Recommendation: CIARA

So it took her awhile to finally hit her stride with the excellent “Body Party,” easily one of the year’s best singles: That 

Ghost Town sample! That fluttery falsetto! That absurdly provocative video! It’s a song that slinks and prowls, all sexy longing, more like a female equivalent of Miguel‘s minimalist sex soul than the urban chanteuses with whom she tends to get lumped. It felt like a fresh start, and it proved to be, as “Body Party” notched Ciara her biggest chart hit in years.

And she delivers on the promise of that first single (even if everyone knew it was actually the fourth) with this, her self-titled album, which feels like a more authentic representation of her vision as an artist than any of her previous records — certainly her last two, the hit-and-miss Basic Instinct and the sharply produced but ill-timed Fantasy Ride. 

It’s a lean album at ten tracks: The opening track “I’m Out” was already great but feels even better as an opening statement of intent, with Nicki Minaj‘s freshest verse in years (that Instagram line!), a shimmery summer-anthem chorus and a video that features CiCi as, um, Ciaralyn Monroe, or something. “Sophomore” is one of the sexiest tracks she’s ever cut, with a hook built on a pun that’s nothing short of ingenious, while “Keep On Lookin’” and “Read My Lips” feel like two sides of the same coin, one all trappy, burned-out desire and the latter bouncy, wobbly and sweet even as it’s hilariously explicit. The eerie “Where You Go” and “DUI” are more expansive and diffuse than many of the other, tauter tracks. The beating heart of the record, though, has to be“Super Turnt Up,” which is one of her best songs ever, period: It’s smooth but furious, layered and dynamic, with Ciara rapping against herself against trap-and-blues production.

Ciara runs far too short — it feels like it’s over before it’s even started — but that leanness probably serves her, especially considering how much of the competition tend to overstuff. She doesn’t fall into that trap here.Anyone who’s watched Ciara perform know that everything is executed perfectly — every dance move, every hair flip. She’s a peerless performer. For the first time, the product feels just as sharply edited: There’s a keenness to Ciara that’s rare. It’s probably her best album yet, which is great — but most thrillingly of all, for the first time, it feels certain that this won’t be her last.

The Best Song Wasn’t The Single: There’s no denying that “Overdose” has massive hit potential: It’s as sugary a pop classic as any in Ciara’s back catalogue, with a storming chorus and that “Somebody call the doctor!” hook that’s instantaneous and addictive. Call it the easiest song on the album to overdose on. (Sorry.)

Pops Like: The biggest pop moments of Ciara’s career, but poppier, and the sultriest R&B moments of Ciara’s career, but sultrier. It’s Ciara, refined.

Full Disclosure: I’ve always had a soft spot for CiCi, especially as setbacks and label drama have resulted in her earning an undeserved reputation for commercial underperformance. There are other R&B songbirds in the game (I’m not naming names) who work half as hard for twice the results, and even have the audacity to shade Ciara along the way. But whether or not Ciara earns her the kind of mainstream success she deserves doesn’t matter. The right people know that she’s the one to beat.

Tracks to download: 'Body Party', 'Livin' It Up', 'Super Turnt Up', 'Read My Lips'...and the BEST ALBUM TRACK: 'OVERDOSE'

Score: 4/5

Check out our track-by-track review of Ciara's 10-song full-length opus.

1. "I'm Out" (feat. Nicki Minaj)

"Ladies it's your song/ So as soon as this come on/ You should get out on the floor/ Go and get your sexy on/ If you know that you better than the new girl that he on/ Go 'head and tell him now/ 'You gon' miss me when I'm gone," Ciara opens the bass-heavy, club banger. What's better than one woman celebrating the end of an unhealthy relationship? Two talking their 'ish as the production applauds.

2. "Sophomore"
Ciara straddles the Soundz's produced-synths ("Gimme Dat") with come-ons ("You gon' be my student, I'm gon' be your teacher/ Let's p lay a little game, follow the leader/ I give a little lesson in sex education") and self-compliments ("So soft, my skin/ So soft, my booty/ So soft, my bed/ I got 'em saying' 'Gimmie more"). Flaunt it, if you got it.

3. "Body Party"

Ciara delivers her best steamy slow jam, and only one on the album, since "Promise," while revitalizing Ghost Town DJ's R&B classic "My Boo." Her boyfriend, rapper Future is heard throughout the slinky, Mike Will Made It-produced track, 'oohing' and 'aahing,' respectively.

4. "Keep On Lookin'"
To all who second-guessed Ciara, from former lovers to critics, Ciara has a message for you:  "I would tell you haters to f-ck off, but I'm still such a lady/ Hate to say that 'I told ya,' now you see I ain't playing/ I'm on another level, you should come get like me/ Can't no one do it better, is that so hard to believe?"  "Keep On Lookin'" is yet another "Ciara" track in which the singer stands tall in self-assurance.

5. "Read My Lips"
A 2013 R&B album, from a female R&B singer, wouldn't be complete without an ode to the oral-obssessed. "So we're staying in tonight. Everybody is going out, can we sit this one out, baby? I got something else in mind. Close the blinds, dim the lights and you better bring your appetite,"  the singer kicks off a domino affect of innuendos that prove tasty and tart.

6. "Where You Go" (feat. Future)
Mike Will Made It and Future team up with Ciara yet again for a love song, but unlike "Body Party," "Where You Go" feels lighter, as Future kicks off the up-tempo song singing (his favorite past time in which he always flourishes) of his dedication as a lover.

7. "Super Turnt Up"
Ciara channels all sides of her that love touches on the self co-produced cut, from the catering, hopeless romantic to the feisty, free-spirted rapper.

8. "DUI"
Ciara's echoing, breathy vocals seduce on the song's thumbing soundscapes, courtesy of Soundz and The Rockstars. "In the middle of the high-way, me and my babe/ R. Kelly on the radio, let it play… You got your hand on my thigh, I got my hand on the wheel and the other… I rather not mention," the singer begins the provocative story of her and her boo teasing and touching while riding around. "I  might have to pull over."

9. "Livin' It Up" (feat. Nicki Minaj)
Before introducing "Ciara" to the world with "Body Party," she quietly teased fans with the Wynter Gordon-written "Livin' It Up." The island-flavored, feel-good track is not only a boost of energy, but you guessed it, confidence: "I'm livin' on borrowed time/ And I'm going to be gettin' mine/ I will be wrong if I don't try/ I don't know when my next meal's coming all I know is I'll be running." Minaj comes at the latter part of the song with a well-deserved pat on the back.

10. "Overdose"
Ciara closes her album strong. The singer experiments with EDM and pop on the album's best song, "Overdose," and wins. The up-tempo song, produced by Josh Abraham and Oliver "Oligee" Goldstein (Carly Rae Jepsen's "Turn Me Up and Britney Spear's "Up & Down"), appeals to fans of all genres, oozing funk and featuring an addictive hook.

— Sam Lansky

Marilyn Manson on The Queen of Pop™

In a recent interview with Larry King, Marilyn Manson stated that he would like to duet with Madonna. This is what I stated in the interview:

Would you ever do a duet with Madonna?
"Oh I'd really love to or would love to still, I had a crush on her when I was younger. I met her and I think she's still as sexy as she was in the beginning."

Video (from minute 23.00)

The Real Reason You Hate Madonna

#3 Madonna-
Yes, She's Still Alive

For as much as we'd like to tell you that she's irrelevant, her record sales and sold out concerts say otherwise. Though we wouldn't complain if she dressed her age and stopped singing to us about the cool new drugs. She's starting to sound like the mom in Mean Girls.

The Rest @ THE SOURCE

Rita Ora tours London for Madonna’s Material Girl campaign

Singer Rita Ora turns tourist in her debut modelling turn for Madonna and her daughter's label, Material Girl.

Chart-topper Rita Ora might have been born in Kosovo, but London has been her home since she was just a few months old. With that in mind, her debut as the face of Madonna's clothing line sees her pull a series of poses around the capital's most famous landmarks.

The 22-year-old Rihanna lookalike was signed up as the face of Material Girl, which Madonna collaborates on with her 16-year-old daughter Lourdes in May. Taking over from fellow Brit Georgia May Jagger, she was rumoured to have bagged a £500,000 paycheck in the process.

Posing in front of the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament and a red telephone box, Ora also rides on an open-top bus, treads the steps at Piccadilly Circus Tube station and dons a bearskin outside the gates of Green Park - with Buckingham Palace just out of shot.

Sadly the Material Girl site doesn't offer shipping to the UK, but it does include a guide to London, citing Tayyabs in Whitechapel as a good place to go for a curry (and we'd wholeheartedly agree) and enjoying afternoon tea at the Orangery as a must.

"What Material Girl means is just so much more than just a girl, it means confidence, it means belief and inspiration, and freedom to really express yourself," offers Ora.

Ora follows in the footsteps of Kelly Osbourne and Taylor Momsen, who have previously modelled for the teen-targeted, Eighties-centric label.

Ora, who was signed to Jay-Z's label Roc Nation when she was a teenager, will no doubt want to emulate Madonna's legendary career. With this campaign under her belt - she's certainly one pair of shoes closer to the original queen of pop herself.

Madonna: 30 Years On The ARIA Charts

As we get closer to the 30th Anniversary of the ARIA Charts (The Australian Recording Industry Association) on 10 July, it’s time to announce another round of chart record holders. Today it’s the turn of the artists who’ve had the most number ones on the ARIA Albums and Singles Charts.

Topping the albums list is U2, who’ve had 11 number one albums. They picked up their first number one in 1984 with The Unforgettable Fire and have gone on to top the chart with Rattle And Hum (1988), Achtung Baby (1991), Zooropa (1993), Pop (1997), The Best Of 1980 – 1990 (1998), All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000), The Best Of 1990 – 2000 (2002), How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004), U218 Singles (2006) and No Line On The Horizon (2009).
We have our first tie of the week with Madonna and Kylie Minogue both topping the list of most number one singles with 10 chart-toppers apiece.
Madonna has scored number one singles with Like A Virgin (1984), Angel / Into The Groove (1985), Crazy For You (1985), Papa Don’t Preach (1986), Like A Prayer (1989), Vogue (1990), American Pie (2000), Music (2000), Hung Up (2005) and 4 Minutes (2008).
Minogue, who also tops the list of Australian number one singles, has had number ones with Locomotion (1987), I Should Be So Lucky (1988), Got To Be Certain (1988), Confide In Me (1994), Spinning Around (2000), On A Night Like This (2000), Can't Get You Out Of My Head (2001), In Your Eyes (2002), Slow (2003) and 2 Hearts (2007).

Most #1 Albums
U2 – 11
Madonna – 10
Jimmy Barnes – 9
Bon Jovi – 9
John Farnham – 8

Most #1 Singles
Madonna – 38 weeks (with 10 singles)
Kylie Minogue – 30 weeks (with 10 singles)
Black Eyed Peas – 30 weeks (with 8 singles)
Rihanna – 29 weeks (with 6 singles)
Eminem – 27 weeks (with 7 singles)

I'll Remember...1990

Madonna Tribe: Fact of the Day

The Paradise Not For Me video shot as a backdrop for Drowned Tour is considered by many one of her best video works.
Here are some tidbits, the video director Dago González shared with us at MadonnaTribe.
The song is about suicide so we show Madonna getting ready to enter the " other side". It is a performance video so the story is really told by the lyrics and Madonna's intention as she delivers each line.
 Arianne Phillips worked on the wardrobe. We were going to use the kimono from the "Nothing Really Matters" video, but Arianne found this elder Japanese woman here in Los Angeles and she had this fantastic wedding kimonos that were from centuries ago, so we presented them to Madonna an she absolutely loved the one we ended up using on the video.
 Madonna was walking on these Japanese shoes which are wooden and they're very difficult to walk on. She started walking on them and she was doing a kind of shake and I told her "in the next shot I want you to walk exactly this way." In post production we ramped it so it had more of a robotic feel. It worked great and it ended up being incorporated onto the stage choreography.
 While we were editing for the tour, she kept telling me to hold back on the cuts (I did not get it at the time, I felt it could become too slow) but once I went back and looked at the footage I realized how right she was- There are takes were you don't have to do a single cut because there is so much emotion and subtext behind every line that she delivers.
 I was never really happy with the last scene of the video where the spirit is supposed to escape her. We tried different versions at that time and nothing was really working, so we ended up with the one that worked the best, but I re-did it this time so what in the original video happens to be like rays of light coming out, out of her mouth comes out this black ink, and is very cool.

 

Thanks Madonna Tribe!

Gives Good Face...1986

I'll Remember...The Evita Years

In honor of what truly is a remarkable career, we press play on Madonna’s ‘Evita’ era. An era, which kicked off towards the end of her ‘Bedtime Stories’ and influenced the shape and sound of 1998′s ‘Ray Of Light’.

She may not have known it then, but the 1994 release of ‘Stories’ would no doubt serve as the catalyst behind what many would agree was the strongest creative era of Madonna’s career.

An era, she used to lobby for the role of ‘Evita’ with the Haussman directed clips, ‘Take A Bow‘ and ‘Something To Remember‘s ‘You’ll See’.
Peaking at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, ‘Bow’s video and subsequent chart success marked yet another triumph for R&B driven music in the decade, with BabyFace responsible for the direction she took on the jam and its supporting album.
Winning her the role of Eva, ‘Donna’s portrayal of the political icon earned her a reported $1 million but served to strengthen her brand on a far deeper level, by way of vocal lessons she took in preparation for the musical.
Under the pupilage of ‘CATS‘ producer Andrew LLoyd Webber, the mezzo-soprano saw her entire range utilised in ways prior projects hadn’t warranted. On this era, she told ‘Spin‘:

“I studied with a vocal coach for Evita and I realised there was a whole piece of my voice I wasn’t using. Before, I just believed I had a really limited range and was going to make the most of it.”


So, with a new found confidence in her voice and the birth of daughter Lourdes birthing a new outlook on her craft, 1997 saw her begin work on the William Orbit driven ‘Ray Of Light’. An album, the saw the icon ditch the sex and sass found on ‘Erotica‘ and swim toward a new creative shore.

A shore, that gave the world ‘The Power Of Goodbye’ and the haunting…’Frozen’.

Peaking at #11 and #2 on the Hot 100 respectively, both singles saw sales of the album pushed to the commercial height of 16 million units moved worldwide, going 4x Platinum in the US, 6x Platinum in the UK and 7x Platinum in Russia.

While eras that followed failed to serve the magic ‘The Evita Years’ did, its ‘time’ marks one of the greatest ‘moments’ in Pop music- marking the only time the ‘Material Girl’s craft was allowed to take center stage and solidifying her status as one of the world’s greatest musicians.

With today’s scene lacking the emotion and artistry we were introduced to on ‘Light’ and ‘Stories’, here’s hoping the coming years see a number of her a number of her less talented Pop daughters pull from the era to deliver material and videos just as riveting.

 

 

 

I'll Remember...1986

On the Cover of a Magazine...1985

"The Revolution of Love is on...Inshallah" -Madonna

"Don't hate me. Hate my #grilz. @cap_master" -Madonna

This pic reminds me of this back in the day pic....

Madonna Tribe: Fact of the Day

Today's fact of the day is devoted to one of Madonna's signature songs:Like A Virgin. Virgin is one of the few Madonna's big hit she hasn't penned in any way herself, but it was written by Billy Steingberg and Tom Kelly.
Steinberg, who wrote the lyrics in 1983 has shared some nice tidbits about the song with us and here they are:
 In 1983, when I wrote the lyrics for "Like A Virgin", I was very happy because I had extricated myself from a very difficult relationship and was enjoying a new one. I felt like a virgin. I wrote the first verse lyric first, starting with "I made it through the wilderness." I didn't start with the title. But after I wrote the line, "you made me feel shiny and new", the title "Like A Virgin" popped into my head. Right away, I knew it could make a startling song and I was excited about working on it with Tom.
 There are some alternate lyrics that we didn't use in the end. Mostly junk. For example, "Ask my friends and they'll tell you it's true. Nobody's had what I'm giving to you."
 The song wasn't intended as a ballad. I had no pre-conceived idea about the music. It's just that when Tom read the first verse, it sounded romantic and serious and his first instinct was to approach the music as a ballad. But I knew that that was the wrong approach. When I told him so, he tried something else. After doing this numerous times, he became frustrated and started playing the "Like A Virgin" bass line and singing in falsetto. I yelled, "That's it!" After that, the song was written quickly.
 Sometimes a song will only "fit" one artist. "Like A Virgin" is one. When we submitted it for other artists, we were told that "no one will sing a song with that title." One A&R guy suggested I re-write the lyric. Michael Ostin, a Warner Brothers record executive, came to our studio to hear what Tom and I were writing. He loved "Like A Virgin" and said he would play it for Madonna.
 The bass line to "Like A Virgin" was inspired by "I Can't Help Myself". And, as I said before, when Tom started singing, he sang in a falsetto that was inspired by Smokey Robinson's vocal style. Songwriters are always influenced by the things they love.

Thanks Madonna Tribe!

Entertainment Weekly‘s 100 Greatest Albums Ever

EW published a double issue with “100 Best” lists of just about every artistic medium known to man. We’re just here to pick apart their choices! Naturally any list of the 100 Greatest Albums Ever is going to have one of maybe three possible Beatles albums in the top spot; also to be expected in the top 10 are Pet Sounds and Nevermind and London Calling and Thriller and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy … sorry, come again? FIFTY ONE spots higher than Master Of Puppets? SEVENTY ONE spots higher than Zep 4? AND only one Madonna album?  (Where's 'Like a Prayer', 'Ray of Light' or even 'I'm Breathless'..haha, just kidding with the last one).






Check the list for yourself below; find reasons to feel outraged, reasons to feel vindicated; share those feelings in the comments. 

50. The Smiths, The Queen is Dead
49. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
48. Outkast, Stankonia
47. The Cure, Disintegration
46. The Beatles, Rubber Soul
45. Radiohead, OK Computer
44. Michael Jackson, Off the Wall
43. Madonna, Madonna

The rest under the cut...

Blurred Lines = Give it 2 Me?

Do you like Robin Thicke‘s song, Blurred Lines? Does it remind you of another song? There are people saying Blurred Lines ripped off Marvin Gaye‘s, Got To Give It Up, and there’s another group of people that think Blurred Lines is a slowed down version of Madonna’s song, Give It 2 Me. Give It 2 Me and Blurred Lines are produced by Pharrell so there may be something to the similarity of the base beat or cowbell that you hear in both songs.

Tell me what you think…

I'll Remember...1986

Gives Good Face...1993