Posthumous Hallyday album sells 300,000 on first day
PARIS: French rocker Johnny Hallyday’s posthumous album sold 300,000 copies on Friday after going on sale at midnight, the late star’s record company Warner Music France told AFP.
Fans of the singer, whose death last year sparked a nationwide outpouring of emotion, queued outside record stores on Thursday night to get their hands on the album.
Warner, which said the sales figure did not include downloads from streaming platforms, had earlier predicted that “Mon pays c’est l’amour” (My Country is Love) would go platinum (100,000 sales) within minutes of going on sale.
Hallyday’s 1999 album “Sang pour Sang” (“Blood for Blood”), sold two million after selling 230,000 copies on its first day.
Hallyday, who had been a star since the 1960s, died from lung cancer in December aged 74.
His death sparked a bitter inheritance feud between his two biological children, Laura Smet and David Hallyday, and his last wife Laeticia.
Laeticia Hallyday on Friday said she had been trying to negotiate with the pair.
“We are trying (but) it is complicated, because a lot of things have been orchestrated,” she told the TF1 television channel.
“There is a lot of hate, contempt, humiliation, lies, which hurts. It’s difficult to hear, it’s difficult to suffer that,” she added. — AFP