DUKE

It's official for me and I am dead.

Thank you, I have seen this along with all the other interviews she did around the world. I'm gonna leave it to this. Really, I am done here. All I will say is read more of you really want to know things about her. If you wish to repeat the same "She's an icon" crap that gets spread everywhere in the media, fine.

I'd love them to actually write a song together. Now that so much has changed in their lives... would be interesting.

Well, those books are infamous. However, I was suggesting you things for further reading because you seemed interested. You are free to have your opinion but further reading might be useful when things you said are factually incorrect, which they were. Don't even try to defend Madonna in front of me. There literally is no point in it. Also, I know the ticket prices and I paid for it. I absolutely love Madonna, but it really is no surprise she made this one of the most profitable tours of 2012. First of all, I wasn't even addressing you with anything I said about her methods not working out. But oh well, as you want. Also, she doesn't book herself into some show. It's Guy Oseary - "the oh-so hated manager that does everything wrong" - who pushes her to do TV appearances. She couldn't care less about any of that. None of her touring incidents, which received quite some media attention, compare to the impact she has had before in the media. I was referring to her work as a recording artist. It just doesn't work out anymore. It's her usual following that buys her records. She does land headlines while on tour, no doubt about that, but this is in no relation to her statements made with an album. Not a tour. She is a megastar, an icon, from another time. She is the same. But the business has changed. She knows the music business from her days. However, she is out of touch with how things work nowadays. Yet she tries to make it with her old standards and the commercial failure of MDNA and its modest critical reception pretty much prove that. Look at modern day artists: they do sell records. Madonna, being extremely opposed to the internet, held her albums back until 2006 to be released on iTunes. Again it was Oseary who convinced her that this was the right thing to do. I was suggesting you to add paragraphs to your text(s) because it would make them easier to understand. If that makes me rude, I am all for it. It was all for the sake of making your posts easier to follow since they do have substance and a lot of content. However, this is hard to see when it's just sentence after sentence after sentence and one big block of text.

Not really sure how to answer this, too...

I can't even say exactly what it is that you said about Britney because now edited the post. I don't mean to be the pissy Madonna fan that's like "What do you know? " but just for the sake of you understanding the mechanisms and the way she works, I advise you to read a little more about her. Not necessarily the infamous biographies by Carol Clerk or J. R. Taraborrelli, but more critical works such as the biography by Lucy O'Brian which is well-written and the most accurate book in terms of names and numbers you will find to this day. What you said about Madonna and her ability to change, her impact and whatnot, that's all true. But it only applies to the past. She was that. She's not anymore. Her methods don't work out anymore. She's a superstar from another time, literally, and whatever it is that made her an icon, it doesn't keep her on top anymore. In fact, she struggles with being an artist in the 21st century. The internet makes it impossible for her to pick up on underground movements to commercialize them. She is now jumping onto the bandwagon because all happens too quickly. She strictly denies to participate in the common celebrity online culture. It's a wonder she joined Instagram and does now post regularly. And may I ask you for something else? Paragraphs. Really, it would make your posts so much more clear and easier to follow. But the way it is now, it's just one big mass of text that I can hardly follow.

I agree with everything except for one thing. And I couldn't disagree more here: dancing. Madonna is a classically trained dancer. She did it all. Ballet, modern dance, jazz dance. She knows what she's doing. She is able to tear a choreography apart into its very essential fragments and judge like a professional, because that's what she is. And it shows. Her dancing is incredible. You've got to see it with your own eyes. Britney, God bless her, is nowhere where Madonna is as a dancer. I have seen her too and don't recall ever seeing somebody dance with this low motivation and grace. Really, I felt embarrassed for her watching what she was doing. The thing is, Britney was a great dancer, but look at her now. And look at Madonna, too: nothing has changed for her. Oh, and she has referred to herself as une artiste at least a billion times in the course of the past decade.

expressed some sort of ironic 'Yeah, yeah...' and expresses an embarrassed grin or something like that. This one you mean?

It would be more surprising to see her inappropriately dressed. She always looks so perfect.

I don't think anything has so far reached iconic status yet. In fact, she has contributed to certain looks' iconography. I know that I'm probably totally annoying with this and the worst nerd ever when it comes to this... but can we please not confuse pretty with iconic? These words really mean something completely different and I literally look like this emoticon whenever I see them twisted around.

I know! The remix was extremely popular at the time, but I don't know how they could come up with the idea of adding it to the album.

Sorry, but how out of place is this "Professional Widow" remix? I have the original version of the album, too.

In the name of this forum's fellow X-Philes, I request: :scu: :fox: Thank you.

I... I... I... drink to that... I guess....

Cute as usual.

if you knew...

____ Last thing I ordered was a bunch of 20x30cm Lana photo prints. For future purposes. Never mind. Wrong thread. For the record: I did not put chemically treated photographs in my mouth.

Sitar... can we make this happen? Would make a Neal and me very happy...

I've even started using it myself... occasionally without even noticing most of the time. Because of her.

That he likes muscular models in tight speedos and stuffed crotches. __________ To quote from your signature:

I'm sorry, but I can't take any conversation seriously when this GIF pops up. I'm too distracted while peeing myself laughing. But yes, it is indeed an interesting conversation.

Something that really annoys me about her is the permanent overuse of the word 'like' as conjunction in a sentence. Whenever I hear an interview, I always wonder... can't she like ( ) form a freaking sentence without 'like' when she thinks about what she's going to say next?

Nah, why should this make you stupid? There are so many different forms of synaesthesia. There are the craziest forms you could never dream of. Some people even have synaesthesia that includes smells. Can you imagine what it must feel like for them when they see a cheese which is yellow, but it evokes the number four which looks green to them while they see the word 'carrousel' written all over it and smell the scent of old and dry cat food? It's not really the lyrics themselves, but the sequences of sounds that certain words, especially those that she uses a million times, include. The word order, syntax and overall structure of verses and choruses is related to it, but it all comes down to the difference phone(me) sequences in words and word groups. I think she has this unconscious way of choosing certain words because they make synaesthetic visual sense to her. Maybe not the same perception I have, but she certainly has one. All the other creative decisions she makes, be it the sonical production and visuals such as artwork, looks, videos or performances... they are all intertwined. I bet that she'd pass a synaesthesia test with an average percentage of 95 to 98%.

She's basically using the same words all over again on this record. I could go into a phonetic analysis of the phones those words incorporate but I'll make it simple: the sequence of vowels and consonants, especially the diphthong phones, play into warm colors such as gold, silver, yellow, orange, beige, brown... but all with a heavy gold wash. What kills me is that "Gods and Monsters" in terms of phonetic content looks and sounds rather steel-blue to me and it kills me since it doesn't fit at all. Lana always referred to her songs as a capturing of moments, atmospheres, landscapes and feelings - they are united in lyrical and sonical ( ) architecture. Therefore, I guess, she uses the same words all over again on Paradise. But it doesn't really bother me since they pretty much translate to one consistent imagery in my head. I know it sounds crazy, and sometimes synaesthesia can really be a burden, but with Lana it's a pleasure to experience the music this way. I think she has some strong synaesthetic tendencies herself, although she may not know about it. The overlapping and blending of sense perceptions (which synaesthesia basically is) is individual for every person, but there certainly is a(n unconscious) structure behind everything she does. It's hard to explain because... gosh, it's just that way. I can't explain it or control it...

Marina and The Cancellations - "E.V.O.L."