Veronica Electronica

Madonna will release a collection of remixes, Veronica Electronica, on 25th July. The new vinyl EP is named after her alter ego from the Ray of Light era, and it contains remixes of songs from that critically acclaimed album. Veronica Electronica also includes one previously unreleased song, Gone, Gone, Gone (in a demo version).

Veronica Electronica is one of several named alter egos Madonna has used at various stages of her career. Erotica begins with the line “My name is Dita”, a persona she also adopted in her book Sex. She performed Material Girl on her Blond Ambition tour as Gladys, wearing a bathrobe, and she played a character called Louise Oriole in the video for her single Bad Girl. She styled herself Madame X — complete with an eyepatch — for her most recent studio album.

Veronica Electronica features seven remixed tracks: Drowned World/Substitute for Love, Ray of Light, Skin, Nothing Really Matters, Sky Fits Heaven, Frozen, and The Power of Good-Bye. But unfortunately, most of them are edited versions, like those on her dance remix albums Finally Enough Love and 50 Number Ones.

The Celebration Tour in Rio

Madonna will end her Celebration Tour, which began last year, with a concert on the beach at Copacabana in Rio on 4th May. The event, which is expected to be attended by more than a million people, will be broadcast live by the Brazilian TV channel Globo. (The Celebration Tour in Rio will be the first live TV transmission of a Madonna concert since HBO broadcast the Drowned World Tour in 2001.)

One of the highlights of the Celebration Tour came when Kylie Minogue joined Madonna on stage earlier this month to sing Can’t Get You Out of My Head. The set list was modified slightly at some venues: Madonna performed an a cappella version of Express Yourself on the American leg of the tour, she sang Sodade in Lisbon, and I Love New York in New York. On selected dates, she sang Frozen, Take a Bow, and a cover version of This Little Light of Mine. In Chicago, she performed This Used to Be My Playground live for the first time in her career.

Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones

Madonna released her dance remix album Finally Enough Love last year. An expanded version, Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones, was released a few months later as a CD triple album and a six-disc vinyl box set. The album features fifty tracks, including forty-nine of the fifty number ones Madonna has achieved on Billboard’s dance club songs chart. The title is a line from the lyrics to I Don’t Search I Find, from the Madame X album, and the text on the cover has been cut-and-pasted from Billboard’s website. Unfortunately, most of the tracks are edited versions, so this isn’t a definitive collection of Madonna remixes. (The full-length remixes are available on her back catalogue of 12" singles and maxi CDs, Justify My Love being a personal favourite.)

Of the fifty chart toppers, forty-nine were singles, the one exception being Madonna’s previous dance remix album, You Can Dance, as the entire album was counted as one entry on the dance club songs chart. 50 Number Ones features two tracks from You Can Dance — Everybody and Physical Attraction — but one of the forty-nine singles, Causing a Commotion, is missing. This is odd, because it did reach number one on the dance club songs chart, and it’s clearly a song that Madonna still likes, as she sang it a cappella during yesterday’s performance of The Celebration Tour.

The 50 Number Ones track list is: Holiday, Like a Virgin, Material Girl, Into the Groove, Open Your Heart, Everybody, Physical Attraction, Like a Prayer, Express Yourself, Keep It Together, Vogue, Justify My Love, Erotica, Deeper and Deeper, Fever, Secret, Bedtime Story, Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, Frozen, Ray of Light, Nothing Really Matters, Beautiful Stranger, American Pie, Music, Don’t Tell Me, What It Feels Like for a Girl, Impressive Instant, Die Another Day, American Life, Hollywood, Me Against the Music, Nothing Fails, Love Profusion, Hung Up, Sorry, Get Together, Jump, 4 Minutes, Give It 2 Me, Celebration, Give Me All Your Lovin’, Girl Gone Wild, Turn Up the Radio, Living for Love, Ghosttown, Bitch I’m Madonna, Medellín, I Rise, Crave, and I Don’t Search I Find.

Cunt

Feminist artist Janice Turner has published two books of her ‘cunt’ paintings: The Cunt Book in 2019, and the significantly expanded The Essential Cunt last year (which also includes an interview with the author). Turner cites Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues as the original inspiration for her quest to reclaim the c-word, and in The Essential Cunt she repeats the word in the same way that Ensler does: “Cunt, practice it cunt cunt cunt cunt love the word and love your CUNT”.

There are also other possible influences. Turner’s phrase “love your CUNT” evokes Germaine Greer’s pioneering essay Lady Love Your Cunt, and The Essential Cunt seems to paraphrase a monologue about the f-word from Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour. Madonna told her audience: “‘Fuck’ is not a bad word... If your mom and dad did not fuck, you would not be here”; Turner writes: “CUNT is not a dirty word!... If not for a CUNT, you would not be here!” Other artists who have painted the c-word include Marlene McCarty, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Alison Carmichael.

The Celebration Tour

“I’m gonna tell you the story of my life, but I’m gonna do it through music and dance, so I hope you enjoy it.”
— Madonna

The Celebration Tour, Madonna’s eleventh world tour, began last night in London. (The show was originally scheduled to open on 27th July, but was postponed after the singer developed a severe bacterial infection.) Madonna will be performing in Europe, the US, Canada, and Mexico, with the final concert being held on 24th April 2024.

Unlike Madonna’s previous tours, which have all promoted individual album releases, The Celebration Tour is her first greatest hits or retrospective tour. The title comes from her 2009 compilation album Celebration. It’s also her first tour without a live band, as the music and backing vocals are all prerecorded. With almost thirty songs, a platform suspended above the crowd, and a spectacular lighting rig, it’s Madonna’s most elaborate live show, after the relative intimacy of the Madame X Tour.

The tour is effectively an autobiography, conceived after Madonna cancelled plans to write and direct a biopic about herself. Montages of clips from Madonna’s music videos, extracts from Truth or Dare, newspaper headlines, and archive photos — including some from the Sex book — provide an audio-visual collage of her forty-year career. She wears an updated version of her notorious Blond Ambition World Tour conical bra, designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, while she performs Vogue, Human Nature, and Crazy for You.

The full set list is: Nothing Really Matters, Everybody, Into the Groove, Burning Up, Open Your Heart, Holiday, Live to Tell, Like a Prayer, Erotica, Justify My Love, Hung Up, Bad Girl, Vogue, Human Nature, Crazy for You, Die Another Day, Don’t Tell Me, a cover version of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, La Isla Bonita, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, Bedtime Story, Ray of Light, Rain, Bitch I’m Madonna, and Celebration (featuring the chorus from Music). On the opening night, she also sang an a capella version of Little Star

Other songs — In This Life, The Beast Within, and I Don’t Search I Find — appear as prerecorded interludes. There is also a prerecorded version of Like a Virgin, in a medley with Michael Jackson performing Billie Jean. (Madonna previously sang a Like a Virgin and Billie Jean medley on The Virgin Tour.) In light of the credible child abuse allegations made against Jackson, lyrics like “Touched for the very first time” make the medley particularly inappropriate.

Madonna’s previous world tours are Who’s That Girl, Blond Ambition, The Girlie Show, Drowned World, Reinvention, Confessions, Sticky and Sweet, MDNA, Rebel Heart, and Madame X. The Virgin Tour was performed only in the US and Canada.

Madame X:Music from the Theater Experience

Madonna’s Madame X Tour will be released on vinyl as a triple album on 22nd September. The album cover is reminiscent of Madonna’s Erotica album, and the back cover recreates a shot from the Erotica music video. A limited-edition picture-disc version is also available, with a cover showing Madonna’s eyes closed, as if in ecstasy.

This is the first release of the Madame X Tour on any physical format, as it was previously available only on digital streaming platforms. The digital version was titled Madame X: Music from the Theater Xperience, and the vinyl album has almost the same title, but it uses the conventional spelling of Experience.

The album track listing is: God Control, Dark Ballet, Human Nature (followed by an a cappella version of Express Yourself), Vogue, I Don’t Search I Find, American Life, Batuka, Fado Pechincha, Killers Who Are Partying, Crazy, Welcome to My Fado Club (incorporating La Isla Bonita), Extreme Occident, Rescue Me (a pre-recorded spoken interlude), Medellín, Frozen, Come Alive, Future, Like a Prayer, I Rise, Sodade, and Crave. The final two tracks were not included in the previous digital version.

Paranoïa, Angels, True Love

Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, the new album from Christine and the Queens, was released yesterday. Madonna appears on three tracks — Angels Crying in My Bed, I Met an Angel, and Lick the Light Out — as an ethereal narrator known as Big Eye. The experimental concept album is available on LP and CD in a three-disc set, though a single-disc version (without I Met an Angel) has also been released.

Madonna also appears with Sam Smith on their new single Vulgar (released on the same day as Paranoïa, Angels, True Love), and she is featured on The Weeknd’s new single Popular. Previously, she appeared on a remix of Dua Lipa’s single Levitating, in the music video for Ariana Grande’s single God Is a Woman, on Maluma’s album 11:11, on Quavo’s album Quavo Huncho, on Annie Lennox’s album Songs of Mass Destruction, and on Britney Spears’ album In the Zone. She also collaborated with Saucy Santana on their single Material Gworrllllllll!

Vulgar

Vulgar, the new single from Sam Smith and Madonna, was released on streaming platforms today. The song’s main theme — reappropriating ‘vulgar’ as a badge of pride, and not caring what anyone thinks — is hard to argue with. But if Smith and Madonna are trying to provoke, they’ve surely failed: “Do you know how to spell my name? / B-I-T-C-H / Go fuck yourself” feels like a rehash of Bitch I’m Madonna.

Madonna fares slightly better than Smith, with more namechecks in the lyrics (as she had in Into the Hollywood Groove, her collaboration with Missy Elliot). There’s also a callback to one of her biggest hits: “Let’s get into the groove”. Perhaps the best thing about the project is the cover photo, with Smith and Madonna’s initials (S&M, geddit?) and two corsets. (The song — albeit the non-vulgar radio version — will be included on the Now That’s What I Call Music! 116 CD.)

Vulgar is Madonna’s third collaboration this month: she also appears on new albums by The Weeknd and Christine and the Queens. Previously, she appeared on a remix of Dua Lipa’s Levitating, in the music video for Ariana Grande’s God Is a Woman, on Maluma’s album 11:11, on Quavo’s album Quavo Huncho, on Annie Lennox’s album Songs of Mass Destruction, and on Britney Spears’ album In the Zone. She also collaborated with Saucy Santana for the single Material Gworrllllllll!

Popular

The Weeknd’s single Popular, featuring Madonna and Playboi Carti, was released on streaming platforms yesterday. Madonna sings a powerful verse about life in the limelight: “Spent my whole life runnin’ from your flashin’ lights... You can’t take my soul without a fuckin’ fight”. The lyrics echo those of Joan of Arc from her Rebel Heart album: “Each time they take a photograph / I lose a part I can’t get back”.

Popular was recorded for the HBO drama series The Idol, and is Madonna’s third musical collaboration this month. She has also released a duet with Sam Smith (Vulgar), and she appears on three tracks on the Christine and the Queens album Paranoïa, Angels, True Love. A CD soundtrack of The Idol was scheduled for release, though it has now been cancelled. Popular will instead be released as a 7" single with another song by The Weeknd, One of the Girls.

Previously, Madonna also appeared on a remix of Dua Lipa’s single Levitating, on Maluma’s album 11:11, on Quavo’s album Quavo Huncho, on Annie Lennox’s album Songs of Mass Destruction, and on Britney Spears’ album In the Zone. She also performed a monologue in the music video for Ariana Grande’s single God Is a Woman, and collaborated with Saucy Santana on their single Material Gworrllllllll!

Sex

When Madonna released her notorious picture book Sex in 1992, she caused a worldwide sensation. Never before had a mainstream entertainer (let alone an A-list celebrity as famous as Madonna) posed for such explicit photographic portraits. Thirty years later, the book is finally being reprinted, and a selection of Steven Meisel’s photographs will be on show at Saint Laurent Rive Droit in Miami, Florida later this month.

Sex remains perhaps the most sought-after illustrated book ever published. Madonna has always been provocative but Sex attracted an unprecedented level of controversy and led to an unexpected backlash. Madonna responded to her critics in the Human Nature music video: “Absolutely no regrets.” She later reinvented herself as a children’s author, writing The English Roses Collection.

Material Gworrllllllll!

Madonna and rapper Saucy Santana have collaborated on a remix of his song Material Girl, which was, of course, inspired by Madonna’s classic 1985 single. Their new single, retitled Material Gworrllllllll!, is released on streaming platforms today, accompanied by an animated video. They previously performed it at Terminal Five in New York on 23rd June.

The Terminal Five show was titled Finally Enough Love, which is also the title of Madonna’s new dance remix album. Available on vinyl and CD, it features edited remixes of Madonna’s dance singles from throughout her career, though no new material. The title is a line from the lyrics to I Don’t Search I Find, from her Madame X album. (You Can Dance, her previous dance remix compilation, was released in 1987.)

The Finally Enough Love track list is: Everybody, Into the Groove, Like a Prayer, Express Yourself, Vogue, Deeper and Deeper, Secret, Frozen, Music, Hollywood, Hung Up, Give It 2 Me, Girl Gone Wild, Living for Love, Medellín, and I Don’t Search I Find.

Madame X:Music from the Theater Xperience

Yesterday, Madonna released a concert film and live album, edited from a dozen performances of her Madame X Tour in Portugal. Although the Madame X album was available in a range of formats, the Madame X Tour is the first Madonna tour without a physical release. Instead, the film is streaming on Paramount+ and being broadcast on MTV, and the album is available on the major music streaming platforms.

The Madame X: Music from the Theater Xperience digital album track listing is: God Control, Dark Ballet, Human Nature (followed by an a cappella version of Express Yourself), Vogue, I Don’t Search I Find, American Life, Batuka, Fado Pechincha, Killers Who Are Partying, Crazy, Welcome to My Fado Club (incorporating La Isla Bonita), Extreme Occident, Rescue Me (a pre-recorded spoken interlude), Medellín, Frozen, Come Alive, Future (with a new second verse), Like a Prayer, and I Rise. Two songs from the tour — Sodade and Crave — are not included.

Levitating

The Dua Lipa song Levitating has been remixed by The Blessed Madonna (DJ Marea Stamper’s stage name), and features guest vocals by Madonna and Missy Elliot. The remix was released earlier this month as a one-sided 12" single on The Blessed Madonna’s record label, We Still Believe. It also appears on Dua Lipa’s digital remix album Club Future Nostalgia.

Madonna and Missy Elliott previously collaborated on Into the Hollywood Groove, recorded for clothing store Gap. (While Madonna sang excerpts from her singles Hollywood and Into the Groove, Elliott was reduced to rapping about how much she loved her Gap jeans.) They also performed together at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards.

Blond Ambition World Tour

Today marks the 30th anniversary of Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour, which began in Japan on 13th April 1990. A defining moment in the history of popular culture, the tour was as much a theatrical presentation as a musical concert. The tour also marked the height of Madonna’s global celebrity, and in the intervening decades, as audiences have become increasingly fragmented, perhaps only Taylor Swift has achieved the same level of name recognition.

Blond Ambition is remembered today largely for its costumes and controversies. Jean-Paul Gaultier designed a corset with a conical bra which, of all Madonna’s many stylistic reincarnations, is arguably her most iconic image. She simulated masturbation during her performance of Like a Virgin, while being fondled by dancers dressed as hermaphrodites, in an extraordinary reinterpretation of her first hit single. When the show was broadcast live on BBC Radio 1, she used the f-word more than a dozen times: “I just wanna say that ‘fuck’ is not a bad word. ‘Fuck’ is a good word...”

The tour is not available on DVD or blu-ray, though the final concert was broadcast live on HBO. (It was later released on laserdisc, as was one of the Japanese concerts.) A concert in Barcelona was filmed by the Spanish TV channel TVE and broadcast throughout Europe. Highlights from the tour, filmed in Paris with multiple 35mm cameras, were included in the groundbreaking behind-the-scenes documentary Truth or Dare (retitled In Bed with Madonna outside the US), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991.

Madame X Tour

Madonna’s Madame X Tour began last night. Her previous world tours (Who’s That Girl, Blond Ambition, The Girlie Show, Drowned World, Reinvention, Confessions, Sticky and Sweet, MDNA, and Rebel Heart) were all held in stadiums or arenas, though Madame X is a theatre tour. This makes each concert a far more intimate experience, and Madonna interacted with the audience throughout last night’s show. She has experimented with smaller-scale performances before: she debuted her Tears of a Clown cabaret show in Melbourne and Miami in 2016, and played one night at the Paris Olympia during The MDNA Tour in 2012.

The new tour includes live performances of almost the entire Madame X album (Medellín, Dark Ballet, God Control, Future, Batuka, Killers Who Are Partying, Crave, Crazy, Come Alive, I Don't Search I Find, and Extreme Occident) and a handful of classics (Human Nature, an a cappella Express Yourself, Vogue, Papa Don’t Preach, American Life, La Isla Bonita, Frozen, and Like a Prayer). There are two cover versions (Fado Pechincha and Sodade), and the encore is I Rise.

11:11

Madonna is featured on Maluma’s new album, 11:11, which will be released on 17th May; she appears on one track, Soltera (‘single’). Likewise, Madonna’s forthcoming album Madame X features Maluma on two tracks: Medellín and Bitch I’m Loca.

Madame X

Madame X, Madonna's fourteenth studio album, will be released on 14th June, more than four years after Rebel Heart. The album's lead single, Medellín, was released digitally this week, and its promo video will premiere on MTV on 24th April. Crave, Dark Ballet, Batuka, and God Control will also be released as digital singles. (The Madame X persona recalls the Mistress Dita character Madonna adopted for Erotica.)

The MTV premiere is a throwback to the 1980s and 1990s, when music videos were a staple of MTV's schedule and each new Madonna video was a major event. Madame X also taps into this sense of nostalgia, as the album will be released on a variety of physical formats: vinyl, CD, and cassette. There will even be a 7" single, I Rise, as part of a deluxe box set.

As with Rebel Heart, there are multiple versions of the album, each with different track listings. The standard digital and CD releases have thirteen tracks: Medellín (a duet with Maluma), Dark Ballet, God Control, Future (featuring Quavo), Batuka, Killers Who Are Partying, Crave (featuring Swae Lee), Crazy, Come Alive, a cover version of Faz Gostoso (featuring Anitta), Bitch I'm Loca (featuring Maluma), I Don't Search I Find, and I Rise. The vinyl and cassette editions feature two additional tracks: Extreme Occident and Looking for Mercy. A double CD edition includes a further three bonus tracks: Funaná, Back That Up to the Beat, and Ciao Bella.

There are also three different album covers (again, as was the case with Rebel Heart). The most striking cover shows the album title sewn onto Madonna's lips, perhaps a reference to her mother's death. (The promo video for Oh Father dramatises a flashback to her mother's open-casket funeral, showing her mouth sewn shut.) This cover, which also evokes Frida Kahlo's self-portraits, features on the vinyl, cassette, and standard CD editions. On the double CD cover, Madonna poses with a guitar. The box set cover shows her with plaited blonde hair.

Quavo Huncho

Quavo Huncho is the debut solo album from Quavo, the rapper who has previously performed as part of a trio (Migos) and duo (Huncho Jack). One track, Champagne Rosé, features guest vocals by Madonna and Cardi B.

Pulp Fiction

On 26th August, Cinema Winehouse in Bangkok will show Quentin Tarantino’s postmodern masterpiece, Pulp Fiction. The film has some of the most quotable dialogue in cinema history, including Samuel L. Jackson’s Biblical monologue, which was taken from the prologue to the Japanese action film The Bodyguard (ボディガード牙) and recently performed by Madonna in the music video for Ariana Grande’s God Is a Woman.

Rebel Heart Tour

Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour will be released on video, CD, and vinyl. The concert, promoting her Rebel Heart album, was broadcast on Showtime last December.

The DVD and blu-ray versions feature the following songs: Iconic, Bitch I'm Madonna, Burning Up, a medley of Holy Water and Vogue, Devil Pray, Messiah, Body Shop, True Blue, Deeper & Deeper, HeartBreakCity, Like A Virgin, S.E.X., Living For Love, La Isla Bonita, a medley of Dress You Up and Into The Groove, Rebel Heart, Illuminati, Music, Candy Shop, Material Girl, La Vie En Rose, Unapologetic Bitch, Holiday, and Like A Prayer. (Take A Bow is included as a bonus in Japan.)

A CD double-album features all tracks except Messiah, S.E.X., and Illuminati. A single-disc CD version features thirteen songs: Iconic, Bitch I'm Madonna, Burning Up, a medley of Holy Water and Vogue, Devil Pray, Deeper & Deeper, HeartBreakCity, Living For Love, La Isla Bonita, Rebel Heart, Candy Shop, Unapologetic Bitch, and Holiday. The two-disc LP, Madonna’s first live album on vinyl, features fourteen tracks as the single-disc CD edition. The DVD and blu-ray releases will also include extracts from the Tears Of A Clown cabaret show, though unfortunately it's the rather shambolic Melbourne debut rather than the more polished Miami performance. The black-and-white extracts include performances of Borderline, Don't Tell Me (with an a cappella section), and a few lines of Holiday.