Pet Shop Boys - Chart History

[BrilliantPSB]

this should be a sticky

[Undertaker]

Actually sold 1,034,000 copies in the 1980's.

Spending the first 25 weeks of its chart life in the top 20 resulted in the over 600k in 87 alone and making it the 11th biggest album of the year and in the top 30 of 1988 as singles continued to be plucked.

[Undertaker]

Courtesy of Haven

Pet Shop Boys year end chart placings

1985

West End Girls - 68


1986

West End Girls - 65
Suburbia - 80


1987

It's a Sin - 8
Always on my Mind - 14
Deserve This - 42


1988

Heart - 26
Domino Dancing - 88


1990

So Hard - 92


1991

Streets - 84


1993

Go West - 46 ( 208,000)
Can you Forgive Her? - 97


1994

Ab Fab - 111 (108,000)
Liberation - 193 (49,000)


*Is there any chance someone could change the thread title, so 'boys' and 'history' have capitals? It wont let me do it and it's pissing me off lol*

[Fugitive1979]

Is there any chance someone could change the thread title, so 'boys' and 'history' have capitals? It wont let me do it and it's pissing me off lol

Surely, as you are the original poster, it should let you do it.

[Nickname]

I've always wanted to know the best selling singles of PSB and the global results of sold singles all over the world. Creating a video with the TOP 20 hits of PSB and a countdown from 20 to 1.

It's a sin, Westend Girls and Always On My Mind could be the number one of the PSB history, I think it could be fun and PSB fans could enjoy watching the final results.

[Devices]

Wow, I'm surprised Liberation did that well. I thought I remember it being one their worst selling singles of the 90's according to some BBC or VH1 program from a few years ago. Oh well, I never really cared for year end lists myself, the singles released near the end of the year are always at a disadvantage since their sales straddle two years.

I just dug up some US sales numbers from back when I used to actively keep track of this stuff. These are cumulative Soundscan album sales as of 2006 or so, and came from the Billboard Q&A section one week. Sadly it only included albums released during the soundscan era (1991-present), prior to that sales were basically made up each week and aren't all that reliable...

Discography - 719,000
Very - 418,000
Disco 2 - 131,000
Alternative - 68,000
Bilingual - 150,000
Nightlife - 139,000
Release - 73,000
Disco 3 - 42,000

Surprising that Disco 2 sold as well as it did....

I also noticed on page 1 there are a couple of US singles chart placings missing, though they're from the Bubbling Under chart (101-125). You've got Can you forgive her? making #109, but missing Go West (#106) and Before (#107).

[Devices]

Here's a scan from the January 15, 2000 issue of Music Week, on the Alan Jones commentary page.

[Eldritch]

Nightlife sold only 38 000 copies in 1999? Didn't Fundamental and Yes surpass that figure in two weeks?

[Undertaker]

Nightlife sold only 38 000 copies in 1999? Didn't Fundamental and Yes surpass that figure in two weeks?

Definatly and Release didn't do any better either. So it takes some going to increase sales with the last two albums. It's unheard of.

[NJTom]

I think nightlife was released later in the USA and that explains the low sales for 1999.

[Waffleon]

Do we know which sold more back in the day - Heart, Chris cover or Neil cover? )

[transforce]

Obviously it'll be the Chris cover.

[retrofuturist]

Re: Neil/Chris cover, I don't know how you'd ever be able to confirm it, but if you were taking a global perspective to sales you might be able to make a prediction based on which versions were sold in different locations. Not all places were priviledged enough to get a choice... in fact, my Heart 7" came in a generic EMI sleeve.

[GalataPSB]

"Pet Shop Boys is one of the best-known names of the techno pop of the United Kingdom. Throughout his career he has placed 12 albums among the top ten in the UK charts with seven Platinum and more than 2.5 million records sold. Forty of their singles have been among the 20 top lists, sold 5.4 million copies in Britain alone."

http://www.deltaworld.org/music/The-Bri ... 0-B-sides/

[retrofuturist]

Greetings GalataPSB,

That article is hilarious... "Pet Shop Boys is working on her eleventh Studio album"

Retro.