The Queen Returns

[XXXWriterDude]

Something about popstars (such as Ester and Bono) getting involved with politics (never mind lip-locking w/BrittneySpears), makes me want to hurl violently... flush, and hurl again.

Also, while I'm at it, man, I'm really tired of all the bitchy, catty gays attacking Madonna. If anyone should be bowing at her feet, it's us. In fact, no other pop star in history has been as vocal as she has about gay rights. And she didn't just talk about them. She included us in her videos, on her tours, put us in her movies. During the 90s, one of the only places that gay people could be found on television was in Madonna videos. Of all the gay divas (Babs, Bette, Diana, Donna, etc. etc.), Madonna is the one who has grabbed onto our hands and pulled us into the spotlight with her so that we could share it. She helped give us a voice in society when nobody else would.

Love her or hate her, she caused a revolution in pop music as no one else ever has. She changed the way that women are viewed in music. She changed the way that gay people are seen. She changed the way that careers are run. I don't mind when people criticize her, as long as they are fair in their criticism. After all, everyone has different tastes. Most of the time, it just sounds like bitter jealousy to me.

[XXXWriterDude]

By the way, over the weekend, I happened to luck upon an advance copy of Madonna's new CD, which doesn't come out until the 15th and has been kept extremely well-guarded by Warner Bros. It's excellent. Most definitely her strongest CD since Ray of Light. It's just straight-up dance music, but not at all Britney/Christina/Avril crap, but soulful, thoughtful, booty-shaking GOOD dance music with a strong message of spirituality and love.

I think this CD is going to be big for her, and will probably bring back a lot of the fans who were disappointed with American Life. She hasn't sounded this FUN in a while.

[Jasun]

Well, ken, I gotta tell you that I can't STAND Madonna. I don't think she can sing, I think her music is dreck and she irritates me in a deep personal way. but if I'm drunk I'll dance to just about anything.

You're right, she's done a LOT for the gay community, but I'm not sure it's necessarily all been good. For some reason, she only seems to help along the profile of shallow, materialistic and flighty people such as herself. Not exaclty the greatest image to have as the only visible one for the gay community.

That being said, it's pop music and taking it too seriously is just silly. Although it does kinda bug me when pop stars try to get street cred by hitching their wagon to a cause celebre, it's just as irritating as policians paying lip service to an issue and doing fuck all about it.

[Paco]

LOL, bitchy, catty gays. WRONG!

Ken, I did not mean to offend you... I was merely providing my opinion of the female (whom I did say I ONCE appreciated).

I will leave out my retorts, but I will say that you are beyond wrong (if you aimed the following to me) about my jealousy of her - the only thing I'd want of hers is a copy of her old porn.

Yes, in the old days, she WAS queen (I still have remixes from the 90's of hers which I will not throw out), and as with Jasun, if I am stoned or tanked enough, I too will dance to more or less anything, with a beat.

[DonMike]

I can take or leave Madonna myself, but I really liked Ray of Light. I'm more about the starving artist musicians than industry driven pop stars. I thought Ray of Light was quite daring in that she put out a CD of music that was personal and spiritual, and quite unlike her other music, but when that didn't sell very well she came back with an album that was so commercial that the whole thing could have been the soundtrack to a bunch of GAP ads. And the song Music was simply a new version of Into The Groove. If you put the words to both songs together and mix them up you'd never know it was two different songs.

But then again, I was out with a 21 year old one time and we were talking music. At one point in the coversation he asked "Don't you listen to anything [I]new[I]? LOL! So I guess I'm an old fart.

[Jasun]

Let us not forget that not only am I a metal snob, but my favorite band ever is Judas Priest. Who's been making music for longer than most Madonna fans have been alive.

[SLS]

I have admired and been a fan of Madonna my entire life. I don't think her influence was making me or anyone else "shallow, materialistic and flighty." I've never even heard a shallow or materialistic song from her. Gwen Steffani sucks like that already, her solo album was about money and clothes. Madonna wrote a song making fun of shallow materialistic girls (Material Girl) at the height of the big 80s when glitz and glamour were everything in pop culture. This only a few videos after gleefully shaking her belly flab in front of a white backdrop for Lucky Star. She's never tried to hide her physcial flaws, or character flaws. She always does the best with what she has, no apoligies. If anything her influence can be summed up as "Use it, never lose it."

[DonMike]

I've never even heard a shallow or materialistic song from her.

D.J., put a record on
I wanna dance with my baby

Do you like to boogie-woogie
Do you like to boogie-woogie
Do you like to boogie-woogie
Do you like my Acid Rock

Hey Mister D.J. put a record on
I wanna dance with my baby
And when the music starts
I never wanna stop
It's gonna drive me crazy

Music makes the people come together [never gonna stop]
Music makes the bourgeoisie and the rebels [never gonna stop]

Don't think of yesterday and don't look at the clock
I like to boogie-woogie, uh, uh
It's like ridin' on the wind
And it never goes away
Touches everything I'm in
Got to have it every day

Hey Mister D.J.

Do you like to boogie-woogie
Do you like to boogie-woogie
Do you like to boogie-woogie
Do you like my Acid Rock

Hey Mister D.J. put a record on
I wanna dance with my baby
And when the music starts
I never wanna stop
It's gonna drive me crazy

Uh, uh, uh

You do have a point. Now, at the risk of getting too deep, let's talk about the incredible symbolism in such lyrics as "Do you like to boogie-woogie", oh and she must have amazing depth and complexity to use the word bourgeoisie. Okay, let's discuss. :thumbsup:

[Jasun]

My favorite Madonna lyric:

"I'll hit you like a truck, I'll teach you how to fuck".

[XXXWriterDude]

Wow, Jasun, you couldn't be further off the mark if you tried. Madonna has pretty much always talked about her disillusionment with fame and fortune, as far back as "Material Girl." And the whole third act of her career has been built on casting aside such material possessions in favor of spiritual enlightenment and the love of her family. All of American Life, in fact, was obsessed with just that notion: "There's got to be something more to life than all of this."

See, the thing that has always drawn me to Madonna was that there was always something lurking beneath the image she often portrayed. From the moment she burst onto the scene in lace and rag-doll, dime-store push-up bras and plastic bracelets, I could tell she was on to something big. What she did was appropriate all these images for "show and tell" as a way to poke fun at society's ideas of femininity, success and fame. The problem with most people is that they never looked past any of what they saw on the surface. None of them even picked up on the fact that it was ALL for show. There's this one moment in her "Lucky Star" video where she winks at the camera, and it's in that moment that I fell in love with Madonna, because I knew that she was saying, "Check me out! Can you believe this shit?" She's actually quite a brilliant satiricist (is that the right word?).

I've personally never seen any indication that Madonna has been materialistic or shallow. What I saw was a young woman crying out for love and acceptance. How else to explain her incessant need to get people fired up with all the over-the-top sex shenanigans (which, for the record, I liked)?

And Madonna's music as dreck? Gasp! Jasun Jasun Jasun... you've obviously never listened to the Like a Prayer or Ray of Light records... two of the most powerful, bold, daring and important artistic statements by a pop musician ever. Like a Prayer was Madonna's Abbey Road: a deeply personal, very challenging record to listen to. Unlike anything else coming out at the time (1988). And Ray of Light was a record that even die-hard Madonna critics warmed up to because of its raw emotion and maturity. In fact, Madonna has written some of THE best pop songs ever--"Holiday," "Borderline," "Into the Groove," "Open Your Heart," "Like a Prayer," "Cherish," "La Isla Bonita," "Keep it Together," "Ray of Light," "Don't Tell Me," "What It Feels Like for a Girl"--the list goes on and on. I can certainly understand you being a Judas Priest fan and not really appreciating pop music in general, which is fine, but really, the woman knows good music when she hears it, and even her critics admit that she has contributed some fine music to the world.

And hey DonMike, you know better than to single out just one song ("Music") as being indicative of Madonna's message. As you said, Ray of Light was about something deeper. Check out just about any of the songs on her new record--which I seriously think is going to be huge for her--and see that she's up to the same tricks again, spreading good will and cheer throughout the world while inciting them to get up on the dance floor and--yes--boogie woogie.

[XXXWriterDude]

You're right, she's done a LOT for the gay community, but I'm not sure it's necessarily all been good. For some reason, she only seems to help along the profile of shallow, materialistic and flighty people such as herself. Not exaclty the greatest image to have as the only visible one for the gay community.

While I'm at it, I have to address this, because it sounds like you have more of a problem with the KIND of gay people Madonna included--and not for the reasons you mention above, as I never once saw any indication that the gay people in Madonna videos were "shallow, materialistic or flighty." In fact, where do you draw such a conclusion from? True, a lot of her dancers were girly and stereotypical, but they were DANCERS, and that's how a lot of them act in real life. (Trust me, I was trained in the theater; I know.) Stereotypes exist because they are true. But, in her new documentary, her wardrobe guy is a butch top, so there goes the stereotype of gay people being effeminate.

Madonna included the gays who were immediately available to her--the ones who toured with her. They were all ARTISTS. Those were the kinds of images of gay people she put out into the world--deeply passionate, incredibly dedicated, sometimes effeminate, occasionally flighty ARTISTS, as all artists are want to be at times (flighty, I mean). And what the hell is wrong with that?

Visibility is a WONDERFUL thing for our community. Our reactions to such visibility, though, are ours to examine....

That being said, it's pop music and taking it too seriously is just silly. Although it does kinda bug me when pop stars try to get street cred by hitching their wagon to a cause celebre, it's just as irritating as policians paying lip service to an issue and doing fuck all about it.

Pop music can't be taken seriously? You mean you can't take the music of the Beatles seriously? You can't take the music of James Taylor seriously? What about Elvis? What's wrong with pop music? Pop music really only means that it's popular. It doesn't mean that it's all drivel and meaningless. People like New Kids and Tiffany and Britney and Avril have given it a bad name over the years, but pop music has an extremely rich and long history of being a socially conscious form of entertainment. In fact, some of the most meaningful songs of ALL TIME happen to be POP songs. Think again about making such a silly statement, Jasun, because a lot of people could say that Judas Priest and metal are tools of the devil.

And again, you think of artists talking about causes they believe in as them trying to gain street cred. I think of it as them using their celebrity to to bring attention to an important topic and do some good in the world. I'm sure there are some celebrities who do it for the P.R., but the ones who are passionate about it are the ones who should be commended. Do you think that gay marriage benefit I went to last night would have made half as much money through standard mailings and phone calls? Hardly. With Margaret Cho and Pink and others on board, it brought in tons more than it otherwise might have.

[DonMike]

I think that as many lines have been blurred, more have been laid down. There was a time where pop music was a forum for people to talk about issues and give poetic introspection of their lives along side artists who just wanted people to dance and have fun. Stevie Nicks and Annie Lennox have always been in the "Pop" arena yet have often given us nuggets of raw emotion and poetic challenges that Brittney Spears and Christine Agublablabla would choke on. So it's not really a matter of "pop" music being bad, but these days it's so commercially driven that people who do more honest and raw music are lumped into the indie category. My only beef with Madonna is that she always seems to be driven by money above everything else. Following up a brillian album like Ray of Light with the drek that was Music prooves that. It's like, here's an album for me, but wait, it didn't sell my usually multimillion copies, I'd better give the kids what they'll buy. I mean, sure it's the music "business" and these people need to make a living. I'm all about that. I don't think Madonna herself would ever say she was an artist above a businesswoman. I, personally, usually do not like music that follows a pattern of "fit peg A into slot B" songwriting. I'd much rather listen to The Postal Service or the first Liz Phair CD, where they were more about writing good music than making a "product". But I'm jaded. I'm also a total hypocrite because after saying all this, I'll turn around and go totally gaga for a new Cher CD. LOL!

[Jasun]

Check out just about any of the songs on her new record--

The only song I know is "Hung Up" which is a note-by-note rip-off of "Boogie Ooogie Ooogie Woogie Dancing Shoes" and, although I only heard it a couple of times, it appears to be about how boring dance clubs are if you're not on drugs.

Whatever. I've had this arguement about Madonna so many times. I get it that it's all just a joke and that it's got that whole "Can you believe I'm getting away with this?" thing to it. But Pop music is supposed to be disposable.. it's fine.. I've got no problem with it, and I loved a lot of New Wave which is about as disposable as you can get.

Don't forget I used to work in Purchasing for a major record chain in Canada for years... Trust me, I've heard "Like a Prayer" and "Ray of Light" a zillion times. Still not a fan. Sorry.

But argueing with Madonna fans about anything Madonna realted is like running head first into a wall. You're not going to win, and it just gives you a head ache.

[Jasun]

I never once saw any indication that the gay people in Madonna videos were "shallow, materialistic or flighty." In fact, where do you draw such a conclusion from?

Her movie. where all the gay dancers were rude, obnoxious assholes who were obcessed with fashion and being lame and spent a good deal of time picking on the straight dancer for sport.

[DonMike]

And talking about music is like dancing about architecture.