The Beatles :: Charts & Sales History

[blackbird]

Top Soundtracks 18/08/2012: Week Ending August 5, 2012

No | Artist | Title | TW | % | LW | RTD
  77 The Beatles Yellow Submarine Songtrack 411 -18 503 860,110
100 The Beatles A Hard Day's Night 319 -9 352 1,478,612

[blackbird]

SoundScan reported that 15,700 vinyl copies of Abbey Road were sold during the first six months of 2012 (total sales were 50,000 copies).

[stevieb]

SoundScan reported that 15,700 vinyl copies of Abbey Road were sold during the first six months of 2012 (total sales were 50,000 copies).

Search for vinyl versions of the Beatles albums on Amazon in both the UK and USA and for most if not all you'll see a message saying either 'Out of Stock' or 'Only 1 (or occasionally 2 or 3) Left in Stock'. Interesting.

[blackbird]

SoundScan 21st Century
Thanks to oldbloke

Key
Rank. ARTIST Title
Date & sales last leaked actual number {pre 1-1-2000 sales}
Estimated sales (Year released)

1. THE BEATLES 1
8-5-2012 12,079,000
12.08m (2000)

2. 'NSYNC No Strings Attached
5-13-2012 11,125,000
11.13m (2000)

3. NORAH JONES Come Away With Me
8-5-2012 10,855,000
10.85m (2002)

4. EMINEM The Marshall Mathers LP
8-5-2012 10,625,000
10.62m (2000)

5. EMINEM The Eminem Show
8-5-2012 10,093,000
10.09m (2002)

6. USHER Confessions
8-5-2012 10,013,000
10.01m (2004)

7. LINKIN PARK Hybrid Theory
8-5-2012 9,996,000
9.99m (2000)

8. ADELE 21
8-5-2012 9,660,000
9.66m (2011)

9. CREED Human Clay
8-5-2012 11,599,000 {2,056,000}
9.54m (1999)

10. BRITNEY SPEARS Oops!...I Did It Again
5-13-2012 9,194,000
9.20m (2000)

[blackbird]

examiner.com
Fans will have to wait a little longer for Mark Lewisohn Beatles biography

[blackbird]

Ray Davies reviews the Beatles LP Revolver, 1967

[blackbird]

Dutch Album Top 100 Chart: 04/08/2012

TW | LW | WOC | Artist | Title
14 14 2 The Beatles Tomorrow Never Knows

[blackbird]

Top 100 Albumes in Spain Week 31: 30/07/2012 - 05/08/2012

TW | LW | WOC | Artist | Title
52 42 39 The Beatles 1

[blackbird]

The New York Times
Meet the Beatles, Again

[bigred]

http://allday.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news ... d-pic?lite

[blackbird]

John W. Whitehead
Ringo Starr: Fifty Years Later and the Birth of the Beatles

[blackbird]

The fake Beatles album Yesterday And Today once topped the charts
by Steven Hyden August 14, 2012

In We’re No. 1, Steven Hyden examines an album that went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts to get to the heart of what it means to be popular in pop music, and how that concept has changed over the years. In this installment, he covers The Beatles’ Yesterday And Today, which went to No. 1 on July 30, 1966, where it stayed for five weeks.

When iTunes announced in 2010 that it had finally reached an agreement with Apple Corps to digitally distribute the most celebrated catalog in rock ’n’ roll history, the only Beatles fans who might have had reason to protest were album-fetishizing purists. I admit I am one of those people. I’m totally an LP-obsessed perv. I believe Beatles albums are intended to be heard in a specific way, in a specific order, just like they’ve always been heard.

This album-centric way of looking at music is sort of like being a strict constructionist with the Constitution. It’s all about staying true to what the creators originally intended, progress be damned. I realize this makes me some kind of fuddy-duddy Luddite, and I am okay with this. I have no problem with using electricity on the Sabbath. But allowing Beatles LPs to be served up à la carte just seems wrong to me.

The irony of this argument is that for a significant part of The Beatles’ recording career, a huge portion of the band’s audience only heard bastardized versions of their albums, with songs taken from various releases and thrown together willy-nilly. Up until the game-changing 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—which according to dozens of “greatest albums ever” lists by Rolling Stone, ushered in the era of the album as a self-conscious artistic entity on par with films and novels—The Beatles’ American record company, Capitol, routinely rejiggered the band’s British records for its own financial ends. Instead of hearing proper Beatles LPs like Please Please Me, With The Beatles, or Beatles For Sale, stateside kids were sold Meet The Beatles!, The Beatles’ Second Album, and Something New, among other reconstituted titles.

In these American versions, songs were shaved off their UK counterparts in order to spread the wealth of valuable Beatles material across more money-making LP releases. Stand-alone singles padded out these crass profit-margin busters, forcing Beatles-hungry fans to repurchase songs they already had on 45. And in the process, carefully assembled track lists were thoughtlessly cast aside, and an accurate representation of The Beatles’ unprecedented artistic growth was obscured.

Yesterday And Today is notable among these “fake” Beatles U.S. albums for a number of reasons. Released in 1966 between the historic double-shot of Rubber Soul and Revolver (probably the two best Beatles albums ever, and I’m sure not a single person would disagree with me), Yesterday And Today was among the last of Capitol’s fabricated Fab Four releases. Though it should be noted that the versions of Rubber Soul and Revolver released in America aren’t the “real” UK releases. Yesterday And Today lifts songs from both records; it takes “Nowhere Man,” “Drive My Car,” “If I Needed Someone,” and “What Goes On” from Rubber Soul, and “I’m Only Sleeping,” “Doctor Robert,” and “And Your Bird Can Sing” from Revolver. Yesterday also borrows from Help! (“Act Naturally” and “Yesterday”) and re-purposes the epic “Day Tripper”/”We Can Work It Out” single to round out the 11 tracks.

Yesterday And Today is also remembered for its original (and quickly pulled) “butcher” cover, depicting John, Paul, George, and Ringo clowning it up in white lab coats with bloodied doll parts in their laps. The cover was taken from a conceptual photo-art session by Robert Whitaker, later known for his contributions to the cover collage for Cream’s Disraeli Gears. Nearly three-quarters of a million copies emblazoned with the gory cover were printed and shipped to radio and retail distributors, but they didn’t survive long. After being inundated with complaints—The Beatles were still growing out of their teenybopper image at this point—Capitol (in no position to defend a product even The Beatles would’ve been reluctant to support on artistic grounds) pulled the original copies of Yesterday And Today. Many of them were dumped into an Illinois landfill; others simply had a new cover pasted on top of the old offensive one.

While not intended as a direct comment on Capitol’s shoddy treatment of their music—McCartney and Lennon later said it was a statement on Vietnam—the original cover of Yesterday And Today is nonetheless a darkly humorous visual representing a haphazardly assembled record-label product. The songs all come from roughly the same period, but the gap between the Ringo-sung Buck Owens cover “Act Naturally” and the druggy psychedelia of “Doctor Robert” hardly seem compatible on a skimpy record that’s barely 27 minutes long. The former track belongs solidly in the Beatles’ early period; the latter points directly to the explosion of sound and color coming right around the corner.

If you know the ins and outs of Rubber Soul and Revolver backward and forward—and if you’re a Beatles fan, or simply a fan of rock music, you probably do—it’s strange hearing the lysergic folk of “I’m Only Sleeping” after the sleek guitar pop of “Drive My Car,” or the country shuffle “What Goes On” between McCartney’s pointed relationship song “We Can Work It Out” and Lennon’s heavy riffing “Day Tripper.” Yesterday And Today still sounds pretty great, for the most part; how could anything made up of Beatles recordings not sound great? But the songs are oddly disconnected from each other. It’s just a bunch of tracks thrown together, with little rhyme or reason. And while the parts are beyond reproach, they’re never up to the magical whole expected from a Beatles album.

Of course, I mean that strictly in the artistic sense. Looking at Yesterday And Today purely from a mercenary record-company perspective, the practice of slicing and dicing Beatles albums into more Beatles albums was a stroke of capitalistic genius. The appetite for new Beatles material in the early and mid-’60s was so ravenous that greedy record executives were fighting each other for their piece of the pie. Ten days before Capitol released the iconic “first” Beatles album in the U.S., Meet The Beatles!, rival company Vee-Jay scooped them on the oncoming mop-top craze by releasing Introducing… The Beatles. The Vee-Jay record was similar to The Beatles’ actual first album, Please Please Me, but with two important differences: 1) The songs “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why” were chopped off; 2) The label’s engineer decided to edit out Paul McCartney’s “one, two, three, faw!” count-off from the start of “I Saw Her Standing There.”

The only problem with Introducing… The Beatles (other than the unnecessary alterations to Please Please Me) was that Vee-Jay wasn’t authorized to put it out; due to an accounting discrepancy involving unreported royalties for sales of Beatles singles, Vee-Jay’s licensing deal with The Beatles’ British label EMI was declared null and void. But the label was so strapped for cash, it decided to release Introducing anyway, immediately prompting a restraining order from Capitol. Vee-Jay eventually got around the order by removing “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You”—since Capitol owned the publishing rights to those songs—and re-inserting “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why,” clearing the way for Introducing’s eventual re-release and joining of Meet The Beatles! at the top of the pop charts.

The U.S. versions of The Beatles’ pre-Sgt. Pepper albums have mostly been forgotten. When the group’s catalog was introduced on CD in 1987, American listeners were treated to the original UK records in an official capacity for the first time. It was a victory for the band and for those who longed to hear the albums as they were actually created. As far as most Beatles fans were concerned, the UK versions were now and forever the only versions.

But for anyone who grew up on Meet The Beatles! or Yesterday And Today, this had to be a mixed blessing. For better or worse, those versions were their Beatles albums. It didn’t matter what the band’s intentions were at the time; for these listeners, this was the way the music was meant to be heard. In the early 2000’s, the Capitol albums were finally reissued for these nostalgic fans. Nothing had changed since the ’60s—this was music already available in different packaging, it just didn’t happen to be the “right” packaging for this segment of The Beatles’ audience. No matter what purists might want to believe, there’s never been one “real” way to hear this band.

[blackbird]

Remembering the Beatles at Shea
Ballpark Digest - Wednesday, 15 August 2012

It was 47 years ago today, when the Beatles went to Shea to play -- on Aug. 15, 1965, the Beatles launched the era of stadium concerts with a sold-out performance at Shea Stadium.

The Beatles actually played New York's Shea Stadium twice -- the second, a year later, didn't generate nearly the amount of headlines or revenue -- and it was the first concert that launched an era of rock and roll played before tens of thousands of fans at a place built for baseball and football. The concert grossed over $300,000 -- the Beatles took half, promoter Sid Bernstein the rest -- as the Fab Four put in 30 minutes of musical work. From Mental Floss:

The boys nervously picked up their guitars and Ringo climbed aboard his drum kit. They stood in the middle of Shea Stadium, small and distant figures, which probably added to the adoration and surrealism of the moment.

It was a typically brief Beatles concert, just 12 songs played in about 30 minutes. The Beatles used their “new” 100-volt amps, rather like using a portable hand mic to get an interview with King Kong, and throughout the deafening roar, they couldn’t hear a note any of them played (or sang)....

Because of the excessive noise and the need to somehow keep some kind of a beat, Ringo later confessed to watching the swinging rear ends of his three bandmates to give him some semblance of rhythm.

[ouf]

Very interesting
http://the-love-you-take.blogspot.co.uk/

[blackbird]

Top 100 Albumes in Spain Week 32: 06/08/2012 - 12/08/2012

TW | LW | WOC | Artist | Title
47 52 40 The Beatles 1

[blackbird]

Dutch Album Top 100 Chart: 11/08/2012

TW | LW | WOC | Artist | Title
97 14  3 The Beatles Tomorrow Never Knows
99 77 69 The Beatles 1

Fixed thanks to AndiIversen.

[AndiIversen]

Dutch Album Top 100 Chart: 18/08/2012

TW | LW | WOC | Artist | Title
99 77 69 The Beatles 1

?
In the 18/08/2012 chart at #99 on the Dutch album top 100 albums is Alain Clark (a re-entry)

[blackbird]

Dutch Album Top 100 Chart: 18/08/2012

TW | LW | WOC | Artist | Title
99 77 69 The Beatles 1

?
In the 18/08/2012 chart at #99 on the Dutch album top 100 albums is Alain Clark (a re-entry)

Thank you - it was the 11/08/2012 chart.

[stevieb]

I'm not very good at posting links on here, but according to Beatles Examiner website, Magical Mystery Tour is to relessed on DVD and Blu Ray on October 9th, with extras including a Director's commentary by Paul McCartney. The BBC Arena strand is showing a documentary about the film on October 5th, as part of a day of Beatles programmes.

[stevieb]

OK, hope this works:

http://www.propermusic.com/product-deta ... ive-143145

Allegedly features Ringo in pre-Beatles days.

[blackbird]

I'm not very good at posting links on here, but according to Beatles Examiner website, Magical Mystery Tour is to relessed on DVD and Blu Ray on October 9th, with extras including a Director's commentary by Paul McCartney. The BBC Arena strand is showing a documentary about the film on October 5th, as part of a day of Beatles programmes.

Here is the link:
New Beatles' 'Magical Mystery Tour Revisited' doc to be screened with film in UK

[blackbird]

The Independent
The Beatles: Time to let it be?

[bigred]

Let the Beatles go? Ain't ever gonna happen.Its 43 years after they broke up,and there are now 7 beatles tribute bands currently active in my area alone.
The Fab four,Abbey road,Yesterday,Ticket to ride,Rain, the Hollywood beatles, and Rubber Soul.We also have a group of high school musicians that just did the entire white album to a packed audience.
Let us not forget the visiters and tourists that go to Liverpool every year and leave there money behind.Would they really bother going if it wern't for the beatles legacy? Something for that crier from Liverpool to think about.

[blackbird]

On amazon.com The Beatles In Stereo is now the best selling Beatles album.
It ranks at # 187 - ahead of Abbey Road at # 193, and the White Album at # 195.

[blackbird]

Legend is the 10th best-selling album of the Nielsen SoundScan era, with sales of 11,103,000 copies since 1991. Among greatest hits albums, it's second only to the Beatles' 1, which has sold 12,083,000 copies. Could Legend one day surpass 1 as the best-selling greatest hits album in Nielsen SoundScan history? Let's take a look. In the past five years, Legend has sold 1,892,000 copies, compared to 1,111,000 for 1. So Legend is closing the gap with the hit-studded Beatles collection. It may well surpass it, but it will probably take several years. (Let me remind you that the figure for Marley's album doesn't in any way count its first seven years of sales.)