Even the most successful careers are plagued by challenges.
This is a reality that Pop empress Madonna is well-acquainted with.
One of her more public setbacks came with the release of her most recent album, 2015’s ‘Rebel Heart.’
The ‘Living For Love’ led set was rocked by a series of catastrophic leaks prior to its arrival – with both demos and full songs hitting the net.
It defied the odds to open at #1 on the pure sales tally in the US, but was the first casualty of the chart’s embrace of streaming and had to settle for a #2 on the final Billboard count after being bested by the SPS figure of the ‘Empire’ soundtrack. To date, it’s only sold 240,000 copies — in total.
Internationally, the project fared even worse.
Now, the 59-year-old is opening about why…
Speaking to French publication Le Parisien, Madge was asked point-blank about the so-so sales of ‘Rebel’ in the region.
Peep the excerpt:
Your last album sold only 50,000 copies in France. Did that disappoint you?
What disappointed me most of all was that someone had hacked and broadcast my songs on the Internet when they were not finished.
This had a huge effect on sales. But I’m very proud of this album …
Are you preparing the next one?
I work, I meet musicians, I discuss my ideas with producers. I am at the very beginning of the process.
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Kudos to the interviewer for “going there” and props to Madonna for not being phased by it.
Far too often the stock response to a flop is to pretend it never happened, almost as if its commercial underperformance is synonymous with quality – which, a lot of the time, just isn’t the case.
Still, it’s no doubt easy to stand by the era when its tour grossed $169.8 million and extended Madonna’s record as the highest-grossing solo touring artist to… $1.131 billion.