Fastest-selling French-language album (one country)

Johnny Hallyday’s (France, b. Jean-Philippe Smet, 15 June 1943, d. 5 December 2017) posthumous album Mon pays c’est l’amour (My country is love) sold a record 780,177 first-week copies in his homeland after its release on 19 October 2018.

By comparison, Drake’s Scorpion, the fastest-selling US album of 2018, sold 732,000 equivalent album units. David Bowie’s Blackstar, released two days before his death in January 2016, sold 146,000 copies in the first week. Adele's 25 sold 3,378,000 first-week copies in the USA in 2015 to become the fastest-selling album of all time (one country).

758,056 copies of Mon pays c’est l’amour were sold on CD or vinyl in the first week, including about 300,000 copies on the first day alone.

Hallyday’s 51st studio album was recorded in 2017, when he was suffering from lung cancer, with the finishing touches added by producer Maxime “Yodelice” Nouchy after his death. It was instantly awarded a Diamond certification in France, for sales in excess of 500,000 units.

Despite a modest following outside the French-speaking community, Hallyday sold a reported 110 million records during his lifetime. In 2002, À la vie, à la mort! shifted 305,634 week one copies and is now the second-fastest-selling album in France. Hallyday’s biggest-selling album was 1999’s Sang pour sang (Blood for blood), which sold more than 2 million copies.