France Album Sales: Mariah Carey

Music Box (1993) Era

There is many indicators to define sales of an album. First, both certifications and retail sales. Second, when you are missing the first level of data, chart positions. If you have none of both, you need to check the success of singles and weight it with the artist singles to albums relevance ratio. If you are truly missing a lot of data as it is the case of Emotions and MTV Unplugged, a key information is the debut week of follow up album, the best highlight of a fan base size.

Mariah Carey third album Music Box debuted at #37 in September 1993, a position worth about 5,000 units at that time. This reveals sales likely on 3-50,000 copies for the artist previous records. While this is interesting to know, those figures are a very small piece of a large jigsaw. In fact, after several years of struggle, Music Box finally took off in March 1994 thanks to second single Hero.

This #5, 16-weeks Top 10 catapulted Mariah Carey to superstardom in France. Out of charts for month, the album did more than recover by hitting a new #7 peak. Quickly going over 100,000 units, then 200,000 units, the train was now rolling and remained unstoppable after the release of the album third single, Without You. A huge 5-weeks #2 song, it propelled Music Box to the #1 position by September, just one year after being first issued. The album massive success was confirmed by #12 hit Anytime You Need A Friend. During the 29 weeks that encapsulated the last two singles, Music Box never dropped below #6, including the entire 1994 Christmas season. By February 1995, the set went Diamond, representing 1 million copies shipped.

By the time following album was released in October 1995, this set was over 1,1 million. Such a blockbuster era clearly boosts the artist catalog. With two studio albums plus one live containing singles from each of them, this live set MTV Unplugged was the main benefiter, even debuting inside charts in the low period of January 1995, peaking at #22. As her two studio albums had a similar profile Emotions was a bit stronger for the simple reason it was the immediate predecessor to Music Box. Sales-wise, MTV Unplugged was passing 100,000 units during this period while by the end of 1995 the first two were on an estimated 60,000 and 70,000 units respectively.

Mariah Carey catalog was also including Merry Christmas by that point. In fact, this festive record was issued in November 1994. This album charted 44-46 then dropped out, as France never cared very much about such releases. Selling from 2,000 to 5,000 units per week until the end of the year thanks to the huge market bump at this period, Merry Christmas shifted an estimated 30,000 in 1994.

Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify (Music Box)

1. Hero – 24,409,000
2. Without You – 21,254,000
3. Dreamlover – 10,004,000
   

   Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify (Merry Christmas)

   1. All I Want For Christmas Is You – 115,096,000
   2. Baby (Please Come Home) – 9,166,000
   3. Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town – 8,840,000