Christina Aguilera albums and songs sales

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.

Table of Contents

ChartMasters’ method: the CSPC

As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC) in order to relevantly gauge the act’s results. It will not only bring you sales information for all albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming. In fact, it will really determine the act’s popularity.

If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, below is a nice and short video of explaining the concept. I recommend watching it before reading on and to the sales figures. You’ll get the idea in just two minutes.

And if you want to know the full method as well as formulas, you can read the full introduction article.

Now let’s get into the artist’s detailed sales figures!

Christina Aguilera’s original albums sales

Christina Aguilera (1999)

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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)

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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

Stripped (2002)

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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

Back to Basics (2006)

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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

Bionic (2010)

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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

Burlesque (2010)

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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

Lotus (2012)

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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

Original Album Sales – Comments

1 of 2: Christina Aguilera Album Art - A Sexually Empowered Bionic Woman

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 "Keeps Gettin' Better - A Decade Of Hits"

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!

In the following results table, all categories display figures in equivalent album sales. If different, pure sales are listed between parentheses.

artist_spotify_id	#	Album	Studio albums (EAS)	sales_update_date	Other LPs (EAS)	Physical singles (units sold)	Digital singles (units sold)	Streams	Streams increase	Total EAS	valid_as_of	streams_updated_value	album_id
1l7ZsJRRS8wlW3WfJfPfNS	1	Christina Aguilera	12,800,000	18.03.17	1,400,000	1,973,000 (6,577,000)	585,000 (3,900,000)	1,024,000 (12/16/24)	Av.: 320 LD: 660	17,782,000	20,241,216	1,024,000	1,336
1l7ZsJRRS8wlW3WfJfPfNS	2	My Kind of Christmas	1,400,000	18.03.17	64,000	75,000 (250,000)	68,000 (450,000)	311,000 (12/16/24)	Av.: 90 LD: 860	1,918,000	20,241,216	311,000	1,337
1l7ZsJRRS8wlW3WfJfPfNS	3	Stripped	9,550,000	18.03.17	931,000	683,000 (2,277,000)	1,185,000 (7,900,000)	1,228,000 (12/16/24)	Av.: 360 LD: 330	13,577,000	20,241,216	1,228,000	1,338
1l7ZsJRRS8wlW3WfJfPfNS	4	Back to Basics	4,000,000	18.03.17	469,000	243,000 (810,000)	1,455,000 (9,700,000)	660,000 (12/16/24)	Av.: 190 LD: 180	6,827,000	20,241,216	660,000	1,339
1l7ZsJRRS8wlW3WfJfPfNS	5	Bionic	750,000	18.03.17	0	0 (0)	570,000 (3,800,000)	185,000 (12/16/24)	Av.: 40 LD: 30	1,505,000	20,241,216	185,000	1,340
1l7ZsJRRS8wlW3WfJfPfNS	6	Burlesque	1,375,000	30.08.17	0	0 (0)	360,000 (2,400,000)	693,000 (12/16/24)	Av.: 200 LD: 200	2,428,000	20,241,216	693,000	1,604
1l7ZsJRRS8wlW3WfJfPfNS	7	Lotus	525,000	18.03.17	0	0 (0)	375,000 (2,500,000)	249,000 (12/16/24)	Av.: 60 LD: 40	1,149,000	20,241,216	249,000	1,341
1l7ZsJRRS8wlW3WfJfPfNS	8	Liberation	0	15.06.18	0	0 (0)	0 (0)	221,000 (12/16/24)	Av.: 90 LD: 30	221,000	20,241,216	221,000	10,000,031
1l7ZsJRRS8wlW3WfJfPfNS	9	AGUILERA	0	27.09.22	0	0 (0)	0 (0)	144,000 (12/16/24)	Av.: 180 LD: 30	144,000	20,241,216	144,000	10,000,032
1l7ZsJRRS8wlW3WfJfPfNS	10	Orphan	0	18.03.17	1,511,000	848,000 (2,827,000)	5,895,000 (39,300,000)	874,000 (03/18/17)	N/A	9,128,000	20,241,216	874,000	1,644

'Av.' stands for Average, 'LD' for Last Day.

As a reminder:

Studio Album: sales of the original album
Other Releases: sales of compilations generated thanks to the album
Physical Singles: sales of physical singles from the album (ratio 3/10)
Download Singles: sales of digital singles from the album (ratio 1,5/10)
Streaming: equivalent album sales of all the album tracks (ratio 1/1500 for Audio stream and 1/6750 for Video stream)

Artist career totals

All-Time Rank	Studio albums (EAS)	Other LPs (EAS)	Physical singles (units sold)	Digital singles (units sold)	Streams	Total EAS
118	30,400,000	4,375,000	12,740,000	69,950,000	10,095,000 (12/16/24)	59,110,000

See where the artist ranks among remaining singers

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.