Forum
Watching a group of teenagers on the Mickey Mouse Club way back in 1993, nobody would have guessed that four of them would be superstars two decades later. With Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling, 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.
Christina Aguilera's original albums sales
Christina Aguilera (1999)
- America
- US - 9,500,000
- Canada - 675,000
- Argentina - N/A
- Brazil - N/A
- Mexico - 225,000
- Asia - 785,000
- Japan - 250,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 120,000
- New Zealand - 25,000
- Europe - 1,220,000
- UK - 440,000
- France - 75,000
- Germany - 175,000
- Italy - 45,000
- Spain - 140,000
- Sweden - 15,000
- Netherlands - 75,000
- Switzerland - 40,000
- Austria - 15,000
- Finland - N/A
- World - 12,800,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in Worldwide estimate by using figures pattern of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in too.
My Kind of Christmas (2000)
- America
- US - 1,175,000
- Canada - 50,000
- Argentina - N/A
- Brazil - N/A
- Mexico - N/A
- Asia - 80,000
- Japan - 25,000
- Oceania
- Australia - N/A
- New Zealand - N/A
- Europe - 75,000
- UK - 30,000
- France - N/A
- Germany - N/A
- Italy - N/A
- Spain - N/A
- Sweden - N/A
- Netherlands - N/A
- Switzerland - N/A
- Austria - N/A
- Finland - N/A
- World - 1,400,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in Worldwide estimate by using figures pattern of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in too.
Stripped (2002)
- America
- US - 4,600,000
- Canada - 375,000
- Argentina - 40,000
- Brazil - 80,000
- Mexico - 125,000
- Asia - 525,000
- Japan - 225,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 325,000
- New Zealand - 40,000
- Europe - 3,280,000
- UK - 1,875,000
- France - 140,000
- Germany - 425,000
- Italy - 65,000
- Spain - 75,000
- Sweden - 70,000
- Netherlands - 125,000
- Switzerland - 65,000
- Austria - 45,000
- Finland - N/A
- World - 9,550,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in Worldwide estimate by using figures pattern of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in too.
Back to Basics (2006)
- America
- US - 1,800,000
- Canada - 175,000
- Argentina - N/A
- Brazil - 15,000
- Mexico - 60,000
- Asia - 290,000
- Japan - 140,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 175,000
- New Zealand - 20,000
- Europe - 1,390,000
- UK - 575,000
- France - 130,000
- Germany - 235,000
- Italy - 55,000
- Spain - 25,000
- Sweden - 25,000
- Netherlands - 50,000
- Switzerland - 45,000
- Austria - 30,000
- Finland - 10,000
- World - 4,000,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in Worldwide estimate by using figures pattern of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in too.
Bionic (2010)
- America
- US - 350,000
- Canada - 35,000
- Argentina - N/A
- Brazil - 20,000
- Mexico - 25,000
- Asia - 90,000
- Japan - 65,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 25,000
- New Zealand - 5,000
- Europe - 180,000
- UK - 75,000
- France - 15,000
- Germany - 35,000
- Italy - 6,000
- Spain - 5,000
- Sweden - 2,000
- Netherlands - 6,000
- Switzerland - 6,000
- Austria - 5,000
- Finland - N/A
- World - 750,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in Worldwide estimate by using figures pattern of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in too.
Burlesque (2010)
- America
- US - 800,000
- Canada - 80,000
- Argentina - N/A
- Brazil - 5,000
- Mexico - 20,000
- Asia - 180,000
- Japan - 120,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 70,000
- New Zealand - 10,000
- Europe - 190,000
- UK - 65,000
- France - 5,000
- Germany - 60,000
- Italy - N/A
- Spain - 3,000
- Sweden - N/A
- Netherlands - 2,000
- Switzerland - 15,000
- Austria - 10,000
- Finland - N/A
- World - 1,375,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in Worldwide estimate by using figures pattern of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in too.
Lotus (2012)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-6910722-1429344164-3538.jpeg.jpg)
- America
- US - 320,000
- Canada - 45,000
- Argentina - N/A
- Brazil - 12,000
- Mexico - 10,000
- Asia - 40,000
- Japan - 30,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 7,000
- New Zealand - 1,000
- Europe - 70,000
- UK - 25,000
- France - 5,000
- Germany - 15,000
- Italy - 3,000
- Spain - 3,000
- Sweden - 1,000
- Netherlands - 3,000
- Switzerland - 2,000
- Austria - 2,000
- Finland - N/A
- World - 525,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in Worldwide estimate by using figures pattern of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in too.
Original Album Sales - Comments
1999 Christina Aguilera - 12,800,000
2000 My Kind of Christmas - 1,400,000
2002 Stripped - 9,550,000
2006 Back to Basics - 4,000,000
2010 Bionic - 750,000
2010 Burlesque - 1,375,000
2012 Lotus - 525,000
Over 7 studio albums including one Christmas set and one Soundtrack, Christina Aguilera sold 30,4 million units. Nearly 60% of those sales come from the US. This is precisely the issue limiting her sales, the lack of crossover appeal she had in various places. Figures demonstrate the situation quite well as her entire discography, compilations included, sold barely 400,000 units in France or 230,000 copies in Italy, less than Britney Spears debut.
It had started quite well still with her first two legit studio albums moving over 22 million copies. The positive note was that Stripped arguably outsold her debut in various markets, ending up lower globally only because of the US sales difference.
Everything got more complicated after that though. Back to Basics wasn't a flop by any means but still showed a real decline from its predecessors. Meanwhile it had three decent hits, something both subsequent efforts Bionic and Lotus completely failed to get. Consequently, their sales have been disastrous with barely 1,3 million units sold combined. Burlesque Soundtrack, on which Cher contributed with two songs, did a bit better than them but nothing outstanding either. Download sales had exploded by then though so maybe results from that format saved those eras? Stay tuned, we will get there during the next pages.
Christina Aguilera's physical singles sales
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
Christina Aguilera started fairly strong in the physical singles field. The four singles from her debut album moved the impressive total of 3 million units in the US alone. Unlike the album, Genie In A Bottle was rather big everywhere, while What a Girl Wants did well too. On its side, Christmas Song sold mostly in the US.
Songs like Beautiful, Hurt or Lady Marmalade feel like being hits as big as the early ones for the vocalist. One major difference separate them though - the US physical singles market vanished in the early 00s. Sales got so low that most labels quickly decided to stop issuing them to consolidate album sales instead. None of the singles in this page had a proper physical single widely available in the US - in fact they combine for a mere 200,000 units there, less than 15% of Genie in a Bottle alone.
Since European and Australasian markets also dropped soon after, most of those figures are relatively low, although they remain fairly good for their respective eras. From the time of Bionic, the market had pretty much disappeared completely.
All together, Christina Aguilera sold 13 million physical singles.
Christina Aguilera (1999) - 1,973,000 equivalent albums
Genie in a Bottle - 3,550,000
What a Girl Wants - 1,275,000
I Turn to You - 550,000
Come on Over Baby (All I Want Is You) - 1,200,000
My Kind of Christmas (2000) - 75,000 equivalent albums
Christmas Song - 250,000
Stripped (2002) - 683,000 equivalent albums
Can't Hold Us Down - 425,000
Fighter - 250,000
Beautiful - 650,000
Dirrty - 675,000
The Voice Within - 275,000
Back to Basics (2006) - 243,000 equivalent albums
Ain't No Other Man - 225,000
Slow Down Baby & Oh Mother - 10,000
Candyman - 150,000
Hurt - 425,000
Orphan - 848,000 equivalent albums
Nobody Wants to Be Lonely - 650,000
Lady Marmalade - 1,400,000
Keeps Gettin' Better - 25,000
Car Wash - 325,000
Tilt Ya Head Back - 225,000
Tell Me - 100,000
Remaining Singles - 100,000
Christina Aguilera's digital singles sales
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between one album and one digital single.
With the US digital market reaching its full force in 2008 only and even later in other countries, the entire successful part of Christina Aguilera career happened before this peak. By the release of Back to Basics sales were already getting big though and accumulated catalog sales of earlier singles during various years amount for many million sales.
Hits from her debut add for less than 4 million units sold, but Stripped songs are twice bigger, led by Beautiful, Fighter and Dirrty at over 6 million combined. The trio of big songs from Back to Basics is even higher thanks to the favorable market.
Together, songs from those albums sold 22 million downloads and ringtones.
Disappointingly, the diva popularity collapsed when download sales peaked. As a result no song from her last three albums sold upwards 1,2 million, in spite of it being a pretty modest tally in that era.
The big deal here is among the Orphan album list which features 3 massive collaborations. Maroon 5 smash Moves Like Jagger is now over 20 million, A Great Big World hit Say Something is at nearly 7 million while Pitbull's Feel This Moment climbs up to 4,8 million. Those featurings are quite simply the top 3 best selling digital hits of the singer.
Christina Aguilera (1999) - 585,000 equivalent albums
Genie in a Bottle - 1,400,000
What a Girl Wants - 600,000
I Turn to You - 400,000
Come on Over Baby (All I Want Is You) - 550,000
Reflection - 550,000
Remaining tracks - 400,000
My Kind of Christmas (2000) - 68,000 equivalent albums
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - 250,000
Remaining tracks - 200,000
Stripped (2002) - 1,185,000 equivalent albums
Can't Hold Us Down - 400,000
Fighter - 2,100,000
Beautiful - 2,600,000
Dirrty - 1,500,000
The Voice Within - 400,000
Remaining tracks - 900,000
Back to Basics (2006) - 1,455,000 equivalent albums
Ain't No Other Man - 3,200,000
Candyman - 2,700,000
Hurt - 2,600,000
Remaining tracks - 1,200,000
Bionic (2010) - 570,000 equivalent albums
Not Myself Tonight - 1,200,000
You Lost Me - 700,000
Glam - 500,000
Remaining tracks - 1,400,000
Burlesque (2010) - 360,000 equivalent albums
Express - 400,000
Show Me How You Burlesque - 800,000
Remaining tracks - 1,200,000
Lotus (2012) - 375,000 equivalent albums
Your Body - 900,000
Just a Fool - 1,100,000
Remaining tracks - 500,000
Orphan - 5,895,000 equivalent albums
Lady Marmalade - 1,200,000
Keeps Gettin' Better - 1,800,000
Say Something - 6,900,000
Hoy Tengo Ganas de Ti - 500,000
Tilt Ya Head Back - 700,000
Moves Like Jagger - 20,200,000
Tell Me - 1,200,000
Feel This Moment - 4,800,000
Remaining tracks - 2,000,000
Christina Aguilera's streaming sales
As seen with the example of the Beatles, today weight of Spotify is steadily increasing, representing as much as 63,5% of overall streams on their example. The Swedish giant recently announced they broke the 50-million barrier of paid subscribers.
We will keep that ratio Spotify-All Audio Streaming services updated as much as possible, especially when next IFPI RIN comes out next month covering 2016 Global market. For now, we will be sticking with this 63,5% rate.
What is this section about? Here we will be reviewing streams from all songs and all albums of today artist, converting each of them into equivalent album sales. The equivalent album sales is the division of the comprehensive streaming figure by 1500 as it is now the norm in the new industry model.
Streaming Part 1 - US Arrival
As CSPC rules focus on rewarding records which created a value rather than new packages of past songs, songs of the Spanish effort Mi Reflejo are spread here in two categories - translations of Christina Aguilera songs are owned by this album itself, while the remaining ones go into the Orphan album.
Unsurprisingly, the biggest hit from her debut album is her breakthrough song Genie In A Bottle at 56 million streams. All other singles from the album keep getting streamed with 7,5-20 million plays each. Those decent figures overall provide 123,000 equivalent album sales.
Streaming figures are often pretty good for Christmas albums. Many people didn't though it was worth it to buy one just to air it for a couple of days. Meanwhile, those same persons can perfectly stream a bit those records at the best time of the year. My Kind of Christmas has enjoyed that way 46,000 equivalent album sales.
Streaming Part 2 - Breaking Boundaries
Often regarded as her best album, Stripped does well in Streaming. At 203,000 equivalent album sales, it tops both the debut album and Back to Basics which stands at 131,000 units.
Beautiful at 67 million, Fighter at 41 million and Dirrty at 37 million all contribute in notable fashion to that sales tally. They aren't alone yet as most of the album tracks are now over 1 million.
Back to Basics songs have a similar path with the expected three hits leading the way. The biggest one is Hurt at 44 million.
Streaming Part 3 - Hard Years
Fan base sales often corrupt the perception of a successful record. Sales of Bionic and Burlesque aren't that different thanks to them, but in streams Burlesque is building its lead more and more.
This is the most visible with album tracks. Some songs from Bionic are on half a million streams only - everything on Burlesque is over 5 million, the trademark of a widespread appeal which isn't limited to fans. The soundtrack has no big hit, nevertheless it adds for 115,000 equivalent album sales including 96,000 units from Christina Aguilera songs.
Streaming Part 4 - Orphan Lotus
Coming out during the Streaming boom, Lotus still has fairly weak numbers. At 33 million Your Body is by far the biggest song but that's nothing impressive for a late 2012 recording. The best example of that is Orphan song Moves Like Jagger which came out one year earlier and still has 260 million streams to date. Say Something is even bigger at 309 million. Such huge smashes push the equivalent album sales of the Orphan list at 874,000 copies.
Christina Aguilera's full length related records sales
It sounds fairly logical to add together weighted sales of one era - studio album, physical single, downloads, streams - to get the full picture of an album popularity. For older releases though, they also generate sales of various live, music videos and compilation albums.
All those packaging-only records do not create value, they exploit the one originated from the parent studio album of each of its tracks instead. Inevitably, when such compilations are issued this downgrades catalog sales of the original LP. Thus, to perfectly gauge how worth this latter is, we need to re-assign sales proportionally to its contribution of all compilations which feature its songs. The following table explains it all.
Remaining Long Format
How to understand this table? If you check for example Keeps Gettin' Better compilation album line, those figures mean it sold 1,475,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all songs included on this package add for 418 million streaming plays on Spotify.
The second part at the right of the table shows how many streams are coming from each original album plus the share it represents on the overall package streams. Thus, streaming figures tell us Stripped songs are responsible for 37% of the Keeps Gettin' Better tracklist attractiveness, which means it generated 544,000 of its 1,475,000 album sales and so on for the other records.
As previously mentioned, Mi Reflejo sales are split within' the original album and the Orphan one. Many of those compilations / EPs / music videos came very early in the singer career thus largely representing the self-titled debut album. For the last two packages, this isn't true anymore with Stripped and Back to Basics songs taking over the strength of their track lists.
Full Length related records Sales - Summary
Here is the most underestimated indicator of an album success - the amount of compilation sales of all kinds it generated. Due to the dependency of the own studio album sales on those releases, they are a key piece of the jigsaw.
Interestingly, the Orphan album is the one that generated the highest number of compilation sales. It is mostly due to original Spanish tunes. As no compilation-like album nor video came out in recent years, Bionic, Burlesque and Lotus haven't contributed at all in such releases, downgrading even more their weight within' the pop star discography.
Christina Aguilera Career CSPC Results
So, after checking all figures, how many overall album sales equivalent each Christina Aguilera album achieved? Well, at this point we barely need to do the addition of all figures defined all over this article!
[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]
One could have expect download sales and streaming to push Stripped closer to Christina Aguilera. The lack of compilation sales prevent it from challenging the debut album more though. This latter record thus remains quite easily the biggest one at 16,9 million equivalent album sales overall while Stripped is a solid runner up at 12,55 million.
If the 6,3 million sales of Back to Basics are someway disappointing and undoubtedly down from its predecessors, it is really Bionic that destroyed the singer status of global superstar. This album plus Lotus barely top 2 million combined once factoring in every possible format. Burlesque shoot ahead of them by now at 1,85 million, a total poised to reach 2 million copies in a not so far future.
Thanks to a few massively successful collaborations, most notably Moves Like Jagger, the Orphan album is very strong at 9,1 million units.
This extra push brings Christina Aguilera to 50,7 million equivalent album sales. This is less than half the 97 million managed by Britney Spears, putting them in fairly different leagues even if some chart statistics feed the debate. Norah Jones or Alicia Keys, both with similar totals to Christina, are better comparison scales for the former Disney star. The following page lists the most successful songs of the artist.
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
Sources: IFPI, Spotify, Chartmasters.org.
Christina Aguilera's biggest tracks
The list of most successful songs is compiled in album equivalent sales generated by each of them. It includes the song own physical singles sales with a 0,3 weighting, its download and streaming sales with appropriate weighting too plus its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.
- 1999 - Genie in a Bottle [Christina Aguilera] - 7,990,000
- 2002 - Beautiful [Stripped] - 4,360,000
- 2010 - Moves Like Jagger [Orphan] - 3,310,000
- 1999 - What a Girl Wants [Christina Aguilera] - 2,840,000
- 2002 - Fighter [Stripped] - 2,690,000
- 2002 - Dirrty [Stripped] - 2,520,000
- 2006 - Hurt [Back to Basics] - 2,160,000
- 1999 - Come on Over Baby (All I Want Is You) [Christina Aguilera] - 1,900,000
- 2006 - Ain't No Other Man [Back to Basics] - 1,810,000
- 2006 - Candyman [Back to Basics] - 1,380,000
- 2013 - Say Something [Orphan] - 1,370,000
- 1999 - I Turn to You [Christina Aguilera] - 1,130,000
- 2001 - Lady Marmalade [Orphan] - 970,000
- 1998 - Reflection [Christina Aguilera] - 940,000
- 2002 - Can't Hold Us Down [Stripped] - 920,000
We have more for you...
... checking out the upcoming artists or even voting for them!
... similar artists
... best-selling artists, albums, and singles
I'm pretty sure Stripped sold over 10 million albums. Mediatraffic has it at around 11 million sold
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.
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 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.
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 later, her catalog was fully audited and updated by the BPI. This led to a new certification - a surprising 5xPlatinum award, showing it had yet to ship 1,8m units. As the album reached 2xPlatinum in Europe in December 2003 only and never made it to 3xP, it appears clear that the OCC figure is way too high.
The same happens with her debut album, supposedly on 364,414 units by August 2006 but which had yet to cross 300,000 units shipped by September 2006.
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 with each release, causing an inconsistent fanbase. This can be seen by the relatively low opening sales of her albums, especially Stripped, despite having strong predecessors.
Regarding her album sales, her debut numbers are reasonable and didn't surprised me much. It did tremendous in North America, plus a few countries elsewhere. It's strong physical singles sales and the solid amount of related releases. 16,7m is a higher figure than expected, on par with Shakira's huge debut Laundry Service. I guess the high figure can also be attributed to the fact it was released during the best years in music commercially.
Stripped is the album that surprised me the most though! It's album sales in the US was higher than I expected, but it being so under 10m copies was a huge surprise! I guess lots of charts experts overestimated it's total in Europe being at 4m copies sold there, hence creating the 10-11m figure reported. But what surprised me the most was it's relatively low 12,2m album sales equivalents. That's lower than Britney's self-titled album, despite in many people's minds that Stripped was the much bigger era. In fact, Stripped sold much more digital downloads and is streamed much more than the Britney album. I guess the disadvantage of not having a huge selling live/compilation album affected it's total. I see that for most artists, while digital downloads are good increase to an album's total, it can't compete with other related releases, as this situation can be seen with other artists like Alicia Keys and Xtina. I expect artists that haven't been analyzed like Usher to have suffered this same fate as acts like him didn't put out any big compilation albums.
What did positively surprised me was Xtina's singles sales. 70m digital downloads and ringtones are a great result, being close to Britney 's 80m figure in the same format. On a negative note, with almost half of her digital sales coming from features/duets, this shows Xtina isn't doing so well with her solo releases, especially since 2008-now.
Love that you added Asian sales to your album sales breakdown! I hope you'll add a page where the cumulative sales for each country will be available soon for convenience!
By the way, I'd like to suggest a few artists you can analyze. Some of these artists have relatively small discography so you can do them quite convieniently.
1. Brandy 2. Monica 3. Fugees and Lauryn Hill 4. The Notorious B.I.G 5. Ariana Grande
6. Nelly 7. Nelly Furtado 8. TLC 9. Ginuwine 10. Kylie Minogue
Of course, I hope you'll analyze popular legends like Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Barbara Streisand etc. soon, but I know you'll need more time for those artists, so take your time!
Keep up the good work, and perhaps you can give us a clue onto whose up next to be analyzed?
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 Basics is always assigned with more than 300,000 units in Canada since it is 3xP but it was certified as a double album for 150,000 units 'only'. Plus Stripped and Back to Basics both had their best peaks in summer time and on years with strong market drops from previous years, in a Mediatraffic-like methodology, this inflates their figures a lot. In mid-00s, Top 10s during August in countries like Italy or the Netherlands doesn't bring much sales. It's quite simple - Christina never had a big album during an holiday season. In the UK for example, she has never been Top 20 at Christmas time.
Of course a higher selling compilation would have help - but had Keeps Gettin' Better been released earlier, her first two albums wouldn't have been selling so well in 2004-2007 years so all in all the story is quite similar. I guess her discography mostly lacks volume, as you rightfully notice she hasn't been prolific enough!
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
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?
