Inside Madonna’s Ambitious ‘Madame X’ Album Campaign

Billboard.com spoke with Greg Thompson, President of Maverick Music, about the ambitious campaign planned for Madonna’s new studio record, Madame X, the decision to roll out five tracks ahead of the album release, and the strategy behind the choice of Medellín and Crave as two different ways to introduce the record to the global markets.

[The album] is a journey, and there are a lot of chapters. In a world where we’re more song-driven than we’ve been in a long time as an industry, it became a real question and a challenge: How do we make sure that people really understand this album by the time it comes out, but still have songs that can be hit singles in certain areas?

This is not the first time that a rather large portion of a Madonna album will be out before the official street date, but this time it’s a carefully planned strategy and not a ast minute plan to recovery from a disaster such as the leaks from Rebel Heart, that eventually led Madonna’s camp to rush six songs out early for the iTunes pre-order.

With the new strategy, Crave with Swae Lee will become the de facto pop radio single upon its release – Billboard explains – with an official music video to soon follow, while Medellín – which received a global television launch across MTV last month – will continue being pushed in Latin markets. Speaking about the decision to lead with Medellín instead of Crave came down to the belief that it was “the signature track to the body of work, and the right place to start telling the story,” Thompson explains, adding:

I think we have a good shot to get a top five club record with some [‘Medellín’] remixes, and get that song into people’s spaces that they might not anticipate.

Read the full article on Billboard.com.