Surprised by how well Bruce is doing as he's doing almost the same in the UK than in the US! UK really loves him.

Could Father's Day have helped a fair bit this past weekend? Not downplaying his success but a possible reason for extra sales!

@1140338748967784448

 

Slay! :cheer:

^ all good things I presume? :D

It has a 9.2 score out of 1082 user reviews! :o It's in fact the #1 most discussed album with Ariana second - you can see the full list here:

 

https://www.metacritic.com/browse/albums/sc...r_selected=2019

 

Currently the best user scored album of all time there! :o

 

https://www.metacritic.com/browse/albums/sc...tered?sort=desc

:mellow:!

 

Well that shut me up.

Pitchfork review. Spoiler: They're not a fan. Some excerpts:

 

Madonna and company have produced the shit out of virtually every notion here.

 

On “God Control,” Madonna’s mumble-rap intro begets a creepy children’s chorus, which begets ersatz disco whose strings are in perpetual flights of fancy, which begets Madonna affecting a cheesy I’m Breathless-era accent to rap about not smoking dope using the meter of De La Soul’s “Me, Myself & I.” Oh, and the song’s theme is roughly: “something…something…gun control.” This is supposed to be fun, but it’s exhausting. It is horrendous.

 

Many of Madame X’s songs trip all over themselves to change course and offer something new every few seconds for the attention-span deficient. Consequently, they often fall flat as an adolescent’s self-conscious contrivances of weirdness.

 

“I will be poor, if the poor are humiliated,” she sings. But no, she won’t. The poor are humiliated, and she will be wealthy for the rest of her life. The only functional implication here is to remind us of Madonna’s benevolence.

 

Madonna’s always gonna Madonna. She’s always going to put her twist on culture to which she has no legitimate claim.

 

Sharks bite, Madonna appropriates. Her pop exists to exploit and sand off edges, packaging esotericism for the masses. It’s just that on Madame X, she is not merely dining out on other cultures; she’s whipping around drive-thrus.

 

“Crave,” a mid-tempo trap ballad with Swae Lee that sounds like a naked attempt to score Madonna her own “We Belong Together.” The singing is flat as a denial, and the lyrics are all tell, no show: “My cravings get dangerous,” Madonna warns without even the smallest sense of danger in the vicinity besides falling asleep at the wheel. What is she even talking about?

 

But as her career stretches on and she finds herself in the position of niche artist, her large-scale projects have the one-way intimacy of a rich friend who drags you with her to a boutique and makes you watch her try on clothes that will sit in the back of her closet for the few months before they’re donated. Life is short; aren’t we all getting a little too old for this?

 

I'm not usually someone to criticise the opinion of a critic — music is subjective and I am under no illusion that Madame X is a perfect album. However, the reviewer has written numerous amounts of critical Madonna articles for years now... He was even banned from Popjustice and some Madonna forums. Strange.

 

He has been on my radar ever since he criticised Björk for not considering her ex-husband's point of view of their marriage on Vulnicura.

Edited June 18, 20196 yr by blacksquare

All tracks have 400k+ listens on Spotify after 4 days! That's pretty good for album tracks! Of course Faz Gostoso and Medellín have collected the best amount of plays.

It is horrendous.

But enough about the review.

Just listened to the Jo Whiley interview. Madonna talks quite deeply about discovering the music and culture of Portugal, particularly how 'Batuka' came about.

 

 

Also I can't believe that Madonna dances with her children to 'I'm a Gummy Bear'! :lol:

No update for today? :unsure:

this really is a great album, really outdone herself again 👍

Pitchfork review. Spoiler: They're not a fan.

I'm not usually someone to criticise the opinion of a critic — music is subjective and I am under no illusion that Madame X is a perfect album. However, the reviewer has written numerous amounts of critical Madonna articles for years now... He was even banned from Popjustice and some Madonna forums. Strange.

 

He has been on my radar ever since he criticised Björk for not considering her ex-husband's point of view of their marriage on Vulnicura.

 

Here is his review for Confessions, if anyone is in the mood for a giggle:

 

I like dick, but I don't like Madonna and that makes me feel sovery very very very very very very very alone.

 

FOD might as well be changed to FOM for all the gay love Madonna receives for just showing up (which is all she does on the beyond-dull Confessions on a Dance Floor, a record so wooden it might as well contain the confessions of a dance floor, but more on that in a sec). What bothers me is not the acceptance, but the seeming blindness of many of the above-linked reviews and reports that comes with the acceptance: they lavish praise without bothering to explain why (the worst culprit is the yeah-yeah-yeah-whatever-of-course-of-course 'tude of the Queerty link -- so much for "useful information" and not feeding into stereotypes). To a large chunk of mostly white, mostly well-off, mostly youngish, mostly tech-savvy gay men, Madonna is great, duh, except for when she's absolutely unbearable (and many a homo still will defend American Life, a record so confused and ultimately stupid that it couldn't even manage to be lucidly hypocritical). The gay default musical taste is Madonna. She is the fail-safe choice, the aural equivalent of shopping at the Gap.

 

While there, keep in mind that on Wednesdays, we wear pink.

 

As someone who loves pop music, I can't exclude myself from those who have appreciated Madonna's output. Before 1996's Evita, in fact, I was a huge fan, but then, I was also a teenager. What eventually repelled me was her noxious mixture of triteness and arrogance, two things I wasn't equipped to take issue with or even be aware of at such a young age. When both came to a point most clearly ("I wanted to put a face on it," she said of Ray of Light's take on electronic music, as though people like Donna Summer, Bernard Sumner and Björk never existed or made videos or were somewhat iconic themselves), I'd had enough. What was liking her worth, anyway? She can't really sing (though it's reasonable that you could like her voice the way you like your culinarily untrained mother's cooking). She can't write. She's savvy and sometimes quick-witted, but rarely does she exhibit the kind of intellect she'd love for us to believe that she possesses. I don't care about dancing or mysticism or flashes of contrived modesty. Yes, she supports the gay community, and has forever, but must that come with the cost of punishment through having to endure babble? Despite her practical reservation on at least one rung of the gay gene's helix, Madonna has very little to offer me (in fact, her music that I still enjoy -- mostly that of her debut album, before she created her know-it-all/know-nothing persona -- I enjoy despiteher).

 

The feminist in me applauds Madonna and recognizes her boldness as a pioneer in the mainstream discourse of women's sexuality; the fag in me turns up my nose at the bait she's dangling in front of me (oooh, dance music!). Not that the package is so attractive, anyway -- Confessions on a Dance Floor thumps and thumps but fails to blow the roof off this sucker with its maudlin, clanking and mushy production and default mode of tunelessness (Stuart Price, whose participation had me interested in this album in the first place, bows under the weight of Madonna's whip, no doubt). The notion that Madonna should do anything but turn out mindless dance music is absurd -- I mean, really, these are her confessions? In her lyrics, my friend Sal Cinquemani hears "cliches [turned]into pop slogans," but what I hear is someone who has virtually nothing to say, whose dry, somnambulist delivery (once the charisma-filled redemption to her technical shortcomings) bespeaks motions that are just being gone through because it's been two and a half years and it's time to make a new record. I hear a supposedly intelligent woman who, without a trace of irony, will pepper her lyrics with: "Love at first sight"; "You're not half the man you think you are"; "Save you words because you've gone too far"; "At the point of no return"; "Hearts that intertwine"; "I'm going down my own road"; "The only thing you can depend on is your family." I hear someone butchering the English language just so we can hear her voice.

 

That isn't generosity, you know.

 

His Hard Candy review is equally silly — which trashes everything she has made since Bedtime Stories (as well as stating only her debut is worth one's salt). Again, music and reviewing music is completely subjective but when someone has had a clear agenda against an artist for over a decade? It's terrible music journalism.

Edited June 19, 20196 yr by blacksquare

Who even reads pitchfork? never heard of that trash.

Wednesday Update: Top 5 Albums

1 Bruce Springsteen - Western Stars (44,139) *

2 Madonna - Madame X (24,038) *

3 Lewis Capaldi - Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish (16,734)

4 Bastille - Doom Days (13,782) *

5 Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures (7,383) *

 

Taken from UKMIX (who got it from Madonna Tribe).

 

Madonna's sales breakdown:

 

Physical: 18,640

Download: 4,196

Streaming: 1,202

 

If everything sells at the same rate, this Friday should see Bruce on 51.8k, Madonna on 27.5k and Lewis on 23k.

Here is his review for Confessions, if anyone is in the mood for a giggle:

His Hard Candy review is equally silly — which trashes everything she has made since Bedtime Stories (as well as stating only her debut is worth one's salt). Again, music and reviewing music is completely subjective but when someone has had a clear agenda against an artist for over a decade? It's terrible music journalism.

God that was a chore to get to the end. :drama: The irony of him complaining about fans praising her work without explaining why. There's clearly some sort of agenda but I just don't understand the point. How can one's life be so empty and dull? A bit of a disgrace that Pitchfork can claim to be "the most trusted voice in music" and allow reviews like that.

She will hang on to number 2 . Where will she be week 2 ?

I expect a big drop next week. Will be surprised if the album sells much more than 60k in total.

Madame X will be Radio 2's Album of the Week as of this Saturday (22nd), meaning songs from the album will be played throughout the week.

YEESSSS!

 

If it sells 27k, the normal 80% drops takes it to 5.5k in week 2 so that's somewhere around #10 I think.