Madonna: Classic Or Dud

Typical.

Absolute stone-cold *classic*, at least til she hooked up with the comedy cockney.

Burning Up should be covered by Britney Spears.

On Madonna: Classic. Finest song about a blow job ever.

As far as Madonna is concerned, the slew of fantastic singles she put out in the eighties and early nineties surely assures classic status, even if her last album did smell like a pile of dead dogs.

2. I am a tad suspicious of that view, though - it goes rather easy on the 80s work. There are a few 80s-Madonna tracks I really am very fond of: 'Papa Don't Preach', and, well... a few others. But I suspect there's a lot of waff filler, too, and that nostalgia is much in play here. Mind you, I always found most of the Like A Prayer LP excellent.

3. Nicole is right: intelligent and sensitive chap though Nick D is, he shouldn't hitch his colours - or anything much else - to Charlotte Raven's mast. The only thing worse than what Raven polemicizes against in that segment is the gal and her views themselves. She is constantly sounding off embarrassingly about things she knows nothing of, and (unlike us) getting paid loads for the privilege. There may be some truth in what ND quoted from her, but there's probably some idiocy and Burchillesque perversity too. And when she says 'Don't trust people who say Madonna's sexy' - well. That depends. I don't like the adjective one bit, and I wouldn't apply it to Madonna now, but if you held a bazooka to my head and made me apply it to anyone, it might have to be mid-80s Madonna.

Oh, Edward? "Burning Up" is Amazingly Brilliant. You are not alone.

"Don't Tell Me" comes across as being just as forced as "Music", I will admit. However, there's something about the way that song is written which also makes it sound more natural. (My guess is that the backing music supports the melody rather than distracts from it, although the unchartiable part of me wants to give "Music" bonus points for trying to keep me from noticing that Madonna didn't seem to come up with a tune for it.)

My general point was that I'm just bored stiff with talk about Madonna. The British media and associated chatterers just go on and on about her, her iconic status, her latest fucking hairstyle. I know this has been going on for years, ever since broadsheet writers and cultural studies lecturers latched onto her, but it seems to have got worse since she came over here.

And it makes me feel old to know that most teenagers are probably wondering what on earth all the fuss is about. Sorry, appealing to the opinions of imaginary teenagers is stupid thing to do.

I don't dislike her. I don't even care about Guy Ritchie. I just think most of the talk about her these days is regurgative rather springing from any real interest in 'Tell Me' or her latest haircut.

Like I, and almost everyone else here seems to say, 80s Madonna - classic. Since then, zzzzzz.....

1. I've always liked Terry Wogan - but god, he was lame when he interviewed Madonna.

2. Her accent - the cod-Brit one she adopted from late 80s on (?): dud.

3. What a load of piffle re. 'We all love her cos she lives in England now'. But that's probably been covered above.

4. The music seemed to get better over the years. I was so struck when 'Who's That Girl?' came on. I hadn't heard it in AGES, had always known I liked it, and it still sounded good. Some (to my ears) didn't: don't care for 'Vogue' much.

4. But slightly larger (though still terribly 'subjective') point: I was surprised at how bad the early stuff seemed. 'Holiday', 'Lucky Star', 'Like A Virgin': yes, they still have the predictable 80s nostalgia value. BUT even as I kind of enjoy that, I seem to hear a naffness, a tackiness in them. In fact one virtue of this prog was that I seemed to see the early stuff as though for the first time, as a kid. It reminded me of seeing early Madonna not as a loveable 80- retro icon of our childhood, but as The Big New Pop Star c. 1984. How did she seem, that way? Arrogant - self-satisfied - unsubtle - overrated - sinister - smug. 'Like A Virgin' felt crass and brazen. I'd never heard it sound so BAD in 15 years or more.

So in a way, one thing it made me feel was a resemblance (from my POV) between early Madonna and today's chart sensations (the people that Tom E likes). It made me feel that she had been just as bad as them. I hadn't felt that for a long time.

That said, her music's actually pretty damn good - "Cherish", "Open Your Heart", probably the entirety of _True Blue_. (Not that this is news to anyone but myself.) She's a crap actress, though, and a crapper singer, especially after her _Evita_ lessons - who the hell taught her how to hold notes? And WHY did they teach her that? And why is she posing with a guitar now like it's a revelation? "Oh, damn, I can play a C chord! This'll impress people!" And I like her better as a brunette. But she survived posing nude with Vanilla Ice, which is a skill I can only hope to emulate.

(And has anyone even mentioned _Ray of Light_ in terms of a quality slice of Ciccone "youth"? Or is there an anti-William Orbit contingent on this list that'll shit on such notions?)

But it's a lose-lose situation, this sort of talk. You praise her like you should, you're just towing the line with the rest of the acolytes. You disapprove, you're a wack playa hata. Just accept her as true American royalty and step away from the doors.

(But, lord, hearing her butcher "Like A Virgin" on that VH1 Girlie Show special was wretched. She turned it into a German cabaret number. A SLOW cabaret number. Lugubrious and woefully self- indulgent, Kubrick-style. "You're so fine, unt you're mine!")

'Ah but thats just the point, she's a weathervane, a survivor and a late 20th century pop icon'. Hmmmmmmmmm.

Klassic

(to be precise, he is not strictly speaking the worst - I find it hard to visualise anyone who could be a worse writer than Imran Ahmed of the NME - but that wouldn't quite have the same universal appeal when it comes to chat-ups)

Only someone who doesn't appreciate pop culture could say Madonna's a dud.

From what I heard Portillo was trying to persuade her to be the star turn at the next Tory election rally. Still she's moved back to LA now, so the sight of her standing next to Bob Monkhouse, Jim Davidson and Ben Elton (prediction) will not come to pass.

You're probably right at that. What the fuck happened to him anyway?

She is also a very crafty song-writer. What is so amazing is how she plays with song structure. Guys if you have ever written songs, you know it takes a musical-genius to write that many styles of song-writing. It is fucking hard. I don't know how she does it but it is her. Yea I know she collaborates but from what I have read, she is always the primary lyricists. She has written very complex songs. Her use of different song structures is nothing short of brilliance. And to make them all hits like she does is pretty astounding.

I am not interested in the petty fighting between fans of different singers that goes on. I am just giving my opinion as a musician. Madonna is the real deal. Even other bands I talk with that aren't into her music give her props for being the real deal. In our circles, we respect Madonna even if we aren't into her music. She is a classic all the way and will go down as one of the top 10 greatest female singer/song-writers of all time. She is a musical genius.

Didn't realize people actually used such terminology.

Oh, and classic or dud, she represents all the worst of postmodern media saturation, celebrity for celebrity's sake, nihilistic materialism, etc. I root for her stalkers.

I didn't listen to her seriously until that point as well. She's great.

So maybe I can't be objective.

A living legend.

And the video of Hollywood is just stunning. As are the remixes.

Yeah, it's been decades since she phoned in a tour, based on what I've seen

We lucked out and got face value tickets for the LA show.

yeah, I found the fan club presale password on Reddit last night and there were a few tix left last night

as of now, idk

Tour delayed. I guess she was in the ICU for a bacterial infection? Scary.

Jesus

https://preview.redd.it/dx9l31hs8t8b1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=7ddad0025559ac50a5d159bbba39b4f99c4a7af4

yikes - get well soon madge!

Get well soon

She has been discharged from the hospital, good news.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66058349

FWIW, Susan Siedelman is appearing at Roxy Cinema in NYC on Thursday, July 27, to do a Q&A for a post-screening discussion of Desperately Seeking Susan which starts at 7pm.

I love the joke with the pyramid jacket – where Susan tells the guy in the thrift store (when she’s trading it for the boots) that it belonged to Jimmy Hendrix… and when Roberta comes in later, asking about it, the guy looks her over and tells her it was owned by Elvis Presley.

North American summer tour cancelled.

We saw her last night at Madison Square Garden. For all the complaints about late start times, once the show gets going it's a non-stop barrage of the Great Pop Canon - rename the tour Madonna's Machine Gun of Hits. The show ends abruptly and ridiculously (not unlike a shootout) running right up against MSG's power-off deadline. It's bass heavy - some songs slam when they should groove. The Michael Jackson tribute interstitial is weird and uncomfortably longer that it should be (like a bad SNL sketch) but ignorable coming after a spectacular "Rain." OTOH, she sounds great and the setlist is unstoppable. Old age and treachery beats youth and exuberance again. I can't imagine anything better from a Madonna show in 2024.

Spoilers here: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/madonna/2024/madison-square-garden-new-york-ny-43accf6f.html

oh shit

Act VI
Bedtime Story
Ray of Light
Rain

!!!

I think if the poll was run again, I'd vote "Don't Tell Me" as #1

I love this report thank you!!

I talked my wife into going with her friends, she's going to have a blast. What I love about Madonna tours is that while any number of pop pretenders understand spectacle, very few have the personality to do something particularly compelling with it. To their credit Swift and Beyonce both seem to have learned the right lessons from larger than life presentations of the past, but erstwhile peers like that are few and far between.

I was going to sit this out even though I've never been to her shows, but a friend who's a diehard fan treated me to a show when his partner couldn't go, and it was a pretty great spectacle - honestly, maybe the best I've ever been to in terms of production design. (Maybe the one U2 show I saw had the best set piece thanks to that enormous rocketship/claw thing, but Madonna had like a bazillion different sets that were all amazing.)

huh

For the first time on a Madonna tour, there was no live band – according to musical director Stuart Price, this is to let the original recordings shine.

yeah, I noticed TV shows also stopped hiring real string musicians, to let those EastWest plugins shine

lol

No one wants to say “to save some dough”

"Ok Madonna, we've looked at the tour budget and we are a little over. We could either cut the light show, or cut the musicians, what do you think?"

Madonna brought Kylie onstage for a couple songs last night in L.A. and i think the earth's axis shifted.

My wife was there... she thought it was a little odd that they performed "I Will Survive" (and then played just a few bars of "Can't Get You Out of My Head"). Her overall review of the show was mixed...

pretty obvious it was just a quick cameo, maybe somewhat impromptu based on Kylie being in town at the time, and that they'd have to do a couple songs they would both know, just a couple logical picks. def more about the iconic moment being created and not the production values.

Apparently it was the slot in the show where she normally does "Express Yourself."

Which she apparently does acoustic, for some reason, right?

Oh, I don't know... she said "I Will Survive" was acoustic.

She took a pic of Lenny Kravitz walking up the aisle... she also saw Jeff B3zo$ there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1RAd9hPhUU

yes, this acoustic number is part of the show and she’s been alternating between I Will Survive and Express Yourself. there is also the vogueing competition segment, and a different guest judge gets invited in each city (we got pamela anderson in vancouver), so perhaps the plan was to have kylie as a guest judge and they decided to use the occasion to do something more?

She called out a person from the stage for sitting down only to discover they were in a wheelchair!

yeah that was pretty cringe

still in awe of how amazing her show was last night. her voice was pretty much destroyed by the end of the show last night (she was drinking Jager all night on stage and yelling, so no shocker), but she's never been known for being a great singer (though sadly that did cause her to outright ruin "Take a Bow", lol).

but the entire show was beautiful, the theatrical jaunt through the decades of her life were incredible, and considering how hateful our Governor is to the LGBTQIA2S+ community, it was great to see something so sex positive and openly celebratory of all orientations and identities in our state. didn't hurt that the song choices were ace - "Bad Girl" was incredible, "Live to Tell", "Everything", "Burning Up" were some of my favorites. she did fully lip sync "Ray of Light", which is not unexpected, but that was incredibly staged.

but man I wish she'd stop demanding her shows be at 84 degrees, god that was hot. lol.

she was drinking Jager all night

gross

lol otm.

I was kinda side-eyeing her, "you want the arena at 84 degrees for your voice and yet you're ruining it anyway by drinking that all night".

Was it a prop, like David Lee Roth's "Jack Daniels" bottle that was full of iced tea?

I thought DLR (and Michael, and probably EVH, for sure Alex, who had a trash can by his set for barf) was drinking the real thing, but he accused the Clash of drinking iced tea.

I was close (courtesy Hagar's memoir):

They would wake up Al about twenty minutes before show-time. There was always a case of tall Schlitz cans. He would shotgun three or four beers and get his buzz on. He would walk out onstage with a couple more cans in his hands, pound those, and drink the rest of the case during the two-hour show. The crew would put out these big rubber trash cans for him to piss in during the show. After practically every song, he’d piss in the trash can, pound a couple of beers, and start playing again. Sometimes he’d really be fucked up. In the middle of a song, he’d just get up off the drums to take a piss or chug a beer. Eventually he started wearing one of those helmets with beer holders on the side, and straws. At the end of the tour, he needed some help.

xxpost kind of the reverse, she was drinking out of a Budweiser bottle all night, then explained that it wasn't really filled with Budweiser, that it was Jager.

(possible it was water and she was kidding, but judging by how raspy and dry-mouthed she seemed, I doubt it).

my mom was dancing and singing throughout the whole show

Guy Pratt, the British sessioneer who's played with Pink Floyd among other giants, breaks down his fantastic bass part in "Like a Prayer." Check out his playing at 12:00.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yluPCLc1ltg

That is one of my favorite clips of all time, pretty sure I've posted it somewhere on ILX once or twice.

(His book is great, btw, especially if you want some colorful Robert Palmer tales.)