CSPC: Dirty Dancing Popularity Analysis

Up until now we have analyzed not only the Grease and High School Musical soundtracks in separate articles,

but also other huge classic soundtrack-albums like Saturday Night Fever or The Bodyguard in the CSPC’s articles for both the Bee Gees and Whitney Houston, respectively. Results were pretty much fantastic in most cases, showing how big these music films can be.

We have also noticed how dominant some classic songs can be from soundtracks in the all time lists.

Today it is time to welcome another one of these long lasting appealing soundtracks or, more precisely in this case, a franchise: Dirty Dancing. This romantic drama dance film was originally released in 1987, achieved instant global success starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, and trascended its time to become an iconic moment in the history of cinema.

From that point of view the original soundtrack of the film was unsurprisingly a commercial smash with a bunch of classic songs, most notably (I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life, and plenty of charts and sales achievements.

A follow up title saw the light of day one year later, More Dirty Dancing, to cash in on the popularity of the first film. And, of course, we also had Dirty Dancing 2 in 2004, albeit with a significantly smaller appeal.

With such a massive status it will be an interesting exercise to fully dig into this massive success and find out how does it compare to some of the other aforementioned soundtracks.

As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge its results. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Dirty Dancing‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming, but it will also determine their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend watching the video before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures.