Everything Everywhere All at Once: Why Madonna’s Fitbit stats must be off the charts right now

By creammagazine, July 3, 2026

Having grown up a good Catholic boy and being an avid listener of pop music as a kid, I was infatuated music artist Madonna from the moment I’d heard her name. It was a balmy Perth night in 1983 and I was returning home from work with my Dad, when my sister Melina said she’d recorded a music program that played the pop singer’s first single release in Australia, Holiday, of “this new singer named Madonna.”

“Stop right there,” I told my sis. “If that is her real name, this singer is going to be huuuuge.”

I knew it was time for the Catholic church’s holier-than-thou reputation to begin to be chipped away at, and with Madonna’s quasi-religious moniker – juxtaposed with a sexually intent image, she’d be the one holding the first chisel.

The hype around the artist – who would go on to release no less than four singles in the span of half a year (Holiday, Lucky Star, Burning Up, and Borderline) – was akin to the campaigning that is carried out by today’s pop starlings (some releasing just about every song from their albums as singles). But Madonna’s was more of an impressive brand of marketing due to the fact that all her promotion was carried out through analogue means: interviews and advertising and literally spruiking her songs to DJ in person.

In the ’80s, getting a record out there to the public meant promoting it through slower, traditional media like television and radio, sometimes even bribing DJs. Often it also meant sleeping with them. Whatever which way was adopted, Madonna was indeed a leader in the field of music self-promotion – some might say a despot.

Always at the fore of reinvention, this ever-shining supernova would go on to unleash as many new looks and sounds as she did new LPs. You could say Madonna was the inventor of the ‘era’ concept in pop music – if only invention offered leniency to the cunning art of plagiarism in the oh-so intertextual world of pop.

Just as today’s mini music icons (history will show the likes of Sabrina Carpenter and Adriana Grande to be mere Pop! Vinyl in contrast to Madonna’s bronze solid presence in music’s hall of fame) have admitted to having been inspired by the Queen of Reinvention, Madonna herself is evidently taking cues from them in keeping on top of modern music marketing methods. In fact, you might say she’s gone over the top.

If you’ve scrolled through your phone even for a minute in the past month, you’d have come across a brief critique or a stack of j-pegs relating to the new album, Confessions II, a sequel of sorts to her successful LP of 2005, Confessions On A Dance Floor. The official release of the album is today, June 3rd, but visuals promoting it hav seemingly been everywhere over the past few months. This week, every second post I’ve seen on Facebook has referenced the record, and I only follow three Madonna-related Facebook pages. She – and the name of the album – are literally all over the shop on social media, reaching audiences in the millions every minute of the day. Madonna has also kept busy trekking the globe it seems. One minute she’s doing promotions and podcasts in the US, the next she’s in a UK setting, showing what’s in her wardrobe to Vogue readers, or camping it up with Graham Norton and Kylie Minogue for the camera. Now that collab is the one I’m truly waiting for, and I’m guessing a lot of production time has gone into it, so come on, please.

If I were an Oura ring o Madonna’s finger right now, or a Fitbit on her wrist, I reckon my steps and other vital stats would be going through the roof!

Borrowing the slapped-together-in-a-couple-of-minutes aesthetic of Charli XCX’s brat era, the album’s artwork – in its tens of guises – looks like it could have come off a photocopier machine at Officeworks (wait, do they still actually have photocopier machines?). Besides the lovely image at the top of this story, which was the first iteration of cover art we saw – and liked – there’ve been hundreds strewn about online and it’s only making us confused. Which album variation has the most tracks? Which has the best tracks? Are the tracks all very good? I’ve heard a batch of them, and so far the real standout is Danceteria – a love letter, you could say, from Madonna to the people and great times she used to have on the club scene in New York when she was just starting to get seriously into her groove. I’m guessing the lyrics to this song were being penned while the idea of a Madonna biopic was being bandied about. That production was scrapped, so why not use it for an album dedicated to the dance floor? Great idea. Good song.

And let’s hope the remixes (from official producers and bedroom boffins alike) start flooding platforms such as Soundcloud and Mixcloud. It might even be a wise idea if Madonna and Stuart Price give select music stems to some big fans and DJs to have a go at remixing the tracks. Just sayin’.

But back to all the hype. Listening parties have been organised in pretty much every country. Impromptu live performances have taken place (from dingy nightclubs to the heart of Times Square). Forums have debated the album’s content and look. Celebrities have been roped in to cameo in music videos. And final-days countdowns have been rotating to keep up the marketing momentum. So much so, that if this record doesn’t achieve at least half a million sales globally, the income probably won’t cover the gazillions spent on marketing.

In 2026, a “successful” album is no longer judged by pure record sales but by equivalent units (a combination of pure sales and streaming). Achieving gold status (500,000 equivalent units) or Platinum (1,000,000 equivalent units) status remains the industry gold standard for mainstream commercial success – in the United States, at least. These figures don’t look too out of reach for Confessions II but methinks Madonna is after a heftier sales figure here. Indeed, forget the sales – for she does’t really need the money – what this icon of icons is clearly after is the number one status. A trip to the top of the charts again like things used to be. Showing fans, followers and quick-to-critique media bitches (like me, I guess) that relativity is still in the artist’s reach.

In the end, what will really speak volumes is the music itself. Will the album as a whole be very good (perhaps even brilliant) or, in retrospect, will it look and sound like a blight on Madonna’s otherwise remarkable discography?

I’m hoping the album as a whole is going to be brilliant. Cohesive to some degree – fingers crossed – and it should be because Price is a dab hand at getting supersonics and trippy, clubby effects into his productions. As for the music videos, please, please, please, no more green laser lights darting out of naughty bits. The kids are seeing it.

Antonino Tati