1. Into The Groove - 877,500
2. Like A Virgin - 832,200
3. Crazy For You - 781,900
4. Holiday - 717,600
5. Papa Don't Preach - 650,700
6. Hung Up - 625,600
7. Like A Prayer - 613,300
8. True Blue - 556,600
9. Frozen - 556,00
10. Beautiful Stranger - 534,800
11 - Vogue - 530,000
12 - Four Minutes - 507,000

Still no million seller. Thoughts? Comments?

I find it really odd that Madonna has had all those hits and not one million seller, you would think she'd have had at least one million seller out of all those hits.

I remember reading about this a few years ago and in the 80s at the height of Madonna mania, the record company were quickly deleting singles so that they could release another single. This is why none of her 80s singles sold over a million copies. However, The Immaculate Collection has sold absolute bucketloads since its release in 1991.

What Madonna achieved in 1985/86 was an outstanding achievement. But it was also very much a sign of the times which also made the UK charts more fascinating to follow.

1985

02/03/1985 Madonna Material Girl 3 24-5-{3}-3-7-11-16-31-44-66->10
08/06/1985 Madonna Crazy For You 2 25-9-3-{2}-3-3-5-6-12-15-19-24-31-42-59->15
27/07/1985 Madonna Into The Groove 1 4-{1}-1-1-1-2-4-7-12-20-29-37-49-71->14
03/08/1985 Madonna Holiday {1985} 2 32-5-{2}-3-6-14-23-33-42-50->10
21/09/1985 Madonna Angel 5 10-{5}-6-8-16-30-36-52-71->9
12/10/1985 Madonna Gambler 4 20-7-{4}-5-8-14-22-38-50-60-72-61R(2)->12
07/12/1985 Madonna Dress You Up 5 12-{5}-8-9-7-6-21-32-47-61-68->11

7 singles released in 1985.

1986

25/01/1986 Madonna Borderline {1986} 2 15-4-3-{2}-6-11-23-41-63->9
26/04/1986 Madonna Live To Tell 2 10-4-{2}-5-10-17-23-40-55-65-72-75->12
28/06/1986 Madonna Papa Don't Preach 1 13-2-{1}-1-1-2-3-7-13-22-40-48-71-75->14
04/10/1986 Madonna True Blue 1 3-{1}-2-2-5-11-19-30-40-53-63-72-58-59-54->15
13/12/1986 Madonna Open Your Heart 4 8-{4}-4-4-6-12-31-40-58->9

1986 undoubtably Madonna at her peak in the 80s with 5 singles that year.

1987

04/04/1987 Madonna La Isla Bonita 1 5-3-2-{1}-1-3-7-17-24-35-53->11
18/07/1987 Madonna Who's That Girl? 1 3-{1}-2-2-8-15-20-26-34-62->10
19/09/1987 Madonna Causing A Commotion 4 7-{4}-5-10-15-28-35-47-59->9
12/12/1987 Madonna The Look Of Love 9 15-{9}-14-16-15-36-65->7

Another 4 singles in 1987 to finish off what was an incredible era for Madonna.

Thanks to Spotify, an artist today in 2016 is lucky to get 2 top 10 singles in a year yet alone 7. Justin Bieber seems to the only artist right now capable of getting multiple hits with the streaming era. Make of that what you will...

Remarkable effort for Beautiful stranger

i think however it is time now to slow down all the Madonna investigations as there is no real point with this inbetween "era's "period and there will no doubt be another heap of sarcastic stuff posted from anti-Madonna people

Surprised that Vogue only makes #11.

Some great singles there. Loved Madonna in the 80's.

But when all is said and done, she's the fourth best-selling singles artist in UK chart history and the top female artist. It's interesting that she's never had a million seller, but when you add up the staggering amount of chart hits she's had I guess it doesn't matter.

Just goes to show how well singles sold in the 80's

The songs at 2,3 & 4 didn't even make number 1 in the UK yet shifted so many copies, but I'm assuming both Holiday & Crazy for you sales figures include the 1991 re-issues.

The most surprising Madonna sales fact for me is that the criminally overlooked Dear Jessie actually outsold both Express Yourself and Cherish in the UK. That came as a nice surprise.

I also think that if Hung Up hadn't been released during the period sales were at their lowest it would definitely be on track for a million seller. It came out after the cd sales were at their worst but before downloads took of. Unfortunate.

How did the singles from Music do?

Warner must kick themselves for doing this. Madonna could well have had 5 million selling singles in the UK if they weren't so quick to keep putting out new ones.

That said,

The Immaculate Collection has sold close to 4 million in the UK which I suppose could be down to the fact Warner deleted her singles from circulation. So perhaps it wasn't such a bad move after all.

Worldwide Music the album sold four million copies in 7 days so I doubt the singles did that well when you weigh it up. No point in buying a single if you already own it on the album.

Strange given the latter two get far more airplay these days.

Dear Jessie was released in December so there is a good chance many of its sales might've been down to people buying the song as Christmas presents. CD singles and cassette singles were becoming the norm by the end of 1989 so I'd guess it sold a good number of CD/cassette singles whereas I would've thought Express Yourself would've appealed to an older audience and might've sold better on 7" or 12" instead.

That's the only explanation I can think of for Dear Jessie outselling both Express Yourself and Cherish. Not bad going when you consider it was the fourth single from an album that had been in the charts for eight months.

Maybe Dear Jessie was more popular with young kids because it had that almost nursery rhyme-esque sound about it.

Why hasn't Hung Up sold a million copies in the UK? It's still hovering around the 650,000 mark 11 years later. Her fans claim it's because Confessions on a Dance Floor has sold 1.3 million copies in the UK, but a lot of other female artists have sold over a million copies of a single despite the album selling the same amount. It's never stopped Celine Dion, Kylie Minogue, Adele, Lady Gaga, Whitney Houston or Rihanna. They've all had million-selling singles from million-selling albums.

Can't Get You Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue has sold nearly 1.2 million copies in the UK (it sold a million within a year) even though the Fever album has sold 1.8 million copies. Confessions on a Dance Floor hasn't sold anywhere near 1.8 million copies in the UK. So again, why hasn't Hung Up reached the million sales mark? It's supposed to be the most successful single of Madonna's music career. It's been available for 99p on iTunes since 2005. It wasn't included on a greatest hits album until Celebration in 2009 and that hasn't exactly sold shed loads, certainly not enough to hinder further online sales of the single.

They no longer delete singles like they did in the pre-digital era. Anyone can go online and download an old song, and that sale will count towards its total. Especially for You, Kylie Minogue's 1989 hit single, reached the million sales milestone in 2014 due to digital downloads. Why hasn't Into the Groove managed to do this? And no, I don't think it's because The Immaculate Collection has sold 3 million copies in the UK. ABBA Gold has sold over five million copies, but that didn't stop people downloading Dancing Queen until it finally sold a million copies a few years ago, the first ABBA single to do so. Ultimate Kylie has sold a million copies in the UK, but that didn't stop further online sales of Especially for You. Even I Should Be So Lucky has continued to sell and will likely reach a million copies in the future.

All I see is a bunch of excuses from Madonna fans. All of this talk about Madonna missing out on having five million selling singles is ridiculous and nothing more than fan speculation to try and save face. The Beatles have six, but they were far bigger in the UK than Madonna. I don't care what her fans say. It's surprising that she doesn't have a million seller in the UK when all of the following have at least one:

Adele x2
Lady Gaga x2
Rihanna x4
Whitney Houston
Natalie Imbruglia
Kylie Minogue x2
Cher
Britney Spears
Mariah Carey
Donna Summer
Celine Dion x2
Jennifer Rush
Leona Lewis
Cheryl Cole
Katy Perry x2

Let's not kid ourselves. Rihanna WILL surpass Madonna's total UK single sales at some point in the future. She's sold over 11 million singles in the same amount of years. It's not like Madonna's selling singles in high quantities anymore. She's lucky if they even chart nowadays.

Polar released a lot of ABBA's singles in quick succession in the 1970s and early 1980s. Same goes for PWL and Kylie in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was common for artists who were big singles acts. Every artist could have sold more copies of their singles had their record company not deleted them. It's not just Madonna. Still, I doubt she would have had five million-selling singles. That's just wishful thinking.


These chart runs were the norm. It's obvious her record label didn't delete the singles any quicker than other record labels deleted singles by other artists. They all accumulated a good amount of time on the chart. They were hardly going to stick around for much longer.

1. The three-month gap between Material Girl and Crazy for You wasn't out of the ordinary. A lot of artists had singles released within the same time frame.
2. Crazy for You spent seven weeks in the Top 10 and 15 weeks on the chart. That's a decent chart run. It can't have been deleted that quickly.
3. Into the Groove can't have been deleted that quickly. It was still in the Top 20 when they released Angel two months later.
4. Holiday was a re-release to cash in on her new-found success. I doubt it affected any of the singles released either side of it. It didn't affect Into the Groove. That was still in the Top 10 when Holiday had already dropped out.
5. Angel, Gambler and Dress You Up were all released within three months of each other but they were hardly going to sell a million copies, lol. Like a Virgin had already sold well over a million copies by that point which is why those three singles had lower chart positions and fewer weeks on the chart.




They look like good chart runs.

1. Borderline was a re-release. It was never going to sell a million copies. Her self-titled debut album had already accumulated decent sales by 1986.
2. All of the four singles from True Blue were spaced out in a similar way to a lot of singles from other artists. Even two months was normal in the 1980s.
3. Open Your Heart was never going to sell a million copies. It was the last single released off a hugely successful album. It didn't peak any higher than #4.


Again, good chart runs. The singles were all spaced out throughout the year.

1. Causing a Commotion and The Look of Love were never going to sell a million copies.

The fact that Madonna has sold the most singles in the UK by a female artist makes the lack of a million-seller all the more surprising. Hits like Frozen, Music, Vogue and Like a Prayer all spent an ample amount of time on the charts but never came close to the million mark. I highly doubt they would have sold another 400k-600k if they were on sale a little longer back in the day. Record companies have to delete singles at some point. They can't remain in print forever. Some of you are in a world of your own. I don't understand why you're so pressed about her not having a million seller. Prince doesn't, and I couldn't care less.

Why would you download Hung Up when so many people already have Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! on Abba Gold?