Wham! & George Michael albums and songs sales

November 10th, 1984. US Billboard Hot 100. David Bowie hit Blue Jean was spending its last week inside the Top 10 at #8. It remains the very last time the British singer visited the top tier as a solo act. Higher on the charts at #3, Prince anthem song Purple Rain was going strong, while the album of the same name was on its 15th – out of 24 – week at #1. Still within that Hot 100 Top 10, George Michael in his teen group Wham! were featuring at #4 with Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go (soon-to-be #1 smash) while the album Make It Big debuted. The year 2016 has really been a brutal end of an era for an entire generation.

UPDATE: Please note all figures have been updated as of May 6, 2017.

An entire generation indeed… as it wasn’t only about 1984. From 1977 to 1989, only 4 solo artists had an album spend 10+ weeks at #1 in the US – Michael Jackson with Thriller, Whitney Houston with both Whitney Houston and Whitney, Prince with Purple Rain and George Michael with Faith. In the last several years, all of them passed away with none of them coming even close to turning 60. While fans inevitably mourn the death of George Michael on December 25 – talk about a twisted fate for the singer of Last Christmas – we will make our own tribute as well by going through his classic catalog.

Releasing his first single at only 19, as part of the duet Wham! along with his friend Andrew Ridgeley, the Greek descendant George Michael‘s rise to fame was absolutely unstoppable. A mere five years after his first record, he had dropped cult hits such as Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Careless Whisper, Last Christmas and Faith. Let’s not only remember those songs but George‘s full catalog.

As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge his results. The concept will not only bring you sales information for all of George Michael‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming, but it will also determine his 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. Let’s go!

The Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC)

There are two ways to understand this revolutionary concept. The first is the Scribe video posted below. If you are unaware of the CSPC method, you will get the full idea within just a few minutes.

If you are a mathematical person, and 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 sales figures in detail in order to apply this concept and define the act’s true popularity!

Original Albums Sales – Wham!

Fantastic (1983)

Make It Big (1984)

Music from the Edge of Heaven (1986)

Original Albums Sales – George Michael

Faith (1987)

Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990)

Older (1996)

Songs from the Last Century (1999)

Patience (2004)

Original Album Sales – Comments – Wham!

Selling 19,45 million with just 3 albums was no easy task during the first music industry crisis that happened after the disco collapse in the early 80s. The giant part of that amount goes to Make It Big which was home to both global smashes Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Careless Whisper. Interestingly, George Michael’s star was so big that this latter hit was credited to George Michael ft. Wham!.

A real teen sensation, the duet destroyed the competition in various countries. It was one of the first albums to break the million milestone in Japan, also being one of the first foreign albums to move relevant numbers in countries like China and India.

Sales of Music from the Edge of Heaven seem abysmal though, even more so considering it featured Last Christmas. This is due to the very bizarre release strategy adopted at the time. That package was issued only in American and Asian continents, whilst still missing some markets in those continents. Instead, remaining countries including Europe and Australia got the package The Final. That record included the biggest hits of the two previous albums plus the full album Music from the Edge of Heaven. As such, we will meet it again within the other full length releases – compilations, live albums, videos – later on in this article. Combined, the two packages will give back much more justice to this album’s success.

1983 Fantastic – 3,750,000
1984 Make It Big – 14,000,000
1986 Music from the Edge of Heaven – 1,700,000

Original Album Sales – Comments – George Michael

Passing away almost 30 years after his debut solo album, George Michael still released only five LPs, one of them being a cover album. That one, Songs from the Last Century, broke the artist’s status of being an active monster selling act. In fact, his first three records sold a combined 35,3 million copies while the latter two only push that mark to 40,75 million.

More often than not, sales distribution within all markets of an artist remains quite linear over the years. It wasn’t at all the case for the pop legend. Faith was an absolute blockbuster in North America, selling 12 million units there. Barely a decade after the end of that era, Songs from the Last Century was struggling to break the 200,000 units barrier in the same markets despite the all-time US peak market 1999 as a background.

On the other side, up to Older his sales remained brilliant in Europe with the 1996 set even topping Faith’s sales on the old continent.

1987 Faith – 18,850,000
1990 Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 – 7,800,000
1996 Older – 8,650,000
1999 Songs from the Last Century – 2,750,000
2004 Patience – 2,700,000

Physical Singles Sales – Wham!

So far, we have covered more than 330 albums from the biggest artists over our distinct CSPC articles. Among them, the artist’s album that generated the most physical singles sales combined is True Blue by Madonna at 12,2 million units. True Blue is only 1 of 5 artist’s albums that saw more than 10 million copies of its singles being sold, studied so far. Guess what? Not one but two Wham! albums are responsible for more than 10 million singles sold.

Make It Big’s total is an unreal 13,9 million units shifted overall thanks to four giant smashes, topped by the iconic Careless Whisper at 6,3 million. This easily tops True Blue’s total in spite of that album having one more single.

An extraordinarily massive 10,15 million singles were sold from Music from the Edge of Heaven too and even a much more modest record like Fantastic still moved an impressive 2,7 million units of its singles. In total, the duet sold 26,75 million singles over the course of only 3 years.

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

Fantastic (1983) – 813,000 equivalent albums

Bad Boys – 1,010,000
Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do) – 350,000
Club Tropicana – 500,000
Young Guns (Go for It!) – 630,000
Club Fantastic Megamix – 220,000

Make It Big (1984) – 4,167,000 equivalent albums

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go – 3,650,000
Everything She Wants – 1,520,000
Freedom – 2,430,000
Careless Whisper – 6,290,000

Music from the Edge of Heaven (1986) – 3,045,000 equivalent albums

The Edge of Heaven – 1,400,000
I’m Your Man – 1,450,000
A Different Corner – 2,050,000
Where Did Your Heart Go? – 270,000
Last Christmas – 4,980,000

Orphan – 0 equivalent albums

Physical Singles Sales – George Michael

I previously mentioned how Wham! joined an elite group of artists that sold more than 10 million physical singles from the same album. As a solo artist George Michael came very close as well with 9,1 million units sold from hits from Faith. As he was on such a long hiatus, we tend to forget he is one of the very rare artists that got 10 or more #1 hits in both the US and the UK.

Both Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 and Older as well as the Orphan Album category own multiple million selling singles too. From his solo material, George Michael sold 23,1 million units in that format – a total almost cracking the 50 million plateau when adding Wham! material.

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

Faith (1987) – 2,718,000 equivalent albums

Faith – 2,220,000
Father Figure – 1,250,000
I Want Your Sex (Parts I & II) – 2,010,000
One More Try – 1,720,000
Monkey – 1,100,000
Kissing a Fool – 760,000

Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990) – 903,000 equivalent albums

Praying for Time – 1,360,000
Freedom! ’90 – 1,060,000
Cowboys and Angels – 70,000
Waiting for That Day – 290,000
Mother’s Pride – 180,000
Heal the Pain – 50,000

Older (1996) – 1,152,000 equivalent albums

Jesus to a Child – 1,360,000
Fastlove – 1,410,000
Older – 180,000
Spinning the Wheel – 410,000
Star People – 270,000
You Have Been Loved – 210,000

Songs from the Last Century (1999) – 0 equivalent albums

No single.

Patience (2004) – 141,000 equivalent albums

Amazing – 150,000
Round Here – 30,000
Shoot the Dog – 50,000
Flawless (Go to the City) – 80,000
Freeek! – 160,000

Orphan – 2,025,000 equivalent albums

I Knew You Were Waiting – 1,510,000
Heaven Help Me – 500,000
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me – 2,240,000
Too Funky – 970,000
Killer/Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone – 120,000
If I Told You That – 130,000
Waltz Away Dreaming – 80,000
Outside – 330,000
As – 240,000
Somebody to Love – 380,000
This Is Not Real Love – 100,000
Remaining Singles – 150,000

BONUS – Singles Ranking

Below is the Top 10 list of albums that totaled the highest number of singles sales among all records studied so far. George Michael registers an impressive one entry plus two bubbling under.

1 1978 Soundtrack – Grease – 24,400,000
2 1977 Bee Gees – Saturday Night Fever – 19,810,000
3 1984 Wham! – Make It Big – 13,890,000
4 1992 Whitney Houston – The Bodyguard – 13,580,000
5 1979 Bee Gees – Spirits Having Flown – 13,170,000
6 1986 Madonna – True Blue – 12,200,000
7 1984 Madonna – Like A Virgin – 12,100,000
8 1996 Spice Girls – Spice – 11,350,000
9 1967 Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour – 11,150,000
9 1965 Beatles – Help! – 11,150,000

1986 Wham! – Music from the Edge of Heaven – 10,150,000
1987 George Michael – Faith – 9,060,000

The following Top 10 is quite simply the highest selling physical singles out of well past 1,000 hits covered up to now. George Michael’s leading hit make its entry with Careless Whisper being topped only by one non-Soundtrack non-Orphan hit, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.

1 1992 – Soundtrack / Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You [The Bodyguard] – 10,560,000
2 1978 – Soundtrack – You’re the One That I Want [Grease] – 10,400,000
3 1968 – Beatles – Hey Jude [Orphan] – 8,200,000
4 1997 – Soundtrack / Celine Dion – My Heart Will Go On [Let’s Talk About Love] – 8,100,000
5 1963 – Beatles – I Want to Hold Your Hand [Orphan] – 7,800,000
6 1977 – Soundtrack / Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive [Saturday Night Fever] – 6,470,000
7 1975 – Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody [A Night At The Opera] – 6,400,000
8 1984 – George Michael – Careless Whisper [Make It Big] – 6,290,000
9 1999 – Britney Spears –  …Baby One More Time […Baby One More Time] – 6,000,000
10 1979 – Bee Gees – Too Much Heaven [Spirits Having Flown] – 5,640,000

Digital Singles Sales – Wham!

With huge hits in physical format, and although strong streaming forces as we will see later, Wham! songs have been surprisingly weak as digital sellers. No doubt the 7,2 million units sold so far will increase at a faster rate from now.

As those songs hardly charted anywhere during the last few years, with the obvious exception of Last Christmas, estimates can appear to be a bit off – although the impact on overall totals of the artist’s career will be minimal. Hopefully, if that is the case, the new information that will come out in the upcoming weeks should help with adjusting figures.

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between one album and one digital single.

Fantastic (1983) – 68,000 equivalent albums

Club Tropicana – 350,000
Remaining tracks – 100,000

Make It Big (1984) – 510,000 equivalent albums

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go – 900,000
Everything She Wants – 250,000
Freedom – 150,000
Careless Whisper – 2,000,000
Remaining tracks – 100,000

Music from the Edge of Heaven (1986) – 503,000 equivalent albums

I’m Your Man – 200,000
A Different Corner – 350,000
Last Christmas – 2,700,000
Remaining tracks – 100,000

Orphan – 0 equivalent albums

Digital Singles Sales – George Michael

In spite of releasing many more albums and singles as a solo artist, the total of digital sales achieved by George Michael barely beats the Wham! figure with 9,55 million units sold due to a lack of widely remembered hits.

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between one album and one digital single.

Faith (1987) – 480,000 equivalent albums

Faith – 1,000,000
Father Figure – 750,000
I Want Your Sex (Parts I & II) – 400,000
One More Try – 600,000
Kissing a Fool – 300,000
Remaining tracks – 150,000

Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990) – 195,000 equivalent albums

Praying for Time – 150,000
Freedom! ’90 – 750,000
Cowboys and Angels – 100,000
Waiting for That Day – 100,000
Heal the Pain – 100,000
Remaining tracks – 100,000

Older (1996) – 203,000 equivalent albums

Jesus to a Child – 350,000
Fastlove – 500,000
Spinning the Wheel – 100,000
You Have Been Loved – 100,000
Remaining tracks – 300,000

Songs from the Last Century (1999) – 60,000 equivalent albums

Remaining tracks – 400,000

Patience (2004) – 83,000 equivalent albums

Amazing – 150,000
Flawless (Go to the City) – 100,000
Remaining tracks – 300,000

Orphan – 413,000 equivalent albums

I Knew You Were Waiting – 250,000
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me – 700,000
I Can’t Make You Love Me – 250,000
Outside – 250,000
As – 250,000
Too Funky – 250,000
Killer/Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone – 100,000
Somebody to Love – 150,000
December Song (I Dream Of Christmas) – 150,000
Remaining tracks – 400,000

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 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

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

Streaming Part 1 – Wham! Catalog

As expected, the duo’s debut album doesn’t do wonders with only Club Tropicana getting decent streaming numbers.

Make It Big contains two gigantic hits, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go at over 105 million and Careless Whisper on 83 million. Interestingly, their order is reversed in video streams with the latter on 337 million while the former has 180 million YouTube views. The two other singles from its original era combine for 18 more million audio streams. Those hits create a very healthy total of 274,000 equivalent album sales. This is way more than every catalog album of Madonna for example.

So the total of Music from the Edge of Heaven, which enjoys 187,000 equivalent album sales, is mostly on the back of the evergreen holidays classic Last Christmas.

Streaming Part 2 – Getting Adult then Older

Overall, George Michael’s first three solo albums are more consistent than his Wham! records but having a few more 1-2 million streams tracks doesn’t help against much bigger hits.

The largest streaming song of the artist from his solo career is Faith at 57 million. Also, Father Figure, Freedom! ’90, Fastlove, One More Try and Jesus To A Child are all past 10 million audio streams. In terms of equivalent album sales, totals are decent but not big with those three records together being on 257,000 units sold.

Streaming Part 3 – Later Years & Stand-alone hits

There are very few songs to highlight from this list. The stand and out track is Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. A duet of Elton John‘s song with himself, that trans-Atlantic #1 hit registers 28 million Spotify plays and 42 million at YouTube. One more #1 on both sides of the ocean, the duet with Aretha Franklin I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me), is up to 10 million on both platforms.

Full Length related record Sales

This category includes all non-studio albums plus all music videos of both George and Wham! In the case of Wham!, this contains the atypical The Final which contained studio songs first released on that compilation in various markets.

Part 1 – Wham! Years

How to understand this table? If you check for example The Best of Wham! compilation line, those figures mean it sold 2,400,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all songs included on this package add for 350,000 equivalent album sales from streams of all types.

The second part on the right of the table shows how many streams equivalent sales are coming from each original album plus the share it represents on the overall package. Thus, streaming figures tell us Make It Big songs are responsible for 44% of the The Best of Wham! tracklist attractiveness, which means it generated 1,056,000 of its 2,400,000 album sales and so on for the other records.

With the exception of the last two music videos, all compilations from Wham! are logically extensively fueled by Make It Big and Music from the Edge of Heaven albums. Thus, they register between them most of the 7,8 million sales achieved by those various packages.

Part 2 – George Michael Compilations & Live albums

If one checks in detail the pattern of sales generators for those various packages they will not be able to identify a real logic. The reason? Compilations of George Michael are a mess. His discography is a nightmare for a label.

The first Wham! studio album included remixes of its own tracks. The second album had hits from both Wham! but also from George Michael. Their third album included two versions depending on the market, with or without past hits, plus new hits from both acts plus one stand-alone Christmas song. Then came George Michael‘s solo discography that was more standard, but the fact his songs’ popularity differ extremely depending on the market, the US or Europe, make tracklist choices impossible. Several of the his biggest hits from his solo career were duets outside of his albums too. Add to that different labels involved and you get the perfect combo to prevent commercials from sleeping.

Still, Ladies & Gentlemen was quite a heavy seller with 11 million units registered. The album left out Wham! songs, indeed both Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Last Christmas are missing which explains why Faith ends up being the main sales provider of that package, responsible for 3,2 million of its sales. However, the TwentyFive album does include main Wham! hits resulting in a very different pattern more favorable to the pair albums.

Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael (1998)

Part 3 – George Michael Music Videos

George Michael has always been an heavy seller in the music videos field. Several of them, including Ladies & Gentlemen, were paired with CD compilations. Thus, patterns are close to those displayed on the previous list of long format packages.

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 the sales of the original studio albums on these releases, they are a key piece of the jigsaw.

Make It Big fully enjoys the presence of Careless Whisper and Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go as it generated sales of 8,1 million compilations of all kind. Music From the Edge of Heaven and Faith contain big hits too, both providing enough appeal for more than 4 million other LPs units sold.

BONUS: Total Album (all types) Sales per Country

• America
  • US – 25,765,000
  • Canada – 3,320,000
  • Argentina – N/A
  • Brazil – N/A (445,000+)
  • Mexico – N/A
• Asia – 6,770,000
  • Japan – 3,370,000
• Oceania
  • Australia – 2,130,000
  • New Zealand – 480,000
• Europe – 39,520,000
  • UK – 15,260,000
  • France – 4,150,000
  • Germany – 4,720,000
  • Italy – 3,230,000
  • Spain – 1,625,000
  • Sweden – 775,000
  • Netherlands – 2,195,000
  • Switzerland – 95,000
  • Austria – 415,000
  • Finland – N/A (115,000+)
• World – 78,900,000

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.

Wham! and George Michael CSPC Results

So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales do all Wham! & George Michael albums achieve? Well, at this point we don’t need to combine all the figures found in this article.

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

'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

See where the artist ranks among remaining singers

Never mentioned anywhere among top sellers or the most successful albums, the terribly underrated Make It Big concludes on a gigantic 27 million equivalent album sales overall. An incredible all around performer, it generated solid numbers from every avenue.

Faith is a very close second at 26,8 million. That result makes George Michael the 9th artist only with multiple albums over 25 million out of the 50 studied so far, joining Madonna, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Backstreet Boys and Eminem.

He is not only about two albums though as he recorded five consecutive albums close or over 10 million.

Cumulatively, Wham! and George Michael sold 104,7 million equivalent albums. This may not sound like too much for such a legendary singer but one needs to consider his catalog features only 124 songs, while someone like Beyoncé already has 162 tracks without counting songs from Destiny’s Child. Speaking of them, you may wonder why I mentioned their numbers individually – solo and group – while I put the combined number for Wham! and George Michael. The fact is that there is really no such thing as “Wham! sales” as even their albums include various George Michael solo songs, among which some of their biggest hits like Careless Whisper and A Different Corner.

The following section lists his most successful songs.

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

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, Chartmasters.org.

Biggest tracks – Wham! & George Michael

The list of most successful songs is compiled in equivalent album 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 with appropriate weighting too, plus its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.

1. 1984 – Careless Whisper [Make It Big] – 13,110,000
2. 1987 – Faith [Faith] – 11,890,000
3. 1984 – Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go [Make It Big] – 10,670,000
4. 1986 – Last Christmas [Music from the Edge of Heaven] – 6,920,000
5. 1990 – Freedom! ’90 [Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1] – 5,880,000
6. 1987 – Father Figure [Faith] – 5,220,000
7. 1987 – One More Try [Faith] – 3,730,000
8. 1996 – Jesus to a Child [Older] – 3,580,000
9. 1996 – Fastlove [Older] – 3,170,000
10. 1983 – Club Tropicana [Fantastic] – 2,820,000
11. 1987 – I Want Your Sex (Parts I & II) [Faith] – 2,340,000
12. 1987 – Kissing a Fool [Faith] – 2,130,000
13. 1991 – Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me [Orphan] – 1,790,000
14. 1984 – Everything She Wants [Make It Big] – 1,770,000
15. 1993 – Somebody To Love [Orphan] – 1,720,000
16. 1990 – Praying for Time [Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1] – 1,720,000
17. 1986 – A Different Corner [Music from the Edge of Heaven] – 1,400,000
18. 1984 – Freedom [Make It Big] – 1,300,000
19. 1996 – You Have Been Loved [Older] – 1,230,000
20. 1990 – Cowboys and Angels [Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1] – 1,010,000

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