France best selling albums ever: Reprise Des Négociations by Bénabar (2005)
From 2001 to Christmas 2006, Bénabar popularity kept rising and rising very steadily year after year. Ultimately, he became the flagship of the French Nouvelle scène (the “new scene”), a new sub-genre of Variety, that consisted in songs with cleverly written lyrics and vocals in-between spoken and sung, often with a very limited voice from the artist.
This movement was massively hyped among intellectuals community and soon crossed over most of the population, more notably with Le Dîner song issued from this Reprise des Négociations album.
Despite a #1 debut in 2005 Q4, Bénabar was still mostly underground. Consistant airplay and continuous touring from February 2006 to November of that year increased his profile to new highs. By the end of his tour, performed in Paris, he exploded completely, returning back to #1 where it remained for most of November and December.
The album was excluded from charts due to the 2-year rule in 2007 (despite being released for only 99 weeks) without even going under #67. The record continued to get stellar sales in 2008 and 2009, both times reaching the Year End comprehensive Top 250 chart, before collapsing completely from 2010.
Yearly French retail sales stand as below:
- 2005: 176,000 CD + 1,000 DL
- 2006: 528,000 CD + 6,000 DL
- 2007: 330,000 CD + 6,000 DL
- 2008: 42,000
- 2009: 32,000
- 2010-2015: 50,000
- 2CD boxes: 15,000
A grand total of 1,186,000 copies sold.
Net shipment as of the end of 2015 is estimated at 1,200,000 copies.
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