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MADAME X album reviews


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15 minutes ago, Hobbit said:

Alternative press i think, but it was just a report with songs scores not a real review.

BTW Metacritic added the COS bad review and the score is still 70

Great news!

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Guest jamesshot

Reviews really don't mean much now. If you look at some movie reviews, so many new movies have huge RT scores like 97-100%. A movie with that kind of score should be an instant classic yet movies, by and large, suck right now. Reviews are a joke.Good or bad. I remember reading a damning review of True Blue in junior high. But it didn't bother me as far as my enjoyment. The only review that mattered was mine. Then when LAP didn't get any Grammy noms I was done with them as well. The fix was in. 

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1 minute ago, jamesshot said:

I remember reading a damning review of True Blue in junior high.

I remember reading such a review back then as well; I wonder if it was the same one.  It said that "Live to Tell" and "Papa Don't Preach" were too "maudlin" and that "Open Your Heart" was the only good track on the album (the only one comparable to her Like a Virgin-era hits).

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On a side note....has anyone taken a look at Madonna's "avg career score" on Metacritic!?!?

This is why I absolutely CANNOT take any of this Metacritic shit but so seriously.

I'm not posting it here so anyone that cares can take the time to look themselves.

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13 minutes ago, Kurt420 said:

On a side note....has anyone taken a look at Madonna's "avg career score" on Metacritic!?!?

This is why I absolutely CANNOT take any of this Metacritic shit but so seriously.

I'm not posting it here so anyone that cares can take the time to look themselves.

her average music score is 71. all of her albums are 70 or higher (which is considered positive) except american life (60, which is "mixed"). that's not bad given how many critics hate her. and it's especially good considering it doesn't include any 80s or 90s albums.

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1 minute ago, vertigokane said:

Think again 😕 The last 3 albums (before MX) are all under 70. 

5B67FDCC-3554-4FB2-8E5A-8C6527A82B88.jpeg

oops. sorry thought green was 70 or higher. either way, only one album is considered "mixed" and her average score is still 71. i think kurt420 was looking at her film score, which is a 42! 

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3 minutes ago, bardo said:

oops. sorry thought green was 70 or higher. either way, only one album is considered "mixed" and her average score is still 71. i think kurt420 was looking at her film score, which is a 42! 

wait, 42 for her film score? that isn't "that" bad..

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6 hours ago, Shane said:

Killers Who Are Partying is an amazing song, and it’s sad to see the pin head logic when it comes to the lyrics.  These are the same people who probably post pics on their social media saying “I am Pulse” and “Je suis Charlie” and have zero problem with it.  The song is a show of solidarity, and the chorus rebukes any argument that she is trying to BE any of those groups.  People’s idiocy in this day and age is astounding.

Killers Who Are Partying is a great song with great lyrics. Its lyrics fit perfectly with the world music idiom, unpretentious and without embellishments. I feel it's a future classic. 

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20 minutes ago, side_streets said:

Another article advising Madonna to talk about her menopause and how she feels in her 60s.

Subtle ageism. 

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/djlouiexiv/madonna-madame-x-pop-music-age-women?origin=thum

he's actually from my country and got some headlines cuz Paris Hilton likes him.

ATTACK: https://www.instagram.com/djlouiexiv/

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6 minutes ago, Nikki said:

he's actually from my country and got some headlines cuz Paris Hilton likes him.

ATTACK: https://www.instagram.com/djlouiexiv/

It's a silly article. Imagine telling an artist what kind of art he/she needs to create.

These entitled critics are unbearable and they know nothing about art.

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1 minute ago, vertigokane said:

He also incorrectly stated that Mirwais was the producer of Ray of Light, and that Hard Candy, MDNA, and Rebel Heart were all commercial failures. Give me a break. The endless lamenting from critics that she somehow devolved into a more immature state after the zenith of Ray of Light is exhausting and obnoxious. It’s as if these folks have some artificial career trajectory in their minds that she should’ve followed after ROL, and now she’s being punished for not following their imaginary timelines. 

Check the facts first and write an article.
Do these web sites have an editor?

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3 minutes ago, vertigokane said:

He also incorrectly stated that Mirwais was the producer of Ray of Light, and that Hard Candy, MDNA, and Rebel Heart were all commercial failures. Give me a break. The endless lamenting from critics that she somehow devolved into a more immature state after the zenith of Ray of Light is exhausting and tiresome. It’s as if these folks have some artificial career trajectory in their minds that she should’ve followed after ROL, and now she’s being punished for not following their imaginary timelines. 

Hard Candy was the 9th top selling album of 2008 Worldwide

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5 hours ago, side_streets said:

Some really nasty things have appeared in American press. 🤮🤮🤮

I won't share them here since they don't count to Metacritic score. 

To say that I'm disappointed by the reception of this beutiful album in the USA would be an understatement. 

Now I can fully understand the success of Donald Trump. 

 

Why?  Most of the people bashing her and the album in the US are hardcore SJW's who hate Trump

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The Economist did a write up.

https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/06/19/madonna-remains-scandalous-but-for-the-wrong-reason

 

Quote

Madonna remains scandalous, but for the wrong reason

These days it is her refusal to stop making new music, not the music itself, that raises eyebrows

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by 

 
 
 
 
 

IN 2016 Madonna was honoured at a music industry awards ceremony. In her speech, she reflected on her 34 years in the business, her extraordinary success as the best-selling female artist of all time and her talent for shocking people. She said something that was, true to form, startling. “People say I’m controversial. But I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around.” 

Asked to identify Madonna’s most scandalous moment, this is not the answer that most people would give. Foremost among her many provocations are the music video for “Like a Prayer” (1989), which the Vatican condemned as blasphemous, her simulation of masturbation during her Blond Ambition tour in 1990, and “Sex” (1992), an erotic photo-book chronicling her sexual adventures with both men and women. The idea that these events could be eclipsed by the mere longevity of Madonna’s career seems odd, until you remember how sexist and ageist the music industry is. In her speech she said that a woman who continues to make music even as she gets older is treated as guilty of a kind of sin. Well, here I am, Madonna seemed to say. Guilty. 

 

 
 
 

 

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She remains unrepentant. Madonna, who turned 60 last August, is back with a new album. Released on June 14th, “Madame X” finds her in her darkest mood since “American Life” (2003). “Things have got to change,” she sings on the hypnotic “Batuka”, “there’s a storm ahead”. Enter Madonna’s alter-ego, Madame X. A spy working undercover as a teacher, nun and cha-cha-cha instructor—but who nonetheless never removes her conspicuous crystal-encrusted eye patch—Madame X is on a mission to cast off the chains of the oppressed. Who the oppressors are is never entirely certain, but they must be located in Brazil, Colombia, Portugal and Atlanta, Georgia, because it is the sounds of those places that supply the soundtrack to her quest. 

Much of “Madame X” seems calculated to appeal to younger listeners. Her persona is on-trend: it’s cool to care about the issues, and Madame X cares. “God Control” laments the fact that nothing is being done to stop mass shootings in American high schools; “I Rise” starts with a clip from an impassioned speech by Emma González, one of the teenage survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. “Madame X” is woke—sometimes a little too woke. On “Killers Who Are Partying”, she sings about identifying with the downtrodden (“I will be gay, if the gay are burned / I will be Africa, if Africa is shut down”). On “Come Alive”, she sings “All I want is peace, peace, peace”. 

Over the years, Madonna has hired producers to help her weave the genres du jour into her music, and sometimes those producers have gone overboard. If you didn’t already know that “Hard Candy” (2008), produced by R’n’B hitmakers Timbaland and the Neptunes, was a Madonna record, you might have thought the singer was Britney Spears. By contrast, the producers of “Madame X”—among them Mirwais and Diplo—understand how to update her sound. On “Crave”, Madonna sings over the skittering high hats and big bass of trap, smoothing the edges of this spare, flinty style of hip-hop until it becomes a wistful lullaby. On the sweaty, sultry “Medellín”, Madonna’s melancholy lyrics give new depth to reggaeton, a genre of Latin dance music as seductive as it is superficial. 

“Madame X” is no “Erotica”—there are no controversies on this album—but that is not to say that Madonna isn’t experimenting. Since she moved to Portugal in 2017, she has been exploring the sounds of the Lusophone diaspora, as is audible on the most intriguing tracks on “Madame X”. “Batuka” riffs on batuque, a traditional dance music from Cape Verde notable for its call-and-response structure, but adds syncopated handclaps and crescendoing drums to hypnotic effect. With its sirens, whistles and chirrups, “Faz Gostoso” is a carnivalesque take on Brazilian funk on which Madonna and Anitta, a Brazilian singer, rap in Portuguese.

All the same, this reviewer could not help longing for a glimpse of Madonna the provocateur. She is right to argue that she is taking a stand against the music industry merely by making records at her age, but she could be more ambitious. During the height of her career, in the 1980s and 1990s, Madonna presented society with a new model of femininity: the woman who was unafraid to brazenly flaunt her sexuality. She inspired a slew of imitators from Ms Spears to Miley Cyrus. Now that Madonna is 60, and still backed by millions of fans, the opportunity has arisen for her to scandalise the public once again. She could show listeners what it is like to be an older woman, one who embraces her sensuality yet is not afraid to reveal her wrinkles and talk about menopause. That would be truly surprising.

 

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1 minute ago, Samo said:

Why?  Most of the people bashing her and the album in the US are hardcore SJW's who hate Trump

Because they cannot obviously recognize Madonna as an ally.

And all that useless obsession with celebrities who outraged somebody combined with on-line witch hunt prevents them to see the big picture clearly and recognize the true enemies. 

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14 minutes ago, Samo said:

Why?  Most of the people bashing her and the album in the US are hardcore SJW's who hate Trump

yeah sure.

repeating the same cassette over and over in every thread doesn't make it true, you know ?

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I find that Economist article offensive, even though the overall tone is positive.  Why should she sing about wrinkles and menopause?  No one ever asks Bruce Springsteen to sing about erectile dysfunction, enlarged prostates and urinary retention.   It's not hard to see why Madonna gets so sensitive about these "age" articles sometimes.  

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Imagine how women over the world must feel reading those articles.. thinking they can only succeed when they're older if they talk about menopause..

 

It's so unbelievably disrespectful and horrible.

Like telling a gay that he "has" to talk about his "gayness", and isn't allowed to speak on anything else..

I guess you're only allowed to talk on whatever you want when you're old if you're a white straight man.

sorry to sound like an SJW, but...

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30 minutes ago, runa said:

yeah sure.

repeating the same cassette over and over in every thread doesn't make it true, you know ?

What ultra conservatives have been bashing her this time around? Please enlighten me ?  The Pitchfork review, if you can call it that, was written by an SJW as is virtually everything from Huffington Post or BuzzFeed

 

That could change with the God Control video, but even then SJW'S will somehow FIND fault with it and her

 

I sweat SJW'S are why Trump got elected in the first place, people got sick of them, they're a cancer to REAL liberal causes and activism.

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4 minutes ago, Samo said:

What ultra conservatives have been bashing her this time around? Please enlighten me ?  The Pitchfork review, if you can call it that, was written by an SJW as is virtually everything from Huffington Post or BuzzFeed

 

That could change with the God Control video, but even then SJW'S will somehow FIND fault with it and her

 

I sweat SJW'S are why Trump got elected in the first place, people got sick of them, they're a cancer to REAL liberal causes and activism.

Definitely agree with this.

Also, I'm really bracing myself for God Control.

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5 minutes ago, Ai Papi Si. said:

Definitely agree with this.

Also, I'm really bracing myself for God Control.

Me too but am excited as well

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https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/madonna-madame-x-album-review.htm

Madonna Remains Our Most Unpredictable Pop Star

 

We honor the first 20 years of music legends’ careers for the drive that elevates them from anonymity to celebrity and the vision that keeps them in flight throughout the best years. We spend the next 20 years weaponizing their own standards against them, calling each album a “radical departure” or a “return to form” or else quietly losing interest in everything but the classics. There’s more love for “Taxman” and “Drive My Car” than “Say Say Say” or “Got My Mind Set on You.” The Queen movie’s narrative ends early at Live Aid; the Elton flick calls it at “I’m Still Standing,” before things get weird in the ’80s. People want to remember their favorite figures at their best, but the miscalculations and recalibrations that happen afterward are just as integral to the story of a brilliant career as the moves made at the artist’s peak.

Madonna Ciccone moved to New York City from Detroit at 20 years old in the late ’70s with a dream of making it in showbiz, be it as a dancer, a rock star, or a singer. In five years, she maneuvered through the eclectic scene at the lower-Manhattan nightclub Danceteria — which collected cool kids who didn’t make it through the door to party with the socialites and celebrities at Studio 54 — and pieced together a demo a resident DJ ran up the pipeline to the label heads who released her early singles and self-titled debut album. In ten years, Madonna was a pop star with a dozen international hit records anxiously setting her sights on a lasting film career. By year 20 of her career, she’d scored a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture and a New York Times best seller and topped the charts again with a studio album recounting everything she learned as a new mother and a student of Eastern mysticism and European dance music.

If you’re the kind of music fan who learns by scrubbing lists of the best of things, you might see Ray of Light as the last essential Madonna album (or hang around ’til 2000’s exquisite Music, lured in by the folk-meets-Fennesz inversion of “Don’t Tell Me”), but trailing off there, you miss a world of bops, flops, and experiments Madonna pursues out of sheer tenacity and self-preservation. Trouble chased for Madonna in the first 20 years of her career; in the next 20, she found it by courting it. Where early moments of provocation — the bridal-gown romp at the 1984 VMAs the singer says was improvised when her shoe came off, the videos that were too hot for MTV, the songs about abortion and Catholic guilt — were timely commentaries on the tug-of-war in the ’80s between the brutish, horny American entertainment industry and the country’s saintly social mores, the Madonna controversies of this century seem engineered for indignant reaction. “Madonna’s priority is to keep people watching whatever she does,” Timesscribe Jon Pareles wrote in a withering review of 2003’s American Life. “She maintains a presence, not a message.” (He’s not wrong about Life, but he couldn’t know that this nervous media omnipresence was where the whole pop machine was headed, that soon every release would arrive in a cloud of noise and promo.)

American Life is an intriguing point of interest this summer, as Madonna has rolled out Madame X, an album (her 14th) that revisits and restructures some of the ideas floated in her fascinating Bush-era misstep. Life expanded on the folktronica crossover of Music’s “Don’t Tell Me,” incorporating acoustic and electric guitar sounds and samples into a body of downcast songs workshopped alongside French producer and Music co-conspirator Mirwais. The aim, it seems, was to speak to the state of a nation at war while reflecting the insecurities the singer experienced in the wake of the catastrophic reviews for her and then-husband Guy Ritchie’s 2002 box-office failure Swept Away. Barring the title track, whose provocative anti-war music video was pulled because Madonna worried that people would misconstrue the message, the American Life singles largely missed the “Hot 100” entirely. The album’s not without offbeat ideas — name another time one of the biggest pop stars dared to sell a four-minute song where she calls herself stupid over the lick from the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” — but its lasting legacy is that of a curious anti-pop downer.

Madame X finds us again at war, this time among ourselves as much as the world at large, and again, Madonna, Mirwais, and Kanye collaborator Mike Dean deliver an album about the ways the planet sucks right now and how that makes the artist feel. The songs were conceived during time spent in Portugal, where Madonna moved “to be a soccer mom,” as her son David courted schools near Lisbon. In time, she grew restless and sought out local creatives. The title of the album is an expression of the singer’s tireless pursuit of art and culture — “Madame X is a secret agent, traveling around the world, changing identities, fighting for freedom, bringing light to dark places,” she says in the prerelease trailer — and a callback to a nickname given by the influential dancer and instructor, Martha Graham. The album surveys world disorder through Madonna’s eyes, but the album gets more out of its cultural explorations than it gives back. (News items about Madonna’s comings and goings in Lisbon are a slight rejoinder to this album’s selfless messaging.) Madame X wants to be Eva Perón again, but it feels more like Carmen Sandiego.

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Let’s face it - If Miley or Ariana or Gaga released this album it would be hailed as a masterpiece.

Fuck these critics. The user rating on Metacritic says it all really. 

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2 hours ago, Samo said:

Why?  Most of the people bashing her and the album in the US are hardcore SJW's who hate Trump

Oh, and like the alt-right Trump-loving conservatives just love Madonna...???   :rolleyes:

 

1 hour ago, Samo said:

What ultra conservatives have been bashing her this time around? Please enlighten me ?  The Pitchfork review, if you can call it that, was written by an SJW as is virtually everything from Huffington Post or BuzzFeed

 

That could change with the God Control video, but even then SJW'S will somehow FIND fault with it and her

 

I sweat SJW'S are why Trump got elected in the first place, people got sick of them, they're a cancer to REAL liberal causes and activism.

That's because most of these media outlets aren't necessarily right-wing rags. If that side cared about arts/culture, and reviewed pop albums, you think they would defend and praise her?!  :blink::lmao:

There's so many more angles to what's really going on than just a one-sided obsession with the "SJW" (a right-wing coined term too).

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Guest jamesshot
4 hours ago, Dickens said:

I remember reading such a review back then as well; I wonder if it was the same one.  It said that "Live to Tell" and "Papa Don't Preach" were too "maudlin" and that "Open Your Heart" was the only good track on the album (the only one comparable to her Like a Virgin-era hits).

YES!!!!!!!!

I was this junior high kid who was thinking, "GTFO". I knew then she was treated unfair. I knew they would never be fair with her. It pissed me off but then I just laughed it off. Thing is, no one said she couldn't sing until after BAT. There were a few reviewers who might have slagged her voice but none of my friends or their parents ever said she couldn't sing. I used to tease my mom, who loved Bruce S, that he couldn't sing and I would make fun of his voice. LOL

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