!!POP EMERGENCY!! Madonna in the Studio With Stuart Price

[Blue Jean 17,685]

4 hours ago, Alibaba said:

Some longer thoughts on this topic for anyone interested:

 

I think if Madonna herself shared more about her creative output over the last twelve years her fanbase would be able to contextualize it more. I don’t mean press junket-style publicity-driven interviews, but more of a fully committed desire for openness, self-reflection and honesty. She has been so intellectually withholding for so long…I think the W.E. interviews were the last time that she truly gave any sense of the warmth and confident self-awareness that were always intrinsic to the discovery and appreciation of her work through the first two decades of her career. Madonna hasn’t really seemed human since then. There have been moments, but for the most part she has chosen to portray herself as a caricature, and I have found this alienating, or at least distancing. Even in her moments of candor on the Celebration Tour she seemed to go from an initial vulnerability to that abrasive extreme within her that makes her less likely to be embraced and understood. She is and always has been a masochist first and foremost.
 

Most people who are drawn to the arts are empathetic. When we have the opportunity to relate to an artist’s vulnerability we can share a sense of compassion and understanding, thus creating a synergistic experience. Without this, the music falls flat, which is why empty exercises in gay boy pandering like Vulgar and Material Gworl failed to live up to their intended expectations. Everything about Madonna’s public life trajectory in recent years has been a fiercely determined attempt to make her seem as impervious to reality as possible.
 

The greatest moments on Madame X came when she expressed confusion, vulnerability, introspection and self-exploration. Her injuries and illness have surely had a substantial impact on her personally, but whether or not she is able to use these experiences creatively remains to be seen. There were moments in the retelling of her story on Celebration that expressed this side of Madonna with effective theatricality, but we have yet to see just how much of her humanity will be channeled into her work going forth. The persistent focus on luxury, fashion, youth, and sex may arguably be Madonna’s modern brand, but it isn’t a bankable one, and it doesn’t appeal to her core audience. I’d liken it to a parallel world in which she retraced herself back to 1995 and decided to favor the Chelsea Boy circuit queens over the East Village post-Beatniks, and Ray Of Light never happened. 😂

 

The complexity of Madonna’s fame and life path are indeed so enormous that I wonder if at this stage any diversion into a specific direction alters the appearance of the entire journey to such a degree that this just exhausts her.  In contrast, Kylie Minogue is smart enough to consistently bring it back to center with a mostly superficial lyrical outlook on life and love, but as a public persona she is always comfortable being vulnerable, appearing accessible and engaging. While I consider Madonna and Kylie quite different in too many ways to describe, I think that Madonna has so consistently wavered from her own creative center post-Confessions that there’s now little sense of there being an artistic identity. At this stage it’s always about her meteoric rise and the legend she has become, rather than the experience of being human, perhaps because she doesn’t think anyone is interested in what being a 66 year-old woman with all of her experience has to say from behind the mask? This might be why it’s so easy for people to categorize her as an 80s (and for some a 90s) artist despite her having remained hugely successful well beyond those decades…and yes, she may not have been setting the charts on fire for the past fifteen years, but she has been far more successful than the vast majority of her peers and then some.
 

I suspect many fans are cynical about her capacity to create heart-centric music at this point in her career, but I know I truly want her to prove everyone wrong. She could do so much, and I implore her bougie gay creative clique to bring out the best in her! Make her aware of what she is capable of! The playwrights, the choreographers, the dancers…They all create with such beauty and truth. May this inspire her and direct her going forth! 

I think the last 3 albums suffered mostly not in their creation but curation. Too much filler and stuff added in to try and get a hit. Rebel Heart could have been a fantastic album is the right songs and versions were chosen for example, and the filler culled. Same with MDNA. Also the single choices were messed up every time. Medellin was her worst lead single ever.