EricMontreal22

This is a completely personal take and deals with things I've had a lot of (maybe too much) therapy about, but I do think it's about sexual abuse, and I think Madonna was abused--partly in the ways she's "acted out" and some of her lyrical content. But it's an amazing video and Fincher really was her best director, if not the best director of videos in general (the way he filmed dance--even in the rip off/homage to Fosse's All That Jazz with Paula Abdul's Cold Hearted Snake is second to none and I've heard he was angry at Madonna for not championing him as a director for Evita).

Madonna and Michael seem like such a weird pairing--I doubt they would have even had anything to talk about in the limo.... To be fair, she did make Breathless a large part of her tour. It's just not a good song though--if Prince could give Nothing Compares to Sinead you would think he could come up with something better for Madonna. But we agree on the video for Oh Father--I think it's an amazing and powerful, without being too obvious, visual about the damages of sexual abuse.

One of the highlights of what I think--at least DVD wise--is her best tour.

I kinda love I'm Breathless but it's not very good really. I give it proprs for Madonna finally getting my fave songwriter Stephen Sondheim into the pop charts, albeit briefly, thanks to the three songs he wrote for her apparently just as a favour to his good friend Warren Beatty for the film. He also apparently made her cry when recording the songs because he complained so much about how flat she was (to be fair the songs, More in particular are pretty difficult).

Ray of Light sounds SOOO dated to me now (as do most orbit productions which is why I've been pleasantly surprised by the clips of his new work with Madonna) but part of that admittedly is because it came out when I was in grade 11 and just starting to really pay attention to pop music producers--and I played his stuff constantly (he even made All Saints sound good with the three terrific songs he did for them). It is undeniably a great album with a lot of strong material, and was a minor comeback for her at a point where people were starting to doubt her relevence. Frozen was massive at the time I remember. I think you're spot on about LAP--I just wish she had realized to leave that Prince song off of it--awful, awful. While maybe too light weight for the album, the Bside to Cherish i think, Supernatural, would have worked therte much more. (Speaking of B-sides I still think it's criminal Has to Be was left off ROL). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHvC5E_x6tk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1hrQ7s_KII

I love that performance of Express Yourself BTW--it's interesting that I don't think she ever performed the original album "Sly and the Family Stone" inspired version--always the Pettibone remix.

I need to get back into PP. I took a break around episode 100 but that was nearly six months back... I think your views are really astute. I was actually very surprised at just how beautifully filmed the show is--something I didn't expect. Even compared to the best of primetime tv from that era, it seems to have been directed with special care.

I guess it shouldn't be dismissed--I've just become disillusioned since my favorite acts tend to always chart there, and yet nobody seems to know who they are anymore, lol. The dance charts are also very much based around gay taste and (I feel bad saying this), gay audiences have a tendency to cling to their favorite artists harder than any other fanbase aside from teenaged girls, so... The Kylie polorization is interesting. I think it's more a reflection on the fact that Europe/Asia has always accepted dance music as mainstream in a way that the US hasn't ever since the disco sucks era. Kylie's early success too was based on the fact she was an Aussie soap star whose show was insanely popular in the UK, and that she was produced/written by Stock Aitken Waterman a team who had insane success in Europe during the late 80s, yet barely made a dent in the American music base (their biggest successes were probably Bananarama and Rick Astley in the US and their Donna Summer album).

But she very much (like Madonna) has become known as a great live act. Her concerts do amazing business, regardless of how her albums sell (I would also argue that she's become something of an album artist with low single sales but, at least decent album performances which may be inevitable for any aging pop act). I always find it kinda amusing how drunk rugby guys will still go see Kylie's campy, homoerotic shows.

And of course Dannii covered Baby Love which was written for Madonna with him. I always thought these songs were kinda ironic--Kylie BEGGED to work outside of the Stock/Aitken/Waterman PWL factory, and yet on the album SAW stepped up to the plate and gave her their best material, and the American stuff she did let her down.

The dance charts mean [!@#$%^&*]==my woman Donna Summer has had her singles chart there since 1970 and as I've said, my other woman (don't worry--they don't fight) Kylie has pretty much everything she does chart there, as do the Pet Shop Boys.

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...)