CSPC: Prince Popularity Analysis

Digital Singles Sales – Part 1

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

For You (1978) – 21,000 equivalent albums

Soft and Wet – 100,000
Remaining tracks – 40,000

Prince (1979) – 154,000 equivalent albums

I Wanna Be Your Lover – 870,000
Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad? – 40,000
I Feel for You – 60,000
Remaining tracks – 55,000

Dirty Mind (1980) – 44,000 equivalent albums

Dirty Mind – 60,000
When You Were Mine – 110,000
Head – 70,000
Remaining tracks – 55,000

Controversy (1981) – 96,000 equivalent albums

Controversy – 290,000
Do Me, Baby – 300,000
Remaining tracks – 50,000

1999 (1982) – 612,000 equivalent albums

1999 – 1,760,000
Little Red Corvette – 1,720,000
Delirious – 270,000
D.M.S.R. – 100,000
International Lover – 100,000
Remaining tracks – 130,000

Purple Rain (1984) – 1,577,000 equivalent albums

Let’s Go Crazy – 1,630,000
Take Me with U – 300,000
The Beautiful Ones – 380,000
Computer Blue – 80,000
Darling Nikki – 630,000
When Doves Cry – 2,730,000
I Would Die 4 U – 1,010,000
Baby I’m a Star – 360,000
Purple Rain – 3,390,000

Patterns of physical singles are similar for digital singles for these early eras except for Delirious which isn’t as popular nowadays as it once was. A second difference is that some album cuts gained in reputation. That’s especially true for Purple Rain songs which all sold relevant amounts, topped by the cult song Darling Nikki. The title track stands on an impressive 3,4 million digital copies while When Doves Cry is a close runner up.

Impressively, Purple Rain is only the 4th album we met that tops 10 million sales on both physical singles and digital singles. The others are Whitney Houston‘s Bodyguard and Michael Jackson‘s Thriller and Bad, which shows how elitist this club is.