Loki

'In all cases, what mattered most to us was originality, influence, the depth of an artist’s catalog, and the breadth of their musical legacy.' Yeah, sure, because current teen idols are more influencing than Ella Fitzgerald, Madonna or Céline Dion, Ofra Haza is overall a worse singer than Taylor Swift and Rihanna, who in the last 6 years has been busier in selling underwear than making music, deserves to be picked up and placed above Leonard Cohen, who published his final album one week before dying. Tsk, it's a list made by fools for fools. Unfortunately, I'm shocked but not surprised. It's been years Rolling Stone tries desperately to stay relevant by publishing shitty articles and lists like this and sucking up to trendy singers and their fan armies. The more their stuff sucks and is questionable, the more people will talk about it, giving them the visibility they crave so badly. Nothing more, nothing less.

Christ, some people are really obsessed. This story is fcking CRAP, made up by a Brazilian fan who spends his spare time spreading this kind of bullshit on twitter. Daily Mail recycled his tweet to give gullible people something to talk. It's not difficult to debunk it. Stop spreading this s*it, please. I miss her Miami era though, if you know what I mean.

Several models who appeared in that photo shoot were at the DiscOasis too, just saying: Fashion (the one on whose tits madge lays her head), Jack Powers and Andrew Darnell, the supposed toy boy (lol), among the others. check the BFA album of the event. This toy boy crap is regularly spread by the usual losers on twitter, by the way. Don't feed the trolls, please.

At first glance, I'd reply 'why not'. I can't hide I'm quite intrigued and pleasantly surprised to a certain degree by this statement and it makes totally sense in the view of self-reflection moment she's going through right now, with the movie about her life, for which a tour centered on her past would be the most natural completation, and the reissues/expanded versions of her back catalogue. Given the ambiguity she's showed towards her monster hits, from total insufference to a certain interest in revisiting them which still quickly ends up to bore her, I'd bet it wouldn't be a standard GH tour with all bells and whistles, but more a show that portrays her life as she sees it through her songs, where not necessarily Like a Virgin would find its place in the sun. In my opinion, the most logic choice would be dusting off the Tears of A Clown format and polishing it a bit: it would be a phenomenal one woman show, very Dietrich-esque, with a retró taste, where musical sections are mixed up with her interacting with crowd. If I'm allowed to dream, I'd kill for a show made up with deep cuts only (Bad Girl and The Look of Love better be there and none will get hurt), rearranged in a jazzy/blues style and organized in different acts, with her singing sat on a second-hand chair, lightened by a single spotlight and wrapped in a cloud of smoke: something similar to the 1993 SNL performance. Everything completed by a live band and, if she wants, a dance troupe to give flesh and bones to her words, with choreographies inspired to Anita Berber's works (funny to say, but Madonna globally seems stepping out from 20s Berlin, so referencing to that period in one of her last tournée would be like closing a circle). With the courtesy by Stuart Price for the musical direction and David Fincher for broadcasting. I wish she could fix the things with Christopher and gave him the creative director duty. I miss his print on her performances :( OK, bye. This would be my idea of heaven: no fucking backup dancers, no screens, almost no lights, just her, her voice, a microphone and her dry dark humor. Jokes and dreams apart, a show where she acts like the narrating voice and leaves the spotlights to her voice, her story, herself is the only feasible thing that comes to my mind, since I'm sure she'd rather have a finger cut than be carried on the stage like a potato sack by her dancers or lighten up her choreos because she can't dance like she used to anymore and above all I refuse to think she'd be so ingenuous to put her body at risk for the sake of dancing at all costs, especially since we're speaking of a tournée (40/50 dates at least and 2/3 continents) and not a one night-event. What is sure is that whatever she wants to do, it won't be easy, both vocally and physically, and it will require an extra dose of patience and time to be settled.

as usual, an interview with her means more than thousand words. there are many interesting points, starting from her relationship with Guy O., which seems it got deteriorated in these last 13 years, basically when he negotiated that monster contract that almost killed all the magic in her. I didn't know he is friend with the Live Nation CEO, but maybe this explains why she joined them. Since she hasn't missed any occasion to kindly remind us how bad that choice was, at the point she admitted she never wanted to make neither MDNA nor Rebel Heart, I wonder if she'll flank him with another person who will dedicate himself, body and soul, to her, as Guy did the in first 20 years, following her step by step in everything and acting as a good creative advisor after all, because it was him who phoned Orbit and submitted to her the tape with the 'Production' demos by Mirwaïs. From her words, it's clear she still needs someone who acts like 'the voice of reason' and guides her, confronts with her and gives the proper shape to her ideas: more a wise friend than a simple financial consultant. despite the age gap, Guy O. acted as a parental figure for her, just as Freddy and Liz did. In these 15 years everything fucked up not because of Guy, but beacause of Guy's absence, imo: since when he rightly decided to focus more on his own business and his life, she felt descarded by him and we all know she works well only when she's fully committed, thing she hasn't been lately because she chose her family over her career (nothing to say against it), and the small group of trusted people (always the same ones, funny isn't it?) she works with are fully focused on her, her requests, her ideas. Paradoxally, this way of working is quite démodé and it's obvious she feels like a fish out of water right now, where you can easily make an album even without seeing the producer in person. Speaking for myelf, reading she's intrigued by how TikTok or internet in general let people promote and manipulate music cracks me up: it's true her attempts of coping with technology are a bit cringy and embarrassing sometimes, but I'm very fascinated that a woman in her 60s still wants to try to understand how we, gen Z, handle our relationships with music and visual arts. bracket closed. About the rest, I'm quite curious to see her next moves and I have the feeling everything will be totally different from what we've seen so far.

In December 1994, accompanied by Alek Keshishian, Madonna attended the premiere of the movie 'Prêt-à-Porter (Ready To Wear)' by Robert Altman in Westwood, Los Angeles. The ensemble cast included Sophia Loren&Marcello Mastroianni, Lauren Bacall, Ute Lemper, Rupert Everett and many more. In this circumstance, she met Sophia Loren and took few photographs with her. 15 years later Sophia was asked about Madonna and replied: 'I only met her once, at a premiere. I was waiting outside with a group of people, surrounded by photographers, and she was walking towards us. I said "Madonna, come here", because she looked so alone, and we were photographed together. She was charming and very respectful to me, but, you know, she looked very lonely'. Funnily, the sentence 'Madonna, come here' follows faithfully the iconic line by Anita Ekberg 'Marcello, come here. Hurry up', directed to Marcello Mastroianni, in the movie 'La Dolce Vita' by Federico Fellini, who died the previous year, on October 31 1993. The Maestro was offered by Madonna, whose love and adoration for Fellini are widely known, to direct the video for 'Rain', but he was forced to decline due to his poor health conditions, which lead him to death few months later.

1. I remember I was still a baby, around 4-5 years old maybe, when I listened to Like A Virgin for the first time: you know, this is one of those old classic that radio stations put on rotation during the 'nostalgia-segment'. My uncle is a great fan of her first years and he regularly stopped changing channels at the radio every single time he picked up the first chord. I was fascinated by that voice with no face, that put upside down my bowels and made me feel happy and alive. 2. It was 2006, with 'Sorry': I was 7 and my mother always put that song on and made me dance with her in the living room, pretending we were at the disco. I listened to that song so many times that years later sometimes I found myself humming the chorus although I didn't know a single line and I was just mimicking the sounds I heard. This song literally has haunted me for years! 3. There are so many, from 'The Power of Good-Bye' to 'You' ll See' and 'X-Static Process'. For personal reasons I pick 'Why It's so Hard': I was born and raised in a family where her music was played frequently, but due to the reputation she has here I didn't take her seriously as artist until I discovered 'Erotica'. At the time I was struggling with my personal identity and a song like 'Why It's So Hard' for the first time made me feel I was OK and that I didn't have to be ashamed of myself for my homosexuality but, on the contrary, I should have been proud of who I am and stop hiding myself. Sometimes she pisses me off with her boutades, but I don't wanna know how my life would have been without her.

from an athletic point of view, she's a freak of nature: she managed to maintain an extraordinary rapport elasticity/strength even at an age relatively advanced. In this sense, the most evident example of this is the 'Sticky&Sweet' tour, which is basically an intense 2-hours cardio routine that would have broken the majority of us, or the 'knee-breaker' move during the Drowned World, move that she represented 14 years later on high-heels. Surely her past as dancer taught her to know every muscle of her body and how to move it properly, neverthless it's extraordinary, given the stress she's caused to herself. Although her body started to show signs of physical weakening later than usual, in the last 15 years she went through menopause, thing that people tend to underestimate but affects metabolism, bones and muscles among others, a stress fracture of one of the metatarsal bones (a very mangy injury) and a chronic degeneration of the cartilagineus tissue in her hip. If we wanna do a comparison, many Olympic athletes are forced to retire in case of these injuries and in any case they leave professional sports in their late 30s, generally. So, give this woman a fucking break. It's a gift for all of us if she still wants to dance and perform for us instead of retiring in the Hamptons and disappearing. Even for her it must be hard accepting she cannot do anymore what she used to do 10 years ago and that she has to shift to a different kind of show, less choreographed and elaborate. Is this a problem? For me, no. This little gig is a further evidence she's still a 'stage animal' if she's fully committed and focused and, above all, if she listens to her body. P. S. I cannot believe that while I was typing this the Supreme Court overtuned the Roe VS Wade verdict. How to cancel 50 years of fights for human and women rights with a fucking stroke of a pen. Dark times are coming, I fear.

What a surprise, Madonna not being Snow White. Even rocks know she's one of the baddest bitches Hollywood has ever seen, among with Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. All of them are ranked in the first 10 spots in the AFI's 25 greatest silver screen stars list and Madonna is widely known as one of the most influencing artists all time. Coincidences? I think not. Love them or hate them, there's not a third way. And I love all of them because they're true bad bitches.

I only hope she's physically OK and she'll have fun. Thing which, incidentally, seems it has been lacking for awhile in her last performances, since the end of the tournée. Maybe because she did them as a mere favour for friends, Pride for that disgrace called Ricardo, who candidly revealed in an interview that all that circus was an idea of his (foolish act from her having accepted), and the Colombian show for Maluma, for which she rehearsed for 2 days, despite being a notorious control freak and a fussy person. Surely I'm wrong, but in these 2 years I've had the impression she didn't give a damn about anything except her kids. I can't blame her, though. I PRAY this time she's in the mood and fully involved, I've enough of these effing requiems about her career. If it's another favour she does for one of her friends, well, I won't care. In any case, this won't change my opinion about her as a performer.

The remix is nothing special, imo. I'm happy for her, though, after all the s**t she's received lately.

Ray of Light (album, singles, videos, remixes and performances) specifically reminds me why I miss the '90s so much, although I lived like last 10 months of that fucking marvelous decade. There was something weird in those years that my mother bequeathed to me, as if she had put the energy of the late '90s in my veins and my heart beated at that futuristic, crazy rhythm, half human half electronic, melancholic and full of hope for the future at the same time. And every '90s movie tv show, song makes me feel at home. Tsk, we babies from the '99 class sucked nostalgia-infused milk from our mothers breasts 🥹. I'd trade anything for living them in full. I can't wait her to leave me broke with these reissues.

I still can't get over the beauty of 'Deeper&Deeper', both lyrically and visually: the cryptic lyrics, the flamenco guitar that pops out from nowhere, the references to Andy Warhol and Luchino Visconti, the fusion between the Roaring 20s and the 70s, linked together by the common sense of decadence that pervaded those years. prolly the song I love the most from hers. I even like the remix, although I usually loathe them. I'd have never believed I could lose my mind over a Philly disco song released before I was born. Also, it's not a coincidence she released the video, coloured with the cinematographic 'pink&blue' lights, just in time for Pride Month! And people still ask me why she's one of my favourite LGBTQ+ icon... About 'Frozen', releasing a '98 remix after 5359 versions none requested would be very madge. I'm happy with this project, so far. Fingers crossed for the rest.

I'm in the minority group of who liked it, I see 😂. even in a crumbling and apocalyptic world, even in a hybrid and sterile laboratory, a woman can still give life to a new life, different from the one we're used to, surely, but still 'life'. I found it full of hope for the future: altough we live in a society which is slowly dying, suffocated by ipertechnology, hybrid, aseptic, mechanical, we still have the strength to birth new individuals, who are the synthesis of it, half 'natural' and half mechanical, like the worms which come from her uterus, or completely natural, like the tree she birthed in that lab. To remind us we can fuse ourselves with technology as much as we want, but nothing will tear our fleshy, human heart away from us. At first glance this series of clips reminded me the movie 'Titane', by Julie Ducournau, I don't know why, maybe for the dichotomy humanity/mechanics. I found it also deeply feminist, particularly important in an historical context where women are still treated like supporting characters and not main protagonists of our society, where their right to choose for themselves and for their own body is still in danger, for the sake of a disgusting and false sense of morality, where women are still punished for their right to be who they want to be, where women are still payed 14,1% less than men, where women are still treated like an object, where women are marginalized and reduced to silence simply because 'they're women'. These clips show how strong and marvelous women are, the only ones capable to bring a new future to this sterile world, even when the circumstances are an obstacle and everything seems lost.

I'm ready for another feud between her and the Vatican. Last time it was epic. I know she'll bring chaos in the 'peaceful' world of Twitter. Fasten your seatbelts, folks, it will be a bumpy flight.

Today it would have been Keith Haring's 64th birthday. I found this short clip, shot by Andrea Soldani in June 1989 while Keith was in Pisa, Italy, for realizing 'Tuttomondo', a mural painted on one of the exterior walls of the Church of San Antonio Abate. 'Tuttomondo' is believed to be one of his final works, along with the mural he painted for the 'ArtCenter College of Design' in Pasadena, in November 1989. This video was originally part of a series of short documentaries dedicated to Keith's visit in Italy. The longest one, with a 27-minutes length , is unfortunately not available on Internet (At least I didn't find it). Last year the city of Pisa organised a beautiful exhibition in Keith's honor, in collaboration with the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection. Happy birthday, Keith, may you make angels draw in heaven.

Is it truly necessary calling her a whore, a pig, a retarded old woman who lost her mind, forgetting we're speaking about a human being and not about a fucking chair? I think we all are entitled to express dissent or concern (I hate lots of her performances or songs that are commonly seen as the Holy Graal, for example), what baffles me is the total lack of balance and empathy people show towards other humans who live under the spotlights. personally, I'm not hurted by discussions about her health (that's what I study, at the end of the day), as long as they respect her and her integrity as a human. I agree with who say there's something wrong with her, still I'm cautious to express my ideas, since no one has never met her in person and health is a very sensitive and incredibly deep subject, which depends on literally thousands of aspects and, for who's wondering, age plays a huge part, changing for good and dramatically our bodies and how we look at our life and our past. I think it would be more productive and smart asking ourselves why someone acts in a certain way, instead of judging the action per se and dismissing the matter saying 'it's an attention seeker' or 'it's a bad bitch, I'm disgusted', or worst 'she/he should act differently'. Said that, for what I saw from Twitter, I found the entire show quite boring and cheap, not only her segment, like any other modern concert. Sorry for the rant. Peace and love, folks.

Glad my post was helpful xxx well, the 'gothic' trend of the XIX century is largely based on East-European and Ancient Roman/Greek myths: witches, vampires, ghosts and so on populated the collective imaginery since the beginnings of the European culture as we know it. Romantic poets and writer just appropriated these, turning them into the expressions of the unconsciousness and primordial impulses. Calling 'Frozen' a gothic video is not technically wrong, but this means watering down and minimizing the efforts she and Chris made to collect and depict in a 5 minutes-video a moltitude of references to different traditions with coherent development and transitions. Nothing is casual in this little masterpiece. I was raised as a Catholic, then I stepped away from it, because I felt betrayed and condamned by the Church for my homosexuality, although I still read and analyse the Bible quite often. I can assure you that whatever she has done in these 40 years is a simple consequence of her being born and raised in a Southern-European Catholic family: 'our' Catholism is filled with peculiar features that make it very different from the Irish or the French one. For an esternal eye it can be seen as 'strange' or 'pagan'. but for explaining it I'd need 345 posts 😂.

In the 'Frozen' video, she condensed different mythological and religious sets: -the Greek: 1.Hecate, the goddess of magic and darkness. daughter of titan Perses (according to the classic version of the myth, written by Hesiod in his 'Theogony', he fought against the Olympian Gods, whose leader was Zeus, along with his fellows Titans, the first generation of divine creatures, born from the union between Gea, the mother earth, and Uranus, the sky. This war goes under the name of Titanomachy) and titaness Asteria, Hecate is commonly associated with night, witchcraft, the Moon, ghosts and necromancy, a particular black magic practice that claims to be able to make the user communicate with the dead in order to foretell future events. The original cult saw her as the goddess of boundaries, which later leaded to adore her as a underworld goddess. Her animal symbol is the dog, as widely known, because dogs were used to watch over the cities boundaries at night. According to Greek beliefs, dogs were part of the moltitude of animals which lived in the underworld. 2.Sirius: the star in the sky is allegedly Sirius, from the 'Major Dog' constellation. it's also quoted as the 'Dog Star', because it was believed this star made dogs mad, during the 'dies caniculares', the hottest days in summer. -the Irish: the crow is the symbol of Mórrígan, the goddess of War, fate and ghosts, as the name suggests, part of a trinity which included Badb and Macha, her sisters, and Nemain, although this section of the cult is object of debact. Mórrígan was able to change her nature, morphing into a woman, a crow, aging and rejuvenating as she pleased. -the Hindu: Kali, the goddess of death, time and change, depicted as a 4 or 10 arms-woman. Sorry for the length xxx I have to find yet a serious article that explains her 'alleged' satanism, because I analysed for fun all her videography and didn't see any trace of it. Instead, she exposed a particular and elegant taste in religions and arts, which includes pagan myths, esotheric beliefs and Catholic hagiography. Instead of asking her crap, journalists should focus more on this side of her, which is astonishgly mesmerising.

here we go again. predictable, in my opinion, since day 1. if there's a rule in this world, that is her love affairs will always turn out to be a fiasco, as if was a counterpoise for her massive, insane professional success: the woman with society at her feet, loved, hated and envied by press and fans, treated like a doormat or a walking bank account by her partners, regularly ending up with a tissue box at her side and a bleeding, broken heart. Tol'stoj would have adored her and somehow she seems to have stepped out from a novel of his, like a modern Anna Karenina, incapable of handling her own loneliness and living without two mediocre crumbles of love, at the endless research of the fairy prince who can make her feel loved like never before. Irony of the fate, both of them have horrid taste in men. I'm so sorry for her, I wish she treasured these bad experiences, accepting the ugly truth she has to search for her own happiness relying only on her own strength and on her kids and family's love. I wish her all the best, all of us deserves to be loved as a human being, and not for a mere bank account or powerful friendships. Anyway, if I was her, I'd call my pal in Miami: she seemed very happy when she was dating her, or whatever it was that.

As her daughter Maria Riva explains in her biography, Marlene Dietrich, basically after the end of her cinematographic career, started performing a one-woman show in theaters and clubs (does it remind of someone we know?): according to Mrs Riva, Marlene had never been happier. This is the same for Madonna: her happiness on a stage clashes with the loneliness and the sense of depression that exude from her social media. Maybe Marlene is her polar star right now: they're very similar after all.

We should ask Siegmund Freud and his pal Carl Gustav Jung. There are so many factors to consider, from her istagram page (hence my eye roll) to her most recent interviews, and still the answer would be partial. Anyway, speaking for myself, there's something tragicomic about her. Take her instagram: every photo is unnatural, cringe and horrible (she's oddly similar to the women painted by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, by the way) and it's foolish to take this fcking app seriously (I mean, it's Instagram, folks). I wouldn't be surprised if she used it to mock our society, its obsession with physical appearance and the abnormous amount of manipulated news, imagines and sounds that invades our world: as she often repeats, no one of this is real. This is the comic part. The tragic one is that she stopped smiling long long time ago and franckly I don't remember the last time I saw her doing it (well, maybe when she suddendly appeared with Sean Penn for a charity event and we all know why she was beside herself with joy). Every time I see one of her post, I cannot help noticing a shadow in her eyes and her bored, annoyed, depressed expression: it seems that no one of her useless toy boys, supposed friends and collaborators cares about her, everyone just uses her, her fame, her power and friendships for personal purposes, in exchange for two crumbs of love and the illusion of being appreciated for who she is and not for what she represents in the industry. It's tragic and heartbreaking. I don't wanna lie: in these recent years she reminds me a lot of Marlene Dietrich, who, in her 50s, tried to satisfy her desperate need of being loved searching for the adoration of her fans. I can't blame her: it's an obvious attitude, considering that only her sons and daughters and a bunch of old friends truly love her unconditionally.

With all due respect to Klein and his artistic intentions, this is what I expected from this photoshoot. It's classy and on point, from the outfits to the pieces of jewelry. Overall, IMHO, it's a hidden tribute to the entire Hollywood's Golden Era, from Mae West for the sunglasses to the couple Garbo - Dietrich for the black cigarette and the tailleur. Obviously Marilyn remains the main model and the focal point of the project. And about her, well, I have no words, she's fabulous, simply fabulous. As years pass by, she still exudes a kind of magnetism and allure that I've seen only in a bunch of Hollywood superstars, the brightest ones in that crazy universe. It's amazing, she is still amazing. I don't wanna sound whiny or boomer-ish, but I wish she looked like this way on Instagram: these photos are another evidence that, with the righ tricks and elegant outfits, beauty is ageless and current edits/filters are just a disgrace.

Very impressed by the jazzy/stripped down version of Dark Ballet, without the vocoder it's so good. Once again, I'm surprised how happy she is while she's on a stage recently and let me say that seeing her smiling nowadays is such a rare event. I've always seen her as a damn robot, but being able to observe how much she wants to be drowned by fans love just melted my heart. And...for who wonder if she is depressed, I'd like to say she's always been prone to melancholy (Jesus, the word 'depression' is so overused without knowledge) and it emerges from every single interview she has had thorugh the years, especially in the early '90s. maybe you missed it. Last thing, lots of comments about her general physical appereance make me wanna bleach my eyes and throw my medical textbooks in the bin lol.

These photos made me feel so uncorfortable because basically she recreated the last photoshoots Marilyn did between 1961-1962, before her death. There are referencies to The Last Sitting, by Bert Stern, shot 6 weeks before Marilyn died (the notes she posted and the glitter on her body suggest it) and other ones to The Misfits, the last completed movie for Marilyn, shot in 1961: in particular she recreated a nude studio photo where Marilyn turns her back to the camera, taken by Eve Arnold. Then, as someone posted before, the set is sinisterly similar to the room where ms Monroe was found dead. Dulcis in fundo, she brought Louise Oriole back to life: I don't know if it's merely a coincidence. Seeing these photos, I can't help thinking of an article published by Vanity Fair in 1991, where Madonna was compared to Marilyn, with a majestic photoshoot by Steven Meisel. The title was...The Misfit: https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/bd86a835-b84c-47a7-bbec-60b9af6ea282.