Whitney Houston Chart Records and Achievements - Sales and Certification Records

Sales and Certification Records

• Whitney Houston was the best-selling album by a female artist in Canada in 1980s, beating the previous best-seller, Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual, which sold more than 900,000 copies in the country. Houston's debut became the first album by a female artist to earn the-10-times platinum mark―diamond level―for sales of 1,000,000 units by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) on March 31, 1987.
• Houston's first release, Whitney Houston, is the best-selling album by a female and a new artist in the 1980s, certified 9× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on October 6, 1988. That has made Houston the first female artist to reach the level since the RIAA launched the platinum and the multi-platinum awards program, in 1976 and 1984, respectively.
• Whitney Houston holds the record for the highest one-week single sales by a female artist, with 632,000 copies sold of "I Will Always Love You" in the week ended December 27, 1992ㅡthe Billboard magazine issue date of January 9, 1993.
• "I Will Always Love You" was certified 4× platinum for shipments of over 4 million copies by the RIAA on January 12, 1993, making Houston the only and first female artist with a physical single to reach that level in the RIAA history. According to Nielsen SoundScan, as of 2009, the single sold 4,591,000 copies in the United States, and became the best-selling single by a female artist, and overall the second, only behind Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997/Something About the Way You Look Tonight."
• In the United Kingdom, "I Will Always Love You" was the best-selling single of all-time by a female solo artist with 1.361 million copies sold in 1992/93, but the sales record was later broken by Cher's "Believe," sold 1.673 million units in 1998/99. In Japan, the single was also the best-selling single of all-time by a foreign female artist at the time, selling 810,000 copies in 1992-93. Worldwide, It sold over 12 million copies and became the best-selling single of all-time by a female artist.
• The Bodyguard Original Soundtrack Album set a record for the most albums sold in a single week since the Nielsen SoundScan introduced a computerized sales monitoring system in May 1991, with sales of 1,061,000 copies during Christmas week of 1992, becoming the first album sold over 1 million in one week. Later, Garth Brooks' Double Live shattered the SoundScan-era record, selling 1,085,000 copies in the first week of its release, November 1998. To date, only five women, including Houston, have notched million-plus weeks. Britney Spears sold 1.31 million copies of Oops!... I Did It Again in 2000; Norah Jones' Feels Like Home moved 1,022,000 in 2004; Taylor Swift sold 1,047,000 units of her album Speak Now in 2010 and 1,208,000 units for her album Red in 2012, and Lady Gaga sold 1,108,000 units of her album Born This Way.
• The Bodyguard Soundtrack received the largest initial certification of any album for 6× platinum by the RIAA on January 18, 1993. The record was broken by 'N SYNC's No Strings Attached, certified 7× platinum initially in April 2000.
• Whitney Houston hit the 10 million mark by the RIAA on January 25, 1994, and made it the first album and the first debut album by a female artist to attain the certification. As a result, she also became the first female artist to have two 10× platinum albums with the album and The Bodyguard Soundtrack, earned the same certification peak in November 1993.
• In 1994, Houston received an award from the World Music Awards, for being the "Best-selling Female Artist of the Era."
• On March 16, 1999, when the RIAA launched the Diamond Awards, honoring sales of 10 million copies or more of an album or single, Houston received two diamond awards with her self-titled debut and The Bodyguard Soundtrack, becoming the first female artist to achieve that feat. Besides Houston, as of today, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Céline Dion, Britney Spears, Shania Twain, and the Dixie Chicks are the only female artists with multiple diamond albums.
• In November 1999, Houston and The Bodyguard Soundtrack, were named the "Top-selling R&B Female Artist of the Century" and "Top-selling Soundtrack Album of the Century" by the RIAA, respectively.
• The Bodyguard Soundtrack is the best-selling soundtrack album of all-time in the United States with 17× platinum certifiaction by the RIAA and sales of 13,125,000 copies, combined 11,815,000 units from SoundScan with additional 1,310,000 sold at the BMG Music Clubs. The album also holds the title for the world's biggest selling soundtrack album of all-time with over 44 million units sold.
• The Bodyguard Soundtrack is the first pop album to sell over one million copies by a foreign artist in South Korea. To date, its sales exceeded 1.2 million in that country. The album sold over 1.1 million in Brazil, becoming the best-selling album by a foreign female artist. In Japan, it was certified 2× million by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) in 1994, for the first time to achieve that feat by a foreign artist in Japanese music history, and became the best-selling foreign album with 2.8 million copies sold. The record was later broken by Mariah Carey's #1's, certified 3× million in 1998.
• The Preacher's Wife Original Soundtrack Album is the best-selling Gospel album of all time, with sales of over three million copies in the United States and six million copies worldwide.
• Houston's rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner," performed by her at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, is the only version to be certified platinum, and it raised millions for the victims of 9/11.