On July 3, 1987, Madonna accepted a rare Canadian Diamond Award at a press conference in Toronto on the eve of her sold-out concert at CNE Stadium. The certification award was presented by WEA Music Canada president Stan Kulin to mark over one million units sold of the True Blue album in Canada.
On May 24 1991, Madonna’s Rescue Me single was certified Gold by the RIAA for shipment of over 500,000 units in the U.S.
On May 23 1985, Madonna accepted a Canadian Quadruple Platinum certification award for shipment of over 400,000 copies of her second album, Like A Virgin, within Canada. The award was presented by WEA Canada’s VP of sales Garry Newman to Madonna and Sire Records president Seymour Stein prior to her sold-out Toronto concert at Maple Leaf Gardens.
Like A Virgin was eventually certified (in July, 1992) with the rare Canadian Diamond certification for shipment of over one million copies in Canada. The only other Madonna album to date to receive Diamond certification in Canada is True Blue, which managed to achieve the feat within a year of its release. To date, only eighteen albums in total (by any artist or musical group) have received a Diamond certification in Canada.
On March 29 1988, Madonna Live: The Virgin Tour home video was certified multi-platinum for sales of over 100,000 units in the U.S.
On February 27 1995, Madonna’s Bedtime Stories album was certified double platinum for shipment of over two million units in the U.S.
On January 23 1990, Madonna’s Like A Prayer album was certified triple platinum for sales of 3 million units in the USA.
Producer Patrick Leonard talked to Billboard magazine about working with Madonna on Like A Prayer:
“She’d start writing lyrics and oftentimes there was an implied melody. She would start with that and deviate from it. Or if there was nothing but a chord change, she’d make up a melody. But, a lot of the time in my writing there’s a melody implied or I even have something in mind. But she certainly doesn’t need that. She would write the lyrics in an hour, the same amount of time it took me to write the music, and then she’d sing it. We’d do some harmonies, she’d sing some harmony parts, and usually by three or four in the afternoon, she was gone.”
On January 5 1995, the lead single from Madonna’s Bedtime Stories album, Secret, was certified gold in the USA for shipment of 500,000 units.
The images in this post are for the UK Secret cassette single.
