The classic catalogue of Bob Marley has received a chart boost from the new biopic.
Bob Marley: One Love is a box office hit in UK cinemas, and the musical drama has now made an impact on the albums and singles charts. The film, which stars Kingsley Ben-Adir (pictured) as Marley, passed more than $100 million at the global box office in 10 days.
The main catalogue beneficiary is Bob Marley And The Wailers’ hits collection Legend (Tuff Gong/Island), which is marking its 40th anniversary this year.
As revealed in Music Week’s charts analysis by Alan Jones, Legend has climbed 18-6 in the latest rundown with consumption up 57.2% week-on-week to 7,377 units. Weekly consumption includes 1,471 physical copies, 421 downloads and 5,485 sales-equivalent streams – the fourth biggest streaming total for the week behind albums from The Weeknd, Noah Kahan and Kanye West & Ty Dolla $ign. The Legend album has now been climbing for six consecutive weeks and has returned to the Top 10 after an absence of 184 weeks.
The greatest hits has spent 12 weeks at No.1 during the past four decades out of a staggering 1,366 weeks on the chart (more than 26 years).
More recently, it has become a catalogue streaming perennial. Legend was No.49 overall in the UK artist albums rankings last year with sales of 116,287 (including 19,715 physical copies, 2,151 downloads, 94,421 streaming-equivalent sales – Official Charts Company). Legend has post-1994 sales of 3,128,014 and it is certified 14 times platinum, meaning it has sold more than 4.2 million units over the last 40 years.
Meanwhile, Bob Marley’s ninth studio album, Exodus – source of much of the music used in the film – has returned to the chart at No.36 (3,002 sales). It reached No.8 on its initial chart run in 1977 and has been absent from the Top 75 since 30th anniversary special editions helped it to reach No.44 in 2007.
Exodus is Marley’s most popular studio album, with Kantar (Millward Brown) charts era (post-1994) consumption of 513,322 units in the last 30 years. Its nearest challengers are 1978 follow-up Kaya (280,046 sales) and 1973’s Catch A Fire (123,001 sales).
The new film’s One Love soundtrack album, featuring the music of Bob Marley And The Wailers, has yet to make a chart impact.
Three classic Bob Marley tracks released by Island have Kantar era consumption in excess of a million copies: Three Little Birds (from Exodus, 1,643,101 units), Could You Be Loved (from 1980 set Uprising, 1,205,283 units) and Is This Love (from Kaya, 1,103,006 units).
Could You Be Loved has returned to the singles chart this week at No.51 (9,331 sales), while Three Little Birds is at No.56 (8,318 sales). The two tracks have been taken off ACR (which requires older songs to stream double that of new tracks for a chart ‘sale’) because of their promotional role in the film’s release.
The Marley family has another presence in the single chart in the form of Bob’s grandson YG Marley, who has a Top 10 hit with Praise Jah In The Moonlight (YG Marley Music/iGroove). The single dipped a place to No.6, although weekly sales were up 13.5% to 32,658. It has sales to date of 121,345.
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