The success of Rock a Little.

[James89]

I was just flicking through Stevie's chart facts and figures and found something quite interesting. People have said that Rock a Little never quite lived up to expectations sales wise but I found that it sold over a million copies in just 8 weeks and yet it never reached the top 10.

I don't really understand this. Its 8 week run goes as follows from its debut: 60-20-14-14-14-14-14-13. Yes it spent 35 weeks overall on the Billboard 200 and 13 of those were in the top 20 even though it only ever reached as high as #12 but a million copies from that run?

During the Christmas week of '85 the album was at #20. I don't know what sales were like back then and I know that sales rocket at Christmas time but I don't have a sales figure in mind but after that week surely the album didn't sell over 100,000 on average a week for another 6 weeks?

Hopefully someone can help me with this and maybe fill me in on how albums sold back in the mid 80's.