France Album Sales: Rihanna
A Girl Like Me (2006) Era
Guess what? Less than nine months after her first successful single, the one-hit wonder was back with a second smash even bigger than the previous one. We were up to April 2006 and the new single was titled SOS.
As mentioned in the introduction, the single was Rihanna first US #1 hit. In France the song started at #18 just like Pon De Replay. Airplay had started for less time yet so the hit managed to climb in later weeks, peaking ultimately at #12. Not necessarily performing much better than the previous single, this new success proved the artist was here to stay much longer than we first though. The credit she earned was illustrated on the album chart were the new set A Girl Like Me outdid Music Of The Sun easily.
Starting at #26 in April on 3,634 sales, A Girl Like Me was down to #80 by its eigth week. From that point, the album trajectory as it went up and up slowly but surely, reaching a new peak of #18 by its week 22 with 4,890 units sold. It happened in September thanks to the newly released single, Unfaithful, which went on to become Rihanna first Top 10 single in France by hitting #7. The album retained a Top 100 placing until the end of 2006, even registering its best sales week during Christmas frame with 6,746 sales at #72.
Completing the year on nearly 112,000 sales the album was up to 125,000 copies when the follow up record came out in June 2007.
Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify
- Unfaithful – 42,510,000
- SOSÂ – 20,263,000
- Break It Off  feat. Sean Paul – 7,878,000