France Album Sales: M. Pokora
A La Poursuite du Bonheur (2012) Era
On to his 5th solo album, M. Pokora pursued his curve from teen pop act to popular Variété artist in 2012. This new status had an immediate impact – his inclusion in the Annual TF1 Charity prime time Les Enfoirés. The irony is that it is very precisely the live album of that show which prevented A La Poursuite du Bonheur from hitting the top in spite of nearly 40,000 units sold.
Being now fully adopted by the main TV channel as one of their own guns, M. Pokora wasn’t needing big hits to sell well anymore. TF1 is such an unstoppable machine that 20-seconds TV spots at high audience hours shoots every album to Platinum plus status. This is what happened again with M Pokora’s new album. The biggest hit of this album Juste Un Instant made it only to #18 but the LP started to move relevant amounts nevertheless.
During its first 21 weeks, it never, ironically, dropped below the #21 position. Soon, it broke the 100,000 sales barrier, then 200,000. By the end of the year, it had sold a healthy 278,000 units, ranking as the 10th top seller of the year. Impressively, it was only one of the 3 albums on which M. Pokora participated that featured in the Year End Top 10. At #4 was the Génération Goldman album of Jean-Jacques Goldman covers, most likely planned and recorded thanks to M. Pokora’s own cover the previous year that had as lead single Envole Moi, a #5 hit again by him along with Tal. At #5 for the year was the previously mentioned Les Enfoirés album. That new cover was also added to an expanded edition of A La Poursuite du Bonheur.
Such a massive presence also enabled previous album Mise A Jour to continue selling well with nearly 60,000 units sold, hitting Double Platinum status for 200,000 units shipped at the end of 2012.
As if it wasn’t enough, MP3 re-entered charts both as a standalone album and as part of a 2CD box along with Mise A Jour.
After the inclusion into Les Enfoirés show and the promotion on the TF1 channel, the ultimate evidence of getting into the French powerhouse club is having a live album at the end of your studio album era. M. Pokora got there in early 2013 with Live A Bercy, which debuted at #1. He learnt the lesson from the previous year as he did so dislodging Génération Goldman the week prior to the arrival of the new Les Enfoirés album. It means he provided vocals on 3 distinct #1 albums within’ 3 weeks, not bad.
Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify
- Envole Moi – 3,272,000
- Juste Un Instant – 891,000
- On Est Là – 458,000