France Album Sales: Jean-Jacques Goldman

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This week some 15 years ago, French Album Chart saw an album debut in a big way at #1, Chansons Pour Les Pieds by Jean-Jacques Goldman. Far from a surprise, this result was logical as since the artist breakthrough in the 80s everything he released was a surefire #1 record, including his live albums. The surprise comes from the fact this set remains to this day the singer very last album.

From his 1981 debut solo LP Démodé to that 2001 smash, Jean-Jacques Goldman was at the top of French music industry. A true hit-machine, all his albums were also huge sellers. When he compiled a trio with two mostly unknown collaborators, he still smashed. Then, he wrote for others, and smashed again. Celine Dion fans may know him for the one responsible of both historical successes D’Eux and S’Il Suffisait D’Aimer, the former one being quite simply the greatest selling album of all-time in France.

With such an undeniable success, the only limit of Jean-Jacques Goldman as an album seller is the volume of his catalog. Indeed, when facing the likes Johnny Hallyday or Michel Sardou on all-time lists, he has to deal with the fact he issued way less albums than them. France has been the place of various mega-sellers that remained widely popular for many years, amassing insane number of sales. Among those we already studied, Celine Dion stands at 18,5 million, Renaud at 16,1 million, Michael Jackson at 14,4 million, Mylène Farmer at 12,1 million, Bob Marley at 10,9 million and Madonna at 10,8 million. A few more large sellers have been checked although they failed to break the 10 million sales milestone, those artists include U2 at 9,7 million, the Beatles at 8,8 million and AC/DC at 8,6 million. With a mere seven studio albums plus two others among Fredericks Goldman Jones group, until which point Jean-Jacques Goldman climbed?

During the next pages we will be studying carefully all information with detailed results of his entire discography since 1981. Please be aware all Youtube figures refer to worldwide streaming as they only aim to display which albums still have strong catalog hits as of now. Yes, you have read it well – for a change we will be using Youtube Music Insights Top 20 of the artist rather than Spotify as the artist catalog is still not available in the latter software. Let’s go!