CSPC: Green Day Popularity Analysis

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A wave. That’s pretty much the easiest way to define the popularity of most artists. Some acts have a bigger wave than others, but they still go up, and then after reaching their peak, inevitably slow down more and more as the years pass by. Among groups not fitting this description belongs Green Day.

An underground punk act in the early 90s, Billie Joe Armstrong‘s band suddenly became hugely popular in 1994 thanks to a trio of chart topping hits on the Modern Rock Tracks ranking. With their popularity quickly vanishing after that streak, the band managed an impressive return to form a decade later with the American Idiot album. Maybe even more incredibly, that seventh album was their first to truly break a global audience.

Initial reception isn’t the be-all and end-all of popularity. A song like Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) came out during difficult years for Green Day and failed to change that trend. Still, it is undoubtedly one of their most famous songs to date.

So, which song and album are the most popular among the modern age classic rock band’s catalog? How big are Green Day? How is their 2016 output Revolution Radio performing? It is time to answer all those questions!

As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge the band’s results. The concept will not only bring you raw data of all Green Day albums, physical singles, download singles, and music videos and streaming, but it will also accurately weight all this information to conclude in to meaningful popularity indicators. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC idea, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend you to check it out before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to jump into the figures. Let’s go!

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Jason

Hoping to see an update of what Revolution Radio ended up at and how Father Of All has performed with it being out for 6 months now. Great article!

Christoffer

Japan – 725,000

Seems odd considering the album is only certified Platinum* (200,000).

*https://www.riaj.or.jp/f/data/cert/gd_search.html

Christoffer

Thanks for the answer. Keep up the good work!

[…] CSPC: Green Day Popularity Analysis, ChartMasters, [website], 11 March 2017, https://chartmasters.org/2017/03/cspc-green-day-popularity-analysis/6/, (accessed 28 August […]

Keshav

So any update as of December 2018?

Christian Smith

I’d like an update to see how Revolution Radio is doing. The spotify streams for those songs seem to be quite a bit higher now than they were on Page 26.

The album has also been certified Gold in the UK indicating 100k+ so I’d assume it sold a good bit more worldwide. It’s probably reached the 1 million milestone by now. I hope in the future it surpasses Uno! at least.

David Oakes

Hello it’s now November 20, 2017.

Any chance of an update on Revolution Radio ?

Tomasz

These rankings are simply amazing! Thanks for all the work! I just discovered your page and can’t stop reading. I’m a big fan!

Raffi

Great work MJD, Anthony and Hernan! Green Day is an interesting case to read and study! Starting so slow, they became so massive with Dookie! The following 3 albums did well, and then they became massive again with American Idiot! I have to say, while Dookie is more successful, I consider American Idiot as their most impressive album in their catalog in terms of success, because they achieved it so deep into their career, and that that album is their only one that spawned numerous sizable hits! Regarding American Idiot, could you tell me whether it is the best selling… Read more »

Raffi

What some users Wants? Is that perhaps a reference to Christina Aguilera?😉 If so, pretty excited for it! Been dying to know whether her debut or Stripped was the more successful album, and how she compared with her peers

Trish

It could be a “I Know What You Want” reference as well haha

Nuclear dolphin

You know I think ‘American Idiot’ is a masterpiece and it was also the last REAL hit rock album ever. How many other rock albums have surpassed 10 million copies since then? It was original as well, combining punk rock into a rock opera, like the Sex Pistols meets ‘Tommy’ by The Who with a bit of mid 70’s Queen thrown in. Its also a massive hit with the streaming, more so than ‘Dookie’. American Idiot has 593,769,585 streams as of today, where as Dookie has 447,417,471. Also if you look at Green day’s top 10 songs on Youtube, you’ll… Read more »

Al

Grat work as always!

But i pointed out that Green Days numbers at the ranking on the last page are missing.