Yahoo! Music's Craig Rosen, who called the album "a stroke of marketing genius", speculated that executive producer Rob Cavallo, who was head of Morissette and the Goo Goo Dolls' management firm, "was instrumental in making sure the soundtrack provided a nice set-up for the forthcoming Morissette and Goo Goo Dolls albums [Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie and Dizzy Up the Girl, respectively] ... Record executives and managers love big hits from soundtracks, especially when they dovetail into a new release by one of their artists. That's the case with both Morissette and the Goo Goo Dolls and it's not a mere coincidence."[4] Bob Bell, a new release buyer for the Wherehouse Entertainment chain of stores in Torrance, California, said the marketing of the album was "amazing" and attributed its early strong sales to "Uninvited". He said of the Goo Goo Dolls that the soundtrack "helped to re-establish them ... [it] brought them back into our minds".[4] Robert Scally wrote of "Uninvited", "Placing exclusives on soundtracks ... has been a successful tactic for creating a buzz around the album while highlighting the musical artist".[5]
Commercial performance
The City of Angels soundtrack debuted at number twenty-three on the Billboard 200 chart on the issue dated 18 April 1998.[6] The following week it entered the top ten at number seven and eventually reached the runner-up position for three weeks until it topped the charts in early June, selling 165,000 copies.[7]City of Angels finished the year as the seventh highest-selling album of 1998.[8] To date the soundtrack has sold 5.5 million units in the United States and has been certified five times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.[9][10] Additionally, it peaked at number three on the Canadian charts and has sold over 700,000 copies in the country.[11]
Elsewhere, the soundtrack also performed well, reaching number one in Australia, Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland. It has been certified Platinum in Japan and multi-Platinum in Australia.[12]
Singles
Its two singles, the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris" and Alanis Morissette's "Uninvited", were released to U.S. radio in March and were still receiving substantial radio airplay by the following August.[4] An internet and radio leak of "Uninvited" in early March forced Warner Bros. to release the entire soundtrack to radio before it became available in stores. According to a publicity manager for Warner Music Canada, the measure was "an inconvenience" taken to stop radio stations from playing low-quality versions of the song downloaded from the internet.[13]
"Iris" reached number one on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, Top 40 Mainstream and Adult Top 40 charts in the U.S., and it spent a record amount of time atop the Hot 100 Airplay chart.[14] "Uninvited" reached number one on the Top 40 Mainstream and peaked inside the top five on the Adult Top 40.
