France best selling albums ever:
Summary 1970-1979

https://flic.kr/p/8w1XqT

PER ALBUM TYPE

Best Of Albums

01 The Beatles – 1967-1970 (1973) : 1 490 000
02 The Beatles – 1962-1966 (1973) : 1 360 000
03 Simon & Garfunkel – Greatest Hits (1972) : 1 325 000

As the overall low market of this decade favors perennial sellers, we could have expect more than only three compilations to be there, especially with the couple of Beatles albums inflating this number. The point is that French artists never had this culture of cult compilations, rather dropping again and again and again various of them with slightly different tracklists. As for foreign artists, very few 70s compilations lasted long enough to add for over 1 million sales as most of them got replaced in early 90s with the mass arrival of CD format. It was the case of Simon & Garfunkel package but the duet was so big in France that it had reached the mark already. As for the Beatles, rather than dropping a new compilation, EMI had the good idea to re-launch both 1973 sets, thus pushing them over 1 million overall sales.

Christmas Albums

01 Tino Rossi – C’est La Plus Belle Nuit De Noêl (1973) : 1 080 000

The US is often regarded as a one of a kind market for Christmas releases. While it is true that Christmas albums aren’t such good sellers in France and that biggest French vocal acts never released holiday albums, Tino Rossi still went on to sell unreal amounts of Christmas related records, including this million selling album. It remains to this day the only Christmas album ever to sell 1 million units in France.