‘Confessions II’ is being a success for Madonna, thanks to the splendid marketing campaign devised by the singer together with Warner, and to the quality of the album, of course. The two dozen variants that can be purchased of the album have had an effect and it has just been confirmed that the album is the new number 1 on the Billboard 200, with 134,000 units sold. The difference with Olivia Rodrigo has finally been wide.
It is his 10th No. 1 album in the United States and the largest in copies since ‘MDNA’, which had tens of thousands of tour bundles. Curiously, Madonna did not manage to have any of her albums from the 90s top the Billboard 200, since the multi-platinum ‘Ray of Light’ and ‘Erotica’ were at number 2.
Where the singer has achieved number 1 in 5 different decades – all since the 80s – has been in the United Kingdom. In this country, 48,502 units of ‘Confessions II’ have been sold in one week, fairly well distributed between physical (35,500), downloads (6,600) and streaming (6,500). The previous ‘Madame X’ stayed at 27,000. It is Madonna’s best number in the United Kingdom and her first number 1 since 2012. In addition, it is her 13th top 1 album in the UK in this country, tying Elvis Presley.
Finally, Madonna’s album is number 1 in Australia and practically all of Europe: France, Italy, Austria, Belgium (both Wallonia and Flanders), Holland, Finland and Switzerland. The only large market where it is ranked 2nd is Germany, due to the clothing bundle designed by a local rapper. The Spanish data will be known this Monday.
With these figures, ‘Confessions II’ is on track to debut close to 400,000 units globally, while ‘Madame X’ managed to sell just over 200,000 in its first week. It will be the first time that a Madonna album sells more than the previous one since… ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’, which revived the artist’s image after the failure of ‘American Life’.
