Physical Singles Sales – Part 1
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5 (1969) – 876,000 equivalent albums
I Want You Back – 2,920,000
ABC (1970) – 1,224,000 equivalent albums
The Love You Save – 1,840,000
ABC – 2,240,000
Third Album (1970) – 1,365,000 equivalent albums
I’ll Be There – 2,870,000
Mama’s Pearl – 1,670,000
Remaining Singles – 10,000
Jackson 5 Christmas Album (1970) – 108,000 equivalent albums
Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town – 360,000
Maybe Tomorrow (1971) – 714,000 equivalent albums
Never Can Say Goodbye – 1,560,000
Maybe Tomorrow – 820,000
In spite of selling mostly in the US in their early days, the Jackson 5 had no problem hitting 1 million sales per single. In fact, their first five hits combine for an outstanding 11,5 million units sold. From them, Mama’s Pearl was the worst performer and yet it still was a #2 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on Cashbox. Never Can Say Goodbye replicated exactly the same peaks and similar sales too.
This insane string of smashes couldn’t last forever. From their #1/2 standards, the group dropped one level to hit #20 with Maybe Tomorrow, which was still a solid seller in spite of dreadful airplay figures. The norm for teen acts is that after the hype slows down the act falls more and more until disappearing from the map. How have the Jackson 5 sustained their sales during the following years?
Just curious, did you add the total of video sales from MJ solo and Jackson 5? Hope those weren’t counted 2wice.
Hi Nathan!
Various packages include songs from both MJ and the J5, so they can appear under the compilation section of both articles. Their sales are spread among both though, avoiding double counting. For example, you can see The Ultimate Collection box on page 40, it includes songs from 8 Jackson 5’s albums. But sales assigned to them add for only 90k out of the 600k total, the remaining 510k sales going to MJ’s albums as per the distribution of streams!
In the case of Queen, their Greatest Hits 1 & 2 alone are well above 50 mill.
I think there are only 3 more artists with the shot of being above 200m: Queen, Elton and Elvis. The latter has a chance of breaking 300m, though i doubt it.
I can’t wait to see Michael’s article. OMG
Are you combining Michael Jackson’s total with these like you did for Beyonce with DC?
When will we ever get a Michael Jackson CSPC. 🙁
Only a few albums were not certified Gold/Platinum, that’s great! 60s and 70s albums didn’t sold a lot of copies by then, with some few exceptions.
Not a huge showing………..but the boost to MJ’s solo material is going to be significant