Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 04/10/2012 at 9:48 AM News

The Popdust Files: charts, madonna, mdna

After every high is a comedown. That’s not a drug reference. It’s a reference to Madonna’s MDNA (also totally not a drug reference), which is projected to make chart history in its second week–the sort of chart history nobody really wants. According to reports from Forbes, backed up by HITS Daily Double projections, sales for MDNA are slated to drop from her No. 1 debut at 359,000 to about 34-50K, decidedly not No. 1 and the biggest second-week drop in Billboard history. Some of this could be poor word of mouth; some of it could be MDNA‘s first-week sales including a concert promotion that bundled CDs with tickets; some of it may well be a stealth DARE campaign. (Probably not. But wouldn’t that be fantastic to watch?)

Elsewhere in chart projections, Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday‘s doing respectable numbers, meaning that HITS Daily Double has it selling roughly as much as Adele’s 21. Generally speaking, it’s a good thing to sell roughly as much as Adele.

[Vulture]