The Passion of the Madonna

Madonna speaking to her dance troupe...
M: "What's the difference between a pop star and a terrorist?"

"You can negotiate with a terrorist".

It is one of the many telling lines from "I'm Going To Tell You A Secret," the behind-the-scenes documentary of 2004's Reinvention Tour.
The last time M created a behind-the-scenes film of her traveling circus was 1990, and a lot has changed since those days. Fortunately for this fan, much too has not changed. Madonna is still mother hen of her flock, still requires royal treatment, and still shows all of us how hard work, attention to detail, and expecting perfection... creates perfection.

Madonna admits to having an enormous ego as she gushes with self-reproach. Of course, this is no secret to any of us, but it is the point. In this documentary she proclaims she has found a new way forward and that she is striving, that we all should be striving to take responsibility for our lives, actions, and speech. She espouses the basic tenants of all spiritual paths: faith, forgiveness, loving kindness, and both the crucifixion and the resurrection—a not so subtle nod to her Catholic roots.
As aware as I am that many think Madonna is the last person to be dispensing pearls of spiritual wisdom to the masses, I am utterly transfixed by her evolution. Madonna is a Leo. I am a Leo. I come from a family of mostly Leos. I GET Leos. We need to communicate our insights, share our trivial revelations, be understood, and look hot doing it! It is natural for us to take our journey public.

And so she does. Just look at her podium! Center court at Madison Square Garden, a full-on production in which she and her dancers become tiny beams of light at the altar of her mega-church. They are there to touch off a fire storm of good will and radiant energy. This is their prayer.

As the disciples stand frozen before the altar, a platform begins to ascend slowly from the bowels of the stadium. A light beams down on a tiny glowing figure resting comfortably on her forearms, sustaining with apparent ease an upside-down Sirsasana yogic pose. The figure shifts slightly, looks directly into the eyes of her followers, sixty-seven thousand of them—and strikes a pose. Vogue.

Death by Yoga Stick

I don't know why I find this so interesting. Linda Stein, a former punk-rock manager turned real estate broker and long-time friend of Madonna, was bludgeoned to death with a piece of exercise equipment in her Fifth Avenue penthouse. Her personal assistant, Natavia Lowery, has confessed to the murder.

Apparently Ms. Stein, who was sixty-two years old, blew marijuana smoke in Ms. Lowery's face and was verbally abusive. Stein uttered some racially-demeaning comments just moments before succumbing to a fatal blow to the head with a yoga stick.

Madonna Corp.

I happened upon this image while randomly surfing the net yesterday, and something about it made me smile. The implication is obvious sans the seven-paragraph hatchet job that accompanied it. It was an article chronicling why Madonna is the most overrated artist in the world and accusing her of having trace musical abilities, a fact obfuscated by the skills of her various & talented producers over the years.
Guilty as charged.
So what if Madonna isn't the best singer or dancer? So what if she hides her shortcomings behind big production values and a cutting-edge support troupe. So what if she she has amassed incomprehensible wealth by surrounding herself with the very best young talent available. I don't care quite frankly.

There are plenty of artists that sing, dance, act, and write more profound lyrics. But Madonna is a visionary; she has insight and she has power. Combine that with raw sexual energy—a male sexual energy. It's the kind of energy that doesn't give a shit who disapproves; in fact, the opposition serves as a tonic and increases her will to succeed. When she fell off her horse and cracked her ribs, what did she do? She got back on the effin' horse, hired Steven Klein to shoot her & the horse in an S&M-themed photo essay for W magazine, then went on to choreograph a solid one third of her world tour in a John Paul Gaultier-inspired homage to everything equestrian. She is brilliant. Talk about creating a spectacle from nothing! It is just this sort of branding that has helped Madonna establish and maintain her iconoclastic standing throughout the world for all these years.

When Madonna hired Shep Pettibone and Andre Betts to Produce Erotica in the early '90s, she essentially was making the shrewd decision to elicit the help of young talent who had their hands on the pulse of underground sound and House music—to help her bring that sound mainstream. The driving beat combined with the sensu-sexual theatrics Madonna created around the album snowballed into a firestorm that is felt worldwide even still. A few years later Madonna developed an inclination toward the metaphysical and she tapped William Orbit, master of atmospheric electronica, to produce a trance-spiritual epic of sorts. Ray of Light won four Grammys because of Orbit's multi-layered mastery, and yes, perhaps Madge was an incidental element with regard to those awards, but that music would not have been heard by the world were it not for Madonna. She put the deal together—she made it happen. Taking ambient electronica a step further, she pulled in Mirwais to produce both Music & American Life, both of which, incidentally, went to #1 world wide. All the while critics were panning our Queen as being "washed up."

It's more than the Music Stupid! Madonna embodies i n s p i r a t i o n. She represents to me how much is possible within a single lifetime, and how a life of magnitude can be whittled from a small and potentially insignificant epicenter.

Why do you love Madonna?

Hard Candy: The M-Filer Review

Best Tracks:
Give it 2 Me
Heartbeat
Miles Away
Incredible
Beat Goes On

Someone wrote that Hard Candy is the non-stop dance record that Confessions on a Dance Floor promised to be, but wasn’t. Word.

I loved Confessions, but it wasn’t a non-stop dance album, not in the way Britney’s Blackout was and certainly not to the degree that Hard Candy is.We were all so worried that Madonna would succumb to the hip-hop arm bending of those men., but it was Madonna who won those arm wrestling matches. Hard Candy is an authentic Madonna creation with some lite street cred tossed in to give it balls.. There are two throw-away tracks: Candy Shop and Spanish Lessons. Both are lyrically silly, one in English and the other in Spanish. Candy Shop however, does open the album and sort of invites us in, "come on into my store, I've got candy galore," and so, what the hell... I'll give it a pass.

On first listen, I’ll confess to disliking Four Minutes. But didn't we all, and what was that about anyway? Love it. HC’s third track is its best. Give it 2 Me takes everything I liked about new progressive music from the early eighties, infuses it with driving electro-trance rhythms, and then amps it up with a solid techno kick. As soon as I heard this one, I knew we were going to be just fine. Heartbeat continues with that electronic vibe I love so much. Still not sure how I feel about that refrain that has Madge rapping, “see my booty get down” over and over. It only lasts a few seconds, but I could really live without that part. Miles Away, She’s Not Me, and Incredible are each arguably the most autobiographical songs on HC. All three present stellar vocal performances by Madonna and in many ways are classic Madonna . Her signature selfconfidence drips off the edges of She’s Not Me, underscoring the singular reality that is Madonna: SHE'S FABULOUS! Incredible is simply that: Incredible. It starts off bubble-gummy and then morphs into a groovy little club tune that you gotta love the very first time you hear it. It's got single release written all over it.

Madonna catches a lot of shit for regurgitating her own lyrics from album to album and perhaps legitimately so. I have never, ever seen her finesse this tendency with the skill and success that is found on Beat Goes On. Madge deftly layers in lyrics from Deeper and Deeper—an all-time favorite of mine—gives a shout out to Donna Summers' Bad Girls, and then pulls into the background as Kanye West (and I can’t believe I am admitting this in public) rips out a kick ass solo to finish it off. This is an example of a song that when originally leaked was just plain garbage. This reworked version is one of the album's best.

Dance2Night continues HC’s tradition of beat-driven dance music (love the subtle nods to Starlight, btw) and is a back-to-basics 70s disco anthem with Madonna’s famously simple and marginally-inspirational lyrics: “You don’t have to be beautiful, to be understood.” A friend referred to it as filler; I give it more credit than that. It’s fun. The last two tracks, Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You and Voices, are beautiful ballads. Not exactly ballads really, but richly lyrical, somewhat haunting, and gorgeous send offs: "Who is the master and who is the slave?”

Fine. I’ll be the slave.

What's On Your Play List?

MADONNATWISTED

music/ with daft punk

what it feels like for a girl

holiday

ray of light

sky fits heaven

skin

erotica

fever/ with en vogue

frozen

don't tell me

nothing fails

hung up & shut up/ with black eyed peas

Two years ago I compiled a collection of my favorite Madonna remixes, burned them to a CD, and called it "Twisted." I liked it so much that I made 30 copies and gave them to friends for Christmas. I don't know why Madonna doesn't put out a remix-only album every now and then. She has a twenty-five-year cache of the best remixed material in the world; it strikes me as curious that a woman with her business acumen hasn't tapped into such an obvious resource. Well, I continue to produce her best remixes regardless. Right now, my favorites go a little something like this:

1. Get Together (original track)
2. Erotica/You Thrill Me (confessions mash-up)
3. Music/Disco Inferno (confessions mash-up)
4. I'd Rather Be Your Lover (original track)
5. I'd Rather Be Your Lover (remix with 2pac)
6. Nobody Knows Me (Balboa Remix)
7. Nothing Really Matters (Club 69 Remix)
8. Secret (Junior Vasquez remix)
9. Amazing