140 million

[John Run]

Comparing Behind the Mask sales to Say You Will sales without context is an incongruent argument. Behind the Mask represented a 77% drop in sales from the prior original release by the band just 3 years earlier. Thirteen years later, in a reshaped record buying market, Say You Will was a 40% drop from Behind the Mask, but a 1100% increase in sales from their last full work of original material, Time, which was released 8 years prior. Of course in the interim, they had the massive selling live compilation, The Dance.

The debate on the listening enjoyment one has from Say You Will is a worthy one. While ambitious, it is long, laborious, and sonically compressed to my ears. That's does not mean their are not some nice moments on the album. The perfect lock of the Fleetwood drums and McVie bass arranged in a distinctly Buckingham way on Miranda. Thrown Down, Steal Your Heart Away and Bleed to Love Her are all well crafted songs. A matter of fact, the album version of Bleed To Lover Her is by far the most streamed track from Say You Will. But yes, in my opinion Say You Will is a tough listen as an entire body of work.

There are other interesting tales of tape in the numbers. Tusk outsold Mirage, despite the perception that Mirage was a return to commercial form. Tusk being the eagerly awaited follow up to Rumours, for sure helped its sales though. The massive sales of Tango in the Night can't be undersold. Buckingham's producer royalties on that one, which I am sure were weighted heavily towards him and not 50 / 50 with Dashut, must have sustained him long into the 90s, when combined with his artist and songwriting royalties. Greatest Hits and The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac have much greater sales volume than I suspected. As noted above, the Welch era was far more successful than perceived, but all of those albums combined don't come to equal the sales of the White Album, so it is easy to see why some members of the band so easily discarded the era.

Lots of interesting data and always a joy to find something new in what I thought I knew.