Madonna's '60s look on the Italian set of her "Turn Up the Radio" music video reminds me strongly of her look 20 years ago with Jean Paul Gaultier and Tony Ward as seen in Italian Moda. I hope the video is as much of a blast as the song is—it really would have been a smarter first single, Super Bowl or no Super Bowl. And you know, it just might be—it's directed by Jonas Akerlund. It's directed by Tom Munro.
Mr. Wifebeater is the hottest PUC I've ever seen
Click here to check out some great video from the set.
Madonna's MDNA Tour has hit Tel Aviv—and it looks fantastic. As does Madonna, beautiful in some outfits that harken to classic Madonna looks (above, you get "Express Yourself" meets Blond Ambition, below, you get her fave strappy bra mixed with Girlie Show):
Courtesy of Delvin
Reports are streaming in from fans saying it's an amazingly complex and perfectly executed tour. Madonna is said to be comfortable and in good voice (first section sounding vocoderriffic, though). I simply can't wait.
I absolutely LOVE the look of this tour. The costumes are amazing, especially the most obviously Gaultier cone-suit. It's distracting how this news report has some live audio and then for other segments just play music over them ("Erotica", for example), but what a juicy chunk of what to expect from The MDNA Tour.
I liked the idea of "Express Yourself" featuring elements of "Born This Way" on The MDNA Tour—gracious. But containing elements of "Born This Way" and "She's Not Me"? Not so gracious. If she were acting out against the media for conflating Gaga with Madonna, that's one thing. But making a statement with a song about a copycat boyfriend-stealer is another and feels like she's stooping.
Love all the photos...great looks for this tour. I haven't thought, "Wow, great looks!" from early Madonna tour shots in forever.
Please don't comment that it's bad to compare the two. Bad is the new good.
I've long been a Kylie Minogue critic, but before I was that, I was a Kylie Minogue fan—I loved "I Should Be So Lucky" and in the same way I have to rank Madonna's first album among her best, just in general never quite got over the bubbly fun that was 1988's Kylie. I loved her early '90s house phase, when I was young and "going out dancing" (whatever that means anymore), but eventually became so turned off by what seemed to be blatant Madonna knock-offs (Kylie became a human impostor fragrance to me) that I never allowed myself to get into her clubby masterpieces of the past decade.
I've already said any conversation about Kylie must begin with an acknowledgment that she's visited the Madonna well too many times—even pop-cultural cat burglar Madonna knows better than to return to the same house night after night—but in seeing her first-ever North American tour last night at Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom, I've come away with some other preconditions to any Kylie discussion: Yes, there's nothing style-wise or form-wise that Madonna didn't do first and better, but there are major differences between the two, both in attitude and, more importantly, musically.
It must be okay to like both, right? After all, Kylie gamely did the rap from "Vogue."
So diva-on-diva grudge matches aside, how was the show?
I got there at 7:30. No need to be there early since she's not my favorite, right? But the doors, which were supposed to open at 7:00, didn't until more like 7:40, so I found myself in a ridiculous, doubled-up line. My Kylie companion, Anthony, showed up just as I got to the front door and we found good seats in the mezzanine that managed not to be directly behind some nearby hulking steroid queens dancing giddily if out of sync with the music.
Before the show, Madonna's "Celebration" played. Nobody booed. Then Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York." Clever, this Kylie.
I don't watch concerts on DVD (not even Madonna's...most of my copies of her tours are sealed), so I wouldn't know, but I'd been told that Kylie's North American show has been put together using all the best bits from her previous tours as a way to help America catch up with the fact that "I Should Be So Lucky" wasn't her most recent hit. The gambit works, resulting in a (nearly) non-stop entertainment-fest with very little to criticize.
