MADONNA - MDNA (2012)

I've made a huge effort to try and not sound like everybod-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBMiYJ7kzbI

where oh where is the dave q madonna thread?

hyurr! Madonna deserves her own thread(s), and here's mine...

a treasure of an opening post

i think madonna may have finally reached jay-z status with me, where i actually think of the artist in their prime as an entirely separate person to the current artist, and there is no overlap at all in my mind

otm, though for me she reached that point years ago

even "music" was like basically a difft artist in my mind

I am baffled by people who prefer new Madonna to "classic" Madonna.

there are people who think that?! surely not

There's quite a sizeable number who think Ray of Light and Confessions are her best work, but I kind of put that down to an age thing, and maybe people disliking 80s production. For me "classic" Madonna (where she could do really no wrong) ended with the Evita vocal lessons which sucked all the warmth and life and the use of her lower register out of her voice, and now that the mannered imperiousness has vanished (which was the whole point of the lessons), we're just left with this lifeless catastrophe. The song is dire but she probably could have done something with it two decades ago.

I'd want to give this song to the Madonna of "Burning Up" or "Open Your Heart" and see what she'd do with it, but she'd probably she'd just look at it and what she'd become with complete derision.

i agree that the vocal lessons were on balance a bad thing but her post-evita voice didn't become an actual hindrance until confessions imo - it suits RoL completely, then on music andamerican life it didn't matter because those albums (at their best) were all about how she electronically manipulated and distorted her voice. on confessions the music is so dazzling that she gets away with it.

i only think of the current incarnation of madonna as starting post-2005, whatever you think of the 1998-2005 period vis-à-vis her 80s or early 90s stuff, it's far closer to that than to the shit she's coming out with now.

Well, to my ears Confessions marked the only time her new voice worked on a whole album, thanks in large part to it being a dance record. The slower stuff on ROL and Music (e.g. "I Deserve It," "Mer Girl") is dreadful; even "Drowned World" boasts a couple of pompous moments, like when, to quote Rob Sheffield, she says "I had so many lah-VERS" as if she's never had one in her life.

What about What It Feels Like For a Girl? A great late slow song imo.

It works. I'd argue that's a ballad conceived as a dance track (the sonics, the way her voice sounds like it's looped).

Re: Madonna's late voice & dance music, it's telling that both Hung Up and Sorry find her scolding somebody - not the whole album but the two big singles, and then Jump is hard-nosed self-help. The open-armed joy she could tap into on Into the Groove or Deeper and Deeper seems inaccessible to her now. Just a thought - there may be exceptions I'm forgetting.

"Deeper and Deeper" doesn't feel joyful at all (and that's part of what makes it so great)! But yeah I agree.

that rings true - confessions marked the first time i felt M's voice thudded somewhat and felt flat. for a dance record it's curiously lacking in uninhibited joy. but yeah, that's pretty bang on about why "hung up", "sorry", "jump" and "push" work (and it's why i've felt that unlike those, "get together" works despite madonna rather than due to her).

xp Ah OK, I find Deeper and Deeper pretty joyful, unlike most of Erotica. Ear of the beholder.

"deeper and deeper" = numbing trauma with hedonism, finding a kind of liberation in that anyway. it's complicated

I'm half-tempted to start a fb campaign urging her not to release this album in an effort to preserve her legacy. A hollow gesture, of course, because the label has already sunk a ton of money into it, but a gesture from the heart nonetheless.

― Johnny Fever, Tuesday, February 28, 2012 12:52 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because American Life and Hard Candy were so great that this is a shock

I want to lock Madonna in a room with just her guitar and see what she comes up with, because she needs a serious reboot.

I'm sure that will work.

Was Ray of Light the last really "unique" thing she did? I mean obviously it too heavily drew from several sources but most of them iirc were sort of more out of the mainstream than, say, disco (re: Confessions).

I'm sure that will work.

Grasping at straws.

Was Ray of Light the last really "unique" thing she did?

"die another day"!

you guys, this new song isn't amazing by any stretch of the imagination but it's a hell of a lot better than "Give Me All Your Luvin'"

also some dude OTM even though I loved American Life

Not to get all rockisty or anything, I think part of the problem is that in Madonna's prime the radio still played standard ... songs, for lack of a better word. Things that could be played on piano or guitar. But the last few years the pop music pendulum has swung over to clubby anonymity, which is fine ... for the clubs. But on the radio there's not a lot of room for songs without a 4/4 stomp and a stupid hook. It's a shame Madonna is buying into that, but I don't see what choice she has, if she wants to get played. Ray of Light and Music were sort of a transitional hybrids allowed by the advent of "OMG dance music electronics!" (see also: Moby, Prodigy, anything with OMG electronics!). But now we're on the other side of that. Just hypothesizing, but top 40 has never seemed more ... digital disco.

you realize it's kind of silly to say music driven by MIDI synths can't be played on a piano, right

it is a shame that the woman behind "burning up" and "holiday" has been reduced to digital disco

At this point in her career, better this than jazz standards.

More the case that her most comfortable sound is now pop's default setting and instead of accentuating the differences the new single merges with everything else, which makes her sound like one of many. Stuart Price's Confessions production is "digital disco" but it doesn't sound like David Guetta and this one does.

i don't even care enough about her to want to defend her but it seems off to not accept she's had club music from the start

(as opposed to "buying into it" now)

xpost Anything can be played on piano or guitar - notes are notes and chords are chords - but it's not really ideal for this sort of thing. It's all about the thump and the rhythm/repetition; the robotic-ness is its appeal, not the melody. (/geir)

Just saying, you can sing Madonna's best stuff in the shower. Or in the car. Or wherever. The newer stuff is subservient to the beat. Which isn't a bad thing! But there are many people who do it better than Madonna.

I don't see the distinction. You can't really sing Vogue or Justify My Love in the shower. She's always had club tracks which don't make sense detached from the beat.

I agree with that (though you can totally sing the chorus to Vogue!). But I'd still say songs like that are the clubby outliers of her ouevre. Lately she's been overtly playing catch-up with club trends rather than originating them, and the look doesn't suit her.

the only reason you can't sing Vogue in the shower is because no one remembers how the verses go

You can't really sing Vogue or Justify My Love in the shower.

believe me, you most certainly can.

though you can't really sing Justify My Love at all

xpost They goes like this: dooby-doo, dooby-doo-doo-do-do-doo-do, dooby-do-do-doo.

dooby-doo, dooby-doo-doo-do-do-doo-do, dooby-do-do-doo
(that's what it's for)

You do the Lenny Kravitz doh-doh-doh-dohhhh part and then you pick up the shower nozzle like a mic and say "Love me! That's Right! Love me!"

You guys sound like Paul fucking McCartney.

Thumbs aloft!

How complex does a hook have to be before you can sing it in the shower?

Exactly 39% complex.

I just mean I have no difficulty imagining LMFAO lyrics can be heard in your more tragic dorm bathrooms. The problem is less that new music is unsuitable to Madonna's gifts so much as Madonna's new music is tired. Cher pulled off digital disco ten years ago.

If Madonna tried to play "Into The Groove" on guitar it would sound like "I Deserve It."

Madonna's gift, as such, used to be (besides not sounding tired) not sounding like she was breathlessly, belatedly playing catch-up.

I just mean I have no difficulty imagining LMFAO lyrics can be heard in your more tragic dorm bathrooms. The problem is less that new music is unsuitable to Madonna's gifts so much as Madonna's new music is tired. Cher pulled off digital disco ten years ago.

― da croupier, Tuesday, February 28, 2012 11:04 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've never been happier to be done school.

isn't "tragic dorm bathrooms" redundant