Tracking Achtung Baby

[womanfish]

as frustrating as the Billboard site can be. They do have one handy thing, and that is to be able to look at the Billboard 200 charts 5 years and 10 years ago. Now doctorwho has done a fabulous job of charting AB for a year, but i thought maybe we could go beyond and see how long it was in the top 100.

The only problem with this is that there are obvious mistakes in these old charts. Whoever put them together was not a detail oriented person by any means.

Just looking at the chart from 10 years ago, it shows Achtung Baby at number 18. This is the correct chart position (for week 31), but they say it has been on the chart for 97 weeks! and it is already certified 8 times platinum.

It shows Billy Ray Cyrus at number 1, also having been out for 97 weeks, but with no sales certification.

Guns 'n Roses Use your Illusion I, (which has sold about 7 million copies to date), is on the chart at number 50. They say it was at number 105 the previous week, yet they show no gold sales gainer symbol. They say it had been out for 108 weeks and it is only certified Gold.

So obviously it's not totally trustworthy, but I think we can probably wade through the mistakes (especially with the correct info we already have from doctorwho) and maybe be able to extend the chart info we have on AB.

 

[STING2]

Dr. Who already has all the info on Achtungs top 100 chart run. The 97 weeks that you see might be total weeks on chart to date on the entire Billboard 200, just like 8 million in sales is the total number of sales for Achtung Baby to date.

 

[doctorwho]

Dr. Who already has all the info on Achtungs top 100 chart run. The 97 weeks that you see might be total weeks on chart to date on the entire Billboard 200, just like 8 million in sales is the total number of sales for Achtung Baby to date.

Actually, all I tracked was AB's chart positions for the first year. I have reported that infromation eslewhere in this forum.

As for Billboard's 10-year old chart that that feature on their web page, I understand Womanfish's comments. Sometimes Billboard will show the final numbers (to use AB as an example: 97 weeks on the chart, 8x Platinum). Other times it will list the album (and I don't mean just AB here - other big albums at the time, such as those by Guns'n'Roses or Hammer) as if it just joined the chart, even though we all know that this was a huge album 10 years ago. This inconsistency takes away the fun of that chart. It would be nice to see an album's chart position on a given week, its certification or highest ranking at that time (10 years ago), and then also see the final numbers next to it.