Debord

You need to associate with less basic people!

I'm not taking issue with you disliking the album - that's obviously your feeling and it's pointless arguing about that. I just disagreed that it could be called 'filler' or 'pretentious'.

Someone tackling ideas and new things in music isn't "pretentious' though, and you not liking something just means you don't like it. It doesn't mean M was trying to be something she's not. She clearly cared deeply about the project and had plenty of fun making it.

What makes them "pretentious" for you?

Well I gathered that. I just don't think even folk who dislike the album could argue that the songs on it are comparable to e.g. Superstar, which is what I'd call filler.

They have done great work with other artists, but it's tended to be artists who always sang other people's songs (Dusty, Liza, Shirley Bassey, Girls Aloud) except when remixing. Even the Boy George one is a cover. Robbie is the only one I can think of who was known for writing his own stuff. Given how Madonna is known for her singular vision it's up in the air as to whether it would've worked.

I know it provokes strong reactions but I've never heard Madame X called 'filler'!

Radio is pretty irrelevant these days no? By any measure Popular has done very well and given it's still one of The Weeknd's most-played songs, it clearly wasn't just cos it was a Weeknd single. I think all any of us can hope for from a new Madonna album is that she makes music she loves. If she works with other artists and it sounds great, who cares?

I don't think it's negative at all, the charts are utterly meaningless nowadays. She has absolutely nothing left to prove.

She's approaching 70. She's not going to get a "proper hit". And if she does anything with a hot producer you'll get all the usual stuff about her being desperate, chasing trends blah blah blah.

Yeah you can see his mum on the left at the start here

There are a lot of considerations in this. I think folk would instinctively use 'relevant' to mean 'doing really well in the charts' but the charts have become less and less relevant and I don't think most folk pay much attention to them. Music is also far more fragmented than ever before and even with big stars like Taylor and Beyonce, loads of the 'general public' barely know their music aside from big hits from years ago. Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys was speaking the other day and was asked about Taylor Swift and said he always found himself wondering 'what's Taylor Swift's Billie Jean?' which I think is saying basically this. Madonna will always be 'relevant' cos she's one of the last of the megastars from an era where they just totally dominated culture and had a string of hits that were impossible to avoid. Folk know who she is, even if they don't actively listen to her. But in a more prosaic sense of relevancy the tour definitely helped - she was all over the UK media when the tour started here and the lunchtime magazine show This Morning had a whole episode dedicated to her the day before it kicked off.

Apparently so https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/madonna/2024/palacio-de-los-deportes-mexico-city-mexico-7babb2d0.html

Pages get 'locked' (meaning only registered users and not new accounts can edit) when there's a lot of activity going on on the page, usually cos folk are trying to disrupt the page. I don't tend to get bothered by Wiki pages, they're just internet obsessives writing stuff in the main!

Anyone can update Wikipedia.