France best selling albums ever: Jusqu’Au Bout De La Nuit by Emile & Images (1999)
From late 1985 to 1987 both groups from Toulouse city, Gold and Images, released respectively five and four Top 10 hits and sold over two million single each in the process. They both quickly disappeared from the music scene yet.
In 1999 they got a genius idea by merging both bands, with former Gold lead singer Emile joining the duet Images. Just after 1998 success of Modern Talking who covered their own mid-80s hits, Emile & Images did exactly the same even copying the black and white squared cover of German duet.
This concept resulted in Jusqu’Au Bout De La Nuit album. It was an immediate hit, entering at #22 only to be up to #2 a fortnight later. This was the success of the summer by being four weeks at the top during August.
This initial smash went on to become the norm as following summer the record pushed back to #8 and various weeks Top 10, then Top 50 in summer 2001 and would have been Top 50 again during summer 2002 if it wasn’t excluded from charts, when it got seven weeks at #1 in the mid-price chart.
Despite an already good chart run, the success of this album has been largely downgraded by former IFOP charts. In fact, while it was certified at 600,000 in 05/07/2000, it was much higher than this mark, being up to 880,000 units by 31/08/2000. The million in France was reached in late June 2001.
As some kind of hits package, the album add great catalog sales in the long run. Yearly retail sales estimated below:
- 2001-S2: 35,000
- 2002: 75,000
- 2003: 25,000
- 2004: 20,000
- 2005: 15,000
- 2006: 10,000
- 2007: 10,000
- 2008-2015: 30,000
Net shipment as of the end of 2015 is estimated at 1,220,000 copies.
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
Sources: SNEP, IFOP, Le Parisien, La Dépêche.