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Reply #30 posted 12/22/14 8:03am

SoulAlive

Madonna Returns To The Top Of The Charts Around The World With Surprise Release Of Six Songs From Her Upcoming Rebel Heart Album

https://ca.finance.y...-074200206.html

Collection Of Songs Reach #1 on iTunes in 36 Countries Within Hours

NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Madonna is currently #1 in 36 countries around the world with the release of six songs from her forthcoming album Rebel Heart. In virtually every country the songs were released, they held six of the ten slots on the Top 10 iTunes chart. In seven of those countries, she had multiple No. 1's. The single Living for Love is currently No. 1 in 20 countries. The six songs - Living For Love, Devil Pray, Ghosttown, Unapologetic Bitch, Illuminati and Bitch I'm Madonna (featuring Nicki Minaj) – are available HERE.

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Reply #31 posted 12/22/14 8:15am

SoulAlive

Madonna’s Next Album Is Shaping Up to Be Her Best in a Decade - TIME Magazine

The singer's surprise release of several new songs reveals that the Queen of Pop hasn't lost her edge

When a handful of Madonna demos leaked last week — an event she called “artistic rape” and a “form of terrorism” — she decided to fight fire with fire by releasing the official versions of six songs cut from her upcoming thirteenth studio album, Rebel Heart. The bundle of new tracks represent her first collection of new material since 2012’sMDNA, a lukewarm flirtation with contemporary club music. Thing is, though, there’s a joy to every new Madonna release that’s just separated from determining the quality of the actual music: at this point in her career she’s pop’s cockroach, resilient and hardy and shockingly adaptable. With each new record, there are lessons about the genre’s present and near future in the specific sounds and figures she chooses to help realize her vision.

Based on this first batch of Rebel Heart material, Madonna is looking to strike a balance. First, there’s are the figures at the centre of EDM and synth-pop, her chosen modes of operation — meaning writers and producers like Diplo, Avicii, and Savan Kotecha. Then, she ropes in artists working at the vanguard across a variety of genres, from superstars like Kanye West to relative nobodies like producers Ariel Rechtshaid and Sophie. This is a savvy move — what a surprise, a smart play from one of the canniest pop stars to ever roam an arena — because it allows her to play to the masses while still pushing boundaries.

The songs that lead off this first Rebel Heart blast, lead single “Living for Love” and “Devil Pray,” could fit in neatly on the radio beside this year’s British house-pop crossovers and Avicii’s own “Hey Brother.” The ones that close it, namely the abrasive half-rapped Kanye collaboration “Illuminati” and caffeine-drunk trap anthem/Nicki Minaj feature “Bitch I’m Madonna,” hew closer to the spirit of PC Music’s obscure SoundCloud accounts and the sharp edges of Yeezus.

And because Madonna exists in rarefied air, the kind reserved for luminaries like herself and Prince and very few others, each of her new releases is less of an independent statement than a response to everything she’s done before, another chapter tacked onto an epic novel with no definite end. The tones, themes, and imagery that make up her musical toolbox — the frank sensuality, the various methods of intoxication, the lapsed Catholicism, the uncompromising confidence — are gospel at this point, and they elevate some of the more forgettable Rebel Heart material to a base level of pleasure. It’s fun to hear Madonna deliver a line like, “It might sound like I’m an unapologetic bitch / but sometimes you know I gotta call I like it is” (and try on 2 Chainz’ flow, just for kicks) because she has three’ decades worth of unapologetic bitchiness in her back pocket. It’s an easy score, sure, but it’s effective. And if the complete version of Rebel Heart, due March 10th via Interscope, can deliver a few more of those easy scores alongside a bit more adventurous songwriting, the album could be Madonna’s finest in almost a decade.

http://time.com/3643...eart-new-music/

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Reply #32 posted 12/22/14 8:23am

SoulAlive

.

[Edited 12/22/14 11:20am]

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Reply #33 posted 12/22/14 10:16am

OldFriends4Sal
e

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Reply #34 posted 12/22/14 10:18am

OldFriends4Sal
e

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Reply #35 posted 12/22/14 10:20am

OldFriends4Sal
e

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Reply #36 posted 12/22/14 10:21am

OldFriends4Sal
e

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Reply #37 posted 12/22/14 10:33am

Askani

avatar

SoulAlive said:

^^ if that photo of the vinyl is genuine,it means that "Wash All Over Me" didn't make the album confused




It's clearly fake. That many songs aren't going to fit on a single LP.
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Reply #38 posted 12/22/14 11:46am

SoulAlive

i-D reviews the six new Madonna songs

Living for Love is one of the new songs made available early, alongside Unapologetic Bitch, Illuminati, Devil Pray, Ghosttown and Bitch I'm Madonna, featuring Nicki Minaj. Madonna has also shared the artwork for her new album, Rebel Heart, which is still set for release in March. The striking black-and-white cover shot by fashion photographers Mert & Marcus shows the singer's face wrapped in thick black wires - and has already spawned thousands of fan recreations on Instagram, some more tongue-in-cheek than others.

But is her new music up to scratch? Here's our track-by-track review.

Living for Love

This uplifting dance tune is a perfectly-pitched comeback single: rather than returning with a cheap EDM banger, Madonna hitches herself to the 90s house revival, a sound she helped to spearhead first time around with hits like Vogue and Deeper and Deeper. When she sings "I picked up my crown, put it back on my head," it feels like a statement of intent.

Devil Pray

Co-produced by DJ Dahi and Blood Diamonds, this semi-acoustic mid-tempo track has echoes of the underrated American Life album. Initially lines like "we can sniff glue and we can do E and we can drop acid" sound awkward and clunky, but after a few listens Devil Pray blossoms into a decent anti-drugs lament.

Ghosttown

An affecting electro-ballad with a sweet message about the importance of sticking together when everything around you turns to shit, Ghosttown is made special by a glorious stealth bomb of a chorus.

Unapologetic Bitch

Madonna has used the #unapologeticbitch Instagram hashtag so much that this track had to be good - and luckily it is. The loping reggae rhythms bring to mind Santigold and recent Rihanna, but the irresistible chorus and spunky lyrics are classic Madge. Check out this V-sign flicked at a hopeless ex: "I"m popping bottles that you can't even afford / I'm throwin' parties and you won't get in the door."

Illuminati

A smart idea, stylishly executed. Here Madonna taps into society's obsession with the idea of an all-seeing secret organisation by telling us what she thinks it isn't - and that includes "Jay-Z and Beyoncé… Queen Elizabeth or Kanye". Talking of Mr West, he co-produced this grinding jam, which has some terrific vocal hooks and Madge rapping, pretty well actually.

Bitch I'm Madonna (featuring Nicki Minaj)

This Diplo-produced party anthem is as childish as its title, with a heavily-vocodered Madge singing: "The neighbour's pissed and says he's gonna call the Five-O." In 2014, does Madonna really party so hard that her neighbours call the police? Obviously not, but with the added bonus of an equally silly Nicki rap, this is a must-have addition to your next pre-drinks playlist.

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Reply #39 posted 12/22/14 12:41pm

luvsexy4all

al jourgenson says madonna smelled like tuna and dog poo when he met her in 85

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Reply #40 posted 12/22/14 12:46pm

luvsexy4all

at least we'll get less dangelo threads/comments

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Reply #41 posted 12/22/14 1:25pm

TheGoldStandar
d

luvsexy4all said:

al jourgenson says madonna smelled like tuna and dog poo when he met her in 85

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Thanks for helping me fuel this fellas Google search count. Based on looks alone, I'd suspect he was smelling himself..?

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Reply #42 posted 12/22/14 1:25pm

TheGoldStandar
d

"Unapologetic Bitch" is a hell of a grower. Can't get the "you never really knew how much you loved me..." part outta my head.

[Edited 12/22/14 13:26pm]

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Reply #43 posted 12/22/14 3:28pm

SoulAlive

"You know you never really knew how much your selfish bullshit cost me...well,fuck you" lol
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Reply #44 posted 12/22/14 6:27pm

purplethunder3
121

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Madonna on new 'Rebellious and Romantic' music, demo leaks, 'possibly' crashing the Grammys and the 'crazy' Sony hack

"It's kind of like the old me and the new me all mixed in together," Madonna tells Billboard of her stunning new single "Living For Love."

t’s a rather large understatement to say that it’s been a crazy couple of weeks for Madonna.

On Tuesday night, more than 10 of the singer’s unreleased demo recordings turned up on the Internet, causing the singer and her team to go into “overdrive” to combat the stolen leaks. (“I haven’t slept in a week,” she says.) The songs were from the sessions for her forthcoming 13th studio album, which at the time, had not been announced (and is still not finished).

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To counter the leak, Madonna accelerated the release of new music: On Friday night (Dec. 19), she announced that her album, Rebel Heart, would be released on March 10, 2015 through Interscope Records, and six of its tracks would become immediately available to purchase. Among those tracks are the set’s lead single, the Diplo-produced soul-meets-house jam “Living For Love.” How far ahead of schedule was the release? The single wasn’t supposed to premiere until Feb. 14, 2015.

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The album — which features a collaboration with Nicki Minaj — is also available to pre-order, and has topped the iTunes Store's top albums tally in more than 40 countries, including the United States. She also dominated the real time Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 chart on Saturday night (Dec. 20), where two of the album’s songs (“Living For Love” and “Bitch, I’m Madonna”) were concurrently in the top three.

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Billboard spoke to Madonna on Sunday morning via phone, to talk about her new album, its “chaotic” recording process, and how her day-to-day business has changed because of the leaks. She also discusses her fondness of Diplo (he’s a “badass”), a possible Grammy Awards performance, and how no one has ever called her an “Unapologetic Bitch."

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Billboard: How are you doing?
Madonna: I'm good. I'm good, I haven't slept in a week, but I'm good.

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I can only imagine the week that you've had so far.

Yeah. It's been a very intense couple of weeks.

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Are you OK right now? As OK as you can be considering what's been happening?
Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm not happy that unreleased demos are out there in the world for people to hear, listen, judge, etcetera, etcetera. Once that happened we went into overdrive. A) Trying to figure out where the leaks were coming from, and then B) Trying to combat that with putting out finished music that people could focus on versus demos that were never meant for anyone to hear. So, that led to no sleep.

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Did at any point you turn to someone and say "Bitch, I'm Madonna," this shouldn't be happening to me?
No. I said, "Shit, this is the age that we're living in." It's crazy. I mean, look at what's going on with Sony Pictures. It's just the age that we're living in. It's crazy times. The Internet is as constructive and helpful in bringing to people together as it is in doing dangerous things and hurting people. It's a double-edged sword.

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Since you said that they were stolen, has it changed how you are operating your day-to-day business? Obviously, you're trying to lock down more stuff, but I mean there's only so much you can do, considering everything is so virtual. Has it changed your day-to-day business with recording the album and making music?
Well, we don't put things up on servers anymore. Everything we work on, if we work on computers, we're not on WiFi, we're not on the Internet, we don't work in a way where anybody can access the information. Hard drives of music are hand-carried to people. We don't leave music laying around. We have photo shoots or video shoots, and everyone has to leave their phone at the door. I mean, unfortunately, it sucks, but that's the way it is. That's how leaks happen.

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It's so sucky.
It is! Because I want to go to photo shoots and play my music really loud and dance to it, and celebrate it, and I can't.

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We know crap leaks all the time, fine. But I mean, (this is) so much! You're so meticulous about how you plan things months in advance… Like you had in your head, "Alright, this how we're gonna roll out the single, this is how we'll roll out the album." And now, a huge wrench has been thrown into the proceedings. Has that pushed everything forward? Are you like, "Alright! Let's start promoting the single now!"
Well, it's thrown us all into overdrive. We're having to think outside the box. Think on our feet. I didn't plan to put my record out this way. I wanted to… plan everything in advance. Release the single, shoot a video, start talking about my record. And you know, prepare for the release of the entire album and have everything set up just so. I mean, that's the kind of person I am. I think that's the best way to do it. But we sort of were left with no choice.

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But there's still going to be a music video?
Of course! I will do all of those things that I've planned to do. It's just, you know, people are now listening to six finished songs.

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And they're great songs, by the way.
Thank you!

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(The release of the music) was a wonderful surprise. You've been able to take a bunch of lemons that had been thrown at you, and I guess make a lemon drop, or lemonade. I don't know, take your pick.
Yeah. That's the stupid cliché that me and (her manager) Guy Oseary have been using. We got a lemon and we made lemonade. Kind of works!

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There has to be a silver lining somewhere. And, there you go. So let's talk about the music. Did you think about releasing these six songs as an EP, and then doing another EP later? Or did you want to make sure that all of the songs stayed together as the full Rebel Heart album — as a piece of work?
Originally I wanted to put everything out together. I have an overabundance of songs, and actually, the reason I wanted to call the record Rebel Heart was because I felt like it explored two very distinct sides of my personality. The rebellious, renegade side of me, and the romantic side of me. In my mind, it was almost like I wanted to do a two-record set. So you get this chunk of songs, and that chunk of songs. That was my original goal. But then all the demos leaked and I can't really go down that road anymore, so I put out (the six songs) first and then, I think a few more songs are going to come out during the time of the Grammys. Then the rest of the album will just come out together (in March), and they'll just get my rebellious and romantic side all mixed in together.

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You mention the Grammy Awards… I'm already picturing you on the Grammy Awards performing "Living For Love" with various guests…
Mmmhmm.

…I'm picturing how that would be wonderful performed on the Grammy Awards, perhaps.
Yes, that would be wonderful. That's possibly something that's gonna happen. (Laughs.)

Possibly?
Yes. Possibly.

Can't spill all the beans right now.
No.

I want to talk about the album’s first single, "Living For Love," specifically. We had Diplo on the cover of Billboard a few months ago. He was saying that (the song) had 20 different incarnations. Was he exaggerating by saying 20, or is that true?
Uhm… (long pause). 20 might be a little too high. But definitely more than 10. A lot of different versions. We knew we wanted to make a dance record. But you know, there's so many different levels of dance music and even different categories of house music. So, it was really like, what's the bass line gonna sound like? Is it gonna be really stripped down and sparse, or is it going to be loaded up? Is it gonna be Chicago house? Is it gonna be U.K. house? It's like, all over the place. Is it gonna be a little bit of one vocal line? Is it gonna be a whole choir singing? So we were experimenting and trying out different things. They all sounded good, but at the end of the day, we wanted it to sound timeless, also. Not just something of the moment.

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Is that MNEK on the track as well?
The thing is, we did do a version where MNEK is singing. The original song, when we first started writing it, was with a singer that Diplo works with all the time…who sounds like MNEK. So, there will be remixes with MNEK's voice on it, but this particular one that's out right now (does not have MNEK). And then there's a female singer whose name is Annie…who sings with the (London Community Gospel Choir), and she also lended her voice to the record. And by the way, I'm a huge fan of MNEK.

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I thought it Alicia Keys was singing on the song with you. But I was wrong, it's not Alicia Keys.
Oh no, Alicia Keys isn't singing on it, she's playing piano on it.

Oh! Okay. Geez, good grief. It's so hard to keep track.
I know! (Laughs.) Alicia plays the piano, and then the female voice is Annie… there are versions of "Living For Love" that MNEK is singing on, and those will be coming out, but just not yet.

It has that right balance of soul music meeting house music. It's the right blend of the two, where you were able find the right balance, where it doesn't sound jarring. It actually sounds like it's meant to go together.
It's kind of like the old me and the new me all mixed in together.

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It's all you! It's all versions of you.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah!

Another new song, "Ghosttown," is such a cool song. It's so evocative. The lyrics are so beautiful. In my head, I'm picturing there's a ghost town, it's cold, there's two souls, they're the only people left. Was that a song that you wrote with Evan Bogart, Sean Douglas and Jason Evigan, or did it come to you already finished?…
Nope.

…How did that song come together?
We all get into a room together. They start playing their chords and then we just start thinking about… When I write with people, we always try to come up with a theme. What do we want to write about? So this one is about the city after armageddon. The burnt out city, the crumbling buildings, the smoke that's still lingering after the fire. You know what I mean? There's only a few people left. How do we pick up the pieces and go on from here? Kind of dramatic. (Laughs.) But not entirely impossible at this stage of the game.

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Yeah, well, at the rate things are going, who knows?
Exactly. One must be realistic and be prepared for anything.

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One must be realistic. Because you know in a few years, we could all just be in some burnt out ghost town together.
Yes, exactly! And we'll all be in our version of a "Ghosttown" or in a version of a "Ghosttown," and at the end of the day, all we're going to have left is each other. So that's really what that song is about.

You can see a music video already in your head.
Yeah! For sure.

It reminds me of when "Gang Bang" (on MDNA) came out. It was so cinematic…
Visual.

…you could see it. Let’s talk about "Unapologetic Bitch." Did someone call you that at some point…
Oh, no.

…and you're like, "Let me make a response (record)?"
No.

No one would ever call you that.
No, I've never heard anyone refer to me as that. That just came out of the ether.

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When you were writing that in a writing session…
No, it's kind of like an extension of… at the beginning of my career, when all the pictures of me came out in Playboy and everybody expected me to cower in shame. And I just said "I'm not ashamed. I have nothing to hide, and I'm not sorry." So, it's my version of “Je Ne Regrette Rien.”

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Well, you have nothing to be apologetic about, obviously.
Well, certainly not in that circumstance. (Laughs.)

Yes, we all understand, there are different things that one should be apologetic for, but certain artistic decisions…
Absolutely. Yes, one should be apologetic in certain circumstances. But not in that circumstance.

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You've worked with a lot of people on this record. We've been following you on Instagram all year. A zillion people.
There's been a lot of cooks in the kitchen.

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A lot of your albums tend to be (produced and written) with a core group of people. Was that hard when you have so many people (on the new album) to keep a through line?
Yes. Very hard. Very, very, very, very hard. It's extremely challenging for me working with a lot of young DJs who never can stay in one city for more than five days. So we never got to finish things. And so then I'd start things with one group of people, and then I'd start something with somebody else, and then they'd have to leave town and the other person would come back. It's a chaotic way to work. You get a lot of ideas, but there's a lot of confusion. It was challenging to keep cohesion with the sound and the direction of the record with people coming and going in a revolving door of creativity. So, I was just the person standing there with a clipboard in the headlights, going "Ok!" (Laughs.) A little bit like a school teacher.

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Diplo is super involved with the album, obviously. Is he sort of quasi-executive producing it…?
No.

…is he involved on more than just the three songs (released so far)?
We did more than three songs. I wouldn't say he was an executive producer, but he has a very strong voice in the record. We collaborated on a lot of music. You know, he heard other songs and gave his input on what he liked and what he didn't like, but I wouldn't call him an executive producer.

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Then I won't!
He's a badass DJ who has great ideas.

Are you actually done writing and recording the album?
Uhm… I am done writing. I'm almost done recording. Almost done. Got just few more little tweaks to do. But first I had to get those six songs out.

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." --Plato

https://youtu.be/CVwv9LZMah0
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Reply #45 posted 12/22/14 6:56pm

SoulAlive

Question of the day: should "Wash All Over Me" make the final tracklist? What do you guys think? Should it be on the album or left behind?

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Reply #46 posted 12/22/14 7:08pm

purplethunder3
121

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SoulAlive said:

Question of the day: should "Wash All Over Me" make the final tracklist? What do you guys think? Should it be on the album or left behind?

I would replace BIM with Wash All Over Me in a minute! lol But does it fit in with the balance that Madonna is looking for between contemporary dance-themed music and her "classic" sound (or songs that are more uniquely her own style) on this album? Does it fit in with the flow of Rebel Heart, in other words...

[Edited 12/22/14 19:21pm]

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." --Plato

https://youtu.be/CVwv9LZMah0
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Reply #47 posted 12/22/14 7:12pm

Marrk

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SoulAlive said:

Question of the day: should "Wash All Over Me" make the final tracklist? What do you guys think? Should it be on the album or left behind?

It's just boring and devoid of originality or musicality. Drown it.

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Reply #48 posted 12/22/14 8:12pm

CandaceS

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https://www.youtube.com/w...8tvvvrIfAM

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Oh. Hell. Yes. woot! (Note they got a lot of the lyrics wrong!)

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P.S. How do I embed a Youtube video like others here do? confuse

[Edited 12/22/14 20:18pm]

"I would say that Prince's top thirty percent is great. Of that thirty percent, I'll bet the public has heard twenty percent of it." - Susan Rogers, "Hunting for Prince's Vault", BBC, 2015
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Reply #49 posted 12/22/14 8:18pm

SoulAlive

here ya go wink

"Illuminati"

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Reply #50 posted 12/22/14 10:22pm

SoulAlive

"Messiah"

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Reply #51 posted 12/22/14 10:27pm

SoulAlive

^^^I gotta say...I really LOVE the ballads on this album! "Messiah","Ghosttown","Joan Of Ark" and "Heartbreak City" are all excellent!! Strong lyrics/songwriting and amazing vocals from Madonna.Remember earlier this year,there was a rumor that she wants to make an album of ballads? If these songs are any indication,that might not have been such a bad idea!

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Reply #52 posted 12/23/14 12:49am

CandaceS

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What I'm hearing is sure as hell better than MDNA!! nod

"I would say that Prince's top thirty percent is great. Of that thirty percent, I'll bet the public has heard twenty percent of it." - Susan Rogers, "Hunting for Prince's Vault", BBC, 2015
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Reply #53 posted 12/23/14 1:31am

SoulAlive

for those of you who want to compile your own CD featuring the six songs released on iTunes plus the demos that leaked last week,this may help you out wink

officially released songs

1) Living For Love

2) Devil Pray

3) Ghosttown

4) Unapologetic Bitch

5) Illuminati

6) Bitch I'm Madonna (feat Nicki Minaj)

Demos that leaked last week

7) Rebel Heart

8) Addicted (The One That Got Away)

9) Borrowed Time

10) Heartbreak City

11) Joan of Arc

12) Make The Devil Pray

13) Living For Love

14) Illuminati

15) Bitch I'm Madonna

16) Wash All Over Me

17) Revolution

18) Messiah

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Reply #54 posted 12/23/14 9:35am

purplethunder3
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Photo
Madonna, shown at the Grammy Awards in January, released six songs from her upcoming album, “Rebel Heart.”CreditRobyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In some circles, the six saddest words in the English language may be: “Don’t you know who I am?” Often the answer is an ego-crushing “no.” So when Madonna names a song “Bitch I’m Madonna” — and books Nicki Minaj to add praise — well, no one knows better than she does that celebrity is Darwinian.

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At 56, Madonna has to contend with a generation of singers who have studied her playbook so thoroughly that they are far more her competition than her admirers. But with the six songs she suddenly released on Saturday, she’s still a contender.

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Madonna put the songs out shortly after the online leak of more than a dozen songs thought to have been planned for “Rebel Heart,” the album she had scheduled for release on March 10. In a post on Instagram that she later deleted, she called the leak a “form of terrorism.”

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But her commercial response was shrewd. The songs can be downloaded from online music services with a pre-order of the album or separately, and Madonna’s name recognition is still so strong that the announcement catapulted all six tracks into the iTunes Top 10 in dozens of countries. (They have since slipped in the United States, but five of the tracks were in the Top 20 early Tuesday morning.)

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Madonna stated that the leaked files were unfinished, and that’s exactly how they sound, particularly those that can be compared with the official releases. Madonna and her producers tweaked the songs further, changing up rhythms and adding sizzle and sharpness to each mix.

In some ways, “Rebel Heart” shapes up as a sequel, with lessons learned, to her 2012 album, “MDNA.” On that album, she switched off between angry breakup songs and party-girl boasts; she also returned to her longtime strategy of collaborating with top D. J.s of electronic dance music as producers. But the resulting songs often felt coldly mechanized and dutifully trendy; overprocessed vocals and cliché-slinging lyrics didn’t help.

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The six-song preview of “Rebel Heart” features Madonna’s better side: as a savvy pop ear and musical team leader, and as a lyricist who sometimes ponders sin along with romance and fame.

Madonna is still reacting to a breakup in two of her new songs (and in more of the demos). But at this point, she’s bouncing back. “Living for Love,” easily one of Madonna’s best singles in a decade, transmutes revenge into upbeat redemption. Diplo and Alicia Keys are among its seven songwriters; Ms. Keys’s piano is also in the track, which harnesses blipping electronics and a house beat to a gospelly buildup. Madonna moves through accusations on the way to positive thinking: “After the heartache, I’m gonna carry on,” she declares.

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“Unapologetic Bitch,” another Diplo collaboration, is more testy. It swerves in and out of a reggae band groove, punctuated by air horn and electronics, as Madonna insults her ex’s sexual performance and taunts, “I don’t care no more / Tell me how it feels to be ignored.”

“Ghosttown” mixes affection and postapocalyptic gloom. It’s a straightforward ballad over synthesizer chords, written with songwriters who have also supplied material to Rihanna, Demi Lovato and Jason Derulo; it begs for a dystopian-romance video.

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“This world has turned to dust / All we’ve got left is love,” Madonna sings, before the chorus promises, “When it all falls down, we’ll be two souls in a ghost town.”

Most of the “Rebel Heart” songs tend to check off at least two idioms per track. “Bitch I’m Madonna” is, fortunately, the most negligible of the “Rebel Heart” tracks. Behind generic club-night lyrics like “We get freaky if you want,” Diplo’s production alternates between blipping, trance-flavored verses — hinting at the chords from “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs — and the slow, sparse beat of trap.

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Kanye West shares the production credits on “Illuminati” and leaves his imprint with distorted vocal effects, a hard kick drum and a rubbery bass line. He’s also mentioned in the song’s merely clever lyrics, which have Madonna rapping the names of celebrities, summarizing the theory of the all-seeing Illuminati conspiracy and concluding, “It’s like everybody in this party / shining like Illuminati.”

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Madonna’s hedonism and higher consciousness converge in “Devil’s Pray.” Its music, with Avicii among the producers, is a little behind the curve; it uses acoustic rhythm guitar above synthetic four-on-the-floor like Avicii’s hit with Aloe Blacc, “Wake Me Up.”

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Madonna, the longtime God-fearing bad girl, sings about how “we could do drugs and we could smoke weed and we could drink whiskey,” but no, those would be bad alternatives. She wants her soul saved from the devil, and not even the tempting electronic beats of clubland can dissuade her. “Teach me how to pray,” she implores. That’s a different Madonna — not blasphemous but devout.

The leaked tracks might, in the end, only raise Madonna’s stature. When the finished album is released — with or without different songs — fans will hear what she adds to them, what she changes, what her standards and instincts demand. They won’t experience Madonna the celebrity or Madonna the fashion statement, but the Madonna who has kept us listening for decades: Madonna the musician.

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." --Plato

https://youtu.be/CVwv9LZMah0
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Reply #55 posted 12/23/14 9:49am

purplethunder3
121

avatar

Image

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." --Plato

https://youtu.be/CVwv9LZMah0
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Reply #56 posted 12/23/14 10:49am

TheGoldStandar
d

Shocked that the Nicki Minaj collabo is the one that fell off of iTunes. booty!

.

I thought the whole point of featuring the flavor of the minute was to get attention.

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Reply #57 posted 12/23/14 11:53am

SoulAlive

http://www.usatoday....en-up/20783447/

Madonna may not have intended to let people hear any of Rebel Heart until next year, but it's hard to imagine anyone who won't be excited by at least half of the material she released suddenly over the weekend.

Leaks of demo material forced Madonna's hand, prompting her to release Living for Love — a single she had planned to put out on Valentine's Day — and five other tracks from her forthcoming 13th album, due in March.

The first three songs, leading with Living for Love a catchy number in the vein ofExpress Yourself and Like a Prayer, find Madonna in hit-maker mode. Devil Pray, with its acoustic guitar and minor-key melody, recalls an Ennio Morricone spaghetti-western score. Ghosttown finds her tenderly singing about two souls who find each other after an emotional apocalypse.

The next three songs — Unapologetic B****, Illuminati and B**** I'm Madonna — are coarser, harder club tracks. In the Kanye West-produced Illuminati, she falls down the rabbit hole of mystical conspiracy theory. In B**** I'm Madonna, her latest collaboration with Nicki Minaj, she puts her dance-club diva credentials up against all newcomers, shouting at one point, "Who do you think you are?!"

Madonna, clearly, knows who she is, even if part of that persona is someone who takes the latest dance trends and mainstreams them. With these six preview tracks, she does that as pop Madonna and club Madonna.

In between those two extremes, there's a lot of room for her Rebel Heart to beat.

Download: Living for Love, Ghosttown, Illuminati

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Reply #58 posted 12/23/14 11:55am

SoulAlive

Madonna
Rebel Heart (so far)
★★★

You'd have to say, if nothing else then Madonna has plugged into the modern world's realities in two very big ways: nothing is safe online; and if you get rolled (by leakers, trolls and North Korean hackers with bad haircuts), roll with it as hard as you can.

If we accept her claim that this premature release of six tracks from Rebel Heart, ahead of a full album in March, was forced on her – last week's leak of what may have been unfinished versions of songs being not just unofficial but unwanted – then she's making the most of a bad situation.

A year ago Beyonce dropped a full album, and videos, without notice and blew everything up for a while. Now Rebel Heart has commandeered the cultural conversation for a few days and put Madonna where she hasn't been for a decade or so, at No. 1. In this case, on the iTunes charts in 36 countries we are told.

Not everything about the six new songs is a surprise, given Madonna's "people" this year have been strategically peppering the interwebs with song titles and collaborators, including here the modestly confident Kanye West on one song, and on another track the modestly dressed Nicki Minaj. The main surprise, I guess, is whether the six tracks reflect Madonna's past, present or future, and the answer to that seems to be, all three.

On Ghosttown, a deeper-voiced Madonnarelives her better ballads (think Live to Tell) over a resonant electronic bed that serves her effective singing with warm electric piano chords. Then there are the '80s/'90s house sounds (piano, hints of gospel in the backing vocals and reach for euphoria escalation) of Living for Love and the acoustic guitar-with-electro-cowboy of Devil Pray (that will remind you of Don't Tell Me from her album at the turn of this century, Music) that is matched with a melody that doesn't attempt to hide its familiarity with House of the Rising Sun.

Not as convincing are the here-ish and now-ish moments. Unapologetic Bitch is a dancehall track with the voice tweaked at times to sound cartoonish amid Jamaican off-beat guitars and squawky synthesiser noise. here's no real connection with Madonna, almost as if she's been dropped in from another track.

The Kanye-produced Illluminati (with Madonna reciting a list of all the ways most candidates are not really part of the classically defined Illuminati, though they may be part of the paranoids' new world order) is colder and harder sounding, in the way of West's own recent work. There's some edge to it but not much menace that would really thrust it into compelling.

It's still more accommodating for a casual listener than Bitch I'm Madonna where, with the vocal assistance of Minaj, Madonna and producers Diplo and Sophie work very, very hard to irritate to penetrate. Noises poke and grate, repeating on you like fingernail scrapings, her voice gets tweaked more and more, and the stop-start rhythm swings from electro dance to lurching strides.

It's contemporary – even if it sounds like it might actually be Britney Spears and friends doing another homage to their inspiration, Madonna – but is it believable? And that is the issue that may not be fully answered until March because the issue with Madonna in the past decade and a half hasn't turned on the fact that she has been trying to be on-trend, even if that has been a constant criticism.

For a start, that was always her calling card, her ability to be on or just ahead of a musical or fashion style that might have been breaking in the clubs or alternative/underground scenes but had yet to transfer to the mainstream. That and a great ear for the right producers and co-writers to help her transfer the trend into marketable music.

Secondly, it is the point of pop music to be of the moment (and Madonna has always been a pop artist, not a vocalist of note, nor a lyricist of depth – that wasn't in her remit).

Madonna's difficulties, at first intermittently but then consistently, have been in the area of matching her understandable quest for relevance – or rebellion – with our perception of her topicality, in personality as much as music.

http://www.smh.com.a...l#ixzz3Mk1cALRx

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Reply #59 posted 12/23/14 2:14pm

go2theMax

avatar

SoulAlive said:

for those of you who want to compile your own CD featuring the six songs released on iTunes plus the demos that leaked last week,this may help you out wink

officially released songs

1) Living For Love

2) Devil Pray

3) Ghosttown

4) Unapologetic Bitch

5) Illuminati

6) Bitch I'm Madonna (feat Nicki Minaj)

Demos that leaked last week

7) Rebel Heart

8) Addicted (The One That Got Away)

9) Borrowed Time

10) Heartbreak City

11) Joan of Arc

12) Make The Devil Pray

13) Living For Love

14) Illuminati

15) Bitch I'm Madonna

16) Wash All Over Me

17) Revolution

18) Messiah

and extending with the ones that leaked 2day:

19) Inside Out

20) Iconic

21) Best Night

22) Back That Up (Do It)

23) Beautiful Scars

24) Body Shop

25) Freedom

26) God Is Love

27) Graffiti Heart

28) Hold Tight

29) Nothing Lasts Forever

30) Tragic girl

31) Holy Waater

32) Veni Vidi Vici

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Forums > Music: Non-Prince > Madonna's new album 'Rebel Heart' (press interviews,Grammy pics,video for the first single,etc)