Today in Madonna History: July 20, 2015

july-20-2015

On July 20 2015, Madonna announced that Diplo would be the opening act for the launch of her Rebel Heart Tour on September 9 and 10th at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec:

“To have Diplo open for me is my dream come true. Montreal is about to TURN UP!!!! We Go Hard or We Go Home!”

With Madonna, Diplo produced and co-wrote the songs Living For Love, Bitch I’m Madonna, Unapologetic Bitch, Veni Vidi Vici, Best Night and Hold Tight. 

Today in Madonna History: July 13, 2026

Screenshot

On July 13, 2026, CONFESSIONS II debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart.

The album became Madonna’s ninth No. 1 studio album in Canada and her eleventh chart-topping album overall, including The Immaculate Collection and Celebration.

Madonna’s albums have reached the following peaks on Canada’s national album charts:

Studio albums

  • Madonna — No. 16
  • Like a Virgin — No. 3
  • True Blue — No. 1
  • Like a Prayer — No. 2
  • Erotica — No. 4
  • Bedtime Stories — No. 4
  • Ray of Light — No. 1
  • Music — No. 1
  • American Life — No. 1
  • Confessions on a Dance Floor — No. 1
  • Hard Candy — No. 1
  • MDNA — No. 1
  • Rebel Heart — No. 1
  • Madame X — No. 2
  • CONFESSIONS II — No. 1

Soundtrack albums

  • Who’s That Girl — No. 4
  • I’m Breathless — No. 3
  • Evita — No. 5

Live albums

  • I’m Going to Tell You a Secret — No. 4
  • The Confessions Tour — No. 2
  • Sticky & Sweet Tour — No. 36

Collections

  • You Can Dance — No. 11
  • The Immaculate Collection — No. 1
  • Something to Remember — No. 4
  • GHV2 — No. 11
  • Celebration — No. 1
  • Finally Enough Love — No. 22

More than four decades after her self-titled debut reached No. 16 in Canada, Madonna returned to the top of the Canadian Albums chart with CONFESSIONS II.

Today in Madonna History: June 21, 2015

RH_Australia_New_Zealand

On June 21 2015, Madonna and Live Nation announced that Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour would take Madonna to Australia for the first time in two decades, and her first time ever in New Zealand.

Live Nation Australia and New Zealand:

Madonna will make a historic return to Australia performing live for the first time in 23 years as well as her first ever shows in New Zealand, with her Rebel Heart Tour.

The tour will kick off at Vector Arena on March 5th and 6th in Auckland, followed by the Australian dates presented by Telstra Thanks and including concerts on March 12th & 13th in Melbourne, March 19th & 20th in Sydney and March 26th & 27th in Brisbane.

Tickets and VIP Packages go on sale Monday, July 6th at 10am.

Tour dates:

Vector Arena, Auckland – March 5th
Vector Arena, Auckland – March 6th
Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne – March 12th
Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne – March 13th
Allphones Arena, Sydney – March 19th
Allphones Arena, Sydney – March 20th
Entertainment Centre, Brisbane – March 26th
Entertainment Centre, Brisbane – March 27th

Today in Madonna History: May 27, 2015

m-forbes-2015

On May 27 2015, Forbes magazine announced that Madonna topped the annual list of top-earning musicians and also claimed the No. 28 spot on their list of America’s richest self-made women.

Here’s what Forbes had to say:

The wealthiest musician on the list, Madonna has an estimated net worth of $520 million, with her main source being from music, clothing, and real estate  One of the top pop divas of all time. Her tours have grossed an estimated $1.2 billion over the years, including $305 million from her 2012 MDNA tour. That helped her earn an estimated $125 million during the ensuing 12-month period during which Forbes calculated celebrity earnings, more than any other musician. Look for another bump when she goes on the road with her latest album, Rebel Heart, in August.

Today in Madonna History: March 27, 2015

Layout 1

On March 27 2015, Madonna graced the cover of New York gay magazine Next.  The magazine included a four-page spread with an interview to the Queen of Queens by John Russell.

Here’s a snippet of the interview between Russell and Madonna:

I counted at least 13 different producers in the album’s liner notes, but it was never Madonna’s intention to work with so many different people on the album. The same health concerns that forced Avicii to cancel his tour in September also threw a wrench into his work on Rebel Heart. Madonna was forced to find other producers to work with on many of the songs they’d started writing together. Meanwhile, Diplo’s touring schedule and other projects meant that his time was limited as well.

“I ended up working with a lot of DJs—young DJs—and I naively didn’t think it through. Oh, it’s summertime, it’s the festivals, and they’re on tour, and I’ll be lucky if I get them for three days, so a lot of that had to factor in. OK, I can’t wait for three months for this dude to come back. I have to find somebody else.”

Of course, art never gets made in a vacuum, something Madonna knows and accepts. “I had to bend my knees and ride the waves.”

The result is an album that, at first, seems all over the map. But it’s tough to judge an album by an artist like Madonna after just one listen. Even if you’re only familiar with her hits, those past gems loom large in comparison to the new material. You’re listening for her next step and at the same time hoping she’ll retain whatever lighting in a bottle quality her early hits had. On first listen, Rebel Heart has its moments, sure. But it’s not until a week after hearing the full album, when I find myself humming Unapologetic Bitch and Ghosttown on the subway, that it really feels like the album clicks into place. Will anyone but diehard Madonna fans—and that’s not an insignificant demographic within her fanbase—listen to the whole album, start to finish, more than once or twice? Probably not. But I’m not sure that matters. Every pop album has to include some forgettable filler tracks—although with the way we consume music these days a la carte, who knows how much longer that model will last. But even at a whopping 19 tracks—23, plus two Living for Love remixes on the Super Deluxe edition—there’s not much fat to trim on Rebel Heart. As a whole, it’s probably Madonna’s most listenable since Confessions on a Dance Floor.

“I didn’t set out to write certain kinds of songs. I just set out to write good songs,” she says. There are dark turns on the album, also a bit of soul searching. And the ballads are particularly strong. Apparently, Madonna set out to write songs that, stripped of all their production, could also work on an acoustic level.

“When we run out of oil and we don’t have electricity, I can just light a candle and strum my guitar and sing you a song.”

Today in Madonna History: March 11, 2015

On March 11 2015, Madonna was interviewed by Howard Stern on SiriusXM.

Here are some tidbits we learned about Madonna during the interview, according to Rolling Stone magazine:

  • Her shocking VMA debut of “Like a Virgin” was an accident. “I had come down the wedding cake and my shoe fell off,” she said. “I was like ‘Oh shit, I can’t dance in one shoe!” The mishap prompted quick decision-making on Madonna’s end as to how to proceed with the performance and led to the controversial stage-humping that took place at the first Video Music Awards. “I didn’t know my skirt was up. I proceeded to sing the song laying down on the ground. I was just making the best of the situation.” She noted that her manager Freddy DeMann told her that her career would be over following the performance.
  • She craves normalcy every once in a while. “Every 3 days I crave it,” she said. “Every three days I go, ‘That’s it. I’m moving to a cabin and living in the forest and no one’s gonna fuck with me anymore.'” Stern probed as to why she thinks she could never give up her career and life in the spotlight. “Because I’m an artist and I’m tortured. I’m a masochist and I like to create. I don’t know. Maybe one day I will.”
  • Madonna’s first year in New York included multiple robberies, an assault and an unreported rape. “I needed money for the payphone and [a stranger] gave it to me,” she said. “He was a very friendly guy, and the phone was ringing. He was like, ‘Oh, I live right across the street if you’d like to make the phone call from my house.” The then 19-year-old Madonna agreed, blaming her “stupid friendliness” from her Midwestern roots. “I trusted everybody. The rest is not worth talking about.”
  • She doesn’t hate David Letterman. Stern acknowledged some early interviews between the pop star and talk show host, noting he could never tell if she liked him or was annoyed. “Oh, that’s how I flirt with people,” she revealed. “One time I was mad at him, when I said the ‘f-word’ a lot, but the rest of the time was good.”
  • She dated Tupac Shakur. The late rapper had actually been the reason Madonna was mad at Letterman. “I was dating Tupac Shakur at the time, and he had gotten me all riled up about life in general,” she said. “When I went on this show, I was feeling very gangster.” Stern revealed his surprise about the little-known past relationship. “I think people know, if you’re in the know,” said Madonna coyly.
  • The misunderstood meaning of “Material Girl” gets on her nerves. “The song that irritated me the most about being associated with me is ‘Material Girl,'” she said. “It was an ironic song because I’m certainly not a materialistic person.” The topic came up as Stern had her clear up a rumor that she detested the success of “Like a Virgin” because other people had written it. The singer declared the rumor false, asserting that she loves the song and appreciates its writers.
  • Upon making her first $1 million, she indulged in buying a Frida Kahlo painting. “That was always my goal,” she said on her art collection. “When I was married to Sean [Penn], I said ‘When I make my first million, I’m going to buy art.'” Madonna had been a huge fan of Frida Kahlo since she was young. “I bought a self-portrait of hers. At the time it was rather inexpensive because people didn’t know who she was.”
  • Jean-Michel Basquiat destroyed all the paintings he had given to her. Madonna and Basquiat had dated when the singer was very young, but his heroin addiction ended up pulling them apart. “He was an amazing man and deeply talented. I loved him,” she said. “When I broke up with him, he made me give all [his paintings] back to him. And then he painted over them black.” She regrets giving the art back, but felt pressured to do so since it was something he had created.
  • She wrote “Vogue” in a few hours. Madonna stands by the idea that her best songs are the ones she wrote in only a couple of hours, “Vogue” included. “I thought it was a very cool dance, very presentational and elegant and all about vanity,” she said about the dance of the same name. The song had been written for Dick Tracy, the film she made with ex-boyfriend Warren Beatty, and was inspired by all the classic movie stars. “[Warren] dated all of Hollywood, basically.” She would ask him questions about what the stars she admired — and he dated — were like, including Natalie Wood and Julie Christie. “I looked up to [these women] and admired them.”

Today in Madonna History: January 21, 2015

rebelheart-fbi-1

On January 21 2015, an undercover investigation by the Internet crime unit of Israel’s anti-fraud police resulted in the arrest of a Tel Aviv man suspected of hacking into Madonna’s home computer, stealing unreleased music and selling the tracks online.

The investigation began after a complaint by Madonna’s manager, Guy Oseary.  With the cooperation of the FBI, the hack was found to be larger in scale and involved more musicians than just Madonna.

An expert in Internet crime was sent to New York City to inspect Madonna’s computers, where he confirmed a hack originating in Israel. Police searched the suspect’s home, seizing computers and media storage devices.

Madonna had this to say about the Rebel Heart album leaks incident:

“I am profoundly grateful to the FBI, the Israeli Police investigators and anyone else who helped lead to the arrest of this hacker. I deeply appreciate my fans who have provided us with pertinent information and continue to do so regarding leaks of my music. Like any citizen, I have the right to privacy. This invasion into my life – creatively, professionally, and personally remains a deeply devastating and hurtful experience, as it must be for all artists who are victims of this type of crime.”

rebelheart-fbi-end