LTSP

Bachelorette party 2000

When someone is mega famous and succesful people always try to find a way to discredit that person. Madonna is also at fault here because she never put her music and musicianship first and in people's faces. I think she did it on purpose, i remember an interview with Liz Rozenberg about how they promoted her, she and Madonna realized early on that she was very polarizing and they decided to fuel that, i believe that's what made her last and overcome every backlash she had because she never was considered the good girl or viewed as the famously talented one so they couldn't destroy that image, each time she came back with something good people were surprised because they were not expecting it from her. After ray of light she focused her image more on her musicianship and in a way it backfired when people thought she wasn't delivering after that. Other artists usually oversale their talents in their publicity which is not clever because when they don't deliver well the king is naked like they say.

Ingrid chavez demo ha no music and it's a poem. The most famous line from it (at the end of the video) is not in the original "demo".

Evita by day, Dita at night.

Leaving Ritz hotel in Paris september 30th

I wonder how she's gonna handle it when MDNAskin will be sold in european markets as in France if you sell a skin product like this and you have photoshopped pictures to promote it it is obligatory to have it mentionned on the pics now. In a way when companies do that (every cosmetic brands do it) it's kind of lying because the perfect result on the pics is not due to the product you are selling.

Oh and when she co-directed that Miu Miu ad she used Generations of love...

No she does not. She cited his work as inspiration many times and an example among many from Q magazine in 1991 Have you bought anything contemporary recently? “Oh. Let me think. I just bought that Enigma record which I love. And, hang on, what else did I get? Oh yeah, I bought Boy George, his new album, which I like."

Thank you @Fighter, that's really bothering to discuss her body or anyone's publicly like this. and that lingerie looks like her Truth or dare line, the bra is the white version of the black one she had during MDNA photoshoot and tour (Love spent).

I want the Paris shows for the selfish fact that i was there two nights with my mum It's like a family film for me hahah

You're obviously not here to discuss. My bad, i did not understand you were trolling the forum. I won't bother you anymore. Keep doing so.

Sorry but you are the one turning this into drama. I absolutely don't understand what you say. On one hand you say that everybody has the right to say whatver they want and on the other you tell people to not say what they want because they don't agree with you and just ignore the whole thing. Dude, faz me uma favor : try to be coherent before name calling people and lecturing because you make no sense. People don't agree with each other. That's it. No need to lose your cool over it. We deal with what you say, deal with what we say. Nobody is right, it's just opinions.

That must be a copyrights nightmare to solve...Apparently Madonna is the main producer but Propaganda is also a producer then is David Fincher up to it ? In the end all we can say is that for a show that had no proper release on video and dvd it is the show that was the most filmed of all her shows.

I have not said a thing yet because i feel embarrassed to talk about somebody's body especially a woman. I know she posted the pic in the first place so she opened that door but seriously i'm not offended by her body, a 60 y/0 that bore 2 children, i'm offended by the comments offended by it, telling her what she should do or shaming her body. Seriously ? Would you like her or strangers doing the same to you ? Are you that perfect that you can judge other's appearance ? and even if that the case what gives you the feeling that you should, must whatever....do it ? You are just participating in spreading a poison that will one day be directed at you and you'll wonder why people are so cruel to you then...I felt exactly the same when the media went after Serena Williams a few years back. Let people be, let them accept themselves the way they are, they are not asking for your permission, they are just telling this is whom, what and how i am. If you feel like you don't like her for that then don't follow her anymore, nobody forces you to, plenty of popstars out there...If you stay with that mindset then the problem is you and there's nothing she or we can do about it to help you go throught the trauma Ring a shrink and ask him or her why it bothers you so much, what it reveals about you to yourself that you can't deal with. Madonna is an over confident person in a world where we are taught to not be, to feel ashamed of what and who we are because consumerism is about selling us things we don't need so they are forced unto us by pushing the buttons of our insecurities. Madonna has always done what is considered embarrassing things to get things moving because she does not sugarcoat things and she will keep on doing so because that's her thing as she gets older in an ageist society that gives her plenty to fight. Madonna has always kicked the doors open brutally (not sugarcoating or saying please) for everybody and while they were judging and mocking her they were still going through that open door. It seems like she's not subtle in her ways in the first place but years later we realize she was because she broke that door without people really noticing she freed them.

Yeah i was about to post these links, thanks for having done it. The producers interviewed here confirm that the full Paris shows were filmed and that David Fincher indeed shot the Tokyo shows in full. Sadly Alek Keshishian said in an interview in 2011 when he was celebrating the 20th anniversary of Truth or dare that most footage were lost and they don't know where it is including what did not make into the movie (= hours of film). He said he did not know if Madonna kept copies of all this as she was the producer but the masters and film were lost when Disney bought Miramax in the 90's.

Physical attraction was a single. In fact it was a double A side single with Burning Up but it was only played in clubs. In fact the remix for the single is the reason why she met Jellybean. The Reggie Lucas version was on the single but the maxi had the Jellybean remix that ended up on the album just like his remixof Burning up ended up on the album instead of the original Reggie Lucas mix which is the version on the Maxi single.I don't think Warner would have made a video for it since they already had a big budget video for Burning up and it did not well so they moved on to the next single...without a video...Holiday. I think the Like a virgin era could not have had another single released since she had so many singles in the charts at the same time which confused the people (Into the groove, crazy for you, gambler being non album tracks). I wish she would have skipped the True Blue single and released Open your heart earlier instead and Where's the party after that with a video followed by La isla bonita. True blue should have stayed an album track. Like a prayer is tricky. I wish she would have released Like a prayer and Express yourself both with the Pettibone house edits as b sides. And Oh Father would have done better with an unreleased track as a b-side (Just a dream ? Love attack ? First is a kiss ?) like Cherish with Supernatural. Why's it so hard would have made a better single choice than Fever and the video for it would have suited it better. Remixes of album tracks would have also helped the single and maxi sales if added like the Waiting remix. the Rain radio remix is bad and she should have made an acoustic version of it instead because it suited the era best. She should have released something else than Take a bow in Europe because it was not the market for it at the time. And again, more unreleased tracks on b sides like Let down your guard on Secret (that should have been on the album anyway). Skin should have been a single. In a perfect world she would have not made the next best thing but since she did Time stood still would have been a better single than american pie Impressive instant and Paradise too. Nobody Knows me the Stuart Price remix from the Reinvention tour should have been accompanying that tour. Hollywood a full lyrics Thin White Duck remix as the single version. NOT THAT VIDEO for Love Profusion. Get together should have had a better video and a better release because it's a classic that was lost on the GP. Definitly i'm addicted instead of GGW. Rebel Heart needed unapologetic bitch.

I wish the choir at the beginning and at the end of I don't give a would have sung FUCK more clearly Especially at the end when it goes up and etheral.

Castellon started working on Half of Hard Candy (he recorded and mixed the Timbaland tracks, Mark Stent recorded and mixed the Neptunes tracks)...here is he's explaining how he worked on Madonna's voice on 4 minutes, her first track where her voice started sounding thin and metallic imo...here's the (lenghty) explanation why from the guy himself (he worked on MDNA and Rebel Heart too, he's the one recording and mixing her voice giving it this terrible sound on her last 3 albums) : "I wasn't there for the first set of sessions for Madonna's album," says Demo, "because I was working on another project, but I was lucky enough to go in for the second set of sessions. When I arrived, about 65 percent of the song was pretty much there, everything from the drums to the basic keyboard lines. I recorded the rest, and I also did some programming, particularly in the intro and the end. But Tim is the creative force behind everything we do. To me he's the Mozart of our times. It's a different adventure every day, just sitting there watching him you can't help but think 'Damn, he's good!' It's very collaborative. I just try to add to his genius as best as I can. He's like Batman with me being Robin: I take his lead." The recording sessions for '4 Minutes' took place at SARM Studio 3 in West London, on a 72-channel SSL 9080. "We recorded straight into Pro Tools, 44.1/24-bit," recalls Castellon. "I'm quite happy with that. I don't go by theory, I go with what sounds good to my ears. I can hear the difference between 16 and 24 bits, but I can't hear the difference between 96k and 44.1k. I don't think the average consumer can hear it either. And when you're working 96/24 the files just get ridiculously big." At SARM, Timbaland and Danja used their trusted Akai MPC3000 and Ensoniq ASR10 sampling drum machines, Yamaha Motif workstation and several soft synths to build the backing track for '4 Minutes'. "I think the horn samples came from the Motif, but I'm not sure," explains Castellon. "There were dedicated analogue keyboards and the rest were soft synths. But we're always experimenting and we're always using whatever equipment we have in the studio we work in. We may have our preferences, but we're always into trying new things. That's why our stuff sounds different to that of everybody else. We're constantly flying around the world — I like to say that my home base is American Airlines seat 3A — and we work in many different studios. We'll use whatever mic pres are there to see what happens. And we customise the sounds we develop before they go into Pro Tools, so they sound exactly the way we want them to. "We also don't use Pro Tools in the way most people do. We may use plug-ins here and there, but nowhere near what other people do. Most of the processing is analogue outside of the box. I like certain plug-ins and I think they can be really cool, but I stick to a small group of them, like Metaflanger and D-Verb, and almost all the Waves plug-ins. Pretty much every studio has the Waves plug–ins, and since I never know where I'm going to work, I prefer to stick to them. I think plug-ins look really cool, but the thing is, to my ears they all sound the same. They don't have a very identifiable sound. But each piece of outboard gear does have its own sound. I'm probably separating myself from the rest of the pack in saying this, because I know a lot of my peers stick to their guns when it comes to plug-ins, but to each his own. Some guys can make Pro Tools and the plug-ins sound great. Other guys still work on a cassette deck or with DATs. It's whatever works for you." The mixing of'4 Minutes' was done at the Hit Factory (formerly Criteria Studios) in Miami, on a 96-channel SSL J-series desk. "My favourite desk is actually the Neve VR60," comments Castellon. "I think it fits my style. I love the sound of it and the way I can hit the levels. I can overdrive it and it sounds great. But I'm not picky in what I use. I like the SSL too, there's nothing bad about it. It's definitely a Cadillac among the mixing desks and I've done a lot of mixes on them. But my favorite mixes were all done on a Neve. I'm also not a mixing-in-the-box guy. I'm from the old platter. Some guys like to do it, and I don't knock it, because they can get a great sound out of it. But I can't do it. I like touching knobs. Sitting behind a computer and messing with a mouse is not as much fun to me. When you play with a computer you can feel like you're at home doing some office work. Sitting behind a large desk is much more inspiring." The backing track for '4 Minutes' consists mainly of brass, synths, and percussion. If this sounds relatively simple, the reality is different, asserts Castellon. "The Session is actually much bigger than most people would think, because Tim and Danja take a lot of pride in designing their own sounds. Sometimes what sounds like one sound is eight different sounds layered on top of each other. A lot of the background parts can be stacked several times. The drums and percussion on '4 Minutes' are 23 stereo tracks, so 46 tracks in total, there were 16 stereo tracks of brass, and so on. The whole session panned out to about 100 tracks, and I took 80 outputs from Pro Tools to the SSL, so there was some submixing in Pro Tools. But for the most part it was straight across the board. "I did the level rides on the CM Labs Motormix controller, because I did not want to use SSL automation. I was jumping between mixes, and I did not want to worry about the SSL computer messing up my blends on a recall, which has happened to me. With some consoles, when you kick on the automation, sometimes the faders start to go haywire and mess up my blends. If I'd only been working on one song, I would have used the J-series automation, because I really like it, but in this situation it felt like playing with fire. So I used the Pro Tools automation, which is probably the easiest automation there is. I did the level rides on the small Motormix controller that I usually carry with me. It's nothing special, just a bank of eight faders, connected to Pro Tools via Ethernet. "I then ran everything through the SSL, on which I did EQ, compression and panning. It was also important for me to use the desk, because I wanted everything to run through analogue circuitry, for summing purposes. Of course, I also connected the outboard effects to the SSL. As I said, I prefer outboard effects, so I used few plug–ins during mixing. Almost all plug-ins would have been used at the recording stage. One additional reason for this is that I didn't know where the track would be mixed, so I needed to make sure that the plug-ins I was using would be available wherever I went. It made sense for me to use very few." Given the massive amount of backing tracks and the fact that many of the parts are very busy, it's easy to imagine that one of the main challenges in mixing '4 Minutes' was making sure that the music didn't overwhelm the vocals. Castellon readily confirms this and explains that it led him to an unusual approach. "I started with the vocals, then I added in the music, and the drums were last. That's unusual for me, even though I don't really have a set way of mixing. It all depends on the song. Sometimes I'll start with what's closest to me on the mixing desk. I will always begin a mix with cleaning up the Session, doing crossfades, making sure there's no headphone bleed, or pops. I hate pops. I spend a lot of time making sure everything is smooth and clean. Few plug-ins were used for the mix of '4 Minutes', partly because Demo Castellon prefers the sound of outboard gear, and partly to ensure that the mix would be portable between studios."When I opened up the session of '4 Minutes', there was so much going on that I knew right away that the hard part would be to make sure that the vocals would cut through and were right in the pocket. Beginning with working on the vocals was the only way to achieve this. After that I formed all the other parts around the vocals. The other challenge was to make sure that everything in the track sounded clear and that you could hear every instrument, every syllable, every breath. Also, I do almost always work linear in time on a track. It's easier, because when you're done, you're done. So I keep working on section after section, until I get to the end of the track and then I know the whole mix is pretty close." Vocals: SSL EQ & compression, Yamaha REV5, Roland Dimension D, MXR flanger, Lexicon PCM42 & PCM70, Waves Metaflanger & Renaissance Compressor, Eventide H3500, TC3000, Pioneer CDJ1000 "I started working with the vocals in the order in which they appeared on the track, so I began with Timbaland's intro vocals. Then I worked on Madonna's vocal, and when that sounded cool I went onto Justin's. I tried to get the vocals as close as possible to the way I wanted them in the final mix. The vocal became my point of reference, and I needed to make sure it sounded as good as possible. While working on the vocal I would occasionally put the kick drum or the horns or the synths next to them, to see how they sounded in context. "On Tim's vocals I used desk EQ, taking out some bottom end, and light desk compression, 6:1 maximum. He sometimes got really loud, and I made sure I caught the vocal before it clipped. I also put on a small hall reverb to complement the room sound from his vocal mic. When you heard the track solo you could hear the room, and I wanted to emphasise that a little more. For this I used a Yamaha REV5 on his main intro vocals and a Roland Dimension D on his ad libs. I used the same settings on Tim's voice throughout the song. "There's also a flanging effect from an MXR and a small slap delay coming from a Lexicon PCM42. I added a chorus effect from the Waves Metaflanger plug-in to that slap delay to give it a different sound. It's easy to use the telephone effect that we often use on Tim [coming from a "20-year old little red box", the exact nature of which Castellon refuses to divulge], but in this case I didn't want to use that. So I was messing around, and tried the PCM42, and liked it, but it wasn't distinctive enough. When I then added the Metaflanger it made it more unique. The distortion on Tim's background vocals? He did that himself. It's the way he plays with the mic. It's kind of weird, he knows how to mimic sound so good that he can create pretty much anything with his voice. So he did the vocal effects himself. I just added a little bit of the same reverb that I had used on his main vocals. "On Madonna's vocals I added some high mids on the desk EQ, and again desk compression, 2:1 ratio, nothing serious. I didn't use any outboard EQ or compression anywhere in the track, it was all from the SSL. I added an eighth-note delay from the PCM42, and a reverb from the Eventide H3500 for the verse and the TC3000 for the hook. The delay was designed to give her voice some space. I think this was all I used. There may have been some effects when her vocal was recorded, but they would have been printed back. "I treated Justin pretty much in the same way, with some desk EQ, taking out some low-mids, and desk compression, 4:1 ratio. In addition, I used a Lexicon PCM70 with a small chorus effect on Justin, and on the first verse, where he goes 'Oooh', I loaded his vocal onto a CD and then played it back using the Pioneer CDJ1000, transforming it like a DJ. The EQ on the vocals was used to make the transitions between the three singers smooth. The compression on all three of them was just to make sure nothing jumped out at you. Making the transition from Tim to Madonna to Justin was difficult, because they're different singers, with different styles and timbres, and one is a woman. These vocals were as different as it gets. I wanted to make sure that the transition between them was smooth and flawless. It wasn't my aim to make the three vocals sound the same, but I did want to make them sound more 'brother and sister'–like. All compression was applied on the submixes, on the groups coming back. So I also added some Waves Renaissance compressor on the THC, the hook vocal comp containing all the vocals in the hook." Brass & keyboards: SSL EQ "The brass was keyboard samples, probably played by Tim. There were trumpets, trombones, I think there even was a tuba. I treated all the 32 tracks individually, simply beginning with the first track on the track listing, getting it to where I wanted it, and then treating and adding the rest one by one. I didn't add reverb or any other effects, just some desk EQ, and the rest was working with levels and panning, getting the right blend. In fact, I didn't add any effects to the music at all, because if I had, I would have lost the vocals. The tracks sounded good the way they were and that made my life a lot easier. "You can tell the difference between a great producer and an average producer by the way they create their sounds, the way they do sound design. These guys are the best, and know how to create their sounds. In the case of '4 Minutes', Tim had a vision from the beginning of how things should go, especially sonically. He's a real producer. He doesn't look only at the music, he looks at the sounds as well. He's also a great engineer and he has an incredible ear and he knows exactly how to piece things together in the stereo spectrum. He knew how he wanted things to sound, and that made it really easy for me on the sonic side of things. All I had to do was make sure that everything was clean and it all cut through. "I call everything that's not the vocals or the brass 'miscellaneous' in my Session. There's too much stuff to keep track of, there's even a flute sample, and several synths, including the synth bass. You don't really hear all the individual keyboard parts, as many are stacked — the main thing you hear is the main keyboard line and the bass. But together with the vocals and the horns, it was a lot of material. This meant that I had to figure out the spacing. Doing this was the biggest thing in this song. I spent a lot of time on this, bringing this track up a little bit and bringing that track down a little bit, and so on. Again, there were no effects, just a little bit of mild desk EQ to make things fit. And again, these guys are the best, so the tracks sounded great as they were, I didn't need to change much. The main thing was to make sure that I left enough space for the drums and the percussion." Drums & percussion: SSL EQ & compression, Waves Renaissance Compressor, Focusrite D2 "What Tim and Danja do with drums and percussion is phenomenal. The only problem is maybe that it sounds too good sometimes and that I may have too much of it. So I may have to turn down things a little bit. They loop certain patterns and then they add things from there. I added just some desk EQ and also some desk compression, to get a tighter feel and make sure it all fit together. Before sending it to the desk, I added some Renaissance compression to the kick to get the level that I wanted. As I said, plug-ins don't have a sound, to my ears, so the Renaissance just helped me to keep the level in check without altering the sound. "There's also a Focusrite D2 EQ on the kick on one place in the hook. There was one particular kick sound there that clashed with the other tracks, so Tim replaced it with another kick that had a very different note and sound. Using the D2 allowed me to match the sound of that new kick drum to the other kick drum sounds. I'm really impressed with how that came out, because I remember doing it, but listening to the track I can't tell the difference. Once the drums and percussion were added that was it. They fitted into the only space that was left. Luckily everything came together in the end. I don't think the mix would have sounded the same if I had worked in the opposite way, starting with the drums and working up towards the vocals." Get Loud "Mixing '4 Minutes' was a matter of keeping things simple," concludes Demo. "We were on a little bit of a time constraint, because Madonna had a deadline by which she wanted everything done. I therefore gave up some mix luxuries to make sure I could turn it in on time. It's one reason why I didn't plug in loads of outboard gear. This being a Madonna song, I pretty much didn't let anyone else touch it, so it was almost all me. The song took me a full day of work to mix, and after that I left it for two days, and then went back to it for some fine-tuning. A mix can take me four hours or four days, it depends on the song. In some cases it can be very finicky to make changes, and every time I listen to it I hear it in a different way. With this song the effects were easy, but the balancing was quite tough. "I mixed back into Pro Tools, 24/44.1, and loaded WAV files up on a drive, and took them to Chris Gehringer at Sterling Sound in New York for mastering. I always try to be there for the mastering of a track I mixed. The mastering wars? Haha! Tim and I are partly to blame for that! We made some records that were clearly very loud and this became a bit of a trend-setter. Of course it can cut the dynamics on some records, and you definitely get fatigue listening to records that loud for a long time. But it's what people want to hear. Whether you want to do this depends on the kind of music. If you like that sound, then great. If you're making a jazz record you're not going to make it as loud as a pop record. You're not going to make a blues record louder than a heavy metal record. Hip-hop is the new popular music now, and pop has to be loud!" What's In A Name? Unlike some engineers, Demo Castellon is happy to admit to using pitch correction on Madonna's vocal on '4 Minutes', yet in the same breath, Castellon declares himself a strong opponent of vocal tuning. So what's going on? "I pride myself on rarely using tuning," states Castellon. "I fight tooth and nail against doing it. I can make anyone sound like whoever, even Frank Sinatra, but I think that it is cheating to tune vocals. Some people do lots of tuning, and I'm cool with that, but it's not the way I like to work. We pride ourselves on the way we do things. When you work with us, we have high expectations. We're not going to sit there and just let you get by. If you're a singer, you should be able to sing, and if you can't, you should not be singing. And Madonna doesn't need tuning. I'm blessed that I get to work with the best in the industry. It makes my job a lot easier. "Madonna and Justin can sing in the pocket, whereas many singers these days don't even know what the pocket is. In the '4 Minutes' session there was some tuning on Madonna's vocals and on Justin's vocals, not because they were singing out of tune, but because Timbaland had a vision for how the track was supposed to sound. We used Auto-Tune or Melodyne because we wanted a certain seamless flow between the two singers. We were being really perfectionist about this, and decided to fix a few notes. In a couple of cases one singer dropped slightly under a note on one word and the other may have been a little over, and we wanted all the notes to flow together, and so they were tuned. Little things like this add their own style. Today I could not tell you where it is, because I don't know, and I would not be able to hear it. One of my engineers did the tuning. "A lot of people will make singers and musicians do endless takes and then they'll comp and fix things. We don't work that way. We're much more linear. Of course there's comping going on, but it's being done while we record. Usually we do a take, and we may punch in a word or clean up a syllable, but after that we move on. If tuning is done at all, it happens just before I start mixing, and it'll be done by one of my guys." And this is what William Orbit said about him But alas, the time wasn’t there. Great swathes of it taken up by the engineer and his assistant bouncing reverb tracks for hour after hour, night after night. Not to real tape or anything, where you could posit that there would be an advantageous sonic dividend (real tape can be magic) but all in the digital domain. A purely procedural thing. Although not a procedure I or any of my own colleagues in this game would want to squander time with. I was just describing to a friend of mine, and whom I frequently work with Serban Ghenea (just look him up if you want to be awed) how it was done, and he thought I was kidding him! There. I’ve said it. I did try to say it earlier but I must have not made the point with enough push, my way being to always say it with the music itself. Over the years it’s become obvious to me that along with Madonna being the greatest pop artist of ALL time, her fan base are also the most ardent, cohesive, discerning and loyal fan base of any artist. Not saying that to blow smoke, is quite obviously true. Big respect. And long life to us all. And as you look at things in a ‘long term’ way (my way also) you always call it like you see it. And I’m with you on that too. Be honest and true, speak your heart and mind, and let the dust fall where it will.

First and foremost she should have given the boot to Demo Castillon. I spoke with Orbit on Facebook when he had his rant about the album there and when i asked him why the mix and cd sound sounded so poor that's when he said that it was all Castillon's fault that he could not even save Madonna's vocals to make his own mixes because the way he recorded her voice was completly out of this world, he could not believe it. So yes the sound of the cd and the mix really drag the album down even the good songs. Then i've personally always had a problem with Girl Gone Wild, i wish she would have just sent the track into the sun on a comet for it to never see the light of day. It's terrible, cheap, outdated, below her and she did not even write it (thank god). I'm addicted on the other hand should have been the first single. Superstar and Bday song just like Girl gone wild should have been put in the trash. Oh and i adore Love Spent acoustic but not the album version. If only she could have made a video album with it before Beyonce with a theme about regaining her freedom after her divorce, not with all the songs but the main ones like Gang Bang, Falling Free.... I really don't care for GMAYL, i don't enjoy it but it does not make me wanna puke like Girl Gone Wild does I even grew to like Turn up the radio. Beautiful killer is a great song but it sounds unfinished with that predominent and repetitive snare.

Blond ambition tour in Paris, somebody jumped on the crane holding the camera filming what was going to be "Truth or dare" that was in the middle of the venue, she yelled at him in french "Don't touch the camera, touch my pussy instead" (touche pas la caméra mais touche ma chatte). I was 10 and with my mum, we had a good laugh about it.

Madonna listening to Moloko <3