The Grammy Awards shake up Billboard’s latest weekly charts, as many of the Feb. 8 show’s featured performers and winners make great sales gains on our lists.
Even though the latest sales tracking week ended on the day of the show — and therefore only includes just a few hours of impact during and after the show — there are still some significant increases on the charts. (Watch for big gains next week too, after a full seven days of post-show impact is registered.)
Collectively, the 26 songs performed on the show earned a 44 percent gain in download sales in the week ending Feb. 8 according to Nielsen Music. They sold a combined 860,000 downloads — up from 598,000 in the week previous.
(Those figures include popular earlier-released versions of some songs on the show that are not commercially available, like Jessie J and Tom Jones‘ cover of The Righteous Brothers‘ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin.'” For our sales research, we included the week’s biggest-selling version of the song, which was The Righteous Brothers’ famed rendition.)
The biggest unit gain among the show’s performed songs was Ed Sheeran‘s “Thinking Out Loud,” which rose by 49,000 downloads to 269,000 sold for the week (up 22 percent).
The next-largest unit gains: Rihanna, Kanye West and Paul McCartney‘s “FourFiveSeconds” (181,000; up by 43,000 – a gain of 31 percent), Sam Smith‘s “Stay With Me” (81,000; up by 38,000 — a gain of 88 percent) and Hozier‘s “Take Me to Church” (136,000; up by 20,000 – a gain of 18 percent).
“Stay With Me” was performed on the show, and won both song of the year and record of the year. Smith was also honored with the awards for best new artist and best pop vocal album (for In the Lonely Hour).
The week’s biggest selling song performed on the show was “Thinking Out Loud.”
The largest percentage gain among the show’s performed songs was best new artist nominee Brandy Clark‘s “Hold My Hand,” which rose by 23,871 percent to 5,000 downloads (up from a negligible figure in the week previous). The second-biggest percentage leap is owned by Beck‘s “Heart Is a Drum,” climbing 2,995 percent to 3,000 downloads (again, up from essentially nothing sold a week earlier).
(Percentage gains can naturally be quite large when a figure jumps from essentially nothing in one week to something more than nothing a week later.)
Looking at big gains by albums, we looked at the biggest-selling albums of the Feb. 8 week by the performers on the show. In total, those titles gained by 47 percent in sales, rising to 250,000 for the week (up from 170,000 a week earlier).
(Our album calculations include the soundtrack to Selma, which was showcased in the Grammy Awards finale by John Legend, Common and Beyonce.)
The biggest unit gain among the performers’ albums was Sam Smith’s In the Lonely Hour, which sold 57,000 (up by 20,000 units — a gain of 53 percent).
The next-largest gainers (by units) were Ed Sheeran’s x (53,000; up by 17,000 — a gain of 47 percent), Beck’s album of the year-winning Morning Phase (11,000; up by 10,000 — a gain of 945 percent) and Hozier’s self-titled album (21,000; up by 6,000 — a gain of 40 percent).
The largest percentage increase among the week’s biggest selling albums by performers is owned by Morning Phase, followed by Juanes‘ Loco de Amor (less than 1,000 sold; but up by 329 percent), Brandy Clark’s 12 Stories (2,000 sold; up by 275 percent) and Electric Light Orchestra‘s All Over the World: The Very Best Of Electric Light Orchestra (3,000; up by 242 percent).
The biggest selling album of the week by a performer was In the Lonely Hour.
[Billboard]