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Celebration 2009 vs. 2022 - Re-evaluating M's most divisive compilation


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First of all, yes, we all know the first edition of Celebration had a couple of big errors here and there, but they were fixed for subsequent editions. As for streaming, if you listen to it in the MQA version on TIDAL it's quite the treat. 

Have you warmed up to it since? I certainly have. I appreciate it a lot more than I did back then. A lot has to do with that rant about how awful everything on it is, a rant that got to me, even though I thought I managed to escape it. So before Finally Enough Love, I think it's time to give Celebration another shot at taking its rightful place in the M canon. GHV2 may have given us an amazing  megamix, but it gave us nothing in terms of remastered or new content. Celebration really delivered if you think about it. 

So here are a few of my thoughts on revisiting Celebration and it's legacy.  Would love to hear yours...

Pros:

- remastered Immaculate Collection remixes

- remastered radio edits

- extended Frozen version

- unique edits: Cherish, Dress You Up*, Express Yourself etc. 

Cons:

- Wasted space on album versions that didn't need remastering (Hung Up, Music, Hollywood etc). I think they should have stopped remastering album versions around Ray of Light. 

- The remastering is well done, but I still would have preferred they didn't go so far with the loudness

- Holiday taking up 1 and 1/2 the time of most other songs. The Immaculate Collection version should have been on there imo.

 

* I know people freaked out that the first three drum sounds were gone, but they were only included in the album version as a nod to live music imo. Even today, listen to any live band rock concert and the drummer does those three drum sounds before actually starting the song. Considering that, for me the new version is better without them. It's a studio version, the tap-tap-tap just sounds weird to me if it's not in live music.MC.thumb.jpg.b17ec9f8d96fb99e996ce6ba84810665.jpg

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I've always love "Celebration" except for this:

- Express Yourself is totally destroyed. And I mean it. Express Yourself is my favorite Madonna' song, and I always skip this track on Celebration. ALWAYS.

- Using Immaculate Remixes instead single versions.

- Bad edits recreating single versions when they were available on the original CD-Singles. 

- Glitches in a couple of songs.

- Dynamic Range compressed.

- And the worst of all: using DVD-5 instead DVD-9 for the video-clips. We need a re-release at least on SD-BD (a Blu-ray using the original video resolution, not upscaled to HD)

But as a compilation (songs & video-clips), I love it (but it's far from perfect).

 

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It's hard for me to make peace with it, and I try from time to time, but...

I've learned to accept that is a general public release and for them it's a great collection full of hits and don't give a damn about the versions or the mastering or whatever. If you check out the Deluxe tracklist is amazing to see the amount of HITS there and still there are more hits not included. How many artists have that?

Also, I try to see it as a product of its time: 2009 was loudness war at its peak and also iPod and MP3 players peak, everything was mastered and compressed to death with those in mind (it was going to sound not great anyway) plus she was leaving Warner and nobody seemed to care that much about the whole project.

Things I love:

- The new songs (yeah, "Revolver" too), three if we count the "Celebration" remix (OK, mum, you were right about that decision, it's better than the album version). 

- "Lucky Star" and "Borderline": to these ears the only two properly remastered songs on the collection. "Lucky Star" never sounded better than this version.

- The segue of "Erotica" into "Justify My Love".

- The personal Thank You's from her in the booklet.

- The marketing campaign! Warned didn't spend a dollar on the proper product but the marketing part was quite good :cute:

Things I don't:

- That they never cared to fix "Music" when it's full of clips and glitches and sounds AWFUL.

- That they combined Album Versions with Single edits and Immaculate remixes without any logic.

- That "Like A Prayer" comes from a bad master or a video rip or something and it's slower than the original.

- The overall "remastering" (more like a bass booster and make it everything louder).

- "It's So Cool": don't like it that much, to be honest.

- The booklet (not enough pages, not even a small text looking back etc.) and the credits (those mistakes...).

- The DVD.

Plus bonus beats!

The Cover

I LOVED the original revealed cover, back in July 2009:

madonna-celebration.jpg

It looked quite iconic until they decided to add the lyrics for the final version:

ab67616d00001e0207859739c52f4b583d59411f

A little bit messy and too much in my opinion. Since that, I like best the Standard cover:

ab67616d0000b27360dd74f881b0eb031d4b3218

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I own both the CD and the DVD and today I had a look at them for the first time I think since 2009. I liked that in both a different poster was included with the artwork made by Mr. Brainwash (who as part of the Banksy "collaborators" was quite a famous artist back then).

I think this compilation, as its own title implies, was more like an improvised party than a solemn act to acknowledge her legacy.  A little rushed and chaotic,  but still fun after all.

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I thought it was quite a good compilation, I would of preferred it in chronological order. 

I don't have a very good ear for these things so I didn't notice the quality of it, only thing I didn't like too much, is the quality of the videos on DVD, that definitely needs to be reissued or a proper Blu-ray for Finally Enough Love.

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I like this compilation. There's some major hits that should've been on there (Deeper and Deeper, being one of them), but overall I think it's a good album. I also bought the Celebration DVD and I actually like it. Obviously, they omitted a few major music video milestones in her career (two of them being Oh Father and Bad Girl), but it really opened up my eyes to how much dedication went into her videos.

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I really never heard the mistakes people talked about lol my only complaint was that they could've easily fit 20 tracks on each disc with unique edits. Also absolutely hated the artwork. Feel like a broken record but ugh the immaculate collection had perfect art. She should've then had a super deluxe set with a 3rd disc of remixes and 4th discs of bsides. 

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On 6/10/2022 at 10:41 PM, Prayer said:

It's hard for me to make peace with it, and I try from time to time, but...

I've learned to accept that is a general public release and for them it's a great collection full of hits and don't give a damn about the versions or the mastering or whatever. If you check out the Deluxe tracklist is amazing to see the amount of HITS there and still there are more hits not included. How many artists have that?

Also, I try to see it as a product of its time: 2009 was loudness war at its peak and also iPod and MP3 players peak, everything was mastered and compressed to death with those in mind (it was going to sound not great anyway) plus she was leaving Warner and nobody seemed to care that much about the whole project.

Things I love:

- The new songs (yeah, "Revolver" too), three if we count the "Celebration" remix (OK, mum, you were right about that decision, it's better than the album version). 

- "Lucky Star" and "Borderline": to these ears the only two properly remastered songs on the collection. "Lucky Star" never sounded better than this version.

- The segue of "Erotica" into "Justify My Love".

- The personal Thank You's from her in the booklet.

- The marketing campaign! Warned didn't spend a dollar on the proper product but the marketing part was quite good :cute:

Things I don't:

- That they never cared to fix "Music" when it's full of clips and glitches and sounds AWFUL.

- That they combined Album Versions with Single edits and Immaculate remixes without any logic.

- That "Like A Prayer" comes from a bad master or a video rip or something and it's slower than the original.

- The overall "remastering" (more like a bass booster and make it everything louder).

- "It's So Cool": don't like it that much, to be honest.

- The booklet (not enough pages, not even a small text looking back etc.) and the credits (those mistakes...).

- The DVD.

Plus bonus beats!

The Cover

I LOVED the original revealed cover, back in July 2009:

madonna-celebration.jpg

It looked quite iconic until they decided to add the lyrics for the final version:

ab67616d00001e0207859739c52f4b583d59411f

A little bit messy and too much in my opinion. Since that, I like best the Standard cover:

ab67616d0000b27360dd74f881b0eb031d4b3218

Like a Prayer is basically the album version, slightly slowed down to fix its pitch then compressed the hell out.

I don't get the "correction" at all. Choices. 😶

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11 hours ago, Roy said:

Like a Prayer is basically the album version, slightly slowed down to fix its pitch then compressed the hell out.

I don't get the "correction" at all. Choices. 😶

Yep, "LAP" is the album version but I still try to understand why it's slowed down. That's why I think it comes from a bad master tape or a video rip. Remember originally the Immaculate version was going to be on it, but it was changed last minute after a Twitter petition to Guy Oseary. So maybe they used what they found first. 

It's barely noticeable, true, but once you hear it it's very distracting.

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58 minutes ago, Prayer said:

Yep, "LAP" is the album version but I still try to understand why it's slowed down. That's why I think it comes from a bad master tape or a video rip. Remember originally the Immaculate version was going to be on it, but it was changed last minute after a Twitter petition to Guy Oseary. So maybe they used what they found first. 

It's barely noticeable, true, but once you hear it it's very distracting.

From the video it's impossible (not FX sound effects). "Like A Prayer" was recorded in digital format, so the speed must be always the same. So you can choose between two options:

a) It's was speed down deliberately (this makes no sense)

b) It's a copy from an analog tape (a good one) but the speed can change in different "master tape" players, barely noticeable. (this is probably the right option). This is a common problem in any "analog" device.

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15 minutes ago, Aiwa08 said:

From the video it's impossible (not FX sound effects). "Like A Prayer" was recorded in digital format, so the speed must be always the same. So you can choose between two options:

a) It's was speed down deliberately (this makes no sense)

b) It's a copy from an analog tape (a good one) but the speed can change in different "master tape" players, barely noticeable. (this is probably the right option).

Thank you! To me, it's the biggest "Celebration" mystery, all the rest we know what happened (bad edits like "Express Yourself" or failed remastering like "Music") but "Like A Prayer" always been a "why??".

It must be the B option, yeah, that they took a good tape but something got wrong in the digital process for that one (and no one seemed to care or notice, which is not surprising seeing the rest of the compilation).

It's a pity cause apart from the slowed down thing, it doesn't sound bad at all. :stare: Bass boost is cool and much needed on that one.

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20 minutes ago, Prayer said:

Thank you! To me, it's the biggest "Celebration" mystery, all the rest we know what happened (bad edits like "Express Yourself" or failed remastering like "Music") but "Like A Prayer" always been a "why??".

It must be the B option, yeah, that they took a good tape but something got wrong in the digital process for that one (and no one seemed to care or notice, which is not surprising seeing the rest of the compilation).

Using analog tapes is a nightmare when we talking about the speed. For example, my very old "The first album" CD has a different speed compared with the official Hi-Res FLAC files, at least the last time a made a comparison (again, barely noticeable). This is the main reason why I never trust in running times.

And I don't wanna star to talk about the 7'' records and the speed problems from the masters tapes...

Quote

It's a pity cause apart from the slowed down thing, it doesn't sound bad at all.  Bass boost is cool and much needed on that one.

Yes, "Like A Prayer" (the album, not the singles) needs a bass boost.

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17 minutes ago, Aiwa08 said:

Using analog tapes is a nightmare when we talking about the speed. For example, my very old "The first album" CD has a different speed compared with the official Hi-Res FLAC files, at least the last time a made a comparison (again, barely noticeable). This is the main reason why I never trust in running times.

And I don't wanna star to talk about the 7'' records and the speed problems from the masters tapes...

True! I remember "Lucky Star" on the "Madonna" album is different speed depending on the edition (the original, digital, the 2001 remaster)... it's truly a headache. :suffer:

I wish I didn't care about all this stuff, I was much happier when I didn't hahaha.

On the other hand, let's see the positive side and that is: the "Celebration" hype sticker wasn't a lie after all?

NS5qcGVn.jpeg

Digitally remastered from the original tapes... of course the master tapes, not the multitracks, and with different results, but true.

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1 hour ago, Prayer said:

Digitally remastered from the original tapes... of course the master tapes, not the multitracks, and with different results, but true.

In my humble opinion, a true remaster is working with the original multitracks, the rest is messing with the EQ, not a remaster.

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I love the compilation as is. I’m critical often of a lot of stuff but most of the edit issues I didn’t notice until I joined this forum, years after listening to Celebration on my own. But I appreciate people caring enough to address those errors. But if I need to slap together a quick playlist with mostly the same volume, then Celebration is where I’m gonna grab the songs.

I loved the following getting some highlights:

Who’s That Girl (I didn’t really know this song until this compilation and I now consider a guilty pleasure from her 80s discography)

Burning Up (Love this song so much so it was nice seeing it represent her early 80s punk persona.)

Everybody (I didn’t really pay much attention to this one until the compilation, I was like “This was a single?”)

But I do find some track listing omissions odd:

Give It 2 Me (I’d swap Miles Away for it but I love it getting exposure on a major compilation despite not really doing anything as a single.)

American Life (I hate they kept sweeping this away despite it being a lead single)

Deeper & Deeper (Ignoring the above omissions, this one being overlooked it’s crazy to me.)

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1 hour ago, gafuller said:

I love the compilation as is. I’m critical often of a lot of stuff but most of the edit issues I didn’t notice until I joined this forum, years after listening to Celebration on my own. But I appreciate people caring enough to address those errors. But if I need to slap together a quick playlist with mostly the same volume, then Celebration is where I’m gonna grab the songs.

I loved the following getting some highlights:

Who’s That Girl (I didn’t really know this song until this compilation and I now consider a guilty pleasure from her 80s discography)

Burning Up (Love this song so much so it was nice seeing it represent her early 80s punk persona.)

Everybody (I didn’t really pay much attention to this one until the compilation, I was like “This was a single?”)

But I do find some track listing omissions odd:

Give It 2 Me (I’d swap Miles Away for it but I love it getting exposure on a major compilation despite not really doing anything as a single.)

American Life (I hate they kept sweeping this away despite it being a lead single)

Deeper & Deeper (Ignoring the above omissions, this one being overlooked it’s crazy to me.)

miles away was huge in Japan, with the help a Japanese TV drama tie-up. It even carried the sales of hard candy effectively. I guess that was the reason. 

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