Welcome 2 America rides high in charts

Prince’s first full studio project since 2015’s HINRUN Phase Two, is riding high in the US and UK charts. First was the UK official chart on 6 August, which saw the release enter its chart at number 5. Next was the Billboard 200 albums, charting Welcome 2 America at number 4 on 10 August.

The occasion also produced Billboard history, in that Prince is only the sixth artist ever to score a top ten album in their chart in all the last five consecutive decades the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. Welcome 2 America is also Prince’s best performing album in the US since 2009’s LotusFlow3r triple set (chart peak #2), returning Prince into the top ten for the 20th time. It makes Prince one of only a dozen artists since the creation of the chart in March 1956 to put at least 20 of albums into the Billboard top ten.

Welcome 2 America is also Prince’s 22nd entry into the UK album top ten, his last to chart as high in the UK was Musicology (chart peak #3) in 2004. The beautifully packaged Deluxe Edition has left fans wondering which Super Deluxe will fill this year’s usual autumn release slot: the hot tip is Diamonds And Pearls, biggest hitter from the thirty-five of Prince’s thirty-nine albums recently under the exclusive publishing licence of Sony Legacy Recordings.

Warner Records retain their rights to Prince’s four soundtrack albums, and there is no word yet on their plans to issue for a counter release this year. Looking at the options for each of their four remaining soundtrack albums; Parade is the lead candidate but the 1986 vault material was extensively mined for 2020’s Sign O’ The Times Super Deluxe and looks likely for another year. Batman remains off limits due to various licensing entanglements. Purple Rain was released as a Deluxe Edition in 2017. Leaving Graffiti Bridge.

Throughout 2020, Warner repressed their entire catalogue of Prince albums dated 1978 to 1992 (Warner seemingly have no interest in Prince’s post 1993 “Hits” packages) on CD ahead of their publishing rights passing to Sony Legacy from the start of 2021 – these re-pressings also included Purple Rain (chart peak #1), Parade (chart peak #3) and lastly, in 2021 Batman (chart peak #1). That is every album, with the sole exception of 1990’s Graffiti Bridge (chart peak #6). So it maybe that Graffiti Bridge has no commercial value or that a full remastering might be in the works, watch this space.