Prince and The Revolution’s newly remixed and remastered archival live album, Prince and The Revolution: Live, makes a splash across Billboard’s charts as it debuts in the top five on Top Album Sales, Top R&B Albums, Catalog Albums, Tastemaker Albums and Vinyl Albums (all dated June 18). It also bows at No. 11 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and No. 22 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart. The revamped version of the album was released on June 3 via NPG/Legacy.
Prince and the Revolution: Live is the highest-charting live album on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums in nearly three years, since Lionel Richie’s Hello From Las Vegas debuted and peaked at No. 2 on the Aug. 31, 2019, chart. Over on the Billboard 200, Live is Prince’s 33rd top 40-charting album — and the late legend’s first live release to reach the chart.
The Live album earned 17,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending June 9, according to Luminate. Album sales comprise nearly all of that sum.
© The Prince Estate
The album was recorded at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, N.Y., on March 30, 1985, as part of the Purple Rain Tour and was initially commercially released on VHS tape as a home video that year as Prince and The Revolution Live. The home video release spent nine weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Music Video Sales chart. It also garnered a Grammy Award nomination for best music video, long form.
The video of the concert was later included on a deluxe 2017 reissue of Prince and The Revolution’s Purple Rain album (originally released in 1984). Then, in May of 2020, the audio from the show was released via digital retail and streaming services through NPG/Warner Records.
The new June 3, 2022 release marks the debut of the remastered version of the Live album, and its first release as a stand-alone album on physical formats. It was available in a number of physical editions, some accompanied by a digitally enhanced video of the concert. Among the packages is a premium $120 box set with three vinyl LPs, two CDs and a Blu-ray video disc of the show.
Of the nearly 17,000 copies sold of Prince and The Revolution: Live, physical sales comprise 15,000 (8,000 on vinyl and 7,000 on CD) and digital sales comprise 2,000.
