RinoTheBouncer

Couldn’t agree more with you. I adore her and she means the world to me and she influenced me in more ways than I can count, but it’s like after her divorce, she became a completely different person, it’s like something broke and she was never the same. She has to be such a perfectionist with every single detail of her work, her image, her statements, her sarcasm, her performances, and everything felt polished and perfected with a high budget. After S&S, she dropped the ball. While MDNA is one of my most favorite albums and the tour is my second most favorite Madonna Tour after Confessions Tour, I think she started to care less and less about her image and her art and it shows. From incredibly low quality single covers, to lack of proper magazine shoots to tone deaf statements and badly shot selfies and distasteful remakes here and there, to the messy performances and the ever declining quality of her work. As much as I adore Madame X and Rebel Heart, so many of the songs feel like they were produced with simplistic equipments at home, with sounds appearing muffled or overly processed. It’s like she’s no longer the perfectionist she used to be, and no longer being managed by professionals. ROL Madonna would never approve of such mediocrity, but now it’s like everything is made with minimal budget and effort, like she doesn’t even have her heart into it anymore, and don’t get me started about her tardiness in Rebel Heart and Madame X, the drinking problems, the incredibly vile remarks she made at fans bodies, accents and looks. That’s just too much. It is one thing to see people grow and change, ROL Madonna was completely different from LAP and Erotica Madonna and so was AL and COADF Madonna, but that’s was a growth and a change in a positive way, but after HC, it’s more like devolution or deconstruction, and the last 2 years were the worst, especially when it comes to what she wears, what she says and what’s she posts online. I love her, I adore her, she’s my No.1 and always will be, but at this point it’s not like the past when she didn’t care about haters, it’s like she doesn’t care about common sense either or her legacy. She was at her peak from ROL to COADF but she dropped the ball after that and while we did have high budget production from MDNA and S&S, the following eras had great potential but the execution ruined so much of them. It really hurts because I don’t care what people say about her, but today people aren’t offended or shocked by her, they are more like appalled by her or laughing at her and I cannot accept that on her. That’s now how Madonna should be remembered. She’s too wrapped up in her world of yes people that she can’t take any form of feedback or change. What I feel is that she’s just not happy. I watch Confessions Tour when she sings Get Together and she’s visibly happy, her face, her smile is coming from the bottom of her heart but in S&S, MDNA, RH, MX, she’s angry, she’s disappointed, she’s deeply hurt and listening to Looking for Mercy, Wash All Over Me and Falling Free pretty much confirms that she’s not happy and hasn’t been ever since the divorce.

Easy Ride The Power of Goodbye Nothing Really Matters Bad Girl Why’s It So Hard Get Together Wash All Over Me Ghosttown Inside Out Looking for Mercy Love Profusion Nothing Fails Justify My Love

I adore her, I idolize her and her work has helped me in so many ways than you can imagine, but her recent creative decisions, tone-deaf statements, badly photographed shots and distasteful remarks are indeed tarnishing her image and legacy in the eyes of the public. I still love her like I always did but I wish she wasn’t living in a bubble with a bunch of yes men who agree with anything she says. She’s an incredible artist who’s badly managed and not a very good listener to criticism. It’s good not to care for people who want to bring you down, but not every criticism aims to bring you down. Sometimes it’s healthy to take criticism into consideration to be better, because nobody’s perfect and we can all learn from one another. People’s hatred towards Madonna isn’t gonna change how much I love her, and I don’t care what the world thinks of her. She’s still my idol, but the only thing I wouldn’t accept is people laughing at her, and at this point, people aren’t offended by her, they’re looking down on her and laughing, and I think she should definitely change that. This is not how the legend of Madonna should end.

Get Together Easy Ride Die Another Day Girl Gone Wild God Control Ghosttown The Power of Goodbye Nothing Really Matters

Happy Madame X Anniversary! https://shop.madonna.com/products/madame-x-vip-book

In that case Equestrian would win for me, I guess. Either that or Trangression. The technology, the music, the scale of everything. It’s just epic.

Anything of value leaked about Madonna? Because they’ve been publishing Gaga-related leaks on Twitter, including song titles that were removed from the album ARTPOP as well as a tour recording..etc.

Get Together

This was excruciatingly hard. You should’ve done a tour by tour poll not 4 tours at a time. Here are my votes. Part I: Dominatrix Part II: Equestrian Part III: Transgression

I’m just giving my own take on it. It felt primitive compared to what she offered before. It was acclaimed yes, but it didn’t click with me, which ultimately is my word against the word of another person who happened to work for a publication. Not saying my word is objective, or theirs either, but I did enjoy the shows but being close was like the only thing I found to be really good. The pacing, the production, the outfits, the interludes and especially her attitude towards the whole project made it feel half-assed for me. Couldn’t agree more with every single word. For that price tag, it’s far from a small show. It felt more like they wanted to cut down on budget and skim as much money as possible. What was really bad is that she had an injury months before the show (it was visible on her knee bad since rehearsals) and they started anyway and made the schedule so packed and she kept cancelling or cutting songs (the opener aka her best song and performance from this era even, not the covers or any classic that we’ve seen a million times), instead of actually revamping the set list to be more like a theater and have her sit or act rather than dance and jump. It would’ve been way more entertaining if she did that and focused on ballads and forgotten gems, but no they kept cancelling last minute... I love this album so much but everything else minus the music videos was a complete trainwreck.

That’s the problem, it wasn’t like actual theater or even something intimate and “for the fans”, it was more like a low budget version of the big shows. I don’t see scaled down as an excuse for uninspired. There are so many theaters that are elaborate and planned better than having two stars and a projector and a high school play cosplay pirate outfit for an opener that they want us to think is George Washington. Only if you change yours to Mediocrity Apologist.

Not the music videos, those are her best in years, but look at her recent eras single artworks or the editing of the album artwork for MDNA Standard Edition, the theater tour idea isn’t bad per se, but she could’ve done a much bigger production for it in a theater, her outfits have been less and less inspired as well.

Sad in a sense that we could've had a bigger budget production and a more elaborate representation of the ideas of the album and a bigger global reach. Also more revenue for her means her still being a profitable investment for more big budget works and good press and a testament of her own power. We like to keep telling ourselves that sales don't matter, they don't always matter, yes but in order for an artist to continue to create, in order for elaborate visuals and outstanding fashion, marketing and efforts to be funded, sales and financial success matters very much, and as you can see, Madame X was plagued with low budget production, both as a tour and as budget for visuals, artworks, and even photo shoots and magazine features. This era was great musically, yes but in terms of presentation and marketing, it fell flat and now that she's no longer in contract with Live Nation, I'm not one bit sure what the next step will be, nor am I optimistic about it, judging by these standards. Madonna is a legendary artist, the best of the best, but she's been wasting a hell lot of great opportunities.

She’s a billionaire, as far as I know, yes. But I mean we could make it about money so we can get the big production 🤣

It’s just so sad how much more she could’ve made, easily 2 to 4 times as much if this was an arena or a stadium tour with some big production...