Overall, a total of nearly 20 million is still very respectable for an artist of her profile. Her sales dropped to 2 million, to 1.1 million, to under 700k, to under 300k, between 20, while her soundtracks Selmasongs and Drawing Restraint 9, even under performed her studio albums. Widely ranked among the best pop LPs of the 90s, this trio of albums also provided her with a good amount of commercial success, although they are obviously not A-League sellers.įrom 2000, she started to struggle to retain the interest of the general public, even in Europe, traditionally her most successful region. It has sold over 3.5 million units to date. Homogenic sold only half of Post‘s sales in the US and the UK combined but performed just as well outside of English-speaking markets. In most countries it had results similar to Debut, ultimately moving over 4.5 million units. Post solidified her fanbase and was as critically acclaimed as its predecessor. The album was also strong in other territories, helping push it to a healthy 5.7 million sales worldwide. It was more of an underground hit in the US, with a modest peak of #64, although it still went Platinum thanks to consistent catalogue sales. The record went Top 10 in Scandinavia but also in the UK and Australia, a sign that her music was managing to cross over to the masses. Her solo adult career couldn’t have had a better start, with Debut building her a strong fanbase from the very first era. Now let’s get into the artist’s sales figures in detail in order to apply this concept and define the act’s true popularity!
If you are a mathematical person, and want to know the full method as well as formulas, you can read the full introduction article. If you are unaware of the CSPC method, you will get the full idea within just a pair of minutes. In the first place, there is this Scribe video posted below. There are two ways to understand this revolutionary concept. The Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC)
Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the numbers directly. I fully recommend watching it before getting into the sales figures. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, below is a nice and short video of explanations. In fact, it will also determine their true popularity.
This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Björk‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming. As Björk 1977 and Gling-Gló 1990 are credited to her, they will also be listed inside her remaining albums section.Īs usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge her results. We will mainly focus on studying her discography from this release. Then in 1993 came the album that opened the career of the diva we know, appropriately titled Debut. While it didn’t have the global impact of the Sugarcubes‘, it sold immense numbers in Iceland and gained a cult status abroad, years later.
In-between, in 1990, the singer, under her full name Björk Guðmundsdóttir, dropped the Jazz album, Gling-Gló, in collaboration with the Tríó Guðmundar Ingólfssonar. This flirt with Indie stardom, was enough to see them tagged as “the biggest Icelandic band of all-time”.
While they failed to go fully mainstream, they were huge stars of the underground indie scene. All of them made the UK Top 20 and the US Top 100. From 1986 to 1992, she led the rock band the Sugarcubes, who released a trio of studio albums. Mostly a cover album of traditional songs, she herself doesn’t consider it to be part of her discography. Her first came in 1977, when she was barely 12 years old. I said her career is special, quite simply because, she’s kind of had 4 different starts to it. So, given all this context about her, just how much has the Icelandic singer managed to sell? Commercially speaking though, being so unique and different, usually provides a handicap to mainstream acceptance and popularity, rather than an advantage. Her persona, her look, her origins, her music, her lyrics, her videos, her career.