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After Black Eyed Peas' victory in our poll regarding the next band to be studied, here is a little introductory gift with a study of Fergie's career. How big was she when she decided to go solo, although always with the contribution of her band mate Will.i.am?
If we think about it, the feeling is that she is one of the rare female singers that left a band to find success as a solo star. We remember very well how the members of the Spice Girls, Sharleen Spiteri (Texas) and Nicole Scherzinger (Pussycat Dolls) flopped in their attempt to go solo. In reality, lots of singers who began in bands achieved great success as solo artists. The thing is though, that we often forgot their early days.
Janis Joplin (Big Brother & The Holding Company), Diana Ross (Supremes), Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac), Gloria Estefan (Miami Sound Machine), Annie Lennox (Eurythmics), Lauryn Hill (Fugees), Beyoncé (Destiny's Child), and Gwen Stefani (No Doubt) all achieved multi-Platinum albums as solo artists and in bands. Then there is Cher and Tina Turner, both big with their respective husbands until finding bigger success as solo singers. Career-wise, the closest to Fergie is likely Lauryn Hill as we are still waiting for their sophomore efforts. Where are they?
Original Albums Sales
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are also factored in.
The Dutchess (2006)
- America
- US - 4,100,000
- Canada - 375,000
- Argentina - 30,000
- Brazil - 120,000
- Mexico - 60,000
- Asia - 630,000
- Japan - 430,000
- South Korea - 7,500
- Indonesia - 30,000
- China - 60,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 290,000
- New Zealand - 30,000
- Europe - 730,000
- UK - 320,000
- France - 52,500
- Germany - 140,000
- Italy - 20,000
- Spain - 7,500
- Sweden - 10,000
- Netherlands - 12,500
- Switzerland - 20,000
- Austria - 12,500
- Finland - 2,500
- World - 6,450,000
Original Album Sales - Comments
2006 The Dutchess - 6,450,000
Sales of The Dutchess are as good as they are frustrating. The album did wonders in North America, Australia, Brazil, Russia, China and Japan (the last four countries being truly hard to break for international stars). At the same time the album was somewhat of a flop in various far more accessible markets, including all over Europe. The Black Eyed Peas sold very well in countries like the UK and France however, The Dutchess still peaked outside of the Top 10 album chart in every European market.
Physical Singles Sales
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
Selling 720,000 physical units of singles from an album mostly exploited during 2007 is a solid result. It could have been even better if the four leading markets for that format by then weren't France, the UK and Germany (where she performed relatively poorly) and Japan, where international singles are almost never released.
The Dutchess (2006) - 216,000 equivalent albums
Fergalicious - 75,000
Clumsy - 25,000
London Bridge - 190,000
Glamorous - 125,000
Big Girls Don't Cry - 280,000
Party People - 25,000
Orphan - 9,000 equivalent albums
Gettin' Over You - 30,000
Digital Singles Sales
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between albums and digital singles.
The Dutchess (2006) - 4,935,000 equivalent albums
Fergalicious - 6,000,000
Clumsy - 4,100,000
London Bridge - 5,600,000
Glamorous - 5,800,000
Big Girls Don't Cry - 8,000,000
Party People - 1,400,000
Remaining tracks - 2,000,000
Orphan - 600,000 equivalent albums
M.I.L.F.S.$ - 300,000
L.A.LOVE (la la) - 1,200,000
A Little Party Never Killed Nobody - 500,000
Gettin' Over You - 1,300,000
Remaining tracks - 700,000
Streaming Sales
Streaming is made up of two families - audio and video. Our CSPC methodology now includes both to better reflect the real popularity of each track. The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube. As detailed in the Fixing Log article, Spotify represents 132 million of the 212 million users of streaming platforms, while YouTube is pretty much the only video platform generating some revenue for the industry. Below is the equivalence set on the aforementioned article:
Audio Stream - 1500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream - 11,750 views equal 1 album unit
Thus...
Equivalent Albums Sales = 212/132 * Spotify streams / 1500 + YouTube views / 11750
Part 1
No song from The Dutchess has truly gigantic Spotify streams. Four of them are impressively solid though, with London Bridge at 35 million, Fergalicious at 50 million, Glamorous at 53 million and Big Girls Don't Cry at 75 million. The last three also top easily 100 million YouTube views. The remaining album tracks are not too shabby either, although not that impressive for a relatively recent record. In total, those streams are worth 328,000 equivalent album sales.
The career of Fergie has been messy lately with various songs coming out without the arrival of an album. Some did okay in the streaming area though. Both L.A.LOVE (la la) and A Little Party Never Killed Nobody top 100 million Spotify streams. M.I.L.F.S.$ and Gettin' Over You are closing in on 200 million YouTube views. Thanks to the more favorable streaming market when they were issued, those Orphan songs combined beat the total of tracks from The Dutchess, with a total of 418,000 equivalent album sales.
Full Length related record Sales
It sounds fairly logical to add together weighted sales of one era - studio album, physical singles, downloads, streams - to get the full picture of an album's 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 value originating 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 the worth of these releases, we need to re-assign sales proportionally to its contribution of all the compilations which feature its songs. The following table explains this method.
This being said, Fergie only released one digital-only EP, which sold an estimated 50,000 copies to date. That's worth 25,000 equivalent album sales, all assigned to The Dutchess as The Dutchess EP included only songs from that record.
Fergie Career CSPC Results
So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each Fergie achieved? Well, at this point we hardly need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!
[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]
The Dutchess closes the countdown with nearly 12 million equivalent album sales. As shown in our Understanding article, her music style was no doubt impacted by digital sales, although during the early years of downloads damages were still limited.
With that said, 12 million remains a superb result no matter how we look at it. We will soon be posting the entire Black Eyed Peas discography to see how The Dutchess performs against the likes of Monkey Business and The E.N.D.
Adding the few Orphan songs to the diva, Fergie is up to 13 million equivalent album sales overall. We will stay tuned to see if she ultimately announces a second LP!
The following section lists her most successful songs.
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
Sources: IFPI, Billboard, Spotify, YouTube, Chartmasters.org.
Bonus: biggest tracks by Fergie
The list of most successful songs is compiled in album equivalent sales generated by each of them. It includes the song's own physical singles sales with a 0,3 weighting, its download and streaming sales, and with appropriate weighting too, plus its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.
1 2006 - Big Girls Don't Cry [The Dutchess] - 3,340,000
2 2006 - Fergalicious [The Dutchess] - 2,310,000
3 2006 - Glamorous [The Dutchess] - 2,270,000
4 2006 - London Bridge [The Dutchess] - 1,740,000
5 2006 - Clumsy [The Dutchess] - 1,190,000
We have more for you...
... the Black Eyed Peas' full CSPC analysis
... Will.I.am's full CSPC analysis
... checking out the upcoming artists or even voting for them!
... similar artists
... best-selling artists, albums, and singles
Hello MJD, you say the The Dutchess did wonders in Russia but you don't mention how much the album sold there in the breakdown. How much did it sell in that country? Thx.
Thanks for the full breakdown!
One correction regarding Cher though, she doesn't belong in the group of artists going solo after their group/duo broke up because she had numerous charting singles and albums as a solo artist while being part of Sonny & Cher.
Just to illustrate, during the 1965-1974 period she had 11 SOLO top 40 Billboard Hot 100 entries, while as Sonny & Cher she had 10, during the same timeframe...
Thanks and keep up the great work!
Hi Angelogilly,
Yes, the "after" word isn't exclusive, for example Beyoncé too released a successful debut solo album and then a new Destiny's Child album. Same for Gwen Stefani and others too. They all started big as part of a duo / group and are last remembered for big solo hits!
Hi but!
The Dutchess went 3xPlatinum in Russia for more than 60,000 unit shipped, making it her third European market after the UK and Germany!
Hey MJD
I don't know if you've heard of an artist zara larsson, but her debut album is doing phenomenal in streaming and single sales (especially in Europe). However her album sales are Very low compared to previous singers. Every artist you've done so far has at least one well selling album, I think it'd be interesting to show a new artist that came up in the age of streaming. Also it'd be cool to see how it compares to albums of previous formats
I think something is wrong, the digital single sales for The Dutchess are 32,900,000 according to this data, which means 3,29 million equivalent album units, and not 4,935 milion.
It was the 8th best selling album of 2007 so let's not exaggerate... She did sold a lot of singles though, maybe top 5 EAS.
Since Soundscan became fairly accurate around 2003 (after the demise of music clubs), I thought it'd be interesting to look at these last 20 years :
2003
1. 50 Cent Get Rich or Die Tryin 6.5m
2. Norah Jones Come Away With Me 5.1m
3. Linkin Park Meteora 3.5m
4. Evanescence Fallen 3.4m
5. OutKast Speakerboxxx/The Love Below 3.1m
6. Beyoncé Dangerously in Love 2.5m
7. R. Kelly Chocolate Factory 2.4m
8. Hilary Duff Metamorphosis 2.4m
9. Toby Keith Shock'n Y'all 2.3m
10. Coldplay A Rush of Blood to the Head 2.2m
2004
1. Usher Confessions 8m
2. Norah Jones Feels Like Home 3.8m
3. Eminem Encore 3.5m
4. Kenny Chesney When the Sun Goes Down 3.1m
5. Gretchen Wilson Here for the Party 2.9m
6. Tim McGraw Live Like You Were Dying 2.8m
7. Maroon 5 Songs About Jane 2.7m
8. Evanescence Fallen 2.6m
9. Ashlee Simpson Autobiography 2.6m
10. Various Artists NOW 16 2.6m
2005
1. Mariah Carey The Emancipation of Mimi 5m
2. 50 Cent The Massacre 4.9m
3. Kelly Clarkson Breakaway 3.5m
4. Green Day American Idiot 3.4m
5. The Black Eyed Peas Monkey Business 3m
6. Coldplay X&Y 2.6m
7. Rascall Flatts Feels Like Today 2.5m
8. Gwen Stefani Love Angel Music Baby 2.5m
9. Kanye West Late Registration 2.4m
10. The Game The Documentary 2.3m
2006
1. Soundtrack High School Musical 3.7m
2. Rascal Flatts Me and My Gang 3.5m
3. Carrie Underwood Some Hearts 3m
4. Nickelback All the Right Reasons 2.7m
5. Justin Timberlake FutureSex/LoveSounds 2.4m
6. James Blunt Back to Bedlam 2.1m
7. Beyoncé B'Day 2m
8. Soundtrack Hannah Montana 2m
9. Dixie Chicks Taking the Long Way 1.9m
10. Hinder Extreme Behavior 1.8m
2007
1. Josh Groban Noel 3.7m
2. Soundtrack High School Musical 2 3m
3. Eagles Long Road Out of Eden 2.6m
4. Alicia Keys As I Am 2.5m
5. Daughtry Daughtry 2.5m
6. Soundtrack Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus 2.5m
7. Linkin Park Minutes to Midnight 2.1m
8. Fergie The Dutchess 2.1m
9. Taylor Swift Taylor Swift 2m
10. Kanye West Graduation 1.9m
2008
1. Lil Wayne Tha Carter III 2.9m
2. Coldplay Viva La Vida 2.1m
3. Taylor Swift Fearless 2.1m
4. Kid Rock Rock N Roll Jesus 2m
5. AC/DC Black Ice 1.9m
6. Taylor Swift Taylor Swift 1.6m
7. Metallica Death Magnetic 1.6m
8. T.I. Paper Trail 1.5m
9. Jack Johnson Sleep Through the Static 1.5m
10. Beyoncé I Am...Sasha Fierce 1.5m
2009
1. Taylor Swift Fearless 3.2m
2. Susan Boyle I Dreamed a Dream 3.1m
3. Michael Jackson Number Ones 2.4m
4. Lady Gaga The Fame 2.2m
5. Andrea Bocelli My Christmas 2.2m
6. Soundtrack Hannah Montana: The Movie 1.8m
7. The Black Eyed Peas The E.N.D. 1.8m
8. Eminem Relapse 1.7m
9. Jay-Z The Blueprint 3 1.5m
10. Kings of Leon Only By the Night 1.4m
2010
1. Eminem Recovery 3.4m
2. Lady Antebellum Need You Now 3.1m
3. Taylor Swift Speak Now 3m
4. Justin Bieber My World 2.0 2.3m
5. Susan Boyle The Gift 1.9m
6. Lady Gaga The Fame 1.6m
7. Sade Soldier of Love 1.3m
8. Drake Thank Me Later 1.3m
9. Usher Raymond v Raymond 1.2m
10. Ke$ha Animal 1.1m
2011
1. Adele 21 5.8m
2. Michael Buble Christmas 2.5m
3. Lady Gaga Born this Way 2.1m
4. Lil Wayne Tha Carter IV 1.9m
5. Jason Aldean My Kinda Party 1.6m
6. Mumford & Sons Sigh No More 1.4m
7. Drake Take Care 1.2m
8. Justin Bieber Under the Mistletoe 1.2m
9. Jay-Z & Kanye West Watch the Throne 1.2m
10. Lady Antebellum Own the Night 1.2m
2012
1. Adele 21 4.4m
2. Taylor Swift Red 3.1m
3. One Direction Up All Night 1.6m
4. Mumford & Sons Babel 1.5m
5. One Direction Take Me Home 1.3m
6. Justin Bieber Believe 1.3m
7. Carrie Underwood Blown Away 1.2m
8. Luke Bryan Tailgates and Tanlines 1.1m
9. Lionel Richie Tuskegee 1.1m
10. Jason Aldean Night Train 1m
2013
1. Justin Timberlake The 20/20 Experience 2.4m
2. Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP 2 1.7m
3. Luke Bryan Crash My Party 1.5m
4. Imagine Dragons Night Visions 1.4m
5. Bruno Mars Unorthodox Jukebox 1.4m
6. Florida Georgia Line Here's To The Good Times 1.4m
7. Drake Nothing Was the Same 1.3m
8. Beyoncé Beyoncé 1.3m
9. Blake Shelton Based On a True Story 1.1m
10. Jay-Z Magna Carta...Holy Grail 1.1m
2014
1. Taylor Swift 1989 3.7m
2. Soundtrack Frozen 3.5m
3. Sam Smith In the Lonely Hour 1.2m
4. Pentatonix That's Christmas to Me 1.1m
5. Soundtrack Guardians of the Galaxy 0.9m
6. Beyoncé Beyoncé 0.9m
7. Barbra Streisand Partners 0.9m
8. Lorde Pure Heroine 0.8m
9. One Direction Four 0.8m
10. Eric Church The Outsiders 0.8m
2015
1. Adele 25 7.4m
2. Taylor Swift 1989 2m
3. Justin Bieber Purpose 1.3m
4. Ed Sheeran x 1.2m
5. Drake If You're Reading This It's Too Late 1.1m
6. Sam Smith In the Lonely Hour 1m
7. Meghan Trainor Title 1m
8. The Weeknd Beauty Behind the Madness 0.9m
9. Soundtrack Fifty Shades of Grey 0.9m
10. Luke Bryan Kill the Lights 0.9m
2016
1. Adele 25 1.7m
2. Drake Views 1.6m
3. Beyoncé Lemonade 1.6m
4. Chris Stapleton Traveller 1.1m
5. Pentatonix A Pentatonix Christmas 0.9m
6. Original Broadway Cast Recording Hamilton: An American Musical 0.8m
7. Twenty One Pilots Blurryface 0.7m
8. Prince The Very Best of Prince 0.7m
9. Rihanna Anti 0.6m
10. Justin Bieber Purpose 0.6m
2017
1. Taylor Swift Reputation 1.9m
2. Ed Sheeran ÷ 1.1m
3. Kendrick Lamar Damn. 0.9m
4. Bruno Mars 24K Magic 0.7m
5. Soundtrack Moana 0.7m
6. Chris Stapleton From A Room: Volume 1 0.7m
7. P!nk Beautiful Trauma 0.6m
8. Soundtrack Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2: Awesome Mix Vol. 2 0.6m
9. Metallica Hardwired… To Self-Destruct 0.6m
10. Soundtrack Trolls 0.5m
2018
1. Soundtrack The Greatest Showman 1.5m
2. Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper A Star Is Born (Soundtrack) 0.7m
3. Eminem Kamikaze 0.5m
4. Travis Scott Astroworld 0.5m
5. Jason Aldean Rearview Town 0.5m
6. Justin Timberlake Man of the Woods 0.4m
7. Carrie Underwood Cry Pretty 0.4m
8. Post Malone Beerbongs & Bentleys 0.4m
9. Dave Matthews Band Come Tomorrow 0.4m
10. Ed Sheeran ÷ 0.4m
2019
1. Taylor Swift Lover 1.1m
2. Billie Eilish When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? 0.7m
3. Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper A Star Is Born (Soundtrack) 0.5m
4. Jonas Brothers Happiness Begins 0.5m
5. Harry Styles Fine Line 0.5m
6. BTS Map of the Soul: Persona 0.5m
7. Tool Fear Inoculum 0.4m
8. Queen Bohemian Rhapsody (Soundtrack) 0.4m
9. Post Malone Hollywood's Bleeding 0.4m
10. The Beatles Abbey Road 0.3m
2020
1. Taylor Swift Folklore 1.3m
2. BTS Map of the Soul: 7 0.7m
3. The Weeknd After Hours 0.5m
4. Harry Styles Fine Line 0.4m
5. Billie Eilish When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? 0.3m
6. Lady Gaga Chromatica 0.3m
7. Juice WRLD Legends Never Die 0.3m
8. Halsey Manic 0.3m
9. Eminem Music to Be Murdered By 0.3m
10. Taylor Swift Evermore 0.3m
2021
1. Adele 30 1.5m
2. Taylor Swift Red (Taylor’s Version) 0.6m
3. Olivia Rodrigo Sour 0.6m
4. Taylor Swift Evermore 0.5m
5. Taylor Swift Fearless (Taylor’s Version) 0.5m
6. Billie Eilish Happier Than Ever 0.4m
7. Harry Styles Fine Line 0.3m
8. Taylor Swift Folklore 0.3m
9. Carrie Underwood My Savior 0.3m
10. Morgan Wallen Dangerous The Double Album 0.3m
2022
1. Taylor Swift Midnights 1.8m
2. Harry Styles Harry’s House 0.8m
3. BTS Proof 0.4m
4. Olivia Rodrigo Sour 0.4m
5. Beyoncé Renaissance 0.3m
6. Fleetwood Mac Rumours 0.3m
7. Adele 30 0.3m
8. Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d city 0.3m
9. Michael Jackson Thriller 0.2m
10. Tomorrow X Together Minisode 2: Thursday’s Child 0.2m
