Little by little, David Bowie continued to amass various good hits, some other moderate ones. Fame, from 1975, was the artist true breakthrough song in the US by climbing all the way to #1 while he never made the top 10 before that one. Ironically, it peaked at a low #17 in the UK. Young Americans singles have noteworthy sales very precisely because young Americans cherished them.
Dropping consistently one album per year the British star moved more than 10 million units of singles from 1973 to 1979.
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
Pin Ups (1973) – 330,000 equivalent albums
Sorrow – 1,100,000
Diamond Dogs (1974) – 420,000 equivalent albums
Diamond Dogs – 400,000
Rebel Rebel – 900,000
Remaining Singles – 100,000
Young Americans (1975) – 945,000 equivalent albums
Young Americans – 700,000
Fame – 2,050,000
John, I’m Only Dancing (Again) – 400,000
Station to Station (1976) – 615,000 equivalent albums
Golden Years – 1,500,000
TVC 15 – 250,000
Wild Is The Wind – 250,000
Remaining Singles – 50,000
Low (1977) – 390,000 equivalent albums
Sound And Vision – 1,200,000
Remaining Singles – 100,000
Heroes (1977) – 135,000 equivalent albums
Beauty And The Beast – 100,000
Heroes – 350,000
Lodger (1979) – 225,000 equivalent albums
D.J. – 250,000
Boys Keep Swinging – 450,000
Remaining Singles – 50,000
Also the version of All The Young Dudes with Ian Hunter and Bowie on vocals on the Mott The Hoople page doesn’t show up on his features.
Just noticed that a number of Bowie songs have recently been been greyed out on spotify and their totals no longer show on the spotify tool report.They’re all on the albums Platinum Collection and Sound + Vision.
Also for some reason the songs credited to Bowie and the Spider on the Bowie at the Beeb album have a separate artist id??