Alan Leggate

I wasn't insulting her.

Not even on the last night and with the roses she waved at her public.
She says she doesn't take it for granted, but she shows the opposite...
So funny Italian commenting:
- Ma poverina!  (Poor little girl)
- L'hai vista? (Did you see her?)
- Sì, l'ho vista poretta... (Yes I saw her, the poor girl)

I just hope that M won’t ridiculously claim that she is being censored... ?

Look I was very excited when she came up with all of these personas for MX. They were exciting and fresh for her, I couldn’t wait to see where it went! However once the album released, it really wasn’t anything I was jumping up and down about. And the personas kind of just went nowhere. I thought for sure after seeing her as a spy we’d get another Die Another Day. I thought she’d create something epic with that blue dress look with the pigtails. I was living for it.  Anyway. It is what it is. It was a fantastic concept for her but I don’t think she really had a well thought out plan for it. I don’t think she should have toured straight away. 

Kevin Antunes is the pits - his music production is so lazy and tired - bit like Mirwais who I have no idea why she has still hung on to him ? Maybe he’s a cheap producer ?

See, I thought MDNA was awful. Awful hair, awful set list, awful versions of classics, awful vocals, awful album.
Rebel Heart was inexplicably brilliant for me.
 

This complete and utter MESS of a tour should have ended MONTHS ago. It was clear she was not in the right physical shape to continue on and no matter how she tried to spin it; the damage was done between her and her core fan base. Stop throwing the "I hate to disappoint" BS in our faces, you're not doing us any favor by deciding last minute whether or not your majesty would perform. Regardless of who you are, the level of RESPECT is lost, the only concern she has is herself; which is fine and she should have taken proper steps to mend the injuries early on by adjusting the tour dates/cancelling in advance. Many of us worked hard to save money just to see a show, and your casual "CANCELLATION" (many times, last minute) is a slap in our face. 
Those will continues to justify this that and the other, WAKE The F**K UP. She does not care about you! She has become more and more self centered and it's sad and pathetic watching it play out over the last 10 years. Enough, Madonna.....you are NOT above anyone else. 

I've taken a step back lately, a lot going on... just popped on by chance to see another show cancelled and the usual conversations here.
 
ill be honest, I think she's incredibly arrogant to think her own 'determination to finish the tour' is suitable justification to cancel concerts attended by fans who travel internationally. And to do this repeatedly because of that arrogance, its not admirable.
 
The Madonna who performed post 9/11, who performed and paid tribute to the lost lives in Udine... and performed the most humble tribute to Prince imaginable... they were admirable.
Im not sure repeatedly doing this and losing fans left right and centre is in any way anything worth defending x

People defending this are hilarious LMAO

Guys, I'm so so sorry, but I'm a little high right now and listening to Madame X audio right now, and...
She doesn't sound great. A *LOT* of it is audio mixing. I can hear the layers so much better. I think they have it setup so that whenever her live voice cuts out, a piped in voice comes in. She's not the first artist I've seen do that. And there's a TON of reverb on her voice (makes it echo). Finally, there's definitely pitch correction on her live voice. So much of it is a backup track.
I'm not sure her live voice is quite what we're making it out to be, I'm sad to say. 

I think she would be doing better in the charts if she embraced her back catalog more, she should have performed more madame x songs on tv shows along with a classic but it's her pure stubbornness that has prevented this era to be more commercial anyway this is another debate. Hopefully she rests up now but I do have a feeling there will be a lot more cancellations I think the 3rd will go ahead she's rested and the last night but the 4 before the end could be in jeopardy  again this is just my own humble opinion 

Unforgivable is starting a tour with these ticket prices after such an injury taking place, before resting and recovering.
Unforgivable is canceling shows when you already have people on a line waiting to see you.  Or that lottery thing they did at the beginning. Or failing to know the measures of every single stage you have shows, so your fucking stage fits. You know...basic things that every act knows. 
Pulling a chair by mistake during a single show? Easily forgivable. The problems are not the chairs or the dancers on this tour. That's not the problem here. 
I also just realized this is the first tour being organized not solely by Live Nation but also by Guy Oseary's management as well. (Maverick)
That explains the mess this has been. 
Speaking of Guy...where the hell is he? One of his biggest artists and supposedly a friend is literally killing herself on stage every night and he's nowhere in sight. I'm sure that mansion in Brazil or wherever the hell he's living is nice. Literally everything he has is thanks to this woman. And she lives in such a bubble that only her doesn't realize how much harm this past year has done for her entire career. 

I still can’t believe how she missed the opportunity to include Easy Ride, Beautiful Killer, Die Another Day, The Power of Goodbye, Bad Girl, Nothing Really Matters and Why’s It So Hard.
Each of these songs is either so fitting to the context of Madame X being a secret agent, or so on point with their message and so relevant today...

I have to say that for many years I've said that I missed the talking on her tours. M wouldn't even say "Hello" in first act. I missed the Ciao Italia communication, you know what I mean? That's why I enjoyed the banter on RHT- the surprise songs, the bouquet moment, the UB. This time it didn't feel intimate nor spontaneous at all - not the polaroid. The Mozart speech was terrible. I probably would have loved the beer talk had I been chosen as the bitch! I was lucky enough to witness two nights when this was substituted by DCFMA and Sound of silence. The talk with Graham Norton and Alan Cumming were really boring. I agree it would have been nice to hear her talk about the songs, instead of soccer mum, god is a woman, not everyone is coming to the future every night.
You may criticize Cher greatest hits tour, but her opening speeches, different every night, and her way of telling stories is so much better!

Ha ha! Well I guess I had this coming! Oops - did I have a point of view? I became a fan in 1994, my favourite albums are Erotica, Ray of Light, Confessions and Rebel Heart. I’ve seen all her tours since 2001, each one at least twice, 4 of them, 4 times each. I’m definitely not looking for a return to the 80s, but having seen her perform so many time before, I recognise this tour is far from her best work. It’s not because the Madame X songs aren’t good, but mostly due to the choppy, stop/start nature of the show. Enlighten me - are there really any fans on this forum who loved the talking parts of this show?!

I agree! Thank you. This tour really has been self-indulgent. That's the exact word to describe it, and not least because of the late starts. 
The set list, even the longer version of the show, only includes 5 older songs compared to 11 and half in Rebel Heart (Vogue being the half), and 10 and a half in MDNA (Papa Don't Preach being the half). I'm definitely not suggesting she should always sing the same hits. Like A Prayer, Vogue, Human Nature have all been performed so many times now, but the intimacy of this show could've been a great opportunity to perform some of the ballads she's rarely (or never) performed in her arena and stadium tours. Plus it would've taken the strain off her injury - although I appreciate she couldn't have known how bad it was going to become during the rehearsal period. I'm thinking songs like Crazy for you, Take A Bow, This Used To Be My Playground, The Power of Good-Bye, Bad Girl, What It Feels like For A Girl, You'll see, Oh Father, Rain, Live To Tell... Take your pick! It would have been amazing to hear the stories behind the songs, which would've made it an intimate experience. 
If there was story arc, it was very incoherent. In her own words, apparently Madam X is anything you want her to be, which is another way of saying she's nothing in particular at all.
And then there are the monologues... at least a quarter, perhaps even a third of the show is taken up by her talking, talking, talking... The move to Lisbon/meeting Celeste Rodrigues story takes longer to explain than the brief snippet of Fado Pechincha performed! Then there's the 'jokes' about scat, dicks, her pussy etc. which are certainly not shocking and in no way 'intimate' or revealing. The only thing intimate about this tour is the size of the venue and her proximity to the crowd.
And I absolutely agree (although I appreciate this may be a personal thing), that Madonna is best appreciated from a far. I would never want to meet her. What would I possibly say to her? She's that old-fashioned (and increasingly rare) kind of tough, uncompromising, and untouchable superstar. She's best admired her from a distance and doesn't do warm and fuzzy well. With the exception of the celebrities she's already met, most of the beer bitches tend to freeze in awe, and you get this awkward, uncomfortable waste of 5 minutes attempting to talk to someone who doesn't know what to say! Is that intimacy? Hardly! I'd rather trade it for another song please.
Look, I get it - some fans have really loved this tour and I'm not trying to ruin anyone's day here. If you like it, that's great. These are just my criticisms and I certainly didn't hate it, but given her age and the very real probability that she may not be able to do this much longer, I really hope she'll take the next opportunity to reflect on her career, and put on a show that's indicative of 40 years experience being one of the most celebrated entertainers of all time. It's not about how much money it makes or the box attendance figures. This tour has been an interesting, if not slightly odd and a questionably successful diversion, but can we just get back to the business of being a great popstar once again?

Ugh I Can't wait for this self indulgent tour to be over with. What started out as an intimate moment for fans has been anything but.
Madonna go back to arenas YOU ARE NOT A THEATER KIND OF GIRL! Being at a distance from your fans is the allure, the fantasy.
Bye Bye Baby Bye Bye.......
Ditch this era and come back with some funky Madonna.

Thank you for telling us all what to do and how to feel. Appreciated. 

No, many people are not in bed on a saturday night but i doubt those people are waiting standing still outside in the cold for 3 hours when they have already queued for a long time before the supposed doors opening time ? Also you say "She did a full show" as if it's something extraordinary and that people should forgive her everything because she does the show people have paid her for. 

This sounds awful, and if it were a one off it might be excusable, but how are these crazy late start times still a thing, especially after starting 12 shows on time in London? What possible excuse is there now? It’s so unprofessional. She’s becoming increasingly hard to love these days. Sometimes you need to lose everything before you appreciate what you had, so I hope the French press rip her to shreds. I’m glad she’s losing money from this tour. I encourage fans not to waste money on these ridiculously expensive tickets, and maybe then, and only then, will she finally realise the value of her fans and work harder to maintain their commitment. Aye-aye-aye...

LOL she must be THRILLED now that she can go back to her flighty start time. 

Understood! I can't pretend to know what makes one person see improvement where another sees otherwise; there's personal taste at the forefront of the debate, and that being totally subjective makes for a weak argument, and so I won't try to elaborate, but I appreciate your point of view.
What I can say is that I have struggled with my own perception of Madonna and my admiration for her over the past decade, and so I know how to contextualize the perception of diminishing returns. I have spent many hours in potential disillusionment upon experiencing various new Madonna projects. That said, I grew up very aware that everything Madonna did was reviled or dismissed by at least some faction of society, and I learned to become one of her fiercest advocates in my youth. Eventually, at around the time of the emergence of Kabbalah in Madonna's creative vernacular I became more questioning and cynical myself. I became more private in my experience of Madonna. I wasn't the targeted demographic of the children's books, and I didn't enjoy her GAP jeans ITG, or her discomfort with the worth of her own music at times...Fortunately, there was always something much meatier and more intense and dense to keep me interested; American Life was the first time that I saw Madonna universally dismissed for something that I found profoundly futuristic and thoroughly enthralling; a subtler monument to her power, but one that matched her evolving maturity. I stuck to that narrative throughout the subsequent years of resurgence and renaissance via COADF and grew to love that version of Madonna; the spiritually political mother and wife. When she then reemerged with Hard Candy I had to readapt again, but this time I was excited to see Madonna's defiance regarding her age. She was so physically powerful...It didn't matter that my private conversations with fellow fans and friends revolved around "did she/didn't she?' plastic surgery analysis and circumspection. I didn't take to the music on Hard Candy in the same way I had to her previous albums. I, like many other fans, had enjoyed the increasing creative influence of Stuart Price, and had hoped for Eurocentric Madonna to prevail. But Hard Candy was Madonna's clapback to Guy Ritchie's English fantasy/nightmare, and I accepted that I was essentially two steps behind, something I have always assumed whenever Madonna has made me uncomfortable or when my devotion has faltered...I know for a fact with hindsight that Madonna and Ritchie had split long before their relationship was publicly dissolved. It made sense that the entire HC era was an act of implicit rebellion. I have reassessed my experience of that period of her career and my life in accordance with that understanding! 
And that is where I was going with all of this...Thanks for being patient enough to get this far! When I was growing up and Madonna was ubiquitous and omnipotent, the channels that delivered her message and her vision targeted the masses. Everyone was exposed to the mainstream. There were fewer choices, and therefore there was more opportunity for an established act to have a huge cultural impact. Madonna was hyperaware of that rare opportunity and she made it work for her no matter the consequences. That hasn't been true for a good while - for her and any other artist for that matter - and so I think it is impossible to have the same experience of Madonna as we were lucky enough to experience twenty or thirty years ago. Madonna has produced music that I find exquisite and deeply moving in the last ten years that will never reach the ears that heard Material Girl or Vogue or Into The Groove. It doesn't make it lesser in quality in my opinion, but I know the lack of cultural impact of a song like Masterpiece makes it seem a diminished work in many people's minds. That's how I perceive things in any case.
 
I love this debate by the way! Please keep it going! 

I loved the relationship they had together, he took no crap from her but in a fun way. He would remix oldies with respect and understood fans would love to hear them. Was it not Confessions where he tried so hard to get her to sing Rain and she wouldn't. One of the best things he did though was Erotica/You Thrill Me. I'd never heard that song before and just fell in love with it.
I always love the interaction in DWT near the end of Music when she goes up to him as he is playing.

I loved the relationship they had together, he took no crap from her but in a fun way. He would remix oldies with respect and understood fans would love to hear them. Was it not Confessions where he tried so hard to get her to sing Rain and she wouldn't. One of the best things he did though was Erotica/You Thrill Me. I'd never heard that song before and just fell in love with it.
I always love the interaction in DWT near the end of Music when she goes up to him as he is playing.

And was way better as a tour music director too - Kevin Antunes is so lazy with his productions ?