France Album Sales: Mariah Carey

Glitter (2001) Era

After surprisingly moving from Sony Music to Virgin, Mariah Carey issued her first soundtrack album in September 2001, Glitter.

Soundtrack albums are often hit or miss, well, it was an obvious miss. With a lead single Loverboy peaking at #54, the album debuted at #5 thanks to the artist fans but was out of the Top 50 after five weeks, out of the Top 100 after ten. At the time the absence of digital sales and pre-orders along with lower release awareness concluded on much less frontloaded sales, thus such tumbles were really dramatic. Leaving charts after the first week of 2002 while it still had to sell the 100,000 units initially shipped, this album represented the end of an era for the American vocalist.

In November 2001, Sony Music decided to release one new compilation to put Mariah Carey entire discography into a single package. Greatest Hits as it was named peaked at #12 in the Compilation chart, suffering from the strong sales of #1’s a mere three years earlier. The heavy Christmas market yet – every Top 20 position in the Compilation side was worth over 10,000 units sold for the busiest week of the year – still sent the album up to Gold status in early 2002.