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Madonna kicks off her “Sticky & Sweet” world tour at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on Saturday, the latest test of her enduring appeal just a week after her 50th birthday. The “queen of pop” will be hoping to eclipse her last trot across the globe in 2006. “Confessions” became the top-grossing tour ever by a female artist, with ticket sales of $195 million. “Sticky & Sweet,” featuring hits that span nearly 30 years in pop music including her latest album “Hard Candy,” includes 49 dates and is due to wrap up in Sao Paulo on December 18. As of Thursday, roughly… Read more »

Madonna won’t know until next week whether a Malawian boy she found in an orphanage in 2006 will become a permanent member of her family, her lawyer said Wednesday. Lawyer Alan Chinula had expected the judge to rule on the adoption Wednesday but said the hearing was delayed after a Malawian human rights group presented arguments on “shortcomings” in the southern African nation’s adoption laws. Chinula said the group was not challenging the adoption and he expected it to be approved next week. The pop star and her husband, film director Guy Ritchie, were not present at Thursday’s hearing in… Read more »

One ticket to the Super Bowl: $2,000. Thirty seconds of advertising during the Super Bowl: $2.7 million. Five seconds’ worth of Madonna in a Super Bowl ad: A heck of a lot more than that. Sources tell E! Online that the Material Girl was paid $10 million to appear in a new advertising campaign for Sunsilk hair-care products, including a commercial that will premiere during the the fourth quarter of Sunday’s game between the New England Patriots and New York Giants (most of whom do not make $10 million in an entire season). In the 30-second spot, old stock footage… Read more »

Madonna is the richest woman in music. The 49-year-old entertainer leads Forbes.com’s list of the top 20 “Cash Queens of Music,” earning $72 million between June 2006 and June 2007. The pop star’s “Confessions” world tour pulled in $260 million, Forbes said. She also made money from album sales, her fashion line with H&M and a deal with NBC to broadcast her concert performance at London’s Wembley Stadium. Forbes.com said it compiled the list by examining concert grosses, merchandising revenue, album sales and other revenue from clothing lines, fragrance deals and endorsements. Barbra Streisand is No. 2 with $60 million,… Read more »

The Material Girl is about to become a Hall of Famer. The ever-evolving Madonna was announced as a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee on Thursday along with John Mellencamp, The Ventures, Leonard Cohen and The Dave Clark Five. A panel of 600 industry figures selected the five acts to be inducted at the annual ceremony, to be held March 10 in New York. “The 2008 inductees are trailblazers – all unique and influential in their genres,” Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation President and CEO Joel Peresman said in a statement. “From poetry to pop, these five… Read more »

If Madonna leaves Warner Bros. for an all-encompassing $120 million deal with Live Nation — as the Wall Street Journal reported this week — the concert promoter will struggle to make money on the deal, according to a Billboard analysis of the numbers. The 10-year deal reportedly includes: $50 million in cash and stock for the right to promote Madonna’s concert tours; a signing bonus of $17.5 million; and advances totaling $50 million-$60 million for three albums. The deal is virtually unprecedented, likely driven by touring potential, but sources say it doesn’t obligate her to tour. Last year, Madonna was… Read more »

Madonna and Britney Spears have been targeted as the spreaders of “Satanic culture.” The aggressive comments were launched by spokesman and senior leader of Palestinian terror group the Popular Resistance Committees, a group based in the Gaza Strip and responsible for the increase in shootings and bombings in the region. Muhammad Abdel-Al is quoted in new book Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollywood To the Holy Land Jihadists Reveal Their Global Plans–To A Jew! attacks the two pop stars, labeling them “prostitutes.” Abdel-Al rants, “If I meet these whores I will have the honor–I repeat, I will have the honor–to be… Read more »

In the wake of the tsunami disasters in Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa, more celebrities are using their star power to help garner support for the victims and their families. Madonna, Diana Ross, Maroon 5 and Mary J. Blige have joined the NBC Universal benefit special, “Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope,” a program that will benefit the American Red Cross, according to Reuters. The telethon will air on Saturday on NBC and its sister cable channels, which include USA, Bravo, Sci-Fi, MSNBC and CNBC. Virgin Megastores has also announced that it will contribute to the relief effort by launching… Read more »

Los Angeles – In a dismal year for the touring industry, with ticket prices soaring and seats going unsold, music fans in North America partied like it was 1989 as Prince and Madonna topped the concert box office. According to freshly tabulated estimates provided by concert trade publication Pollstar, Prince sold $87.4 million in tickets in 2004, while Madonna earned $79.5 million. Prince also worked a bit harder for his payday, playing 96 shows, compared with 39 for Madonna. Canadian pop singer Celine Dion actually topped Madonna by about $900,000, but her haul came exclusively from 154 dates performed at… Read more »

Madonna has reinvented herself once again, this time as the top touring act of 2004. The singer’s Re-Invention Tour was the year’s biggest grosser, according to Billboard Boxscore, taking in $125 million through September and scoring 55 sellouts out of 56 shows. The elaborate concerts averaged $2.23 million each night. Another ’80s icon, Prince, came in second place, with one of his most successful tours in more than a decade. Playing to more people than any other artist (almost 1.5 million), Prince’s Musicology tour grossed $90.2 million. Country star Shania Twain was third, playing to almost 950,000 fans and grossing… Read more »