FraP

I gotta admit, there's a tinge of sadness wrapping up this tour. The amazing thing is, I got to be there for both the opening night in London and the closing night in Rio. I lived through the start and end of this epic journey, which might just be her last big tour, although I really hope I'm dead wrong 🥺 During the first night in London, I was happy but couldn't fully vibe with the show even though it was a total surprise. It was a rough day for me, and even though I was physically there, all I could see were the flaws. Realizing I needed to give it another shot, I decided to catch the show again, in Lisbon. Then, being in Italy at the end of November (I'm Italian), I couldn't miss Milan. With each stop, I became less critical and started to enjoy the show more and more. Up until Milan, I liked the show more, but it hadn't quite stolen my heart. I even thought maybe I'd seen it one too many times. I had never seen a Madonna tour more than twice before. Then comes the surprise: I hear from my ex who lives in San Francisco, and he tells me he's got an extra ticket for the Celebration Tour in SF and invites me to join him. After some thinking, I managed to find a great deal on flights and decided to go, making it my first visit to the wonderful California. San Francisco swept me off my feet and was a magical place that changed me in some ways.That night, I was on cloud nine before the show. I wasn't sure how I'd experience the show, given it was the fourth time, but I ended up loving everything way more than before. And this time, I saw Madonna for the first time from the stands, but I was still really close because I was down below. I was moved; I never took out my phone and danced and sang my heart out! Then I did something insane: I hopped on a flight to Rio, where I still am now, working remotely from here and keeping European hours (crazy), barely getting any sleep. I'm loving Rio, like mad. The people are fantastic. But seeing this show in Copacabana was an absolutely mind-blowing way to wrap up my journey with Madonna. I cried, I was moved, I felt connected to everyone there: ladies in their 50s or 60s singing their hearts out, members of the Brazilian LGBTQ community, people of all sorts, but all united by a unique joy. And by the energy Madonna gave us, giving it her all in this show in front of 1.6 million people, with the sea right there, in an even more magical atmosphere than in stadiums, where I think Madonna has always delivered much more than in closed spaces. It's the same show, but I had a completely different experience from the others; it was incredible ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️ And even now, I still feel a bit there in Copacabana, I haven't fully recovered from that emotional storm. Sorry if I'm going on about the sound of the official recordings and especially the out-of-sync audience, but you can't imagine what I experienced in Copacabana, you have no idea what the crowd was like there. We all danced while watching her sing and move on stage, we were all part of the performance too. This needs to be remembered. So I'm watching many times the TV recording searching for the emotions I lived through, but I can't find them completely. Sure, the recordings are incredible, but there are elements that make me think "the real show was something else". The thing I hate the most is that at some points, you can't hear the audience even though we were all singing along, the audience gets cut out almost abruptly. And the second thing I hate so much is hearing the audience out of sync (and seeing Madonna out of sync too, with audio that wasn't from Rio, but they couldn't adapt it in a way that seemed realistic). 🙉👎 The real show sounded almost like in stadiums: I could hear the voices of the entire audience, but I could also hear her live voice. It was incredible. 🌟🎶🌴 Sorry for this long message, I hope you all understand 🥺

Yes, such an "erotic" kiss at a moment like that is almost cringe, at first sight it looked cringe to me too. I mean, in Madonna's narrative, all the dancers have just died; it's not exactly the time you'd expect two guys to be kissing like that. I would have expected a more intimate kiss, maybe just a peck. Madonna wanted to include it as a reference to the population most affected by AIDS, the LGBT community. The idea was good, but the couple chosen was a bit off. Anyway, despite the audio, it's still better than RHT dvd 😆😆😆

Yesterday I asked a friend of mine who works as a cameraman for live TV shows in Germany how much delay is typical in live broadcasts. He responded that in television shows (talk shows), it can be a few seconds, in sports events up to 30 seconds, and in concerts 10 seconds to a minute, at least in the only three occasions he has worked on concerts. Occasionally, there might be a two-minute delay for specific needs, but he has never experienced a delay of 10 minutes. He mentioned that in such cases, they simply record and broadcast it later, hours or days afterward. I also read on Instagram that the 12-minute delay was a specific request made by Madonna's team to Globo, not a common request. Indeed, Madonna's team wanted to make various changes, including the choice of shots. If you notice, during "In This Life," it's all dark, but a couple of men kissing is shown, clearly footage from an earlier moment in the show (as confirmed by the guys themselves). I saw a post about it. It was decided that at that moment they would show a scene of a gay kiss, precisely because it was meant to add meaning to the performance. Madonna's team, in addition to synchronizing various audio tracks to make changes to the audio, had to do editing by choosing the right shots, not just selecting which cameras to show live. The choice made for "In This Life/Live to Tell" is beautiful, and I'm glad they used this delay to work on a nice edit of the footage. Although, if I were to be overly critical, I might have preferred a more intimate kiss. But probably, it was the only one the cameramen captured from the beginning of the show. Anyway, we're so happy about her glory and about her show. It's just that here we're on her fan forum, we already said we loved everything, now we're talking about something which made us sad. But we're still happy about the show! I'm just sorry for Madonna's image, really. In the mainstream audience, she already doesn't have a reputation for being someone who can sing or someone who sings live, and with such glaring errors, you'd almost think they did it on purpose or didn't have enough time to do such work decently.

Happy that we're on the same page lately, after the recent argument where there were accusations 🤗🫂 Madonna unites everybody! ♥️ I actually criticized her vocal performance and I said she should have lip synced that night instead of using autotune which made her even more flat than she was. But I've always shifted the focus onto the message, which I adored. I loved the use of gas masks and the references to the genocide with the jab at Israel using the lyrics from Dark Ballet. I adored it all. Madly. I even forgave her for the line in Killers Who Are Partying (MX's best song) where she says "I'll be Israel if they're incarcerated," which is perhaps the stupidest line she's ever written in her entire life (and in fact, she corrected it to "Palestine" live throughout the tour).

I agree with @True Blue 84 I think there is a lot of misogyny. In the 80s, Madonna had a huge success and overshadowed many other artists. They said she wouldn't last, that she was a bitch without talent. They said she couldn't sing or dance (when in fact she danced better than almost all other female popstars), because she was strong and controversial, as you say. Sexuality came later, Madonna was already criticized in 1985, when she became very famous, for the way she owned her sexuality and challenged social conventions. Prince showed his butt and wasn't criticized, Bowie pretended to perform oral sex on his guitarist guitar and people found it amusing, but Madonna was demolished for much less. The reason? She's a woman and women were not suppose to behave like that!

The reason we are not happy with the audio is that it's bad and that we care about her and we want to keep authentic memories of these moments. We love her religiously. We want them to be loved and to be remember as the legend she is. We're not being hateful. We just want authentic memories, not evidently fake ones. I'm happy for this big success. I was there and I LITERALLY CRIED multiple times. It did not happen at the other shows of the tour I attended. But when I watched the TV recording I was so disappointed, it's not always like that, it only happens with Madonna because she always tries to mask her imperfections by making it all worse. So I really hope they're gonna fix it.

I'm with you on most of it, but you're too harsh. She gave it her all, and apart from a few slips, she sang pretty well, only to self-sabotage with this poorly done audio editing. The thing that bugs me the most is the audience sound that pops in and out and is ALWAYS out of sync. Sorry for repeating it but it pisses me off. We were singing in sync, I was singing in sync! She tarnished my image and that of the Brazilian audience. I'm gonna sue her!!! 🤣🤣🤣

GGW has always been lip-synced. She hasn't sung it live even once. But it's a recording engineered to sound live. Body Shop was always live, and it never seemed lipped to me. The point here is that this show was live from start to finish, and 12 min they made several shoddy audio substitutions for the TV broadcast. The audience is almost always out of sync, creating a very unflattering effect. Sorry, but this bothers me A LOT. Plus, there are moments where her voice (specifically raw vocals and not backing vocals) is heard, and she's either not singing or singing different words from the audio. It's evident in Holiday and other moments too.It's a disaster; I almost suspect it was done by at most 2-3 people rather than a team of 20 people paying attention to all the details. And it's a shame because it tarnishes her image, giving off an extreme sense of artificiality. Don't Tell Me was completely ruined, with audio that doesn't even remotely resemble her live voice which is heard just in the first verse (because she was out of tempo and they could not replace her voice there). And there too, you can hear her voice when she's not singing. As far as I'm concerned, they can autotune all they want, but they need to do it in a way that sounds realistic and stays in sync. Everyone says she doesn't sing live for these reasons, and I hate it. I was there and we all listened to a live concert, not a mimed one.

Hope they fix the audio not matching the video. Let's see! It also bothers me that the audience singing is out of sync 99% of the time, as if it had been added with approximate timing.

I guess we're gonna have a concert film which will be Rio + Berlin + London + Milan + Mexico + San Francisco + Lisbon... Every show in a single concert film. Isn't it awesome?

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I mean, her voice is never perfect, she makes a lot of mistakes here and there in every concert, but that's also the beauty of a live performance, hearing some errors makes the performance feel real and human. In some songs, I approve of the audio dubbing (like in Crazy For You, for example), and I think it would have been necessary in Everybody, because strangely this time she didn't even sing in the verses (I really don't know why she made this choice but I noticed right away), so they could have used a recording of her live voice from moments when she sang good on tour, but they didn't do that at all. But I think she sounded good enough in Holiday or Don't Tell Me. Don't Tell Me is live at the beginning (she was out of tempo so they couldn't dub her), then they replaced her voice with a vocal take that's way different from how she sounds live (which is good in that song) and it's very obvious. You can really hear that first she sings with her voice and then it's replaced by other vocals with a much higher tone. I like her slightly low voice in Don't Tell Me, it's perhaps the song where her current voice fits best overall. And if they really wanted to replace her voice, they could have done it with a recording of her best live performance on this tour, but they didn't do anything like that. Bad Girl was a bit shaky, but I would have left it as it was. It wasn't bad at all. And if you're going to replace the audio, only do it in the phrases where it sounds really off, inserting a vocal take done in identical conditions (same microphone, always handheld, with the same audio system) so that the difference isn't perceived, and make sure it matches the video. In summary: excessive and stupid modifications.

Most people were there (me included). We listened to her live voice. The broadcasted version is dubbed with vocals from another show in many parts. And I noticed that also the crowd singing sometimes is not properly synced. That's a pity, her voice was really good... I was hoping that since it was a live broadcast we were getting the real thing, but she didn't want that. The camera shots are amazing, but audio is bad, unfortunately

I edited my previous message with this video too with timestamp of the moment I'm mentioning. It's obvious they changed her vocals and it wasn't necessary. I was there, 50 meters from the end of the stage and I saw her and heard her voice. In Don't Tell Me she sounded good. Why did they do this? 😢 Indeed But I also noticed they did not autotune Express Yourself. If so, it's possible they did not autotune her live voice, but her live voice of previous performances. I'll check EY again to see if its like this

It's pretty much confirmed that they used vocals from other concerts. Maybe when they did not have time to autotune her voice, they replaced them and they did not check. In Don't Tell Me, when she kisses her daughter, her voice continues and it didn't sound like backing vocals to me. (The video has timestamp of the moment I'm mentioning, if you press play it plays that moment) In this video, if you watch the screens, her voice stops when she kisses her daughter and there's no backing track

Totally agree with you!