Quote:
Originally posted by Dale
You know, that actually is a good point. The album sold around 20 million copies worldwide and looking at the receipts of the whole era they do look very impressive but when you look at the release date... there were plenty of albums selling the same amount of copies if not more. And yet because it was Michael Jackson everything did look monstrously huge. Interesting to read what was going on behind-the-scenes.
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It's shows that before the internet labels could literally choose and pick what looked huge behind-the-scenes.
Another thing:
When "You Are Not Alone" debuted #1, they made it look HUGE and earth-shattering since he was the first artist to do it. In reality, what had happened was, they let the song surge all the way up radio without being available for sale, then released it on sale so it went right to #1. Back then, you weren't allowed to chart on Hot 100 unless the song was on sale.
"You Are Not Alone" only sold 120,000 first week. That was good, but nothing earth shattering (Whitney sold 632,000 of IWALY 2 years prior!) yet they made it seem like it was a huge huge release. Funny thing -- "Fantasy" debuted at #1 two months later, with 229,000 in sales. If Michael was truly this out-of-this world never before seen power, why did Mariah sell almost double? He was truly not as big as him / his label tried to fool everyone into believing in the press.
Fast forward to 2001 when "Invincible" 363,000 first week. 363K wasn't nothing huge in 2001 to open with (the average #1 album in 2001 sold 422,202 copies so it was actually BELOW what the average #1 album was selling). Yet they had him block-out Times Square and made it seem like "the King of Pop was having a huge return!!!". That's when everything started backfiring for him.
They need to come back
