Supremes US album sales

[luke]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu7h3L40fq0 Maybe redundant but still interesting. Why HDH album so much lower in sales?

[jobeterob]

This is a video of that site that listed these and Ray’s Stevie’s and Diana’s

In their book, Eddie and Brian said Liverpool sold a million and Brian sure has many kind words about Diana

You can also see why the 70’s Supremes started having trouble within a year - the sales just weren’t there which Mary said as well

[blackguy69]

I highly doubt the Liverpool album sold a million copies

[daviddh]

Some look correct while others seem off.
Floy Joy sold like 200.000
Together sold 400.000
And why would Sunshine sell more than HDH which had two number ones.
Liverpool sold about 800.000

[daviddh]

I thought Supremes sing hdh sold 1.500.000 copies

[jobeterob]

Well no one knows for sure anymore; some of those that were there might have a reasonable idea

Some of these albums would never sell what they sold at the time - Funny Girl, Liverpool, even TCB

[florence]

Post removed.

[sup_fan]

I highly doubt the Liverpool album sold a million copies

surprisingly, it probably did. while the album is today not considered one of their best, it had a very strong chart run. it stayed on the charts for 20+ weeks

[lucky2012]

^ This brings back a memory of a 7th grade classmate mentioning he really liked A Bit of Liverpool by the Supremes. This was at the time of More Hits and Rubber Soul. His parents or older brothers & sisters must have bought the album?!

[sup_fan]

the album was clearly intended to be a quick jump on the Brit Invasion bandwagon. the girls were MASSIVE at this time. The WDOLG album was already into the Top 20 and fast going into the Top 10. Baby Love was still in the Top 10 and Come See was in Top 40.

So they frankly could have released a recording of the 3 girls standing in their bathroom and gargling with mouthwash and it would have charted. They were the definition of PHENOMENON and kids were grabbing up anything they could

The album contains all songs that everyone would recognize. pretty much all of them were hot hits and so now they fun and cool girls were singing them!! wow!! gotta have it!!

Now 50+ years later we can look back with hindsight and recognize that there are elements of the album which might not hold up as well to other recordings by the group. But that's really taking it out of context.

[jobeterob]

the album was clearly intended to be a quick jump on the Brit Invasion bandwagon. the girls were MASSIVE at this time. The WDOLG album was already into the Top 20 and fast going into the Top 10. Baby Love was still in the Top 10 and Come See was in Top 40.

So they frankly could have released a recording of the 3 girls standing in their bathroom and gargling with mouthwash and it would have charted. They were the definition of PHENOMENON and kids were grabbing up anything they could

The album contains all songs that everyone would recognize. pretty much all of them were hot hits and so now they fun and cool girls were singing them!! wow!! gotta have it!!

Now 50+ years later we can look back with hindsight and recognize that there are elements of the album which might not hold up as well to other recordings by the group. But that's really taking it out of context.

That’s setting out the context for it for sure

[sup_fan]

i don't have any data for it but i wonder what Meet The Supremes did once WDOLG hit. I'm assuming that sales for it increased. And then again when they released it with the stereo mix and the next cover. never charted of course but curious to see how it jumped in sales

there are some old pics of DMF out shopping and stopping by a record store window and seeing a huge display of all their albums. This was, i think, right around the time of Liverpool

[jobeterob]

Kind of sad to see Meet the Supremes and Funny Girl outsell the 70’s Supremes

[sup_fan]

I don't know if they really did. yeah i bet they did outsell some of the 70s stuff but maybe not all

Now if we are ONLY going on the chart data, we can see that:

Funny Girl was on the charts for 12 weeks and peaked at 150
Meet the supremes never charted

Right on - 19 weeks and peaked at 25
New Ways - 17 weeks and peaked at 68
Touch - 10 weeks and peaked at 85
Floy Joy - 15 weeks and peaked at 54
Jimmy Webb - 13 weeks and peaked at 129
The Supremes - 8 weeks and peaked at 152
High Energy - 15 weeks and peaked at 42
MS&S - no chart data, i don't think it charted

I would say that RO, NW, NJ, HE all outsold Funny Girl. It's debatable if Jimmy Webb did or The Supremes. maybe JW did but odds are Sup 75 didn't.

I'd also guess that Touch did simply because it charted inside the top 100. But if it did outsell FG, it probably didn't by much

[sup_fan]

the NW album chart rankings was sort of interesting. It entered the charts a little lower than previous but that wasn't anything too unusual. many of the albums entered in the mid 100s. Problem is that by weeks 2 and 3, almost all of the previous had really jumped. Sing HDH went from 134 to 40. Love Child went from 158 to 53. Unfortunately NW seemed to just stall. until week 4 when it sort of made a jump.

165 - 123 - 115 - 80 - 73 -78 82 - 82 - 71 - 71 - 68 - 69 - 69 - 68 - 78 - 102 - 130

NW seems to sort of sputter around a bit. rises, and falls. rises again. and it fell off quickly too. other albums peak and then do a long slow decline down.

[sup_fan]

just to add more color

Stoned Love was released about the same time as the lp. and both took about 3 weeks or so to enter the charts

stoned love chartings:

61 - 48 - 22 - 21 - 20 - 12 - 7 - 7 - 8 - 8 - 8 - 12 - 21 - 26

The fact that SL sort of got stuck in weeks 3 - 5 and just sat in the upper 20s. They something clicked and it jumped to 23 and then spent 5 weeks in Top 10.

Maybe you could tie the big jump into the Top 10 for SL with the album rising again up to 71 and then 68?

[sup_fan]

ok - i've been playing with my spreadsheet :) and looking late 69 through 70. took all of the DRATS/Sup releases and plotted them out on a calendar view. and then dropped in the handful of tv appearances. This way we can see what might be impacting one another

DRATS lps
Cream of the Crop was released 11/3 and first charted on 11/29. it entered at 173 and week 2 it SHOULD have gone higher than it did [[137). But week 2 was the week On Broadway first charted [[release 11/7). Broadway entered at #61 so i think it's very safe to say that it could have impacted sales of Cream. if you could only buy 1 lp, Broadway was the big tv special, gatefold cover, etc.

By Cream's Week 3 it rebounded and shot to 51 and then to 36 the next week 4. But during week 4, GH 3 was released. so that too would have slowed down sales and chart rankings

JMC releases
Someday was still in the Top 20 when JMC debuted on Ed Sullivan show with Ladder. A week later, Someday was dropping off the charts after tying with Love Child for the longest chart duration of any Sup song. within a couple weeks of Sullivan, Ladder entered the charts.

Farewell and Right On were released nearly on top of one another. so clearly that impacted sales

Same with Mag 7 [[week of 9/12 i'm guessing - can't find exact date, just month. typically it seems albums took roughly a month from release date to enter the charts) and NW [[week of 9/19).

Stoned was released week of 10/10 and entered charts on 11/7. River was released week of 10/31 and charted 11/28.

the NW album did a big jump when Stoned Love started to chart. both lp and single were released on top of one another. Shortly have SL entered the charts, the girls were on Merv Griffin [[appearance cut due to network) and Tom Jones. then two weeks later they were on Pearl Bailey.

So you can pretty clearly see the releases start to tapper and plateau when they're competing with one another. and you can see them typically jump when there's a tv appearance.

[RanRan79]

Sup, any chance you'll have time one day to write up each single and album and list what the numbers were each week it was on the chart, the way you've done here?

[sup_fan]

Sup, any chance you'll have time one day to write up each single and album and list what the numbers were each week it was on the chart, the way you've done here?

yep! that's actually what i did. i have 2 pages in Excel, one for singles and one for albums. I went ahead and did both Sups and Diana solo. Each page contains every US release, the date of release [[or in some cases just the month if specific date is unavailable), date the item entered the chart and date of peak position. this is the first peak. some songs like Come See About Me hit #1, then dropped and then returned to #1. I only identified the first peak.

then I list out the week by week movement for each. For sake of keeping the page from becoming out of control, every chart position is listed as Week 1, Week 2, etc. So they're all lined up. you can then see all releases and how long they charted for and what positions.

From this data, i was then able to copy and paste all of the 69/70 releases that i mentioned above and then I adjusted the chart runs to match the calendar. That way you really see the TIMING of when things were happening.

happy to share. this certainly isn't proprietary or anything. just an obsessed fan with time on his hands lololol

it doesn't appear that i can attach a file here. just images. feel free to message me and i'll send the file to you

[sup_fan]

16955

here's a screen shot.

This is also the excel file where i did tabs for what the Supremes were releasing in the 70s along with Diana, J5, Marvin, Temps, etc. That lets you see what the girls were releasing but also what else motown was releasing right at the same time and you get a better sense of maybe why some of the promotional efforts waned on the girls. Do you spend lots of money on an act with marginal returns or an act with high returns? pretty basic business question there

I've also taken many of the EE booklets and built out a year by year timeline of what the girls were doing. so in Jan 65, what was being recorded, what tv shows, what live gigs, what releases, etc.

i know - i'm a nerd lolol :p

[reese]

16955

here's a screen shot.

This is also the excel file where i did tabs for what the Supremes were releasing in the 70s along with Diana, J5, Marvin, Temps, etc. That lets you see what the girls were releasing but also what else motown was releasing right at the same time and you get a better sense of maybe why some of the promotional efforts waned on the girls. Do you spend lots of money on an act with marginal returns or an act with high returns? pretty basic business question there

I've also taken many of the EE booklets and built out a year by year timeline of what the girls were doing. so in Jan 65, what was being recorded, what tv shows, what live gigs, what releases, etc.

i know - i'm a nerd lolol :p

Great info! I would say "Keep it up!" but I don't want to add any additional pressure. :)

[sup_fan]

Great info! I would say "Keep it up!" but I don't want to add any additional pressure. :)

haha - no worries. I completed the chart run info through MS&S. At Their Best didn't chart so not worried too much about tracking that one. Diana's material is completed through this time frame too.

And i only did the US Billboard Pop charts for singles and albums, although i did read through the Disco Action content once we got the Sups doing their later singles.

[RanRan79]

Thanks Sup! I'll save it to my computer and see if I can read it. If not I'll message you.

[Boogiedown]

GREAT STUFF !!!!!:cool:

[sup_fan]

Thanks Sup! I'll save it to my computer and see if I can read it. If not I'll message you.

Ran - i just did a quick, random screen grab of the page. the page is too big for 1 screen view so even if you're able to see if, there's a lot of songs and stuff not in the image