Future Lover

I can respect a different opinion of course and you do make some fair points! But I think we're going to have to agree to disagree when it comes to TGS. I've always considered it one of her lesser tours and that has only continued to ring true as time has gone on. While it has some definite high points, I just can't get over the ugly stage, the incredibly disappointing and often confusing setlist, the inconsistent momentum of the show, and the single worst overall look she has ever had with that unfortunate hair coupled with underwhelming costumes. I will give credit where it is due however and that's yes the musical direction does elevate a disappointing setlist, her energy and charisma was there in spades, and the Justify My Love performance is incredible.

The Girlie Show above Drowned World and MDNA?? Girls take the nostalgia glasses off I am begging

I sure hope not. All of those other artists declined for a reason. It would be silly to publicly give her blessing to an institution founded on racism and subjugation that is still in the modern era held back by both of those things.

Voted! This wasn't super hard for me, I think her weakest tours are very clearly so and her best are also very clearly so

I’m sure there are, but we cannot rewrite history here. It was largely rejected by general audiences at the time and while it’s standing has improved, I’d best most causal listeners would put it somewhere toward the middle. It’s continued presence on lists like this, it’s poor scores on Rate Your Music and it’s good but not great scores on Album of the Year—all done by audiences—show that a large part of casual listeners and general audiences don’t consider it to be one of her best. And like I said, a lot of the general public stopped tuning in for new music from MDNA forward, so AL will stick out to them as one they’d call weaker since it stands out among the albums they know of her. And that’s okay. It’s not an album everyone will love and it’s one of the least commercial projects she’s ever released so of course the devotional will like it more than normies will.

While I and many other fans do love and adore this album, I think we've just got make peace with the fact that those outside of her fanbase generally see this as one of her weakest, if not her weakest effort. The general public likely hasn't heard much beyond Hard Candy or maybe MDNA, so of the albums they're familiar with in full, then this is probably going to end up being their least favorite.

It is possible to know how great she is--I don't think we'd be here if we didn't think so--and not like everything she's ever done. No artist is going to have a perfect discography across 40 years of work. At some point they're going to make an album that just doesn't do it for everybody. I'm 100% positive every album she's released is to someone somewhere her worst one. That doesn't mean they don't recognize greatness. The greatest in history are not great every step of the way.

And only two of them were capital G good, I’m afraid

Her worst is Like a Virgin and I’m tired of pretending it’s not. It speaks to her magnetism that an album that is dominated by forgettable filler was that successful and is considered a classic.

Jesus Christ what a disgusting thing to say

It isn't about the album's charting no, but it is handicapping certain songs by having their streams split and it handicaps the albums themselves when that is where the emphasis has turned. Catalogue streaming is what's in right now. Rather than hits being priority, acts with a legacy are emphasizing their catalogues to great effect. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and more have all seen a massive increase in their album''s engagement with tracks that are not just their hits finding success. It's just silly to be drawing attention to a compilation album rather than the album itself. For example, Material Girl on Celebration has 314,507,744 streams--it's one of her most popular songs on the platform. But the Material Girl that's on Like a Virgin--the exact same song with no remixing or edits--only has 44,857,570 streams which means that when people listen to the song, they're not being taken to the album but rather Celebration. If they combined the two versions into one tag, then a song that gets a massive amount of engagement will in turn shine a light onto it's parent album, not a slapped together singles collection. Warner has made it clear that they want to reemphasize her discography, not just her singles. If that is their goal, then it's dumb to be actively pulling attention away from the album and instead giving it to a compilation album. It's showing that her team is out of touch with what the trends are for legacy acts right now and they're causing her to miss out on a lot of the benefits that other acts are receiving by choosing to emphasize their actual discography. It doesn't help when there's different versions of many of the albums that are on there sitting right alongside maxi singles. Her page is clogged with a lot of superfluous things that don't serve much purpose (there is no need for both versions of Erotica to be on there for example). For those who're just discovering her, there is no sense to be made of where you're meant to begin, what's what, and where to find what you're looking for.

To me that's not even the main issue with her streaming. It's just all a mess. They don't playlist album versions, they playlist the Celebration versions. They haven't connected most of the Celebration versions to the album versions so there's at minimum two different versions of each song available which is cutting the streams of the albums off at the knee. It's literally so simple to make them tagged as the same song. Instead if you stream a certain song on Celebration, the streams go to only to the Celebration album, not the studio album like most artists with compilations have it set up. They have buried her studio albums on her page between the maxi-singles and live albums. They have different editions of each album available instead of one master edition. It's a disaster. Her streaming figures could be so, so much better if they'd fix her fucking page.

It's so wild how mad this has gotten some people in here?? It's fine if you aren't into it but this can literally only help her. In an era where catalogue streaming is more popular than ever, the more attention that can be brought to her older songs--and make no mistake, this will bring attention to the original just as the Frozen and Bloody Mary remixes did--the better. Her streaming has been so poorly handled from the beginning. It's an absolute disaster right now. Like embarrassingly so. It's about time that there is some work done to make her catalogue more viable on streaming.

If it’s random bullshit I will also recant. You never with her anymore, random things done just to do them and then big moments are all sprinkled in together these days.

It's free promo, that's not really a waste. It'd be the perfect time to promote the tour, announce the first of the re-releases, etc. I doubt she'd be doing it if there wasn't a specific thing this screentime is being used for considering she's never done it before.