[Madame X album general discussion]

6 minutes ago, Bretticus said:

I said why I compared it to IB (in my opinion) - it's not an album that I can see myself putting on in the future when I just want to hear some Madonna music as they are more concept or "theatrical" albums that don't suit a casual listen outside of a couple of tracks (in my opinion) - and no need to be passive aggressive!  

Great! Thanks for clarifying. I understand better now. All love and light here. Nothing personal. I’m only here to discuss Madonna.

[Madame X album general discussion]

37 minutes ago, Bretticus said:

Please don’t put words in my mouth. I just said that like I’m Breathless, I think I will need to be in a particular mood to want to listen to MX in the future the same as I do with IB. Both are great albums, I didn’t state they were similar in any way nor did I state that I don’t like MX or IB either! 

I appreciate your explanation, but you did state they were sort of alike in how you viewed them. My bad for asking you to share your opinion in greater detail. I  obviously misunderstood, but it was an invitation to debate. That’s what a forum is. Prime example of why there is no longer much of an active Madonna forum. 

[Madame X album general discussion]

2 hours ago, Jazzy Jan said:

@Bretticus is a great Madonna fan who is just giving his honest opinion and saying that he personally feels the same way about Madame X and I'm Breathless. He does not need to explain any further about how he feels and was not overly critical. He has posted  enough on this forum for us to know he is a dedicated fan. 

 

I’ll ask my own questions, thanks. 

[Madame X album general discussion]

18 hours ago, Bretticus said:

I’m still listening to it in full often as it’s still a new piece of work.... but I can see it becoming an album you only listen to every once in a while when you are in the mood. It’s kind of like I’m Breathless to me... doesn’t fit in with her other albums and isn’t something you’d just put on because you want to listen to some Madonna music.

I’m interested in hearing more about what you actually mean about it being like I’m Breathless. If we want to debate the quality of something, it seems we should be able to deepen our analysis a little more than this. Otherwise it’s just a matter of personal taste as already stated. It’s a fundamental issue in the lack of dynamism and detail within criticism of this album. I’m certainly not arguing that you can’t dislike it or find it a lesser work in her canon, but please make the effort to elaborate. Because it makes no sense to the other forum members if you don’t.

In my view, I’m Breathless and Madame X have nothing in common other than perhaps if the listener simply categorizes all genres outside of mainstream pop as inferior. One was a loose soundtrack to a period action movie that had its pastiche roots in jazz and musical theater with the addition of an infamous global house anthem. The entire album showcases Madonna as an agile and disciplined vocalist The other is a broadly stroked global genre-hopping, deeply personal album on which the level of meticulous vocal production is both its genius and its greatest flaw. 

 

[Madame XY. Creating a playlist. Help needed]

Nice! Here’s my X/Y

Medellin/La Isla Bonita

Dark Ballet/Paradise (Not for me)

God Control/Future Lovers

Future/Why’s It So Hard?

Batuka/Nobody’s Perfect

Killers who are partying/Mother and Father

Crave/Love Tried To Welcome Me

Crazy/Borderline

Come Alive/Survival

Extreme Occident/You’ll See

Faz Gostoso/Into The Groove

Bitch I’m Loca/Human Nature

I don’t search I Find/Rescue Me

Looking for Mercy/Ghosttown

I Rise/Burning Up

Funana/Love Makes The World Go Round

Back that up to the beat/Super Pop

Ciao Bella/Get Together

[Madame X album general discussion]

Traditionally concept albums and cohesive theme-based albums have fared much better with critics. We are all subject to unconscious bias as a result of the way we were educated, and cultural and intellectual snobbery had always traditionally dictated the zeitgeist until relatively recently. I can’t say populist-driven tastes have made for a particularly impressive shift in quality and diversity, but fortunately the upside of the “democratization” of the music industry post-streaming has at least made variety accessible to those who seek it out. 

P.S. thanks @Voguerista! More a temporary sojourn than a comeback.

[Madame X album general discussion]

It’s been a while since I last posted. With a lot going on personally and collectively, I was glad to have my unique rapport with Madame X the way I did with Madonna albums when I was a child and teenager.

Opinions are what make this forum function. Without discussion, which includes differing opinions, there is no passion. Without passion there is no longer a measurable fan base. I sense there has been a surging reluctance to contribute by many members since the release of the Madame X album because anything short of syncophantry is often shot down. Personally, I feel it’s almost impossible in the modern era to not be affected by the defeatism of the measure of relevance of any musical release by its chart performance, validation by the media and streaming presence. While some are able to accept that Madonna is far from her commercial peaks of yore, and are therefore able to contextualize the quality of her work outside of its mass cultural validity, others cannot relate to music without it forming the Zeitgeist. I think it’s important to recognize this within the fan base because it is a real phenomenon that we have had to adapt to her dwindling mainstream appeal after a very long imperial phase. It’s been a bittersweet chapter in Madonna’s career in my opinion. Almost nobody is able to harness cross-generational interest in this era of the minute attention span, and she gave it a really good shot. When something isn’t embraced by the masses, it’s invalidating for the fan...particularly in Madonna’s case because she has been expected to prove herself at every turn for 36 years, and there’s almost a collective gleefulness in being able to dismiss her value due to being less commercially relevant.

I find this album mostly cohesive (I define cohesive in this case as the vast majority of songs that make up the collective album forming a common flow of style, production techniques, and quality), but it has flaws too. This doesn’t prevent me from enjoying it, but I’ll admit my enthusiasm for it was tempered by the sometimes schizophrenic forum dialog (Eurovision was a nightmarish kickoff, and I’m not referring to her vocals) in the first month following its release, and so I personally stepped away. Musically, I find Madame X to be quietly triumphant. There are some beautiful melodies, and the warm subtlety of many of the songs is what gives an overall richness to the album experience. That said, paradoxically, and at the risk of enticing a mob mentality clapback, a considerable part of what I do not enjoy as much about Madame X is Madonna’s voice. There are certainly magnificent moments; Looking For Mercy, Crazy, Come Alive, Extreme Occident, and Killers are all glorious Madonna vocal classics for me. However, scattered throughout are moments when I find it to sound weak and limited, poorly produced, and more often diminished by bells and whistles that I don’t find to showcase her strengths. Again, I understand this is totally subjective, and also somewhat unfair considering that 99% of today’s pop is pitch corrected and heavily filtered. Unfortunately I do think some fans and casual listeners have interpreted the vocal manipulations as a reinforcement of the notion that Madonna’s voice itself has deteriorated substantially, and that it requires this type of distortion. This is just an opinion, and I respect anyone else’s if it is coming from a constructive place. I’m fully aware that Madonna has defended her artistic license to use her voice as a malleable instrument, and I am in total agreement with that, but that doesn’t negate the way something is received by the individual ear. I prefer when her voice sounds intimate and accessible, but preferences are just like opinions and assholes. We all have them. 

["You're going to have to be more specific". Madame X annihilates Dutch interviewer]

Yeah. Watching it again, it seems pretty clear she either remembers or was reminded of their last encounter, which, as he highlights himself, showed him being an asshole the first time around. She had every reason to give him the death stare, and that petulant little Dutch pride jab! He really was ineffective if his intention was to get her to address her vocal performance at Eurovision. I kept trying to see it as him being kind by skirting the matter and allowing room for her to offer her own response, but it was his final interview, and it was pretty spineless to then edit the piece to make her look evil and hypersensitive!

["You're going to have to be more specific". Madame X annihilates Dutch interviewer]

3 hours ago, Ladyplus said:

This interview is soooo heavily edited, it is hard to tell if the answers/reactions match the questions. A highly poor and trashy interview. Unwatchable.

You are right. A part of what made me uncomfortable throughout the interview is that they edited it to fit a preconceived notion of what Madonna is; imperial, imperious, and impenetrable. The problem with that is that while she is not always those things, she can often get testy in interviews when she isn’t in the mood, and she generally shuts down once she reaches that state of mind. This comes across as arrogant, and even petulant to many. 

Yes, it is the responsibility of the journalist to direct the interview in a way where that won’t happen if that is indeed the goal. However, this Dutch interviewer was clearly seeking a reaction. He didn’t get it as Madonna handles herself with the utmost professionalism, but as a fan it definitely feels like a missed opportunity. If it had been better approached as a question, we might have had a definitive response that would have put the Eurovision elephant outside the room once and for all. Oh well. 

Thank you to everyone who expresses differing opinions on these matters without just shutting people down for not agreeing. It really helps me as a fan to reassess the way I experience Madonna, and challenges me to gain. a broader perspective. 

["You're going to have to be more specific". Madame X annihilates Dutch interviewer]

12 minutes ago, Lolo said:

Kind of. Also sometimes she seems perfectly fine with questions that aren’t middle of the road and another time she clearly prefers to stick to the routine. You can almost never tell why, is the interviewer, the air, the quality of drinks or cushions... Sometimes she’s patient and sometimes not. I’d be terrified to interview her cause her mood seems so random, at least to me. 

Totally...there’s definitely something erratic about her demeanor in these interviews. I have noticed that she’s mostly been quite subdued and almost passive for Madonna in a good deal of them, but this one just made me uncomfortable. There are certain topics that just seem to trigger her, even though they are quite logical questions, and it isn’t like the journalists know what each other has already asked...He had an agenda, but he was smart enough to flatter her immensely with the talk of all she had done to facilitate his own personal freedoms, and the praise he offered regarding the album. Sometimes I feel she also has an inability to show indulgence for the fact that English is a secondary language for most of the interviewers I’ve seen her devour. I’d have thought that after so many years she’d get the subtleties of the raw spontaneous translations the questions she is asked sometimes represent, but she can be quite ferociously dismissive. I imagine it just depends on her patience levels, bolstered by possible hunger, or maybe she needs to pee and those corsets are just torture on her bladder!

["You're going to have to be more specific". Madame X annihilates Dutch interviewer]

I’d imagine that as no one asked her about the Eurovision performance in any other interview, it probably was listed as topic non grata. He probably breached that agreement, which is why he was immediately shut down. She had ample time to address what he was masking in euphemism. She was clearly aware of it, and her response of staring him down and playing ignorant was as brilliantly defiant as it seemed steeped in foolish pride. That said, she seemed irritable from the beginning. I can’t imagine how dull it must be to do a press junket for two days, but in all honesty she really doesn’t have to approach her promo this way. She’s chosen to do it in hyper-concentration for over twenty years, and it always seems to try her patience to such a degree that she can come across as frankly rude and condescending. 

[Madame X album general discussion]

6 minutes ago, KalamazooJay said:

Thanks for the reminder. And continuously telling us what we should and should not understand. 

Agreed. And PJ Harvey did make a pop album. Two actually. One was called To Bring You My Love, and the other was Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea.

I was also happy to hear from Madonna’s mouth that the finger snaps in I Don’t Search are actually sampled from Vogue. 

[Great new Madonna interview with Mojo (Edit: Added the missing page!)]

Loved her response to William Orbit’s name being mentioned! She shut that down fast. 

[iHeartRadio Icons Madonna Interview]

26 minutes ago, alquemist said:

"Some people think I want to get into the groove while eating spaghetti".  She's so funny

BTW what's that moojie eucalyptus peppermint thing she's talked about?

 

It’s a Muji aroma diffuser for essential oils...

[Madame X - - UK Chart/General Promo Discussion]

I think we were all shocked, in dismay and there was so much invested in the hype that the fallout felt deeply personal. I don’t even remember my perspective at the time anymore other than a feeling of being disappointed, but I agree with you that the performance hindered her promotional rollout enormously. It was a huge misstep. But I still love Future, and wanted so much for it to play universally. We are all fighting over the same thing at the end of the day. We wanted Madonna to be universally embraced and for this to be perceived as an official third-coming, but the new material isn’t getting heard because of all of the negative fallout. But I still have hope that she is being true to her artistic vision and that is fundamentally important to me as a fan, and I hope it translates via something she has yet to reveal via performance.

[Madonna NYC Pride thread]

14 minutes ago, acko said:

The CIAO ITALIA broadcast in Europe is single handedly responsible 4 the 'Madonna Can't SIng Live' reputation in Europe. I've said this before.
I know a lot girls under the age of 10 at the time who handed in their fan cards, after... and gave me all their scrap books.

My mother was shocked too

Yup!!! And Blond Ambition was the same...I was living in France when they broadcast the Barcelona show as @karbatal mentioned. I watched it with two high school friends and one of their parents, and while the production was more than impressive, the shock at her vocals was palpable! The immediate reinforcement was that she was an expert entertainer who couldn’t sing, and who used a lot of metaphorical “pyrotechnics” to make up for her weaknesses. I don’t think that ever changed in most casual observers’ eyes, and they were accepting of that. Then Madonna got critical acclaim after a tough few years of public flogging and I think we as a fanbase got a little cocky and started to curate Madonna’s vocal output selectively because we had enough fine examples of her at the best of her ability. It’s just a theory, but I feel that as social media seems to blur the line between opinion and fact, we have just fallen further into tribalism based upon whatever we all want to believe. Madonna seems acutely aware of this, and I admire her capacity to keep moving forward in spite of all the noise. It’s a choice to not be swayed by public demand and opinion, but I understand it as a strength, not a weakness. 

 

[Madonna NYC Pride thread]

4 minutes ago, karbatal said:

As @promise to try said a couple of days ago, we fans got the FRIGHT of our lives during the Who's That Girl tour already and the live video for Causing a Commotion. The fact that Madonna's live voice was an issue after Eurovision really surprised me! I mean, Blond Ambition was broadcasted from Barcelona to the whole Europe and let's face it, her throat was at her worst moment ever! And 2019 comes and it gets viral. I blame the stupid social media. 

Exactly! I’ve discussed this with fellow fans regarding past performances. I remember watching the VMAs in 1987. It was the first time I had that “Oh no. What will people think” feeling...When I was a kid I was acutely aware that in Ciao Italia she sounded rough in comparison to her studio vocals, but with hindsight, the athleticism of her performance and her command of the stage were actually emboldened by the forcefulness of her voice with all its limitations and idiosyncratic expressions. That continues to be the case for me, but there is a level of negative mass hysteria that permeates the dialogue because of social media that drowns out rationalism and objectivity, both positive and negative.

[Madonna on Jimmy Fallon]

He is a 60 minutes correspondent. Perhaps that’s what she is doing.

[Madonna @ NYC pride - CONFIRMED !]

The contrarianism of some of these rebuttals is frankly bizarre. They don’t even make sense. You either respect an artist’s choice as fundamental or you don’t. Popularity and art rarely coexist. Art is often uncomfortable, politically divisive and rarely heralded at the moment it reaches the zeitgeist. Taste, preference and fantasy are simply a part of the process that gives art context and meaning for the person having the experience. Enjoyment is subjective and suggestible. From these points, you can make your own choice as to how you choose to experience Madonna’s Pride performance. 

[Madonna @ NYC pride - CONFIRMED !]

Just now, Ai Papi Si. said:

No actually I do get to speak about that with some degree of authority cuz I lived there and went to that club almost every weekend from the years of 2014-2016 when I had friends who worked there. I was there just a month before it happened. I know ppl who were wounded and one who died. She really better watch it with this video. And this is just coming from me. Imagine how ppl who were there might interpret it. 

I’m sorry for your experience. I’m getting out of this thread because you have your reasons for your passionate responses, and I respect that. 

[Madonna @ NYC pride - CONFIRMED !]

9 minutes ago, Ai Papi Si. said:

This is such a reach.

Madonna used to be good at this. She has so many weapons in her arsenal to give people the message you just tried to convey. INSTEAD, , when it came time to pick her weapons, she chooses a banana (Future), an old rotting fish (American Life), potpourri (I Rise) and some other as-yet undisclosed weapon (if its Vogue, I'd say Vogue is like a samurai sword). That's what her weaponry is consisting of these days when it comes to high profile live performances. That's BONKERS. 

Have we forgotten Live To Tell? How about oh, I dunno... Express Yourself? How about Deeper and Deeper? How about some of the new stuff that's really empowering and sexy, like Medellin? Or something controversial yet hauntingly catchy like God Control which drives home a massive issue while still sounding celebratory? 

She's gotten caught up with messages just like @Jeby said, and she's abandoning imagination as a result. This is why I am terrified of the God Control video. A ridiculous, graphic, or otherwise crude statement echoing Pulse (a very sore subject for American gays - just ask me) will make Europe's recent about-turn look like a blown fuse. It could be nuclear winter for her here. I hope she is being smart about this video. This is not 2003 with the American Life video. This is 2019.

Ugh this fucking woman. She has me wrapped around her finger but she's got me worried about her. 

If she was to sing Express Yourself I can guarantee half of her contrarian fans would complain she was lazy in revisiting an old chestnut. If she did Deeper and Deeper, it would be that her voice sounds bad, and how does the song reflect anything Pride-related? If she sang Live To Tell, the porta potties would be overflowing. Im sure you meant no offense, but I’ll interject that I don’t need to ask you what is a sore subject for American gays. I am one. None of us gets to speak on behalf of a majority. But I feel this conversation isn’t evolutionary. It’s torally tribal, and I guess that’s the problem. Madonna just can’t please every faction of her fanbase, casual and fervent, the GP, the haters, the ignorant and the cynical. It’s impossible. 

[Madonna @ NYC pride - CONFIRMED !]

Maybe Madonna doesn’t feel her place at Pride is to cater to the desires of people who will run to the porta potties to do drugs because she isn’t flaunting glitter and glee while singing Rescue Me. Maybe she doesn’t feel it's her “duty” to entertain in that manner, and instead is focused on waking her audience up because the type of gay male who sees Pride as a drug and fuck fest should probably be reminded that there are still millions of gay men around the world who don’t have the privilege of paying hundreds of dollars to feel they are part of a microcosmic elite, or deciding that because they can’t count the hairs on their chest anymore and their metabolism is faltering they will redefine as bears. Instead these people are stuck under oppressive regimes where they can be legally discriminated against, beat up and murdered without consequence, and they need international solidarity. Maybe she wants to be partly political and partly celebratory because that actually makes sense. Maybe some people will have the common decency to listen to and appreciate her playing an acoustic Future on her guitar before flipping the vibe to Vogue. 

Maybe people who have been in the know a few times aren’t always in the know, or they receive false or misconstrued information. Or maybe her 2019 American Life revamp will be all disco balls and ketamine, and she’ll perform it in a diamond-studded g-string with her tits painted in rainbow colors with Ariana Grande and a Donna Summer hologram on backing vocals. 

[Madonna @ NYC pride - CONFIRMED !]

6 minutes ago, Ai Papi Si. said:

I’m all for being wrong. I don’t like threads like this either. They’re depressing as fuck. But if I can’t vent...?

[Madonna @ NYC pride - CONFIRMED !]

#justiceforfuture 

I think you’re in for a surprise. Just saying.

[Madonna @ NYC pride - CONFIRMED !]

Oh, I think everyone understands your frustration. You don’t agree with Madonna’s choices, and this is a forum devoted to Madonna, and it’s great that we all get to express ourselves in matters related to her with honesty and passion. But she has a hat with the words “Wake Up” embroidered on it too. She’s rehearsed Crave and Batuka too!