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Very shortly Queen will have four albums over 2 billion streams, with a fifth on the horizon. Those are amazing figures for a band at their peak in the 70s/80s. I was never a huge Queen fan but you can't deny their global popularity.
Hey Chartmasters. Episode 41 of "Queen the greatest" was just released, and this time regarding Made in Heaven.
They start with the words: "today we're heading back to 95, to look at Queen's fastest selling and most successful studio album to date".
What do you think about that statement, which contradicts a bit the data in here?
Hi Lee / Braca!
Yes, the situation about Queen's US compilations has always been confusing. Let's clear things up.
About our figures:
- GH (original, 1981) sold 4.27m with the 2004 WWRY edition included
- GH 2 (original, unreleased in the US) sold 150k (imports)
- GH 1&2 sold 1.175m
- PC sold 1.55m
- Classic Queen sold 3.7m
- GH (US, 1992) sold 7.47m
No double counting, and no merging apart from GH 1981 + GH 2004. This can be debatable, it would be better to split everything on next update I suppose.
Now, the RIAA certs are kinda messy. About PC, it was the same album certified in 2005 and 2012, so 'only' 2xP total, it then went 5xP in 2021 for 1.67m boxes sold. It's consistent with our 1.55m estimate from an earlier date.
Certifications from GH are bogus though. Former awards of Classic Queen (3xP up to 2002, 3.7m sales now) and GH (8xP up to 2006, including the original plus 1992) were fine if we pass on the dubious merge of GHs.
The new ones make little sense though since it appears they haven't merge the albums the same way as before. The 1981 can't be at 9xP if we don't add the 1992 release that is now listed aside at 5xP, and that one sold much more than 5m.
Yet, if we add together the certified units from these main 3 releases (9+5+3), the total is good (we were at 14m+ but then now you need to add SPS).
My guess is that they have now sorted things up, splitting the 1981 and 1992 releases, but they've put the wrong release dates in front of certs. Meaning:
- the 1981 release with SPS is past 5m
- the 1992 release with remaining SPS (same tracks included inside the 1981 release can't be certified twice) is past 9m
- the 2004 version may be included in one of these totals, which one is almost impossible to know as it depends on how they dispatched the SPS of the common tracks
- no PC sales were certified on these awards, they stick to certifying it on its own
Regardless of how you split their certifications, to attain the level of success they achieved with the U.S only accounting for around 25 percent of sales is both very impressive and must be quite rare?
Other huge global acts (The Beatles, MJ, Elvis, Zeppelin, Floyd, The Eagles etc) U.S. sales seem to account for a much higher proportion of their total (35 to 70 percent).
The only act in this league (lets say ASR of more than 500) to have a similar weighting between the U.S. and the rest of the world would be ABBA.
Queen are a rare case in this regard. They lost North America during the 80s, while remaining huge pretty much anywhere else.
ABBA only sold around 15% of their albums in the US, much less than Queen (25%).
Among the top 50 acts of all-time, you also have Dire Straits (20%), David Bowie (25%) and Julio Iglesias (15%).
Yes, ABBA have a very small footprint in the States relative to their success elsewhere.
ABBA and Queen would seem to be the only acts in what might loosely be called the 'Premier League' of music artists (top 15 or 20) in terms of their sales/success with an American share of less than, say, 35 percent of their total.
Does the mention of "hardcore bombs" in the article refers to Flash Gordon and Hot Space ? Flash Gordon was a largely instrumental soundtrack released a few months after The Game, so it shouldn't be compared to their other albums. As for Hot Space, it may have been a minor flop but definitely not a "hardcore" one, that would be something like Garth Brooks' Chris Gaines nonsense or Usher's Here I Stand, albums that sold like 15% of the previous one, not 35% like Hot Space.
Hi Analord!
The article is about how the albums have been received / portrayed by media, and precisely points out that while some albums are claimed to be super strong and others super weak, numbers tell a different story, hence the comparison with the average.
Really ? I see no mention of the media :
"The most surprising fact for an act that registered out-of-this-world smashes, as well as hard core bombs, is to see that every album sold at least half of their average while none of them managed to double it."
Also you did an article a few years ago about the biggest flops of all-time, in which you included Flash Gordon :
"17 Queen – Flash Gordon (1980): -86,3%
All five albums released before Flash Gordon moved at least 14,4 million EAS. Massive hit makers, Queen bombed hard with the soundtrack of the famous comic strip, just like the movie. The Game, released the same year, was home for 2 ground-breaking US #1 smashes. It climbed all the way up to 29,48 million EAS. Flash Gordon stalled at 4,03 million."
I agree with Analord - I think you can't compare Flash Gordon with other Queen studio albums (in this case - The Game) like this (their sales), because FG is soundtrack, full of theme music, melodies and dialogues. It's not a proper studio album, like for example A kind of magic, which also included songs that were used in Highlander.
You should compare The Game and Hot Space, instead.
PS by the way, IMHO as a soundtrack Flash Gordon is very solid try, incredable fits and express movie.
Hi Analord!
Just after your quote I mention how singles were "received very differently", this is the reference, that I though was very clear, to the media reception of the band's songs back then. I mention that all albums sold at least half of their average precisely to point out that these headlines were exaggerated, and reading it back, it also seems quite clear to me.
As for the other article, it was a raw list of the largest drops in CSPC percents compared to immediate predecessor. Do you want me to cheat numbers to fit your narrative? This is not the way I work. Also, you mentioned pure album sales in your previous message, and now you switch to CSPC data, which are two completely different indicators. Flash Gordon sold in fact over half of the average of their discography in pure album sales, which is definitely not as bad as it's usually claimed, as written. In terms of CSPC, it sold less than a fourth of their career average, so it's obviously much more of a flop overall, as written, too.
Let's read it again...
"The most surprising fact for an act that registered out-of-this-world smashes, as well as hard core bombs, is to see that every album sold at least half of their average while none of them managed to double it. How can we explain that every album is so close in spite of singles received very differently?"
Sorry but this has nothing to do with "Flash Gordon and Hot Space are incorrectly portrayed by the media as being hardcore bombs"... The fact that it seems "very clear" to you is perplexing, to say the least.
By the way, no one considers Flash Gordon to be a flop except for you, who believes it's one of the biggest flops of all-time "in terms of CSPC" ? OK.
