MrIndependent

It is a shame that this has happened with her best album in a long while. Had it been Hard Candy and/or MDNA I wouldn't have minded. She missed out because of bad timing, though. I think the album could potentially have more consistency than MDNA.

Fabulous topic, Liam! Thanks for posting and also to all those involved in compiling the data. Nothing Really Matters sold +70k to hit #7! :o What was the reason for such high sales in this particular week, does anybody know?

Madonna 4, 81 Rebel Heart 10 The Immaculate Collection 49 Celebration 153 Confessions On a Dance Floor 200 Ray of Light

I'm really excited for this special. Two of my favourite Madonna interviews are the Jonathan Ross ones during the Erotica and American Life eras; they have great chemistry together.

In HMV? Hopefully this is a sign that the sale is helping. :D

:D :D I echo those saying that it's time for her to come out with something experimental. She's been in the dance/pop zone for 15 years now and although Body Language and X are creative she hasn't done anything as surprising as in her Deconstruction days. I do think that there was some creative material at the beginning of the Kiss Me Once sessions with Garibay but for whatever reason the recordings became more generic some way through.

Great! I miss them; they and M have a great chemistry together. On another note, I hope that they are practising Rain means that it has a chance of being included on the tour. Madonna has paid dust to it for so long now.

Hahaha but why don't you like them? It's an uncommon and intriguing opinion. :P

May I ask what it is about Ray of Light that you really don't like? :P

I added up the scores of the ten lists including all thirteen of her studio albums, and got the following list (from favourable to least favourable; maximum score 130): 1 Ray of Light 108 2 Confessions on a Dance Floor 101 3 Like a Prayer 94 4 True Blue 84 5 American Life 81 6 Erotica 71 7 Rebel Heart 70 8 Music 69 9 Like a Virgin 57 10 Bedtime Stories 48 11 Madonna 47 13 Hard Candy 43 13 MDNA 43 Hard Candy received more higher scores than MDNA. Bedtime Stories being so low, and True Blue being that high, makes my eyes sore.

I think Sam will end up roughly 2,000 ahead of Madonna sadly.

It's the chart in the link that you posted above.

The top ten chart posted on PopJustice, however, looks realistic.

Those sales for today are definitely dodgy. There's no way that Ed and Noel only sold just over 1,000 yesterday either. No way.

I'm surprised that King is still ahead of Lay Me Down. Where are the original version of LMD and Thinking Out Loud, please?

I just heard Queen and it's astonishing; I wonder why it was removed from the tracklist. Perhaps Madonna and her team didn't think it was lyrically fitting with the themes of the record, which is still debatable (to an extent it is; to another it isn't). It's not easy to digest an album with so many songs and if it were my album I'd rearrange some of the tracks to give the album a slightly different structure. Out of the twenty-five finalised songs (including Queen and Autotune Baby), twenty of them are great, and only two of them are really needless, those being S.E.X. and Autotune Baby which was rightfully removed from the final tracklist. If Queen replaced S.E.X., it would be an album with completely impressive songs.

I'd say that there could be potential sales missing from the above update; those amounts seem a bit low for everyone.

I just listened to the demos for Rebel Heart and Wash All Over Me. The album version of the latter is far better; the lyrics and her vocals are so grey that it doesn't suit being a dance song at all. As for the former, there's not a striking difference between the demo and the album version, and both are great. I'll listen to more tomorrow.

There is only one worldwide Super Deluxe Edition and Queen isn't on it.

What a stupid comment and a completely ridiculous comparison.

No, it isn't. The predictions in the 60-80k region were borderline unrealistic. She's not the seller that she once was. I'm agreeing that the John Legend featured version of Lay Me Down will hit #1 on Sunday without being combined with the original. It should be #3 in tomorrow's update and #2 on Friday's.

I still need to check out the demos but I'm glad the Avicii productions were altered; I'm not here for generic dance pap, and the album versions no doubt give the album more musical variation. Does anybody have a list of the tracks which have demos that are strikingly different to the album versions, please?

Think - Sam and John Want - Years & Years

I'll post my thoughts on each album later. :D

LOL No.