While watching a group of teenagers on the Mickey Mouse Club way back in 1993, nobody would have guessed that four of them, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling, would be superstars two decades later. It just happened. Following the foot steps of the former which got big along with N’Sync boys band, the two blonde girls both arrived in the Pop Music scene in 1998 / 1999 with a huge #1 hit, instantly drawing attention and creating the perfect rivalry story for gossip magazines.
If recent struggles of both Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera moved away public eyes on other new popular singers a la Taylor Swift or Adele, the battle was fierce for several years between both artists and even stronger within’ their respective fan bases. One has more US #1 albums, the other has more #1 singles. The latter has the biggest UK album, yet the first has the biggest global seller. With valid arguments both sides, it becomes hard to accurately define which one was the biggest. The only thing which remained safe up to now is that from their debut to 2004 they both recorded an impressive string of hits.
Now, we will fully clarify the situation setting Christina Aguilera overall popularity from her self-titled debut until her last effort Lotus.
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge the diva results. The concept will not only bring you raw data of all Christina Aguilera albums, physical singles, download singles, music videos and streaming, it will also accurately weight all this information to conclude on meaningful popularity indicators. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC idea, the next page explains it with a short video, I fully recommend you to check it before getting into sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to jump to the following pages. Let’s go!
Hi, I would just like to clarify. Is the World sales count the accumulated sales of America to Europe to Asia etc? Or is it the sales in the countries outside America, Europe and Asia? Thanks.
Hi Fred!
Yes, estimates include all countries – although very few outside of America / Europe / Asia / Oceania have a legal market.
Exelent article as always! 😉
It was interesting to see estimates for Asia but it lead me to a question, does figures from Russia and Turkey go into the Asian or the European estimates?
Hi Al!
Both countries Russia and Turkey are part of the IFPI Europe Panel / European estimates in all CSPC articles!
Thank you! Are you planning on doing an analysis on Deep Purple since their new album is coming out in a few weeks?
THANK YOU so much for this! This is such a great analysis of album sales from Xtina.
Can I request the same thing for Janet Jackson too? I would love to see it, thankyou
Great article！Barbra Streisand,Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, please！
Thank You MJD, Anthony and Hernan for this wonderful piece of work! I guessed right that it was Xtina to be analyzed! In fact, I’ve always been interested in how she performed compared to Britney. This analysis really shows that they were on both different levels, though in my opinion, the fact that Britney was more successful than Xtina was pretty obvious, despite the rivalry between them. I don’t think the comparison between them is fair though, as Britney fully exploited her popularity during her peak, while Xtina released one studio album every 4 years, with her image evolving drastically… Read more »
Hi Raffi! If followers of Chartmasters.org had a name (like the navy, fighters or little monsters), no doubt you would be the leading one! Great analysis as usual 😉 I’m still considering how / where to put the comprehensive tally per countries but this should be available from the next CSPC article! Indeed Xtina figures are no doubt lower than expected. Just like Britney, she has got several wrong numbers going on for various years. Her debut album was inflated due to the supposed Columbia House sales which never existed, then the OCC tally of Stripped is wrong, Back to… Read more »
Michael Jackson, please!
album + singles = 100+M
Many would say that Christina career is not really that huge. When you consider it between the likes of Britney, Beyonce, Rihanna, etc. Of course, she has a long way to go to catch up. But selling 100 million albums and singles is nothing to be ashamed of either. Millions of singers would die to be in her shoes.
Wow, thank you for this! You did a terrific job as usual.
Although to be honest I was expecting some of her eras to be bigger, like her debut and Stripped. Obviously she has some great numbers but I was expecting them to be a bit bigger, considering she’s always compared to Britney and Beyonce.
Hasn’t “Stripped” been confirmed to have sold 1,98 million+ in the UK by 2016? That would put shipments at 2 million easily.
Source: http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/flashback-to-2002-christina-aguilera-reinvents-herself-with-dirrty-at-number-1__17063/
Hi Luminator! This is indeed the figure reported by the OCC – a wrong one. Their numbers are way less accurate than most people think, especially for years around 2000. I was discussing this issue a few days ago with Hernan with Queen Greatest Hits III as an example – claimed to be on 650,000 units by 2008 as per the OCC, its real shipment to that date was only 560,000 copies. The case of Stripped is fairly obvious – by August 20 2006 while the album was still 3xP, it was on 1,818,939 as per the OCC. One month… Read more »
So everybody is wrong , but you
No Erminio, what’s not wrong are facts 😉
I’m pretty sure Stripped sold over 10 million albums. Mediatraffic has it at around 11 million sold
Hi Maddy,
Mediatraffic is everything except trustable, especially when divas are concerned as Freddy always inflates them to death. As per the IFPI, Stripped was #21 of 2002 with 3,9m copies sold and #16 of 2003 with 3,5m, making it 7,4 million copies shipped by the end of 2003. Copies sold in early 2004 were already shipped during 2003 Xmas season and after that it wasn’t selling that well anymore. Since KGB best of, it has low catalog sales. There is absolutely no way it sold 11 million copies, not even close.
You are both equally trustable lol
What??? CA just sold 12.8 m???
Hi Mat!
Yes, putting all figures together this is the closest to the truth you can get. Billboard reported long after its initial run it sold 12,5m and considering how weak of a catalog seller it is that makes sense with individual sales from each country.
Hi please help understand the meaning of comprehensive streaming? Where the numbers came from? Thanks a lot…and may I also ask if you have an updated figures for this? Thanks
Hi Rjhay,
Spotify streams are just that, Spotify streams. This platform has 132 million users against 212 million users combined for all streaming platforms (Apple Music, Google, Tidal, Deezer etc), the comprehensive streams refer to audio streams on all those websites/applications.
Hi again…do you have an updated figures for the stream counts? Cuz christina has a new song america…thanks
christinas debut album sold 17 mil worldwide tho
Hi Slavisa,
This is just a urban legend, it is nowhere near such a figure.