Still, if you think that is in bad taste, wait til you see the first picture in The Sun's "slideshow of Madonna and Guy":



Fucking unbelievable.

Labels: madonna, tawdry tabloid bollocks

The last time Madonna went on a stadium tour, with 1993's Girlie Show, it was a creative and critical flop. So much so that it would be eight years before the Queen of Pop returned to the stage. When she did, it was in the smaller and more controlled environment of the indoor arena, where she could better realize the intricate, theatrical extravaganzas she's now become famous for.

So it was with some trepidation that I travelled out to Wembley for the Sticky and Sweet show. Would the acrobatic drama of the Reinvention and Confessions tours translate to such a huge venue - or would it be swamped by the scale?


I should never really have doubted the Queen of Pop. She has enough personality to fill three Wembley Stadiums - and the technology behind these massive concerts has progressed light years since 1993. Flanked by two massive "Ms" and about seven video screens, Madonna could project her (Blond) ambition into space if she wanted.

Highlights of the show included Into The Groove's double dutch skip-along, a ballsy hard rock version of Borderline and a gypsified La Isla Bonita. Practically every song had a new visual theme, and the choreography was almost entirely devoid of cliché. My particular favourite was Heartbeat, in which a "crippled" Madonna was posed and manipulated by her dancers like a marionette - a sly dig at the critics who claim she's getting too old for this pop lark.

And, while we didn't get the skateboard ramps or multi-story climbing frames of her recent tours, there was plenty of visual splendour for the audience's hungry eyes. Dancers donned classic Madonna costumes - the conical bra, the Like A Virgin wedding dress - for She's Not Me; while Devil Wouldn't Recognise You saw the Queen Of Pop enveloped by a curtain of lights.

Song-wise, the show was a bit too Hard Candy heavy - opening with the underwhelming Candy Shop and closing with a slightly muddled Give It 2 Me. At the same time, those new songs, which sound a bit anaemic on CD, were given some much-needed muscle by the fantastically accomplished band. Madonna wisely threw in a few hooks from her older hits into the mix to keep the fans happy, too.

In fact, Madonna's willingness to rejig and refresh her music is one of the things I admire most about her. It shows a real creative hunger in comparison to the "wheel out the old hits" mentality of most performers of her stature. One truly splendid example was Like A Prayer, which was transformed into a thumping rave anthem by virtue of a mash-up with Felix's Don't You Want Me.

It was so good, in fact, that the crowd forgave her en masse for singing completely the wrong words - which made the pre-recorded guide vocal somewhat obvious.

There have been a few gripes about the ticket prices for the Sticky and Sweet Tour but I honestly believe the show is worth the price of admission. Compared to similarly-priced events by the Rolling Stones or the Police, your cash investment is clearly being spent on the creative endeavour, rather than Sting's yoga lessons.

However, can I make one heartfelt plea to set designers around the world? If you could raise the stage a mere three feet higher off the ground, then short-arses like me could see the whole thing, rather than paying £75 to watch a giant TV for two hours.

Thankyouverymuch.



Setlist
Candy Shop
Beat Goes On
Human Nature
Vogue (with 4 Minutes, Give It To Me, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life)
Die Another Day (video interlude)
Into the Groove (with Jump, Double Dutch Bus, Toop Toop)
Heartbeat
Borderline
She's Not Me
Music (with Put Your Hands Up 4 Detroit)
Rain / Here Comes The Rain Again (video interlude)
Devil Wouldn't Recognize You
Spanish Lesson
Miles Away
La Isla Bonita (contains elements of Lela Pala Tute)
Doli Doli (dance interlude)
You Must Love Me
Get Stupid (video interlude)
4 Minutes
Like a Prayer (with Don't You Want Me, Feels Like Home)
Ray of Light
Hung Up
Give It 2 Me

Labels: madonna, Music, Review

Madonna's Sticky and Sweet tour kicks off next week in global music epicentre Cardiff. There are plenty of leaked set lists banging around on the internet [1, 2, 3] but I'm not looking... Let's just say I'm hoping she'll give us more Fizzy Pop than Hard Candy.

However, I'm perfectly happy to take a sneaky peak at these stunning costume design sketches, which have been released by Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci. Note that one of them has a cross on it. The Vatican is presumably on red alert already.

Says Tisci: "I feel incredibly fortunate to have been given the opportunity to offer the world of Givenchy Haute Couture to Madonna the Icon, the Artist, the
Woman for whom I have so much respect and admiration."

Blah, blah, blah.


click on the images to enlarge

Meanwhile, here is a snippet from this week's Now magazine which makes the most fantastic leap of logic in order to justify a further story about Esther's marriage.

The pressure of her troubled relationship is clearly getting to Madonna, who was spotted looking gaunt and frail last week. Her husband Guy Ritchie isn't helping. Just when she's hoping he'd play the low-key obedient husband, he's made the sort of public outburst that clearly shows how much he's come to dislike his wife.

"In an interview last week, Guy, 39, who's busy promoting his latest film RocknRolla, due out in September, blasted: 'Sugar kills. Think of the calories in sugar. Fat kills more people than anything else. Sugar is responsible for a lot of deaths, arguably more than crack cocaine'.

"His outburst had many people scratching their heads, but was he making a veiled attack on his wife? Madonna's latest album and tour, which begins in three weeks time, is called Hard Candy. The connection between sugar and candy hasn't gone unnoticed."

Credit where credit is due, that's an absolutely heroic attempt to wrangle controversy out of air so thin it wouldn't even be fit for the peak of Everest. In particular, I like how Guy's "outburst" "clearly shows how much he's come to dislike" Madonna and yet is so confusing that it leaves people "scratching their heads". Genius.

If you wish to pass your congratulations on to the author, he has helpfully published his email address - and here it is: chris_white@ipcmedia.com

Labels: madonna, Music

Duran Duran's John Taylor has hit out at Madonna, accusing her of copying their colllaboration with Justin Timberlake and Timbaland.

"It wouldn't be the first time Madonna's copied us," the bassist added. "She's been doing it for years."

Imagine what it must be like being inside John Taylor's mind, twisting and turning every pop happening to reinforce the fact that Duran Duran are the most important and groundbreaking act of all time.

Remember that video where Madonna had highlights in her hair and mimed to a song? WELL DURAN DURAN DID IT FIRST.

And what about her song about dancing on an Spanish island? WELL DURAN DURAN DID A SONG ABOUT RIO WHICH WAS NEARLY EXACTLY THE SAME.

And that one time when she was the biggest female pop star on the planet and earned more than $150m from concert tickets in a single year? WELL DURAN DURAN... Erm... Oh, fuck.

John, if you're reading, here are a list of people who collaborated with Timbaland before you came up with the idea for the first time ever in history and then Madonna stole it:

Jodeci, Sista, Aaliyah, Ginuwine, Missy Elliott, Magoo, Playa, Nicole, Jay-Z, Total, Nas, The LOX, Da Brat, K-Ci and JoJo, Snoop Dogg, Outsiderz 4 Life, Torrey Carter, Mocha, Jadakiss, Fabolous, Bubba Sparxxx, Petey Pablo, Ludacris, Limp Bizkit, No Doubt, Destiny's Child, Tweet, Truth Hurts, Mack 10, Shade Sheist, Pastor Troy, Ms. Jade, TLC, Baby aka #1 Stunna, Solange, Lil Kim, Mýa, Obie Trice, Alicia Keys, Kiley Dean, Zane, Nate Dogg, Brandy , Cee-Lo Green, Knoc-Turn'al, Lloyd Banks, Beenie Man, LL Cool J, Shawnna, Utada, Jackie O, Xzibit, The Game, Jennifer Lopez, The Black Eyed Peas, Fat Joe, The Pussycat Dolls, Ray-J, Jamie Foxx, Nelly Furtado, Busta Rhymes, Danity Kane, Chingy, Lloyd Banks, Diddy, Omarion , Young Jeezy, Beyoncé , Redman, Björk, Bobby Valentino, Tank , Rihanna, M.I.A., Kanye West

That is all, Thank you.

Labels: duran duran, madonna, Music

In which (and, please, try to contain your astonishment) Madonna dances around in her pants.

Madonna - Give It 2 Me



Oh for God's sake, woman, give it a rest.

Labels: madonna, Music, video

So, did you see Madonna's performance at Radio One's Big Weekend? What a shocker - and I'm not just talking about those veiny forearms...



Perhaps it was the unseasonal UK heatwave but Madonna's voice (never the best, admittedly) was shot to pieces, particularly in the lower registers. There was also a lot of miming. And I mean a lot of miming. Not that it would have mattered if the dancing had been anything better than average. For the most part, it was of the stike-a-pose-walk-to-next-spotlight-strike-a-pose-sing-for-a-bit variety. Pedestrian, in other words.

The decision to rework Hung Up with a grungy guitar riff was great. But letting Madge sing the first virse a capella was less inspired, and only marginally less embarassing than her attempt to sing the Stones' Satisfaction. And if I were Rocco or Lourdes, the sight of my 50-year-old mum making noises of sexual ecstasy in front of 10,000 people would be enough to trigger some kind of traumatic stress disorder.

Things picked up towards the end. Give It 2 Me was energetic and playful, with Mrs Ritchie donning a pair of nerdsome spectacles for the sexy secretary look, and Music - mixed with Fedde Le Grand's Put Your Hands Up For Detroit - provided a rousing end to the festivities.

Based on the evening's evidence, Madonna needs to ditch the dreary Hard Candy tracks and pull off more of those show-stopping set pieces when she launches her tour in Cardiff this summer.

Madonna - Give It 2 Me (Live in Maidstone)

Labels: madonna, Music

What in the name of all that is good and pure is going on here?

Labels: madonna, Music, video

Well, The Times and The Telegraph broke the embargo on reviewing Madonna's album, so I did, too

There will be a post of a non-Madonna-related nature at some point during the next week.

Labels: madonna, Music, Review

So, I've just come back from a listening event for Madonna's Hard Candy album. I'm not really allowed to tell you anything about anything but here's the three word synopsis: It's quite good.

Until I can reveal the full nature of my worthless opinion, here's what I scribbled down in a notebook as the evening's proceedings, erm, proceeded.



(I'm never going to get that GCSE in graphic design, am I?)

Uberblogger Arjan has a more complete and, let's face it, professionally typed out review on his site.

Labels: madonna, Music, Review

It was supposed to premiere on Monday, I understand, but Madonna's video is up on the web this very (4) minute(s). At the time of writing, you can see it on Daily Motion and Youtube (youtube), but don't expect those links to be functional for long.

If you can't be bothered tracking it down, imagine the following pictures set to the sound of an industrial accident in Minsk.


I'm a little teapot...

Guy! Something is very wrong with our mirror

Justin learnt to wear two layers after the wardrobe malfunction

...Madonna, however, did not

Help me Justin, I've had a fall

Ewwwwwwwwwwww

Labels: madonna, Music, video

Despite Madonna achieving perfect corporate synergy by releasing her new single the very same day it premiered on radio, she hasn't managed to go to number one "with a bullet" on the iTunes chart.

Instead, it is Estelle whose fulsome and tunesome American Boy single is sitting pretty at the top of the download listings. A richly deserved result, if a little unexpected.

I interviewed Estelle a couple of weeks ago, and she confessed that the bubbly vocals on the track were her attempt to sing like Su Pollard in Hi-Di-Hi. No word of a lie.

Not much else to report today*, so here is a picture of Estelle. I believe Tyra Banks might label it "fierce".



* Except that Sir Alan Sugar is a big cuddly bear in real life

Labels: estelle, madonna, Music

Oasis aren't involved, so it won't make the papers, but this week sees three of the biggest-selling female pop artists in UK chart history facing off in a race for number one... Let's take a look at the contenders:

Labels: Girls Aloud, madonna, Music, sugababes, vote

I am most definitely not on the internet from my holiday, so it is a complete Holmesian mystery as to how this post is being written.

Anyway, just wanted to alert you to to things:

1) Madonna's rubbish new single, 4 Minutes To Save The World (with Justin Timberlake and Timbaland). What is going on here, then?

(I have no idea how long this will stay online)

2) Janet Jackson's rather spiffing new video, Rock With U. It's like Madonna's Ray Of Light in slow-motion. Note how the key lyric "Strobe lights make everything sexier", and how the video has to use a strobe set to flash every second so as not to induce epilepsy in MTV viewers.

Janet Jackson - Rock With U

Labels: Janet Jackson, madonna, Music, video

The Onion's AV Club have just published a splendid article running through 21 average albums that would make great EPs. Among their choices are REM's New Adventures In Hi-Fi, The Verve's Urban Hymns and Kanye West's Graduation.

It's a great read... but saldy lacking in pop records. And, as we all know, pop records generally need a good bit of pruning before they make it over to your iPod.

So, here are some of my additions to the Onion's list. Feel free to add your own using the comments thingummy. It'd make my day.

Christina Aguilera - Back To Basics (2006)


In which Aguilera pays tribute to the jazz singers who inspired her by, erm, dressing up like them and singing exactly the same songs she always sings. The public duly ignored it, aghast at the thought of Aguilera screeching and wailing over the course of two entire discs. But, pared down to a more manageable size, this is a corking little album. The big band flourishes and jazz inflections actually serve to highlight Aguilera's vocal technique (it's not just shouting, after all) and the Mark Ronson track, Without You, is among the best things she's recorded.

EP Version: 1) Back In The Day 2) Ain't No Other Man 3) Candyman 4) Without You 5) Slow Down Baby 6) Save Me From Myself


Madonna - Erotica (1992)


Having hit a career high with Vogue in 1990, Madonna dragged that song's co-writer Shep Pettibone into the studio for an entire album. One of the most prolific and talented remixers of the time, Pettibone struggled when it came to writing actual songs. Tracks like Thief of Hearts and Why's It So Hard are little more than drumbeats, and Madonna - never the world's most profound lyricist - is particularly woeful here "Friends they tried to warn me about you / He has good manners," she declares bafflingly during Words. On Deeper and Deeper, Madonna and Pettibone even acknowledge their lack of ambition by slapping the chorus of Vogue over the coda. The good tracks, unusually for a Madonna album, are the ballads.

EP Version: 1) Erotica 2) Deeper and Deeper (a decent song despite itself) 3) Bad Girl 4) Rain


Radiohead - Kid A / Amnesiac (2000)


Amnesiac already appears on The Onion's list, but I reckon you need to combine both records to create a decent EP. The two albums actually derived from the same recording session - so the songs cohere perfectly. Amnesiac has the best tunes in Knives Out (pretty) and Pyramid Song (claustrophobic). Kid A provides the experimentalism and menace… Plus, in scrapping Life In A Glass House, we can pretend Radiohead never "experimented with jazz".

EP Version: 1) Everything In Its Right Place 2) Knives Out 3) Pyramid Song 4) Morning Bell (Kid A version) 5) You And Whose Army 6) Optimistic 7) Motion Picture Soundtrack


U2 - Zooropa (1993)


This is a bit unfair, as Zooropa was originally intended to be an EP accompanying the band's Zoo TV tour. Instead, in a flurry of activity partially prompted by the dissolution of Edge's marriage, the group turned in a full 10 tracks. Predictably, given the circumstances, they're not all of the highest standard. Stand-outs include the title track - a montage of three different songs that perfectly captures the chaos of the recording sessions - and Stay, Farway So Close, which is perhaps U2's most under-rated ballad. Future Batman single Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me was also started during the recording sessions, so I'm reclaiming it here for my six-track EP.

EP Version: 1) Zooropa 2) Numb 3) Lemon 4) Stay (Faraway, So Close) 5) Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me 6) The Wanderer


Prince - Symbol (1992)


Apparently conceived as a rock soap opera, this album (the sequel to Diamonds and Pearls) has a plot more confused than Terry Gilliam's Brazil. The music, too, lacks focus - as Prince tries to marry his new-found love of 70s funk with the rap stylings of his then-band, the NPG. Sexy MF, for example, wouldn't sound out of place on a James Brown album until it is spectaculraly derailed by Tony M's agressively misogynistic rap. Luckily, there is an edited version that jettisons this atrocious interruption which we can purloin for the purposes of our EP. In addition, several "classic" Prince tracks survived the NPG's onslaught, with The Morning Papers in particular recalling the glory days of Purple Rain's pop/rock crossover.

EP Version: 1) Sexy MF - edit 2) Love 2 The 9s 3) The Morning Papers 4) 7 5) 3 Chains O' Gold


The Beatles - White Album (1968)


A certain breed of Beatles fan thinks this double album ranks as the fab four's best work. They are so wrong it hurts like a spike in your ear. More than half the record is self-indulgent, druggy bollocks. The other half is frequently unfocused - presumably the casualty of the discordant atmosphere in the recording studio. Indeed, many of the better songs were essentially recorded in isolation - with McCartney playing drums on Back In The USSR and Harrison performing While My Guitar Gently Weeps with Eric Clapton after several Beatley attempts at the song proved unsatisfactory. You could probably get a decent single album out of the 30 tracks, but I prefer a more brisk stroll through this musical wasteland… and I'm subsituting the single version of Revolution for Lennon's throwing-the-toys-out-of-the-pram album mix.

EP Version: 1) Back In The USSR 2) Helter Skelter 3) Dear Prudence 4) Revolution 5) While My Guitar Gently Weeps 6) Happiness Is A Warm Gun 7) Blackbird

Labels: beatles, Christina Aguilera, madonna, Music, Prince, radiohead, U2

It has now been a week since the the latest Kylie single premiered and, despite the fact that it's a perfectly serviceable slab of techno-pop, the song seems to have ruffled a few feathers.

Popjustice has a great summary, cherry-picking quotes from the web's Minogue-o-maniacs. For example: "Kylie just doesn't have the voice to make it really work" and "She's slapped us in the face again".

I have a feeling that people were expecting some kind of revelatory, heart-on-her-sleeve bombshell. After all, Kylie has had an incredibly harrowing three years - from being diagnosed with cancer, to having chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery. Not to mention splitting up with her long-term boyfriend and shelving dates on her celebrated comeback tour because she wasn't back to full health.

But then Kylie has always been strangely mute about her personal affairs. Anyone going to the Showgirl Homecoming concerts would have seen that her main priority was to dress up in feathers and bask in the fervent adulation of her fans. There were no tear-jerking moments where she revealed her innermost thoughts and passions - unless Kylie secretly wishes she were a robot from Doctor Who. Which is a possibility, I suppose.

Across nine albums, Kylie's lyrics have never strayed into her domestic affairs, either. She can't get things out of her head, she spins around, and she doesn't know why (in French), but we know precious little about her loves and losses, her personal battles for control, or even her on-set experiences with Jean Claude Van Damme.

Kylie's talent is to act as a cypher for the listener - a blank screen on which you can project your own experiences. That's why she'll never be Madonna, Janet or even Christina, all of whom use music as a spiritual and emotional enema.

Perhaps she's genuinely got nothing of interest to say, but I suspect she's too scared to relinquish control.

And, in the end, that's why her fans are upset. After supporting her through a particularly rough patch, they expected something in return - only to find Kylie had retreated further into her cocoon.

Not that anyone wants a full-on cancer album, you understand. But just a hint of the person behind the bottom would have been nice.

Kylie - 2 Hearts

Labels: kylie, madonna, Music

...Or at least that's what it sounds like. According to the perenially-accurate interweb, it's a demo of a track called The Beat Goes On from Madge's forthcoming album, and it's produced by The Neptunes.

Remember them? They were quite popular in 2003.

With any luck, Madonna has actually decided to feed this terrible song into the great big pop shredder. Otherwise, we can only expect the new album to be another American Life. And nobody wants that, do they?


Madonna - The Beat Goes On

Labels: madonna, MP3, Music

It's been a while, so what has been happening in the world of pop?

:: Rihanna went to number one with her Umberamella. You can stand under it, apparently.

:: Avril Lavigne did not get her waps out for Blender magazine, but they made it look like she did. Avril is not offended, because they paid her in whisky and cupcakes. So that's alright, then.

:: Cheryl Tweedy called Lily Allen a "chick with a dick" after heavy provocation from Gordon Ramsay on his not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be TV show the F-Word. How does she know? Did Ashley Cole [rest of joke deleted on advice of lawyers]?

:: George Michael told Parky that smoking spliffs is, like, totally awesome dude. "Nobody ever came home stoned and beat up their wife," he argues. And they say dope dulls the mind...

:: Beth Ditto got her top off at a concert and people went a bit bananas. It is best not to search for pictures on the internet unless you have a very happy relationship with jam roly poly.

:: Bjork's Volta album was not the return to form we'd all be promised. Instead, it sounded like two cats fighting over a washing machine.

:: Lily Allen wrote a love letter to Cheyl Tweedy on the myspace. "I may not be as pretty as you but at least I write and SING my own songs without the aid of autotune . I must say taking your clothes off , doing sexy dancing and marrying a rich footballer must be very gratifying , your mother must be so proud , stupid bitch ." Ouch!

:: A probably not very legal collection of rare Madonna and Nelly Furtado tracks went online at Only VIP Media. Get them while you can.

:: Michael Jackson is trying to put a stop to an auction of his personal effects which, claim the owners, include paintings of young naked boys. What’s this? Michael Jackson - the cuddly, friendly Peter Pan of Pop - likes pictures of young men all in the buff and nudey? I don't believe a word of this villainous claptrap.

:: Paris Hilton really is going to jail. In the words of Kermit the Frog: "Yayyyyy!"

:: Cheryl Tweedy 'remembered' (was told by a journalist) that Lily Allen has recently called her bandmates ugly and vile and husband Ashley Cole horrendous. "I can't stand people who give it but aren't prepared to get it back," she told The Sun. “I left school a long time ago and have no time for this." "Are you writing this down?" she probably did not add.

:: Germaine Greer read an article I wrote on the BBC website, likening Serbia's Eurovision-winning performance to a slow-motion lesbian porn film. "Shame on him," she wrote in The Guardian. I hold my hands up, Germaine. I've never seen a lesbian porn film. Have you?

Labels: bjork, eurovision, george michael, Girls Aloud, gossip, Lily Allen, madonna, Michael Jackson, Music, Nelly Furtado

A few points:

1) How can we solve global warming by "just being ourselves" and remembering "nothing is real"?
2) This song is actually Fernando by Abba.
3) Er...
4) That's it

Labels: madonna, Music

This:


Looks a bit like this:


Except Natasha Bedingfield's new album NB is only about 5% as pervy as Madonna's mid-90s sexfest.

It's really quite good, though. I'll do a review in the next couple of days.

Labels: madonna, Music, natasha bedingfield

Back in the 80s, when McFly were born, singles came on small discs of shiny black plastic. They were incredibly fragile - susceptible to scratches and liable to break if they were dropped. They also had very sharp edges. If you threw one hard enough you could take someone's head clean off. I don't know how we coped.

Because this was the era of capitalist greed and yuppies (a type of Japanese fish in a business suit) people decided the single should be bigger. Overnight, it grew from a humble seven inches to a honking great twelve inches [insert your own penis joke here].

Initially nobody knew what to do with all the extra space. It was filled up with instrumental versions and "extended" mixes - essentially six minutes of a drum machine followed by the actual song. But people soon started to get creative, messing about with song structure, adding counter-melodies and in some cases throwing the entire song out and starting over again.

By the mid-80s I only bought records in the 12" format. As an aspiring musician, they were actually quite educational - the teased out bass lines and harmonies actually taught me a lot of the basics of song-writing. I'm not so keen now, though. Dance music essentially gave remixers the excuse to overlay the original track with a turgid thump-thump-thump drumbeat and leave it at that.

Anyway, to get to the point: Madonna was the queen of remixes. This is partly because her songs were strong enough to withstand being pulled apart, but also because she's always chosen her collaborators very well. Indeed, most of her recent albums have been produced by remixers (William Orbit, Stuart Price) who started out re-working her singles.

A couple of weeks ago my oldest friend in the world, Graeme Moore (we bonded over a mutual appreciation for the works of Five Star) sent me a couple of CDs of rare Madonna mixes. This set me off on a massive, and expensive, eBay nostalgia-fest. I thought I'd share some of the results with you... Enjoy!

::Justify My Love (William Orbit Remix)
Orbit takes Justify My Love to pieces and re-casts it as a spooky electric dub track. A vast improvement.

::Like A Virgin (Extended Dance Remix)
This doesn't do anything other than give you an extra two minutes of dancing time. But what more could you ask for?

::Keep It Together (12" Extended Mix)
Shep Pettibone remixed most of the singles for the Like A Prayer album before Madonna dragged him into a recording studio and made him write Vogue - which ended up as the b-side of this single before it caught on in clubs and became a hit in its own right. This remix is one of Pettibone's best. The drum break at 1:02 is the most exciting thing you will ever hear.

:: Sorry (PSB Maxi-Mix)
Featuring new vocals from Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant. So good Madonna used it on the Confessions tour.

:: Love Profusion (Raphi Rosario House Vocal Mix)
Because sometimes overlaying a thump-thump-thump drum beat actually improves the song.

Labels: madonna, MP3, Music

In between offending the church and the continent of Africa, Madonna is apparently interested in the artform of popular music.

To that end, she and producer Stuart Price (aka Jaques Lu Cont, aka Les Rhythmes Digitales, aka The Thin White Streak Of Piss Duke) have been telling InStyle magazine their top 10 party tracks. Here's the list.

1. Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
2. Cerrone - Supernature (mp3)
3. ESG - Dance
4. Gwen McRae - All This Love That I'm Giving
5. Yarborough & Peoples - Don't Stop the Music
6. George Benson - Give Me the Night (mp3)
7. Destination - Move On Up
8. Tyrone Brunson - The Smurf
9. T-Connection - Do What You Wanna Do
10. Giorgio Moroder - Evolution (mp3)

Classics one and all (except, perhaps, The Smurf which I've never heard in my life).

Meanwhile, if you want to support Madge's bid to kidnap small children from third world nations, you can now buy her personalised Christmas Tree ornament, which allows you to celebrate the birth of Jesus and one of the world's formeost blasphemers all in one! Nice work.


[via Madonnalicious]

Labels: madonna, MP3, Music

So, apart from the website falling apart because all the videos have become unavailable, what has happened during the last two weeks of discopop inactivity?

:: Madonna has adopted / kidnapped an African baby and made a new pop video.

:: While attending some Scottish golf tournament, our favourite comedy actor Bill Murray was approached by a blonde Scandinavian who invited him back to her house. He obliged, only to discover that she was a student, there was a party going on at her flat, and he was expected to do the dishes.

:: Sheryl Crow stripped down to her grundies in front of a paying audience. My eyes! My eyes!

:: The electricity bill wasn't paid, so the Sugababes had to make their new video in the dark. Good song, though - particularly the line "I want sex on the beach and I don't mean on the rocks". Because that could do your back in.

:: The internet is 'ablaze' with rumours that Virgin records mishandled the promotion of Janet Jackson's new album. One executive was allegedly overheard saying "I don't need her to sell big numbers, I just need her to debut at number one" (it entered the Billboard charts at #2). Further rumours suggest the diva is leaving Virgin after this album.

:: Futuresexy lovegod Justin Timberlake got slapped in the face with some meat and also made a new pop video

:: About the only celebrity story we noticed in the US - because it was on permanent replay - was Mel Gibson's confessional interview with Diane Sawyer. What transpired is that he is truly sorry, that he can murder a toaster and that the Jews aren't, strictly speaking, responsible for all the wars, but they sure do seem to get involved in a lot of them. Oh dear.

:: Mr T has a new reality show in the States, which we unfortunately missed. But you can have hours of fun with the milk-drinking, fool-pitying, blinged-out, gun-toting psychopath by playing with the online Mr T Dressing Up Playset. It is truly a thing of wonder and beauty.

Labels: links, madonna, Music

These pictures of Madonna giving it some chav are a bit old, but I hadn't come across them til this morning:


White tracksuit


Black tracksuit

She doesn't look bad, but as someone pointed out on the popjustice messageboard: Why did they airbrush her face but not her roots?

Labels: madonna, Music

Is this the tracklisting for Madonna's new album?



What you see above is a CDR cover, supposedly listing 16 new songs from La Ciccone. You can see / read more over on the madonnavillage forums. Our guess is that the CD contains demos and works-in-progress, Presumably the tracks with ticks beside them are the good ones (only 8 more to go before the album is finished, therefore).

If anyone has a copy of the CD, do they fancy sending it to us at Discopop towers? We're particularly interested in hearing the wonderfully-monikered "Song".

Other rumours: the album will be called "Confessions on a Dancefloor" and the first single samples Abba's "Ring Ring".

All nonsense, of course.

Madonna Village - Rumoured Tracklisting?!?!?!?!?

Labels: madonna, Music

Back in the 90s, we were fascinated by Madonna's pointy bra.

What was she keeping in there? Nobody really knew, but we reckoned it was either a crucifix or a pyramint.

How wrong we were. Because, according to a 'source' on this website, Madonna likes to store pink crystals in her knocker-holster.

What a pervy old minx.

Sympatico / MSN Entertainment: News

Labels: madonna, Music