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Saturday Deluxe / 9 December 2023

Chartwatch – Success for Peter Gabriel and Wham!

By Paul Sinclair

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31

Peter Gabriel’s new album i/o has entered the UK album chart at number one this week! It’s his first UK number one since So back in 1986 and his third in total (Peter Gabriel 3 aka ‘Melt’ also hit the top spot in 1980).

i/o sold a total of 15,647 units made up of 11,178 CDs (that includes the 2CD+blu-ray edition) along with 2320 vinyl albums, 1420 digital downloads and 737 sales equivalent streams. Despite their being two different vinyl editions (Bright-Side and Dark-Side mixes) for chart purposes Realworld would have made sure that these were accepted at the same album and didn’t count separately. A good thing too, because less than 700 sales separated Gabriel from South Korean K-pop boy band Ateez who for most of the week looked like they’d deny PG a number one with their album World EP: Fin, but in the end they fell short with 14,972 sales.

Peter Gabriel almost holds one of those now fashionable ‘longest gap between…’ records. With 37 years between number one studio albums, only ABBA can beat that with the 40 years between The Visitors (1981) and Voyage (2021).

In other album news, Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret is a re-entry at number 31, its first chart appearance in the chart for over 40 years. Its number nine in the physical album charts, 13 places ahead of Trevor Horn’s Echoes – Ancient and Modern (which stalled at lowly 81 on the ‘proper’ album chart).

In other chart news, having taken over 36 years to finally get to number one on the UK singles chart, Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ can’t stop getting to the top! Having finally reached the summit in 2021 the song repeated the feat in 2022 and again at the very beginning of this year. So this is now the fourth time! Next week Sony are releasing the festive favourite on CD single and green vinyl seven-inch but they might be wondering if they should have bothered – it doesn’t seem necessary. That said, with no Ladbaby this year (small mercies) they’ll be hoping for ‘Last Christmas’ to be number one on Christmas Day itself (something that hasn’t happened yet) and I could easily see ‘Last Christmas’ dropping a place or two only to reclaim the top spot again. We shall see…

Read the SDE review of Peter Gabriel’s i/o. Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, Echoes – Ancient & Modern and i/o are all available on blu-ray audio with Atmos Mixes, via the SDE shop, with the first two being SDE exclusives.

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31 Comments

31 thoughts on “Saturday Deluxe / 9 December 2023”

  1. It’s really great to see PG at number one. I enjoyed the monthly release of singles but wondered if it would cannibalise the sales of whatever album was going to be released at the end of it (and up to a few weeks ago, we were still in the dark if we were actually getting a physical album). I also thought it might get lost in the Christmas album rush. It has to be said that €25 was an irresistible price point for 2CDs/Bluray, which I bought, even though I don’t have a bluray surround set up just yet! Compare that to €60 for the Stones 1CD/1BR HAckney Diamoonds.

  2. I’d rather it was the Pogues at no.1, but there you go! It was quite moving to watch the performance of Fairytale, with correct lyrics, being played as only the Irish can, in church, around Shane’s coffin. I doubt he’d want it any other way!

  3. Just to summarise a couple of posts I’ve meade elsewhere about i/o’s sales
    CD sales were 5x LP and 9x download sales. CD is king!
    This got a good roll out from the record company. My local HMV had every format on release day and it had equal display priority instore with the k-pop and Taylor Swift type releases.
    Look and learn Steven Wilson!

    1. I buy mostly vinyl but bought the CD+Bluray edition of i/o, simply because it was too good value not to. Both stereo mixes AND the spatial audio for £22. Or spend £80 combined for the stereo mixes only on vinyl.

  4. About a decade ago I benchmarked 10k sales often being just about enough for a top 10 album position. Judging by this, it’s probably shrunk close to 1k sales for a numer 10 record now!

    I do wonder how long the likes of Fopp and Rough Trade can last. HMV comes and goes but probably relies on merch and video games.

    You can also understand how deluxe boxsets that we all love reading about on here, have inflated in price aggressively in the last few years while the general price of gig tickets has rocketed since the pandemic.

    1. Fopp will last as long as HMV want it to last! Only1 in glasgow now!don’t get the deals you did years ago,I remember getting the clash cd boxset beautiful thing all cds like mini 7 inch singles a fiver? The spands 25 anniversary of true lovely deluxe version £2 great days! I remember as a kid buying cheap 12 inch singles 50p from a little record shop in the savoy centre sauchiehall Street glasgow! I also bought empire burlesque on day of release from their the guy that sold me them was I believe MR Fopp!!

      1. Fopp’s deals back in the day were amazing. I got Let It Be Naked and Dylan’s Modern Times on vinyl for a fiver each and the Bowie 10cd 90s box set for £25. Nowadays I go in, walk round and tend to cone out empty handed.

  6. 60’s,70’s and 80’s acts would have been flabbergasted that in 2023 sales of just over 15k of units is enough to get a no1 lp.How times have changed! Since most folk casually consume music online without ever buying anything kind of hard to work out the true popularity of each release.

    1. That is why “streaming equivalents” are part of the calculations.
      What these numbers show again is that streaming is basically legalised theft in terms of returns to artists.
      As Jason Isbell said recently when asked if his left wing politics might drive away some of his audience -“it doesn’t matter because those people stream and whether I get no streams a month or 2 million streams a month it pays about the same”.

  7. I sometimes think I want to go back to a time when we just had the physical product but I love the choice. I have PG’s album on vinyl x 2 and the Cd/Blu Ray and I have played it via stream a bit when out of the house. I was lucky enough to see the tour – he’s an amazing artist and I think this album is superb. So glad it gets to number 1. I was really surprised how small the non-physical sales are and found your breakdown really interesting Paul. As for Christmas number 1, I am backing Fairytale if New York – it is overdue.

      1. The first SDE unboxing that features a razor blade and swearing?!..

        I think Brett & Co have extended the punk ethos of Autofiction to its packaging. Rip it apart to get to the music. You don’t get that experience with streaming. :-D

  10. It’s such a shame that artists like Roger Waters and Peter Gabriel take so long to release studio albums, as their most recent ones are excellent. Outside of their age / activity levels being an issue, it doesn’t seem to be commercially worthwhile for artists who’ve been there, done it, made a fortune, to bother creating new music.

    Now where is Prefab Sprout’s Femmes Mythologiques album, or whichever project Paddy McAloon has moved on to?

  12. Yeah well deserved…I/o is just superb…I like the Lightside more than the Darkside, which sounds like a different album…happy with the Soft Cell BRA & as for Last Christmas, it hasn’t hit #1 in the US yet…it’s peaked the highest yet tho now, #4, so it still could…yet the 65 year old “Rocking Around The Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee hit #1 on the Hot 100 this week for the first time, so that’s pretty cool…

    1. Did you listen to the Inside Mix La? I agree though the Bright-Side mix as a whole is the best option at this point but due to a return haven’t heard the Inside Mix yet.

  15. Only 2300 vinyl records and 15000 units total really surprises me for number 1. Just shows how physical product is still a niche market.
    It’s a great album and pleased it’s number 1.

  16. So glad Peter Gabriel made it to number 1 even if it’s a brief stint. The ads for it were quite prolific in the run up to release on social media. I’d like to think it got there because it’s blummin brilliant. Dear OCC I have listened to it about 100 times if that could be added to the sales please?…..

    Likewise Soft Cell if the £60-75 box set is included isn’t a bad showing.

    1. It’s a stunning album I’m not one for gushing but there is so much quality in it. i/o Jesus that chorus. I’d like a Steven Wilson side as an SDE exclusive for my Christmas wish list…

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