vespertine

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Madonna said: "show hole"

 

Stuart pranking the gays with Hung Up on Tokischa but then mixing it with the album version

This sent me I'm gone

Yeah…it’s me, one of the novel writers! Scroll on if you don’t have the patience or interest. 😂
 
As I scrolled through comments here and elsewhere, I noticed a good few that were simply callous, dismissive and more a reflection of whatever misery resides in the commenter’s mind, and perhaps a nod to their total disenfranchisement as “consumers”. I think the culture in which we live post-social media has rendered people impossible to please, vicious and in constant search of the negative. It’s a social disease, and many people have it. Enjoy your misery - and if you’re triggered by this being said, you know it’s on you!
 
To put the experience of opening night into context, I’d like to share that I remember seeing Sticky and Sweet in Cardiff fourteen years ago, and I found the show underwhelming. With time, Madonna loosened up, and by the time I saw her back home in the US she was commanding that stage with aplomb and gusto. I believe this can be said of her initial performances throughout her years of touring. 

It’s clear that Madonna is somewhat limited in movement by injury, and whether or not her choreography has been adjusted to accommodate this will eventually become clear if she manages to recover while touring. 

All that said, she looks amazing! She’s 65. Most people 20 years her junior would look ridiculous doing what she is doing here, and yet she looks an absolute powerhouse. I saw a lot of vulnerability in her performance this evening. I don’t know if that will stay as prevalent as her confidence increases. Let’s not forget this is her first global tour since having not only a near fatal health crisis, but also significant hip and knee surgeries. She is bound to be uncomfortable. She also has the scrutiny of haters en masse to contend with when committing to exposing herself publicly for all to see night after night! She’s been ridiculed constantly for years, and so I can only imagine the amount of inner work she must do to prepare herself for this type of experience! 
 
As for the flow of the show, I think we need to see it in person and observe everything that is being conveyed before making assessments about what is superfluous and what is lacking. Maybe it’s a work in progress to be fine tuned in the coming shows, but Madonna isn’t dumb. She doesn’t commit herself to projects of this scale mindlessly! There is a narrative. Maybe you’re just not seeing it yet! The audacity of anyone to question her vision as if she’s some bar singer who is taking to the arena stage for the first time! It’s not up to any of us to say what should or shouldn’t  be done in her show. That’s a matter of personal preference, and we established long ago that it is impossible for Madonna to fully please even a large minority of her hardcore fans. It’s not a conventional Madonna show. It’s not a conventional show on any level. The power of suggestion along with negative feedback creates a loop of ugliness. It happens on here and on other platforms all the time. It’s like needing to put down your phone. It requires a type of self-discipline to not feed into it or have your point of view altered by it. As previously stated in another post, it is one thing to offer a critique (and if you want to make it interesting and worthwhile you have to use your intellect and knowledge), but to be immediately focused on her ass, the songs she didn’t perform, the parts you didn’t like…it’s just lazy in my opinion. I have to accept it, and unfortunately I often get caught up in reading it, but for the record, and I will put it in CAPS for emphasis:
I AM SO PROUD TO BE A MADONNA FAN TODAY. I AM PROUD OF HER; HER TENACITY, HER VISION, AND HER LEGACY. 
 
This tour probably won’t be able to match the cultural impact of its 80s, 90s and 00s predecessors because it is totally retrospective. To me, it serves as a reminder of the fragility of life within the construct of time. In this way, I found there was a kinship with The Girlie Show; something ironically uncelebratory lurks throughout the show. Maybe that’s inevitable given the brush with death Madonna had earlier this year and the general malaise in the world as it stands today. That said, there is a warmth to it that I found lacking on Rebel Heart and Madame X. A sense of the transcendent, I guess. The fast pace of the setlist in order to fit more songs in is a little jarring, but we also live in a time when the average pop song is no longer than 2.5 minutes, and so it may also be that this is a throughly modern approach that we aren’t comfortable with because we come from a time when the longer a song was, the deeper it went! That’s my take, anyway. 
 
I didn’t expect to be mesmerized by the livestreams today, especially when the first one showed the ceiling more than anything else and was accompanied by some of the most classic fan “vocals” my ears have ever had the displeasure of experiencing, but there were obvious showstoppers, even rendered in poor quality…NRM, Live To Tell and Bad Girl come to mind. I realized in seeing many other fan videos that Madonna makes references to past performances and videos (Open Your Heart, for example) that I didn’t see in the live stream. I imagine there’s a lot of these moments, and so I am very much looking forward to eventually seeing all this up close and in the flesh! 
 
I’ve read a lot of speculation about her vocals. “Is she singing live? Is the entire show mimed?” 
It seems quite obvious to me from any of the videos from the floor audience that she is singing live. You can hear when she’s relying heavily on the backing track, but it seems like there’s some technology being used to blend her voice better with the track vocals. The only exception to this for me was Everybody, which was just too obvious because the original vocal is too girlish for her now. To anyone questioning if she’s singing live, she even messed up the vocals on a couple of occasions…Bad Girl for example. I think she’s in fine voice for the most part, but she did sound a little croaky and strained on some songs…I don’t remember exactly which ones, but I think Vogue was one of them. She definitely doesn’t have ease with her higher register anymore, and that’s just fine. They’ve done a great job of choosing and arranging the songs to suit her comfort. 
 
FINALLY, THIS IS DEFINITELY A SHOW THAT NEEDS TO BE PRO SHOT LIKE BLOND AMBITION IN TRUTH OR DARE! 
 
🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵

Madonna's mum.

Pretty underwhelming and messy so far. M's choreo is on a Mariah-level - she walks or gets lead to a spot, move her arms or play guitar, and walk to the next position.

Back in 1992, Madonna released a Coffee Table Book, called "Sex".  The book was a provocative look at sexual fantasies in photographs and words. It was quite controversial and coincided with the release of her Erotica album. Included with the book was an exclusive song called Erotic. Madonna suffered a lot of backlash at the time, calling her all sorts of nasty names and claiming her book was trash.  But do you agree?  Let's hear from the fans?  Feel free to share your favorite stories, encounters or photos from this book.
Listen here: Sex Book - Erotic Audio

 
 
Maybe not SFW? Outtake

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What do we think of this, Ms. Thang? I think this might be the best Rusical ever. Nobody was terrible, some were just better than others, the judges are laughing and intrigued the entire time, the looks and lyrics were all perfect. It was just pure fun.
And Jan killed it.
 

What do we think of this, Ms. Thang? I think this might be the best Rusical ever. Nobody was terrible, some were just better than others, the judges are laughing and intrigued the entire time, the looks and lyrics were all perfect. It was just pure fun.
And Jan killed it.
 

she's changed