CSPC: Cher Popularity Analysis
Original Album Sales – Comments
Sonny & Cher Albums
1965 Look At Us – 1,300,000
1966 The Wondrous World of Sonny & Cher – 250,000
1967 In Case You’re in Love – 250,000
1967 Good Times – 125,000
1972 All I Ever Need Is You – 700,000
1973 Mama Was a Rock and Roll Singer, Papa Used to Write All Her Songs – 75,000
Cher solo Albums
1965 All I Really Want to Do – 450,000
1966 The Sonny Side of Cher – 325,000
1966 Cher – 250,000
1967 With Love, Cher – 250,000
1968 Backstage – 100,000
1969 3614 Jackson Highway – 100,000
1971 Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves – 1,000,000
1972 Foxy Lady – 375,000
1973 Bittersweet White Light – 100,000
1973 Half-Breed – 600,000
1974 Dark Lady – 300,000
1975 Stars – 125,000
1976 I’d Rather Believe in You – 75,000
1977 Cherished – 50,000
1977 Two The Hard Way – 50,000
1979 Take Me Home – 550,000
1979 Prisoner – 75,000
1982 I Paralyze – 50,000
1987 Cher – 2,050,000
1989 Heart of Stone – 6,000,000
1991 Love Hurts – 3,500,000
1995 It’s a Man’s World – 850,000
1998 Believe – 11,800,000
2001 Living Proof – 1,125,000
2010 Burlesque – 1,375,000
2013 Closer to the Truth – 600,000
The debut album of Sonny & Cher, Look At Us, was strongly successful in the US. It peaked at #2 for 8 weeks, all of them behind Help! by the Beatles. The market was dreadful for LPs then though. The absence of catalog sales for this album limits its to date tally which is on 1,3 million only.
That’s the main issue of all the pre-1987 albums. Some had success upon release including All I Really Want to Do, Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves (titled Cher), Half-Breed and Take Me Home, but they were all deleted a few years later. They were released in a few countries only as most markets were dominated by singles instead. Bad market conditions coupled with no catalog sales mean that even her hit albums moved around half a million units only. In fact, her first 18 solo albums add for less than 5 million sales!
This situation changed with Cher, the 1987 album. It sold 2 million copies and opened the door to larger promotional campaigns. Heart of Stone sold 6 million copies, confirming the trend. Both albums saw most of their sales come from North America. Her Love Hurts smashed various countries but flopped in the US, although 3,5 million is still great. It’s A Man’s World bombed, only to see Believe smash ever harder. Then, Living Proof was a disastrous follow up. This sequence resumes perfectly the career of Cher, made up of huge and unexpected smashes followed by hard core flops. Her ups and downs are unmatched.
In total, she sold nearly 35 million studio albums, including 27,3 million from the last eight sets.
When you update this one would be good you include the album Black Rose (1980), Cher’s rock and roll band.
Hi, can you please update Cher’s total as her streaming numbers have grown a lot in the last few years. She released an album in 2018 which has 90 million streams on Spotify, also the video for ‘Believe’ has just crossed 100 million views since it was uploaded on her YouTube channel in late 2018. Thanks!
Hi Ben!
All artists climb too fast to keep every article updated. This being said, we developped a tool that updates the total CSPC as soon as someone searches for his streams. You can see the list of updated totals here.
Hi again! Thanks for the reply MJD, much appreciated. And thanks for that link, I guess it’s somewhat of an update. I was thinking of if it’s possible to see how the accumulated streams affect their parent album.
Also, the article mentions 12 million downloads while the link you posted states 9 million, so can you please clarify what’s the correct estimated figure?
Thanks again.
Please update Cher’s figures!! I think it has change a lot since the last update
I was a bit surprised by the low streaming results of “Bang Bang”, given how iconic the song is, but then I realised what happened. Cher’s original version has only 3.5 mln stream on Spotify , but Nancy Sinatra’s version of the song has 73 mln streams on the same platform, so “Bang Bang” is a typical case of a song that has been obscured by a cover version who became much more popular than the original version in the long run.
You should update this. Cher has released a new album in 2019 that was number one worldwide for at least 3 days. Dancing Queen sold considerably well considering her age.
Also, Cher had put out a few other songs under a different name. Bonnie Jo Mason and Sonny and Cher also once were named Caesar and Cleo. I don’t know much about their data, but its something to look into. Do you also have her collaboration with Neneh Cherry and that singer from the Judds Love Can Build a Bridge?
https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=sA0EAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=zh-CN#v=onepage&q&f=false
Believe was 3xP in Turkey, which equals to 300k sales. Based on your Germany:Turkey=25:1 ratio, it was estimated only 50k, so I think you should adjusted the special formulas for Cher.
Hi Dhhd,
Standard ratios are only used when no data is available, list of certifications of Believe is known / has been used already.
But the pan europe sales you were using the normal formulas