The album was a critical and commercial success around the world, eventually selling over 8 million copies in the US alone and thus going eight times Platinum by RIAA in February 1995. It peaked at No. 2 on the US Billboard 200 for ten nonconsecutive weeks, barred from the top spot by three different albums, including Michael Jackson's Bad, and was more weeks in the Top 5 than any other album in 1987. Whitesnake was the band's highest-charting album in the US and peaked at No. 8 on the UK Albums Chart.
