Madonna - Confessions on a Dance Floor #2

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Op dinsdag 15 november 2005 20:32 schreef MadGuy het volgende:
Woei! ICON, de officiële fanclub van Madonna heeft een nieuwe track gereleased. Het heet 'Superpop'. Het is erg 70's, de lyrics zijn om te lachen en zijn erg tongue-in-cheek. maar Madonna zou Madonna niet zijn als het ook niet een boodschap had: om de top te bereiken moet je alles geven!

"If you want to reach the top, if you do you never stop!"

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How Madonna Got Her Groove Back
Madonna is returning to her dance-floor roots for her latest triumph
By NEIL STRAUSS

Have you ever witnessed a Madonna moment?

Allow me to share one with you.

It begins with the words "nice boots." Those are the first words Madonna says to me when we meet. The next words are "I approve," letting me know that we are now in her world, where a strict code of standards and practices applies.

But this is not the Madonna moment. She is just, in her own way, being fun and friendly.

The Madonna moment comes two hours later, when she changes into knee-high silver boots for a television performance.

As she walks past, she looks down her nose at me and says, "Who's got the better boots now?"

This is a Madonna moment.

One can't help but wonder sometimes how this boy-crazy outcast from Michigan ended up selling some 250 million records worldwide. But watch her closely for a while, and that answer will come in a Madonna moment, when, despite the ego-shedding lessons of Kabbalah, her competitive nature emerges.

She is probably a good person at heart. And if not, she's at least struggling to be good. But there's a tripwire in her head, and when it's crossed, you understand that it's no accident she became one of the most famous women in the world and has retained that title for more than twenty years.

There are Madonna moments in her tour documentaries, when she refers to herself as "the boss" and "the queen" when talking with her crew and dancers. And there was a golden Madonna moment on Late Night With David Letterman in October, when Letterman offered her the smaller of two horses to ride. Mistake.

"I don't want a tiny one," she snapped. "I want a big one. I want the prettiest one. Well, I want the best horse."

Madonna moments are not bad things. They are the telltale signs of a woman who believes she deserves the best the world has to offer -- the best boots, the best horse, the best career, the best stage show, the best seat on the plane. For the most part, thanks to her confidence, intelligence and single-minded work ethic, she's gotten it.

That is, until she had her first experience with mortality a few months ago. In a well-reported incident, Madonna attempted to ride an unfamiliar horse at Ashcombe, the eighteenth-century estate in western England that she shares with her husband, director Guy Ritchie. She fell from the horse, breaking eight of her bones. It was the first time she'd ever broken a bone and a wake-up call to her own vulnerability.

"It was the most painful thing that ever happened to me in my life, but it was a great learning experience," she says. She is sitting on a private plane that is taking off from a Royal Air Force base south of London. Its destination is Germany, where the members of Green Day will soon experience a Madonna moment of their own.

Madonna version 2005 is a woman in flux. She is part spiritualist, part narcissist; part provocative sex symbol, part children's-book author; part artist, part mother; and, thanks to her new aerobi-disco look, she is part retro, part futuristic. She doesn't even live in one place; she spends most of her time in London and has homes in New York and Los Angeles. She is a contradiction. And she will always be one. This is because her true genius is a facility for learning. She is a quick study. One of the only things consistent about her career is her ability to absorb and incorporate knowledge at an alarming rate, allowing her to stay one step ahead of critics, competitors, fans and trends. Some accuse her of being pretentious since she started speaking in a British-tinged accent, but rather than being an affectation, it is simply further evidence of her adaptability and spongelike nature. Before I leave her presence, she will actually count on her fingers the things she's learned from me. I've served my purpose.

Her new album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, integrates the lessons she learned from her previous album, American Life. Perhaps her most poorly received album (unjustly so), this was Madonna restyled as a pop-culture Che Guevara and anti-materialist girl, brooding about her life and the culture she's part of. It is her folk album. Confessions on a Dance Floor is the antithesis.

If American Life was for the head, Confessions is for the feet. It is pure groove. It is her equivalent of a mash-up album. It takes snippets from forty years of dance music (Giorgio Moroder, Tom Tom Club, Abba, Pet Shop Boys, Stardust, the Jacksons), mixes in snatches from her own back catalog ("Like a Prayer," "Papa Don't Preach," "Die Another Day") and filters it all through club-cool electronics in a nonstop mix. At the helm is Stuart Price, who in addition to being the musical director on Madonna's last two tours is an English DJ, remixer and recording artist (known as Les Rhythmes Digitales) who is equal parts Beck and Daft Punk.

Even in a form-concealing black sweat shirt, Madonna looks thin and fragile. At forty-seven, she cuts a more spartan and elegant figure than the navel-bearing, crucifix-dangling, hair-moussing Madonna who burst into the national pop consciousness in 1983. She is now Esther, Madge, Lady Madonna with children at her feet, or, as her staff calls her, simply M.

"Do you want to see where the bone broke?" Madonna asks as we talk about her horse tumble.

She pulls her sweat shirt aside and proudly displays the battle scar: a collarbone that, at its midsection, disconnects and juts up into the skin.

"She's broken hers, too," Madonna says, gesturing to Shavawn, her former nanny and current stylist. Shavawn is helping her massage the bone with some sort of vibrating machine that Madonna says has helped it heal faster. "She's the person who made me get on the polo horse."

"I didn't make her," Shavawn protests.

"She did," Madonna insists. "It's her fault."

"I didn't," Shavawn repeats.

"Because she was the person who instigated it, she had to be my caretaker," Madonna continues. "She slept in the room next to me the whole time."

"You're guilting her out," I protest in Shavawn's defense. Even though Shavawn is laughing, inside she must feel bad. Who wants to be responsible for breaking their boss's bones? That is, assuming they like their boss, which Shavawn clearly does.

"I don't have to," Madonna says. "She guilted herself out."

Suddenly, Madonna sounds a lot like my Jewish mother.

It is at this point that I notice the carry-on bags that both Madonna and her manager have brought on the airplane -- they are both filled with popcorn. I make a note to ask about it later, when we're not on the subject of medical emergencies.

Despite being taken to the hospital, Madonna says that the day after the accident, she decided to take a helicopter to Paris for her birthday. Hopped up on morphine, she felt little pain.

"I'm a lot of fun on morphine," Madonna says with a laugh. "At least I think I am." She pauses and looks at Shavawn for confirmation. "But I'm not fun on Vicodin."

Her manager, Angela Becker, who is also sitting on the plane along with Madonna's hair and makeup team, clarifies. "Do you know the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?" she asks. "I've never seen a transformation like that in my entire life."

"I only tried Vicodin once," Madonna says. "I was in a lot of pain, and everyone kept telling me to try Vicodin. But they kept saying, 'Be careful. It's so amazing. You're going to get addicted.' So I called five people to get advice before I took it, and they all told me I was going to love it."

"She went on a walk with me," Shavawn blurts, as she packs up the bone machine. "And it was really scary."

"Drugs have a weird effect on me," Madonna continues. "They do the opposite with me. I just chewed the entire inside of my mouth. I bitched at everybody. And I was in more pain. It was the worst experience of my life. So I'm happy to say that none of my pharmaceuticals -- and I had a plethora of them given to me -- influenced me."

Madonna's lack of interest in drugs is another reason for her success: The biggest career killer is the mixture of a person who's very confident in her judgments with drugs that impair those judgments.

"I just like the idea of pills," she says as she stretches her legs on the wall of the cabin. "I like to collect them but not actually take them. When I fell off my horse, I got tons of stuff: Demerol and Vicodin and Xanax and Valium and OxyContin, which is supposed to be like heroin. And I'm quite scared to take them. I'm a control freak."

Just the other day, Madonna was in Portugal, where she obsessively rehearsed the first live performance of her undeniably catchy electropop single "Hung Up" thirty times for the MTV Europe Music Awards. The result: She not only stole the show but, nearing fifty and wearing a leotard, still managed to be the best-looking woman on the stage that night.

For Madonna, whose stage productions have become as career-defining as her albums, the next project is to start planning a tour for the new year. "I want to make people feel like they're inside a disco ball," she says, beginning a show description that in part sounds like a non-ironic version of U2's Popmart. "I want to explore the idea of making the dancers more personalities in the show and having their stories come out. And we want to devise a sound system that's surround-sound, because the standard system in a sports arena is crap for people watching, and it's crap for people onstage."

(Excerpted from RS 988, December 1, 2005)

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Op dinsdag 15 november 2005 21:28 schreef MadGuy het volgende:
De officiële site dus.

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Op donderdag 17 november 2005 13:55 schreef CrazyDutchPunk het volgende:
Vergeet Children In Need niet morgenavond!
Ze zit zeker in het progamma tussen:
8pm to 8.30pm (21.00 - 21.30 NL tijd
11.30pm to 12am(00.30-01.00 NL tijd)

Dit zijn de geplande tijden..het kan dus uitlopen Ze gaat iig een nummer doen..

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Op zaterdag 19 november 2005 19:41 schreef Mr.Happ-E het volgende:
Albumpje kost maar 5,55 bij de Mediamarkt zag ik vanmiddag in een reclamekrantje dat is niet veel

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The background video screens reveal Madonna in a glitter ball, wearing shocking pink hotpants and a pink leather jacket, she walks downstage and with her dancers launches into an energetic version of Hung Up. She looks fantastically fit tonight.

During the song she takes off her sunglasses and throws them into the crowd!

After the song she talks to the crowd, sounding very American, telling fans that the Camden Palace (KoKo) concert was just a warm-up for this show, this show is going to kick the Camden Palace show's arse!

She asks the crowd if they like her new record, YES! all the fans scream, then she says 'Good, I made that record for you f*ckers!'

By now the leather jacket was off and so was the pink top, revealing just a pink vintage leotard.

Madonna was very chatty and cheeky with the crowd last night, she complained that she was oxygen deprived and that we were all stealing her oxygen.

The Astoria was very hot and Madonna joked: 'Aren't you guys hot! I should have worn my bathing suit, oh wait....I did!'

Teasing fans, she said she wouldn't start her next song until all the front row took their shirts off, of course they complied but started throwing the shirts onstage to which Madonna replied: 'No, no don't throw them at me, they're a bit smelly!'

Her performances of Get Together and I Love New York were also energetic, she seemed to be getting such a buzz off the crowd who were loving every moment of this.

Introducing I Love New York she said: 'I apologize about the title of the next song. You all know I live here now and I love the UK, and I Love New York is just a figure of speech. I f*cking love London! Because the best fans are here in London!'



Her performance of Let It Will Be was one of the highlights of the night, with fantastic electronic images flashing on the catwalk, Madonna writhed and gave her all in this song, the fans in the front row could even reach out and touch her.

Somehow some water had got onto the catwalk, so Madonna spoke to the crowd: 'Who threw water on my stage? Do you want me to hurt myself? Who did it? Was it you? Put out your hand! (A fan puts out his hand, and she playfully slaps it). You are naughty!'

The comes the final song Everybody, the dancers return and balloons are released, unfortunately there are a too many balloons and Madonna and her dancers get engulfed in them, leaving the dancers (and Madonna) trying to kick them off stage.

Just as the fans think the show is over....suddenly she starts singing Jump, the crowd finally go insane and start jumping to the song, it is a fantastic surprise and a great finish....with that she is gone, with a quiet 'Thank you' from Madonna once she is off-stage.

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Op maandag 21 november 2005 18:51 schreef Mr.Happ-E het volgende:
In ieder geval, ik ben vandaag bij de Mediamarkt geweest, en hij is dus echt ¤5,55 Heb em dus meteen meegenomen Dat is geen geld!

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Op maandag 21 november 2005 19:43 schreef HuubTuub het volgende:

[..]

Welke Mediamarkt?

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Op maandag 21 november 2005 21:22 schreef MadGuy het volgende:
Daar maken ze grof verlies op zeg!

Wel een toffe actie natuurlijk.

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Madonna Dances to Number One: "Confessions On A Dance Floor" Tops Charts Internationally

NEW YORK, NY -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 11/23/2005 -- Madonna has set the world dancing with the release of her phenomenal new Warner Bros. Records album, "Confessions On A Dance Floor," featuring the smash global hit, "Hung Up."

A bravura return to the iconic superstar's dance music roots, "Confessions On A Dance Floor" has swept the planet since its release on November 15th, debuting at Number One on Billboard Top 200 charts and repeating the feat in a staggering 24 other countries from Japan, Portugal, Spain and Australia to France, Germany, Sweden, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, the single "Hung Up" is setting charts everywhere ablaze, rocketing to the top spot in eight countries and ruling American dance charts for four weeks in a row. In the process it has joined the ranks of thirty-five number one dance singles from an artist who has single-handedly defined the genre across nearly two decades.

The MTV Networks (including MTV, VH1 and Logo) have been a huge part of the success of Madonna's new album. The "Hung Up" video, which reached number one on MTV's TRL for five consecutive days, while remaining in heavy rotation on both MTV (The Big 10) and VH1 (Gung Ho), further enhances Madonna's reputation as the premier video pioneer of our time.

It's a reputation spreading into digital realms as well, with three different configurations of "Confessions On A Dance Floor" currently holding three out of four top downloads spots on the iTunes Music store, while "Hung Up" is lodged at number one on iTunes overall singles chart. Altogether, the iTunes Music store sales represents nearly 10% of Madonna's overall CD sales. As a ringtone "Hung Up" is likewise making history since debuting a full month before its radio release, prompting millions of downloads across the world.

Racking up sales of over 350,000 units in the U.S. alone, "Confessions On A Dance Floor," joins Madonna's two previous albums, "Music" and "American Life," as her third straight number one debut. With a sound that evokes and embellishes all the excitement, energy and innovation that first set Madonna apart as dance music's all-time most original innovator, "Confessions On A Dance Floor," co-produced and co-written by Madonna and DJ wizard Stuart Price, is just the latest triumph from this incandescent superstar. Packing stadiums worldwide with her astonishing stage spectacles, Madonna has made music history with international sales of over 200 million albums. Her enormous influence has spanned six chart-topping albums and 46 Top 40 singles.

It's hardly surprising that fans around the world have taken the album to heart as a declaration of musical independence and identity. "Madonna has transformed herself so many times," observed Stephanie Rosenbloom in The New York Times, "that nearly every fan has seen a glimmer of herself, or himself, reflected in her at some point...To see even a part of yourself embraced by her, especially a part that you feel is marginalized, can be a heady validation."

With "Confessions On A Dance Floor" Madonna has offered glorious validation to our immemorial impulse to "dance for inspiration."

www.madonna.com