MADAME X album reviews

[Illuminati]

Review from Welt, pretty positive. They say she is the enemy of the old white heterosexual men who fear women like her. 

https://www.welt.de/kultur/pop/article194969897/Madonna-als-Madame-X-Feindbild-des-alten-weissen-Mannes.html

Madame X is described as a great body of work of a woman who doesn't follow the trend of simply putting a jazz ensemble on stage to re-hash her past hits. 

[dollhouse]

24 minutes ago, Illuminati said:

Review from Welt, pretty positive. They say she is the enemy of the old white heterosexual men who fear women like her. 

https://www.welt.de/kultur/pop/article194969897/Madonna-als-Madame-X-Feindbild-des-alten-weissen-Mannes.html

Madame X is described as a great body of work of a woman who doesn't follow the trend of simply putting a jazz ensemble on stage to re-hash her past hits. 

Dig at Gaga? Refreshing if so

[Lolo]

40 minutes ago, Illuminati said:

who doesn't follow the trend of simply putting a jazz ensemble on stage to re-hash her past hits. 

Loving the shade here.

[Samo]

11 hours ago, headonfire said:

THIS WILL BE A DEFINING ALBUM IN HER CAREER, ANOTHER CREATIVE PEAK, ALMOST 40 YEARS INTO IT! 

I think and hope you're right, unfortunately  unlike Like a Prayer or Ray of Light, the general public won't be aware of it or even that she still makes new music.  The PR campaign has been "rough" at best.  The PR campaign for Rebel Heart was much better and none of the GP is aware of that album

 

Madame X should be everywhere, talk show spots playing different characters, Netflix special, major fashion magazine covers etc 

[Gaudet]

Is Mojo's review out there yet?

[systemvalues]

8 minutes ago, Samo said:

I think and hope you're right, unfortunately  unlike Like a Prayer or Ray of Light, the general public won't be aware of it or even that she still makes new music.  The PR campaign has been "rough" at best.  The PR campaign for Rebel Heart was much better and none of the GP is aware of that album

 

Madame X should be everywhere, talk show spots playing different characters, Netflix special, major fashion magazine covers etc 

Is the NYT case  not good enough to advertise her album?

[systemvalues]

24 minutes ago, Lolo said:

Loving the shade here.

He stated the truth.

[Nightvision]

According to AOTY, Mojo and The 4O5 gave MX an 80/100 (both critics count for metacritc): https://www.albumoftheyear.org/album/149030-madonna-madame-x.php

We don't have the official links yet to confirm, though

[smirnoff_ice]

1 hour ago, Nightvision said:

According to AOTY, Mojo and The 4O5 gave MX an 80/100 (both critics count for metacritc): https://www.albumoftheyear.org/album/149030-madonna-madame-x.php

We don't have the official links yet to confirm, though

If that’s the case, that’s amazing! 

[Voguerista]

This is so true for what we're hearing so far....

The Guardian

Throughout, there is more density and musical adventure than at almost any other point in her career.

NME

Bold, bizarre, self-referential and unlike anything Madonna has ever done before, 'Madame X' finds the star with a glint in her eye.

ET

A mad mishmash of an album

[Geiger83]

2 hours ago, Illuminati said:

Review from Welt, pretty positive. They say she is the enemy of the old white heterosexual men who fear women like her. 

https://www.welt.de/kultur/pop/article194969897/Madonna-als-Madame-X-Feindbild-des-alten-weissen-Mannes.html

Madame X is described as a great body of work of a woman who doesn't follow the trend of simply putting a jazz ensemble on stage to re-hash her past hits. 

That is for me the best review so far, not only in Germany. It is fantastic 

[HolidayGuy]

Maybe that Sun pic is of the stand-in mentioned in the NYT article.

[M_Sinner]

Another review from The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/08/madonna-madame-x-review-splendidly-bizarre-return-to-form

[TXIII]

1 minute ago, M_Sinner said:

Another review from The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/08/madonna-madame-x-review-splendidly-bizarre-return-to-form

Why would they review it twice? Do they both count towards Meta?

[stevo208]

8 minutes ago, M_Sinner said:

Another review from The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/08/madonna-madame-x-review-splendidly-bizarre-return-to-form

Why 2 reviews from the Guardian? It's THAT good?

[air1975]

2 hours ago, Samo said:

I think and hope you're right, unfortunately  unlike Like a Prayer or Ray of Light, the general public won't be aware of it or even that she still makes new music.  The PR campaign has been "rough" at best.  The PR campaign for Rebel Heart was much better and none of the GP is aware of that album

 

Madame X should be everywhere, talk show spots playing different characters, Netflix special, major fashion magazine covers etc 

 

 

I think PR has not been perfect but its not bad. We've gotten 

multiple lyric videos

3 proper music videos

Vogue Italia cover and Vogue UK cover

Cover in the French magazine (name eludes me right now) 

Tour announcement 

BBMA performance

Eurovision performance

Some radio interviews in the US

NYT article and controversy 

Graham Norton coming up 

Today show coming up 

Pride Island performance coming up. 

 

I feel like its been a good mix of music videos/ print media/ planned interviews. My only complaint is that I wish there had been a concerted push on radio to get behind either Crave of Medellin - the radio strategy seems disorganized and half hearted

[Mr Ciccone]

1 hour ago, M_Sinner said:

Another review from The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/08/madonna-madame-x-review-splendidly-bizarre-return-to-form

Great! 

[Pera]

I hope she does more talk shows, it's been a while since she did something like Fallon or Letterman. A real lengthy interview.

Although I've no idea what counts as a good promo these days, where is she suppose to go to get the biggest audience.

Few people are still buying Magazines, listening to the radio etc.

[Samo]

4 minutes ago, Pera said:

I hope she does more talk shows, it's been a while since she did something like Fallon or Letterman. A real lengthy interview.

Although I've no idea what counts as a good promo these days, where is she suppose to go to get the biggest audience.

Few people are still buying Magazines, listening to the radio etc.

Yes EVERY icon releasing new music still does magazine covers

[Shaun]

1 minute ago, Samo said:

Yes EVERY icon releasing new music still does magazine covers

You’re obsessed with magazine covers. You talk about it endlessly. It’s so odd.

[XXL]

6 hours ago, karbatal said:

Those German bad reviewers will end up feeling like IDIOTS

 

[XXL]

11 hours ago, Flip The Switch said:

 

 

 

[the-queen]

Downright epic pop. That’s my Queen. Buying this album will be my highlight of 2019.

[alcermag]

NEW REVIEW BY THE GUARDIAN (out today, june 8, 4/5 stars)

Madonna: Madame X review – a splendidly bizarre return to form

Madonna’s 14th studio album is an engrossing mix of Latinate beats, political allusion – and Joan of Arc

 

    Madonna is in her fourth decade of what we now somewhat suspiciously call appropriation, a pick-and-mix skill set that has previously laid the singer open to accusations of unoriginality or, worse, cultural hijacking.

But when the patented Ciccone filtration system gets it right, the process is just shy of alchemy. Sexualised Catholicism, at the dawn of MTV, was Madonna’s first stroke of kismet. The last time Madonna was indisputably on point, she had hooked up with French producer Mirwais for Music (2000)and the sensuous possibilities of club culture. Her latterday output has stuttered somewhat, but for Madame X the stars have aligned with Madonna’s Pinterest mood board once again. There are hot climates and a piratical eye-patch; shape-shifting to the sounds of the Portuguese diaspora, trap-pop and reggeaton.

It helps, of course, that she self-quotes as much as she soaks up. Is Latin pop in vogue? Don’t mind if Madonna seizes upon it. Medellín, the first track from Madonna’s 14th studio album, arrived like La Isla Bonita on steroids: with Madonna in a lather of faith and lust, exercising her long-held fascination with all things Latinate and in sync with a pop mood attuned to the other Americas. A further hook-up with Colombian star Maluma lurks further down this generous tracklisting: Bitch, I’m Loca flirts with reggaeton and Maluma himself, who plays a delivery man instructed by Madonna to “put it inside”. (Note the title: Bitch, I’m Madonna, remixed; throughout the album, you’ll find Madonna saying a “little prayer” as she did on Like A Prayer (1989), or on her knees “like a virgin”.)

 

This is an album whose most memorable songs are definitely its strangest

Colombia is a red herring, however. The songs that became Madame X actually came together during Madonna’s two years in Portugal, where she decamped in 2017 when her son David enrolled in Benfica’s football academy. Madonna absorbed the local sounds with more of a mature, simpatico rather than asset-stripping eye.

One lively Portuguese-diaspora tune, Faz Gostoso, makes a pitstop in Brazil, featuring Brazilian singer Anitta. Most “world” of all, however, are the sounds of batuque on a track called Batuka, a ceremonial good-time music of the Cabo Verde islands. Batuka finds Portugal’s Orquestra de Batukadeiras – women from Cabo Verde – helping out on a spiritual call-and-response track about overcoming adversity. There’s a cute video on their Facebook page of Madonna drumming. Add to this a Diplo reggae production, Future, on which Madonna plays at being Santigold, and the hot-climate half of this album adds up to considerably more than the sum of its parts: a polyglot party that feels spontaneous, an internationalism that feels earned, not tokenistic.

Naturally, this Madonna album has to respond to other major trends in US pop. Her selection of guests has an eye on hip-hop heat levels, rather than actual chemistry, calling on Quavo from Migos on Future, and Swae Lee from Rae Sremmurd on Crave. Their performances aren’t quite as game as Maluma’s. To say that the former sounds like a track that might have been done by Ariana Grande isn’t a negative, though: here, Madonna pulls off contemporary R&B-leaning pop with no obvious missteps.

The meat of the album, however, lies elsewhere. Hidden away in the lyrics to Batuka are topical allusions: “Get that old man/ Put him in a jail.” Quite apart from the many Spanish and Portuguese passages, Madame X is littered with whispered, rapped or digitally cloaked lyrics. It is a political offering – the Eurovision palaver, where Madonna hamfistedly tried to engineer peace in the Middle East, was a foreshadowing – but one in which Madonna’s meanings often perform a kind of seven-veil dance.

Easiest to understand is Killers Who Are Partying, a 21st-century digital fado on which Madonna allies herself with the dispossessed and marginalised: virtue signalling, with trap beats on. It’s sanctimonious, coming from a first-world millionaire, but she sings it like she believes it.

Often, she obfuscates, but just intriguingly enough. A snippet of Florida school-shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez’s “We call BS” speech begins one song, I Rise. It follows, therefore, that a song called God Control is probably about gun control, as well as democracy and the state of the US. “This is your wake-up call!” warns Madonna, before the whole thing is bathed in glitterball disco and topped off with a schoolyard sing-song rap about how Madonna doesn’t take drugs. It sounds, weirdly, like Daft Punk.

This is an album whose most memorable songs are definitely its strangest. Most ambitious of all perhaps is Dark Ballet, a long concept-song about Joan of Arc in which the lyricism of the piano lines startles. Madonna herself is heavily Auto-tuned, mumbling stuff about being a witch; she seems to blow on the flames of a pyre.

You get the feeling that Madonna identifies with the French martyr. She spends a lot of Madame X weighing up whether she is crazy, or lost, concluding quite the opposite. “I wasn’t lost,” she sings on Extreme Occident, on the deluxe edition. Killers Who Are Partying bears many declarations, but perhaps the most relevant one is about Madonna herself. “I know what I am and I know what I’m not,” she sings. Even more tellingly, I Don’t Search, I Find puts a full stop on popstar neediness. “Finally, enough love,” she sings.

The whole Madame X conceit – an international woman of mystery – dissipates quickly as this unexpectedly engrossing album goes on. Madame Xis certainly a fluid album, but one tempered by Madonna’s solid confidence in her own aesthetic decisions.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/08/madonna-madame-x-review-splendidly-bizarre-return-to-form

THANKS TO THIS, THE SCORE ON METACRITIC IT'S NOW 79

Edited June 8, 2019 by alcermag

[Pera]

12 minutes ago, Samo said:

Yes EVERY icon releasing new music still does magazine covers

I know. And I love it when we get new a photoshoot (specially when its as nice as the one for Vogue UK) and interview.

But I'm curious if that actually has any impact on album sales.

[XXL]

1 hour ago, M_Sinner said:

Another review from The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/08/madonna-madame-x-review-splendidly-bizarre-return-to-form

 

Wow

I love this one

Thanks

 

 

The whole Madame X conceit – an international woman of mystery – dissipates quickly as this unexpectedly engrossing album goes on. Madame X is certainly a fluid album, but one tempered by Madonna’s solid confidence in her own aesthetic decisions.

[Hobbit]

metacritic score is 79 now, i think they added Q magazine review

[Flip The Switch]

1 minute ago, Hobbit said:

metacritic score is 79 now, i think they added Q magazine review

I hope it reaches 85.

[Hobbit]

Just now, Flip The Switch said:

I hope it reaches 85.

i don't know, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork will lower the score

[HolidayGuy]

So many reviews out there- the number included in Metacritic for some titles is oddly low compared to films.

Also, no matter how one tries to liken average scores to letter grades, it doesn't really work out that way- hence, why 61 and up is considered favorable- certainly, no one would think a "D" was favorable, even though it's a passing grade.