Michael Jackson was all over the place during the 80s, releasing two monster sellers Thriller (1982) and Bad (1987). Follow up album, 1991 release Dangerous, was apivotal album for the star as the cult producer of previous albums Quincy Jones, was no longer on board. Teddy Riley had taken his place as primary collaborator.
When songs like T.N.T, Back To Black, Highway To Hell, You Shook Me All Night Long, Hells Bells and Thunderstruck among others never got packaged together, you are poised to expect big sales once such a release comes out.
Coming out of nowhere, Pow woW band took France by storm during a year before leaving as fast as they came.
One more high profile LP replacement compilation, Back To Front by Lionel Richie went on to perform insanely well in France.
ABBA has the perfect profile of a large selling compilation acts with so-so studio album sales along with massive singles hit. To get into blockbuster sales status, one of their compilation thus barely needs to be their main available hit package during a large enough time span. This happened with Gold.
Bodyguard is the kind of album that requires no introduction. Everybody knows the movie, everybody knows Whitney Houston, everybody knows I Will Always Love You.
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During the first half of the 90s, singles charts were flooded by Eurodance tracks. Not many acts of this genre achieved success in the albums side, virtually none except Ace Of Base.
Before 1993, Alain Souchon released eight studio albums. He got a few hits, nice sales in elitist public but no widespread appeal. This all changed that year with C’Est Déjà Ca album that contained his iconic song Foule Sentimentale.
I would be lying if I tell you Mariah Carey was well known in France when Music Box was released in 1993. She was pretty much the opposite of a star – none of her albums charted, she received no certification and only one of her singles made the Top 20, I’ll Be There, mostly thanks to the original Jackson 5 song being famous.
