TonyR
The Legend Continues
Posts: 8,397
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Post by TonyR on Feb 11, 2019 16:38:34 GMT
Yeah I really struggle with this to be honest, and I mean this in a 'nice conversation over a pint' post rather than an argument I don't see how you can go from a fan to the seeming hatred you seem to have. I've been a fan of someone and moved into ambivalence whilst still loving their earlier work (Janet, Mariah), but I can't see how you can go from fandom to (to quote you) hating them. I mean hatred! Surely that's just for the Hitlers of the world rather than a pop star who you used to love? I get that Madonna hasn't always got the best public image and is prone to saying the wrong thing but don't we all, and if everything we said or did was always reported on then we'd have the same imagine. I know I can be a right prick at times (feel free to disagree). So, forgive me, I really struggle to see your POV here. By all means I get 'I used to like her music but don't anymore' or 'I like her music but think she's unlikeable'. But I used to be a fan but now I hate her, I don't get. I wonder if it's an age/sex thing? The very things you used to love her for, now seem repellent coming from a 60 year old woman? And in regards to 'no doubt go full circle back to love when she's passed', I bet you lambasted people who did the same with MJ? Hated him when alive then shedding tears when he passed? It's a complicated one. I was always an MJ fan first and a Madonna fan second. I genuinely love who she was in the 80s/early 90s, Like A Prayer, Vogue, La Isla Bonita era Madonna will always hold a place in my heart. I think her music took a serious nosedive in the 00s and never truly recovered. I hear the music she makes these days and I struggle to comprehend how it is the same person who made such high quality pop in the late 80s/early 90s. There's the occasional song where I see traces of her former greatness, but its far and few between, and artistically I feel let down as a former fan. In terms of where the hatred comes from, I don't really hate her or wish bad things on her - I'm not that twisted. But I do dislike a lot of the things she went on to do outside of the music and it has nothing to do with age. As well as a gradual declining interest in her newer work, I felt like she threw MJ under the bus in his life and found it too little too late when she started praising him after his death. I also didn't like the way she became so bitchy about Lady Gaga, it seemed to me she felt threatened by someone younger having such success and as a fan of Gaga, I felt like Madonna's attitude in interviews etc showed a lack of class. MJ gets ripped off and imitated all the time and he never once bad mouthed artists like Justin Timberlake or Usher. I also had a very bad concert experience which effected me. I saw her on the Drowned World tour and she was two and a half hours late, swore at some fans who booed her for not being on time and cut the show short presumably because of curfew times. Suffice to say, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I am slowly starting to feel twangs of affection towards her again, probably because she is getting older, time heals old wounds and I still consider her early music to be a defining soundtrack to my life as a young gay man coming of age in the late 80s. Am I a hypocrite for acknowledging that I will be sad when she passes? Perhaps, but it is a very different scenario than the bandwagon jumpers who called MJ a freak in life and suddenly decided to have a change of heart once he died. I guess I don't feel like Madonna particularly NEEDS my love or support, the way MJ did in life. Does that make sense?
Somewhat! I know sometimes in concert she's been a little, shall we say, kranky - it's not acceptable. Especially at those prices. Each time I've seen her, she's been nothing more than lovely (and punctual!). I agree she didn't handle the Gaga thing well, but she hasn't fully slagged her off just the odd shady comment. I think a lot of it was frustration that all of a sudden Gaga was getting lauded when Madonna had done it all before yet not given credit anymore (sort of the same way MJ fans get pissed when JT gets too much praise). As for the you not liking her latest works. That's fine & all the fun of music being subjective. Personally I love it, well most of it. Some albums post 2000 I really don't like (Confessions, Music) and some I adore (the stuff you probably hate: American Life, Hard Candy). But that aside, a bit like me & Janet again, and I haven't liked anything she's done since 1995, but I still give her credit & usually defend her based on her 1986-1995 albums alone. After that I'm just not interested. I don't defend her blindly, like I say, some work is patchy, and occasionally awful (Bitch, I'm Madonna) and sometimes she's downright unlikable; but I always love a lot of her music and she's produced enough amazing stuff recently (Ghosttown) to counteract the bad. Plus in terms of her personality, yes she may turn up late and swear occasionally, but she also build orphanages in Malawi & raises tonnes of money that no-one talks about. She has this defense mechanism that is seen as cold but I think that's normal after years of being torn apart.
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Post by ghost on Feb 11, 2019 17:49:09 GMT
Am I a hypocrite for acknowledging that I will be sad when she passes? Yes, you are. It shouldn't be one rule for MJ and another for everyone else. You can't moan about people treating MJ badly in life and then coming around to him after he passed and then openly admit to doing the exact same thing with Madonna. It's very sad that society has a habit of not appreciating its brightest stars while they're still with us.
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Post by aazzaabb on Feb 11, 2019 19:53:40 GMT
Really interesting conversation TonyR and Russg I agree with a lot of what TonyR says. She’s not been without her flaws and sometimes she’s a bit bitchy. Russg, I think you’re associating Madonna’s imperial phase with a happy time in your youth. A mixture of nostalgia and a more simplistic time. I suppose really when I think of most artists I love, they’ve all had that imperial phase; MJ, Prince, Madonna, PSB’s, Kate Bush. Their early albums were at a point where they were sonically and visually at their most appealing and they were setting all kinds of trends. Everybody peaks, but what goes up has to come down also. Madonna’s later albums are patchy as are MJ’s Invincible or Prince’s 3121 or Pet Shop Boys Super. If Madonna made the same kinds of records that she made back in the 80s/90s she would have nosedived. Pop music is tricky because you’ve got to evolve with the industry if you want to be relevant in the charts and continue to be commercially successful and appealing. There’s some great tracks that span her entire career. Have you got the 2CD version of Celebration? There was also an online fanmade edition that added even more tracks and I honestly think it’s jam packed with great tracks. The Rebel Heart sessions yielded some of her best work in years in my opinion. Check out the superb Queen. Queen
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Post by Russg on Feb 12, 2019 19:01:30 GMT
It's a complicated one. I was always an MJ fan first and a Madonna fan second. I genuinely love who she was in the 80s/early 90s, Like A Prayer, Vogue, La Isla Bonita era Madonna will always hold a place in my heart. I think her music took a serious nosedive in the 00s and never truly recovered. I hear the music she makes these days and I struggle to comprehend how it is the same person who made such high quality pop in the late 80s/early 90s. There's the occasional song where I see traces of her former greatness, but its far and few between, and artistically I feel let down as a former fan. In terms of where the hatred comes from, I don't really hate her or wish bad things on her - I'm not that twisted. But I do dislike a lot of the things she went on to do outside of the music and it has nothing to do with age. As well as a gradual declining interest in her newer work, I felt like she threw MJ under the bus in his life and found it too little too late when she started praising him after his death. I also didn't like the way she became so bitchy about Lady Gaga, it seemed to me she felt threatened by someone younger having such success and as a fan of Gaga, I felt like Madonna's attitude in interviews etc showed a lack of class. MJ gets ripped off and imitated all the time and he never once bad mouthed artists like Justin Timberlake or Usher. I also had a very bad concert experience which effected me. I saw her on the Drowned World tour and she was two and a half hours late, swore at some fans who booed her for not being on time and cut the show short presumably because of curfew times. Suffice to say, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I am slowly starting to feel twangs of affection towards her again, probably because she is getting older, time heals old wounds and I still consider her early music to be a defining soundtrack to my life as a young gay man coming of age in the late 80s. Am I a hypocrite for acknowledging that I will be sad when she passes? Perhaps, but it is a very different scenario than the bandwagon jumpers who called MJ a freak in life and suddenly decided to have a change of heart once he died. I guess I don't feel like Madonna particularly NEEDS my love or support, the way MJ did in life. Does that make sense?
Somewhat! I know sometimes in concert she's been a little, shall we say, kranky - it's not acceptable. Especially at those prices. Each time I've seen her, she's been nothing more than lovely (and punctual!). I agree she didn't handle the Gaga thing well, but she hasn't fully slagged her off just the odd shady comment. I think a lot of it was frustration that all of a sudden Gaga was getting lauded when Madonna had done it all before yet not given credit anymore (sort of the same way MJ fans get pissed when JT gets too much praise). As for the you not liking her latest works. That's fine & all the fun of music being subjective. Personally I love it, well most of it. Some albums post 2000 I really don't like (Confessions, Music) and some I adore (the stuff you probably hate: American Life, Hard Candy). But that aside, a bit like me & Janet again, and I haven't liked anything she's done since 1995, but I still give her credit & usually defend her based on her 1986-1995 albums alone. After that I'm just not interested. I don't defend her blindly, like I say, some work is patchy, and occasionally awful (Bitch, I'm Madonna) and sometimes she's downright unlikable; but I always love a lot of her music and she's produced enough amazing stuff recently (Ghosttown) to counteract the bad. Plus in terms of her personality, yes she may turn up late and swear occasionally, but she also build orphanages in Malawi & raises tonnes of money that no-one talks about. She has this defense mechanism that is seen as cold but I think that's normal after years of being torn apart. I thought her best albums post-90s were Confessions and Hard Candy, but even they weren't a patch on her output from True Blue - ROL. Having said that, I've only heard MDNA once and never bothered checking out Rebel Fart. I just found her increasingly pretentious, it started around ROL with crap like Mer Girl and songs that sound like yoga chants (Shanti Ashtangi). I didn't mind too much on ROL as there were still some great songs on there (Nothing Really Matters, The Power of Goodbye, Frozen and Sky Fits Heaven). But I think she let the critical praise go to her head, as I find both Music and American Life to be largely unlistenable, and marked the end of my Madonna fan days. The Rebel Heart sessions yielded some of her best work in years in my opinion. Check out the superb Queen. Queen I took a listen, but it just sounds too generic and like everything else that's out there these days. After she fell out of favour with the critics with American Life, she became increasingly desperate to chase trends and I think it effected the quality of her music. In some respects, I'm almost glad MJ never carried on after Invincible, as he too was starting to show signs of trend chasing and it would've been heartbreaking to watch him dilute his otherwise incredible body of work with mediocrity designed to appeal to the Justin Bieber crowd. He was already beginning to sound like N Sync with a few of those dance cuts on Invincible. Yuck!
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Post by aazzaabb on Feb 12, 2019 22:45:25 GMT
Fair enough. I love it. It's unreleased so I'm imagining it with a proper master and tweaked production. I mean I hear what your saying but it's all pop music essentially and a lot of her 80's material is pretty generic too. Especially some of the early mixes of tracks on the first few albums which get an improved mix on The Immaculate Collection a few years later.
I don't know. Man I love so much from the Rebel Heart sessions. I think you pretty much have your mind made up about that album though so your not going to enjoy anything from it.
I think we romanticize the past aswell to large extent. I mean her great songs from the 80's and 90's will always be great but is it fair of me to say that a lot of her 80's and 90's albums had a few duds on there aswell?
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Post by bedroom on Feb 13, 2019 19:20:12 GMT
Fair enough. I love it. It's unreleased so I'm imagining it with a proper master and tweaked production. I mean I hear what your saying but it's all pop music essentially and a lot of her 80's material is pretty generic too . Especially some of the early mixes of tracks on the first few albums which get an improved mix on The Immaculate Collection a few years later. I don't know. Man I love so much from the Rebel Heart sessions. I think you pretty much have your mind made up about that album though so your not going to enjoy anything from it. I think we romanticize the past aswell to large extent. I mean her great songs from the 80's and 90's will always be great but is it fair of me to say that a lot of her 80's and 90's albums had a few duds on there aswell? Interesting points. I'm not a huge fan of Like A Virgin album but I would definitely say her debut is flawless. Yes it's very raw in places and could be polished....But I am in love with it just the way it is. I like pop music to be a little raw. It could just be that I just bought it on vinyl today and the artwork enchanted me...it cant be though I danced my ass off in the living room for 8 songs non stop. During an interview in the late 90s she was asked about the Spice Girls. And she said something to the effect of "dont hate them I used to be a spice girl too in the beginning". I think she made the perfect transition from pop star to pop artist in her career. But still there is a reason we listen to albums like her debut and LAV and True Blue and not Tiffany or Debbie Gibson albums from the 80s. I'm sure some people do though
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Post by aazzaabb on Feb 13, 2019 20:35:07 GMT
Fair enough. I love it. It's unreleased so I'm imagining it with a proper master and tweaked production. I mean I hear what your saying but it's all pop music essentially and a lot of her 80's material is pretty generic too . Especially some of the early mixes of tracks on the first few albums which get an improved mix on The Immaculate Collection a few years later. I don't know. Man I love so much from the Rebel Heart sessions. I think you pretty much have your mind made up about that album though so your not going to enjoy anything from it. I think we romanticize the past aswell to large extent. I mean her great songs from the 80's and 90's will always be great but is it fair of me to say that a lot of her 80's and 90's albums had a few duds on there aswell? Interesting points. I'm not a huge fan of Like A Virgin album but I would definitely say her debut is flawless. Yes it's very raw in places and could be polished....But I am in love with it just the way it is. I like pop music to be a little raw. It could just be that I just bought it on vinyl today and the artwork enchanted me...it cant be though I danced my ass off in the living room for 8 songs non stop. During an interview in the late 90s she was asked about the Spice Girls. And she said something to the effect of "dont hate them I used to be a spice girl too in the beginning". I think she made the perfect transition from pop star to pop artist in her career. But still there is a reason we listen to albums like her debut and LAV and True Blue and not Tiffany or Debbie Gibson albums from the 80s. I'm sure some people do though I just read a quote along the lines of “The Spice Girls were about girl power, where‘as Madonna was less restricted and simply about power!” I agree about Madonna, True Blue and Like A Virgin. All 3 albums are iconic, especially True Blue and Like A Virgin when talking about iconic album sleeves! When you think of classic 80’s pop those 2 instantly come to mind in the same way as Thriller and Bad. I’m going to pick up the first 3 Madonna albums on vinyl myself this year also. I will admit I think they are superb begging to end, but I think it’s also due to the fact that they’re short albums of the 40 minute mark which is the perfect album length imo. This way even the throw away tracks are fun and set up the singles tracks beautifully.
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TonyR
The Legend Continues
Posts: 8,397
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Post by TonyR on Feb 16, 2019 19:16:07 GMT
I love those first two albums, some lovely pop music on them.
Her more mature stuff on LAP is better for sure but for pure pop fun the first two rule.
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Post by bedroom on Feb 16, 2019 19:24:32 GMT
I love those first two albums, some lovely pop music on them. Her more mature stuff on LAP is better for sure but for pure pop fun the first two rule. I just want that first single and first video off of the upcoming album to give me that breath of fresh air in the midst of this stupid documentary mess. I have really high hopes for this album to be honest.
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TonyR
The Legend Continues
Posts: 8,397
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Post by TonyR on Feb 16, 2019 19:27:45 GMT
I love those first two albums, some lovely pop music on them. Her more mature stuff on LAP is better for sure but for pure pop fun the first two rule. I just want that first single and first video off of the upcoming album to give me that breath of fresh air in the midst of this stupid documentary mess. I have really high hopes for this album to be honest. Yeah me too. Highest hopes I’ve had for a while. Mainky cos it’s Mirwais and also that tweet about a single album with one producer. I hope its one standard album of 11/12 songs and no deluxe or ultra deluxe and I hope the end single is maybe a ballad or something that isn’t a pale Madonna by numbers like Living For Love. i still think of the lead fron Rebel Heart had been Ghosttown it would have been a stormer of a hit.
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Post by bedroom on Feb 16, 2019 19:33:03 GMT
I just want that first single and first video off of the upcoming album to give me that breath of fresh air in the midst of this stupid documentary mess. I have really high hopes for this album to be honest. Yeah me too. Highest hopes I’ve had for a while. Mainky cos it’s Mirwais and also that tweet about a single album with one producer. I hope its one standard album of 11/12 songs and no deluxe or ultra deluxe and I hope the end single is maybe a ballad or something that isn’t a pale Madonna by numbers like Living For Love. i still think of the lead fron Rebel Heart had been Ghosttown it would have been a stormer of a hit. I really have not followed what mirwais has been upto since American Life but if she chose to work with him again even though they produced the least commerically successsfull album of her career, I'm guessing it's bound to be good.
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TonyR
The Legend Continues
Posts: 8,397
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Post by TonyR on Feb 16, 2019 20:08:10 GMT
Yeah me too. Highest hopes I’ve had for a while. Mainky cos it’s Mirwais and also that tweet about a single album with one producer. I hope its one standard album of 11/12 songs and no deluxe or ultra deluxe and I hope the end single is maybe a ballad or something that isn’t a pale Madonna by numbers like Living For Love. i still think of the lead fron Rebel Heart had been Ghosttown it would have been a stormer of a hit. I really have not followed what mirwais has been upto since American Life but if she chose to work with him again even though they produced the least commerically successsfull album of her career, I'm guessing it's bound to be good. Yeah I love that too. I guess she loves AL even if she never does anything from it live.
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TonyR
The Legend Continues
Posts: 8,397
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Post by TonyR on Feb 17, 2019 17:11:51 GMT
Have you heard this? My favourite Madonna B side (from Secret). Really good enough to have made the album.
Always loved this ever ever since I got the single in 94.
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Post by Russg on Feb 17, 2019 18:32:07 GMT
Still one of my favourite Madonna songs to this day:
Always makes me feel good.
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Post by Russg on Feb 24, 2019 12:08:57 GMT
The best Madonna album of the 00s was Confessions by a landslide.
I had lost interest in the early 00's when she seemed to be more interested in being taken seriously as an artist than in making good music. Albums like "Music" and the awful "American Life" was the trigger point of this loss of interest.
I'm not a massive fan of Dance music but I think "Hung Up" is a great record and listening to the samples this album sounded like one to get to catch-up a little bit with Madonna.
Madonna's brand on dance music on this album is probably as much dance music as I am going to like. No other track matches "Hung Up", but I do also enjoy "How High", "Push", "Sorry" and "Forbidden Love".
I haven't listened to the album in a while, but I added "Hung Up" to my best of Madonna playlist, which is mainly made up of the 1980's era classics.
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