France Album Sales: Madonna

Evita (1996) Era

Compilations are great cash-in machines, but they often create the feeling the artist is a singer from the past among the general public, negatively impacting further releases. From 1990 to 1995, Madonna sold more best of type albums than studio albums. She also always needed hits to sell well and her Soundtrack albums, often soundtracks of flop movies, used to sell under her standards. All those reasons made Evita an absolute bomb when it was released.

The movie was a disaster and on its side lead single You Must Love Me peaking at an awful #41 position. The album debuted at an horrible #26 position in November 1996, dropped to #41 on week 2, stood there for one more week and then left the Top 50.

I already mentioned Madonna hasn’t always been the biggest album selling force but making hits is no problem. While Evita era seemed completely dead the release of both the movie and the second single Don’t Cry For Me Argentina in early January relived the record in incredible fashion. It wasn’t that much for the movie that registered a mere 277,000 entries, but for the incredible smash the single proved to be. Issued the same week as various hits including No Doubt Don’t Speak, Gala Let A Boy Cry, Jamiroquai Cosmic Girl plus a pair of French boys bands songs from 2 Be 3 and Alliage, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina still shot to #1 for four weeks, the artist biggest smash of her career up to that point.

The album reentered at #30, catapulted to #9 the following week and to #2 just after, only stopped by Mylène Farmer album Anamorphosée. The resurgence was short-lived yet and the album only sold 160,000 units for the year, failing to break the year end Top 50. This doesn’t include the 30,000 units sold during 1996.

Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify

1. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina – 2,754,000
2. You Must Love Me – 849,000
3. Another Suitcase In Another Hall – 683,000