Whitney Houston (album) - Commercial Performance

Commercial Performance

Released on March 14, 1985, Whitney Houston debuted on the Billboard Top Albums Chart the week of March 30, 1985, at number 166. Sales were low initially. However, with the success of the first single "You Give Good Love", the album began climbing the charts and finally reached the number one on Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart (formerly "Top Black Albums") in June and the top 10 on the Billboard 200 (formerly "Top Pop Albums") in August 1985. Thanks to successive hit singles and winning at the Grammys, eventually Whitney Houston topped the Billboard 200 album chart in March 1986. With the album taking 50 weeks to hit number one, it became the slowest climb to the top of the charts since Fleetwood Mac took fifty-eight weeks to reach the top in 1976, with the band's second eponymous album.

Whitney Houston spent 14 non-consecutive weeks at the top of Billboard 200 chart from March until late June 1986, which was short of one week for Carole King's record of 15 weeks for the longest running #1 album by a female artist. It was the second-longest running No.1 album among the debut albums in Billboard history, behind Men at Work's Business as Usual, which had 15 weeks on top in 1982-83. The album exhibited massive staying power, remaining on the Billboard 200 for 162 weeks. It also spent a record 46 weeks in the top 10, beating Carole King's record with Tapestry. But the record was later broken by some artists in 1990s—Paula Abdul's Forever Your Girl, Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill and Celine Dion's Falling into You. Houston's debut was the best-selling album of 1986 in the United States and the #1 album of the year on 1986 Billboard year-end charts, making her the first female artist to earn that distinction. She became also the #1 pop artist of the year. The RIAA certified it Diamond on March 16, 1999 and later 13× platinum on July 29, 1999, for shipments of 13,000,000 copies of the album in United States.

The album was successful worldwide. In the United Kingdom, it peaked at number two on the albums chart, spending 119 weeks on the chart. It was certified 6× platinum for shipments of 1,800,000 units of the album by the British Phonographic Industry(BPI), becoming the fifth best-selling album of 1986. In Canada, the album reached the top spot on the albums chart and remained there for 17 weeks to become the longest stay at the summit by a female artist. On March 31, 1987, it was certified 10× platinum for sales of over one million copies, making it the best-selling album of 1986, and later Diamond by the Canadian Recording Industry Association(CRIA). Whitney Houston was also the 1986's top selling album in Australia, staying at number one of the Kent Music Report albums chart for 11 weeks, the longest stay by a female artist at the time. It became the first time an African American artist had a number 1 album in Australia. In Japan, the album was ranked number two on list of the 1986's best-selling album by a foreign artist, with a total of 450,000 units combined sales of LP, CD and Compact Cassette, only behind Madonna's True Blue. Besides, the album reached the number one on the albums chart in Norway for ten weeks and Sweden for six weeks, the number two in Germany, Switzerland, and the number three in Austria and New Zealand. Worldwide, Whitney Houston has sold over 29 million copies, becoming one of the best selling albums in the 1980s. According to the Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales data in 1991, as of 2009, the album sold over 1,038,000 copies in the United States.

The week ending of February 12, 2012, following Houston's death on February 11, the album re-charted on the Bilboard 200 at No. 72 with 8,000 copies sold.