Female Beauty

The Material Girl, Madonna has smashed pop rival Britney Spears‘ record for the highest annual earnings by a female singer in the latest edition of Guinness World Records. The veteran pop singer raked in an estimated $50 million in 2004 – over the previous record that held by Britney Spears for the $38.5 million she reportedly earned in 2000. Spears is also unseated by another 40-something as the world’s most searched-for person and most searched-for news item on the Internet. She loses those top spots to pop diva Janet Jackson who also gets credit for the largest-ever fine imposed on a broadcaster after one of her breasts was exposed live on air.

In July this year, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” has been voted the most groundbreaking video of all time. The singer topped a poll conducted by music channel MTV, beating off stiff competition from such classics as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time”.
Madonna’s controversial “Confessions” tour which begins May 21 in Los Angeles has set the record for being the all-time highest-grossing tour by a female artist. Madonna plays her 60th and final show in Tokyo on Thursday (21-9-2006) evening, having played in front of almost 1.2 million fans and grossing $US197.3 million.

The latest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records also hails crooner James Blunt‘s Back To Bedlam album for selling the most copies in the UK in a year and rock newcomers Arctic Monkeys for having the fastest selling UK debut album with Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. It sold 363,735 copies in its first week and 113,000 on its first day.

Oscar winning movie star Nicole Kidman is another top earner, holding the record for the most money paid per minute to an actor after she earned a reported US$3.71m for a four-minute commercial for Chanel No.5 perfume.

Elsewhere, chat show host Oprah Winfrey is the highest paid person on television, Cher’s 2005 Farewell Tour was the highest-grossing music tour by a female artiste and Irish rock band U2 were the biggest-earning act in the world last year.
Madonna’s pay-packet and Jackson’s malfunctioning wardrobe, together with Sigourney Weaver’s height and Mrs Hillary Clinton‘s memoirs, have one thing in common – they’re world record breakers.

Heartbreaker Brad Pitt is the most wanted man on Internet search engine Google last year, according to the star-studded 2007 version of the Guinness World Records book which went on sale yesterday. As for the downsides of stardom, modern celebrities have yet to match Errol Flynn’s real-life courtroom performances, which saw him jailed a record four times.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 1:35 am and is filed under Celebrity News, Entertainment, Women Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.