Music Times pointed out late last week, as part of our Back of The Billboards segment, that Marvin Gaye's greatest hits compilation Number 1s had probably received a healthy boost in sales thanks to the soul singer's prominence in music headlines in the previous week. His estate's victory over Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams regarding the similarities between his "Got To Give It Up (Pt. 1)" and the pair's "Blurred Lines" seems to have generated new interest in the performer. Billboard provided stats this weekend to demonstrate this was true.
Number 1s was formally released during 2007, but didn't crack the Billboard 200 for the first time until last week, when it placed at no. 175. That represents a huge rise, more than 4,000 albums sold last week. It's Gaye's first debut on the Billboard 200 since The Very Best of Marvin Gaye broke through during 2001.
What's interesting is that we can check to see if readers were interested in rediscovering Gaye's catalogue as a whole, or if they were just curious to compare the two songs involved in the lawsuit. Your correspondent has spent plenty of time complaining about Billboard's new metrics for the Billboard 200—which now takes single downloads and streams into consideration to determine "equivalent" album sales—but Gaye got a significant boost thanks to the new plan.
"Got To Give It Up (Pt. 1)" had its best digital sales week ever, moving more than 10,000 downloads, which was enough to amount to 54 percent of the "equivalent" album sales that Number 1s received on the Billboard 200. The download total also moves the single to no. 18 overall on the R&B Digital Songs chart. That may be its highest placement on that particular list, but "Got To Give It Up" had gotten farther in its heyday: It topped the R&B charts and went to no. 1 on the Hot 100 as well during the week of June 25.
