France Album Sales: Jean-Jacques Goldman
Non Homologué (1985) Era
If when his reputation still had to be built, Jean-Jacques Goldman was already securing hit after hit with some ease, now that he was regarded as one of the most credible artist in France, one can only guess how easily he would be smashing.
Believe it or not, with his fourth album Non Homologué the singer was able to increase his status even more. The lead single Je Marche Seul was absolutely everywhere during the summer of 1985. A #2, 12 Top 5 weeks smash, the song and its lyrics were a trademark of the artist.
Such a hit would have been enough to make this era a success. In fact, the album debuted at #1 in September 1985 monthly chart on the back of it. That’s when Jean-Jacques Goldman stepped up even more by dropping the cult track Je Te Donne. It is hard to summarize how utterly gigantic that song is with a few lines only. The single was a 8 weeks #1 smash during the Christmas season moving 1,5 million units. Pretty much everyone who covered that song later, from the Worlds Apart to Génération Goldman turned doubtful eras into million selling albums. The studio album, one compilation and soon one live album of Jean-Jacques Goldman also became million sellers in the long run. All formats considered, Je Te Donne is likely the biggest challengers of Pour Que Tu M’Aimes Encore, a song he wrote himself to Celine Dion, for the title of most popular French song of all-time.
The norm after destroying the Christmas season as Non Homologué did is to drop fast early the following year. Jean-Jacques Goldman success was unlimited yet and the album remained inside the Top 10 for an absurd 14 consecutive months. Both first singles were so big that I almost forget to mention Pas Toi, the third and last one from the original studio record. Considering the amount of copies sold by the album its #5 peak in the Singles Chart is just superb.
By November 1986, the album left the Top 10. Era over? Not exactly. The album started to drop out only because En Public was released. It is almost a tradition in France to issue a live album after every highly successful era. With that release, the status of Jean-Jacques Goldman among French juggernaut was somehow validated. More than just a live album, En Public was the closest album to a greatest hits for the artist. At that point, he had released 10 singles, all of which went Top 10 and all of which were part of En Public tracklist. As it wasn’t enough, La Vie Par Procuration, a song from Non Homologué, was used a single on a live version to support this LP.
He made it again. In spite of the song being already owned by almost 1 million people through the album, that single was #2 in Christmas 1986 Chart. So was En Public on December chart. This double-LP moved an incredible amount of units for such a product hitting 700,000 sets – 1,4 million discs – sold by 1988.
Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on YouTube Music Insights
- Je Te Donne – 9,520,000
- Pas Toi – 7,137,000
- Je Marche Seul – 4,612,000
- La Vie Par Procuration (Live) – 4,507,000
- Famille -2,639,000
No other track from the album among the artist Top 20.