France Album Sales: Whitney Houston
The Bodyguard (1992) Era
As mentioned inside the article dedicated to this album, it seems silly to present an album and a single as massive as The Bodyguard and I Will Always Love You.
If most international stars have a hard time to get Top 10 hits in France, both the album and the single of this era shot to #1 and retained a chart double for an amazing eight weeks. Big soundtracks use to perform that way with a massive domination during a 8-12 weeks period while the movie is hot on theaters. Bodyguard was different in that, as while it was a big soundtrack first, it became a big album too in latter months.
I’m Every Woman (#11), I Have Nothing (#29), Queen Of The Night (#47) and Run To You (#47) were issued every three months up to April 1994. Notable airplay for each of them enabled the album go back up to #2 thanks to the first of them, to #7 during the third single era, to #9 while the fourth was airing and #6 thanks to the last hit. By February 1995 the set was still riding as high as #12. Sales were up to a terrific 1,44 million by the end of that year.
Trying to reproduce a hit formula isn’t always easy. Movies Waiting To Exhale (1995) and The Preacher’s Wife (1996) completely bombed in France, just like everything related to this era. Whitney Houston lead single from the former Exhale (Shoop Shoop) peaked at #23, a bad performance giving the success the diva was coming from, all subsequent singles from both soundtracks failed to chart.
Both albums respectively went #27 and #28 in January after their respective December #44 and #45 debuts, selling a mere 60,000 units each in the process.
Top 3 Most Streamed Tracks on Spotify
- I Will Always Love You – 71,676,000
- I Have Nothing – 27,322,000
- Run To You – 7,651,000