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During and After: How Complete was each era?


cjc

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At the end of each era did it feel complete? Has each era been revisited enough in tours and compilation albums?

Madonna:

At least 4 of the 5 singles had full scale videos. (Holiday is still debated). All 5 singles were performed live on various TV shows and on the Virgin Tour. In subsequent tours the 5 singles have all been performed and the album has been quite well represented on compilation albums.

Like A Virgin/ VisionQuest:

Of the 7 singles only 2 had full scale videos. All were performed on the Virgin Tour and all bar Gambler and Angel have done well from subsequent tours and compilations.

True Blue:

All 5 singles had full scale videos. The album was nearly all performed in the Who's That Girl Tour. 4 of the 5 singles have featured on compilation albums and have been performed live several times in subsequent tours. Only the title track seems to be ignored. Possibly the most complete era.

Who's That Girl/ You Can Dance:

An era that never really seemed to get going or know where it was going. 4 singles, only one video. 3 of the Who's that Girl songs performed on that tour and only one revisited since. Era is not well represented compilation albums either.

Like A Prayer:

The different single releases in various countries towards the end gives the impression of no concrete plan of how to end the era. Lack of video for Keep It Together supports this. Wasn't really any TV shows/ Award ceremony performances (bar Express Yourself). The fact that the album had to share it's tour with I'm Breathless robbed us of many possible great performances. Apart from Like A Prayer and Express yourself this album hasn't been revisited live. Only the 1st 3 singles have appeared on compilations.

I'm Breathless/ Immaculate Collection:

I'm Breathless is not badly represented live given it is a period soundtrack album and of course Vogue has been performed many a time. Justify my Love has only been performed live once and Rescue Me is still waiting a live performance. The fact that the 2nd and last singles from both albums had no video made leaves it feel like an incomplete era.

Erotica:

6 singles and only one with no video but that was not released in many countries and at least had the MTV performance. Bad Girl and Fever had the SNL performance. The Girlie Show Tour had 5 of the 6 singles and a couple of album tracks performed. Crime that Bad Girl was missed and has never been performed since. However, at the time this did feel like a complete era. Since then hasn't been revisited much in tours and compilation albums. GHV2 had only 2 Erotica tracks against 4 from Bedtime Stories and only 1 Erotica track was on Celebration making it the most under-represented album on Celebration.

Bedtime Stories:

Well represented of single releases on GHV2. A few live performances of the singles were welcomed and by the time of the 4th single it did feel that the single releases had run there course and we all looked forward to the tour that never materialised. What have we had since, Human Nature a zillion times and every time a tour is announce fans hoping Take A Bow and Bedtime Story will be performed. Think we have all given up on any of the other album tracks being performed.

Something To Remember:

Possibly one of the most confusing single release schedules with video for unreleased single and different countries getting different singles so at the time we were never quite sure when the era had ended. Shame that One more Chance never had a proper video or maybe another of the 2 songs that had videos could have been released instead. Apart from the few performances of You'll See on DWT and considering this was the 1st album that I'll Remember and This Used To Be My Playground the live representation of this album is virtually zero and doesn't look like changing much.

Evita:

Although Buenos Aires was lined up to be the 4th single and then was cancelled this era felt the right time to end. Although only You Must Love Me was the only song to have a different video to the film the other performances from the film make adequate stand alone videos. Although we've only had You Must Love Me performed all through a complete tour there seems no real desire in fandom to see the other songs performed.

Ray Of Light:

A very well represented album at the time with all 5 singles and many of the album tracks getting TV performances. Although there were rumours of Skin being the 6th single after Nothing Really Matters it feel like the album single releases had run their course. Since then 2 singles of one of her most popular albums on Celebration seems inadequate but the big crime is The Power Of Goodbye and Nothing Really Matters waiting to be performed on tour.

Music:

Very well represented live both at the time and subsequent tours and on compilation albums. At the time though What It Feels Like For A Girl was not the right way to end the single releases. Her popularity at the time could have easily delivered a 4th single from the album.

GHV2:

No new song. Enough said.

American Life:

Given the low chart performances of the later singles it was the right time to not release anymore. However, given the messed up nature of the Nothing Fails, Love Profusion releases with various release dates and no video for Nothing Fails just meant no one was sure when the single era for the album was due to end given rumours of a fifth single. The live performances at various promo events and TV shows showcased the album well but missing 2 singles on RIT and no subsequent performances of any of the tracks makes this era seem incomplete.

Confessions On A Dance Floor:

Loads of promo at the time and 10 songs performed on the tour. 4 singles with 3 full scale videos and one nearly full scale video by the time Jump was released it felt the era had come to an end. Of course Hung Up has been performed since and Sorry and Get Together are the only 2 likely candidates for inclusion on a future tour.

Hard Candy/ Celebration:

5 singles, 3 full scale videos. 1 thrown together live video several months too late. The era started off well but after Give It To Me it all seemed to fizzle out. Hopes for a 4th single from Hard Candy evaporated after the dismal performance of Miles Away. The Celebration video hardly had effort put into it but was better than what we got for the digital only radio-unfriendly release for Revolver. Still at least we got live performances for all of the singles and most of the Hard Candy tracks. An resolved era.

MDNA:

For the first time since the Music Album all of the singles had totally full scale videos. 9 songs were performed live on the tour. Shame apart from the superbowl there were no other live performances or promotion. By the time the totally non-performance of Turn Up The Radio on the charts we should have expected this to be the end but it just felt like it shouldn't have been given the lack of promotion and album tracks that should have been singles in the 1st place.

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Guest Not4Pussies

I think HC didn't have a full out era nor a consistent one. Would like to have seen more of mdolla and the boxing theme. It felt like she didnt know what to be.

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Really interesting recap, thank you. Makes you realize just how massive her back catalogue is, because one (or the casual fan) doesn't really realize all these gaps and "underepresentations" until one stops and thinks about it. Or when a tour comes along and she neglects those underrated gems time and time again.

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I really feel like American Life got the shaft, but I understand why and I am not sure more singles would've helped much. Hard Candy too - an album which could've gone platinum (probably) in the U.S. with a little more effort.

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I disagree with many of your assessments.

Erotica: A ton of promotion and effort went into this era, including a full-scale tour dedicated almost solely to the album (something which couldn't be said for her previous two tours), and she's performed both "Erotica" and "Deeper and Deeper" in recent years. "Rain" was an interlude and "Erotica" also played a part in the last tour. For an era that was kind of floppy at the time, it feels very complete.

Bedtime Stories: feels a little incomplete to me because of the lack of tour.

Music: Utterly incomplete era. Only three singles, the last of which might as well have not even been released.

American Life: Like Erotica, it also feels totally complete. Five singles including DAD, an EP (!), a full tour with many of the songs. It's another example of an album not doing well, so M put extra effort in. She even said the EP was a way to keep the album alive because she believed in it.

HC and MDNA feel a little incomplete because the tours cut promo short.

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I would challenge your definition of "era" as beginning and ending with each album's promotion. Throughout her career -- and especially in the 80s and early-90s -- her music has only ever been part of the equation. Her attitude, her fashion, and even her movies were all part of something larger.

I would challenge measuring an album's legacy only by its number of studio-filmed videos, presence on compilation albums and later live performance for these same reasons. To only look at these things is to ignore the fact that she changed the way an entire generation of women and girls dressed on more than one occasion -- and did so the first time around the album release that you give demerits to for having "only" two studio videos.

I think there are distinct eras in her career where her music, her videos, her movies, her tours, her fashion, and her attitude were distinct from one another. I think they divide pretty neatly into 13 eras and counting:

  1. Virgin era: 1982 - 1985
  2. Who's that Girl era: 1986 - 1988
  3. Blond Ambition era: 1989 - 1991
  4. Sex era: 1992 - 1993
  5. Mid-90s era: 1994 - 1995
  6. Evita era: 1996 - 1997
  7. Veronica Electronica era: 1998 - 1999
  8. Drowned World era: 2000 - 2001
  9. Esther era: 2002 - 2004
  10. Confessions era: 2005 - 2006
  11. Sticky and Sweet era: 2008 - 2009
  12. A big black hole: 2010 - 2011
  13. MDNA: 2012
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Guest bluejean

I don't think American Life got the shaft. She did an abundance of promo for that album, more than most others. Anything more would have been flogging a dead horse.

I think the most complete era is probably Ray of Light. She did alot of interviews, TV performances, magazine articles and 5 great music videos. The only thing missing was a tour.

Confessions had alot of promo but only really 1 1/2 decent videos.

The promo for Hard Candy and MDNA was of course woeful/non existent and I know everyone will step in say "it's about touring now." That may be the case but the eras still feel incomplete for us fans. The remixes (and I count that as part of the promo) were also sub par in comparison to earlier eras.

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The Eras that didn't feel complete to me were

American Life - After the amazing vdo that was Hollywood we got Love Profusion with a tones down image and it kind of ended there .

Confession - I love this era but I felt that she copped out on the vdos ( Sorry , GT & Jump ) . They should have been SPECTACULAR vdos since the songs were fantastic and the album was well received .

HC /MDNA - I felt that she just could be bothered with 1.5 good vdos at this point and just wanted to concentrate on the tours .

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The Eras that didn't feel complete to me were

American Life - After the amazing vdo that was Hollywood we got Love Profusion with a tones down image and it kind of ended there .

Confession - I love this era but I felt that she copped out on the vdos ( Sorry , GT & Jump ) . They should have been SPECTACULAR vdos since the songs were fantastic and the album was well received .

HC /MDNA - I felt that she just could be bothered with 1.5 good vdos at this point and just wanted to concentrate on the tours .

Confessions was so disappointing, video-wise. She should have brought John Renck back to direct the other videos. Would have been amazing to see all the videos flow into one another as a continued storyline the way the album tracks were remixed to flow into each other without interruption.

They tried to do a sequel video with "Sorry," but Jamie King is just the worst. F-ing horrible.

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Get Together deserved an amazing video and what we got was crap and forgettable. It should have been the 2nd single, everyone I play it to falls in love with it. I'm sure it could have been one of her huge hits if executed properly. Such a damn shame. All I can hope for is an utterly brilliant performance on a future tour.

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For me HC and MDNA felt very incomplete.

Miles Away barely limped out and was followed months later by a live video which was inexcusable. MDNA - they completely misjudged the power of social media and the project was dead in the water after two months. The tour came and went in the UK with little fanfare. MDNA also felt like that it didn't really have any theme. There were no magazine covers, no promotional tours and even the tour wasn't called MDNA at the start. It was just a random picture and 'The Madonna Tour' which was extremely odd.

Obviously, we know there is a clear shift towards the live side of things now and that is born out by her last two tours being two of the biggest ever but, as we've said before, I think a lot of us would have liked some more ongoing album promotion. Guy did say 'we're still learning' so it will be interesting to see what the next album brings.

As for the earlier eras, Madonna never really did that much promotion after the first album when she did lots of PAs and visited Europe. It was all about the videos and the tours. At the time, LAP went straight into IB then into IC which went into BAT so it seemed like one long era! I remember the period between the BAT and TUTBMP seemed like an eternity!

Music, the album fizzled but that was because Warner wanted Amazing to be released and the fans voted for Impressive Instant. I think Madonna got the hump, dropped Amazing from the tour and did little to promote GHV2.

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Guest SecretGarden

To me each era just seems complete, and personally it isn't about single releases or chart positions but the message and image she was going for with every era - each one had a definitive persona which extended to the music, videos and tour. The only one which I guess can be argued was ambigious was the MDNA era but even with that everything she did was a self reference, it was like an homage to previous eras but updated them to fit within the modern day, e.g the feminem/masculine section of the tour which was very 'Girlie Show' inspired, something I'm sure Madonna intentionally planned.

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Despite the shitty single choices, MDNA really felt like a consistent era to me. We got the Superbowl, a couple of really good TV interviews throughout the year as well as the Facebook and Twitter chats. Her 1960's look was consistent throughout the 3 videos and she had honestly never looked better and we got an amazing, incredible tour that in my opinion FINALLY topped Blond Ambition.

As a fan the single choices will always be painful for me and it's inexcusable that Guy put the failed promo down to 'we are still learning,' I mean, c'mon, this is Madonna here not some brand new artist. After four years out of the spotlight you would think there would have been a lot more put into the promotion. There are still ways to promote a record even without the artist present and we didn't even get that. No TV commercials, no magazine advertisments etc. At best she could have put one fucking week aside for some radio, a press day etc. We didn't even get the live videos we were promised from opening night. They either completely miscalculated things and assumed MDNA would have been a runaway success due to the anticipation or they just simply don't care about record sales and chart positions anymore. What really stumps me is why they never use the tour interludes for the videos. To the general public who don't go to Madonna concerts they would appear as new videos, only the fans would know that they were interludes or why not film the video's in advance, before she goes on tour and then release them accordingly, similar to Erotica in 1993 when Bad Girl, Fever and Rain were all filmed in quick succession whilst she focused on the tour.

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We know that Madonna doesn't do a heckuva lot of promo performances, compared to others- even withe the increase in the number of outlets in which to do so, she hasn't really upped the ante there, especially during an album's release week, or relatively close to it. But when she does, it's usually an event and memorable. But she has done more outside the USA since the late 90s, at least.

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The Hard Candy era suffered from releasing the wrong singles and a lack of aggressive promo.

The same thing happened with MDNA.

The last era that truly felt 'complete' was the COADF era.

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why not film the videos in advance, before she goes on tour and then release them accordingly, similar to Erotica in 1993 when Bad Girl, Fever and Rain were all filmed in quick succession whilst she focused on the tour.

I agree! When Madonna finishes an album and submits it to the record company,they should all sit down and pick the singles.Then,Madonna should film the videos immediately...*before* she begins the tour rehearsals.I hate when she has to make cheap-looking,unimaginative videos because of a lack of time ("Get Together","Jump","Give It 2 Me","Turn Up The Radio").

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But they did that.

They picked the singles in advance, they knew since the beginning those would be the singles of MDNA. Then they planned the filming of the videos. GMAYL in december, GGW after Super Bowl and before tour rehearsals and finally TUTR was initially planned o be filmed in Turkey but was changed to Italy.

They did plan everything, just not how some fans would like.

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^ And the reason you can't do all that in advance, which includes shelling out all the money to shoot the videos, is that things change. The album could have sold 50K the first week and fell off the charts within a month (I'm exaggerating to make the point), at which point Interscope would have said "We're done. We can't put any more money into this," OR a positive thing could have happened, like GMAYL becoming a huge #1 smash, after which the label might want to recreate that success by releasing something similar (like "Superstar") rather than GGW.

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It just seems like,once she starts tour rehearsals,everything else (single selection,videos) gets pushed aside.She suddenly doesn't have time to make great videos.That has certainly beenthe case with the last two albums.

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How do you explain Erotica then, all videos were shot quickly before she went into tour rehearsals.

The videos weren't filmed in that quick succession. Deeper and Deeper was filmed in November 92, Bad Girl was filmed in January, Fever in early April and Rain in mid-May. But the Bad Girl / Fever releases was a sign that the record company were jumpy about the poor performance of the album and singles so strategy and releases changed.

The difference is that her tours now start soon after the album launch. When she first started touring, the tours were often 18 months to two years after an album release and sometimes two albums had been released in the meantime. So, the projects were allowed to evolve with singles and videos. With S&S and MDNA, the tours started after only one or two singles so for the hardcore fans, the tour is the live show. For the casual music buyer, the MDNA era doesn't even exist and HC is basically the 4 minutes single.

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This is exactly why her albums should be released in November.She doesn't begin her tours until the summertime,so this would give her (and the label) plenty of time to promote the album effectively.She did this for COADF and everything worked out beautifully (let's excuse the cheap-looking "Jump" video,lol).

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Music, the album fizzled but that was because Warner wanted Amazing to be released and the fans voted for Impressive Instant. I think Madonna got the hump, dropped Amazing from the tour and did little to promote GHV2.

What? "Music" was her last album that was undeniably a massive worldwide hit. It sold 15 - 20 million copies, despite a greatest hits set featuring all three of its singles being released barely a year later.

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What? "Music" was her last album that was undeniably a massive worldwide hit. It sold 15 - 20 million copies, despite a greatest hits set featuring all three of its singles being released barely a year later.

I'm not denying it's success. What I mean was that the project had more life in it had they tried but they didn't. WIFLFAG came and went very quickly. We all wanted Impressive Instant to be released but nothing happened.

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I'm not denying it's success. What I mean was that the project had more life in it had they tried but they didn't. WIFLFAG came and went very quickly. We all wanted Impressive Instant to be released but nothing happened.

Was it weird at the time with it burning out?

I felt like Hard Candy kind of worked because of the tour and the promo tour and the huge success of 4 Minutes and things, but MDNA definitely felt incredibly stunted.

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I'm not denying it's success. What I mean was that the project had more life in it had they tried but they didn't. WIFLFAG came and went very quickly. We all wanted Impressive Instant to be released but nothing happened.

I seem to recall things very differently. Fans were chomping at the bit to see the release of "Impressive Instant," but that quickly came to an end as the tour began. From Barcelona on, I can only recall Madonna fans being extremely excited -- especially when news of a second greatest hits set leaked.

Far from incomplete, "Music" feels like one of the most fully-realized projects of her career to me.

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I seem to recall things very differently. Fans were chomping at the bit to see the release of "Impressive Instant," but that quickly came to an end as the tour began. From Barcelona on, I can only recall Madonna fans being extremely excited -- especially when news of a second greatest hits set leaked.

Far from incomplete, "Music" feels like one of the most fully-realized projects of her career to me.

I remember it very differently. I remember the poll that Warners conducted asking our choice for a 4th single that was easily won by Impressive Instant which was then ignored and we heard that Amazing was the next single. Then Amazing never appeared on the tour and we knew no more singles from Music. At the time it was surprising to only have 3 singles from a studio albums. All of her previous studio albums had had at least 5 international singles barring Bedtime Stories. Also when the Music album was released Warners said it being targeted at the 2000 and 2001 Christmas market and there would be 5 singles excluding American Pie.

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