sonicboy

With all the speculation and rumors that swirl around the lives of celebrities, I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of their actions and their reasons behind the choices they make in their lives and careers unless they specifically choose to share their current perspective on it. My views are the product my own life experience, which is a very different experience from that of a celebrity, or at least that's what I've ascertained from observing the common truths shared by those who are labelled as such. I can only assume that the life of a celebrity, and in particular a celebrity not born into fame and wealth who has experienced both sides and has learned how to adapt to the insanity of being famous would be extremely challenging to navigate, even for the most resilient among them. One aspect of that insanity is that celebrities are often expected to maintain static views and are constantly being held to things they may have held true at one point in their journey that does not necessarily ring true for them years later. My life experience teaches me that most people's views are constantly shifting and evolving from the moment they are born until the day they die. That's the human experience, as I see it. I would be pretty weary of anyone who thinks they've got it all figured out, even in their own lives, let alone anyone else's. Celebrities typically face a shit storm any time they choose to share their honest perspective about aspects of their experience, because it is not a perspective that most of us have lived and experienced first-hand. They are typically scolded for daring to share their own truths and experiences whenever they inevitably do not align with our own. In other words, the general public tends to put celebrities on a pedestal and then tries to seeks to shove them off of it whenever they get too honest about the true realities of fame, which most of us cannot relate to, and because we all carry preconceived ideas about fame that are mostly rooted in fantasy, not truth. Many celebrities choose to cope with this paradox by telling their audience exactly what they want to hear so that they can remain relatable in their eyes. They segregate their actual life experience from their public persona so they can continue to deliver what is expected of them without rocking the boat for their audience. But, as we know, even within the microcosm of celebrity, Madonna marches to the beat of her own drum. She shares any view she feels like sharing when she feels like sharing it, and without necessarily giving us the full background of what aspect of her unusual life circumstances led her there. Her audience generally expects her to explain her rationale for every mundane choice she makes, not only in her career but in her life as well. And yet, given that the majority of her audience would be comprised of non-famous people who bring with them their own preconceived notions about fame and money and power, we remain free to evolve, to shift our views, and to chose what, when and how much we want to share about our experience, without the pressures of having it be observed and judged on a mass scale. We often forget that behind the larger than life persona, Madonna is also a human being who is just as entitled as any one of us to chose for herself how she adapts and responds to the circumstances of her life, and how much of that experience she chooses to share, when she chooses to share it and to what extend. And we often overlook how ridiculous and unfair it is to expect her views to evolve in lockstep with our own when when her life experience that is constantly shaping and reshaping her reality is quite different from ours. And yet, it is human nature to seek genuine connection in those we idolize. That's one of the paradoxes of fame. We get to chose whether we acknowledge it and accept it, and possibly even find value in it. She actually has to live it, which is quite different from our perspective as the observers of her fame. Often when I express this view to people, the response is along the lines of "oh poor Madonna with her rich people's problems." This makes it clear that to me that the person I'm speaking with has fully bought into the fallacy that money and fame and power are the ultimate life experience we could seek for ourselves. Perhaps they have chosen to ignore the fact that many celebrities eventually crack under the intense pressure it creates, and cannot empathize with the continuous trauma Madonna would need to adapt to in order to continue to be a creative person in this environment. Maybe their fantasy about what fame is doesn't want to ponder the dark and isolating side of it. Fortunately, I'm not a celebrity, so I get to chose to be empathetic to their point of view despite it being very different from mine, and I can only presume, hers.

With all the speculation and rumors that swirl around the lives of celebrities, I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of their actions and their reasons behind the choices they make in their lives and careers unless they specifically choose to share their current perspective on it. My views are the product my own life experience, which is a very different experience from that of a celebrity, or at least that's what I've ascertained from observing the common truths shared by those who are labelled as such. I can only assume that the life of a celebrity, and in particular a celebrity not born into fame and wealth who has experienced both sides and has learned how to adapt to the insanity of being famous would be extremely challenging to navigate, even for the most resilient among them. One aspect of that insanity is that celebrities are often expected to maintain static views and are constantly being held to things they may have held true at one point in their journey that does not necessarily ring true for them years later. My life experience teaches me that most people's views are constantly shifting and evolving from the moment they are born until the day they die. That's the human experience, as I see it. I would be pretty weary of anyone who thinks they've got it all figured out, even in their own lives, let alone anyone else's. Celebrities typically face a shit storm any time they choose to share their honest perspective about aspects of their experience, because it is not a perspective that most of us have lived and experienced first-hand. They are typically scolded for daring to share their own truths and experiences whenever they inevitably do not align with our own. In other words, the general public tends to put celebrities on a pedestal and then tries to seeks to shove them off of it whenever they get too honest about the true realities of fame, which most of us cannot relate to, and because we all carry preconceived ideas about fame that are mostly rooted in fantasy, not truth. Many celebrities choose to cope with this paradox by telling their audience exactly what they want to hear so that they can remain relatable in their eyes. They segregate their actual life experience from their public persona so they can continue to deliver what is expected of them without rocking the boat for their audience. But, as we know, even within the microcosm of celebrity, Madonna marches to the beat of her own drum. She shares any view she feels like sharing when she feels like sharing it, and without necessarily giving us the full background of what aspect of her unusual life circumstances led her there. Her audience generally expects her to explain her rationale for every mundane choice she makes, not only in her career but in her life as well. And yet, given that the majority of her audience would be comprised of non-famous people who bring with them their own preconceived notions about fame and money and power, we remain free to evolve, to shift our views, and to chose what, when and how much we want to share about our experience, without the pressures of having it be observed and judged on a mass scale. We often forget that behind the larger than life persona, Madonna is also a human being who is just as entitled as any one of us to chose for herself how she adapts and responds to the circumstances of her life, and how much of that experience she chooses to share, when she chooses to share it and to what extend. And we often overlook how ridiculous and unfair it is to expect her views to evolve in lockstep with our own when when her life experience that is constantly shaping and reshaping her reality is quite different from ours. And yet, it is human nature to seek genuine connection in those we idolize. That's one of the paradoxes of fame. We get to chose whether we acknowledge it and accept it, and possibly even find value in it. She actually has to live it, which is quite different from our perspective as the observers of her fame. Often when I express this view to people, the response is along the lines of "oh poor Madonna with her rich people's problems." This makes it clear that to me that the person I'm speaking with has fully bought into the fallacy that money and fame and power are the ultimate life experience we could seek for ourselves. Perhaps they have chosen to ignore the fact that many celebrities eventually crack under the intense pressure it creates, and cannot empathize with the continuous trauma Madonna would need to adapt to in order to continue to be a creative person in this environment. Maybe their fantasy about what fame is doesn't want to ponder the dark and isolating side of it. Fortunately, I'm not a celebrity, so I get to chose to be empathetic to their point of view despite it being very different from mine, and I can only presume, hers.

So difficult to choose, but I think I'd have to go with Open Your Heart. It was quite a groundbreaking video at the time both for its content as well as for technical achievements. I remember being blown away by the cinematography the first time I saw it, since most videos up to that time were so drab looking colour-wise. Up to that point telecining technology tended to produce really washed out visuals during the transfer from film to video...just look at the Like A Virgin video, it's so muted...if the original film rolls exist somewhere, they could do wonders with it! But getting off track here...lol. OYH is one of the first mainstream videos I remember seeing that used really vivid colours and clearly used then-state-of-the-art telecining techniques that managed to fully capture the film prints in such a clean and crisp way. It really jumped out at you. Fincher and later Romanek also made technical advances, but Mondino the first one to really push M's videos into a different realm from a technical perspective. And from a content perspective, in retrospect OYH feels almost more shocking than JML, just because it really came out of nowhere and was not what anyone would have expected her to do at the time. JML was less shocking in that regard, because by that point she had been consistently pushing that particular envelope for awhile, so even though she was pushing it further, it felt like a natural progression. But with OYH, to wear that outfit and play a peep show dancer, I don't think anyone would have predicted it, as it was such a brazen move for an artist that was constantly being labelled a sexpot. Rather than run away from it, she owned it. It was a very bold move.
Plus I just love Mondino's sensibilities as a director in general...every video he makes has some strange thing about it that makes it stand out. It's never the same thing, but there's always something. And it's always one of those ideas that would seem silly on paper and might even seem silly the first time you see it, but then it somehow becomes the essence and the hook of the entire thing. Ususally there's an element of humour or irony there.
He's also done brilliant videos for other artists. Don Henley's The Boys Of Summer is 85 was his breakthrough in North America, and it's no surprise that M would have wanted to work with him because it's a beautiful video, and one of the first to reintroduce black & white in a way that felt current and new.

So difficult to choose, but I think I'd have to go with Open Your Heart. It was quite a groundbreaking video at the time both for its content as well as for technical achievements. I remember being blown away by the cinematography the first time I saw it, since most videos up to that time were so drab looking colour-wise. Up to that point telecining technology tended to produce really washed out visuals during the transfer from film to video...just look at the Like A Virgin video, it's so muted...if the original film rolls exist somewhere, they could do wonders with it! But getting off track here...lol. OYH is one of the first mainstream videos I remember seeing that used really vivid colours and clearly used then-state-of-the-art telecining techniques that managed to fully capture the film prints in such a clean and crisp way. It really jumped out at you. Fincher and later Romanek also made technical advances, but Mondino the first one to really push M's videos into a different realm from a technical perspective. And from a content perspective, in retrospect OYH feels almost more shocking than JML, just because it really came out of nowhere and was not what anyone would have expected her to do at the time. JML was less shocking in that regard, because by that point she had been consistently pushing that particular envelope for awhile, so even though she was pushing it further, it felt like a natural progression. But with OYH, to wear that outfit and play a peep show dancer, I don't think anyone would have predicted it, as it was such a brazen move for an artist that was constantly being labelled a sexpot. Rather than run away from it, she owned it. It was a very bold move.
Plus I just love Mondino's sensibilities as a director in general...every video he makes has some strange thing about it that makes it stand out. It's never the same thing, but there's always something. And it's always one of those ideas that would seem silly on paper and might even seem silly the first time you see it, but then it somehow becomes the essence and the hook of the entire thing. Ususally there's an element of humour or irony there.
He's also done brilliant videos for other artists. Don Henley's The Boys Of Summer is 85 was his breakthrough in North America, and it's no surprise that M would have wanted to work with him because it's a beautiful video, and one of the first to reintroduce black & white in a way that felt current and new.

This certainly sounds a lot more interesting than that other biopic, Blonde Ambition, unless they completely rewrite the screenplay – the draft that leaked for BA is attrociously bad!

Hey wait a minute...I wrote that! :wink:
 
The win for The Confessions Tour was very well-deserved. I think it's her best concert film by a long shot (I consider TorD and IGTTYAS to be documentaries so I wouldn't compare them to her other concert films).

https://todayinmadonnahistory.com/2017/02/10/today-in-madonna-history-february-10-2008/
On February 10 2008, Madonna won her 7th Grammy Award. The Confessions Tour film, directed by Jonas Ã…kerlund, took home the award for Best Long Form Music Video.

It marked Madonna’s fourth Grammy nomination for Best Long Form Music Video, and her second win in the category:

Blond Ambition World Tour Live – Won (1992)
The Girlie Show: Live Down Under – Nominated (1995)
I’m Going To Tell You A Secret – Nominated (2007)
The Confessions Tour – Won (2008)

I think Has To Be is a better song, but Mer Girl is the perfect way to end Ray Of Light. It's sort of like Act Of Contrition...it's not a song you'd really want to hear on a random playlist but it is an essential component of the album nonetheless.

This is a day late. I was just browsing google about Bedtime Story and found this....
 

 
"On March 10 1995, Madonna’s luscious Bedtime Story music video was given a cinematic release at three different Odeon Cineplex film theatres:
 
Santa Monica, California (Broadway Cinemas)
Manhattan, New York (Chelsea Theater)
Chicago, Illinois (Biograph Threater)
 
The one week engagement allowed attendees to enjoy the Mark Romanek directed masterpiece on the big screen for a week before the video was released on MTV.
 
Madonna later celebrated the premiere of Bedtime Story video by throwing a Pajama Party at Webster Hall in New York, on March 18, 1995."
 
http://todayinmadonnahistory.com/2016/03/10/today-in-madonna-history-march-10-1995/

Today in Madonna History: June 8, 1992
https://todayinmadonnahistory.com/tag/recording-sessions/
On June 8 1992, Madonna began recording sessions for the Erotica album at Soundworks, in New York.
 
While the writing and recording of Madonna’s previous albums had typically unfolded rather quickly, Erotica marked a change of pace in the creation of a Madonna record. Songwriting sessions for the set had occurred sporadically throughout the previous year with co-producers Shep Pettibone and Andre Betts, in between movie projects and photo shoots for her upcoming coffee table book, Sex.
 
In contrast to the slick production qualities of the albums that preceded it, Madonna wanted Erotica to feature a darker, more gritty and less polished sound. This led to the decision to carry over many of the original demo vocals recorded during the songwriting process at Shep’s home studio to the final versions, with mainly lyrical additions/changes, musical overdubs, background vocals and final mixing taking place during the sessions at Soundworks.
 
One notable change that did occur in these final recording sessions was Madonna’s decision to swap her original lyrics for the song Goodbye To Innocence (which had gone through various incarnations in an attempt to keep the track off the cutting room floor) with the lyrics of the torch classic, Fever.  An earlier arrangement of Goodbye To Innocence with lyrics intact was later featured on the pro-choice compilation album Just Say Roe, while a dub version of the same arrangement was retitled Up Down Suite when it appeared as a b-side on the Rain maxi-single. Another rough demo of the same track (streaming above), which is referred to as the “Straight Pass†mix on its original submission for copyright registration, leaked to file sharing services in February, 2008.

While I'm happy for Liz, I can't help but be sad about this news. She's been the only constant in Madonna's career since the beginning, and has been such a  stabilizing force in her life.

While I'm happy for Liz, I can't help but be sad about this news. She's been the only constant in Madonna's career since the beginning, and has been such a  stabilizing force in her life.

While I'm happy for Liz, I can't help but be sad about this news. She's been the only constant in Madonna's career since the beginning, and has been such a  stabilizing force in her life.

While I'm happy for Liz, I can't help but be sad about this news. She's been the only constant in Madonna's career since the beginning, and has been such a  stabilizing force in her life.