endorphin74 said:

It also reminds me of her "spoken word" on RESCUE ME....

is her europe music awards performance from yesterday
already online at some mtv website somewhere?

i missed the show yesterday and i have been surfing
the various mtv sites until maddening delirium but,
for some reason it's impossible to find movie files

IstenSzek said:

impressivemadonna.com

ehuffnsd said:

I knew it!




I'm such a dork...guess I can't go 2 New York!

jayaredee said:

snitch. and to think we could trust in you.

IstenSzek said:

CHIC0 said:

In truth, I wanted 2 sabotage Madonna's new project because I am, in my subconscious, an obsessed Kylie Maniac!!!!

MikeMatronik said:

then why do you have a Tori Amos quote as your signature. so when Kylie releases her next project you'll be an obsessed Madonna Maniac?

CHIC0 said:

I'm Natashya!

MikeMatronik said:

yeah..well, just call me Esther
[Edited 11/4/05 8:54am]

CHIC0 said:

coof...now spank me!

MikeMatronik said:

ask nicely.

IstenSzek said:

They weren't bleak!

CHIC0 said:

porr faavoorr!

Cariño!

MikeMatronik said:

CHIC0 said:

"I'm not your bitch...don't hang your shit on me!"

Oh, Sí! CARiÑo!

!dame MÁS!

MikeMatronik said:

i'll give u love..i'll teach u how to fu--uhhhhh.

OK...Here's my first after thoughts. I have only listened to it a few times.

Time goes by so slowly for those who wait....Madonna. I doubt she could have pulled this off when her next album hits in about 3 years. She'll be 50. This was the right time to do this type of album. I am looking at it now as a concept album. One person for the most part at the helm of a single vision...to get you to dance your ass off to Madonna. He succeded.

Where Mirwais had really no vision over what Madonnas last two albums should sound like. Not that they were bad, but the vision was way off. FOr instance Music starts off one way and then veers out of control at song 4. By song 5 it's a different album entirely. And who ever let Madonna have her way with a guitar...on a Madonna album ought to be bitch slapped. That said there are really good songs on both...but as a whole they just did not hang together...certianly not like ROL did nor like COADF does.

I really like COADF. I like Hung Up. I can't say it's the best on there...but it is certainly hangs with the resr and is the most noticable straight from the get go. And speaking of...that's what I miss most about madonna songs...is the Good from the first 5 seconds. You didn't have to wait for the song to become to like it...nor did you have to let the songs grow on you. This has been how her music has been since Ray of Light.

The song I like the most are Hung Up, Sorry, Let it Will Be, Fobidden Love. How High is a Kylie Song. I feel that the strongest part of the album is the last 3 songs. It ends very nicely. There are touches of Erotica, Bedtime Stories, and Ray of Light all over the album. The songs I don't care for that much aren't bad...I just don't care for them.

This is a very strong, cohesive and fan friendly album. I think it will get great reviews and do very well. However it is no Ray OF light...nor is it a masterpiece. I feel this is a great album that could have been a fantastic one...if she had chosen a different producer. I don't agree that she should have had a bunch of producers on this. This needed to be a cohesive project and the stregnth of one producer. But Stuart Price? I don't know his credentials. But I think she should have chosen someone with a little musical training. He's a dj and this is a dj record. Many of the songs, albeit good, are almost one trick ponies. How the song starts is how it ends...and there is little variation through out each. This is why I think ROL worked well...William is classically trained. It shows too. There was a complexity he added to her music that wasn't there before. He was also old school...so he didn't push the bounderies as someone who was up and coming would have. However, this also added a maturity to ROL too. What would this album have sounded like had she used someone like BT or even Basement Jaxx or anyone who composes electronic music as well as has a dj sence about them? Just a thought.

So I really like this album...I am also sure that it will grow on me in ways ROL did not. I am sure my opinion will change as time progresses. I agree that it deserves the 4 Stars it's been getting.

superspaceboy said:

I totally agree with your review.
I don't think Madonna will create another classic album from this point on, but i haven't heard any classic albums in a long time now. They just don't make them like they used to.

Anyways this is another memerable chapter in Madonna's catalog.

I'm gonna not listen 2 Madonna until November 14th...

all this emotions r making my heart blow!

AndreC said:

this is the first time i'm hearing of people checking out the cd. i need to hear this for myself.

MikeMatronik said:

Kylie Madonna & Madonna Kylie. No need to do that.

I've listened to it a few times now, and I still think it's only an okay album. I loved Hung Up when it first came out, but I've already grown tired of it. That was only three weeks ago! I know she wasn't going for anything deep or meaningful, just a fun dance album, but this feels somehow like a step back. A step back in time, even. Something odd about hearing a woman nearing 50 doing sing-songy, fluff lyrics. Lyrics have never been a strong point, and I don't expect poetry to flow from her mouth like Cheetos going into Britney's mouth, but something less embarrassing than some of the lyrics within would be good.

The thing that I find to be very odd about Madonna (and I know I'm gonna piss somebody off...oh well) is that in some areas, she hasn't improved at all over time. Mostly I'm refering to her acting - which is as stiff today as it was in A Certain Sacrifice - and her lyrics. They're no better now than they were on True Blue. Yes, they've become more personal as she's experienced more in life, but I don't think the quality of her lyrics has grown much.

But the stuff on the album that I like, I really like. There's a whole new wave feel to many of the songs that is a lot of fun. It's a dance album, so obviously it's very high energy. As VC already said, it sounds a bit '90s to me. La Bouche? Not really. I was thinking more Captain Hollywood Project. I'll definitely be buying this when it comes out and that makes me happy. American Life was the first album of hers that never landed on my music shelves, and I'm happy to add another to the collection.

The London Times REVIEW


http://entertainment.time...34,00.html

Madonna of the pinks

In a glorious return to her roots Madonna has made the world's gayest album, says Peter Paphides

It must be a source of reassurance to any gay pop icon to know that no matter how crummy her last career move, she can always come back. Indeed, the great thing about being a gay icon is that a few wrong turns and public mistakes serve only to make you even more of a gay icon.

Take, for instance, Kylie Minogue. Like the most devoted of soldiers’ wives, her core fanbase waited patiently as she went off to record two stinky albums of pointless Hoxton pop. When she returned with Spinning Around and Can’t Get You Out of My Head, the relationship was all the stronger for her lapse. Likewise Cher and Believe. After a slew of dreary soft-rock albums, she finally gave her staunchest admirers what they wanted — in spite of the fact that she needed persuading even to release the song.

Though trifling by comparison, most of Madonna’s crimes against pop have been deposited a little too recently for comfort in the communal memory bank. As difficult Madonna albums go, American Life was up there with Bedtime Stories. It was lambasted in some quarters for its preoccupation with big issues (fame, war and, um, the “tree of life”), but all that stuff wouldn’t have mattered if the songs were a bit more fun. But combined with the worry that she was turning into Camilla Parker Bowles, there were very real concerns that from here on we’d have to make do with Gwen Stefani and Alison Goldfrapp for amazonian future-pop — and even accept that they were making a better job of it than Madonna has in the past few years. Hands up who smiled when the Oldfrapp nickname came into circulation? Oh, we of little faith.

Early indications that she had learnt from her mistakes have, of course, come with the news that she has sidelined Mirwais Ahmadzaï, her collaborator on Music and American Life in favour of the thrillingly unsubtle Les Rhythmes Digitales honcho Stuart Price. The new single Hung Up has already delivered sensationally on that promise.

With its inspired use of the opening synth fanfare from Abba’s Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man after Midnight) it serves notice that Madonna has gone back to her roots. Of course, in the case of most artists the mere idea of such a thing is enough to have you stifling yawns: U2 hanging out with old bluesmen; Green Day’s torpid punk affectations; Van Morrison’s stultifying run of hotel-lobby jazz albums.

In the case of Madonna though, back to basics means New York in the late 1970s, when the aspiring star arrived from Michigan, shortened her name to one iconic handle and survived on popcorn as she struggled to make it as a dancer. It’s the tail end of disco, when the nightclubs Danceteria and Studio 54 were booming, a new $10 pill called Ecstasy accelerated the beat into a soft synthetic pulse and every great pop song came with its own whoosh! moment. On Confessions on a Dance Floor the whoosh! factor is high, not least on I Love New York, which has the song’s fabulously unapologetic sentiments carried along on an insistent digitised I Wanna Be Your Dog riff: “LA is for people who sleep/ Paris and London, baby you can keep . . . If you don’t like my attitude, then you can eff off/ Just go to Texas/ Isn’t that where they golf?”

The catty provocations of the delivery here are just one of hundreds of reasons why Confessions . . . is the gayest record yet. If Village People, Pet Shop Boys, Man 2 Man featuring Man Parrish, Donna Summer and a resurrected Sylvester all left Studio 54 at 4am, each with a bottle of poppers taped to their nose, and ventured straight into a recording studio where Giorgio Moroder was waiting for them with a tray of Breezers, they still wouldn’t make a record as gay as Confessions on a Dance Floor. “I’m gonna tell you about love,” Madonna intones breathily on Future Lovers, “Would you like to try?” All the while, arpeggiating I Feel Love synths fade in and out of view, contriving a sweet sense of disorientation that increases when the beat stops and she urges us back into the heart of the action. Then, cue everything all at once. Whoosh! moment No 17.

In keeping with Madonna’s and Price’s attempt to create something akin to a trip, songs grow out of other songs, mini-fugues escort you into more pop possibilities. As if 25 years of lapsed Catholicism, songs about her dead mother, clinches with black Christs and a starring role in Evita haven’t already earned her a lifetime gold privilege pass at G.A.Y., two songs on here plant themselves firmly in that wonderful Europop tradition — ATB’s 9pm (Till I Come), Desireless’s Voyage Voyage, Abba’s hymnal Lay All Your Love On Me — where major tunes and minor chords collide over a rhythm that urges escape.

Assisted by a canny steal from the Jacksons’ Can You Feel It, Sorry begins in wounded Italian tongues of betrayal, before casting the 47-year-old singer in an abusive relationship. Better still is Forbidden Love. Over a tune that resembles post-coital Daft Punk, it sees Madonna cooing, “Once upon a time there was a boy and there was a girl,” so tenderly that not even the thought that she might be singing about the director of Snatch can ruin it. However many versions of Madonna we’ve been sold, I can’t recall ever having heard this smitten soft-hearted girl — well, perhaps on True Blue, but that was a song so rotten that it was hardly surprising that Sean Penn left her shortly after.

It’s a higher love that Madonna seeks to address on the mantric invocations of Isaac. No doubt divined from her recent kabbalah dalliances, the song features Yitzhak Sinwani singing lines from a Yemenite poem (the one that Ofra Haza popularised in her 1988 hit Im Nin’ Alu) as swirling strings rise to meet an ever-intensifying rhythm — a perfect cue for Madonna to leap into affectingly bonkers talk of angels calling your name and life being some kind of great cosmic test.

Yes, sometimes it’s hard to keep a straight face, but let us also not forget that one reason why Madonna elicits such devotion from her fans is the restless spirit that she brings to bear on her records. It’s a quality we’re only too ready to acknowledge in the music of, say, Bob Dylan or Eric Clapton — but because Madonna came from pop, it’s something that rarely seems to warrant a mention. But ever since Like a Prayer — the record where it became apparent that fame wasn’t going to fill the void — it’s been there.

On How High she sings, “It’s funny/ I spent my whole life wanting to be talked about/ I did it, just about everything to see my name in lights/ Was it all worth it . . . I guess I deserve it.”

She is never one to underestimate her own cultural impact, and the closing track, Like It Or Not, follows Survival, Human Nature and Nobody Knows Me in a long tradition of Cicconian ripostes to her detractors. On this one, she suggests that the critical brickbats are just an occupational hazard of iconhood: “I’ll be the garden/ You be the snake/ All of my fruit is yours to take/ Better the devil you know/ Your love for me will grow.” At which point, it’s all that your usually reserved, university-educated correspondent can do to withhold from leaping up and squealing, “You go, girlfriend!”

Ultimately, it’s just the one very clever idea at the heart of Confessions... that makes it such an unalloyed joy. By returning to the source of her grand pop odyssey, Madonna has avoided the trap that has suckered zillions before — namely, that spiritual, soul-baring sentiments don’t need to be accompanied by furrowed-brow music. It seems obvious when you think about it, but it occurs to so few artists. Whatever discourse arises from her twelfth and finest album, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Confessions on a Dance Floor is a record designed to make you lose yourself in that whoosh! moment — knowing that by doing so, there’s every chance you’ll truly find yourself.

Martinelli said:

so true. i'm loving the album more and more with each listen.

My review (after a thorough listen on the cross-trainer): As many have already said, it's basically a sequel to ROL. It's gorgeous, lush, danceable and peppered with little "Eastern" flourishes.

But, it also has the same problem as ROL: The songwriting is sacrificed in the name of all that lushness. By songwriting I mean both the lyrics and the hooks. New York/dork is painful and everything is just kind of bland. Remember how "down on my kness, I want to take you there" used to have more than one meaning? There's very little of that here. As for hooks, Hung Up and Push are the only ones that really stand up and make you notice them--everything's kind of samey samey. I'm sure the rest of them will tear it up on the dancefloor with a vial of K rammed up your nose, but I don't go clubbin' much anymore.

Overall, I give it a B for general listening, a B+ for the cross-trainer. Better than AL, a little worse than Music, and nowhere near the genius of Erotica!

http://www.slantmagazine....asp?ID=685

Madonna
Confessions On A Dance Floor
Warner Bros., 2005



Madonna made like the bastard rebel child of Patti Hearst and Che Guevara on the cover of 2003's American Life, but the socially-conscious, publicly slept-on album didn't exactly stage a coup. Despite moments of greatness ("Intervention," "Die Another Day," "Nothing Fails"), the album somehow amounted to less than the sum of its parts, at times awkward and monotonous (thanks to Mirwais' creatively-stunted production), but also daring, the sound of a superstar once again venturing outside her comfort zone. The fact is, American Life wasn't a bad album by any standard; had it been released today (or in '03 by an unknown artist), it could very well have become a critics' darling a la Green Day's American Idiot or, at least, been less of a bomb—a point hammered home while watching Madonna's crinkled expression in between wartime "American Life"-style videos like "Wake Me Up When September Ends" and My Chemical Romance's "The Ghost Of You" during her visit to MTV's TRL last month.

But now that the rest of the country has caught up, Madonna is making like all of the pre-Reagan dancing queens who took to Studio 54 during similar economic turmoil back when the aspiring dancer from Michigan first arrived in the Big City in the late '70s. Her best work has always married the rapturous with the introspective (think Like A Prayer, Ray Of Light), and maybe Madonna has learned that she's better off taking a cue from George W. Bush and appealing to her base. And if there's anything else the woman knows how to do, it's damage control. Mirwais proved to be even more of a one-trick pony than William Orbit and, aside from one song, Madonna wisely cut the French producer from the payroll of her new album Confessions On A Dance Floor. The bulk of the album is instead helmed by Stuart Price, who, ironically, was responsible for American Life's quietest, most sublime moment, "X-Static Process." Here, though, Price helps Madonna return to her former four-on-the-floor glory.

One of Madonna's greatest latter-day paeans to the dance floor, 2000's "Music," was retro in practice, not essence, a meta throwback to the Material Girl's own post-disco origins. The spiritual girl of Ray Of Light was still in charge—there was a greater social order at stake in the intentionally throwaway lyrics about getting up on the dance floor. Lead single "Hung Up," on the other hand, is sung from the perspective of the girl who once had nothing. Like Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For?," which was remixed into an impatient slice of Italo disco by Price, "Hung Up" uses a ticking clock to symbolize fear of wasted time, but Madonna isn't just singing about careerism (or even bringing the people together), she's talking about love, the thing that made "Into The Groove" such a timeless dance classic. And "Hung Up"—which Madonna first imagined as a figurative cross between Danceteria, the NYC club where she first got her start, and ABBA on Ecstasy—doesn't just reference the past, it embodies it with its pitched-upward vocals, infectious arpeggio sample from ABBA's "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)," and decidedly unironic, archetypical key change during the bridge.

Aside from "Hung Up" and "Sorry," the insanely catchy second single that's destined to become a Madonna classic, Confessions isn't the mindlessly fun dance album we were promised. It, in fact, has a lot more in common with Madonna's last three albums, particularly Ray Of Light, than her first three. Confessions is American Life repackaged for the masses—or, rather, her masses: recurrent topics include materialism ("Let It Will Be" and "How High") and, of course, spirituality. "Issac," which is what the Dave Matthews Band might sound like if they started making techno music, is exhilarating, while "Future Lovers," with its spoken-word passages and chants, is less like an actual song and more like a spiritual instruction manual. The allegorical closing track, "Like It Or Not," finds Madonna stuck in English Roses mode, stringing together Kabbalah-learned platitudes one after the other. For evidence of Madonna's previous talent of turning clichés into pop slogans, look no further than "Get Together," with its subtle nods to "Holiday" and "Secret," or the "I've heard it all before" hook of the ABBA-esque "Sorry" (the track samples The Jacksons' "Can You Feel It," the bassline of which was, coincidentally, nabbed for Madonna's career-defining "Material Girl" 20 years ago).

Of course, it wouldn't be a Madonna album without at least one clunker, and this time it's "I Love New York," a guitar-driven track that sounds like an American Life leftover (though it wasn't produced by Mirwais) and includes couplets that end with "New York" and "dork" and, even worse, "f' off" and "golf." It helps that, despite some minimal effects, the vocal performances are nothing if not assured: "Jump," a gritty club anthem that wouldn't have sounded out of place on Erotica, showcases her lower register; the elastically propulsive "Push" finds a microphone-chewing Madonna paying homage to those who inspired her to keep going (possibly her mother, her children, her husband, even the late college dance instructor who pushed her to move to NYC, or presumably all of the above); and "Forbidden Love" is a slice of pensive ambient techno that positions her as a sex-kitten-voiced cyber-disco seer (Madonna hasn't sounded this genuinely tender-hearted since Bedtime Stories…coincidence?).

Comparisons to Light Years, Kylie Minogue's own discofied comeback album from 2000, are inevitable, and not just because both include nearly identical nods to Donna Summer's "I Feel Love." But the final stretch of Confessions, starting with "Issac," is like the soundtrack to some futuristic production of Yentl (supposedly the album is the product of what was originally intended to be a musical score), and that's something only one woman could get away with. One of the few pop singers whose albums are best appreciated in their entirety and not lopped off into "hit singles," Madonna, with the help of Price (who segued the album's tracks like a DJ set), has succeeded at creating a dance-pop odyssey with an emotional, if not necessarily narrative, arc—and one big continuously-mixed fuck-you to the art-dismantling iPod Shuffle in the process.

Sal Cinquemani
© slant magazine, 2005.

Is "Sorry" about Prince? Couldn't help but wonder if she's speaking French the way she did on LoveSong as a subliminal hint...maybe it's her way of apologizing for blowing him off?[b]

purplegypsy said:

She isn't saying sorry, she is telling the other person their words are useless and not to speakl. most people think it's about Elton John.
[b][Edited 11/4/05 16:36pm]

Madonna steals show at MTV Europe awards By Ian Simpson
Fri Nov 4,10:37 AM ET



LISBON (Reuters) - Madonna stole the show at the MTV Europe Music Awards on Thursday with the first live televised performance of her new single "Hung Up," emerging from a giant glitter ball wearing purple leather boots and matching leotard.

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The 47-year-old queen of pop rocked the Atlantic Pavilion on one of the music industry's most important nights outside the United States, and said she still got a kick out of playing to a crowd.

"After I fell off my horse it was amazing to be able to get up and dance," she told Reuters backstage, referring to a riding accident in August when she cracked three ribs and broke her collarbone and a hand.

She confessed she had feared that energetic performances like the one in Lisbon would no longer be possible because of the injuries.

"Being in front of all the people, waiting for it to come up, and waiting to see the audience, my heart was just pumping out of my chest," Madonna said in a brief interview.

Madonna will be hoping "Hung Up," the first single from her new album "Confessions on a Dancefloor," puts her back on top of the charts after her last album failed to sell well.

"I've been making records for over 20 years. I've had an incredible run, highs and lows, but I keep going."

Scooping two awards were as pop-punk idols Green Day, who won Best Album and Best Rock categories. Their record "American Idiot" also won at the Grammys this year.

Best Male category went to Robbie Williams, beating competition from 50 Cent and Eminem. Gorillaz was named Best Group and Coldplay took Best Song for "Speed of Sound."

Best Female category went to Colombian-born Shakira, Snoop Dogg snagged Best Hip-Hop, Best R & B was won by Alicia Keys, Best Pop by the Black Eyed Peas, and the Chemical Brothers were awarded Best Video for "Believe."

System of a Down were crowned Best Alternative, and James Blunt took away the Best New Act award.

COLDPLAY, CARTOONS, COMEDY

Irish rocker Bob Geldof was given the humanitarian Free Your Mind Award after staging what was billed as rock music's greatest day with Live 8, a global anti-poverty concert watched by hundreds of millions of people.

Madonna, handing Geldof the prize, called him "my hero."

Gorillaz "appeared" using hologram-style technology to beam three-dimensional, performing cartoon characters on stage.

Billed as the world's most successful virtual band, the human artists behind Gorillaz traditionally appear at live gigs as silhouettes on a giant screen combined with images of their cartoon alter egos.

Actor Jared Leto had the crowd booing, whistling and turning their thumbs down at U.S. President George W. Bush, in a moment of political controversy.

"If you can't criticize the president in our country, who can you criticize?" he said.

Williams was in typically exuberant form, taking a dive into the crowd during his performance and joking at the expense of none other than Madonna.

"She's amazing. She's an absolute legend. I can't believe she's 89 and looks like that," he said.

Hosting the event was spoof Kazakh television presenter Borat, a guise adopted by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen who is renowned for his risque, politically incorrect humor.

His opening gag on the night was no exception.

"It was very brave of MTV to start the show with a transvestite," he joked, referring to Madonna.

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Goldfarb and Mike Collett-White in London)