How's That Again?

According to this news item, Madonna's "highly anticipated" new album will be called Hard Candy.

I was going to make fun of the "highly anticipated" label, because I had trouble imagining a woman who'll have a pop album release party just four months before she has a 50th birthday party had anything that the swiftly fickling planet of pop music taste would anticipate.

But I would probably be wrong to do so, because Madonna's last three CDs topped the US charts and went platinum. Her 2005 album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, sold eight million copies worldwide and was number one on the charts in nine different countries (The U.S., U.K., Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Canada, Australia and Italy). I had zero knowledge of this, which I guess is proof that I don't listen to Top 40 radio anymore. I tip my hat to the Material One for her musical longevity.

In an interesting Sign that The Times Are Indeed Changing, the eight million copies Confessions sold matches the sales for her 1983 debut, Madonna. That album didn't do any better than No. 6 on the charts in the U.K. and No. 8 in the U.S., France and Italy. It barely cracked the top 30 in Germany (probably West Germany only at the time; the Stasi wasn't into Billboard sales reports) and didn't chart at all in Switzerland. So selling eight million records goes a lot farther than it used to.

PS -- the sales figures come from Wikipedia, who in turn gets them from Billboard magazine.