material_boy
-
Posts
0 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by material_boy
-
-
Being in the U.S., she hasn't had a huge hit since -- what? "Don't Tell Me?"
I'm still a fan after 12 years of flops and minor hits. I don't care if she every has another major hit, so long as it's good.
Now, if she releases a bunch of shit albums, then I'm going to have a problem.
-
What made you put S&ST above CT? Nothing wrong with that...I'm just curious
Well, firstly, I think that S&S was generally just a (small) cut above Confessions.
Confessions had more "Oh my GOD" moments than S&S did -- disco ball entrance, equestrian "Like a Virgin," dance routines during "Music" and "Erotica," to name just a few -- but it had some much weaker moments than S&S as well. "Live to Tell" was just trying way too hard. And, honestly, I'm not sure that I've ever been able to watch the Confessions DVD all the way through -- my thumb just instinctively hits "skip" whenever "I Love New York" and "Ray of Light" come on.
S&S doesn't really have anything in it that makes me queen out the way parts of Confessions do, but I can also watch it from beginning to end without skipping a single performance. The show is just good from beginning to end. Even the weaker numbers -- looking at you, "You Must Love Me" -- are engrossing.
Most importantly, though, M's energy level is just on another plane in S&S. She seemed to really be enjoying herself on that tour and that energy comes out during the show in a way that was lacking during Confessions.
-
^Why are her recent tours so low in yo list?
Drowned World Tour is number one! (Yes, I still think of it as a "recent tour.")
As for my thought process, it was pretty easy for me break them into classes. The top three are perfection -- I just needed to think a bit on whether to rank Blond Ambition as number two and Girlie Show as number three or vice versa.
The next three are all excellent, but in a class below the top three. I had to think a long time how to order these three -- and I had S&S as number four up until the very end. (Still not sure I made the right call there.)
Reinvention is good. I love it for sentimental reasons, but I recognize its flaws. So, I ranked it pretty low here.
As for MDNA -- I don't know what to say. It just never did a thing for me. Huge chunks of the show are just utterly forgettable to me. (I had no recollection of "Hung Up" when I read something about it here on MadonnaNation.) I re-watched the show when it came out on DVD and was slightly bored at times.
That's not to say that I think it's bad -- that MDNA is her lowest-ranked tour on my list is an embarrassment of riches. It's just not as good as her other shows.
-
says who? DWT is the worst tour IMO
Ban this person.
-
-
The tour has not aged well, that's for sure. Many of the costumes and sets were half-assed compared to DWT or other tours from the past decade, but it was hugely popular among fans in its time.
I was part of many M forums that were geeking out over it during its run. Many commented that she seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself during the show, unlike DWT, where she seemed to adopt the personas of the characters she was playing. And yes, many fans were genuinely excited to hear hits. It had been 10 years since she'd last performed "Vogue" and more than that for most of the setlist. Concerts are just plain fun when you're with a big group of people singing along together to a song you all know. (For this reason, I simply don't understand the bourgeois attitude many M fans today take towards the hits.)
Thinking back even to MDNA -- which featured its fair share of hits -- my then-boyfriend didn't lave the show saying "Wow, I can't believe the dance number in 'Celebration'" because no one ever heard "Celebration" before. But the moment we left Madison Square Garden, he said he loved that she included a snippet of "Papa Don't Preach." And everyone around us was drunk and laughing and talking about how awesome "Vogue" was or that she mixed "Born This Way" into "Express Yourself." We made friends with strangers talking about the singalong during "Like a Prayer."
I met a lot of people that same way at Reinvention -- and it was fun. I think that a lot of people had that experience during RIT and that it was cathartic for fans who'd seen her get the shit kicked out of her by the press in 2003.
So, yeah, it was amazing in its time. It was exactly what Madonna and her fans needed. But it doesn't really stand up when you go back and watch it now.
-
Fan-made. Amazing.
-
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.
I'm not saying that it was expected that we'd only get three singles -- just that we didn't seem to dwell on it for very long. I feel like I've discussed "II"'s potential single release more frequently post-2001 than I did in 2001.
Maybe I'm just misremembering things, but I feel like we were all like "Only three? That's too bad. NEXT!" and then got on with queening out about how magnificent the tour was.
The whole era still feels very complete to me, even 12 years 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.
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I would love a more intimate show, but I'd want it to be something she's never done before -- I would want more than just another Brixton or Koko Club or even another L'Olympia. I loved those shows, but they were simply pilot runs or scaled-down version of the shows she does already.
If she's going to do something intimate, I'd want a full band or maybe even an orchestra -- I'm thinking some more like Portishead's simply gorgeous 1997 Roseland show than I am a simple "Unplugged" set. Maybe that sort of thing only works for a one-night-only performance to be marketed as a live album. Still, it could be brilliant. It would allow her catalogue of music to really shine. I think "Ray of Light" tracks could do especially well in a setting like this.
-
LOVE.
I have this mp3 from ages ago. I just listened to it yesterday for the first time in years, probably. So amazing.
Though... I may actually prefer "Gone." It's hard to choose between amazing and brilliant.
-
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:
- Virgin era: 1982 - 1985
- Who's that Girl era: 1986 - 1988
- Blond Ambition era: 1989 - 1991
- Sex era: 1992 - 1993
- Mid-90s era: 1994 - 1995
- Evita era: 1996 - 1997
- Veronica Electronica era: 1998 - 1999
- Drowned World era: 2000 - 2001
- Esther era: 2002 - 2004
- Confessions era: 2005 - 2006
- Sticky and Sweet era: 2008 - 2009
- A big black hole: 2010 - 2011
- MDNA: 2012
-
Eh, the bad press will be an obscure memory by the time she goes back on tour. The media these days deposes of news stories so quickly that it really doesn't matter tbh. Everyone will have forgotten. Madonna isn't a 6th grader - she's a veteran and the goobers who made a stink about CUSTOMER SERVICE won't go to the tour next time around, only to be replaced with a bunch of delighted young phaggots who don't give a shit.
I guess that I simply don't share your optimism here. Young people certainly have shorter attention spans on these sorts of things -- and they're certainly spend their money more freely -- but Madonna's fanbase isn't young anything anymore. Just shy of 30, I'm pretty sure than my boyfriend and I were the youngest fans in our section by a full decade.
Madonna's fanbase is mostly 30-, 40-, 50-something -- age sets that are much more cognizant of their spending. They'll remember bad press and they may reconsider investing large sums of money in tickets next time around.
-
I should also add -- I think one of the most infuriating things about the lack of hits is that she has SO MANY.
She has almost 40 top 10 hits in the United States -- a market that has been exceptionally difficult for her in the past 10 years.
With a catalog like that, she could do a straight-up hits-only tour in 2014 -- and then turn around and another straight-up hits-only tour in 2016, and her '16 setlist need not feature a single song from the '14 setlist for everyone to still be able to sing along. So, the fact that she limits herself to four or six every few years is infuriating.
-
I have to agree with what others have said about the next tour being different. There was a tremendous amount of bad press around this tour -- and I do believe that will impact future sales. A totally anecdotal example of that:
In 2008, a group of girls that I went to college with and I all wanted to meet up in NYC for Sticky and Sweet. (We are all live in the northeast, so NYC makes for an easy meet-up.) We couldn't make it happen and everyone was bummed. But we did all come together at my place one time when everyone was in town to watch the S&S DVD -- we drank wine and had a blast. We vowed to see her live together the next time she toured.
Last year, we tried again, but we couldn't pull it together this time either. Everyone was bummed. But then with the constant negative press -- the mixed reviews, the lack of hits, the news stories about sky high ticket prices and the late start times, etc. -- and more than one has said "Thank God we didn't waste our money." Now, one cares to have a DVD watch party and no one is interested in seeing live next time around. These are eight late-20-something women -- AKA the only people in America who still buy her music, besides gay men -- and not a single one is particularly interested in checking out the next tour. That's a problem.
I agree that Madonna is not the sort of artist who caters to the crowd -- she caters to herself to build what she thinks is the best show possible. But she took putting her wants over her fans' wants to some great lengths in 2012. She can't really afford to do it again. Her fanbase has shrunk considerably from 2000 / 2001 and is shrinking still -- at an ever-growing pace. She's going to need to give fans something if she's going to keep selling out stadiums and arenas. She doesn't need to become a full-on "legacy act," a la Cher or the Rolling Stones, but she needs to find a happy medium.
-
Her career is over. Actually the show ends with "Into the groove" but nobody knows it since by Celebration everybody leave the show even M and her dancers.
-
Maybe, but did anyone expect her renassence at 40yo with ROL? Did anyone expect a number1 dance hit at 42yo with Music? Did anyone expect a major comeback at 47yo with the worldwide acclaimed COAD?
She has been old forever by now but bitch has surprised us many times before. I think its still possible as long as she cares to sing.
Yes, I think everyone expected a comeback in 1998. She was, at this time, still the biggest star in the world. She had a string of global top 10 hits throughout the mid-90s, she starred in a near-universally-acclaimed movie, and the birth of her daughter was the decade's biggest celebrity news story, other than the death of Princess Di. She was set-up for a big comeback -- and she delivered.
Yes, I think everyone expected a big dance tune in 2000. No one expected to sound like underground French club music, but it was clear she was ready to have some fun after "ROL."
The only legitimate comeback of her career was "Confessions" because, other than "American Life," she never stopped being the biggest name in the music industry.
-
Her albums are/should be events, not solely a means to tour or hawk a perfume.
I'm a Madonna fan for her recorded music and it sucks when it gets treated as an afterthought or as the least important ball in the air amid a swarm of merchandising crap.
@ Celery.I agree though Hard Candy certainly left a bad taste for many and it seemed to just keep getting worse.
A lot of MDNA proves she can obviously still write and record great songs but she sounds fucking bored on the rent-a-hit's she's used lately. It's clearly not going to score a significant hit for her so she may as well just focus on making an album based entirely on her own instincts and collaborative creativity. Doing so without trying to simultaneously a) direct and promote a film b) launch a fragrance c) launch multiple clothing and accessory lines d) meet a deadline for a major television event performance could make for her next masterwork.
And next time let's utilize a little "traditional" promo, eh?
It won't matter -- the next album will flop, too. Let's all come to terms with the fact that she's not going to be posting huge numbers anymore.
1) The music market is very different today. Albums are dead. Singles are the new kind -- and Madonna and / or her management team don't seem to have caught on yet.
2) There are other, bigger stars out there today. (See: GaGa.) Those stars will suck the air out of the room for the next release, just as they did with this one -- and with "Hard Candy."
Madonna fans just need to get past the fact that she's not going to be wracking up many more (if any) number ones. She's past her prime. Lionness in winter.
Let's celebrate the incredible career she has and be thankful that she's still producing great music, even if it isn't selling. Honestly now, "MDNA" is fantastic. Be thankful it's not another "Turd Candy" and let's hope that the next one is just as good, or better -- regardless of its sales.
-
So, can this be the next single now? And adopted into the setlist full-time?
I need a "Beautiful Killer" video.
-
I hate it, I truly do. I hope US does wonders and embraces her with open arms. Only 1 MSG date? C'mon, she's gotta come back and do more in the US.
And I'm going to be there!
-
"Like a Virgin" in its MDNA Tour is a very slow waltz, which would have been totally unrecognizable if it hadn't been for the lyrics. And the performance makes M look very vulnerable. You could say it's the reverse of "Je t'aime... moi non plus".
Egads. That sounds terrible. "Je t'aime" was the perfect end. Desperate, infatuated, powerful, unhinged. I can only imagine doing something vulnerable would be anticlimactic to that set.
OK. I am now putting my "no more spoilers" hat back on and reserving judgment for the live show.
-
Haven't seen the show yet. (Don't have tickets until NOVEMBER. Gargh.) Have stayed away from all bits of news when possible -- reviews, YouTube, etc....
But I had to watch this. Holy F. Gorgeous.
Now, I've gone to take a peek at the setlist -- "Beautiful Killer" was only performed here? You must be kidding me. It was brilliant. Simply, straight-up brilliant. And "Je T'aime?" To. Die. For.
I can understand "Je T'aime" being Paris only... But please tell me she performs "Like a Virgin" like this. Slow. Desperate. Sexy. Tying someone up. Killing him. I can see the song fitting the "Je T'aime" performance very nicely in non-French shows.
(Also, apparently I've missed some sort of controversy about this show being only 45 minutes -- and costing the same as the regular show? Frankly, I'd have gone crazy. I'm surprised they didn't riot. I paid damn good money for those tickets. Come November, I want a two-hour show.)
Would you care if she never had another "big hit"?
in ARCHIVE - Madonna
Posted
Christ. I forgot about "4 Minutes." That was legitimately a huge hit here. Just not a great song.