Madonna is now most successful UK album artist ever

She’s just scored her twelfth number one album but, at 53, is Madonna past it as a pop singer?

Madonna’s new album, MDNA, went straight in at number one last night, making her the most successful solo artist ever in UK album chart history (beating Elvis’s record of eleven number one albums).

Madge will be relieved no doubt given her first single from MDNA, Give Me All Your Luvin’, only reached number 37 in February.

Poor MDNA sales

MDNA may have just topped the UK album charts but it seems it was Madonna’s lucky week. She managed it with just 56,000 albums sold, according to Music Week.

This compares with songstress du jour Lana Del Rey who shifted 50,000 copies of Born to Die on the first day of sales alone (sales then climbed to 117,000 in its first week – take that Madonna!).

Who’s that girl, er, woman?

The video for Give Me All Your Luvin’ features a basque-clad Madonna writhing atop a team of American footballers (you can watch the video on BT Vision right now). “Don’t play the stupid game, because I’m a different kind of girl,” is one of the chorus lines from the song. Actually the sooner Madge realises she’s no longer a girl, the better for all concerned.

We all know Madonna has always had a successful knack of surrounding herself with the hottest producers and performers (in fact, MDNA is produced by William Orbit who is credited with reigniting her career when he produced Ray of Light in 1998). And she’s a savvy enough business operator to recognise a good pop hook when she works with other artists. But surely it’s time she abandoned the corsets and thigh-high boots to the next generation?

Pop is inherently a young person’s game. Let’s face it, Madonna doesn’t need the money so why does she insist in soldiering on? Maybe it’s because her film career, both acting and directing, has never taken off.

Either way (bad pun alert), I think Madonna is very borderline these days. Maybe it’s time she took a holiday…

Is Madonna too past it to be performing pop songs? Let us know below