MTV: Madonna Lacks Substance

From toting fake guns to exposing herself onstage, pop icon's MDNA Tour has run into criticism at every turn.
Madonna can't catch a break. Pop music's queen again finds herself in a flood of bad press after fans at an intimate show at Paris' l'Olympia club booed and chanted "refund!" when the music icon's performance ended after just 45 minutes. While this latest fiasco seems to be rooted in misunderstanding — "She has done a handful of club dates in the past and they were never more than 45 minutes," according to her rep — Madonna has run straight into controversy at every turn on her MDNA Tour.

I'll Remember...2001

Turner Prize Speech

Madonna's Truth Or Dare Shoe Line Is A BIG Hit!

Madonna has had some top hits in her time, such as: Like a Virgin,Material Girl and Lucky Star, so it's not surprising that her new HIT as a designer is taking off as well!

The songstress' shoe collection, Truth or Dare, made it's way over toSelfridges in the UK earlier this month, and it's already selling out!

Department store manager Helen Attwood said of the overwhelming demand:

"It's been thrilling to see our customers' response to this project - the Truth Or Dare collection has proven to be our most commercially successful footwear pop-up this year so far. It's one of the most successful celebrity endorsements we've ever worked on."

Attwood added the store already had to re-order half of the styles because they can't keep them stocked, with the bestsellers being the thePanu studded court shoe and the Cedia brogue in black.

Madonna certainly has a shoe designing talent, and we can only hope that her brother's footwear collection will be just as fab!

Paparazzi...1990

Madonna to Tour India?

Melissa Totten, a popular impersonator of pop queen Madonna, is set to tour India. She will visit seven cities, starting Aug 17. Totten will be here for Madonna Forever Tour, being organised by luxury scotch brand Black Dog as part of its Easy Evenings events.  She will travel Goa, Gurgaon, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Vizag, Guwahati and Hyderabad.

Madonna fans can look forward to her all-time hits like Madonna, True blue, Confessions on a dance floor, Bedtime stories, Like a prayer, Hard candy, Something to remember and American life.

"Madonna has many avid fans amongst Indians and we are sure that our connoisseurs who are fascinated by her genre of music will enjoy the 'Madonna Forever Tour'," Avishek Das, senior general manager (Marketing), United Spirits Limited, said in a press statement.

SOURCE

Madonna GoesTo The Circus

After all the craziness going on with Madonna these days, we're glad the Queen had time to kick back and relax!
The pop icon was spotted attending a performance of Cantina, a vaudeville circus show at the Southbank Centre in London alongside her boytoy, Brahim Zaibat, and 15 other members of her entourage!
According to witnesses:

“She spent a lot of time engrossed in conversation with her friends about key bits of the show.”

Oh! She must have really liked what she saw then!
Perhaps we'll be seeing some vaudeville-influenced material on her next tour!
Either way, it must have been a welcome relief to have some downtime with her gentleman friend amidst the business of MDNA!
Hope you guys a good time!

Paparazzi...1987

NEW SONG

MADONNA FEAT. FAR EAST MOVEMENT – TURN UP THE RADIO (REMIX)
Pop queen Madonna‘s ‘Turn Up the Radio’ may have not made many moves on charts since its debut in recent weeks, but the addition of group Far East Movement may change that.  One of four remixes set to be available for download on August 5, this version of the track is making its rounds on the web days in advance.

As the Material Girl’s ‘MDNA World Tour’ sees her selling out stadiums across the globe, Laidback Luke has lent his hand at remixing the third single from her 12th studio LP ‘MDNA’.

Is it just what the doctor ordered? You tell us...

Why Can't Madge have Kylie's Creative Team?!

Madonna may be “the queen of reinvention”, but her style is anything but evolved, according to rival singer Kylie Minogue’s stylist, William Baker.

As her stylist and “gay husband” of 17 years, Baker has been responsible for Kylie’s own high (hit-or-miss) wardrobe turnover rate. He claims that she has transcended a fashion threshold that Madonna hasn’t yet managed — a style that ages gracefully.

“Kylie’s gone high fashion”, he states.

Has she?

The Queen responds to the Ungrateful Peasants.

Liz Rosenberg has released the following statement about the controversy that sparkled from Madonna's intimate gig at the Olympia:

"Madonna's Paris club show was planned as her heartfelt thank you to France which she expressed at the start of her show. Despite a grueling concert tour, she desperately wanted to perform for her fans in an intimate setting at the historic Olympia as a means to honor her love for French artists, French cinema and a tribute to France's long history of welcoming and inspiring artists, authors, painters, poets and minorities from other countries over the years.

The show was not billed as her full MDNA concert and tremendous effort was made to keep the ticket prices reasonable ($100 for 2000 floor seats) and keep them strictly for her fans.

The show cost Madonna close to a million dollars to produce. She has done a handful of club dates in the past and they were never more than 45 minutes. And by the way, she put on a fabulous show which was streamed for millions of fans around the world."
 

Paparazzi...1993

"give us our f*cking money back you b*tch!"

Madonna Pisses Off Paris Fans With 45 Min Show!
Parisian fans are none too happy with Pop's main lady Madonna after she cut her Thursday evening, live-stream Paris show at the l'Olympia down to barely 45 minutes!!
The extra MDNA Parisian performance was added last minute in what is believed to be one of the HIGHEST grossing tours of all time, and tickets were available exclusively to uber-Madge fanatics before being released to the public…

Madgenites had been camping outside the venue DAYS in advance, and for 80 to more than 280 Euros per ticket, we're sure they were expecting a nice, lengthy concert chocked full of Madonna magic!

Beautiful Killer/Die Another Day Mashup

Love it!

I'll Remember...1987

American Music Awards

Madonna Wins Favorite Pop/Rock Video Female

Why Is Madonna Being Such An Asshole Lately?

 

You may have noticed that Madonna has been in fine form lately – at least when it comes to acting like an insufferable, disrespectful asshole. The pop singer has somehow shifted from years of creating and releasing genre-bending, though-provoking music that empowered a generation of young girls to searching for the best way to aimlessly push everyone’s buttons. And to what end? What can Madonna possibly have to gain from purposeful nip slips and slapping swastika’s on people’s foreheads? Her recent actions while on tour supporting MDNA have raised questions about whether there’s a difference between being cutting edge and just throwing tantrums just to get attention.

Strike a Pose...1995

Madonna explains 'MDNA' swastika sequence: 'It's about intolerance'

Madonna has explained a segment of her 'MDNA' stage show which incorporates a swastika and other controversial imagery.

The singer attracted attention for the sequence, where the Nazi iconography was superimposed on the face of National Front leader Marine Le Pen, when it was first aired in Israel.

It was later suggested that the right wing party may sue Madonna after she repeated the broadcast during her show in Paris.

Asked by Brazilian network Globo what the whole sequence was about, Madonna said: "The intolerance that we human beings have for one another.

"And how much we judge people before knowing them. That's why it's done in the song 'Nobody Knows Me'."

TURN IT UP!!!

Her Madgesty's new song just hit Billboard's "Dance/Club" chart!
This isn't a huge deal for Madonna, considering this is the 60TH TIME she's made the list, but we're still proud!

Turn Up the Radio debuted on the ranking at #39 — but if the song makes it to #1, it will be gurlfriend's 43nd track to swing to the top spot.  It may take a while for the queen to grab the tippy-top ranking. Right now, Katy Perry's Wide Awake has a strong well-devereved hold of #1, and J.Lo's Goin' In is making a steady climb up.

It's gonna be a battle of the divas!!

Paparazzi...1985

Desperately Seeking Susan Premiere

Paparazzi...1998

Madonna: “I’m glad I helped Gaga write ‘Born This Way’!”

Madonna is now claiming songwriting credits for Lady Gaga‘s ‘Born This Way’, the very song she previously deemed “reductive”. Madge’s admission came during a recent Brazilian interview where she spoke about her ‘M.D.N.A.’ tour among other things. Madonna is heard saying: “I’m a really big fan of ‘Born This Way’, and I’m glad that I helped Gaga write it”. The saga continues.

Madonna needs to let go of this “Born This Way/Express Yourself“ plagiarism argument. It’s tired. Plus, it’s been an overstated fact that the tracks are uncannily similar. No need to keep singing the same tune in interviews. What she needs to do now is slap herself for making ‘Give Me All Your Luvin’ as a single and then start brainstorming music that will prove worthy of her legacy.

Memrobilia...1990

'I'm Breathless' Japanese Warner promotional only 28½" x 20" full colour poster

Madonna Takes on Guns

Madonna ignored pleas to tone down her MDNA show at a concert in Scotland and brandished a machine gun and pistol onstage.

Police officials advised the pop superstar not to include images of firearms and weapons themselves during the Murrayfield Stadium gig in Edinburgh in the wake of the Colorado cinema massacre on Friday morning.

But she defied the local authorities and hit the stage with pistols and an AK47 assault rifle - as she has at all the shows on her MDNA tour.

"Madonna and her dancers using replica guns was always in bad taste but given what happened in Colorado it is even worse. She should know better," a spokeswoman for the Mothers Against Guns organisation has told local newspaper the Daily Record.



 Amnesty International Scotland director Shabnum Mustapha says:

Strike a Pose...1987

Jean Paul Gaultier/Super Bowl

Paris Fashion Week Haute Couture S/S 2012

Madonna Rocks Birmingham

Madonna took her ‘M.D.N.A.’ tour to the NIA arena in my native Birmingham, UK this week (July 19th). There are six videos from her set, uploaded in super high quality (amazing HD audio-visual). There’s also some smooth improvisation for ‘Gang Bang’, enabled by the scrapping of a motel set due to technical difficulties.

I DON'T GIVE A FUCK!

Nipple flashes. Guns. Nazi imagery. Gaga-bashing. Blasphemy.  Yep, another Madonna tour, another round of utterly predictable controversy. And this is news?

Apparently so, since every other date on Her Madge-esty’s current MDNA tour seems to dangle some fresh piece of titillation — literally dangle in some cases, as the fans in Paris and Istanbul who recently got to play peek-a-boob with Madonna’s left and right breasts, respectively, can attest — before global media that are all too willing to run with it like none of this has ever happened before, like this isn’t exactly what she wants. Seriously, does the entire planet suffer from some kind of disease, some Memento-esque “condition” that makes it perpetually forget what Madonna has done for a living for the past 30 years?

A day without headlines must be akin to a day without air for Madonna Louise Ciccone, and she is to be admired for doing such a smashing job of keeping herself in near-constant circulation for all this time. Some people with the time to devote to these sorts of things have observed that her present-day attention-getting tactics are starting to look a little bit desperate — I did as much in my review of MDNA, the album, this past March — but the actually truth is far simpler: Madonna has always been desperate. Desperate for acknowledgement, if not approval, by any means necessary. Even if it means posing in compromising positions with Vanilla Ice for a book of erotic photos.

I'll Remember...2000

Amazing acoustic performance of 'Don't Tell Me' on David Letterman

Wonder if this is what her intimate performance is going to be like next week in France.  That would be awesome and a nice change.  Madonna Unplugged. 

I'll Remember...2000

Georgia May Jagger: Madonna is style inspiration

Georgia May Jagger gets her style inspiration from Madonna.

The 20-year-old daughter of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and former supermodel Jerry Hall, revealed that the singer is her fashion icon.

The face of the Autumn 2012 Material Girl marketing campaign said: "I had so much fun shooting this campaign."

The photo shoot took place at the rehearsal for Madonna's MDNA tour at Nassau Coliseum in May.

She added that her experience growing up on tour with her father enabled her to channel what Madonna and her daughter Lourdes has in mind for the line of clothing's new season.

She said: "I spent a lot of my childhood backstage hanging out around amps. That was where we chilled when we were younger.

"So this photo shoot brought back a lot of memories. I have always admired Madonna's music and style; she is constantly reinventing herself."

Georgia May said in a recent interview: "I do think it represents Madonna's style when she was younger. Girls my age are still trying to do it. It's all youthful and fun and carefree style that she's known for."

Oh Madonna, how did it come to this?

Oh Madonna, how did it come to this? There are some who would argue that you were always a bit of a chancer, a woman who put more effort into controversy than you did into your music. But we were fond of your various pop reinventions over the years, admired your dashing chutzpah and especially loved tunes like “Ray of Light”.

These days, though, even fans will sigh at the latest publicity stunts undertaken to show that Madge still has game. Strokes like last weekend’s to-do in Paris, where her shot of French rightwing politician Marine Le Pen with a swastika on her forehead naturally caused controversy, have become par for the course. We expect her to come out with this kind of palaver and, like an audience watching a performing seal, would be disappointed if she didn’t do so.

In order to feed this desire to flog tickets, promote her new releases and show that she’s still relevant, Madonna has resorted to look-at-me ruses which remind you that we haven’t heard a decent new tune from her in years. These antics grab headlines and let people know that she’s still around (and has something to flog), but it doesn’t do anything more than that. There are still tickets on sale for her Dublin show next week, for example, and you’re more likely to hear one of her greatest hits on the radio than anything from the current album. Madonna has become Meh-donna.

There are probably some in Team Madge who know that they have to get her producing great, audacious tunes again. They’re the ones who know she still has some creative currency, even if she’s spending it like a drunken sailor. The big question, though, is if Madonna herself has any interest in doing any of this or if she’s merely content to keep acting the eejit.

Strike a Pose...1984

Francesco Scavullo

Words can not descibe.  Ok maybe one.  FIERCE!

Why Madonna keeps on keeping on

Madonna rolls into Dublin next week to play the Aviva Stadium as part of her "controversial" MDNA world tour. She may have lost her power to truly shock a long time ago but what annoys Madonna haters the most is the fact that, at the age of 53, she keeps on keeping on, says Alan Corr.

She's only two months into her MDNA world tour but already Madonna has cried live on stage, flashed the audience in Turkey, flashed the audience in Rome, made some silly statements about drug use, flashed the audience in Paris, and incurred the wrath of French far right leader Marine Le Pen by showing pictures of her face plastered with swastikas as part of the stage show. 

Maybe it's all in a bid to make up for the lack of decent songs on her new album, but Madonna was at in again in Hyde Park the other night - dropping her drawers during a rendition of Human Nature. So the original of the species is back doing her utmost to annoy as many prudes and killjoys as possible and good for her. It's all good dirty fun to some people; tiresome attention seeking to others. However, as has been the case for far too long, some arbiters of bad taste have decreed that Madonna should no longer be allowed to (even try) playing shock tactics any more.

100 Best Things in Pop Culture:

No. 67 The Madonna-Gaga Feud

Courting controversy has been in Madonna's bloodstream since the genesis of her career. From the iconic 1984 VMA performance of "Like a Virgin" that found her writhing seductively in a wedding dress to her much-maligned foray into soft-core with the release of the aptly named 1992 coffee table book, Sex, she's been ruffling feathers and challenging social conventions throughout her three decades as a pop idol.

Lady Gaga is much newer to the game, and while nobody could accuse her of being a wallflower, she seems more inclined to get attention for wild wardrobe choices (meat dress, anyone?) and arty publicity stunts (her 2011 Grammy red carpet entrance in a giant egg comes to mind) than acts of moral provocation.

Smug criticisms of Madonna and endless Gaga comparisons are a victory for ageism and misogyny

On Tuesday night Madonna brought her MDNA tour to England, performing a show in Hyde Park that was witty, narrative and relentlessly energetic, as well as the ridiculous spectacle you would expect from the Queen of Pop. After emerging on stage from a confession box brandishing a firearm, she wasted no time in introducing slackline walking, video screen cameos from hip-hop heavyweights, a troop of military drummers suspended from the ceiling, and much more.

My friends and I were enthralled throughout the two hour experience, screaming and clapping at Madonna’s various gymnastics, jokes and the moments of meritable vocal performance, agreeing in the post-concert buzz that the vibrancy and cleverness of MDNA leaves her previous tour lying in the dust.

Aside from the fair point that the sound could have done with being a great deal louder, criticisms of the concert have been overwhelmingly predictable. Renowned antagonist Piers Morgan, whose never-ending throwing of cheap insults at Madonna in a bid for column inches to boost his plummeting American TV career, is echoed by others who seem to have adopted his trite view that Madonna is too old to attempt business-as-usual in her pop career. This view fatally overlooks the artifice of any pop personality. You do not go to a gig to find out about a real individual, their favourite food, their personal details – indeed, their age. When Eminem murders his mother in a music video, do we really think he is at high-risk of committing matricide? When Rihanna sings “chains and whips excite me” do we really believe that she is a depraved frequenter of S&M dungeons? No, we do not.

Madonna to open concert with tribute to Warsaw Uprising

WARSAW, Poland — Organizers of a Madonna concert in the Polish capital have agreed to a request from city officials to start the show with a brief clip about the Warsaw Uprising, the 1944 revolt against Nazi rule, in a nod to war veterans.  Some veterans and young Catholics have voiced anger that the Aug. 1 concert falls on the 68th anniversary of the uprising — a day marked with a sombre tone.

MDNA Tour

She just may have the whole world in her hands.  For, despite the recent arrival of multiple lawsuits against her, ‘Celebration’ singer Madonna may have cause to do just that as reports indicate the Pop queen is ruling tour charts across the globe.

Leaving her nearest competitors, Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez, in her rearview…

Her latest stint at #1 on Billboard’s tour chart is just a glimpse at the singer’s overall summer tour domination, beating out fellow divas Gaga and Lopez to amass $450 million on the ‘MDNA World Tour’ to date from just 70 shows (from ticket sales alone, excluding merchandise sales).

And, already holding the title for the highest grossing tour of any solo act of all time, Madge is on pace to outdo herself for the 3rd time.  Possibly landing in the #3 spot for highest grossing tours of all time for any act, it should be noted that the Material Girl has consistently played less shows than the two acts ranking above her while pulling in similar figures.

Paparazzi...1995