Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

Gaga is a lot closer to flash in the pan than on Madonna’s level. Madonna is 5th in total value on the Forbes musician list. Gaga had one hit album and it grossed half of Madonna’s number sold. Madonna had 8 albums with 10 mill plus bought. Gaga…one. It’s like comparing Miley Cyrus to Taylor Swift. This sounds more like a Zoomer convo where certain people were born after Madonnas pertinent top 15 years and are looking for their age equivalent garbage talent.

comparing sales is kinda pointless given how the financials of the music industry has radically changed from then til now.

You guys are looking at this through the boomer cultural lens but you are way over hyping Madonna.

Madonna continued to make music, shit she released her 14th studio album in 2019. It's just that she stopped being relevant after her half decade of stardom in the late 80s. You know Marilyn Manson is still releasing albums too, right? nobody has heard from him since 2001 but he's still been releasing music.

When it comes to cultural relevence/star power you have your beatles, your Michael Jackson, and your Taylor Swift (as much as it pains me to say, she's this generation's Beatles). Then you have stars that start bright but peter out or stop being relevant.

Madonna is on the same level as Cher or Prince. She is no MJ or Beatles and if Lady Gaga continues to do exactly what she's doing, she'll also join them in that club. Madonna had half a decade of being on top, being culturally relevant, then she petered out. Yet she kept making albums and kept selling albums but only her fans knew or listened to them. Every once in a while they'll hit it big again and one song off of a new album will effectively become a "one hit wonder" and actually get some radio play and they'll recharge their 15minutes of fame, Madonna's was "Music" just like Cher's was "Do you beeeeeeeeliiiiiiiiiieeeeeeevvvvvveeeee in life atter love?" or Prince's Musicology album which shot to #3 for no fucking reason decades after anyone but hardcore fans knew he was even still performing.

As long as Lady Gaga keeps starring in trash movies like Madonna did and keeps dropping albums every few years like Madonna did, if even one of them is a chart topper then she is 100% going to be this generation's Madonna.

Harshaw said:

You mean that they only sell singles now instead of being able to actually sell full albums?

Lady Gaga isn't even close to Madonna.

View attachment 553835

Click to expand...

No as in the music industry radically shifted due to digital.

You cannot compare music sales before 1995 with 1995-2010 or 2010-current.

Pre 1995 was albums, vinyl, cds, etc. MTV, music videos, etc.

1995 was the advent of digital, when we started putting CD-ROMs in PCs and realized we could burn copies of them, as well as convert the music files to mp3. Its Napster and piracy and all that entails but it's much much more than that. 1995-2010 is your "selling singles instead of albums" quip.

2010 and on is streaming. Its 1/2 of 1/2 of half a cent for every play on Spotify. Its the return of music videos but in youtube format for ad revenue.

Pre 1995 artists could get rich selling albums. Afterwards they got rich selling merchandise, and concert tickets, and now it's branding and ad revenue. It's a completely different game.

TomServo said:

Your autism cannot save you here. MADONNA > MR GAGA

Click to expand...

I feel like I'm having an argument with a zoomer making up his own language. Their relevancy quotient is very similar! Is that like the DEI score? Their climate change rating? What does a relevancy score do for a musician besides sell more albums? And Madonna sold a fuck more albums. It sounds like we got a triggered zoomer who is upset that Gaga is just as bad of an actress as she was a musician, and no one wants to talk about her latest shitty movie. Madonna was a shitty actress too. Her relevancy quotient was much higher though. Sorry Sylas. Better research topics during the Gen X period a little better and you may not look like a moron.

Gaga is worth 150 million. That's chump change compared to Madonna no matter what she sells. Cuck more.

Harshaw said:

Soo what you are saying is Madonna had to work much harder to become as popular and famous as she did compared to Lady Gaga who had the benefit of streaming and "branding and ad revenue.". Yet Gaga has been trying to keep herself relevant the last 10 years while Madonna probably sold more singles for Like a Prayer in the opening weekend of Deadpool and Wolverine than the amount of people that even went to see Joker 2 worldwide.

Click to expand...

Look bro. Gaga did this movie to earn her +3 relevance on my imaginary scorecard and that’s at least equal to 3 Madonna 80s albums. The movie bombed and got shit on by….Terrifier 3 but that’s ok because Gaga desperately trying to get in movies isn’t because no one has ever listened to her music but because relevancy is everything. Eat that Madonna! Who cares if a lot more people bought your shit! That’s not at all relevant!

Movie is that bad, eh?

Harshaw said:

Soo what you are saying is Madonna had to work much harder to become as popular and famous as she did compared to Lady Gaga who had the benefit of streaming and "branding and ad revenue.". Yet Gaga has been trying to keep herself relevant the last 10 years while Madonna probably sold more singles for Like a Prayer in the opening weekend of Deadpool and Wolverine than the amount of people that even went to see Joker 2 worldwide.

Click to expand...

No actually i'm saying the opposite.

Pre 1995 album sales were all there was, I mean you could take your cassette recorder and hold it up to the radio and make a copy of it -background noise, DJ intro and all- but yeah, album sales was pretty much the only way to listen and own the music so of course popular artists sold more albums back then than they do now. Now we measure by streams and earlier we measured by singles sold on itunes, things that weren't even a thing back when Madonna was popular.

So yeah in Madonna's time, if you heard a song you liked playing on the radio, you went out and bought the album. That was your only choice. Of course her album sales are higher than modern artists. Newsflash, the beatles sold more albums than Mozart, could have something to do with there not being albums back when Mozart was making music. But it doesn't change the fact that we like to compare artists from different era's and come up with ways to measure how "culturally relevant" they are.

Also keep in mind, Madonna has 40 years and 14 albums worth of sales, worth of concerts, worth of samples and rereleases in popular media such as you mention "Deadpool and Wolverine", etc. Did you know that she had 14 albums? No, you only remember the first couple. Just like you probably didn't know that Prince released nearly 50 fucking albums, 3 of which after his death. All you know is Purple Rain.

comparing album sales from a 40 year artist who made most of their biggest hits pre 1995 vs a 15 year artist who made most of their sales post 2010 is fucking retarded. It's like comparing youtube followers or total plays, Lady Gaga has 4x as many followers on youtube and about 10k x more plays (many billions) than Madonna does(low millions), but you are comparing apples and oranges. There was no youtube when Madonna was popular, most of her fans are fucking 60+ years old now they prolly don't know how to internet.

A more accurate comparison would be, "at this point in her career, how many popular songs did Madonna have, vs Lady Gaga?" I count 8 hits for madonna over this time period and 9 for Lady Gaga:

Madonna 1983-1999 (16 years)
"Like a Virgin"
"Material Girl"
"Like a Prayer"
"Express Yourself"
"Erotica"
"Secret"
"Take a Bow"
"Ray of Light"


Lady Gaga 2008-2024 (16 years)
"Bad Romance"
"Poker Face"
"Alejandro"
"LoveGame"
"Just Dance"
"Paparazzi"
"Telephone"
"Born This Way"
"The Edge of Glory"

again even this isn't really a great comparison because back in the day when album sales ruled all you really only had 1-2 hits per album with a lot of filler so Madonna's hits are spread out over a lot of albums where Lady Gaga's come mostly from a double album with a ton of hits followed by couple off the follow on albums.

edit: If you want we can also compare "at this point in their career how many shitty films they have starred in" and you'll see that they are basically the same person following the same trajectory. Sorry boomers but Madonna's cultural relevance faded before most of us hit puberty. (Those of us in HS/College when EQ1 launched)

This thread is more entertaining than the movie, at least.

Chris, just when I think you have hit peak retard you find new depths to dig yourself in a deeper hole. The Beatles fucking DEFINED rock music for the entire planet for over a decade and then individually had multidecade careers that eclipse what most artists every experience. Even Ringo fucking Star was banging out hits for over a decade. Jimmy fucking Hendrix did an entire concert just covering Sgt Peppers shortly after it came out. That is how pervasively immense they were as a group, literally defining what all rock bands would be after.

All you need to know about the Beatles is that they got away with saying they were bigger than Jesus and every single band to ever claim they were bigger than they were vanished shortly after. Even Oasis. Sargent Peppers will be played and purchased by people long after everyone forgets any of the other pop trash mentioned in this fucking derail.

Whether you like or hate them, there has never been and never will be again a band with the lasting power and influence of the Beatles because they literally were the trailblazers for mainstream music for all who have come since. And you are a retard for even hinting otherwise.