France Album Sales: Sade

The Best Of Era

I usually put compilation albums inside the details of the previous record. The Best Of has been the #1 Sade album since more than 20 years yet and also completely destroyed their catalog.

In 1993-1994 only, Diamond Life had eight different runs inside Top 50 Catalog chart in the US, Promise had four while Stronger Than Pride had ten, a total of 22 distinct spells from those three albums combined. Two of them were still Top 50 on 12/11/1994, a mere two weeks before the release of The Best Of. After the release of this latter album, the first three albums never charted again, not even a single week combined, in a 21 years time span.

While we know this compilation destroyed back catalog sales, it also had obviously the positive effect of selling copies on its own. In early November 1994 this package went #1 in the Compilation chart and remained Top 15 until the end of the year. The set went #8 in early 1995, #15 in June 1996 and #10 in 1999. It was 2xGold after the last months of 1994 and reached Platinum status just after its 1996 re-entry. By the end of the decade sales were up to 450,000 units.