CSPC: Wham! & George Michael Popularity Analysis

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