The 1980s chart square off of Madonna vs. Bruce Springsteen has taken a unique turn after just four days.

Madonna’s “Madame X” album is falling apart. After hitting number 1 on iTunes out of the gate, the “weird” album (not my words) has dropped to number 10. It’s the same thing on amazon, and on  most iTunes charts. In Japan, it’s number 25.

Springsteen’s “Western Stars” is not only number 1 on iTunes and amazon, but it’s a hit around the world, too. Most countries list it at at number 1. Bruce hasn’t had such a clear hit in a long time.

Today, Tuesday, a clearer picture of the numbers involved will emerge later in the day. For Bruce, it’s all good news. But for Madonna, it could be troubling since she’s going to hunker down and tour this album starting in September. If the songs on the album aren’t in much demand, Madonna should realize now that fans will want to hear her hits, not “1, 2, cha cha cha,” as she sings on “Medellin,” her senior citizen shuffle board song.

For Bruce, I’d be surprised if he didn’t do some shows at least to promote “Western Stars” this fall. It’s got to be tempting for him. He’s a Wayfarer, baby. He likes to be on the road.

Since midnight, the chart fight on the iTunes 100 album list has been between Madonna’s “Madame X” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Western Stars.”

When the race began, Madonna was in the lead, and she was all day. But at 6pm, Bruce overtook her and now has the number 1 spot. He is also number 1 on amazon.com.

As I said earlier, once the first flush of Madonna fans bought their downloads, and listened to “Madame X,” I thought things would change. “Western Stars” is an unexpected masterpiece. “Madame X” is a mess.

It’s not over yet. We’ll check back in the morning and see how things are going. But for Bruce to jump ahead on iTunes, that’s big.

Madonna’s “Madame X” is number 1 on iTunes and on Amazon’s digital music chart thanks to ticket bundling. Every fan who bought a ticket to Madonna’s live show this fall automatically got a download of “Madame X.” The RIAA counts these downloads as sales. Madonna’s pulled this trick before to get a number 1 chart debut for a new recording. Then in the second week, sales drop 80% or more.

This time things may get trickier. “Madame X” is a really bad album, worse than usual in Madonna’s post-career releases. There are no dance songs on “Madame X,” but there’s a lot of political mumbo jumbo. Madonna, like Michael Jackson as he got older, thinks she can save the world. So she sings Hallmark politics about the left and the right, out to please everyone and achieving nothing.

From the sound of “Madame X,” Madonna actually has no ideas. At least when she sang about sex, she was defiant. That always came through. But back then Madonna didn’t have six children- four under the age of 13– who would sing along with her records. Now that  she does, it’s a different game. Platitudes are now her business. They’re not even witty, there’s no wordplay.

But then it’s not just that the songs have no coherence lyrically. There’s also just a mess. Many of them are interrupted by strange digressions. “The Nutcracker Suite” pops up in one of them.The songs stop and start. On Wikipedia, her PR says she tried to make a record like “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Whaaaat? The problem, of course, is that unlike Freddie Mercury, Madonna is not a composer. She doesn’t write music. It’s unclear if she writes lyrics, really.

Oh for the days when Madge just worked with real songwriters. They did the heavy lifting, and she presented it in her own form. That’s how we got “Like a Prayer” and “Like a Virgin” and “Vogue.” But she can’t do that now. She can’t expose herself to a collaboration. So she sticks to Mirwais, who’s been there for her during the post-hit period, quietly trying to fashion a whole album out of thin air. I guess you could say they’ve done it again

It’s been a long trip with Bruce Springsteen, hasn’t it? For some of us who were there at the start in 1973 we can  still remember buying “Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey” at Korvette’s. “Spirit in the Night” was just about the most unexpected, wonderfully mysterious thing, a little novel or short story that we couldn’t get enough of. Then “The Wild, the Innocent” cold cocked everyone with the whole second side and “Rosalita” was a fury that blew the first album away and ….

And here we are on June 14, 2019, a lifetime has passed, with “Western Stars” coming just months after Bruce’s magnificent Broadway show broke box office records and finally closed. Since the very peak of his career with “The Rising” in 2002, Bruce has released five albums of original music, all very satisfying, maybe not as iconic as the earlier releases, but all with their merits. “Magic” was my favorite and I always liked “Devil’s Arcade.”

But now we have “Western Stars,” which Bruce himself has called a jewel box, and he’s right as usual. I haven’t been able to stop listening to it. I already have favorite songs, particularly “The Wayfarer,” “Sundown,” “There Goes My Miracle” (which I wish Roy Orbison could come back for and cover), and “Stones.” The others are grade A, those are my A plus for now.

Lush and melodic, “Western Stars” is full of what we used to call singles. It’s a jukebox of hooks and catchy phases, music that will stick in your head for a long, long time. It’s obviously superior to almost everything else in rock these days.

I can’t go through all the lyrics now. But in “The Wayfarer,” we find Bruce restless as he was in 1973:

Same sad story, love and glory goin’ ’round and ’round/
Same old cliché, a wanderer on his way, slippin’ from town to town/
Some find peace here on the sweet streets, the sweet streets of home/
Where kindness falls and your heart calls for a permanent place of your own

What it really reminds me of is U2’s “All That You Can Leave Behind” album, the one with “Beautiful Day.” Bruce may not even realize this. At the time Bono declared that they’d just swung for the fences and made an album with all hits and no fillers. That’s what “Western Stars” sounds like to me. (The only other record that sounded like that in the last year was Elvis Costello’s “Look Now.”)

“Western Stars” worried me before I heard it. After all, Bruce had just finished the Broadway run. And some of this recent original songs like “Working on A Dream” or “Wrecking Ball” would be sensational for anyone else but not Bruce’s top work. But “Western Stars” is really inspired. There are melodic turns, and lyrical moments that are just stunning. Just when you think things are going to sound repetitive or Bruce-like, Springsteen avoids the cliche. He was obviously inspired, and it’s thrilling.

The album does have a ‘western’ sort of Jimmy Webb-John Hartford kind of thing going on, but really in the end, it’s very Springsteen. The lyrics tie back to the era of  “Spirit in the Night” in a way you won’t expect, they’re very evocative and intimate. A couple of plays and they’re in your head.  Listening to “Western Stars” is like trying on the most comfortable suit you can remember.

Springsteen is going to turn 7o on September 23rd. That he’s still in the game, and on top of it, is a miracle and a treasure. Like a few others– Sting, Elton, Paul McCartney– he’s just going to keep creating regardless of radio play, streaming, and so on. Bowie would have done it. Lennon and Harrison, obviously. It’s a legacy that’s being created, and it outlast all of us.