A couple of weeks ago in my From my Readers post, I mentioned a post at the USAToday.com Listen Up music blog (run by Ken Barnes) which addressed the recent inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The comments on the post were full of comments about Rush which prompted Barnes to put up a follow-up post where he discussed Rush's Soundscan record sales from 1991 to the present. He points out that fans seem to prefer the old stuff. They've bought over a million copies of Moving Pictures and nearly 900,000 copies of 1976's 2112 since 1991; more than the numbers for Test for Echo and Vapor Trails combined. Here's the entire post:
Last week, as part of the series of answers to your sales questions, we looked at Donna Summer's sales figures in the SoundScan era (late '91 to now). Continuing with a mini-series on your favorite should-be-Hall-of-Famers, today's sales list deals with Rush. (Next week, Kiss.) Of course, sales isn't necessarily a criterion for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inclusion, but they're a telling indicator of continuing popularity.
Like Summer, Rush's peak came before the SoundScan era -- the trio ran off 19 straight gold or platinum albums before SoundScan started tabulating sales, with 1981's Moving Pictures being certified as quadruple platinum. Most of the sales for those albums are lost in the mists of prehistory. But the band has still racked up sizable sales for its entire catalog in the SoundScan era.
The long list, chronologically arranged, follows.
Rush (1974): 197,000
Fly by Night (1975): 219,000
Caress of Steel (1975): 193,000
2112 (1976): 848,000
All the World's a Stage (1976): 246,000
A Farewell to Kings (1977): 258,000
Hemispheres (1978): 269,000
Permanent Waves (1980): 283,000
Moving Pictures (1981): 1.20 million
Exit Stage Left (1981): 542,000
Signals (1982): 305,000
Grace Under Pressure (1984): 201,000
Power Windows (1985): 181,000
Hold Your Fire (1987): 232,000
Show of Hands (1989): 173,000
Presto (1989): 152,000
Chronicles (1990): 825,000
Roll the Bones (1991): 1.15 million
Counterparts (1993): 772,000
Test for Echo (1996): 490,000
Retrospectives I: 1974-1980 (1997): 168,000
Retrospectives II: 1981-87 (1997): 203,000
Different Stages (1998): 277,000
Vapor Trails (2002): 338,000
Spirit of Radio: Greatest Hits (2003): 502,000
Rush in Rio (2003): 144,000
Feedback (2004): 160,000 (my favorite Rush album, if that means anything. One of the best covers albums)So what can we conclude from this data?
1. Rush sure has a lot of albums
2. Fans prefer the old stuff to the new stuff: No album of new material has topped 500,000 since 1993's Counterparts.
3. But fans really buy that old stuff, snapping up a number of hits collections and retrospectives in various configurations, all with sales in six figures. Plus, selling nearly 900,000 copies of 1976's sci-fi concept album 2112 since 1991 is a really impressive achievement.
Very interesting. Many thanks to Counterparts member The Pass for the heads up.
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