Prayer

Mariah stans vs. Madonna... in 2019???? Aren’t we all getting a little too old for this? Yes, INDEED. It's not 2005, grow up.

She's probably self-funded all the visuals so far for the album, including "Medellín", "Crave" and "Dark Ballet", all of them already high budget videos. Plus the rumored upcoming videos for "God Control" and "Batuka" - plus the album documentary. Of course she's got the money to do it, but she's a business woman in the end...

She could have a true mainstream hit with this song! Hope they do a music video for it... just use footage from the "Madame X" photoshoot + some new Madonna & Anitta footage and that's it!

The singer is Kimi Djabaté, but Dino helped her. She explained it in the interview for "TETE" magazine: TÊTU: We don’t know well Dino D’Santiago, could you tell us more your collaboration with him? Madonna: He was kind of an interface. He is from Cape Verde and most of the musicians from Cape Verde I worked with don’t speak English. He was with me in the studio when we were recording and was telling them what I wanted. He helped me musically to give life to these songs because I had no other way to communicate with them. Well.. in a way I did with the music. We wrote a song called Fuana that will be a bonus track. I have another song called Ciao Bella which is not on the deluxe version of the album. The singer Kimi Djabaté who comes from Guinée-Bisdseau sings on this track. Once again, it’s Dino who introduced me to him. When he came to record for this album, he didn’t speak English at all. Only créole. Dino was the translator and really helped me. When I recorded Killers Who Are Partying and Extreme Occident which are influenced by the morna, I sent them to him to have his feedbacks. I wanted to know if he was feeling the authenticity fo these songs. His approval was very important to me.

To be honest, I'm really tired of journalists using Madonna to talk about THEMSELVES. Who's "desperate" now? Same as the NY Times woman. But if that makes her feel better, it's OK, I guess.

Hi there! Spotify's automatic algorithm/system "decides" if two versions of a song are essentially the same song and then combines plays for both (or all) of them. In this case, the same number of plays will show on each version of the song. This usually happens when the lenght is the same, even though the mastering is different, for instance: "Music" on the "Music" album and on the "Celebration" album. Both are 3:46 but different mastering (terrible on "Celebration" haha) - but for Spotify's algorithm they're the same song. "Don't Tell Me" on "Celebration" is a shorter edit, so Spotify takes it as a different track. Same as "4 Minutes" and others. The worst case is "Like A Prayer": the "Celebration" version is basically the album version (originally 5:41) "remastered" but, for some reason, it's a little slower (5:43), so it's considered a different version for Spotify and plays with the "Like A Prayer" album version are not combined. Both combined are over 125 million plays now. Madonna's digital back catalogue is a bit of a mess, anyway. Different versions and mixes on old albums and of course no singles/EP before 2005. :(