France best selling albums ever: Kendji by Kendji Girac (2014)
While TV show The Voice has been an incredible success story from day 1 in France, recording its best audience performances of Europe there, sales of 18 years old Kendji Girac debut album, simply titled Kendji, still amazed everyone.
Almost every year, one local-sound album (of music representing Latin countries, Corsica, Celts or Brittany to name a few) completely fullfill the whole World Music market segment of France. There was Audin & Modena, Indian Sacred Spirits, Manau, Manu Chao, Shakira, Nolwenn Leroy among others scoring huge selling albums in the past. With his French-Spanish lyrics and instrumentals, Kendji took that spot not only one, but two years in a row, sitting into the Top 3 best sellers of both 2014 and 2015. It comfortably surpassed the million mark in spite of an abysmal market context. Until some new album pass this milestone, Kendji remains the most recent million seller. As this article is being written in the early 2016, the album is still riding high on charts inside the top tier.
Yearly French sales stand as below:
A grand total of 1,133 million copies sold.
Net shipment as of the end of 2015 is estimated at 1,175 million copies.
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