Original Album Sales – Comments

1985 Whitney Houston – 21,900,000
1987 Whitney – 19,800,000
1990 I’m Your Baby Tonight – 9,900,000
1992 The Bodyguard – 41,100,000
1996 The Preacher’s Wife – 5,300,000
1998 My Love Is Your Love – 10,400,000
2002 Just Whitney… – 1,900,000
2003 One Wish: The Holiday Album – 900,000
2009 I Look to You – 2,400,000

It is difficult to define a pattern or even an average for Whitney Houston’s album sales considering how diverse their fortunes have been. Out of the 9 records listed above, two are soundtracks featuring songs by other artists – more on next page about this – and one is a Christmas album. Plus, her latter albums sold fairly low amounts in comparison to her earlier sets.

Nevertheless, a total of 113,6 million over 9 album represents a pretty healthy average of 12,6 million per album. Obviously owning a 41-million seller helps. The Bodyguard confirms its status of gigantic smash by being quite simply the highest selling album studied so far, eclipsing the previous mark of 38,1 million registered by another classic soundtrack, Grease. Its lead is rather impressive with a 3 million gap, plus a 10 million gap over the 5th biggest album met up to now – list below:

1 1978 Soundtrack – Grease – 38,100,000
2 1971 Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV – 36,800,000
3 1977 Fleetwood Mac – Rumours – 35,500,000
4 1997 Shania Twain – Come On Over – 33,500,000
5 1987 Guns N’ Roses – Appetite For Destruction – 30,900,000

As with every monster success, it makes flops look even bigger. Shifting 108,4 million across her first sex 80s-90s albums, Whitney Houston took a massive hit with 2002 album Just Whitney, an album that has yet to reach 2 million units and arguably one of the biggest bombs of all-time for the music industry. While I Look to You had started to turn things to a more positive side after a terrible decade, the final whisper of the singer prevented us from getting additional chapters.