I heard it all before
The new Madonna video is out.
Enh.
The Kylie hair is pretty flattering, actually. But it’s Kylie hair. That’s not a slam on Kylie (who didn’t really invent it herself, anyway). We love Kylie. But Madonna is not Kylie. Sure, she’s done revivals and rip-offs before, but she always seemed to be enjoying herself, and they served some kind of expressive point. Remaking the “Fever” video minus the metallic body paint? No point to that that I can see. And kind of grim actually.
Oh, and speaking of which–one more thing.
Mads? Listening? Here it is:
UNCLENCH.
YOUR.
JAW.
Seriously, it can’t be just whatever your aesthetic-body-maintenance people are doing, unless they’ve gone and wired your mouth shut. Part of it’s age, probably, but most of it is clearly posture and attitude. Your lips no longer look pliant and inviting, so your trademark brazen stare has no tease to it. It just looks scary. I mean, scary-scary, not thrilling-scary.
Seriously, have you relaxed a single muscle–at all, ever–since the obstetrician dilated you so you could pass that last kid? Girlfriend, you have enough money to finance ten Methuselah-length lifetimes. You’ve been the most famous woman on the planet for the better part of two decades. Rock critics capitulated to you as far back as Like a Prayer. Contemporary music videos, for both better and worse, would be inconceivable without you. You used to be an overachiever because you had a million ideas; now you work hard to make videos for disco songs that show people, you know, dancing around. A real flight of imagination, that.
Let’s just hope you come up with something better for “Jump,” which is supposed to be the third single, yeah? It’s the best song on the album and doesn’t deserve the see-me-do-Dance-Dance-Revolution-with-a-bunch-of-teenagers treatment.
“Bitter! Party of one?”
I read a comment somewhere saying something to the effect of “it’s a crying shame that Michael Jackson and Madonna still have careers, and I blame foreigners and gay guys, respectively”.;-)
Who am I to talk? My current favorite female vocalist is the lead singer for Sugarland.
This is the exact same video as “Hung Up.” Same dancers even. Speaking of which, I wonder what those guys are thinking when Madonna gets all up in their faces like that.
Michael, I only get angry because I care so much.
John, yeah, fine, I’m an enabler. Despite my residence abroad, however, I want to make plain that I’m in no way responsible for propping up Michael Jackson.
Alan, they’re probably thinking, The casting director said we’d get a little extra if we made the old bag look like a still-magnetic sexpot.
Sequences of videos can work sometimes. I thought when the Eurythmics did it for Savage, it was pretty cool. But they weren’t, as you say, the exact same. Also, didn’t we see the people-partying-with-Madge-in-a-big-luxury-vehicle routine for “Music”?
That was different – cowboy hats are so not disco.
At any rate, I think this video is kind of embarassing – for its viewers to watch, and for M to perform. I don’t want to seem to be waffling on my position here, but honestly — Who does she think she is? (Okay, don’t answer that) Oh well, at least it has eye candy.
I know it does. Normally, concentrating on that would be the easiest thing in the world : ), but in this case, I still can’t get past the whole “Sorry I Hung Up” vibe. A real shame.