EricMontreal22

It's funny, from the brief view of Renly and his wife in one of the other promos, many fans of the novel freaked out that they were making the character "switch" to being fully straight. LOL Even though the character profiles shows that's not true--and this is exactly how it was in the books... Obsessive fans...

The previews are pretty great, but that never means anything. Still with the exact same team I am pretty confident it will be up to the same standard... Their youtube channel has somewhat interesting video profiles for the upcoming premier of four characters.

Suddenly everyone I know is watching it, I see people reading the books on the bus (I know they always sold well, but not like this) George RR Martin has recently been doing a lot of press, at least here in Canada, and I suspect DVD sales will be strong. When it started--at least amongst my circle of friends--it still seemed like a cult show--a sizeable audience for cable but still. But it seems to have blown up almost the way True Blood did between seasons which is interesting as this is a show that demans more of its audience. And yeah it is grim, but effective in its way i think.

The controversial new poster...

I am in love with these new promos.

Hello Dolly was part of the problem, but more a symptom. She was horribly miscast--and Gene Kelly is not a good director of other people's material. But the studios were all still looking for a Mary Poppins or Oliver! and did more and more bloated, huge budget musicals, of which Hello Dolly was hardly the worst. (Jerry Herman's later movie of Mame, for example--which really should have kept Angela Lansbury from the stage version but she wasn't a big enough name--is near unwatchable in its wretched-ness)

It's an awful film. Even Kander and Ebb's new songs (after Jule Styne who did the original refused to do iot) are BAD, and at that era of the 70s (Cabaret the movie, Chicago, etc, etc) they were at the height of their powers. OK that song excepted lol While I do find the Broadway album over produced (but as Swede said, it's nothing compared to the second one), it's ironic how hard she had to fight to be allowed to record it. And yet I believe it became a huge huge hit.

I admit I like it--she actually had the gaul to ask Sondheim to re-write some of Clowns' lyrics because she didn't think they were clear enough (and he did! lol He also re-wrote Putting it Together for her, but that was to make it about the record industry and not rt like in the musical it's from). What do people think of the "sequel" album to Guilty she did with Gibbs recently? All I remember is one of the songs was a big gay club hit in remixed form.

Erotica has a ton of great stuff--I usually prefer the original versions. It's interesting because it and Vogue before sorta marked the change in remixers when they went from constructing longer club mixes for songs that still sounded the same, and moved to re-inventing the song completely. I always loved Bye Bye Baby, though I am hardly shocked it wasn't a hit as a single. A highlight for me still is the performance of Why's It So Hard at Girlie Show after the orgy scene (which again, hardly seems more shocking now than many music videos) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3k_s6DlEeo

They said the reason Gang Bang has that title (besides obviously to provoke) is it was called Bang Bang, but they didn't want it to have the same name as the famous Cher (and every other cover artist) song. Same with why Gimme All your Luvin is spelled that way, so it's not mixed up for the more famous song of thesame name. Apparently... I love that clip! LOL I hope she does it live, I could see a crazy staging for it. Angela, Erotica really is a good album--there's one awful one-joke song about cunninlingus (I'm sure I spelt that wrong, it's not a word I use often lol), but otherwise it really doesn't even have much to do with sex. I really hope she'll do Deeper and Deeper again on some tour I get to see live. As for the Sex book--you can see it very easily online if you're curious. Honestly I think what shocked most was, as you say, the idea that she was doing this book. It's not hardcore pornography--it is soft porn I guess but even then it's hidden under the claim of being arty (whether it is or not is not up for me to judge, but I mean the shots are all staged, often somewhat obscure in terms of if you can see what's going on, etc). I personally wish it was more genuinely arty--it's soimply not very good at what Madonna claims she was trying to accomplish IMHO which would be a book of photographs and writing that were erotic but genuinely had some artistic credit, they weren't just there to shock, but were there to provoke a reaction. To me the book fails at that--so it's not good porn, not good art, it's just kinda junk. I also don't really buy that Madonna ever felt a victim about the reaction to the book--yes she got criticism for it, but she was NOT blacklisted at all by it the way some people might be. It seems to have fulfilled all the goals I suspect she had for it--it' got a huge reaction, it sold well, etc. At that point, like I've said, I think Madonna would hjave had some negative backlash no matter what she did as she had gotten so big. What I meant about how now we net porn and sex tapes things are different was more that the book looks even more tame now when any kid can do an innocent google search and suddenly be shocked to see some random porn image. I really think in that sense it woul dbe a much bigger non event now, and really if she wanted to make as big a rucus in this day and age she would have to do a hardcore porn movie or something. Things have changed that much in the past 20 years. You are right though that sex tapes, even though we all know this is often not true, still allow the performer to hide behind claims of it not being their fault that it leaked. (Althoughif Madonna had had a sex tape leakj out in 1991 it probably would have had a stronger reaction than they do now).

That';s one reason I love Donna Summer (if people on here haven't realized it yet lol). She has a voice that at its peak could compare to Whitney Houston (and she certainly kept her voice much better than most of these people), yet nearly always she uses her voice to suit the song, not that American Idol thing of using the song to show off your voice and barely even singing the melody. Being a HUGE HUGE musical theatre fag, I think people always assume I love Barbra. But I'm pretty mixed on her. I LOVE early Barbra--she sounds terrific in Funny Girl (better in the earlier cast recording than the movie soundtrack), I love all of her 60s albums, and I admit I love much of her cheesy 70s stuff (The Way We Were, her disco songs--her and Donna Summer are so well paired up on Enough is Enough vocally, there's a funny outake bootleg floating around from that recording session where they both improv swears and other things into their lyrics and are cracking each other up). But, if we're talking musically and not movie wise, I lose interest by the 80s. Stephen Sondheim is my all time favorite composer, and I appreciate thatg she helped get many of his songs noticed by non theatre people thanks to Babs singing them on her 80s Broadway albums, but they're SO over produced, they just become cheesy mushy adult contemporary crap. And I feel that way about a lot of her stuff post late 70s--it startes to verge into Celine Dion territory for me (don't get me wrong, I have some Celine guilty pleasurers). There's no edge, and by that I don't mean she should do cutting edge pop, but it starts to sound like muzak to me. (Actually getting to her movies, I think after the mid 80s or so she started to similarly make easy, middle of the road movies. Even Prince of Tides, she directs it well, and it's not a bad movie, unlike say crap like The Mirror Has Two Faces, but in her own adaptation she gutted the original dark novel to make it a movie about her character, a shrink, saving a troubled man which is one small part of the novel). I did really love her album from a couple of years back, Love is the Answer, where she went back to the jazz, stripped down arrangements of her 60s material. And I admit I didn't hear her album from last year where it sounds like she may have done the same. But I can never fully love Babs, except early Barbra. I see her two songs done with Paul Jabara, Enough is Enough and The Main Event are posted--love the long 12 or so minute versions of both. Jabara actually wrote It's Raining Men for Barbra and Donna Summer to reunite on, but their labels didn't want them associated at the time with such a camp song, LOL. Anyway some faves not chosen... I love the slightly campy, over the top theme song she did for Eyes of Laura Mars (I believe her boyfriend at the time, a hairdresser, produced the movie and she did it as a favour, or something) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTp0vErHJOM EVen more over the top is the cover she did with Jim Steinman (OK this is from the 80s). Steinman's songs are always a guilty pleasure to me (Total Eclipse, All Coming Back to Me, Meatloaf, etc) Love the spoken open lol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st1bTsBQH-0 This is from Love is the Answer--nice to hear her just with a piano again http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okGMxmMlbqI I can;t believe they cut this song from Funny Girl when it turned into a movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qCeNlKTKSU . This is just a matter of taste, but this is exactly what I mean bny her 80s albums turning me off. I LOVE the song Somewhere of course, but she just sings through it with no nuance in her voice, and the production is like stinky cheese to me, it's SOOO over produced.

I always find it funny that this number is (a very faithful) homage/copy of Bob Fosse's Rich Man's Frug number from Sweet Charity, down to camera angles, and then not all that many years later Beyonce does the exact same homage for her Get Me Bodied video... Also love Princess' After The Love Has Gone. Stock Aitken Waterman usually sucked when they tried to do more mature sounding R&B or midtempo numbers--their forte was the cheesy/fun hi NRG stuff like Kylie, but that Princess album is surprisingly strong throughout, and one of their earliest works as producers/writers.

Absolutely. I love a lot fo Bedtime Stories, but working with softer R&B producers (Babyface, etc) never fully suited her (though it was fairly brave to still end with a song written by Bjork). I actually did really love the Something to Remember ballad compilation though, although I haven't played it much for a while. I think in some ways she would have had somewhat of a backlash anyway--and it's not like Erotica was a huge flop, but I do see some of it as her fault. Sex isn't very graphic (a lot of it is kinda dumb--the diary sex fantasies, umm her and Vanilla Ice lol, or pseudo arty), and of course it's barely a blip now in the era of internet porn and celeb sex tapes, but... She also initially marketed Erotica as almost aural pornography--it was seen as that out there, when really, after the lead single and her Dita dominatrix image, the album isn't very erotic at all (one critics said, I remember, that some might be surprised that a song called "Why's It So Hard" on an album called Erotica is about compassion and understanding). It's perhaps my favorite album of hers, though it's still a fairly tough listen--it's long (it was sold on double vinyls), it uses a lot of less mainstream forms at the time like a more commercialized form of "sleaze" which was big in gay clubs, etc. Even early on in the project she started to try to soften her image, releasing Rain and Bad Girl from it. (It may have thrown people that just before Erotica's lead single came out, she had a US number one with This Used to be My Playground from League Of Our Own, which shared Erotica's main producer with Shep Pettibone, but feels like it fits much more with the I'll Remember/Bedtime Stories Madonna era). But I think even without courting controversy, Madonna had reached such a height, that some backlash was inevitable--it's just the way it goes. . Angela, does your Like a Prayer casette still smell like petchouli or have the safe sex insert?

I was 11 or 12 at the time, and I remember going on a school trip to the library and some boys in my class trying desperately to see if they had the book (I think there was a rumour they kept a copy you had to read IN the library, but now I'm thinking that's probably not very likely at the library we were at...)

I love both of those, though it's hard to pick between the two Express Yourselves from each tour. I know she burned her bridges apparently with Nicki Harris after the Drowned World tour, but I wouldn't mind seeing Donna DeLory back as a backup singer on this new tour--I missed her (*among other things) during Sticky and Sweet. For Confessions our seats were right at the part of the stage Donna was often at when Madonna would be elsewhere, and she really was a great performer in her own way. I also find it kinda funny how Madonna largely poipularized those head mics for dance heavy shows--but then (and partly due to Madonna herself, as she did lip synch more back then, and used them for completely lip synched TV appearances) they became so connected in people's heads with lip synching (also thanks to Janet, who did it much more), that now most performers have gone back to hand mikes, even when they do heavy choreography, as a sort of proof that they're singing live, including Madonna... My only problem with Keep it Together (such an underated/forgotten single) is they really should have given Bob Fosse some credit for the rip off. Then again, Paula and Beyonce never have, and at least Madonna did do some (minor) work with him, so...

Yes, this aired oddly in Canada too on a Quebecois station (I say oddly because we also got the HBO, France one but some months later since Canada didn't have HBO Canada back then).

I certainly agree with that. I do think Girlie Show is the more "theatrically" satisfying overall--the segues between acts, for instance, were much better done--, but there's no doubt that Blonde Ambition broke new ground (even if artists including Kate Bush and Bowie had done some majorly staged tours before then, they didn't quite make the same mainstream impact), and perhaps has some of the more memorable sequences (aside from that Dancing with the Stars judge sliding down a pole topless with Girlie Show of course ). I thought there was more to the Blonde Ambition thing. I know Guy claimed online last year that a release of it was in the planning stages. I also know many fans are hoping they can somehow get all the footage filmed of the concert for Truth or Dare and edit it together, as many think that's the best filmed version, though I can't see them going through that trouble... I know a different date, from the Japanese leg was released in Japan though again I think it's tied into the laser disc deal--and then in Canada and some of Europe we got yet another date that has a lot of mishaps, and Madonna probably doesn't want released again--that aired on TV but I have an old video tape of most of it I recorded (I missed the beginning). Ah well, I guess it'll pop up eventually. The situation with ReInvention is odder--I know CBS was going to air it but then it fell through, though the concert edit has popped up in full online...

As I think they did for a lotof the Todd story--or at least hoping that people had vague and fuzzy memories that could easily be pitched into a different direction.

I forgot all about Carol and the previous rape.

She needs ot get her [!@#$%^&*] together and release Blonde Ambition to DVD--I know they keep promising it, and I have a bootleg of the DVD but... (of course Reinvention Tour is also sitting, all edited for DVD release, with nothing there--maybe she's waiting for a break in her career). I see that her old label, through Rhino is releasing a box set of all her major albums (so exclusing compilations, I'm Breathless and soundtracks--which means no Vogue or other major tunes) this month to capitolize on her promo I imagine. It's not a bad deal--$50 or so for all the albums in a box set, in individual paper sleevs, but I have them anyway I agree that I would love to see her work with Chris again--I love both Blonde Ambition and Girlie Show. I'm a bit surprised he never worked on any other concert tours. And yes of course she won't be working with him anytime soon again lol. As I said earlier in this thread, I think Jamie King who she's worked with ever since is getting a bit tired--at least Sticky and Sweet seemed to show that--besides which now nearly every pop star works with him, a change could be good... But I guess not this time around (I still have high hopes for this tour, regardless)

They have yeah. The common consensus seems to be that the two singles so far aren't the best tracks on the album, and the dance stuff and a few of the ballads have been getting some praise.

Great promo--the week that it references is on youtube in its entirety--I think I linked to it a ffew months back.

Some more reviews: http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/going-out/music/mdna-review-madonnas-new-album-754626 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/first-listen-madonna-mdna-interscope-7544751.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/mar/07/first-listen-madonna-mdna?newsfeed=true

I think they added the newer names to the list largely to seem relevent. Really, if they're going to include people like Aretha, shouldn't they consider people like Barbra Streisand, even if I personally have found her unlistenable since at least the early 80s? Yeah her tours usually are about half based on her new album, which I appreciate considering she lately has toured nearly every album, and it would be so much easier for her to just do more Greatest Hits tours (her Reinvention Tour after American life was advertised as a Greatest Hits tour--partly because of the lacklustre interest in American Life--but Madonna had it her way, and really it was modeled as much around American Life setlist wise as her past hits). I know this has made some fans unhappy--when I saw the Confessions Tour which i loved, we were surrounded by (I assumem, due to the ticket costs) fairly wealthy middle aged people who really only knew her old hits, and would leave to get more beer every time she'd do a new track--which was often. I think you have a fair point about her dance singles--while she's guaranteed to get every track at the top of the dance charts due to her name alone (the dance charts seem to largely be based more around gay clubs anyway--in the US even acts who don't do well there like Kylie routinely top them), I think maybe she's not sure how to approach the dance stuff lyrically now with the common belief that dance songs should be more about having fun and dancing, etc. That said Gaga (whether you like her heavy handed messages in her lyrics or not) seems to have avoided that--and even Madonna who claimed that her Confessions album would be all about having fun and dancing basically only had a lyrically vacant song with her lead single for it Hung Up, many of the other songs, for good or bad, being shoehorned with very personal lyrics (It also has some great midtempo songs, despite claims of it all being dance all the time, like Forbidden Love, which was so great live, and Push anbd Like It Or Not, we'll ignore the overtly religious Isaac). For the record, I much much prefer Mariah in full ballad mode (or at least some of her early C+C Music Factory dance pop like Emotions) than her hip hop/R&B work...

The ABBA girls were vastly underated as vocalists undoubtedly but that's a hella weird list. Aretha hasn't had a great voice since the mid 70s--it just seems like they lopped together a lot of random female vocalists haphazardly--some who write all their own stuff, some like Madonna who co-write most of it (mainly lyrics--something sometimes I think Madonna should ask for more help with lol), others like Aretha who never wrote anything. I dunno, I think people still seem to find it hard to list female artists and categorize them (would a similar list lop Bob Dylan with The Rolling Stones and say Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake or someone together--I don't think so, but maybe). Thanks for those reviews. I'm a regular Popjustice poster, and I usually agree with their reviews, although they have a tendency similar toAttitude of blind gay fandem (I guess they're not all gay but in my experience talking with the people who write there, they are ) and a somewhat annoying habit of claiming such and such track is the best track they've heard all season, and then when it comes out and flops turning around and dissing it. Still, it's good to see it's getting positive press. I take it that the last half of the album (on the standard edition) which is produced by William Orbit who did all of Ray Of Light will be the moodier, more ballad heavy part (a bit like her Music album I guess which is front ended with more dance tracks, and then becomes more moody and sombre by the end). I admit, I still like a Madonna album to be more dancey than not, but I do love her ballads--I just think if there are too many the album can get mired in Madonna's teenaged poetry navel gazing. American Life isn't nearly as bad an album as its reputation and sales would show, in hindsight a lot of it is interesting and I like Mirwais' production, but listening to at a whole it really is too filled with slower Madonna songs where I think she thinks she's deeper than she is, which is fine for a few songs but can become a chore to listen to. I do like Masterpiece and am glad it's on the album. Speaking of--the deluxe edition of MDNA will have four or five bonus tracks on the end (and sounds like it won't end on a ballad heavy side). I kinda don't understand this recent thing about Deluxe editions. I know in the past, partiularly in the UK, they often reissue an album a year or so later with a new single and extra tracks to boost sales, but the current thing is to releae Deluxe and Standard versions together--Gaga did it last year too. I'm one of the few people my age I know who still buys CDs, at least for the performers like Madonna I tend to collect, and I don't understand why anyone who is enough of a fan to buy the album wouldn't pay the 1-2 dollars more for the five extra tracks (right now on Amazon.ca the deluxe edition of MDNA is actually cheaper on presale). I suppose it's a gimmic like everything else, but this isn't a case of buying it from Target or somethign and getting bonuses, or the deluxe edition being limited...