Did madonna even have competiton in her prime?

[Lynk 3,276]

Whitney was the only real competition Madonna had in the 80s. I mean they both had 7 #1s on the Hot 100 and have two of the best selling female albums of that decade.

[Darth Sidious 10,110]

23 minutes ago, Billie Frank said:

1836 - 2008? 

Not me taking up for Madge here, but Medellin was pretty good. 
And let’s not forget, we’re not allowed to joke about Madonna being over 60 anymore https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/people/madonna-claims-jokes-about-her-age-tantamount-racism-no-one-would-dare-say-degrading-remark-about-being-black-10074577.html%3famp

 

[Chris Morlock 50,337]

6 hours ago, Billie Frank said:

Barney the canibal. 

[Billie Frank 16,336]

1 minute ago, Chris Morlock said:

The best thing that ever happened to that creature:

 

[Shego 32,222]

9 hours ago, Billie Frank said:

Just because Madonna may have been the most relevant female artist of a time period it doesn't mean she didn't have competition. In the late 80s which is what you seem to be referring to Celine hadn't broken through yet and Michael Jackson was bigger. 

Madonna was bigger than MJ during the Like a Prayer/Vogue/Immaculate Collection years

[Billie Frank 16,336]

3 minutes ago, Shego said:

Madonna was bigger than MJ during the Like a Prayer/Vogue/Immaculate Collection years

Meant Mid-Late 80s but anyway. 

[LÉON 18,997]

2 hours ago, Billie Frank said:

That was actually in terms of radio i think. Even then though it's easy to see why she was bigger through the decade as a whole than Xtina or Britney as she was more consistent.

Whereas Xtina somewhat lost relevancy post B2B and Britney yo-yoed

I would agree though she was less innovate and after 2008 just pandered to middle aged woman and old gays with bland "you can do it, don't let anyone stop you, i am the underdog" middle of the road pop-rock songs.

"Raise Your Glass" is pretty much the blueprint for nearly every P!nk song in the last 11 years. 

By "consistent", read "stayed the exact same for an entire decade"

I can't deny P!nk's success and huge collection of hits, but I feel like the biggest achievement in his career is getting a song referencing drugs to #1 in the UK charts 

[LÉON 18,997]

8 hours ago, Royalty said:

And don’t forget about Britney as soon as she got popular! She ate Madonna up at some point and no, I don’t mean the 2003 VMA’s

Aside from Britney's last major era Fatte Female, I'd say Britney and Madonna were concurrently successful up until then, especially in Europe.

Let's not forget that not long after Bootney had two UK #1s from the ITZ album, Madonna did the same with COADF.

Admittedly, Gimme More and Piece of Me are now more iconic, but Circus came out the same year as Hard Candy and both had relatively equal success.

Plus Madonna was in the Ray Of Light era when Britney debuted, one of her most successful, and then continued to have commercial and critical success until 2000/2001. American Life was a blip, during that eating-up era in fact, but Britney was also pretty much blacklisted by American radio at the time, so not really competition

 

[Royalty 102,961]

27 minutes ago, LÉON said:

Aside from Britney's last major era Fatte Female, I'd say Britney and Madonna were concurrently successful up until then, especially in Europe.

Let's not forget that not long after Bootney had two UK #1s from the ITZ album, Madonna did the same with COADF.

Admittedly, Gimme More and Piece of Me are now more iconic, but Circus came out the same year as Hard Candy and both had relatively equal success.

Plus Madonna was in the Ray Of Light era when Britney debuted, one of her most successful, and then continued to have commercial and critical success until 2000/2001. American Life was a blip, during that eating-up era in fact, she was also pretty much blacklisted by American radio at the time, so not really competition

 

 

[ajp 11,158]

Madonna’s only competition in the mid-80’s was all the male pop-rock acts and metal bands popular back then. Female Pop music was not popular when she broke the scene. Her only contemporaries were Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper and then Whitney debuted. Female bands like The Bangles and The GOGOs had it much easier because they were “bands”. Male Pop Groups had the market share - Duran Duran, Prince & The Revolution, Tears for Fears.  Michael Jackson is credited for opening the Pop door with Thriller in 1982 and he was untouchable in the 80’s.

[LÉON 18,997]

6 minutes ago, ajp said:

Madonna’s only competition in the mid-80’s was all the male pop-rock acts and metal bands popular back then. Female Pop music was not popular when she broke the scene. Her only contemporaries were Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper and then Whitney debuted. Female bands like The Bangles and The GOGOs had it much easier because they were “bands”. Male Pop Groups had the market share - Duran Duran, Prince & The Revolution, Tears for Fears.  Michael Jackson is credited for opening the Pop door with Thriller in 1982 and he was untouchable in the 80’s.

Shame the kids weren't

[ajp 11,158]

1 minute ago, LÉON said:

Shame the kids weren't

[ISlayForX 7]

Madonna is truly the biggest female superstar ever, i feel like only Taylor and Adele can get close to her at this point. 

[SeekingThrill 8,960]

11 hours ago, Royalty said:

And don’t forget about Britney as soon as she got popular! She ate Madonna up at some point and no, I don’t mean the 2003 VMA’s

And then she ate herself.   

[Cher 1,356]

13 hours ago, Mr. Mendes said:

. In Madonna's case, in the 80s in terms of females Janet gave her a challenge and for a time Cyndi did as well (though to a lesser extent than Janet). She was always going against Michael and Prince in the 80s and I think at any given time they were sort of trading off the top-top between the three of them. In the 90s, Mariah did give her competition although outside of the Hot 100, they were rarely ever fighting for the same turf they thrived in their own sides of the business. 

Cyndi was initially more popular than Madonna. She's So Unusual outsold Madonna's debut and had bigger hits. Like a Virgin turned the tide in Madonna's favor. Of course, Janet was a consistent competitor with Madonna from the '80s to the early 2000s.

[Royalty 102,961]

44 minutes ago, SeekingThrill said:

And then she ate herself.   

This went completely over my head Idk what you mean

[LÉON 18,997]

30 minutes ago, Royalty said:

This went completely over my head Idk what you mean

She's Mrs "she's too big" now "she's too thin"?

[Strobo 1,312]

If by prime Madonna we mean 1984-1991? (lowkey we can even include 92-02 because Erotica still did well and had two top 10 hits and a top 15 hit in the US, while staying pretty much unaffected in the rest of the world. American Life was the first era that could actually be considered a "flop")

Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson were all competitors in one way or another.

MJ was the undisputed King, and still to this day the biggest to have ever done it. Madonna did overtake him with the whole Blonde Ambition era, and stayed more afloat overall due to a bunch of personal messiness throughout the 90s all the way until his passing.

Prince had his moment with Purple Rain, but was not really playing the pop game before or after that album. He had a vision with his music and just did whatever the hell he wanted to do. He has some hits before and afterwards, but overall Madonna was the far more popular artist.

Whitney Houston had a couple of pop hits, but like the (ridiculous) Mariah comparisons they had completely different demographics. She does have impressive numbers, but no one thinks of Whitney the pop star when they think of her. They think of Whitney, the big voiced balladeer.

Janet Jackson is probably the closest artist to Madonna in terms of goals and what they do, but Janet wasn't quite as big as Madonna. At least, not in the same way. That said, they both had the moment they were taken seriously as artists (with hits to boot) in 1986, massive, acclaimed eras in 1989, had sex-forward eras at very similar times to each. (Something I never quite understood was why Janet got praised so much for hers, while Madonna got dragged through the mud, but that's another topic.) As well as having their most introspective and personal eras, with a much more fun, pop-heavy era around similar times to. Their careers took decently similar directions from 1986-2001, just I'm sure they had different goals in mind.

[BreatheeOnKnee 453]

Janet was her biggest competition from janet's Control era up until the superbowl incident

 

[Skyline 15,998]

At the very beginning, she was compared to Cyndi Lauper whose debut album She's So Unusual was more successful than Madonna's debut overall (16 million WW sales vs. 10 million, and Madonna has the advantage of her later albums being successful and therefore helping increase sales of her earlier albums). Cyndi was for a brief time a commercial and critical darling and was heralded as the next biggest thing. People forget Cyndi was the first female artist to get 4 U.S. Top 10 hits from an album. The fact that her album was well recieved by rock music critics was significant at the time because usually they were prejudiced against pop acts (Michael's Thriller album from a year before was another exception to this rule). The tables turned when Madonna released Like a Virgin and by 1985 she had far surpassed Cyndi, who sadly couldn't reach the heights of her debut with her later albums but kept being compared to Madonna until the end of the 1980s. Madonna got critical acclaim with Like a Prayer in 1989 and basically left Cyndi in the dust after that.

 

Whitney and Janet were Madonna's main competition in the mid to late 1980s. Whitney's 1985 debut and Janet's Control from 1986 both were successful at a time when Madonna released True Blue. Janet got more comparisons to Madonna than Whitney, since Janet and Madonna were more "performers" than "vocalists". In terms of artistry, I think Janet was Madonna's closest competitor when it came to how they reinvented themselves each album. Janet's music was largely in the R&B territory which limited its success worldwide, but she briefly outsold Madonna worldwide with Janet. compared to Madonna's Erotica from a year before. Janet can be considered a competitor to Madonna from 1986 up until the Superbowl incident which derailed Janet's career. As for Whitney, I feel the comparisons were less common. Whitney did get huge success in 1993 with The Bodyguard soundtrack (which was much bigger than Madonna's Erotica album) but after Madonna's comeback with Ray of Light in 1998 she stayed bigger than Whitney from that point onwards.

 

Kylie Minogue can be considered competition outside the U.S., especially in the U.K. She got plenty of comparisons to Madonna in the 1990s although she wasn't really on par with her in commercial success in that decade. Though Kylie did have a resurgence in the early 2000s and Fever in particular was very successful.

 

Mariah Carey hit the ground running in 1990 with her debut album, which was bigger the U.S. than Madonna's Like a Prayer from a year before, however Mariah lagged behind Madonna in Europe until 1993 when she released Music Box, much more successful than Madonna's Erotica. Certainly in the U.S. Mariah was releasing several blockbuster albums in the 1990s and was definitely ahead of Madonna for that whole decade. Mariah fell hard from those heights with 2001's Glitter but regained her footing with The Emancipation of Mimi in 2005, which was more successful than Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor in the U.S. but did not sell as much outside the U.S. Mariah was undoubtedly Madonna's competition worldwide from 1993 to 1998, after that it goes up and down depending on the album.

 

Then of course, there's Michael Jackson, often referred to as the "King of Pop" while Madonna gets "Queen of Pop". Michael's album sales are certainly bigger overall, Thriller especially trumps any of Madonna's albums. However, I would argue that most of Michael's famous hits come from the 1980s with maybe a few from the 1990s. Madonna on the other hand had more longevity, getting one of her biggest career hits with "Hung Up" as late as 2005 (and "4 Minutes" coming in 2008). Michael's death in 2009 definitely shifted public perception of him and creates this image of a man who stood far above all other artists. This may be partially true, but I would argue that Madonna certainly beat him in longevity with her commercial success continuing until the late 2000s. Her 2000 album Music sold more worldwide than Michael's Invincible album. We don't know how things would have turned out if he released more albums that decade but Madonna was definitely bigger than him in the 2000s until his death in 2009 tilted public perception in his favour.