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Ten reasons I loved (and love and defend) the MDNA era, 10 years later, despite the criticism.


Drownedboy
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Drownedboy

1)Loved the Tour, the only time I have seen her, in Barcelona and she was flawless and the show amazing and was a total success for her. 2)The Superbowl perfomance: awesome, iconic, loved by everybody and a total success. 3)The cover of the album: one of her most beautiful ever. 4)The album itself:oks, I could do without Birthday song or I fucked it up, and I never quite liked the first single, even though it was fun and a success, but at the end MDNA mixed all the Madonnas (the f

Roland Barthes

It's still a shit album and its masters should be sent into the sun to burn in it forever. I've never hated a madonna song ever before girl gone Wild and i still do. The whole era was her trying to compete with Gaga meaning she lowered herself to her awful asthetics and putrid dance music from a worst of the 90's compilation. It's badly written, badly recorded, badly produced, badly mixed and badly mastered. The cover is beautiful though. So is the whole photoshoot. The tour is messy, it's like

Prayer

Great dance-pop album and probably her last album with the whole pop world watching and paying attention. Amazing tour. Terrible promotion. The lack of a proper marketing team from the label behind her was noticeable here. This album with Warner would have been managed differently. The whole concept of the "DNA of M" was too cool to not use it. It's funny how some fans complained that she didn't do pop/dance with "Hard Candy" but later complained too when she was back to it on "MDNA". She r

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1 hour ago, Roland Barthes said:

It's still a shit album and its masters should be sent into the sun to burn in it forever. I've never hated a madonna song ever before girl gone Wild and i still do. The whole era was her trying to compete with Gaga meaning she lowered herself to her awful asthetics and putrid dance music from a worst of the 90's compilation. It's badly written, badly recorded, badly produced, badly mixed and badly mastered. The cover is beautiful though. So is the whole photoshoot. The tour is messy, it's like a blockbuster movie that aged badly. The terrible "Joan of Arc" costume, the American Apparel socks as arm warmers...The whole first segment is unwatchable now. The best part is Love Spent/Like A Virgin and the finale. I remember how stupid she looked at the Miami Winter Dance Conference, the Paris Olympia fiasco,  the awful remixes, LMFAO, how bad she handled the MIA scandal....W.E. is the best thing she made during that era. MDNA marks the end of her creative recording career and success and, in retrospect, the Superbowl was like a weird ceremonial of killing Madonna, she arrives as a slaying and conquering queen and disappears into the void in the end. MDNA never felt like Madonna. It's cheap. It feels like an imitator, like a Madonna drag doing her act in a provincial bar.

Lol tell me how you really feel about it ?

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Great dance-pop album and probably her last album with the whole pop world watching and paying attention. Amazing tour. Terrible promotion. The lack of a proper marketing team from the label behind her was noticeable here. This album with Warner would have been managed differently. The whole concept of the "DNA of M" was too cool to not use it.

It's funny how some fans complained that she didn't do pop/dance with "Hard Candy" but later complained too when she was back to it on "MDNA". She really can't win with some people.

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5 reasons I don’t like the MDNA era:

1. The album is kinda rushed and needed more polishing.

2. Bad single choices 

3. Lazy and terrible promotion.

4. The Super Bowl performance didn’t have that Madonna magic 

5. W.E.

Everything else was amazing. I still listen to the album, the videos and cover were beautiful and the tour is one of my favorites 

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In my top 3 favs with Confessions and Erotica. After the lackluster videos and imagery of Hard Candy, MDNA felt like she was back. Loved the nod to 60s exploitation films and felt like a very big fuck you to Guy since he was always about those films. I'm gonna say though....was never a big fan of Love Spent or Masterpiece and always skip them. I do wish she had done more promo. Superbowl was not enough but seeing that tour...wow...her best right up there with Blond Ambition and Confessions. 

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3 hours ago, Roland Barthes said:

It's still a shit album and its masters should be sent into the sun to burn in it forever. I've never hated a madonna song ever before girl gone Wild and i still do. The whole era was her trying to compete with Gaga meaning she lowered herself to her awful asthetics and putrid dance music from a worst of the 90's compilation. It's badly written, badly recorded, badly produced, badly mixed and badly mastered. The cover is beautiful though. So is the whole photoshoot. The tour is messy, it's like a blockbuster movie that aged badly. The terrible "Joan of Arc" costume, the American Apparel socks as arm warmers...The whole first segment is unwatchable now. The best part is Love Spent/Like A Virgin and the finale. I remember how stupid she looked at the Miami Winter Dance Conference, the Paris Olympia fiasco,  the awful remixes, LMFAO, how bad she handled the MIA scandal....W.E. is the best thing she made during that era. MDNA marks the end of her creative recording career and success and, in retrospect, the Superbowl was like a weird ceremonial of killing Madonna, she arrives as a slaying and conquering queen and disappears into the void in the end. MDNA never felt like Madonna. It's cheap. It feels like an imitator, like a Madonna drag doing her act in a provincial bar.

why the hell was she trying to compete with gaga ? wtf ..the tour was amazing ..you just have terrible taste and im sorry about that - why do some fans have the idea that madonna is that obsessed with being on top she sits at home twiddling her thumbs wondering how she can compete with newer younger artists ..she does not and she never has done ..she does what she wants to do - i dont even think she is that competitive personally - her record company may have demanded a certain sound but she certainly does not think "omg what will i do gaga and ariana and all these other basic bitches are getting number ones what will one do " lol..i find it absurd some fans may think like this about madonna ..mdna sounded nothing like the fame or the fame monster 

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3 hours ago, Drownedboy said:

1)Loved the Tour, the only time I have seen her, in Barcelona and she was flawless and the show amazing and was a total success for her.

2)The Superbowl perfomance: awesome, iconic, loved by everybody and a total success.

3)The cover of the album: one of her most beautiful ever.

4)The album itself:oks, I could do without Birthday song or I fucked it up, and I never quite liked the first single, even though it was fun and a success, but at the end MDNA mixed all the Madonnas (the funny, the strong one, the  fighter, the ballader, the melancholic and reflective). Girl gone wild is pure vintage Madonna and the video is a total homage to her carreer. I always loved Addicted or Some girls, and some ballads like Masterpiece and Falling free remind me of the best ballads with William Orbit of the ROL time. It is special for me that acoustic version of Love spent, which is really emotive and on the other hand, I´m a sinner reminds me of the LAP days and it´s also quite funny and ironic. And Beautiful Killer is sooo sexy.

5) It was very succesful at the first, went to number one and sold at first a lot of copies, oks I know it had  no legs, but on that last decade who had legs not being Adele?

6)She looked amazing throught that Era, much better than in the previous one and much better than today.

7)She danced wildly on the Tour as one would expect Madonna dance on a Madonna show, she was impecable and even at that age, superhuman.

8)The whole era and the album gave me a much more european vibe than Hard Candy, which I think suits her musical work better.

9)She fighted for many great causes and was very brave on many times, but with more intelligence, wit and charisma than in later manifestations, and in a less narcissistic way.

10)It was for me the last era of Madonna in her prime as a force of nature, despite it all, because, even I like a lot some things about The Rebel Heart era and album, I think by 2015 her insecurities, which on the other hand made her human and that was not bad at all,  started to show a lot, and it was quite clear though the tour she was struggling personally and professionally (dancing less, the Roccogate, the leaks, the fall on that awards show..) and then for me the Madame x one has been her worst ever (eurovision, covid, tour cancellations and at the same time my father died and I have the most horrendous memory of that era, sorry.)

number 10 i do not agree with ..you talk about her fall at the awards show like it was her fault - it was a accident it was nothing to do with her being less professional and tbh she proved how professional she was by getting up and finishing the performance like the true fighter she is ..i was so proud of her - shes 63 she is not going to dance like she did when she was 50 

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58 minutes ago, beautifulkiller said:

number 10 i do not agree with ..you talk about her fall at the awards show like it was her fault - it was a accident it was nothing to do with her being less professional and tbh she proved how professional she was by getting up and finishing the performance like the true fighter she is ..i was so proud of her - shes 63 she is not going to dance like she did when she was 50 

Of course it was not her fault and she dealt with it like the absolute pro she has always been. What I mean is that with The Rebel Heart era many wrong things started to happen. The leak of the album was not either her fault, or the covid with Madame x, obviously. But for me, till 2012 she was in total control. That´s what I meant.

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4 hours ago, Roland Barthes said:

It's still a shit album and its masters should be sent into the sun to burn in it forever. I've never hated a madonna song ever before girl gone Wild and i still do. The whole era was her trying to compete with Gaga meaning she lowered herself to her awful asthetics and putrid dance music from a worst of the 90's compilation. It's badly written, badly recorded, badly produced, badly mixed and badly mastered. The cover is beautiful though. So is the whole photoshoot. The tour is messy, it's like a blockbuster movie that aged badly. The terrible "Joan of Arc" costume, the American Apparel socks as arm warmers...The whole first segment is unwatchable now. The best part is Love Spent/Like A Virgin and the finale. I remember how stupid she looked at the Miami Winter Dance Conference, the Paris Olympia fiasco,  the awful remixes, LMFAO, how bad she handled the MIA scandal....W.E. is the best thing she made during that era. MDNA marks the end of her creative recording career and success and, in retrospect, the Superbowl was like a weird ceremonial of killing Madonna, she arrives as a slaying and conquering queen and disappears into the void in the end. MDNA never felt like Madonna. It's cheap. It feels like an imitator, like a Madonna drag doing her act in a provincial bar.

Agree with most of it  - Girl Gone Wild is SO bad - glad she went back to european dance music after Hard Candy but she went for a classless trashy generic EDM sound. Agree the best part the tour was Like a Virgin and Love Spent plus the finale  - all brilliant performances. Remixes were across the board awful for the album.  The shrill pitched up vocals sounded grating on some tracks and the unsubtle use of autotune on some tracks even Masterpeice you can here the autotune corrections. Think the william orbit tracks were the better ones but needed more time to polish them and maybe a different direction away from the EDM sound to make  the best of the tracks  and think reading between the lines of his Facebook posts that her was not happy with what the engineers did to his tracks on the final album.   Think Falling Free, Love Spent , I'm A Sinner, Some Girls and Beautiful Killer were the better tracks . Some of the others could have been turned into something better if they had different production

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7 minutes ago, MDNA22 said:

Agree with most of it  - Girl Gone Wild is SO bad - glad she went back to european dance music after Hard Candy but she went for a classless trashy generic EDM sound. Agree the best part the tour was Like a Virgin and Love Spent plus the finale  - all brilliant performances. Remixes were across the board awful for the album.  The shrill pitched up vocals sounded grating on some tracks and the unsubtle use of autotune on some tracks even Masterpeice you can here the autotune corrections. Think the william orbit tracks were the better ones but needed more time to polish them and maybe a different direction away from the EDM sound to make  the best of the tracks  and think reading between the lines of his Facebook posts that her was not happy with what the engineers did to his tracks on the final album.   Think Falling Free, Love Spent , I'm A Sinner, Some Girls and Beautiful Killer were the better tracks . Some of the others could have been turned into something better if they had different production

lets face it girl gone wild had very very little to do with her in terms of her recording talents ..the demo almost sounds the same ..lets remember the amazing tour performance of this track though and i agree about the mastering on some of the tracks especially love spent - i think girl gone wild and gmayl videos were great ..i dont get the hate for them ..turn up the radio sucked though ..cheap - i cant believe some are hating on the tour - it was so good ..are these the people who are wanting confessions part 2 or do they just generally have bad taste 

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2 minutes ago, beautifulkiller said:

lets face it girl gone wild had very very little to do with her in terms of her recording talents ..the demo almost sounds the same ..lets remember the amazing tour performance of this track though and i agree about the mastering on some of the tracks especially love spent 

True  - the tour performance of Girl Gone Wild was amazing  - more than the song deserved lol 

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6 minutes ago, MDNA22 said:

True  - the tour performance of Girl Gone Wild was amazing  - more than the song deserved lol 

Gang bang was brill too and the mastering on that track is really good ..i dont know what went wrong with the mastering on the mdna album - lets not talk about the horrific mastering on revolver ..i mean i was so excited when i heard the demo and then we got madonnas version and the sound is terrible ..who ever mixed that track needs to be sacked - i cant even listen to revolver because of the bad mastering but the song itself is good - i wonder if she was just not willing to spend a lot of time in the studio to do different vocals so they only did a few takes and they did what they could with what they had and nobody said " madonna that vocal take was not very good lets redo it " ..

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I still love Gang Bang, I'm Addicted (the best thing she did with Benassi), Falling Free, Love Spent, I Fucked Up, and I'm A Sinner. I go back to those more than anything else she recorded since Confessions. Way more than anything on Madame X.

Vogue from the SuperBowl is perfection. The rest was garbage. I wish she had done the SuperBowl for any other album before that. The setlist would have been so much better.

So many people I know who are not big Maonna fans and can be very critical of her, LOVED "Turn Up The Radio". Go figure.

Those gorgeous visuals wasted on "Secret Project"....

 

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As time passes I find myself liking this album more and more. It's pure energy and one of the only alternatives to Confessions on a Dancefloor that keeps the energy at 100% for a good portion of the album. 

I think she approached this era with a carefree look/attitude that confused people. She was going for relaxed and confident and I think it came across as lazy.  Whether you want to believe she was trying to compete with Gaga or not, in the public's eye Madonna's throne was threatened by Gaga's string of hits, epic music videos, her single handed resurrection of huge dance numbers, extreme fashion, and she "could sing". So when Madonna presented her first musical/ visual ideas after a 3 year hiatus everyones eyes were on her. And the music wasn't as good as everyone else's, the dancing wasn't as elaborate, the looks were pedestrian and the vocal delivery wasn't anything to write home about. I remember the first time hearing Girl Gone Wild and it was painfully obvious in the part "but I'm a bad girl anywayyyyyy HEY!" That "hey" was manufactured in post production to create a climax of sorts in the song... and it falls extremely flat. as does the word "wild" in the chorus... over and over and over again. There's no real substance to the music video, definitely no storyline. Gaga was making mini movies!! I don't think she was competing, if anything I think she did the opposite... but I don't think that strategy worked. 

 

With that said.... Now when I listen to it, I can listen without the comparisons to Gaga or anyone else who was making superior EDM at that time and the album stands on it's own better now. I appreciate that it isn't as high gloss sounding as Femme Fatale. I appreciate the craziness at the end of Gang Bang, at the time I was staring at my speakers in horror while she screeched "drive bitch!". I can listen and hear Madonna in it that I couldn't hear at the time. 

I also just love that she kills Guy Ritchie on the second song on her album. I mean... how bad ass is that! I think in an alternate universe, she released Gang Bang as the first single with an epic music video. 

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12 minutes ago, RUADJAI said:

As time passes I find myself liking this album more and more. It's pure energy and one of the only alternatives to Confessions on a Dancefloor that keeps the energy at 100% for a good portion of the album. 

I think she approached this era with a carefree look/attitude that confused people. She was going for relaxed and confident and I think it came across as lazy.  Whether you want to believe she was trying to compete with Gaga or not, in the public's eye Madonna's throne was threatened by Gaga's string of hits, epic music videos, her single handed resurrection of huge dance numbers, extreme fashion, and she "could sing". So when Madonna presented her first musical/ visual ideas after a 3 year hiatus everyones eyes were on her. And the music wasn't as good as everyone else's, the dancing wasn't as elaborate, the looks were pedestrian and the vocal delivery wasn't anything to write home about. I remember the first time hearing Girl Gone Wild and it was painfully obvious in the part "but I'm a bad girl anywayyyyyy HEY!" That "hey" was manufactured in post production to create a climax of sorts in the song... and it falls extremely flat. as does the word "wild" in the chorus... over and over and over again. There's no real substance to the music video, definitely no storyline. Gaga was making mini movies!! I don't think she was competing, if anything I think she did the opposite... but I don't think that strategy worked. 

 

With that said.... Now when I listen to it, I can listen without the comparisons to Gaga or anyone else who was making superior EDM at that time and the album stands on it's own better now. I appreciate that it isn't as high gloss sounding as Femme Fatale. I appreciate the craziness at the end of Gang Bang, at the time I was staring at my speakers in horror while she screeched "drive bitch!". I can listen and hear Madonna in it that I couldn't hear at the time. 

I also just love that she kills Guy Ritchie on the second song on her album. I mean... how bad ass is that! I think in an alternate universe, she released Gang Bang as the first single with an epic music video. 

you talk like nobody before gaga had a string of hits and made good videos ..britney spears ..christina ..helloooooooooooooo 
i think all eyes were on madonna due to the public knowing gaga was copying madonna not because her throne was threatened lol - lets not try and behave like gags is the only artist to have hits since madonna took the world by storm ..she wasnt 

madonna was making mini movies videos before gags was even born so lets not start thinking that was groundbreaking - britiney was also making mini movie videos , mariah too ....

i dont get this whole madonnas throne threatened by gaga ..or madonna was shook by gagas talents lol ..

i think its created by fans not the artists themselves - i never felt madonnas throne was threatened because madonna does not make music to stay on top obviously 

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48 minutes ago, beautifulkiller said:

Gang bang was brill too and the mastering on that track is really good ..i dont know what went wrong with the mastering on the mdna album - lets not talk about the horrific mastering on revolver ..i mean i was so excited when i heard the demo and then we got madonnas version and the sound is terrible ..who ever mixed that track needs to be sacked - i cant even listen to revolver because of the bad mastering but the song itself is good - i wonder if she was just not willing to spend a lot of time in the studio to do different vocals so they only did a few takes and they did what they could with what they had and nobody said " madonna that vocal take was not very good lets redo it " ..

Yeah true too - the sound on revolver was dreadful and how they handled her vocals but maybe they did not get a good take like you said and had to make do but if that was the case you would have thought once she heard the finished song she would have said herself it's not good enough and re-record it or change the engineers if that was the problem.  

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5 minutes ago, beautifulkiller said:

you talk like nobody before gaga had a string of hits and made good videos ..britney spears ..christina ..helloooooooooooooo 
i think all eyes were on madonna due to the public knowing gaga was copying madonna not because her throne was threatened lol - lets not try and behave like gags is the only artist to have hits since madonna took the world by storm ..she wasnt 

madonna was making mini movies videos before gags was even born so lets not start thinking that was groundbreaking lol

It's really quite amazing how you can seem to read everything I wrote but not understand any of it. 

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2 minutes ago, MDNA22 said:

Yeah true too - the sound on revolver was dreadful and how they handled her vocals but maybe they did not get a good take like you said and had to make do but if that was the case you would have thought once she heard the finished song she would have said herself it's not good enough and re-record it or change the engineers if that was the problem.  

wonder if she is lazy in the studio because she just does not feel inspired when creating a album to support a tour 

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