How big were Simon & Garfunkel? The Beatles are often compared to the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and the Monkees for different reasons. The former because they are the leading symbols of the British invasion. The second due to them being their main challengers artistically speaking. Then the latter since they were created as an American answer to them which in all fairness was insanely massive in 1967. In terms of global success and sales though, the closest to the fab four from 1966 to 1970 was none of them but instead the aforementioned duo Simon & Garfunkel.

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The duo made of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, who was first promoted as Tom & Jerry struggled during several years before exploding to the general public. They did so in two steps, first thanks to a re-issue of The Sound of Silence which crossed over the main audience, hitting #1 in the US. Second, thanks to the movie The Graduate and its #1 soundtrack made of songs from them.

This progressive raise in fame resulted in one of the weirdest discographies you will ever find. The first album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M first flopped. So when its song The Sound of Silence became big a couple of years later, a new album containing the same single although in a new version, Sounds Of Silence, was issued to benefit from this hype. Then The Graduate as a Soundtrack included Sounds Of Silence too but also Mrs Robinson, the big hit which was supporting their 4th album Bookends at the same time.

Since they all included the same singles, their records cannibalized each other from day one. It makes their success much harder to read. Luckily, thanks to our approach we are able to re-assign the success of all records into their original creators, providing at last a clear view of the duo's popularity.

Simon & Garfunkel's original albums sales

Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (1964)

Sounds of Silence (1966)

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966)

Bookends (1968)

Bridge over Troubled Water (1970)

Original Album Sales - Comments

1964 Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. - 2,140,000
1966 Sounds of Silence - 5,550,000
1966 Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme - 5,250,000
1968 Bookends - 5,300,000
1970 Bridge over Troubled Water - 19,580,000

A total of 37,82 million albums sold with 5 studio albums only. Considering the very low global market for album sales during the 60s, these numbers are incredible. They are even much more impressive when we know that the first two shared the same lead single, making them effectively closer to 4 albums only.

You must wonder where The Graduate is. This Soundtrack sold 5,01 million units on its own, always on the back of the same songs. It includes all main songs of their former studio albums and as such belongs to the compilation category which we will see later on this article.

This situation explains the very surprising gap in sales between Bridge Over Troubled Water and its predecessors at roughly 4 to 1. Its hits were gigantic but so were singles of its predecessors Sound of Silence and Mrs Robinson, so such a difference is unexpected but ends up being logical since 4 different albums contained at least 1 of these songs, diluting their impact. The cannibalization effect is obvious here. On its side, Bridge Over Troubled Water enjoyed 2 years of madness with 4 consecutive smash hits. In 1972, all these records were strongly hit by the release of Greatest Hits which shot down interests in them.

We are barely scratching the surface of sales generated by those recordings but we can already understand that they are much higher than figures suggested by pure studio album sales...

Physical Singles Sales

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

Often regarded as an album band, Simon & Garfunkel sold large amounts of records with their big hits. The Boxer sold close to 2 million units while The Sound of Silence, Mrs. Robinson, El Condor Pasa (If I Could) and Cecilia all topped that mark. Their champion is Bridge Over Troubled Water with more than 4 million units, a rare achievement in physical singles. The duo sold nearly 24 million singles in total in spite of their relatively short career.

Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (1964) - 9,000 equivalent albums

Seven O'Clock News - 10,000
Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. - 20,000

Sounds of Silence (1966) - 1,218,000 equivalent albums

The Sound of Silence - 2,680,000
I Am a Rock - 1,380,000

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966) - 885,000 equivalent albums

Scarborough Fair / Canticle - 910,000
Scarborough Fair (1982) - 20,000
Homeward Bound - 1,380,000
The Dangling Conversation - 320,000
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme - 50,000
The 59th Street Bridge Song - 10,000
For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her - 260,000

Bookends (1968) - 1,407,000 equivalent albums

America - 420,000
Fakin' It - 320,000
Mrs. Robinson - 2,500,000
A Hazy Shade of Winter - 590,000
A Hazy Shade of Winter (1991) - 390,000
At the Zoo - 470,000

Bridge over Troubled Water (1970) - 3,252,000 equivalent albums

Bridge over Troubled Water - 4,160,000
El Condor Pasa (If I Could) - 2,800,000
Cecilia - 2,030,000
The Boxer - 1,840,000
The Boxer (1992) - 10,000

Orphan - 378,000 equivalent albums

Wake Up Little Susie - 290,000
Hey, Schoolgirl - 120,000
Our Song - 20,000
That's My Story - 140,000
My Little Town - 690,000

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 Sound of Silence, I'm forced to do something that has never been done before: splitting it into two albums. The song is known through its acoustic and electric versions available on their first 2 albums. The problem is that while Spotify has both versions, they are shown with a unique count of streams so we need to identify another way to split it.

Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M and Sounds of Silence sold 7,69 million combined, 27,8% from the former and 72,2% from the latter. Similarly, their streams for tracks outside of The Sound of Silence are split 29,4%-70,6%. To stay consistent with these figures, we will assign 28,6% of the song's digital results to  Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M and 71,4% to Sounds of Silence. We have a first example here as the song's 3,6 million downloads and ringtones are spread just like this.

Continuing on downloads, Simon & Garfunkel songs aren't as strong as one could have expect. They are still healthy at more than 6 million for songs from Bridge Over Troubled Water and an average of 2 million from the remaining 4 eras.

Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (1964) - 176,000 equivalent albums

The Sound of Silence - 1,050,000
Remaining tracks - 120,000

Sounds of Silence (1966) - 507,000 equivalent albums

The Sound of Silence - 2,550,000
I Am a Rock - 300,000
Kathy's Song - 250,000
April Come She Will - 220,000
Remaining tracks - 60,000

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966) - 186,000 equivalent albums

Scarborough Fair / Canticle - 480,000
Homeward Bound - 400,000
Remaining tracks - 360,000

Bookends (1968) - 353,000 equivalent albums

America - 420,000
Mrs. Robinson - 1,630,000
Remaining tracks - 300,000

Bridge over Troubled Water (1970) - 903,000 equivalent albums

Bridge over Troubled Water - 2,250,000
El Condor Pasa (If I Could) - 920,000
Cecilia - 770,000
The Boxer - 1,470,000
Remaining tracks - 610,000

Orphan - 27,000 equivalent albums

All tracks - 180,000

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 157 million of the 272 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 (EAS) = 272/157 * Spotify streams / 1500 + YouTube views / 11750

Part 1

All tracks from each of these 3 albums register at least 1 million streams on Spotify. The biggest hit from them is obviously The Sound of Silence. The song has 181 million streams on Spotify and 377 million YouTube views, spread with the 28,6%-71,4% ratio between the first two LPs.

It isn't the only hit through. Scarborough Fair and Homeward Bound are both close to 30 million on Spotify while The 59th Street Bridge Song, Kathy's Song, April Come She Will and I Am A Rock are all over 10 million. These streams are worth nearly 460,000 EAS combined.

Part 2

Mrs Robinson is the second biggest Spotify song of the duo with an impressive 140 million streams. In terms of consistency though, no album can challenge Bridge Over Troubled Water. The title track, Cecilia and The Boxer are all over 60 million. The Only Living Boy in New York and El Condor Pasa are both over 25 million.

In total, Bookends stands at 239,000 EAS while Bridge Over Troubled Water leads the way at 341,000 EAS.

Part 3

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.

How to understand this table? If you check this example, those figures mean The Graduate sold 5,010,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included on this package add for 441,597 equivalent album sales from streams of all types.

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 Bookends  songs are responsible for 35% of the The Graduate tracklist attractiveness, which means it generated 1,761,000 of its 5,010,000 album sales. We will now apply this concept to all his compilations.

Part 1 - Main Compilations

The impressive selling force of Simon & Garfunkel was quickly translated into their compilations. The biggest seller of all is the iconic Greatest Hits from 1972 at a whopping 31,49 million pure album sales.

We can notice that except The Graduate which came out before Bridge Over Troubled Water, all their later compilations have the exact same pattern. Aforementioned 1970 album is responsible of one third of hits packages' appeal, Bookends of 25%, Sounds of Silence almost the same and then the last two albums com over / under 10%.

These albums add for an unreal 52 million units on the back of the same dozen of songs. The Collection and Definitive both sold over 5 million without being released in the US. Incredible.

Part 2 - Minor Compilations

The popularity of Simon & Garfunkel was massive everywhere. This includes Japan were their huge impact led their major to issue countless of compilations with the same tracks again and again, with all of them selling well. Most of the packages listed here were indeed Japan-only releases. From Old Friends, we reach minor global releases.

Part 3 - Minor Compilations

We saw these albums already inside Paul Simon' CSPC study. A part of their sales went to the solo singer, but they also include Simon & Garfunkel's recordings which is why they appear on their sales too. Obviously, they sold much less than their own packages.

Part 4 - Box Sets #1

The never-ending appeal of the duo is also visible through their sales of box sets. The 1981 set Collected Works was especially successful with 710,000 units to date, assigned to each of its individual records.

Part 5 - Box Sets #2

Part 6 - Box Sets #3

Part 7 - Live Albums

Interestingly, the weight of Bridge Over Troubled Water is slightly lower in live albums than in compilations. It's the result of the absence of both El Condor Pasa (If I Could) and Cecilia which weren't sang in most of them.

The duo owns one of the biggest selling live album of all-time. The Concert in Central Park, which was performed in front of more than 500,000 persons, has sold over 10 million units to date.

Part 8 - Music Videos

Roughly the same products than from the live category but this time in music video format. Once again the Concert in Central Park dominated the list.

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.

Already immense sellers in pure album sales, Simon & Garfunkel's albums also powered an outstanding amount of compilations and live records. Sounds of Silence, Bookends and Bridge Over Troubled Water have fueled from 18,5 million to 21 million sales of compilations each! Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme are lower but they are still responsible for a very healthy number of 8 million albums sold each.

BONUS: Compilation Albums Sales

The Graduate (1968)

Greatest Hits (1972)

The Simon & Garfunkel Collection (1981)

The Concert in Central Park (1982)

The Definitive Simon & Garfunkel (1991)

The Best Of Simon & Garfunkel (1999)

The Essential (2003)

BONUS: Total Album (all types) Sales per Country

• America

  • US - 45,550,000
  • Canada - 4,470,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - N/A
  • Mexico - N/A

• Asia - 10,880,000

  • Japan - 8,290,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 2,435,000
  • New Zealand - 570,000

• Europe - 36,325,000

  • UK - 11,115,000
  • France - 5,555,000
  • Germany - 4,775,000
  • Italy - 1,215,000
  • Spain - 2,265,000
  • Sweden - 1,395,000
  • Netherlands - 1,905,000
  • Switzerland - 595,000
  • Austria - 370,000
  • Finland - 300,000

• World - 106,565,000

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.

SIMON & GARFUNKEL CAREER CSPC RESULTS

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

[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]

Brilliant. The career of Simon & Garfunkel started slow and hasn't last long but it hasn't prevent them from selling magnificent numbers. The top album is Bridge Over Troubled Water. At more than 45 million equivalent album sales across all formats, its quite simply the most successful album released up to that point, impressively topping Beatles' biggest Abbey Road by 2 million.

This success isn't a one-off. Both Sounds of Silence and Bookends close on 26 million. So far, from all artists we studied, we have been able to identify only 8 albums from the 60s which top 25 million - 7 Beatles' albums plus Led Zeppelin's II. These two Simon & Garfunkel albums join them, proving the duo was really at the top of the game.

At 15 million and 10 million respectively, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme and Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. are very strong too.

The career to date of the duo stands on 123,9 million equivalent album sales with a mere 5 albums and virtually no orphan song. Their LPs generated an average of nearly 25 million album sales.

Thanks to our new ASR (Artist Success Rating) concept, we can add that they sold 73,9 million times the worth of their full catalog (Equivalent Discography Sales). This evidences an exploitation poorly handled with compilations downgrading catalog sales of their studio albums very early in their lifetime. Only Michael Jackson and the Eagles sold more times the entire value of their discography.

This implies an ASR score of 542. They are tied with Elton John in spite of a much shorter discography. They are also just behind Madonna, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones. If we have a look at Paul Simon's comprehensive discography as he is the songwriter of both his solo career and the duo, he registers an ASR score of 727, higher than Queen and trailing only Michael Jackson and the Beatles.

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, Discogs, Chartmasters.org.

Bonuses

BIGGEST TRACKS

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. 1964 - Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence [Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. / Sounds of Silence] - 28,800,000
2. 1968 - Simon & Garfunkel - Mrs. Robinson [Bookends] - 18,990,000
3. 1969 - Simon & Garfunkel - The Boxer [Bridge over Troubled Water] - 12,140,000
4. 1970 - Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge over Troubled Water [Bridge over Troubled Water] - 11,800,000
5. 1970 - Simon & Garfunkel - Cecilia [Bridge over Troubled Water] - 10,630,000
6. 1966 - Simon & Garfunkel - Scarborough Fair / Canticle [Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme] - 5,480,000
7. 1970 - Simon & Garfunkel - El Condor Pasa (If I Could) [Bridge over Troubled Water] - 5,150,000
8. 1966 - Simon & Garfunkel - Homeward Bound [Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme] - 4,690,000
9. 1968 - Simon & Garfunkel - America [Bookends] - 3,610,000
10. 1965 - Simon & Garfunkel - I Am a Rock [Sounds of Silence] - 2,580,000
11. 1970 - Simon & Garfunkel - The Only Living Boy in New York [Bridge over Troubled Water] - 2,340,000
12. 1966 - Simon & Garfunkel - The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) [Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme] - 2,180,000
13. 1968 - Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends Theme [Bookends] - 1,850,000
14. 1966 - Simon & Garfunkel - For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her [Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme] - 1,350,000
15. 1965 - Simon & Garfunkel - Kathy's Song [Sounds of Silence] - 1,110,000

Records & Achievements

• At 45,148,000 equivalent album sales, Bridge Over Troubled Water is the most successful album released up to 1970.
• At 28,800,000 equivalent album sales, The Sound of Silence is the most successful song released up to 1974.
• At 18,990,000 equivalent album sales, Mrs Robinson is among the 5 most successful songs from the 60s.
• At 26,037,000 equivalent album sales, Sounds of Silence is the most successful album from 1966.
• At 26,674,000 equivalent album sales, Bookends is the 2nd most successful album from 1968.
• Simon & Garfunkel is the only act ever to register more than 1,000 weeks inside the UK album chart with less than 10 studio albums released.
• Bridge Over Troubled Water remains the longest running #1 artist album ever in the UK with 33 weeks.
• The Sounds Of Silence was the biggest international hit of the 60s in Japan with 21 weeks at #1.
• Simon & Garfunkel led the comprehensive album chart in Japan for 39 weeks, far and away the most weeks at #1 for an international act.
• At 181,318,000 streams, The Sounds Of Silence is the 6th most streamed track from the 60s.

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