One month away from her 50th birthday, Kylie Minogue is back with her 14th effort, Golden. The Aussie icon has been through a long and hilly road since her debut hit Locomotion. We all remember her early teen pop hits as well as the ground-breaking comeback Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, but apart from these two periods her career seems much more obscure.
Often described as the rival of Madonna, we begin to wonder how legitimate this is. Indeed, if she only recorded a pair of successful eras out of a dozen, she is hardly a Queen of Pop, not even the Princess as she is nicknamed. She isn’t a nobody though as shown by the #1 debut of Golden in both the UK and Australia. So, where is the truth? How big Minogue really is?
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge her results. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Minogue‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming, but it will also determine their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend watching the video before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures.
Globally, she may not be a huge seller (it’s all relative…), but from the perspective of someone in the UK, she has not had only a pair of successful eras (she’s had *7* platinum albums in the UK), and “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” was not her big comeback—it was “Spinning Around.” And even when people weren’t buying her records in the 90s, she still had enough of a cultural impact that people knew what she was doing (Nick Cave, Manic Street Preachers, dodgy movies, etc.). In other words, she is comparable to Madonna in the UK and… Read more »
Also, you ought to take into account touring. She’s done some huge tours.
Thank you so much for making Kylie. Great work. So appreciable to have an estimation of her career. ^^ Ouch ! I never saw you so “severe” on a summarie presentation. The estimations of somes albums are down compare to them you make 10 years ago. For exemple, “Body language” at 1,2M was at 1,8M previously. “Light year” also. I suppose the news figures are more reliable. -It seems to me that the last time the OCC revealed Kylie sales, “Light year” and “X” was over 475k. For exemple LY was at 480k and that was 4 or 5 years… Read more »
Hi Vince! One of the main changes from my old figures (for all artists) to the new ones is that I stopped to use certs as a minimum. For example, when Glitter or American Life were Plat in the US, I used to put 1m there although their Soundscan figures showed the real data was lower. The logic was that we didn’t know when an album has been overshipped in remaining countries, so sticking to Soundscan was weighting down the US market. Now, there is much more data from various countries so I got rid of that idea. That’s why… Read more »
I don’t think that 105k units is generous for Body Language in Australia. From memory, Michael Jackson’s #1s was sitting Just below the Top 50 in the 2003 annual chart with around 75k units. #94 in the 2004 yearly chart did 34k units, so Body Language probably did 40k units. Moreover That year end chart did not include non charted weeks. 120k units looks like a more realistic estimate IMHO.
Do You think That Kylie was overshipped too? Because it was certified 4x Plat. in 1989
Hi IE! #1s was overshipped too, it went further on certifications only thanks to catalog sales. From 2003, only the Top 25 has consistently ship 2xP. I have the #50 of 2003 on 70k. I’m aware of YECs not counting non-charted weeks, but that works both ways: #1s and BL didn’t sell enough to be #52 and #54 of the year 2003 in a 100% accurate YEC, they are most likely under the Top 60. I have ARIA’s scans of certifications from 1990 to date. By experience, I’m very careful with pre-90 certs which are often in-house / made up… Read more »
Hi MJ! Not sure I’ve understood all of your message and I’m sorry in advance for being a bit off-topic lol but Michael Jackson’s #1’s sold 79,041 units to sit at #52 on the YEC with the following breakdown: 24/11/2003: 9,955 (#8) 01/12/2003: 13,313 (#7) 08/12/2003: 14,104 (#6) 15/12/2003: 16,208 (#6) 22/12/2003: 25,461 (#8) Unfortunately I can’t even recall the source as I got these figures more than ten years ago. I found them truly reliable though and in line with figures leaked by Undercover for more or less the same positions in December 2003 and 2004. Those 79,041 units… Read more »
Hi IE!
It definitely helps, you never disappoint! I fully rely on Bulion, I had never notice that link before, I’ll add 1989 right now to my file, thanks a lot for that!
I used to read Undercover many, many years ago but at the time I wasn’t keeping track of links / figures, so nice to see some of them! I was underestimating 2003’s YEC sales by about 10%, I’ll add that to the updates, thanks again!
Hey MJD. Thank you for your answer. ^^ Did you use the OCC figures from last week? http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/kylie-minogues-official-top-40-biggest-selling-songs__22391/ You have also this from 4 years ago http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/kylie-minogue-s-official-number-1-singles-sales-revealed-__3849/ http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/kylie-minogue-s-official-number-2-singles-sales-revealed__3876/ I don’t get somes physicals sales. Somes are low and surprise me. For somes figures, I thought that only her UK sales are higher that the total. For many, UK + Australia seems to exced the total. And for most, UK + Australia represents already more that 80% of the total and that surprise me. For exemple – “Spinning arround” sold 314k in Uk (arround 270k physical) and is Platinum is Australia… Read more »
Hi again Vince! Trying to answer on all questions (tell me if I miss some): – Spinning Around is set on 250k physical sales in the UK. It scanned 245k in 2000 and left the Top 200 on the final week of that year (btw, it is also set on near 70k downloads). Physical singles were given up by majors much earlier in small markets than in the big ones. By 2000, the 6 main markets (US, JP, UK, GE, FR, Oz) were responsible for 346,5 million of the global sales of 370 million on that format. Basically, these countries… Read more »
Two RIAA gold singles, one gold and one platinum album; for better or worse the US is the world’s most important music market. She’s only a two hit wonder here.
Super hot, but not a big seller……….loved locomotion in grade school though
Yikes! Not an impressive total.
Not overly surprising from my (Canadian) perspective as the only song I ever remember hearing by her was Can’t Get you Outta My Head.
Thanks guys!
I love her spinning around music video.
Decent sales for her considering she never made it big in North America, mainly the US. Had she had mild success in the US this number would probably be around 20M higher.
very underwhelming results. i knew she was nowhere over 75 million but expected her to clear the 50 million. wow those are bad numbers for someone who is so over hyped. the US not supporting her proved to be her weakness.
We can see that, instead of Can Get Out of my head, and in the UK, she has small numbers! She has a big career but I expected more because her nickname is Princess of pop but she is so far away from Madonna, or Britney Spears!
I think she will focus on UK and Australia for her upcoming promotion of Golden
She’s only considered the “Princess of Pop” in the UK and Australia, elsewhere she wasn’t really that big of a deal.
In the UK she’s treated like a goddess, that’s mostly because of the TV series ‘Neighbours’ that she was in during the late 80s. She’s had a couple of big albums there as well but a whole bunch that didn’t sell. I admire her stickability, but she is ultimately a singer and actress. I don’t think she deserves comparisons with Madonna, the figures prove that.
She’s not treated like a goddess in the UK mostly because of “Neighbours.” It’s because she’s been around for 30 years and had 7 platinum albums and many tours, etc.
exactly. she may not have been a Celine Dion but she hasnt done bad when it comes to longevity on the charts
when Kylie was promoting the single “confide in me” in 1994 her OFFICIAL sales reported was 14 million singles and 12.5 million albums.. this was for “Kylie” “enjoy yourself” “rhythm of love” “let’s get to it” + “greatest hits” … it’s not possible that this figure has only gone up to 25m (another 12.5m albums).. “fever” did indeed sell well over 6 million “light years” (the previous album) also sold lots more after the “fever” success and it re-entered the UK charts for MANY weeks around xmas 2001.. it was official (by EMI) as having sold over 1.5 million sales… Read more »
Hi William! Sadly, a lot of the numbers we read being claimed as “official” aren’t official at all. The true official figures can be found on EMI Annual Reports, below is the information available for Kylie’s early 00s releases: 04/2000 to 03/2001 All albums over 1 million are listed, Light Years isn’t there yet. It was 4xP in 03/2001 in Australia and Plat in 02/2001 in the UK, meaning it had shipped at least 600k on both countries combined by the end of EMI’s fiscal year. In other words, it had shipped under 400k elsewhere and the UK/Oz represent at… Read more »