France Best Selling Albums Ever:
Update Part 4

Bruno Coulais – Les Choristes OST (2004) : 1 725 000

The surprise smash album of 2004 hasn’t been doing too well lately. After three strong years, Les Choristes Soundtrack disappeared completely from charts and never surfaced again. Weirdly enough, it is doing well at Amazon.fr, often getting inside the Top 1,000 ranking. While that way of purchase is clearly favorable to such an Adult Contemporary album, this is still significant.

Raphael – Caravane (2005) : 1 530 000

After the top seller of 2004 with Les Choristes, here goes the top seller of 2005 year end chart, Caravane album by singer-songwriter Raphael. The artist never replicated a similar success, seeing his fame quickly vanish in a way very similar to international singer James Blunt. Caravane still remained a strong catalog seller until 2010 included. Since, it has been slowing down every year, although all things considered it is still quite a decent catalog seller.

Grégory Lemarchal – La Voix d’un Ange (2007) : 1 045 000

It’s always pretty hard to comment on Grégory Lemarchal. He was the winner of the TF1 program Star Academy at the age of 21 while suffering a genetic disorder that was inevitably going to cost him his life. The vocalist passed away less than three years later in 2007 at 23. Such a tragic fate obviously touched deeply the French public with the inevitable massive impact on the singer sales, most notably on La Voix d’un Ange which was issued shortly after. Since, TF1 channel made sure to regularly air a special prime-time program to exploit the situation. This brings an atypical chart consequence with the album often making returns in a big way. La Voix D’un Ange isn’t the main benefiter anymore though as 2012 compilation 5 Ans came out. That one went #11 in December 2012, newly peaked at #8 in August 2014 and just ended to return last week in early 2017 at #17. This recent comeback also means the activity in 2016 has been very weak, likely the slowest year for the singer since he issued his debut album back in 2005.

As usual, feel free to comment, even if it’s only to guess which album is related to the picture at the top of each section!

Sources: SNEP, Chartmasters.org.