Jan 03 2009
Madge’s WB Swan Song Imminent With Hits Album
Madonna- seen here performing in Mexico City during her record-breaking Sticky & Sweet Tour- will see her first 25 years of cultural and musical ambition immortalized in a career-spanning collection due out this year. (picture courtesy of Associated Press/ Eduardo Verdugo)
Fresh off wrapping the highest-grossing solo concert tour ever, Madonna’s next musical project looks to be a career-spanning hits collection.
UK publication Music Week recently reported that the as-yet-untitled compilation- Madonna’s final album to be released by longtime label Warner Bros.- would be out sometime in the first quarter of this year. Madonna’s most recent album, Hard Candy,hit No. 1 and has sold 700,000 copies in the USA, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
In this day and age of iTunes, where consumers can cherry pick and purchase individual tracks they want, greatest hits albums don’t hold the allure and commercial promise they once did. However, a 25-year compilation of the Queen of Pop’s best surely is an event, even as most greatest hits albums in recent memory (Celine Dion, Rascall Flatts, Christina Aguilera, to name a few) have come and gone in rapid fashion.
To date, Madonna’s had three major compilations- 1990’s mega-selling The Immaculate Collection; 1995’s ballads album Something to Remember; and 2001’s uneventful GHV2: Greatest Hits Volume 2.
Immaculate contained the cream of Madonna’s 1983-1990 crop, and through audio and visual means, acts as a virtual soundtrack of its time, defining the mood and politics of the Reagan era. Despite containing edits and altered versions of the originals, the album was a commercial and critical giant. Containing 15 classics- starting with “Holiday” and going right up through “Vogue”- and two then-new tracks, the arguably most culturally relevant album of the last quarter-century has sold more than 10 million units in the USA and more than 23 million worldwide.
GHV2 acted as the official follow-up compilation to The Immaculate Collection, but was far less successful, both as an event and a commercial force. Unlike Immaculate, GHV2 contained no new tracks- just 15 1992-2001-era hits; nothing wrong in that, but not much incentive for people to add it to their collection, especially if they owned albums like Bedtime Stories, Ray of Light and Music.
Also unlike Immaculate, the GHV2 hits did not appear in exact chronological order, lessening the impact. While Madge’s 1992-2001 era contained hits like “Take a Bow,” “Ray of Light,” Music” and “Don’t Tell Me,” overall, the material has the unfortunate task of being compared to her 1983-1990 output- and, as such, doesn’t flow or impact quite as strongly.
Without a single or new material to push it, GHV2 spent just 18 weeks on the Billboard 200, selling a little less than 1.4 million to date in the USA. In 2008, GHV2’s sales totaled around 10 percent of what Immaculate sold, showing that the public unquestionably prefers 80s-classic-era Madonna.
And that should bode well in part for the upcoming compilation, since it’s supposed to be a career-spanning album. No word on whether it will be a single- or double-disc collection, though the latter would be more practical. Warner Bros. has made some questionable choices in its time, but even it must know that trying to cram 25 years of classic material into a single disc would not do Madonna or her music much justice.
But, even if Warner pulls out all the stops in terms of promoting and marketing its final Madonna audio release, will a Madonna 25 compilation be exciting enough to woo savvy consumers who have the ability to buy tracks for 99 cents a pop on iTunes?
Time will tell, but Madonna probably won’t invest too much into the hits collection- she’s leaving Warner for Live Nation, which is paying her $120 million for recording and touring endeavors. No doubt Live Nation is pleased with Madge’s recently wrapped Sticky & Sweet Tour- the trek grossed some $281.6 million in just four months.
Talk about “Material Girl” continuing to define the times…
