Madonna might end up with the highest grossing North American tour of any female performer this year, but American radio is simply not playing the first three singles from her new album.

“Hung Up” got middling airplay on mainstream top 40 outlets, “Sorry” was barely played, and “Get Together” has been all but ignored by pop stations. (Her album, “Confessions on a Dance Floor,” has sold a healthy 1.5 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.)

Has the pop queen lost her main stream appeal or is there a radio ban controversy?

Message boards at Entertainment Weekly and VH1, among others, are rife with everything from support for Madonna to conspiracy theories about why she can’t crack the radio dial.

But this time, Madonna may have turned left while the pop climate was turning right. Other pop chameleons such as Nelly Furtado and Mariah Carey reinvented themselves with recent rhythmic/hip-hop-leaning singles. Madonna opted instead to return to her dance-pop roots.

Here is a couple of reasons why top 40 radio might not be playing Madonna.

According to Dom Theodore, regional VP of programming for Clear Channel and program director of top 40 WKQI Detroit, today’s programmers consider each Madonna song on a case-by-case basis to determine if it fits mainstream top 40, adult top 40 or both. Or neither.

For Theodore, the sound of “Confessions on a Dance Floor” skews more retro-adult top 40 than mainstream top 40, while recent club tracks like Rihanna’s “SOS” have “more hip-hop credibility.” The Rihanna jam may reference an early-’80s dance hit (Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”) but Theodore believes it does not have the same “retro ’70s feel” as the Madonna tracks.

However the new album has sold very well.

Madonna has had no such problems internationally. Since its release last November, “Confessions on a Dance Floor” has topped the charts in 29 countries and sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, according to Warner Bros.

Here is a few of the cities and stations that are still bumping her music.

Except for dance radio outlets like KNGY San Francisco, KNRJ Phoenix and KNHC Seattle, Madonna is missing from the terrestrial radio landscape in the United States.