On our travel from present to the past among best selling albums ever in France, we have yet to met two types of albums: hits package album and a non-French/English record. Both of those specificities are true with this record, Best Of by Italian singer Laura Pausini.
One of the most authentic acts of French music scene, Manu Chao, former leader of cult band Mano Negra, was in front of the biggest challenge of his career in 2001 when he had to follow up the monster seller Clandestino.
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When Patrick Bruel released Entre-Deux in 2002, his last three sold albums had sold cumulatively over 4 million copies in France, setting very high expectations on the new record. In this context, changing a winning formula was seen as a very risky move, Bruel still took it View More
Debuting in 1975 with the album Amoureux De Paname and peaking in 1985 with the gigantic hit single Mistral Gagnant and the album of the same name that sold over a million, the career of French legend Renaud was over by the late 90s, which seemed quite natural after all those years, especially considering personal life troubles of the artist.
Released in late February 26 2002, Come Away With Me was just one more anonymous album released by one more an anonymous artist, Norah Jones. Entering the album chart at #143, it was still one of the rare countries where it debuted right from its release.
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If one wonder how massive Johnny Hallyday is locally, let put it that way: He sold more records in France than the Beatles or Elvis Presley did in the UK. Just that.
At first one wouldn’t compare Carla Bruni to Yannick Noah. Looking at it more closely, not many people have been able to be incredibly successful in a very exposed domain, then succeed in outstanding fashion in music area before representing France country at the highest level on the third part of their lives, as those two personalities did.
After a debut solo album that failed to reach the Top 50 and an entire career with his former band The Charts, expectations weren’t high for Calogero 2002 album titled simply Calogero.
If one start looking for the most widespread link between all French million selling albums of the last 20 years, his conclusion will definitely be a three-letter one: TF1. French Media environment has this particularity of being extremely dominated by the first TV channel. The only one available during many years in the past, the average 40+ music consumer of French variety has the habit of mixing “television” and “TF1”, there is no other channel for a large part of the country.
French music scene has always been massively dominated by solo artists. We just ended to study million selling album Le Chemin by Kyo in 2003, but that is the exception rather than the standard. In fact, no band, local or international, sold a million copies of an album in France since that date. The country had in all its history a mere four truly big and cult bands, those are Téléphone, Noir Désir, Louise Attaque and Indochine.