Post-award weekly sales total: 224,500Post-award sales bounce: 202%Cumulative sales since release: 3,261,000
Spinal Tap's manager Ian Faith was right: Death sells. It also generates awards — for John Lennon at the 1982 Grammys, and for Nat King Cole, electronically resuscitated by his daughter Natalie, at the 1992 Grammys. When R&B legend Ray Charles passed away in June 2004 with an album of duets already in the can, it was a safe bet that the disc would not only sell well but dominate the following year's Grammy ceremony. For heaven's sake, Genius Loves Company opened with a duet between Charles and recent Grammy queen Norah Jones (see 2003, below); this, friends, is why the term "Grammy bait" was invented. By the time Grammy night 2005 rolled around, the posthumously-released album had already peaked at No. 2 on the charts and sold more than three million copies. Because Brother Ray was, of course, not present to perform on the Grammy ceremony, his post-show gain was nearly eclipsed by alive-and-kicking band Green Day, who won Best Rock Album forAmerican Idiot and performed its title track. In the end, however, Charles's album outdid the Bay Area punkers' by about 50,000 copies — a handy reminder that even a poppier strain of punk can't fully qualify as Grammy bait.
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