France Album Sales: Red Hot Chili Peppers
I’m With You (2011) Era
Sometimes it is hard to explain why a music act is suddenly regarded as something from the past. For sure, waiting five years between two albums is a lot, but various artists still had huge follow ups after long hiatuses. What’s sure is that if the Red Hot Chili Peppers were incredibly hot in 2006, by 2011 not many were still looking after them.
Lead single The Adventures Of Rain Dance Maggie bombed in all markets, peaking at #38 in the US and #44 in UK – Dani California had peaked at #6 and #2 respectively in comparison. In France, the single peaked at #38 too. While this is the second highest peaking single of the group ever in France, their early low peaks were due to the absence of the band in the CD Single format. By 2011, digital sales were included in France charts and for this reason The Adventures Of Rain Dance Maggie was supposed to peak much higher if it was successful.
Believe it or not, in France the album hasn’t done that bad. It debuted at #2 with 28,500 copies and sold 103,000 units during its four months of sales in 2011. The set continued to sell some copies until the end of 2013.
Interestingly, 2011 is also the year that saw the creation of French comprehensive album chart which allowed back catalog records to chart. Californication charted for an incredible 17 weeks for the year. Not only that, it did so in January/February/July/August/September, which means it was selling steadily great amounts and as soon as the release schedule and the competition was a bit lower, it was enough to see it reappearing. Ironically, Greatest Hits charted for 17 weeks too. Since 2012, both strong catalog albums added respectively 21 and 34 weeks on charts. The first week of I’m With You was the main indicator of the pace of sales of their past albums as four of them reentered:
#87 Greatest Hits
#108 Californication
#155Â Blood Sugar Sex Magik
#180Â By The Way
Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify
- The Adventures Of Rain Dance Maggie – 22,366,000
- Monarchy Of Roses – 8,022,000
- Look Around – 7,917,000