After last nights embarrassing, monstrous and catastrophic Madonna spoof on HBO - this is for those in need of a real star with real performance showmanship. No incessant talking, self congratulatory amateur inflated blow hole shyt - just singing, dancing, energy, strength, endurance, an eye for detail, sets, lights and just complete fabulousness. The template for touring. This is how it's done. This is how a true performer commands the stage.
The Real Deal.
this is what gaga and aguilera copied, right? :)
ReplyDeleteAMAZING INTRO!!
brilliant. that nastiness called gaga can only dream.
ReplyDeleteBless you, child!
ReplyDeleteThat goes for you too, Pud-child.
ReplyDeleteMy forever favorite Blond Ambition.
ReplyDeleteI was at gaga's concert last summer at MSG. I was expecting to see something great. It was boring. Her HBO concert was even worse she wouldn't shut up!
ReplyDeleteI saw the Monster Ball at MSG on the first round. It was in need of a good director - very inconsistent.
ReplyDeleteI like the self-proclaimed mother monster, but she's not going anywhere forward if she keeps on blatant and simply impersonating Madonna from her themes to her creativity style. Plus, she desperately needs to find her very own Susan so that she can build a personality of her own. Her latest songs are so Madonnasy!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, while searching the Internet I discovered your blog some weeks ago and it has blown me away ever since! There aren't as many good blogs as yours that talks about our star with so much vigor and passion. Love it! Keep on going :)
Summed up perfectly. Mwah.
ReplyDeletePUD...sorry to say but Gaga's concert rocked. What an amazing message she gave. I actually have a new fondness for her again.
ReplyDeleteMadonna and Gaga are two diff artists... with some similarities. Gaga obviously is inspired by Madonna, but so are many other artist out there now.
I think you/we despise Gaga b/c we wish Madonna was doing what Gaga is doing now, being creative. Madonna has been a bit of a bore the last decade. Hopefully Madonna will get her creative juices going again, now that she is single she will find her true self again and rock the world.
Gaga's concert reminds me of Girlie Show a bit...and it was so fun! Hate to admit it. :P
xoxo
http://themadgestycollection.blogspot.com/
What was Confessions, both album and tour, all about if not creativty?! Madonna rocked the decade and she's just 2 years away the spotlight - exactly the time someone we know came basking in it. Wait till she releases her new stuff!
ReplyDelete@João
ReplyDeleteI hope you are right. Actually I know you are right! M will kick ass soon enough...
Waiting patiently.
http://themadgestycollection.blogspot.com/
To be fair, that Madonna performance was 8 years into her career and a high point that hasn't been repeated very often since. Even here in her prime her live singing is, well, horrible. She sounds like she's been kicked in the stomach right before she went on stage. So yes, she's got every other element right, but isn't being able to sing mostly in tune a huge part of the point of being a singer? It's Madonna's one failing as a live performer and a glaring one. So Gaga isn't as pretty and can't dance as well, but she can certainly wail on that piano and in that regard, she makes Madonna's musical performance talent seem very small indeed. Gaga thrills with her live vocals, Madonna makes people wince.
ReplyDeleteIn the end I enjoy both of them for their strengths and don't see why Madonna fans have to respond to every Gaga move with "well look at Madonna doing such and such." Madonna has the better catalog, beauty (albeit fading), dancing prowess, and undeniable star quality that allows her to transcend her limitations. In short, God divides, and no one star has everything. So that's why we should enjoy both Madonna and LG for the unique contributions they bring to pop music.
To be fair, Gaga's message is NULL VOID, considering she isn't being ANYTHING she was born as: Rich, well off, a socialite who went to school with paris hilton, a girl with tons of friends who dressed regular like everyone else as witnessed on her MTV boiling points clip. She is a guidette from Jersey who got lucky.
ReplyDeleteShe is a terrible entertainer with a fake message leeching from a ton of people with low self esteem and no self-worth.
Terrible in every sense of the word.
and LOL@anyone who thinks Madonna has a terrible live voice.
ReplyDeleteGo youtube a recent Whitney or Mariah live clip and then watch Madonna recently perform 'You must love me' or 'lament'. her voice has only gotten better over the years.
lol again. too funny. :)
Damn some of u M fans are so off!!
ReplyDeleteGaga has no substance!
Reality check!
GAGA CACA copies she doesn't pay homage she's delusional. She'll make concept boards based of stuff that has been done and live them out thinking no one will catch on?? Puh-leazee! she and her team obviously has studied every Madonna move from how she speaks in interviews to her whole body of work from over 3 decades!!!
It's also a different time she reaches the younger audience with all the new ways of medium so her beloved monsters are easily fooled but they are hungry for a version of madonna for their generation. Gaga will never be sexy will never be able to capture Madonnas allure and raw beauty. Madonna was always sexy! gaga can't do sexy. Gaga was a privileged upper class kid who wanted to be cool. can't force it sorry. Put a 25 year old Madonna or heck even now next to gaga she still sparks an outshines Caca.
I'd say Caca is very driven but it comes from insincere place. Her only interesting work thats talked about is when she takes from M direct.
She also takes from more obvious people, look up Daphne Guinness she was doing all the looks Gaga was doing when Gaga was wearing her Abercrombie in HS!
Gaga can sing? ok well to each their own i think she tries to hard to sing and remeber Mariah Carrey and Whitney and many others in the past can " sing" She plays piano? Ok so did Debbie Gibson. Id still see madonna live any day over them
Madonna is all around star with substance and she struggled she fought she pioneered and is still doing it with INTELLIGENCE! Smart! That being said I think there is a lot of good believe it or not from the Madonna/gaga comparisons it's kept Madonna in media without doing any new material. Can u listen to some of gagas songs at the gym or passing or watch for sec?? yes maybe.,but it's not settling !! you feel guilty cause u know it's off! right now she has Madonna fans watching her cause she's stealing but once she stops as I hope she's learned to stopn enough! she will be in the MEH pile of other pop dumb artists of her gen! Tell Christina hi.
end of the day when you see the queen m no matter what everyone bows cause at the end of day even gaga is an obsessed fan.
Only one M! Thanks CACA for reminding us that even if you often imitate you can NEVER duplicate!
Thank the powers that be that we grew up with the original!
PUD thank you for keeping all us in check and I totally respect that you remind us! I think gaga should pay a charity of Madonnas choice with all her money she made off her concepts!
Everyone has an opinion, and rightfully so, but as long as you have two eyes and two ears you cannot tell me that you are oblivious to the fact that Gaga can't dance to save her life and her show looked cheap and amateurish. Her music is weak with the exception of the few tracks she is known for, and in their live format they sound innocuously weak. She is an insipid mess on stage, and all of the reinforcement I hear about how she can sing and Madonna cannot is lost on me. There is no nuance in her vocal delivery. Her voice is quite ugly to me, and the only way she knows how to express emotion in song is by roaring, as if to keep you form falling asleep. It is terribly aggressive and almost offensive. She also should shut her hole over the lip-syncing because not only has she been guilty of it herself, there is also a very thin line between what she proclaims and the truth behind the curtain. We can all hear your vocal backing tracks Gaga, as well as the three backing vocalists who carry the majority of the tune during your "dance" tracks. That fright wig certainly serves its purpose to conceal your face when you aren't moving your mouth during the choruses.
ReplyDeleteA final note on her performance as I saw it is that her snake oil soapbox nonsense is so grating that it eliminates the potency of any (self-glorifying) message she might put on display to guide her self-pitying fans out of their shame holes. It falls flatter than her pancakes off a piano stool.
Next to Madonna at any stage in her career, her HBO performance is a travesty of epic proportions (yes - this is the correct use of the word for once), and the fact that fans and critics alike seem to be unable to point out the level of mediocrity on display leads me to believe either the said populace has undergone some form of mass sensory depravation, or they have no sense of history or cultural reference before 2008. One thing is for sure. Gaga is more Miley Cyrus than Madonna, but poor Gaga seems so stuck in her Eve Harrington complex that she will likely unravel in a similar fashion. It's quite sad really. She doesn't seem well.
As for Madonna, watch her move in EVERY performance. It is sensual or sexy or aggressive or restrained whenever it is meant to be. Listen to her voice. It might be strained or thin at times, but it always carried the weight of emotion and truth, both in it's simplicity and its complexity until Sticky and Sweet, which was just too grandiose for its own good and removed all humanity from her presence. Regardless of that hiccup, there are seven other world tours, a multitude of smaller performances and countless live television performances, good and bad vocally, that capture the essence that is Madonna. I doubt anyone will be saying that about Lady Gaga in a few years.
By the way, did anyone else notice that her song You and I is a rip-off of Four Non Blondes' What's Up? It was flagrant to me when I heard it live. It would seem she really can't do an original thing to save her life.
Bravo Alexander!
ReplyDeleteI wish the Gaga/Madonna comparisons would stop. They have nothing in common other then a vagina and even that's debatable.
Sometimes i disagree with pud about gaga but this time he is right. Ive watched the Gaga show yesterday on HBO and it was sooo bad ! She talked to the audience for like 1 hour and the rest was singing,what the fuck was that ?. Ive seen her 3 times live,i think she is good and has a lot of talent,but the times i saw her she was different. The show in NYC was so bad,she just shouldnt shut up,it was boring.
ReplyDeleteit's an interesting conversation but now it's just getting a bit dark and sad.
ReplyDeleteOMG The Monster Ball was so bad I was embarrassed for her. The worst part about it was that it was dull. WOW!
ReplyDeleteI saw it live. I found it dull and uninspired. I agree that GAGa is a spoiled rich child who got lucky. She is copying Madonna. Even though, I think GAGa can sing but few care about that anyway. Her show looked very cheap and was inconsistent. What will the press never her live down? Will she forever have the material girl equivalent used as a moniker? Will she even be that relevant?
ReplyDeleteseriously i'm so BOOOORED with all this gaga message thing! gaga is always talking about message, message, message, message, message, blah blah blah blah blah.....ENOUGH GIRL!
ReplyDeleteM is my Queen, and will always be...
ReplyDeleteIt's sort of paradoxical, I find, all this anti-Gaga talk coming from M's fans! In the past, at every stage of her career, M has received exactly these very destructive commments now targeted against Gaga. Scapegoat in turn, maybe?
Isn't M all about embracing each unique individual for who and what they are?
I didn't watch the HBO show, but did see Gaga live last year -- without knowing much about her, or her music. And yet I was VERY positively impressed at the great talents she brings with her.
jprouse, kudos when you say, let's "enjoy both of them for their strengths". I'm with you too when you point out that "no one star has everything. So... enjoy both Madonna and LG for the unique contributions they bring".
Ultimately, M, LG, YOU and I were all "born a certain way", or weren't WE?
Let's remember, indeed, that everybody is a star! Including Gaga and you too. Aren't W.E.? ;-)
Regardless of who she 'copies' or 'imitates' or whatever messages she's trying to express, I feel that she's done too much too soon.
ReplyDeleteI feel 'over' Gaga already, I'm not a fan particularly, I like some of her songs and think she's creative in a way that most artists aren't anymore, but I am pretty sick of hearing/seeing her now. The hype is overshadowing everything she does. It is only pop music afterall. It should speak for itself and not need to be oversold to people.
I wish her the best, but she needs to take her foot off the gas a bit and let people digest.
...oh, and yes, I agree that Blond Ambition IS the template for live extravaganzas.
ReplyDeleteThank God Gaga is here to make music exciting again!! It's the same spirit of what Madonna's music had in the 90's!! It's the new generation! Madonna fans (who I happen to have been one since the 80's by the way) need to stop hating on her!! To me, it shows how much influence Gaga has that everybody has an opinion about anything she does! Kind of reminds me how people hated on Madonna back in the day..hmmm??? Gaga will never replace the queen but she's a talent in her own right and she's not trying to replace her. Pop culture is all about influences from different generations combined with their OWN talent!! If people have such a problem with Gaga, don't watch her live shows or listen to her music! sounds pretty simple to me.. =))
ReplyDeleteWtf? Go and do your homework before you further these pathetic comparisons!
ReplyDeleteMadonna was never criticized for being a plagiarist loudly proclaiming her talent and distinction. How ridiculous would it have been if she was wailing on about how True Blue was the greatest collection of pop songs ever written, the new Rumors by Fleetwood Mac, proclaiming Love Makes The World Go Round and Where's The Party to be anthems of a generation. She was criticized because she made certain people uncomfortable! She didn't need to. People tolerated her or loved or hated her because the music spoke for itself, something not one single Gaga song with the exception of Bad Romance has done.
Madonna was truly brave and a visionary. Nothing requires courage in this day and age, and certainly not the self-esteem vomit that Gaga's message holds. I have a feeling that most of the people who are feeling empowered by Gaga's message today will turn into her most vicious detractors some day. They are just a bunch of nasty, spoiled, self-entitled pity magnets and once they realize that a pat on the back doesn't get you very far in life, they will wish they'd
chosen someone to look up to who told them to just get up and get on with it.
ReplyDeleteI just heard gaga's new song, LMAO, another flop on its way =)
ReplyDeleteand LOL at all these Gaga trolls claiming it's time for a new generation, seems like joanne took a shit in your head
@Alexander Christ and Daniel: such anger and hatred... everything Madonna's against! what an homage to our Queen! I'm sure she's proud of such negativity you're displaying... wow!:(
ReplyDeleteI was going to comment on the whole "religious" segment of the Blond Ambition tour and how brilliant it was. After reading the plethora of commentary, I would rather just go to bed. ANOTHER mention of that person and Madonna. snore
ReplyDeleteReading all this just reminds me of my dad watching Madonna on TV in the 80s and dismissing her as "some girl that can't sing who is trying to copy Marilyn Monroe." Madonna fans have officially become grumpy old men. I used to defend Madonna when she was continually accused of ripping people off. Now Madonna fans are doing it to someone else. It makes no sense. Yes I understand that Madonna's thievery was done in a more "nuanced, artistic way blah, blah" but COME ON! Madonna has been successfully sued for plagiarism. As the Reinvention Tour book - oh and Bible - clearly state: there's nothing new under the sun.
ReplyDelete"Madonna fans have officially become grumpy old men"
ReplyDeleteGOLD.
Uh, when Gaga is constantly being referred to as the new Queen of Pop, when most people know she is nothing new or original and rips off everything Madonna has done, of course were gonna mention it: over and over.
ReplyDeleteFAKT.
I usually come to Pud's to see how beautifully he honors The Queen! I love his posts and he truly pays tribute to her.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes me sad is that I assume we are all adults who come and visit his page. If we are adults, it amazes me how evil and vicious we can be.
At the end of the day, your words and evil comments have done nothing to change anything. Madonna's career is as it has always been, people who love Gaga will continue to do so - all of these comments (much like bad reviews) mean nothing.
If Gaga is truly a rip off and not talented and is all the other ugly things you said about her, then her work will speak for itself. If Madonna truly was as ground breaking as everyone has mentioned (and I think she has been) then her work will speak and has spoken for itself. Why we have to be so ugly and mean about it and take it so personal is beyond me.
If you don't like Gaga or Madonna, then don't like them. To be so foul against any of them says more about us then it does about the artists themselves.
The funniest thing about all of this is that neither Madonna nor Gaga could give a shit about anyone of us. Think about that the next time you expend so much energy in hating either one of them.
I happen to like them both but that's because I am a fan of music. I first fell in love with Madonna in January of 1984 on AB and have loved her ever since. I have seen her live 18 times, I attended the premiere of Evita, was in the pit for one of the RIT shows, and I had a close encounter with her in 93 in NYC for Girlie Show. I am a TRUE fan like most of you.
She is The Queen and is special to me...so special that I don't have to put anyone down to prove it.
@jrouse & @Buster: couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeleteI understand some of the recent criticism thrown towards Gaga. I mean, with that recent "fashion" letter she wrote, it's pretty obvious the accolades she's been getting from the media have seriously gone to her head.
That being said though, it doesn't take away from Madonna's accomplishments or who she is. Nor does it take away the fact that Madonna was often criticized, and still is, for "borrowing" from so many other artists, paintings, films, etc. It didn't take away from her accomplishments as an artist, and why should it take away from Gaga's?
Not to mention that this specific performance in this post was from the *1990* Blond Ambition tour...that was...what...21 years ago now? I mean, come on. Has Madonna ever achieved anything as incredible as Blond Ambition, tour-wise, since? Nope, not really. Not to put aside some of her terrific tour accomplishments but if this post is meant to show "how it's done", well, Madonna should take some lessons from her own tour and seriously step up her game after the incredibly underwhelming Sticky and Sweet tour.
Anyhow, I digress. I understand some of the snickering and pettiness, but come on guys and gals, we're adults. Let's act like it, no?
@Buster so eloquently said...=))
ReplyDelete