I love Pearl Jam and like their first 8 albums and the evolution of their music and how their music really matured as they got older is something to write about.
But, I find the album sales of all their albums very interesting and I can’t think of another band that started out so big and whose sales dwindled so much with each new album with a few rebounds here and there over the course of the years.
Like their first few albums are by far their best selling and that’s not a shock at all…while No Code (1996) sold far far less than Vitalogy and really ended the band’s superstardom. However, Yield (1998) was a commercial rebound for the band and then Binaural (2000) was the first Pearl Jam album to not go Platinum in America. And Riot Act (2002) sold even less Binaural (2000) and then their 2006 self-titled release was another commercial rebound for the band and it outsold Riot Act and Binaural (I think).
And Backspacer (2009) ended up being the band’s biggest selling and longest charting album on the US Billboard 200 of the 2000’s. And 2009 is when I got into Pearl Jam and remember downloading Backspacer and really liking it back then and I remember around this period, more people seemed to care that Pearl Jam was still making new music and there was a bit of a revived mainstream interest in the band for a short period of time. And Backspacer was the last Pearl Jam album to go Gold in America.
I know Pearl Jam never cared about record sales…but it’s interesting to think about.