Blue Prince

The queen has arrived! Seriously, wasn't this performance fun? Watching it again, how was she able to dance on the stairs? Unforgettable! 
 

Also, the most simple thing she can do is make a great soundtrack song for a big movie or series in which she will not star. I think her best selling single of 2019 was Material Girl in the US and that was because it was featured in a Stranger Things episode. I mean the last time she did it she won a Golden Globe. It probably won't be the next Shallow or Skyfall but in the streaming era it will gain a lot of points from the younger. It would be a great first step as a reintroduction if her name is associated with something else that people actually care about. If she doesn't even write the song, it is very much likely it will win an Oscar too, as always ?

I hope the person I end up with is a fan too, which is rare in my generation, or that person won't be able to handle all of her music that I'll be playing through the years! I will seek that Madonna song in every playlist we make.

Masterpiece. It was pretty much the first (good) song we got from her for the new decade and it's beautiful! The only thing that annoys me is that beat that goes on (pun intended) throughout the song, destroying the melodies.

I’ve loved Madonna since a very early age. I think most of us can say that. But to be honest, I think I’ve actually enjoyed Madonna more since I became a part of a Madonna community. I could never really discuss M in my normal life because people didn’t know/care to hear it. But knowing I can talk about her, bitch and moan about her, criticize her, but most of all love her with other people is comforting. I don’t really know what I would do without this place. Sure life would go on, but this makes it so much better. I think this quote sums it all up.
 
”To a room full of people, that I admire, that I appreciate, that I adore, that I love...and... that I would all separately at one time or another like to smack the shit out of, cheers”

Would you say the same had you missed Future Lovers? ?

Would you say the same had you missed Future Lovers? ?

Would you say the same had you missed Future Lovers? ?

5/5 from NME
Madonna live in London: The Queen of Pop lets her guard down and it’s incredible
After cancelling a handful of shows – including two London dates – due to injury, Madonna has finally arrived at London’s Palladium for opening night. By her standards, it’s a ludicrously small venue. This lofty, gilded space has hosted a few other musical legends in its time – Frank Sinatra and The Beatles to name a couple – but in bringing her latest record ‘Madame X’ to life, Madonna takes the dramatic brief from a venue as well known for theatre as for music, and runs away with it.
Much like a theatre production, the gig is split into a number of different segments, and the ever adaptable Madame X – with her enterprising approach to the current jobs market – is the versatile thread running through. During opener ‘God Control’ she’s a fighter, dodging gunfire, and fighting off police officers with riot shields: “Death to the patriarchy,” she yells as they bundle off her into one of the set’s moving compartments.
In a surreal interlude she turns comedian and addresses the room from behind a doctor’s screen, cracking jokes about small penises, and pretending to give birth: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is what it’s like to have Mozart coming out of your pussy!” In the disco banger ‘I Don’t Search I Find’ she’s a spy under interrogation. And later on, she’s a cheerleader for Lisbon: kicking back in a blue-tiled fado bar for a reworking of ‘La Isla Bonita’, inviting all manner of new friends – including Cape Verde group Orquestra Batukadeiras – to join her on stage. During this last segment, Madonna is wide-eyed and awestruck; it’s clear that collaborating with these musicians is what really makes her tick.
At times, a little like the more ham-fisted moments of ‘Madame X’, the messaging can feel a bit overbearing. The world is going to shit, but Madonna really loves Portugal – this much is clear.
Continually, Madonna plays on the intimacy of the West End theatre, at one point marching into the audience in search of a spare seat. Cosying up next to a bemused fan, she takes a swig of his beer. “I’m about to drink your backwash!” she declares merrily. “Do you come to the theatre often?” Quite understandably, he’s lost for words.
At times, the affair feels like a pop panto: when Madonna appears in a resplendent feathery hat and her customary eye-patch, she could easily be mistaken for a knee-slapping Captain Hook. This only heightens as the superstar leads the Palladium through a chant of “One, two, cha, cha, cha” (from ‘Madame X’s lead single ‘Medellín’) later in the set, demanding they shout louder and louder. When a stage-hand brings out a chair, Madonna seizes the opportunity to reference her injury, while cracking a dirty joke. “Usually I kneel for it [this interlude] for like, 20 minutes,” she says. “I’m good at that, so I’ve been told”.
And the wisecracks keep coming. There’s a truly bizarre charity auction where Madonna takes a selfie onstage, and flogs the resulting polaroid to someone in the front row for a grand; when a man gets onto her stage and waves a wad of cash at her, she’s visibly fuming. “I don’t care,” she tells him, waving his money away. “You walked on my stage without permission”. As the whole chaotic saga finally draws to a close, £50 notes strewn across the stage, she sighs at her UK audience’s inability to close a deal efficiently. “Are you guys confused about Brexit?” she quips.
She also makes fun of herself, poking fun at her own inability to arrive on time (on the US leg of the tour, she was late multiple times – tonight she’s a mere 15 minutes behind). There’s even a niche remark about London’s noise curfews. “There’s an iron curtain…” she states, ominously. “I’ve been warned by Westminster Council”.
Largely centred on ‘Madame X’ tonight is light on the classics: there’s a snippet from ‘Express Yourself’, performed alongside her daughters Mercy, Stella and Estere. She sneaks in a brief flourish from ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ into an instrumental section. ‘American Life’, ‘Human Nature’ and an ever-so-slightly underwhelming ‘Vogue’ appear in full – the penultimate song is a thumping rendition of ‘Like A Prayer’. A minimal performance of ‘Frozen’ – Madonna seated behind a screen, a larger-than-life projection of her daughter Lourdes dancing around her – is the goosebump inducing moment of the night amid the visual overload.
As it happens, the production is so intricate and absorbing that you barely miss the more familiar tunes and numerous overlooked cuts from ‘Madame X’ – the self-referential ‘Crazy’ and sinister apocalypse banger ‘Future’ – seem to find their feet. For all of her dramatic personas on ‘Madame X’, tonight is largely about Madonna herself. By the end, it feels like we know her a lot better.
It’s strange to witness the Queen of Pop in this light. As disorientating as it feels, the tension of seeing an untouchable legend letting her guard down makes this show incredibly special. It also feels like a brave move from an artist who could do just about anything. Then again, risk-taking and reinvention is what makes Madonna an icon.

And another 5/5 from BBC:
Madonna's new persona... stand-up comedian ★★★★★
"She is here, isn't she Will?", asked a worried looking man at the London Palladium at about 20:00 on Wednesday night. "Yes", I said. I didn't actually know for sure, but he looked so anxious I thought a bit of reassurance wouldn't go amiss. 
Anyway, the merch counter had just fallen over and there was a rising sense of calamity which didn't need adding to. 
Madonna goes deep with her fans. The connection is genuine and mutual. Nobody blames her for cancelling shows due to extreme pain in her knees and hips, people just hope it's not on their night (she has subsequently ruled out shows on 4 and 11 February).
"I feel so guilty," another fan told me. "My mates had tickets for Monday night, which was cancelled and I've just sent a WhatsApp of my seat tonight."
"Where are you sitting?" I asked
"Row U in the stalls," he said
"How much did you pay?" 
"£250" he said "Not bad eh? I think it's going to be great."
And it was - 5-star great. 
Not because the show was perfect, though. Madonna's movement was visibly stiff, lighting errors left dancers in the dark, and some of her banter fell flat. All of which only added to the "live-ness" of the event, which was more an evening of intimate cabaret than a stadium blockbuster show.
It was perfectly imperfect, like one of those sketchy landscapes by Cezanne where you can see his underdrawings and misplaced lines, making it so much more beautiful and real than Canaletto's soulless precision. 
Truth is the point of art, not perfection. 
Getting to it sometimes means removing the artifice, or strapping it on. Madonna's schtick has always been the latter. 
She's a post-modernist right down to her kinky boots, adopting superficial personas and cultural influences. She is the Cindy Sherman of pop, the chameleon Queen with a debt to the shape-shifting aesthetics of David Bowie.
This time around, though, Madonna has let the mask slip. 
There's still a character for her to hide behind (Madame X, a dominatrix type cliche sporting an eye-patch and padded pants), with its usual mix of the sacred and the profane (she is both a prostitute and a nun). But she constantly undermines her own illusion just as Cezanne did with his fidgety, cross-hatched lines. 
One minute she is the all-singing, all-dancing Madame X, inhabiting a vividly theatrical world embellished with huge projections. The next she has stepped beyond her own fourth wall to have a chummy chat with the locals. It's improv, kind of. The audience interaction is a pre-conceived element of the show, but her spiel is site-specific, and her responses spontaneous. 
The artist was present in every sense.
Sometimes it worked. 
Sometimes she went on for a too long, leading to the occasional "get on with it". And sometimes it was awkward: "Does anyone have a spare seat I could sit in?" she asked (scripted).
A chap near the front put his hand up. Madonna gingerly stepped down from the stage for a tete-a-tete. She's fine, he's star-struck. Beer is swigged (scripted). To no avail. His tongue has tied itself into a knot so tight no amount of liquor is going to loosen it. A stilted conversation ensues (unscripted). 
Nobody minds. Madonna's doing stand-up. We're in the room. She is with us, of us, not some distant star on a faraway stage performing a risk-free romp through back catalogue favourites with a few numbers from the latest album thrown in to help sales. 
The Madame X Tour is an adventurous piece of contemporary theatre, and a match for any of the Tony and Olivier-winning shows currently playing the West End and Broadway. 
It starts with a Hitchcockian scene. Madonna is stage right, in profile: seated, visible only as a silhouette behind a translucent curtain. She is typing. Slowly. A gunshot rings out every time she strikes a key, provoking a robotic movement made by a single besuited dancer standing in front of the curtain, stage left.
Text is projected on high as the dancer contorts his body under a hail of literary bullets, most fired decades ago by James Baldwin, one of America's finest post-war writers. His words "Artists are here to disturb the peace" appear as an epigraph. 
He is right. Up to a point. Which is about 23:00 for Westminster City Council, according to our celebrated hostess. She told us an iron curtain would be dropped if she went on beyond its stipulated curfew.
The diaphanous fabric lifts, Madonna struts, the stage is set, and the show proper begins with God Control. The audience goes nuts ("I should have done this years ago," says the singer as an aside), as the steps and structures revolve and animate. 
Dark Ballet comes next in a show built around her recent Madame X Album. The smattering of old favourites stitched into its fabric have been incorporated so elegantly as to make them feel an essential part of the whole rather than crowd-pleasing add-ons.
And so it is with Human Nature, which follows and resolves in a seated scene that doubles up as a rest for the star and a witty nod for the die-hards towards the famous 1995 video directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. 
Then comes some "Hello London" repartee before an a cappella version of Express Yourself. 
It's good, and it gets better. 
A string introduction to Papa Don't Preach segues into a sophisticated rendition of Vogue performed in a striking, angular, black and white design. 
Not all the creative decisions are made so astutely. There's an ill-advised, wince-inducing vignette, which sees Madonna launching into a "let's wind back the years" routine involving an upside-down-splits topped-off with toe wiggle. I felt a tweak in my own groin - and not in a good way. 
Fortunately for Madame X, and us, such moments are few and far between. This show is designed (and constantly redesigned) around the 61-year-old's physical condition. Dancers help her on and off pianos, chairs and steps. You can sense her frustration at her body's restricted ability, but she can still hit the beats better than most. 
Plus, her team of dancers are fantastic. They excel under Megan Lawson's choreographic vision, which appears to riff on a revered contemporary dance cannon including such notables as Pina Bausch's The Rite of Spring, Hofesh Shechter's Sun, and Michael Jackson's moon walk.
The heart and soul of the show is provided by Madonna's newly found love: the evocative sound of the Fado musicians she discovered in her current home city of Lisbon. 
That, and the wonderful female Batuque singers from Cape Verde, an African archipelago once colonised by the Portuguese who took an unfavourable view of their traditional music.
The star's show is infused with her love of Fado music, which originated in Portugal around the 1820s, and is known for being deeply melancholic
The show ends with a full-bodied version of Like a Prayer, which leads into an encore of Madame X's protest song, I Rise. 
Which we all did as a visibly delighted Madonna led her merry band of players out of the auditorium and off into the night (or the physio's bench).

Also, the most simple thing she can do is make a great soundtrack song for a big movie or series in which she will not star. I think her best selling single of 2019 was Material Girl in the US and that was because it was featured in a Stranger Things episode. I mean the last time she did it she won a Golden Globe. It probably won't be the next Shallow or Skyfall but in the streaming era it will gain a lot of points from the younger. It would be a great first step as a reintroduction if her name is associated with something else that people actually care about. If she doesn't even write the song, it is very much likely it will win an Oscar too, as always ?

The only hope for a big comeback now is fully embracing her legacy. An official mega Hollywood biopic + compilation/greatest hits tour would do wonders for her image. It's time.
I love "Madame X" and I'm very grateful she's still hungry and wanting to do new things, but it's time to remind people her great legacy.
I was at a party with friends of all ages recently and I was super surprised how now Elton Jonh is super cool and popular again. I was like "what?". And it's all because of his "Rocketman" biopic. Same with Queen and the "Bohemian Rhapsody" movie.
Madonna has all the great songs, videos, tours, looks, EVERYTHING. But people need to see all that again - or some new generations for the very first time. 

Madame Xtraordinary!
 

I liked the one she wrote to Quentin Tarantino after his character in Reservoir Dogs said Like a Virgin is about big di*ks. She sent him a copy of Erotica signed: To Quentin. It's not about di*k, it's about love. Madonna.

About lack of water! ??

About global warming I suppose 

Yeah, at some point we should stop accusing her creative choices. She makes more compelling music than the crap that is overplayed today, doesn't look worse than all the plastic and overtattooed people that rule music nowadays, doesn't make less beautiful videos than the most beautiful ones out there. Her biggest hits this decade are probably GMAYL and BIM and I wouldn't want an album full of those. It just shows that most people only reward vanity in songs. She'll have some good moments again before she retires and when she dies at 110+. Till then let's just hope for more exposure and more albums, more often.

True. I question whether music is appreciated like it once was? 

I had this fantasy in my head, where Madonna hit the Brits (Feb18) just before leaving the UK to perform in Paris (Feb20). Just one song maybe that's already part of the tour. Any chance in a billion she would bother to do that? 

I had this fantasy in my head, where Madonna hit the Brits (Feb18) just before leaving the UK to perform in Paris (Feb20). Just one song maybe that's already part of the tour. Any chance in a billion she would bother to do that? 

I had this fantasy in my head, where Madonna hit the Brits (Feb18) just before leaving the UK to perform in Paris (Feb20). Just one song maybe that's already part of the tour. Any chance in a billion she would bother to do that? 

Taylor Swift did with Bad Blood but of course the mix included guest vocals, probably cause the album version wasn't strong enough. The b*tch still didn't want Kendrick on her album 

Yeah, at some point we should stop accusing her creative choices. She makes more compelling music than the crap that is overplayed today, doesn't look worse than all the plastic and overtattooed people that rule music nowadays, doesn't make less beautiful videos than the most beautiful ones out there. Her biggest hits this decade are probably GMAYL and BIM and I wouldn't want an album full of those. It just shows that most people only reward vanity in songs. She'll have some good moments again before she retires and when she dies at 110+. Till then let's just hope for more exposure and more albums, more often.

Don't worry, I'm sure it's true even about almost all number one singles of the last decade 

It's not the radio, but I play Madonna all the time at the cafe I work at, and sometimes my coworkers will do the same ;)