Talk about it

Madonna has done duos with a lot of people, and even a trio, and she continues that trend here with Sabrina.

...unfortunately the contrast beings a few things into comparison. Both of their voices feel a little processed, and I know they are capable of great natural sound, so is Madonna needing help these days? (Madame X processing looms large.)

Also, to be honest... you can really see that Maddy has had work done these days...

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Confess the II

By film, she means "this is a ten minute remix/medley of the album to give you a taster of the songs."

And there are special guests! Some are singers she is working with, some are random movie stars! (I suspect we'll see more of them when the full videos for those songs drop.)

And if you have premium (and that's a whole different rant) you also get the Afterparty (ie two minutes of bts).

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Maddy and Sabby!

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New Maddy?!

And it seems like there will be a new album!

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Best Maddy Album?

I watched this Zebra Charts video about Madonna and it made me wonder... how well did the albums do? So this means... statistics!

First of all, I'm just going for the main albums, no compilations, no part contributions, with the one exception being I'm Breathless, which is all Madonna songs. Then I'm looking at the US Billboard Top 200 albums for the album rank, and for each released single the US Billboard Top 100. (Not all songs have a listing there, especially in the latter albums, so I do wonder if I should be looking at something else.)

And all numbers based on what Wikipaedia has, so I'm assuming they are accurate.

I looked at: how many songs did the album have (first release, no special add ons), what rank did that album get, how many singles were released, of those how many got to Top 10, and how many got to Top 1.

We can look at percentages of singles that got top, and all that, but it's pretty clear... True Blue is the winner! So she peaked in 1986... well, it does have my two favourite songs of hers... Huh.

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Ten Days to Go

There is a new Madonna album coming... kinda.

Veronica Electronica is sort of a concept album, whereby Madonna is putting on an alter-ego self, which isn't uncommon for singers. Heck, Madonna has done that herself, with Dita during Erotica and Madame X in Madame X. One upcoming track has been released already:

That's the demo version, which won't be the version on the album because... the album will be remixes.

Oh... is that all? I'm gonna get it, but... kinda disappointed that this is just rehashing old material. I was hoping this was a full new album because... I will admit, this song is already better than the entire Madame X album.

Here's hoping we do get something fully original in the future than a remix of Ray of Light.

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Wait... is that...?

Are we getting a new album????

...or is it just an ad for a magazine? (it could be both!)

Hang on... is that Teardrop I hear?

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From Madonna's Unknown Heart

Clearly I am a Maddy fan, and for whatever reason YouTube decided that I need to know about unreleased songs from albums. Which is pretty cool. Here for example, are the unreleased songs from Rebel Heart.

But my question is... how did they (the video channel) get them? Or whereever they got them from? Does Maddy secretly release these on the sly? Do recording studios stockpile them and someone leaks? It's neat to hear these songs, but... does Madonna really want people to listen to songs she hasn't explicitly released?

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Maddy Can Dance

The latest "album" from Madonna is Finally Enough Love, which contains (if you get the extended version) 50 different singles of hers remixed. Which reminded me of another remix album of hers: You Can Dance.

What is weird is that the Vinyl, CD and Cassette (yes, we are back in the days of vinyl and cassettes) all contain the main seven songs. However, the CD has three extra tracks... but the cassette has four different tracks... and they are different extra tracks to what the CD has! The CD has "Dub" versions of Holiday, Into The Groove, and Where's the Party, where the Cassette has "Dub" versions of Spotlight, Holiday, Over and Over, and Into the Groove.

So if you wanted all those remixes... you had to get the CD and cassette... which I did (although no idea where they are now).

I did wonder if those remixes might have been released on Finally Enough Love, but those are different mixes again.

But none of them have my favourite remix:

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War with Madonna

Madonna('s video channel, operated by... who knows, some corporate hire) has just released the director's cut of American Life. You might recall the video for that, it has Maddy in front of a lot of flags, and a minor bit where she raps about her terrible life where she has three nannys and a chef and stuff.

But this is that one. This is the original video, planned and filmed. Which is slightly... political message. Which the entire album was supposed to be, but she didn't quite get there. Still some good songs on there.

But yeah, this is what she started with, before it got pulled.

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It's "Weird"

So there's an Al Yankovic biopic... or is there?

This covers all the well known parts of Al's life: getting an accordion from a salesman, recording a song in in a bathroom, Madonna asking him to do a parody... but we get those other parts as well. Al going to polka parties, drinking excessively, making real songs that others do covers of. Going to a Mexican criminal's home. You know, the rest of the story. Not to mention the torrid love affair with the aforementioned Ms Ciccone.

Okay, so there might be some liberties taken with the truth, but there's no doubt this is 100% as real as that other music biopic, Walk Hard. Your actual level of humour you will get out of this can vary a lot, but there's no doubt everyone is having fun. And play "spot the celebrity".

While we know Daniel Radcliffe is playing Weird Al, Al himself does the songs. Although we have Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, we don't get any of her songs, but she definitely looks the part (mainly helped by the 80s hair and the trashy clothes - very on brand for Maddy at the time).

As for where you can watch it outside of having Roku, Mr Weird himself had this to say on twitter:

Roku's working on it. In the meantime there's VPN (Very Probably No) way to watch it legally. I'm sure you have a TORRENT of other questions, but I have to move along, sorry.

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Every HD Body

I'm not sure why now in particular, and if this going to kick off a new trend of doing this, but Madonna (by which I mean more likely whatever company is behind this) released Everybody, now in HD! Both the video and the audio.

Now the audio sounds fine, I haven't seen that particular version back when it wasn't HD so don't know how bad the audio sounded, but the video...

It just doesn't look that crisp, aside from very close up on her face. I don't know what they did, but the general video of her and her background duo wavering around to the music doesn't look very good. This is partly due to the backlights, but everyone looks like they have double image lines around their bodies or something.

HD = "Hey, Dancing!"?

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Madame X

It's her latest concert, mainly filmed in Lisbon, but you can spot shots from other shows.

Madonna performs songs from her most recent album, Madame X, but scatters in previous songs too, usually with a twist on them. However, rather than huge shows, Madonna chose to go to smaller, more intimate venues so people could get up close to her (and she to them). Certainly the stages are smaller and so everyone gets up in there. And the cameras really do.

I didn't talk about the album when it came out, but I had a big problem with it: namely Madonna sounds extremely robotised on her songs. There are moments of pure auto-tune, but it feels like something like that had been applied to everything. Especially during Batuka, you compare Madonna with the all-women group, and she comes off really badly. And they are here in this concert too! And this concert also shows Madonna singing more naturally for her other songs, so I just don't know why she felt this album needed this treatment.

But, hey, concert with her performing live, that's got to be good right? One small issue... the editor decided that we must have a different shot every two seconds. It's extremely aggravating! Calm down! Madonna knows how to put on a show, you don't need to smash cut to something every other moment, just put the camera on her and leave it alone! Some close up, fine, but put down the cocaine!

I damn hope Madonna does other international concerts, certainly I'd like to go to another one, but this is not the best representation of what she can do.

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She's an X

Hey, a documentary Maddy did about her latest album! I haven't really expressed my opinions about Madame X because... really I felt it was very over processed and not really her natural voice. And in some ways, it was 'get out of the way of the world music'. And this documentary goes into more about why she did the album that way.

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Well, that's Album of the Year sorted...

New album from Madonna is "Madame X" due in June. Here's the first track.

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Madonna's Behind

With her tour ending, her channel is now releasing a batch of behind the scene videos. I'm not sure how many there will be, but so far we have:

Wardrobe

Transport

Home

Stage

Choreography

Dancers
The thing is... there are crickets in one video, and that indoor arena with the weird coloured seats... wait a minute, did they film this up in Auckland? I think so! That's Vector Arean!

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Rebel Heart

Woo! Basically... Madonna performed live in front of me! Woo!

We started with a video leading in for Iconic, and then she descended in a cage. Bam! And from there we were off. Okay, I admit, I was signing along with all the songs, but everything was so loud I doubt I annoyed anyone. (And if I did... well, that's what happened.)

During the set, Madonna sometimes disappeared from the stage, which surprised some, but that's what she does in her concerts now. Possibly to get a breather, but definitely to change costumes. And there were a lot of costumes in this, and very frequent changes. She puts on a good show!

She did about half the songs from Rebel Heart (with a few of them being videos for other dancers while she changed) and some older songs. Including a recreation of Material Girl that brought back the video, and used the rather extensive stage set up. (One part of the stage could rise to 45 degrees!)

If I was doing this again, I would go for a fan package for one night, and just go for a normal ticket the other night. If she returns, I'm definitely keen. (I always thought I would have to go to Australia, but no, after 32 years, she came here!)

Some photos, with varying quality, are available here. Some people don't like her... but I enjoyed this, and that's all that matters.

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Nearing Maddy

So, I went to Auckland for a reason... because that's there the Madonna concert was!

I got myself a rather expensive fan package ticket. Which was really confusing when I was supposed to pick the ticket up, basically when the concert opened, not before, because I was getting a gift with it. I think I was supposed to have other stuff as well, but never saw any of that.

The gift itself was a commemorative book about her world tours, with lots of glossy photos of all her tours from the start up to and including Rebel Heart. There are other bits and pieces in there too, including some guitar picks. Looks very nice.

The show itself supposedly started at 8pm, so I was sure to be in my seat by then. I wasn't on the floor with the stage (which meant that everyone sitting there was standing the entire time), but instead of the first row of the tiered seats. So no-one in front of me, and I was about halfway up the catwalk stage.

Here's a photo without any zoom on.

At 8 there was indeed something. Now while I don't have anything against her as a DJ, I came here for Madonna, not DJ Yellow Sleep Mask. She did play a nice set, and even put on Poi-E at one point, but, come on!

She finished at 9, and so Madonna... right? Well, no. Time went past until finally, at 10pm, the show started!

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"Journalism" made easy.

Where in NZ is Madonna?

F*** off.

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From Rebel to Heart

David Bowie did some nice songs I liked, but I never really got into him as much as some other people around me. So I'll let Madonna speak about him.

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