France Album Sales: Red Hot Chili Peppers

Californication (1999) Era

Considering only one out of their first six albums can be considered as a strong success, expectations for Californication were pretty mixed. At one end, Blood Sugar Sex Magik was huge and was still selling very well as a catalog album, giving credit to the band. At the other end, they proved fairly irregular in their capacity to create airplay hits.

Airplay hits, Californication was full of it. Obviously Singles Chart results aren’t very indicative for such a band as only Scar Tissue lead single ranked at #66. In reality, it was a real hit, just like Around The World, Californication, Road Trippin’ and Otherside. None of them was a big crossover smash, which explains why the album had less weeks Top 10 than One Hot Minute with only two, including its #2 debut peak, and only 11 Top 30 weeks despite being released just before the smooth summer period, while the predecessor had 21 weeks Top 30 in the strongest period of the year.

Obviously worldwide Californication was way bigger than One Hot Minute but French public always liked to cultivate its differences as the situation was completely reversed. The long run gave Californication awards back yet. In fact, the album remained floating inside the Top 100 for an impressive 21 months. Charting #47 of 1999 and #55 of 2000, the album sold 345,000 units during this period plus 45,000 more in 2001.

In August 2000, Blood Sugar Sex Magik charted one week at #71 while in January 2001 it ranked at #84 while One Hot Minute was at #105. Those reenters represent the strong interest on their catalog that was boosted by Californication success.

Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify
  1. Californication – 118,999,000
  2. Otherside – 85,362,000
  3. Scar Tissue – 70,036,000

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