How do you know you're a superduperstar?

When Newsweek complains that your "36-track double CD" greatest hits set (your third), excluded too many hits. I say the exclusion of the Evita songs is a plus. And though it's hard to figure out the logic of the sequencing (particularly on Disc 2), it's got to be satisfying that the collection starts, credibly, not with "Holiday" but "Hung Up." Good for her.

And although Mariah Carey may hold the title for #1 singles, Madonna's overall statistics are ultimately more impressive.

Madonna is ranked by the Recording Industry Association of America as the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second top-selling female artist in the United States with 63 million RIAA-certified albums; she has sold over 200 million albums worldwide. In 2007, Guinness World Records listed her as the world's most successful female recording artist of all time....

Madonna has also received acclaim as a role model for businesswomen in her industry, "achieving the kind of financial control that women had long fought for within the industry" generating over $1.2 billion dollars in sales within the first decade of her career.

Wha? Billion? First decade?!

Unlike Mariah or the newly resurgent Crack is Whack Whitney, Madonna's tours are visionary productions. And most important, she enjoys critical respectability. You won't find any anthologies on Mariah any time soon. And while it's true you won't find any on Aretha either, that's because no one has yet found a way to write about her intelligently. None of which is to say that Mariah's bubblegum doesn't have its own honored albeit small place.

According to Rolling Stone, Madonna "remains one of the greatest pop acts of all time".[209] She is also "the world's highest earning female singer on earth". Madonna's 2008 Sticky & Sweet Tour became the highest grossing concert tour by a solo artist. In the United Kingdom, she is the most successful female in the singles chart history and has more number one singles than any other female solo artist. In 2008, she surpassed Elvis Presley as the artist with most top ten hits in the history of Billboard Hot 100. In 2007, Madonna was listed by VH1 as eighth in the Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. On March 10, 2008, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.