Strike a Pose...2012

Still the 'Material Girl'

Madonna is living up to her nickname: the Material Girl tops Forbes annual list of the top-earning musicians by a wide margin. How much did she make, and who was her closest competition? 

The top 5:

1. Madonna - $125 million
2. Lady Gaga - $80 million
3. Bon Jovi - $79 million
4. Toby Keith - $65 million
5. Coldplay - $64 million

Madonna easily surpassed singer Lady Gaga and veteran rockers Bon Jovi as the highest-paid musician in 2013, Forbes said on Tuesday.

Madonna earned $125 million, most of which was from her hugely successful MDNA tour, which grossed $305 million, as well as merchandise sold at concerts and a clothing line and fragrance.

"Madonna is living up to her nickname: the Material Girl tops our list of the top-earning musicians by a wide margin," Forbes said.

2014 Guinness World Record

MDNA Tour - Review

So, I just spent two hours watching the MDNA tour film from Epix. And quite frankly, wow.

For a person who didn’t have the option of seeing this show, I can say that after watching this show, I feel like I have missed out.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty, I’m going to be a hypocrite. I’m mentioning Madonna’s age. 54. At this age, most singers/ artists when they put on a show, they begin to slow down, walk around the stage and shake a hip here and there if it’s a boppy number (see Tina Turner or Cher). At 54, Madonna should be commended for her ability to still put on such a thoughtful, detailed and high-energy show. Not to mention her ability to perform this show 88 times.

I did all I could to not watch the whole show on YouTube when people started posting their videos. I looked at some clips, and absorbed dozens of photos, but nothing really prepared me for the whole thing.

Madonna said of the show that it was “a journey from darkness to light”. That said, the show starts off quite…rough. Even by Madonna’s standards. She’s been known in previous tours to be edgy, or poignant on matters of human nature (not the song, though it does appear this tour) and spirituality. The first section of the show is dark. Darker than Madonna’s come up with for a long time. When I say dark, I mean thematically. And when I say rough, I mean physically. It is violent. Labelled ‘Transgression’, the first section of the show sees Madonna fighting/ killing off assassins in ‘Gang Bang’ and succumbing to torture by captors through ‘Hung Up’. You almost begin to feel the darkness.

The next section, ‘Prophecy’ sees Madonna expressing love, as in finding love in someone else as something that can save her from the darkness. She does this in a more uplifting way from throwing cheerleader’s baton and pom-poms, to guitar riffs, to doing a mash-up with French-Basque band Kalakan Trio.

The third section, my favourite section, ‘Masculine/Feminine’, begs the audience to question the roles people have in relationships and what role does sex play in society? Simplified, this section is classic Madonna reminiscent of the Blond Ambition tour (1990) or the Girlie Show (1993). This time, it’s sexier, classier and surprisingly more emotional. For me this is the emotional high-point of the show. ‘Vogue’ and the sexy mash-up of ‘Candy Shop’ and ‘Erotica’ are playful and sexy. But it moves quickly onto ‘Human Nature’ where Madonna starts tearing off her clothes, ending in a haunting rendition of ‘Like A Virgin’ and ‘Love Spent’. It feels like just the right amount of dramatic tension for the show. It would almost be as if Bette Davis had a song to sing at a piano bar in the film ‘All About Eve’, lamenting all that she no longer has, as a result of her femininity.

The interlude, a remix of ‘Nobody Knows Me’ brings us back momentarily to the first section of the show. Violence, emotional, packed in a socio-political punch. I found this interlude, both disturbing and poignant. Words I’ve already used to describe past Madonna in this review. Quite frankly, Madonna at her best.

The final section of the show, ‘Redemption’ is the culmination of the previous hour and a half. It is the light we were searching for.  It is what comes after the violence and the darkness, it is what happens once we express our love for one another, it is what’s left after breaking down the boundaries of what society tells us we are. Happiness, Joy, Spirituality. All these things bound together in amazing choreography, and high-energy.

I’ve clearly thought about the show too much. But, onto the practical aspects of the show that I picked up throughout my watching. Okay, after the schamozzle of the vocal editing that happened with the Sticky & Sweet Tour DVD, I was a bit antsy about how they were going to edit the vocals this time. As adoring fans, we must accept that as time goes on, our voice…changes. And every tour, Madonna’s voice gets a little more dubbed or auto-tuned each time. We can accept that. But while her voice is good, by the Miami show of this tour, her voice was getting close to cactus. Which is why I’m glad that this time around, there was a healthy mix between her actual voice, her purposely altered voice (such as Revolver, Hung Up etc.) and plain old editing out her vocals with the studio recording. Good work there guys. My only complaint in relation to sound is that Madonna’s vocals were too loud, as a result you couldn’t hear the music very well. Lucky for us, we already know the music by heart.

My main issue of the film and what will soon (not soon enough!) be the DVD, is the visual editing. Now I knew going in that the footage wasn’t all going to be used from the Miami shows. I guess you could say that the MDNA tour is a proper film of the show, because it takes in shots from almost all the shows. But, I honestly don’t think this has worked in Madonna’s favour. First of all, it’s confusing to see shots from Miami, an arena where 15-20,000 people are watching, and then cutting to a shot from a stadium in France, where 60,000+ people are watching. I am all about consistency, and I thought the filming of the Confessions Tour DVD was the zenith of seamless cutting between shows to create a perfect DVD.

I guess the problem with Madonna is that she is too much of a perfectionist. Trying to use as much footage as possible. It’s like she’s cutting between 5 different shots for the same 3 seconds, just so we know that the footage is there.

Speaking of using footage, I was horrified to see my favourite performance/song of the show be mutilated in editing. The song of course was Candy Shop/Erotica. I cannot understand why they used footage from the L’Olympia show in Paris. The stage and set pieces were different to the rest of the tour, and so the endless cutting between the two gave me a headache. The stage for the L’Olympia show was tiny in comparison to the rest of the shows, ruining the atmosphere the stage was supposed to create. I guess the use of the L’Olympia show footage annoyed me more because it’s footage we have already seen. Everyone who is a fan of Madonna has seen the L’Olympia show. Recycling that for the DVD seems…cheap? I want my DVD to have footage that I haven’t seen before.

The only other real complaint I have in relation to the footage, is the insertion of the photo stills from ‘Like A Virgin’ and ‘Love Spent’. All I’m going to say is unnecessary. We’re already watching you do your thing, if we want photo stills of it, we’ll screencap it and reblog it endlessly on Tumblr.

Editing aside, I love this show. Madonna once said that her job was not done if people didn’t leave her show feeling any different; that if people needed to wake up. “It’s not enough to wake people up, they have to be given a direction. If they aren’t given a direction, they’re just going to fall asleep again.”

I think this could be her most consistent show to date and her most brutal attempt at waking us up.

The 5 best moments in Madonna's MDNA concert film

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Gives Good Face...

MDNA TOUR TORONTO

MDNA Count Down...Toronto 4 Days

Madonna - Love Spent

Wish this was included in the set list.  Sounds amazing!

Madonna Hits Home Run ...MDNA TOUR NYC

Madonna, Mistress of the Show

Madonna’s sold-out Bell Centre concert Thursday is a contender for show of the year. Musicianship? Less solid, but didn't trouble fans who stood, sang and shouted approval all night

MONTREAL - Who would have the chutzpah to argue that Madonna’s sold-out Bell Centre performance Thursday night was anything but the show of the year?

Mind you, that is not to say the frenetic, overheated aerobic eye-popper was the concert of the year. The Madonna oeuvre has very little to do with musicianship, songcraft or art – at least not in the conventional sense. Nor is she a great singer.

For almost 30 years, our Madge has been making serviceable pop records, some of the best-loved of which were mixed into a set heavy on songs from her latest disc, MDNA, during Thursday’s two-hour extravaganza.

When you strip away the hoopla surrounding her various guises, her once-daring sexual envelope-pushing, her celebration of her celebrity and her bad-Catholic girl pose, what’s left? An entertainer who, admittedly, outdoes all her imitators and progeny when it comes to dancefloor pop – a point made clear when she slyly incorporated Lady Gaga’s Born This Way into Express Yourself.

And such hits as Like a Prayer, sung near the end of the set, might even have been a religious experience for some 16,000 adoring fans who had stood up, sang and shouted their approval almost non-stop all evening.

Even so, from the opening moments of her set (which started only at 10:15), the primacy of the presentation was clear: dancers, clad as monks, rang a bell and swung an incense-filled censer before Madonna descended in a confessional to open the show with Girl Gone Wild.

Before you could say “abrupt left turn,” however, the singer and her dancers were packing heat. Aggressors were shot during Revolver, at the end of which Madonna aimed her gun right into the audience (wonder how that will play when she does the show in Denver, Colorado, in October?).

As the singer continued on her revenge rampage – possibly making an artistic point, but not with any clarity – blood spattered all over the back screen during Gang Bang. Repeatedly. The audience cheered and fists were raised in the air. Chillingly.

After that, it became impossible to keep up with the sheer madness happening on the elaborate stage, with its two cakewalks converging at a point deep into the audience on the floor. Slackline athletes, up to 20 dancers on stage at some points, costume changes, video links with remixes, Autotune, a “Free Pussy Riot” chant, segmented platforms raising up and down as the performers negotiated their footing … it was hard to take it all in. Rarely did Madonna dial it down to simply deliver a song, as she almost did, quite effectively, during Papa Don’t Preach.

Nonetheless, the superstar’s virtually continuous motion was absolutely astonishing for a 54-year-old performer, and certainly enough to put wannabes half her age to shame. The forceful nature of her movements, however, did raise curiosity about how the vocals continued to sound so smooth.

In the end, the clubby backbeat made the quality of the tunes beside the point – as did the hard-to-debate idea that this was, more than anything else, a pop spectacle no act would want to follow. But like a meal consisting entirely of sundaes, it became numbingly hard to consume after a while.
As midnight went by and she closed the night with the DJ motif of a high-energy version of Celebration, you had to look hard for signs of fatigue on Madonna’s face. And the fans? They could have stayed all night.



SOURCE

Madonna's makeup artist shares the star's beauty products and looks from her MDNA tour

Inarguably as important as the music and theatrics, Madonna's look always takes centre stage.

A glam squad of four, including Madonna’s key makeup artist, Gina Brooke, is standing by at the ready backstage during her MDNA concert tour to work with pit-stop efficiency. Through a bevy of costume changes, this deft team quick-changes Madonna’s makeup and sometimes her entire look in a mere minute and a half between sets.

While there’s a need for speed, makeup application involves dexterity and care, especially when working around the eyes. Brooke, a native New Yorker, has worked with Madonna and other celebrities for 10 years, beautifying them for special events, videos and photo shoots. She is leading Madonna's makeup for MDNA - which made its first Canadian stop in Montreal Thursday - as well as her last three tours.

“I designed two main makeup charts to cover Madonna’s three makeup looks for the current MDNA tour. After our initial 45-minute pre-show makeup application, I’ve got one and a half minutes to change Madonna’s look two times during each show. Any glitch is potentially disastrous, as the show keeps rolling,” says Brooke.

Madonna to U.S. fans: Appreciate your freedom

The Associated Press
Published Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012 6:24AM EDT 

PHILADELPHIA -- As she kicked off the U.S. leg of her "MDNA Tour" in Philadelphia, Madonna said she was happy to party in the USA after touring Europe for three months.

The pop icon told the crowd Tuesday night they should "never forget how lucky you are to live where you live and to have the freedom that you have." She made the comments after talking about the arrest of three members of the punk-rock female band Pussy Riot. The women were sentenced to two years in prison after performing a "punk prayer" at Moscow's Christ the Savior cathedral in which they called on the Virgin Mary to deliver Russia from its leader, Vladimir Putin.

"In my travels around the world the one thing I truly witnessed is we in America have freedom of speech, freedom of expression," the singer said.

Madonna, who toured most of Europe from June to August, has called for the Pussy Riot members to be freed. Paul McCartney and Peter Gabriel also have spoken in the women's favor.

"I don't think that it's a coincidence that I'm in the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed," Madonna said at the Wells Fargo Center to nearly 20,000 fans. "We are in the land of democracy."

Russian activists recently sued Madonna for millions of dollars, claiming they were offended by her support for gay rights during her show in St. Petersburg. A law passed in February makes it illegal to promote homosexuality to minors, and the author of that law has pointed to the presence of children as young as 12 at Madonna's concert on Aug. 9. (Minors also attended Madonna's U.S. show.)

The MDNA Tour - In Madonna's Own Words

My show
Is a journey.
The journey of a soul from darkness to light
It is part cinematic musical theatre.
Part spectacle and sometimes intimate Performance art.

But above all its a journey
From darkness to light
From anger to love
from chaos to order.

It's true there is a lot of violence in the beginning of the show and sometimes the use of fake guns - but they are used as metaphors.
I do not condone violence or the use of guns.
Rather they are symbols of wanting to appear strong and wanting to find a way to stop feelings that I find hurtful or damaging. In my case its wanting to stop the lies and hypocrisy of the church, the intolerance of many narrow minded cultures and societies I have experienced throughout my life and in some cases the pain I have felt from having my heart broken.

Ultimately as we follow through the journey of my story, the audience can see quite clearly what I see -
That the enemy is within and the only way to survive Disappointment Disapproval Judgment Heartbreak Jealousy Envy And Hatred Is with Love - not with revenge - not with guns and not with violence.

In spite of all the chaos and darkness and intolerance we seem to be encountering more and more in the world,
We cannot allow our anger or bitterness to swallow us up.
We come to understand that
There is an innate and pure love inside us all and we have to find a way to tap into it.

And we can't do it by being victims or placing the blame or pointing the finger at others.
But by recognizing that the enemy is within
And when we come to terms with it
And accept it
And struggle to change ourselves,
Then we can change the world without hurting anyone and we can inspire others to do the same.
When you watch a film there are usually good guys and bad guys to help illustrate this point, Sometimes I play both.
I enjoy acting out this journey.
For none of us are perfect and we all have our own journey of growth to go on.
I know people can relate to it.
It's very important to me as an artist that my show not be taken out of context.

It must be watched with an open heart from beginning to end. I am sure if it is viewed this way, the viewer will walk away feeling inspired, Invigorated and will want to make the world a better place.

And this of course was always my intention.

To My Fans in Australia...

"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!

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'."

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:

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.