On December 27 2003, Madonna’s Nothing Fails/Nobody Knows Me single hit #1 and her collaboration with Britney Spears, Me Against The Music hit #2 on Hot Dance Singles Sales chart in US: it was the first time an artist had occupied the top 2 positions on the Singles Sales chart since Puff Daddy in 1997.
On December 20, 20 2003, Madonna had three titles on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in the USA: Me Against The Music, Nobody Knows Me and Nothing Fails.
Madonna was the second artist in 18 years to achieve 3 simultaneous entries on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart (previously achieved by Bronski Beat in 1985).
On December 8 2003, Love Profusion was released as the final U.K. single from the American Life album. The track was written and produced by Madonna & Mirwais.
On November 26 2003, Madonna appeared on The Tonight Show (with host Jay Leno) at NBC Studios, in Burbank, California.
Madonna handed out gifts to new dad David Letterman when she appeared on the Late Show earlier in the month, and she didn’t want to leave his TV rival Leno out.
“I brought you some Thanksgiving presents.”
Madonna handed the TV host a baseball jersey and a framed illustration from her new children’s book Mr. Peabody’s Apples.
Most odd about this appearance is that Remixed and Revisited was released on November 24 and Madonna never mentioned it. The Nothing Fails single was also released on November 21, and an upcoming single for Love Profusion (December 8) was also never mentioned. Very few artists would skip mentioning new releases in such a high profile interview. It makes me wonder how involved Madonna was with these releases – or if Warner Bros. was forcing the singles and the remix collection to be put out. All Madonna chose to talk about was her marriage to Guy, her father’s winery, her children’s books and Kabbalah.
For the record, I think this is an adorable interaction between Madonna and Jay. She’s funny, sweet and articulate.
On September 29 2003, Madonna promoted her first children’s book, The English Roses, at the Barnes & Noble store at the Rockefeller Center store in New York, with a meet and greet.
On June 2 2003, Madonna began filming the Hollywood music video in Los Angeles, California. The music video was directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, and portrays Madonna highlighting the highs and lows of Hollywood.
Jean-Baptiste Mondino said this about the concept of the video:
“Some kind of artifice that Hollywood can provide, that is so wide and has a graphic story-line about it as well as some humour about it, and to show the beauty, the scariness, the sexiness and the loneliness that one’s success can be, ’cause everybody’s dreaming about Hollywood, no matter what. The expectation can be very dangerous, and maybe for somebody like Madonna, who might be at a point, to realize that to be on the top is maybe not that important. That’s what I feel about the video.”
On May 10 2003, Madonna’s American Life album reached #1 on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart in the USA.
In 2008, Sal Cinquemani had this to say about American Life in Slant magazine:
In hindsight, American Life isn’t the masterpiece that Erotica so quickly revealed itself to be. It’s frequently self-indulgent, misguided, unpleasant, difficult to listen to, silly yet somehow humorless, but it’s also consistent, uncompromising, and unapologetic. The album is a testament to the artist’s willingness to take risks and her refusal to stay inside her comfort zone. In the grand scheme of things, the album might rank as one of the weakest in Madonna’s extensive catalog, and the ones that followed have been as good, if not better, but American Life stands as the last time Madonna seemed to make music without the primary objective of scoring a hit. It’s interesting to imagine what Madonna’s career would look like today had American Life been a success: For better or worse, that pink leotard and Justin duet might never have existed.
Today In Madonna History 