Alibaba

I think she says that her sound is cutting out. She can’t hear herself.

You never know! She did post her greetings to Austin to her IG Stories to the soundtrack of “Secret”. Maybe our baby does have a secret after all! 😎

Her voice has good nights and bad nights. This has been the case throughout the tour, including in LA where she even had a night when she lost her entire upper register during Mother and Father, stating it herself for the record onstage. I highly doubt she is thinking of canceling her Mexico dates. Sounds like the usual dramatic fantasies people come up with on that absurd platform of bile. She has four nights off after tomorrow’s show, and then another five nights off between Austin and Mexico City. She then has a week to prepare for Rio. She’s gonna be fine.

It is hard to show up for yourself and to learn to parent your inner child when you come from a background of trauma. If she suffers from claustrophobia and panic attacks, clearly her trauma is considerable and she’s been on a long journey toward mental wellness. I can relate, and I am moved by her extreme honesty. She’s clearly been going through some trauma activation since her illness and this speech serves as a reminder that she deserves kindness and compassion. It’s obviously hard for her to be vulnerable, and so for her to be that honest in front of 20,000 is significant.

Okay…I think we are veering a little off course by turning this into an indictment of her entire personality! That’s just too much…Surely she deserves more respect from her fans than that! She probably needs a rest, and it’s understandable after 71 performances. She knows she’s getting overwhelmed and frustrated…She’s literally spelling it out in her pre-Express Yourself speech. That said, venting it all publicly in the way she did isn’t particularly artistically-minded as it takes away from the narrative of her show, which is counterintuitive. I hope she finds some calm in the coming days. It is also the New Moon in Aries Total Solar Eclipse tomorrow, and so maybe she’s feeling it! Her voice does sound strained, and I’m sure that she gets affected by the dryness. No singer welcomes air-conditioning…It’s like kryptonite to the voice, and you don’t have to be doing Mariah acrobatics to feel the pain of it.

How strange that she would express herself that way onstage in front of her audience. I guess it’s not a big deal, but personally I find it really off-puttingly uncharacteristic and unprofessional. She must be feeling under the weather, or maybe her hip or knee are hurting. I’m guessing she isn’t talking about the a/c in the open arena because it’s been hotter than hell at most shows on the floor…she must feel the chill of it coming into her dressing area or under the stage? I’m guessing she’s just over it all and is finding herself feeling exhausted in the last stretch knowing that she still has to ten shows to go. She’s probably angry at herself and it’s her way of getting herself energized.

It’s incredibly unfair to rob Sandra of her own accomplishments. As already stated, she has had a very storied life and she is a talented comedienne and actress. She carved out a very unique style for herself as a performer. Her shows are autobiographical and comical with feisty social commentary, but always served with a touch of emotional tenderness underlined with music. I think she has been mostly gracious considering how much everyone always brings up Madonna when interviewing her. For many years I think she resented it and it may have led to some occasional overt hostility, but imagine being tethered to someone who hurt you (is it really that hard to imagine that Madonna lacked sensitivity in the early 90s?) for the rest of your career despite all of your other achievements! I think that would get under anyone’s skin, and she handled this ning nong’s prying with aplomb in my eyes. Madonna’s star shines so bright that it burns most people who have been in her orbit. It’s like a brand; permanent and unavoidable. I have empathy for how challenging that might be for some.

As far as I can remember, Sticky and Sweet Part 2 was added because she got hammered with an astronomical divorce settlement and wasn’t about to lose that amount of net worth for anyone. Regarding Brazil and the possibility of more shows being added, it was also announced on February 6th that a final date had been added to the tour itinerary in Miami. Clearly that wasn’t true, therefore nothing can be ruled out. As an addendum, I would like to reinforce the sentiment that this forum has become an absolute shambles. It remained one of the last places for fans to have intelligent discussions about Madonna’s body of work, her influence and impact, and her achievements. Then the culture shifted and being a Madonna fan seemed to become increasingly difficult as a collective experience. We went from the pseudo-woke brigade in full force 24/7 being offended by every idea they didn’t agree with to a cacophony of what seemed like bots insidiously telling us how much they loved everything. Critical thinking left the building. Once the tour started it seemed to level out into a healthy discussion centered around the almost daily reports on the corresponding tour dates, but we have once again descended into a chaos of either dual accounts trolling non-stop, or generally unstable, extremely immature individuals posting like they’re back in the sandbox expressing all of their unconscious feelings, personal issues and a need to have someone tell them that it’s all gonna be okay, and that they’re right for being intolerant of someone else they know nothing about having a different perspective or experience. Well here’s the bottom line…It’s all gonna be okay with or without the validation of a moderator, but don’t expect to have much of an audience to participate in your nonsense. I can hardly be bothered sharing anything on here at this stage. Half the people who once contributed actual thoughts to this place have left because of the absurdity of a small but loud minority spouting absolute bile that contributes nothing to the Madonna community and culture, and many others have withdrawn into the rafters, skimming through all the petty squabbling and rambling for some relevant information about the extraordinary woman we came here to discuss. It’s always been a challenge to navigate certain personality types online in relative anonymity, but at least it seemed we used to respect that on a Madonna forum we could invest in Madonna talk that provoked thought and intelligent discussion. Is it because of social media that this has faded out? Is it because we are getting older as a fanbase? Whatever it is, it is both sad and embarrassing. If we can’t muster the courage and determination to show up and actually give value to Madonna’s legacy within the fanbase, it doesn’t bode well for that legacy elsewhere.

Why are people interpreting that he’d be saying this about his employer? He is literally saying that Madonna is an artist and puts her money, fame, artistry and power where her mouth is. I could speculate he means any number of people, none of whom need to be named because it will just incur the wrath of weirdo sheeple…the vast majority of current pop stars are nowhere near Madonna’s level of consistent engagement to her causes. I don’t know why anyone would question Ricardo’s dedication, admiration and devotion to Madonna, nor has he ever given any reason for us to think he isn’t grateful for his position. Clearly Madonna likes him very much (just go back to that French Madame X interview in which the journalist said he was snapping shots of her in the distance and M thought he was a paparazzo to see how much his relationship with her has solidified over the subsequent five years), and if he facetunes her until there’s nothing more than a hint of realism it is because she wants it that way. It’s fame, an inherently deceptive, illusory concept with no substance. I’ve always felt his style was meant to capture the essence of our time! AI, VR…Whatever it is, Madonna is an intelligent, intellectual, mature woman who has her reasons for everything she does. We may not understand them all the time, and she certainly doesn’t explain herself much, but if she’s willing to go on a world tour and be photographed as she truly looks every night she takes to the stage we can at least be assured that she doesn’t have a problem with how she looks in real life or on IG, and neither should anyone else. Now that it’s been confirmed for us all to see that she is still a stunning beauty in the flesh at 65, I’d say it’s even more obvious just how conceptual the IG filters are intended to be in a world obsessed with youth. Whether or not they are necessary is like asking whether or not Where’s The Party should have been a global single. It wasn’t, and so it is! And yes, I think we are all a bit jealous of Ricardo. How could we not be?! What a life he gets to experience!

You’re right. It was a poor choice of genre to use techno. I meant house music. 🙏🏼

I’m not sure I’d agree with that. If you listen to a lot of r n’b, soul and boogie from 1978-1982, all of Madonna’s earliest material is inspired by and derivative of those genres. Reggie Lucas is literally one of the architects of that sound, and Madonna was a regular at clubs where Larry Levan, Jellybean and champions of the genre DJ’d. It’s mostly a case of that music not making it to the pop mainstream because the genre was considered black, and neither radio nor burgeoning video channels and programming like MTV would play it. Where Into The Groove and much of Nile’s electronic influence on Like A Virgin differs is in the slow infusion of techno, which was also already big in black clubs in Chicago and NY. In this sense, Into The Groove is a blueprint for the future of mainstream dance pop. Also, I posted this literally three hours before this post by Chihuahua with the video embedded. It helps to take the time to check if something has already been shared. 😎

I initially thought it was well-researched, but there was a great deal of information left out, and it became tedious beyond the Girlie Show. There was too much of a tendency to stick to a bird’s eye view of her career, with little actual deeper research. I understand that she wanted to make it a historical account of Madonna’s life, and while it is lengthy and I am sure it took a great deal of work, there’s something lacking in the end. In the second half of Madonna’s career there is practically no insight beyond a basic timeline of publicly seen performances and interviews. The author spends far too much time recounting the details of each tour (with occasional glaring errors), barely making any effort to contextualize beyond her own personal discovery of Madonna’s work and dryly conveying what she sees, which is of no interest to fans as we have all seen the shows. The early years are where the book succeeds…It’s a noble effort, but lacks any real depth or style, and the little attention paid to the latter part of Madonna’s career was almost insulting.

Barbra Streisand gave a free concert in Central Park in 1967, as did Simon and Garfunkel in 1981.

This thread is becoming unhinged again. I don’t even know if these are real people at this point. The posts are so trivial and bizarre that I honestly question if they are written by bots. I get that English isn’t everyone’s first language, but not even the worst direct translation can account for some of the lyrical bile I find myself reading sometimes. And it’s pages of it! Either people repeating the same thing over and over again, or random mood fits that should call for compassion and empathy because clearly there is a mental struggle on display, but then I remind myself that this is a MADONNA forum, not a support group. Can we focus on the actual topic of the thread and try to find the most intelligent and unique way to convey our personal perspectives? Humor is always a plus, as is self-awareness, but a critical eye requires knowledge and understanding.