In 1995, a new alternative rock band emerged, the Foo Fighters. The curiosity came from the fact its singer was none other than Dave Grohl, former drummer of Nirvana, a band suddenly no longer after the passing of Kurt Cobain one year prior. While rock fans were curious about the Foo Fighters, very few would have expected the band to still be around 22 years later.

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But here they are. Concrete And Gold, their 9th studio output, recently topped the Album Chart in various countries including the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands. The group never crossed over to the mainstream though. Their highest peak ever inside the US Hot 100 singles ranking is a dreadful #18 position, a very poor showing considering their 13 songs that reached #1 on the Alternative and / or Mainstream Rock charts. Even in the UK, where it is easier to hit a high peak due to the strong turnover that happened in the late 90s / early 00s, the band never had a Top 3 single.

With virtually no pop appeal, how well can a band really sell? Has the band managed to stay relevant after the initial impact stemming from people's curiosity? Those are the questions we will answer today.

Foo Fighters' 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.

Foo Fighters (1995)

The Colour and the Shape (1997)

There Is Nothing Left to Lose (1999)

One by One (2002)

In Your Honor (2005)

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (2007)

• America

  • US - 1,000,000
  • Canada - 145,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - 30,000
  • Mexico - N/A

• Asia - 180,000

  • Japan - 115,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 225,000
  • New Zealand - 45,000

• Europe - 1,190,000

  • UK - 740,000
  • France - 20,000
  • Germany - 175,000
  • Italy - 25,000
  • Spain - 5,000
  • Sweden - 20,000
  • Netherland - 32,500
  • Switzerland - 17,500
  • Austria - 12,500
  • Finland - 12,500

• World - 2,925,000

Wasting Lights (2011)

Sonic Highways (2014)

Concrete and Gold (2017)

Original Album Sales - Comments

1995 Foo Fighters - 3,350,000
1997 The Colour and the Shape - 4,825,000
1999 There Is Nothing Left to Lose - 3,200,000
2002 One by One - 3,775,000
2005 In Your Honor - 4,050,000
2007 Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace - 2,925,000
2011 Wasting Lights - 2,525,000
2014 Sonic Highways - 1,550,000
2017 Concrete and Gold - 550,000

Up to 26,75 million studio albums sold, the Foo Fighters proved their consistency long term. In fact, they achieved this total with no album breaking the 5 million mark. Their first 7 albums all sold past 2,5 million copies, a tremendous showing.

If we get into the details, those figures appear to be even more impressive. The group sold pretty poorly in various markets like France and Spain, which makes their total all the more solid.

The French market proves the band is absolutely not a Nirvana-side project. Cobain's band was massive there. Thanks to that, the self-titled debut of the Foo Fighters did OK there with 150,000 units sold. Their next 8 outputs sold an average of 30,000 copies. Clearly, fans of the older band aren't buying copies of the new group. In the same range of ideas, the consistency points out how the Foo Fighters kept building their own fan base.

Please be aware that as Concrete and Gold remains recent, a large chunk of those units, some 40%, are still not sold as of this day.

Physical Singles Sales

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.

Rock bands rarely sell singles. Some achieved one big crossover hit at best. The Foo Fighters have no such song, and their singles weren't even released in the US so their sales in this format are somewhat irrelevant. Across their entire career, they moved only 1,4 million physical singles.

Foo Fighters (1995) - 120,000 equivalent albums

This Is a Call - 210,000
I'll Stick Around - 70,000
Big Me - 60,000
For All the Cows - 60,000

The Colour and the Shape (1997) - 99,000 equivalent albums

Monkey Wrench - 160,000
My Hero - 50,000
Everlong - 70,000
Walking After You - 50,000

There Is Nothing Left to Lose (1999) - 51,000 equivalent albums

Breakout - 40,000
Learn to Fly - 80,000
Generator - 20,000
Next Year - 30,000

One by One (2002) - 66,000 equivalent albums

All My Life - 120,000
Low - 20,000
Have It All - 20,000
Times Like These - 60,000

In Your Honor (2005) - 42,000 equivalent albums

No Way Back - 10,000
Best of You - 80,000
DOA - 30,000
Resolve - 20,000

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (2007) - 33,000 equivalent albums

The Pretender - 90,000
Long Road to Ruin - 20,000

Wasting Lights (2011) - 3,000 equivalent albums

Rope - 5,000
Remaining Singles - 5,000

Orphan - 15,000 equivalent albums

Wheels - 10,000
The One - 40,000

Digital Singles Sales

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between albums and digital singles.

Part 1

It isn't because a single sells poorly in physical format that it isn't a success. Some singles move 2-track CDs, others sell albums. The 1997 hit Everlong became an all-time 90s Alternative music classic and has sold a stunning 3,3 million units in the downloads and ringtones format. My Hero, Learn To Fly and Times Like These are all million sellers too.

Indeed, from the 4 pre-digital era, only the debut album has no big seller. The greatest total is signed by The Colour and the Shape, with its songs are now over 5 million units combined.

Then there is In Your Honor, an album released during the very early days of iTunes. At the time, Gold and Platinum awards in that format in the US were still awarded for only 100,000 and 200,000 units respectively. It didn't stop Best Of You though. That song perfectly stood the test of time and now rides on 3,6 million units.

Foo Fighters (1995) - 105,000 equivalent albums

This Is a Call - 200,000
I'll Stick Around - 100,000
Big Me - 300,000
Remaining tracks - 100,000

The Colour and the Shape (1997) - 810,000 equivalent albums

Monkey Wrench - 700,000
My Hero - 1,100,000
Everlong - 3,300,000
Walking After You - 150,000
Remaining tracks - 150,000

There Is Nothing Left to Lose (1999) - 338,000 equivalent albums

Stacked Actors - 75,000
Breakout - 250,000
Learn to Fly - 1,700,000
Generator - 75,000
Next Year - 75,000
Remaining tracks - 75,000

One by One (2002) - 405,000 equivalent albums

All My Life - 850,000
Times Like These - 1,650,000
Remaining tracks - 200,000

In Your Honor (2005) - 765,000 equivalent albums

No Way Back - 300,000
Best of You - 3,600,000
DOA - 500,000
Resolve - 100,000
Cold Day in the Sun - 200,000
Remaining tracks - 400,000

Part 2

We already met the case of bands such as Coldplay and Linkin Park that had little showing in the singles chart until the digital years. On a lower scale, the Foo Fighters did the same. The Pretender joins Everlong and Best Of You among the songs with impressive strength, having sold 3,5 million units to date.

Both Wasting Lights and Sonic Highways had no such hit. They benefited from coming out when people were already using iTunes a lot, inclusively replacing the purchase of albums. Thus, all their tracks have relatively decent sales.

Over the course of their career, the Foo Fighers sold a very respectable total of 26 million digital singles.

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (2007) - 780,000 equivalent albums

The Pretender - 3,500,000
Let It Die - 350,000
Long Road to Ruin - 850,000
Remaining tracks - 500,000

Wasting Lights (2011) - 435,000 equivalent albums

Bridge Burning - 300,000
Rope - 700,000
Arlandria - 250,000
These Days - 500,000
Walk - 650,000
Remaining tracks - 500,000

Sonic Highways (2014) - 158,000 equivalent albums

Something from Nothing - 350,000
Congregation - 150,000
Outside - 150,000
Remaining tracks - 400,000

Concrete and Gold (2017) - 15,000 equivalent albums

All tracks - 100,000

Orphan - 180,000 equivalent albums

Wheels - 750,000
Remaining tracks - 450,000

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

Equivalent Albums Sales = 212/132 * Spotify streams / 1500 + YouTube views / 11750

Part 1

While clearly not a fan-favorite, the album Foo Fighters has nice streams. Two of its songs top 10 million streams on Spotify and the entire track list is over 1 million. Overall, it is on 64,000 equivalent album sales from streams.

The Colour and the Shape sold well under the radar for many years. Thanks to Spotify, we understand why. Everlong is an absolute monster. Its popularity continues to grow to this day. From a good alternative hit back in 1997, it leveled up to one of the cross-genre Top 10 biggest 90s songs on streaming platforms with a tremendous 220 million at Spotify. Impressively, My Hero is huge too at 77 million while Monkey Wrench has a strong 40 million. All songs but one crack 2 million. The album has a great total of 424,000 equivalent album sales from streams, a virtual tie with Nirvana's In Utero and more than various strong rock albums from the 90s like Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I and II and U2's Achtung Baby.

Part 2

Learn To Fly confirms the great showing of the Foo Fighters on streaming platforms with more than 100 million plays on both Spotify and YouTube. Combined, All My Life and Times Like These achieve the same feat.

Those similar results provide There is Nothing Left to Lose and One By One respectively with 169,000 and 157,000 equivalent album sales from streams.

Part 3

As a 20-track double album, In Your Honor is incredibly consistent with all its songs over 2 million streams on Spotify. The monster from it is obviously Best Of You. This iconic song has over 143 million streams on both platforms. Mostly thanks to that song, the album has 247,000 equivalent album sales.

One more album, one more beast. The Pretender has 159 million streams on Spotify and 270 million on YouTube. The entire album has all its songs on fairly high levels with a total of 289,000 equivalent album sales.

Part 4

If anyone still doubts the appeal of the Foo Fighters in streaming, they only need to check those numbers. Basically, every tune from Wasting Lights and Sonic Highways is close or over 10 million. They have no juggernaut, but their consistency is stunning. The former registers 272,000 equivalent album sales while the latter suffers for the lower number of songs to add for 151,000 units. It won't be long before Concrete and Gold gets into the 6 digits territory.

Part 5

The Orphan category contains every song which do not feature among the original studio albums. Some came out on EPs, were live performances, or supported the release of Greatest Hits. The one from this latter set, Wheels, is the biggest at 27,000 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.

Remaining Long Format - Compilations / Live sets / EPs

How to understand this table? If you check for example the Greatest Hits compilation line, those figures mean it sold 3,900,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included on this package add for 1,109,000 equivalent album sales from streams of all types.

The second part on the right of the table shows how many equivalent streams are coming from each original album, plus the share it represents on the overall package. Thus, streaming figures tell us songs from the The Colour and the Shape album are responsible for 34% of the Greatest Hits track list attractiveness. This means it generated 1,339,000 of its 3,900,000 album sales and so forth for the other records.

This share of The Colour and the Shape is the key element here. This album generated plenty of sales across different sets, from the studio album to the digital single but also compilations and live packages. It contributes for more than half of Skin and Bones' sales. Every other album up to Echoes, Silence, and Patience & Grace have its own share of appeal also.

Remaining Long Format - Music Videos

More of the same in terms of sales distribution patterns but this time for music videos. Some are themed after a specific album, like the last two, but career-spanning live albums have the usual big hits with once again The Colour and the Shape dominating the picture.

Full Length related records Sales - Summary

Here is the most underestimated indicator of an album's success - the amount of compilation sales of all kinds it generated. Due to the dependency of sales of the original studio albums on these releases, they are a key piece of the jigsaw.

The Colour and the Shape is responsible for as many as 2,3 million sales of compilations in every kind, a huge number for an album that sold less than 5 million units by itself. As Greatest Hits is an immense catalog seller, this tally will continue to grow.

BONUS - Compilation Albums Sales

Greatest Hits (2009)

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.

BONUS: Total Album (all types) Sales per Country

• America

  • US - 12,515,000
  • Canada - 1,905,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - 560,000
  • Mexico - N/A

• Asia - 1,910,000

  • Japan - 1,210,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 2,050,000
  • New Zealand - 360,000

• Europe - 11,210,000

  • UK - 6,175,000
  • France - 425,000
  • Germany - 1,685,000
  • Italy - 365,000
  • Spain - 100,000
  • Sweden - 300,000
  • Netherland - 285,000
  • Switzerland - 175,000
  • Austria - 155,000
  • Finland - 155,000

• World - 31,700,000

Please note that some of the countries totals may be slightly incomplete when the figure is N/A for minor releases. Countries with too much missing information to be precise enough are listed as N/A.

Foo Fighters Career CSPC Results

So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each album by Foo Fighters achieved? Well, at this point we hardly need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!

[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]

The Colour and the Shape is the biggest album of all. It is up to 8,5 million units, a strong sophomore effort which more than doubles the debut LP. The most impressive aspect is the consistency though, as every album from the first 7 is well over 3,4 million. All those albums have decent catalog sales and push Greatest Hits close, with their noteworthy streaming results we can say that their future is really bright.

The negative conclusion is that the band is slowly but surely going down. Every album that came out after In Your Honor was less successful than its immediate predecessor. Concrete and Gold will need a serious hit to reverse this trend which isn't looking likely as of now.

Nevermind (no pun intended), the band amassed 39,3 million equivalent album sales so far. That's roughly half that of A-League bands like Coldplay, Green Day and Linkin Park which by itself is really good for a band that never had a hit crossing over the pop spectrum.

The following sections list their most successful songs as well as their records and achievements.

As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Chartmasters.org.

Bonuses

BIGGEST TRACKS - Foo Fighters

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 1997 - Everlong [The Colour and the Shape] - 5,140,000
2 2005 - Best of You [In Your Honor] - 4,460,000
3 2007 - The Pretender [Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace] - 3,430,000
4 1999 - Learn to Fly [There Is Nothing Left to Lose] - 3,110,000
5 2002 - All My Life [One by One] - 2,280,000
6 2002 - Times Like These [One by One] - 2,060,000
7 1997 - My Hero [The Colour and the Shape] - 1,790,000
8 1995 - Big Me [Foo Fighters] - 1,430,000
9 1997 - Monkey Wrench [The Colour and the Shape] - 920,000
10 1995 - This Is a Call [Foo Fighters] - 880,000

Records & Achievements

• The Foo Fighters recorded 23 Top 10 hits inside the US Alternative Songs chart, the second most ever tied with U2, only topped by the Red Hot Chili Peppers at 25.
• The Pretender spent 18 weeks at #1 on the US Alternative Songs chart, the longest running #1 single ever until it was topped by Madness by Muse in 2013.
• The first six studio albums from the band sold 1 million units or more in the US.
• The first seven studio albums from the band sold 300,000 units or more in the UK.
• Concrete and Gold reached #1 on every official chart from English-speaking countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New-Zealand).
• Each of the 9 studio albums from the Foo Fighters reached the Top 10 in the UK.
• Their last 6 studio albums reached #1 in Australia, as did Greatest Hits. No act which debuted in 1985 or later tops this achievement.
• In Australia, Greatest Hits reached the Top 20 in six distinct calendar years (2009 #1, 2010 #6, 2011 #17, 2014 #15, 2015 #7, and 2017 #14).
• At 220 million, Everlong is one of the 10 most played songs from the 90s on Spotify. The leader is Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit.
• At 143 million, Best Of You is one of the 10 most played songs from 2005 on Spotify. The leader is Coldplay's Fix You.
• At 159 million, The Pretender is one of the 10 most played songs from 2007 on Spotify. The leader is Kanye West's Stronger.

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