Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Lady Gaga, Queen of Magazine Covers



As if a sold-out 200+ date tour, a multi-platinum certified album, and countless corporate sponsors was not enough to complete the Gaga-domination of 2010, the singer has another title under her belt: Queen of Magazine Covers. The 24 year-old cultural icon has graced numerous magazine covers this past year and it seems that her popularity has been newsstand gold. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Gaga was 2010's most successful cover girl, as issues of Rolling Stone, Cosmopolitan, and Vanity Fair that featured the pop singer became among their best sellers. Her machine gun-wielding Rolling Stone issue sold 245,000 the week it was released, a number that is three-times the average weekly sales for the year, while Cosmopolitan's Gaga feature sold 1.7 million, its biggest seller through October. It appears everything Gaga touches turns to gold, and I have a feeling 2011 will be another winner for the singer.








While Gaga had huge sales, Rihanna was a big winner for magazines as well. Her topless cover of GQ Magazine for their January issue became the magazine's second best seller of the year, while the August issue of Seventeen magazine that featured the Bajan beauty on the cover earned them their year's best seller. Unlike Gaga, Rihanna's record was not perfect, as her July cover of Elle brought the Hachette monthly only 285,000 in sales for the month, slightly below average.




Taylor Swift, sadly, had a not-so-good year in terms of magazine sales. Her April Elle cover issue was the worst selling issue for Elle, with 60,000 fewer sales than the average. Unfortunately, this trend continues with her Glamour and Marie Claire covers, which had the second-worst and third-worst selling  issues, respectively. Ironically, the singer's strong album sales seem to make up for the lackluster magazine sales, as her album Speak Now has outsold U.S. sales of Gaga and Rihanna in 2010, despite a release just weeks before the year's end.

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