all about Madonna

Hung Up video is now at number 9 on MTV TRL.
source : madonnanation/pieldemiel

Madonna was interviewed for Brasilian TV Show Fantastico. Visit Madonna Express to download this interview.

Madonna has defended her interest in the mystical Jewish teachings of Kabbalah, saying media descriptions of it as a cult make her angry.
In a newspaper interview, the singer put all the attention down to a lack of understanding of the religion.
She told the New York Daily News it seemed it "would be less controversial if I joined the Nazi Party".
Madonna said she could relate to Tom Cruise, whose following of Scientology has attracted many column inches.
"If it makes Tom Cruise happy, I don't care if he prays to turtles," she said. "And I don't think anybody else should."
Directing career?
The newspaper interview with Madonna took place after a Kabbalah guru credited with persuading her to make a trip to Israel in 2004 was arrested for alleged extortion.
Madonna said the Kabbalah was "not hurting anybody" and she found it "very strange" that people questioned her following.
"It frightens people," Madonna said. "So they try to denigrate it or trivialise it so that it makes more sense.
"'What do you mean you study the Torah if you're not Jewish?' 'What do you mean you pray to God and wear sexy clothes? We don't understand this.'"
According to the Daily News, Madonna also said she was not interested in acting in films anymore but did add she wanted to follow in the footsteps of her husband Guy Ritchie by taking up directing.
source : bbc

Click here or on the image bellow to download this interview.

Thanks to SoF*ckable

Madonna shouldn't expect any dinner invites from Sharon Osbourne. The rocker's wife named the Kabbalah devotee as one of three "nightmare" dinner guests.
"I would like to punch her," Osbourne told British GQ in an article due to come out shortly, according to UK reports. "She is so full of [bleep]. She's into Kabbalah one minute, she's a Catholic the next. She'll be a Hindu soon, no doubt." Osbourne's other "nightmare" dinner guests included Mick Jagger and Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music.
Osbourne, who is no stranger to the plastic surgeon's knife herself, also had some surprisingly harsh comments for some other stars who've allegedly been nipped and tucked.
Madonna's rep took the high road. "I'd sure love to have dinner with Bryan Ferry and Madonna anytime," spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg told The Scoop. "I think they're two of the most fascinating people I've ever met. Don't know Jagger. And have no idea why Sharon Osbourne finds Madonna loathsome because she has found a form of spirituality which she has studied seriously for ten years and that gives her serenity in her life."
source : msn.com

Singer Alison Goldfrapp has criticised Madonna as unoriginal - because the Music star relies too much on other people to shape her music.
British duo Goldfrapp - composed of Alison and composer Will Gregory - write and perform their own music, and find it hard to comprehend why musicians like Madonna pinch parts of other people's ideas.
Alison says, "She's always got her eye on what everyone's doing and she's always nabbing people, the latest DJ or whatever, to get them to put their thing on her thing, you know.
"I think it's quite clever, but I don't know if that's creative."
source : contactmusic

4 stars (Q Recommendeds)
Madonna's last album was a dud. American Life, released in 2003, was phase three of her electronic renaissance, one that started with Ray of Light (1998) and continued with Music (2000). Belatedly getting down with the trendy dance producers of the day suited her: between them, those two albums sold around 30 million copies.
On American Life, the wheels fell off her disco bandwagon. A rotten Bond theme (containing the immortal line, "Sigmund Freud, analyse this!"), artwork apparently inspired by Frank Spencer and a wishy-washy anti-US stance conspired to produce 5 million sales, a career low. Amazon are currently trading copies for £1.75.
Yet American Life offered prescient words to anoyne calling time on her appeal to a pop audience. "I don't want an easy ride," went the final track. "What I want is to work for it/ Feel the blood and sweat on my fingertips." Madonna, a ruthless careerist from day one, has always known when to come out fighting. Anyone who can sit through a Guy Ritchie premiere with broken bones and three cracked ribs is clearly made of sterner stuff than the rest of us.
Confessions... is her strongest album since Ray of Light. Its relentless drive is marked by an incessant bass drum that doesn't let up for an hour - if your neighbours buy a copy, you'll know about it - and the fact it's mixed like a DJ set: no gaps, no ballads. Mirwais, the producer whose Daft Punk-with-Tourette's sound marked previous albums, is sidelined to a two-track co-write. Stuart Price, "musical director" on recent tours, takes most of the credits. Best known as remixer Jacques Lu Cont, Price favours a pastiche of '80s electro - his last work accompanied a car advert featuring a breakdancing hatchback. But here he takes Madonna somewhere else: the gay nightclub.
Opening "Hung Up" sets the pace, a six-minute mash-up of boogie bassline and ABBA's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)". You can practically smell the amyl nitrate. "Sorry" is catchier; a tune that nudges hi-NRG and a lyric of bloke-done-wrong that's equal parts "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Outta my Hair" and '90s gay club favourite "Short Dick Man". "I Love New York" couldn't be more blatant in its claim to be that city's 3am anthem if it came with an edict from Mayor Bloomberg. Elsewhere, there's Giorgio Moroder basslines, dramatic strings and the sound of marching boots. Thrilling stuff.
It stumbles on "Isaac", which may or may not concern Kabbalah teacher Isaac Friedin and marries chanting to a too-fast tune. "Jump," likewise isn't quite the copper-bottomed pop song it thinks it is. These are minor gripes. Madonna's 12th album proper is up there with her best. Analyse that. Johnny David
source : madonnanation / suedehead

Madonna knows what people are thinking.
She's well aware that plenty of eyes roll, or glaze over, every time she talks about politics or war or her parental duties or, most of all, her spiritual quest through the kabbala. But since she has insisted on addressing these subjects so often - both during interviews and in her music - the media have come to consider the grown-up Madonna to be as "preachy" as the younger one was thought to be "dangerous."
"What do you call 'preachy'?" Madonna asks. "Having an opinion?"
"Guilty as charged!" she then proudly announces.

As Madonna holds forth in her Manhattan hotel room, she's obviously in no mind to go back to playing the party girl of old. She may be here to promote her new CD, "Confessions on a Dance Floor," which returns her to the rousing beats and frothy exuberance of early hits like "Holiday." But she says her motivation for recording such an album wasn't simply to make fun music again, or even to shore up her wobbly recording career.

Instead, it seems, she wanted to, ahem, help mankind.

"It's that old cliché," Madonna explains, "when the world gets you down, you need to be lifted up. Look at the state of the world. People need to be inspired and happy."

It's not the only time in our interview when Madonna serves up a lofty sociopolitical theory for what many might consider a simple musical issue.

Asked why her last CD, "American Life," became the first disappointing seller of her career (barely going gold), she doesn't acknowledge any possible artistic deficit. Instead, she asserts that the cool reception was "because I was critiquing America. We had just gone to war in Iraq, and I was criticizing George Bush's decision. People were saying, 'You're not supporting the troops. 'You don't care.' "Which is bull-. I care a lot. That's why I didn't want it to happen. I said the wrong thing at the wrong time."

Back then, the singer made a very un-Madonna-like move by withdrawing her controversial video for "American Life," which equated Bush with Saddam Hussein. Now she asserts that the only reason she yanked the video was "because I was worried for my children. I saw what happened with the Dixie Chicks. I didn't want people to throw rocks at [my kids] on the way to school."

Not that Madonna's retreat lasted very long. She addresses politics again in her new documentary, "I'm Going to Tell You a Secret," which aired last week on MTV and VH1. Though the film covers some of the zippier moments from 2004's terrific "Re-Invention" tour, it finds Madonna pontificating about the importance of "going against the establishment" and of taking "responsibility for the world around you."

At one point, she even dresses down her makeup man for not being registered to vote.

STILL A REBEL

Originally, the "Secret" documentary was supposed to come out in movie theaters. Though Madonna did shop it at the Cannes Film Festival, she says she was turned off by the fact that, "unless you're Steven Spielberg, distributors take all your DVD rights. When I sold 'Truth or Dare' [her 1991 documentary] to Miramax, I got very little out of it. Just to use a clip of it in my new movie, I had to pay them like $7,000."

"It was thinking outside the box to have it shown on TV," she insists.

The new documentary contrasts tellingly with the old one. In "Truth or Dare," Madonna comes off as a flip and provocative fun-time gal. This time she says things like, "Sometimes fun is overrated."

While "Truth" painted her as an outrageous Lady Madonna, "Secret" reveals her to be a cross between Joan Baez and a singing-dancing Mother Teresa in training.

The media have had a field day with the transformation. Long ago, it become a staple of gossip columns to giggle over the contrast between the sassy young Madonna and the prim children's author.

Madonna, who's now 47, sees no contradiction whatsoever.

"Obviously, my tastes and my priorities have changed," she says. "But I am still asking the question 'Why?' Just because I'm a mother doesn't mean I'm not still a rebel and that I don't want to go in the face of convention and challenge the system. I never wanted to think in a robotic way, and I don't want my children to think that way, either. I think parents should be constantly questioning society."

Some critics, however, assert that Madonna is being reactionary, or even (gasp!) conservative, in her oft-stated refusal to let her kids (Lourdes, 9, and Rocco, 5) watch TV.

"It's not conservative," she says. "It's actually very punk-rock to not watch TV."

But let Madonna talk long enough about pop-culture excess, and she ends up sounding not wildly dissimilar to Pat Robertson. "It's very surface-oriented and of the moment and disposable," she says. "You have to constantly up the ante. [Celebrities] just have to keep getting more extreme to get attention. It's crap. It's scary. We are obviously creating our own demise."

Eeyow! Are things that bad?

"Look at the world we live in," says Madonna, yet again.

In reaction to this excess, the singer has spent more and more time exploring the inner life through her faith. The shift has inspired more hostility toward her than anything in years.

"It would be less controversial if I joined the Nazi Party," Madonna says of the kabbala.

"'What do you mean you study the Torah if you're not Jewish?'" she asks rhetorically. "'What do you mean you pray to God and wear sexy clothes? We don't understand this.' It frightens people. So they try to denigrate it or trivialize it so that it makes more sense.

"I find it very strange that it's so disturbing to people," she continues. "It's not hurting anybody."

On that level, she relates to Tom Cruise, who has taken endless flak for being a Scientologist. "If it makes Tom Cruise happy, I don't care if he prays to turtles," Madonna says. "And I don't think anybody else should."

The accusation that her participation in kabbala makes her part of a cult irks her even more. "We're all in a cult," Madonna says. "In this cult we're not encouraged to ask questions. And if we do ask questions, we aren't going to get a straight answer. The world's in the cult of celebrity. That's the irony of it."

Certainly, Madonna should know a few things about that particular cult, having worked its tenets to a T. The difference, she says, is that "I hope to utilize [fame] to make things better, to help people come to their senses."

Even if we, the benighted, fail to heed Madonna's call, at least she can still get us to pay attention to her more routine controversies. Apparently, she has the ability to stir some up even when she's not trying.

A song on the new album titled "Isaac," which uses Jewish musical motifs, has outraged some kabbalist rabbis. They claim the song is about Isaac (or Yitzhak) Luria, a 16th-century Jewish mystic. "Jewish law forbids the use of the name of the holy rabbi for profit," Rabbi Rafael Cohen, who heads a seminary named after Luria, said in a statement.

Madonna insists that her song is not about Luria at all but about Yitzhak Sinwani, who sings on the track. "They're saying I'm committing a blasphemy, but that's not what the song is about," she says. "What are they doing commenting on pop songs? Don't they have synagogues to pray in?"

The album may provoke some milder criticism for another song: "I Love New York," in which Madonna lionizes this city while singing that "L.A. is for people who sleep/London and Paris, baby, you can keep."

"It's just that feeling of 'God, I love [New York]," Madonna explains. "I'll always have a special fondness for this place, because this is where I learned how to survive. This is where I went to the school of hard knocks, where I found myself. Believe me. I love London and I love Paris. But in that song I don't.

"I'm allowed to be contradictory," she giggles. "And I'm a paradox, you know?"

SNEERS AT FAME

Madonna emphasizes the point in the new song "Let It Will Be." In one moment, she sings about having done whatever it took early in her career to become famous. In the next, she sneers at the culture of fame. "I'm posing the question to everybody: How far are you willing to go?" she says of our collective lust for recognition.

As far as acting goes, Madonna feels she has gone just about far enough. All those who've winced through films like "Body of Evidence" and "Swept Away" will be thrilled to know that Madonna says she's not interested in acting in movies anymore.

"I want to direct," she announces.

Which, of course, may bring on yet another round of shudders from Madonna's many foes. The artist herself acknowledges all the "haters" by closing the album with the danceably dismissive "Like It or Not."

Not least, the song captures Madonna's trademark defiance and unrepentance. It's those enduring attitudes that seem to override all the contradictions of her career. Though Madonna may offer a new song like "How High," in which she wonders if she should go on with her work, in the end it's clearly not a question she takes very seriously.

"I'm not thinking of quitting," she says with a big laugh. "I ain't going nowhere."

source : nydailynews

Madonna made her debut on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart 22 years ago with "Holiday."
This week, she scored her 51st chart entry as "Hung Up," the first track from her November 15 release, "Confessions on a Dance Floor," made a lofty entrance at No. 20. It's the sixth Madonna song to debut in the top 20, and the first since "Ray of Light" beamed onto the list at No. 5 in 1998.
Madonna's highest-ranking debuts to date are:
"Ray of Light," debuted at No. 5 (1998)
"You'll See," No. 8 (1995)
"Frozen," No. 8 (1998)
"Erotica," No. 13 (1992)
"Rescue Me," No. 15 (1991)
"Hung Up," No. 20 (2005)
"Hung Up" is already Madonna's highest-charting single since "Die Another Day" peaked at No. 8 three years ago. Of Madonna's 51 chart entries, 42 have placed in the top 20. If "Hung Up" continues its journey up the Hot 100, it could become the 36th Madonna song to land in the top 10.
"Hung Up" brings two familiar names back to the Hot 100 after an absence of 20 years. Since "Hung Up" is based on ABBA's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)," Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson are included in the songwriting credits. This marks their first appearance on the Hot 100 since 1985, when Murray Head went to No. 3 with Bjorn and Benny's "One Night in Bangkok" (written with Tim Rice), from the musical "Chess."
As songwriters, Ulvaeus and Andersson have a chart span that is now extended to 31 years, dating back to the 1974 debut of ABBA's "Waterloo" on the Hot 100.
It's been a good week for the two male members of ABBA. On October 22, "Waterloo" was named the favorite Eurovision Song Contest winner of all time by viewers of a European TV special celebrating the 50th anniversary of the competition.
source : reuters

"Hung Up" is the fastest rising single in BDS history. The fans have clamored for it and radio stations across Canada have delivered it.
According to Nielsen - Broadcast Data Systems, "Hung Up", the first single from Madonna's forthcoming album "Confessions on a Dance Floor", has reached #1 on Canada's Contemporary Hit Radio Chart in only its second week on the air, making it the fastest rising single since BDS began monitoring Canadian radio airplay in 1995. The track is also Top 5 Hot AC and Top 5 Overall at radio.
"What makes this even more impressive is that this achievement has happened after just 10 1/2 days of airplay. No other song has even come close to this in the last 10 years," said Paul Tuch, Nielsen Entertainment - BDS.
Anticipation for the new Madonna album is building to a feverish pitch and airplay is exploding all around the world. The single has already reached #2 on the European airplay charts as well as #8 in Japan and #8 in Germany. The video for "Hung Up" is scheduled to debut around the world tomorrow, October 27.
"Hung Up" also dominated the digital world this week debuting at #1 on Canada's Digital Download chart which monitors legal downloads of music.
source : dominicantoday

Whoever said size matters obviously never met Madonna.
In person, the most durable and deconstructed pop icon of the past two decades is a wee slip of a thing. The face that launched a thousand trends is delicately featured, the yoga-toned frame so slight that you wonder how Madonna could have emerged intact after tumbling off a horse in August, on her 47th birthday.

The singer did break four ribs, her clavicle and bones in a hand and shoulder as a result of that accident, which took place at the estate she shares with her husband, filmmaker Guy Ritchie, and two children, 9-year-old Lourdes and 5-year-old Rocco, in the English countryside. But nine weeks later, Madonna is cast-free.

"I feel good," she says, perching daintily on a sofa. "But then I try to exercise or do something, and I realize that my bones aren't completely together yet."

The woman who coined the term "blond ambition" is not, however, going to let a few aches and pains interfere with her work. Madonna is in town to promote Confessions on a Dance Floor, her first album since 2003's American Life, which arrives Nov. 15. The first single, Hung Up" a thumping, shimmering confection that samples the ABBA hit Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" was introduced last week on MTV's Total Request Live and will be featured on crossover episodes of CBS' CSI: Miami (Nov. 7) and CSI: NY (Nov. 9).

MTV also premiered Madonna's new documentary, I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, last Friday. The film, which will re-air on the VH1 and Logo Networks, follows the star on and offstage during her 2004Reinvention Tour, juggling concert performances with footage of Madonna clowning around with her dancers and crewmates, and with Ritchie and the kids. There are more serious moments as well, with Madonna reflecting on how her life and views have evolved.

"It's like me keeping a journal, but it's visual," says Madonna, whose recent projects have included a fifth children's book, Lotsa de Casha, and a kiddie clothing line inspired by the "very opinionated" Lourdes. "But I never intended (Secret) to come out at the same time as my record. It took me twice as long to edit as I had expected."

Accentuating the personal

Secret does share with Confessions an unabashedly personal tone. Madonna has described the latter as an unapologetic dance album "about having a good time straight through and non-stop." Dig beneath the buoyant beats and neo-disco arrangements, though, and you'll find wistful undercurrents in both the music and lyrics.

"That's why I called it Confessions on a Dance Floor," Madonna explains. "Most people equate dance music with being fluffy and superficial; it's just about having fun. That's fine, but I can't write 12 songs about nothing. My feelings or point of view inevitably sneaks in."

Like 1998's Ray of Light, the first album Madonna released after becoming a mother, Confessions juggles state-of-the-art production " Madonna co-wrote and produced the songs with Stuart Price, musical director for her past two tours, with additional help from American Life producer Mirwais Ahmadzai (also Madonna's collaborator on 2000's Music) and others " with age-old spiritual questions, albeit filtered through a modern star's perspective. "Should I carry on? Will it matter when I'm gone?" she asks on the introspective How High.

"I'm constantly trying to figure out what my place in the world is," she says. "That search was obviously instigated by the birth of my daughter. In my film, I talk about how I woke up one day and thought, 'my God, I'm about to have a baby; how am I going to teach my child what the meaning of life is when I don't know myself?' If she asks why she's here and who is God or why are people suffering, I want to have answers. And I want to ask those questions, too."

One song, the Middle Eastern-flavored Isaac, has already generated controversy in the print press and online. "Jewish mystics to Madonna: Lay off our sage!," screamed one headline, a reference to certain Israelis' outrage over the singer's supposed decision to allude to that movement's founder, 16th-century mystic Isaac Luria.

But Madonna claims Isaac was actually named after Yitzhak Sinwani, a Yemeni singer who appears on the track. "The album isn't even out, so how could Jewish scholars in Israel know what my song is about? I don't know enough about Isaac Luria to write a song, though I've learned a bit in my studies.

"But I've never heard that it's blasphemous for anyone to mention the names of catalysts. That's just a religious organization claiming ownership of something. 'This is our information; you're not Jewish and you can't know about it,' or, 'You're female and you can't know about it.' That's religious thinking ."

Religion vs. spirituality

Madonna, whose Catholic upbringing also continues to inform her work, is keen to distinguish such thinking from the kind of reflection that drew her to the Kaballah. "I like to draw a line between religion and spirituality. For me, the idea of God, or the idea of spirit, has nothing to do with religion. Religion is about separating people, and I don't think that was ever the Creator's intention. That's just people's need to belong to a group and feel good about themselves.

"Just about every war that's ever been started has been started in the name of God. It's, 'I belong to this group; my group's better than your group, so if you're not in this group, we're going to kill you.' For me, religious thinking is synonymous with tribalism. You're not thinking for yourself; you're doing things because that's what somebody else did, orit's how your family taught you to behave and think."

With her own family, Madonna says, she encourages a more inclusive approach to spiritual education. "Because I study Kaballah, my children are exposed to it. We go to a Torah reading every Saturday morning. And my daughter goes to spirituality-for-kids classes. But it's non-denominational; there are kids who are Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, whatever."

Lourdes and Rocco also seem to have absorbed their mother's love of dance, though with very different results. Madonna's daughter has been taking ballet lessons since she was 4. "I didn't start till I was 12, which in the world of ballet is late, and I moved from ballet into modern and jazz. (Lourdes) has more of a ballerina's body, with these beautiful ballerina's feet.

"No lessons for my son, though. His style is sort of street. If I ask him to dance for me, he never will, but if there's music on in the playroom, he'll dance by himself. I have to sneak up on him. He loves R&B and hip-hop, and he dances that way. It's very funny. I don't know where he got it from " I mean, he goes to the Lycee (Francais School) in London. But I think things like dancing, and what you're drawn to musically, are instinctual."

During the school year, Madonna, her children and Ritchie are based in London. "We go to the country house on weekends, or in the summer," she says. "I'm a city girl. If I hadn't married Guy, I'm sure I wouldn't have grown to appreciate the beauty of the countryside. There's an idyllic peacefulness there you couldn't find anywhere else. Now I can tolerate being in the city because I have a place to escape to, where I can leave the door open and my children can run outside. It's the one place I can feel like everybody else."

Well, almost like everybody else. Of reports that she doesn't allow Lourdes and Rocco to watch TV, Madonna first says, "I was raised without television. They watch films, and my daughter always has her nose in a book. I don't get the sense that they feel deprived. I don't know why that's shocking."

But Madonna also admits she is concerned about the impact too much contemporary pop culture could have on her offspring in particular. "TV is horrifying," she says. "Everything is so celebrity-obsessed, and I'm a celebrity. Why confuse my children with that?"

As things stand, of course, Madonna's kids "get photographed everywhere they go. There are so many more paparazzi now. Because of the Internet, there are all these new agencies. It's created a whole new line of work for people, where you've got to follow people to the end of the earth and climb fences."

Survival tactics

Such comments may seem ironic coming from someone whose rise and continuing fame have been credited at least in part to masterful marketing, and who is widely considered the first superstar made by, of and for the video age. And Madonna doesn't want to bite the hand that has fed her.

"As you go on making records, everyone keeps predicting your demise," she says. "It almost seems like they want you to fail. You have to find a way to be creative and have the freedom to do what you want to do, while also being aware of what the market demands and what people like. It's a fine line to walk, and there's a lot of competition."

Certainly, Madonna's imitators and inheritors are legion, from teen upstarts to Britney Spears to 36-year-old Gwen Stefani, whose solo album featured virtual homages to her obvious idol. "She ripped me off, so we mutually agreed that I could rip her off," Madonna quips of Stefani. "We work with a lot of the same people. She married a Brit, she's got blond hair and she likes fashion. But I don't mind. I think she's very sweet and really talented."

Besides, Madonna still has a few role models of her own. She continues to feel a strong connection to the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. "Her work was very confessional, and told you a lot about what was going on in her life. But you never knew exactly what was true and what was false and what she was overdramatizing. She was creating a myth about herself. But she used it as an educational tool for herself and, I think, for other people.

"That's how I think of my work. I do self-portraits. People put me into all different categories: I'm a material girl, a sex goddess, a mother, spiritual. But I love contradiction. There's always a mystery, always a whole other life going on."

source : usatoday

By now, most of the civilized world knows Madonna has a new album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, coming out Nov. 15. Her new documentary, I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, has already aired on MTV and is scheduled for rebroadcasts on VH1 and Logo. Her fifth children's book, Lotsa de Casha, came out in June.
But one of her diversified endeavors flies relatively under the radar. Her clothing line in sizes 2T to 13, based on her best-selling 2003 children's book, The English Roses, is just a year old and sold at retailers such as Neiman Marcus and at englishrosescollecton.com.
Many designs feature red rose motifs. Prices range from $19 for a polka dot umbrella to $175 for a long velvet coat with embroidered flowers and jeweled buttons.
The collection also offers jewelry (including a charm bracelet, $14), a musical jewelry box with a rotating dancer ($18), dolls ($25-$85) and tea sets ($30).
Daughter Lourdes, 9, "always gives me her input," says Madonna via e-mail. "(I ask) would she wear it? With what accessories? Are there any other colour options, etc. She is very influential."
New is a rainwear collection. "It rains a lot in London, so we have to take this into consideration, for an English Rose cannot get her fabulous new outfits wet, can she?"
Is a boy's line next?
"Probably not," she says. "My son (Rocco, 5) wears the same T-shirt and jeans every day."
source : usatoday

Click here to vote for Hung Up video on TRL.

source : madonna.com

Visit VH-1.com to watch Hung Up video. Video Captures will be available in gallery soon.

Click here or on the image bellow to download this interview.

...The Hot 100's top debut is a big one for Madonna, as "Hung Up" bows at No. 20. It's her 51st chart entry and the sixth Madonna song to debut in the top 20...
source : billboard.com

Pop superstar Madonna is amazed her father has struck up a friendship with Michael Moore, because he is a firm supporter of US President George W Bush.
Republican Tony Ciccone, who lives near Moore's Michigan home, first befriended the Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary-maker when Madonna asked him to deliver a case of his wine to mark staunch Democrat Moore's birthday.
The 47-year-old singer says, "Here's the irony of all ironies: he's now really good friends with Michael Moore.
"They live near each other in northern Michigan, where my father has his vineyards, and several things happened.
"It was Michael's birthday, and I wanted to send him a gift. I said, 'Dad, would you drive over a case of your wine? Can you do that for me?'
"He put a whole basket together with pasta and a sausage, and he and my stepmother went bearing gifts."
And Madonna was astonished to receive a phone call from her father expressing his admiration for Moore: "He called me later and casually said, 'Oh yeah, we stayed and had a cup of tea.
"He's so nice, we really liked him.' I'm like, 'You are kidding me Dad!"
source : contactmusic

Madonna has promised patient Australian fans her next world tour will come Down Under.
The superstar's last two tours (2001's Drowned World and 2004's Re-Invention tour) have both bypassed Australia. Her last visit was 12 years ago for 1993's Girlie tour.
"I had a really great time last time I was in Australia, but I know it was a long time ago," Madonna, 47, said in London yesterday.
"It's just that Australia is so far away and for the last two tours I had to cram everything into my children's summer vacations. But I really don't want to pass Australia by next time."
Madonna, who has sold four million records in Australia and 200 million worldwide, is planning a world tour for 2006, once again around daughter Lola, 9, and four-year-old son Rocco's schooling.
The club-oriented tour would be "about discotheques and disco balls", she said, and came on the back of her return-to-dance album Confessions on a Dance Floor, sequenced without gaps between tracks to simulate a DJ set.
The album will be released on November 14.
Tour dates are reportedly already locked in for Japan.
"If I go to Japan I'll go to Australia, I promise!" Madonna said.
Confessions on a Dance Floor follows American Life, the lowest-selling album of Madonna's career.
Meanwhile, Channel 10 is in talks to screen Madonna's new documentary I'm Gonna Tell You A Secret in Australia later this year.
The film discusses her devotion to Kabbalah and her marriage to film director Guy Ritchie.
"Marriage is challenging but that's what I want," Madonna said.
"Marriage isn't easy, but I don't want easy."
source : thecouriermail.news.com.au

Ladies and gents, it's Stuart Price! He's the technical wizard who's been producing Madge's new album, 'Confessions On A Dancefloor', and knock us down with a feather if he didn't call us up for a chat the other day!
Aside from spilling the beans about Madge, he told us all about his favourite tracks on the album, one of which he had nothing to do with and the other of which he had plenty to do with. Over to you, Stuart!
'The last track, 'Like It Or Not', is my favourite of the songs I had nothing to do with. I like it because, as the title suggests, you can't sit on the fence about it. It's a pretty honest statement from her and one of the good things about the new record is she's not complaining about anything. This song is someone baring their soul and saying: 'You've just listened to what I do and this is who I am.' It's a good sentiment to end a record on. Musically, the reason I like it is because it sounds like an old folk Pentangle record with that acoustic guitar. It could've almost been in 'A Mighty Wind'!
'My favourite out of the ones I produced, aside from 'Hung Up,' is 'Forbidden Love'. The whole album was done in my flat and mixed by someone in a commercial studio but 'Forbidden Love' wasn't. It was started in the loft and we finished it and mixed it there. It was really home-baked! That one will always be special for me.'
Aw! Isn't he sweet!

Madonna Myth 1: She's a religious nutter!
'That's absolutely false. I'd just describe her as an extreme intellectual. The girl has got far too much going on in her head to be passive to religion and spirituality. She's always looking for answers, she's a big questioner of life.
I'm not surprised people call her a religious nut, but actually she'd be the first to say that her Kabbalah is not a religion, it's a study. I'd quash all that religious bollocks in a second 'cause I've never got that from her. She's quite pushy, she'll say: 'I think you should read about this because I think it's good for you.' But on a personal level that's her being a friend rather than being a saleswoman.'
Madonna Myth 2: She's past her sell-by date!
'Bollocks! Whatever her age, it's immaterial. When you sit in a room with her working on stuff, she could just be some 18 year old singer. Albeit an 18 year old with a lot of experience! She's got this inherent understanding of dance music and pop music and she more than belies her age.'
Madonna Myth 3: She can't actually sing!
'Also bollocks. The first thing that impressed me about her, when we were in the rehearsal studio before the tour, was how well she could sing. We were doing that song from 'Ray of Light', 'Substitute For Love', and there's no studio trickery. I just thought: 'Bloody hell, she's brilliant.'
Madonna Myth 4: She doesn't really produce her own records!
'All my answers are 'bollocks!' I was hoping there was something I could agree with! She's more like the old school producer. With modern producers, you expect to see them behind computers and keyboards, but the best thing about the way she produces is she never touches anything. She sits there on the couch at the back, pores over everything and tells you where it's going wrong.
I can stay up till three or four in the morning working on a song, thinking that I'm re-inventing the wheel. By 11am I realise it's the biggest pile of bollocks I've ever made, but she can come in and tell you what the good bit is. I think that makes a good producer.'
Madonna Myth 5: She smells of horses!
'I don't think I've ever detected the odour of a horse on her. And it's quite a distinctive smell isn't it? Not that I've hung around that many stables or anything. I've never detected that kind of musky odour on her. I'm sure I found a long horsehair in her jacket once, though.'

Well, we're convinced. Thanks Stuart! What a lovely fella. He knows Madonna, you know!

source : madonnamad/channel4

Picture courtesy of DrownedMadonna.

'Gee, It's nice to get out of the house!" That's what Madonna, wife and mother of two kids, said around 3:30 a.m. Saturday night at the Roxy.
A Column's-eye view of a pop icon's last dance! To say that Madonna is working hard to make her coming "Confessions on a Dance Floor" CD a hit, would be putting it mildly. She has done everything asked of her by Warner Records, and even more - she has cantered down the streets of the city on a horse with David Letterman (her first equine experience since that terrible fall in England [as pictured Friday on Page Six] ). And Saturday night, she put in a surprise appearance at the Roxy [as pictured yesterday in The Post], the famous downtown disco where it began for M more than 20 years ago. The Roxy will close next year.
The star materialized in front of several thousand screaming weekend partyers. Wearing a blue dress that looked transparent under the strong lights, she carried a 12-inch vinyl record of "Confessions" to hand to the DJ. "I can't believe I'm back here after all this time, with 12 inches" she said, deadpan. And then she danced and danced and danced. She pulled stunned and thrilled boys up from the floor and writhed like a teenager herself. (When her new songs "Sorry" and "Hung Up" blasted out, the place went crazy!) She lingered for hours after, chatting informally with everybody who approached. The star left at 4 a.m. looking fresh - looking in fact like the night was only beginning.
Everybody, including Madonna herself, said it was just like the good old days. For a few hours it was.
source : nypost

Rocker Jon Bon Jovi has been criticising Madonna for bringing her children up in the public spotlight.
According to Bon Jovi, Lourdes, 9, and Rocco, 5 are taken to film premieres and routinely feature in magazines such as Heat, which he thinks is unacceptable. "I've been in this industry for 22 years," the singer said. "No one has any idea what my four kids look like. I keep my private life private and I always have."
However, Madonna's spokeswoman says this is not true, saying that "Madonna has never brought her children to a movie premiere. He can rest assured (Madonna's) kids are cherished, adored, well fed, respected and are extremely loved and well protected by their parents."
source : digitalspy

Rumours of a return to Camden Palace by the Queen of Pop have been quashed by the club's new owners.
Marylebone resident Madonna made her first ever live UK performance at the legendary venue in Camden High Street in 1983 and was this week said to be planning a repeat performance.
But a spokeswoman for the club, which has been relaunced as Koko, said: "There is nothing confirmed from this end so don't believe it until there is. Someone in Italy stuck it on a fan website and since then we've been inundated with Italians phoning up asking for tickets.
source : london24

Madonna has made a surprise guest DJ appearance at a New York club to debut songs from her new album 'Confessions On A Dancefloor'.
The star appeared at MisShapes party at the club Luke And Leroy in the West Village on Saturday (October 22).
Madonna did a 30-minute DJ set with her Producer/Remixer Stuart Price, aka Jacques Lu Cont. She was also accompanied by Maverick Records chairman Guy Oseary, her publicist Liz Rosenberg and close pal Lenny Kravitz.
Madonna told the packed crowd via microphone, "You all have to relax and have fun and we're going to play you some really good songs!" which was followed by the small audience's thunderous applause.
Also with Madonna was one of her remixers, DJ Junior Sanchez, who said, "Madonna DJing MisShapes was inevitable, with such a refreshing, young, cutting edge new album, she had to expose it to the most refreshing young night in New York."
As Madonna and Price played records and danced in the DJ booth, Sanchez went on to say, "Getting her to connect with today's and tomorrow's nightlife is where she needs to be because that is where she has always been."
The MisShapes, Geordon Nicol, Leigh Lezark and Greg.k, are as well known for their weekly event and as a DJ team as they are for the myriad of celebrity guests that have chosen to DJ the party.
Those who have spun discs there include Kelly Osbourne, Brandon Flowers of The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp and Dior Homme designer Heidi Slimane.
'Confessions..' is out on November 14.
source : nme

First things first. If Madonna released her "American Life" single and video today, instead of two years ago, it would have been huge.
She was so forward-thinking with her anti-war sentiments and her complaints against excess that the American mainstream is only catching up to her now. Of course, now that most of the country is on the same page that she was, Madonna has jumped to a whole new book entirely.
"Hung Up," the first single from her forthcoming "Confessions on a Dance Floor" (Warner Bros.) album, is pure escapism, a throwback to the late '70s, a time when Americans turned to disco and debauchery to forget about inflation caused by high gas prices and failed foreign policy.
It's catchy, riding a sample from ABBA's "Gimme Gimme Gimme" for nearly the entire song, and it floats by effortlessly, with barely a thought in its airhead, as the chugga-chugga beat pounds on.
The song's success is essentially a sure thing, but the real question will be how many similar-sounding dance acts will Madonna - and her collaborator, Stuart Price, known for his work as nu-disco king Jacques Le Cont - take with her up the charts.
Juliet is a good bet, since Price produced her debut "Random Order" (Virgin). "Random Order" is packed with intricate, dance tracks like "Avalon" and "Ride the Pain," which are more memorable for their beats than her vocals. Cut Copy is another good possibility, since the Aussie trio isn't ashamed to show off its love for the dance stylings of Le Cont and his pals Daft Punk on its debut "Bright Like Neon Love" (Ada).
And maybe with Madonna's help, nu-disco pioneers Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx will finally get the American audience they deserve.
source : newsday

Click here or on the image bellow to download this interview.

Madonna is worried that her secret wasn't juicy enough. When her new documentary, "I'm Going to Tell You A Secret," premiered in New York, she said she was nervous the audience wouldn't like it.
"It was like, 'Oh my God, oh my God, I hope I did the right thing. Oh, that scene is too long. Oh, that's too short. Are they going to get this part? Are they going to like this? Oh, they're going to think it's boring!' Just worrying the whole way, biting my fingernails off," she told ABC News Radio.
The documentary, which aired Friday on MTV, is a behind-the-scenes look at Madonna's "Re-Invention Tour." It follows the pop icon all the way from dancer auditions to rehearsals, a visit to Israel and the final show.
She worked on the film for a year. Despite her nerves, she said she thought the fans and contest winners selected to attend the screening like it. "When I got to the end of it (the screening) ... I could feel that people enjoyed it," she told ABC. "That was a huge relief for me," she says.
source : ap

September 2005 - Top 5 over 30
1. Madonna
2. Jessica Simpson
3. Pamela Anderson
4. Angelina Jolie
5. Eva Longoria
source : google

She's been a movie queen, a dominatrix, a dance floor diva and a political activist but Madonna's latest reinvention may catch some of her more hard core fans off guard.
The Material Girl may be enjoying domestic bliss as a wife and mother, but with a new CD and documentary soon to be released she's ready to tear up the dance floor.
Her latest CD, Confessions on a Dance Floor once again proves that just when you thought she was in danger of slipping out of 'Vogue' Madonna reinvents herself and in the process rejuvenates an entire genre.
This time she's turned dance music on its ear, producing what Madonna describes as a much more personal recording with deeper lyrics. Optimistically hoping fans will think while they dance.
"Generally people don't make dance music that makes you think, but I wanted to do that, to reinvent the whole genre of dance music," she told eTALKDAILY's Ben Mulroney in New York.
Take the album for what it is, she added.
"You can dance or you can psychoanalyze me. It doesn't irritate me when people do that at all."
Confessions is already meeting with positive reviews even before its Nov. 14 release. A newspaper in England called it "an hour of pure electronic dance/pop heaven, with no weak track, and should be hailed as a masterpiece."
The CD follows a classic dance club format, segueing from song to song.
Along with the first single, "Hung Up," the CD includes a sample of Abba's classic "Gimme Gimme," as well as dance-themed cuts "Get Together," "Sorry," "Future Lovers," and "Isaac."
The last track has some Kabbalist rabbis up in arms alleging the song is about a 16th century mystic Yitzhak Luria, whose name they say should not be used for profit.
Madonna's more 'spiritual' self is also seen in her new documentary which premiered in New York this week and will debut on MTV in America.
I'm Going to Tell You a Secret chronicles her 2004 Reinvention Tour and is a far cry from the blatant sexuality and self-involved diva Madonna paraded to the world 12 years ago in 1993's Truth or Dare.
Secret shows Madonna sharing screen time with her musical director, dancers and choreographer, as well as other members of the crew. It also shows rare scenes with her children who travelled with her on tour.
"To me confession means revealing something about yourself, telling the truth, being courageous," she told eTALK.
"I think the nature of the documentary is to go behind the scenes. You have to be willing to tell the truth. If I'm going to make a documentary of life on the road I have to include my family, so I couldn't just leave them out."
In one part, a man tells Madonna, "I don't really believe in God."
"That really hurts me to hear that," Madonna responds.
At the screening in New York Madonna admitted to being nervous. She was worried her film might bore her fans and hoped people would appreciate the changes she's been through.
"It would be kind of tragic and pathetic if I was still the same person," she told ABC News after the film. "I think that while I had some redeeming traits and qualities when I made Truth or Dare, there's a lot about me that I think is kind of selfish and kind of juvenile, and I'm happy to know that I've evolved and moved on."
And Madonna's next move could lead her to the stage. She told eTALK that she would consider writing musical theatre. In fact she wrote 20 songs with theatre in mind, some of which ended up on the new CD.
But when asked if she would take centre stage, she had a different choice in mind.
"Maybe I'll just wait a couple of years and my daughter can do it," she said with a smile.
Asked by Ben what she'd most like to be remembered for, she said with a laugh, "It ain't over yet."
"I think firstly to be able to have a successful career that spans two decades is a blessing, so I'm grateful for that. I'll be remembered for tenacity, I guess."

source : ctv

Check out Drowned Madonna for exclusive scans of Attitude Magazine.

Click here or on the image bellow to download Madonna's appearance on David Letterman's show.

The queen of reinvention has achieved the seemingly impossible yet again. In the footsteps of her least successful album ever, 2003's preachy, melody-breaching "American Life," Madonna returns with a song that will restore faith among her minions, fans of pop music and radio programmers. "Hung Up" is pure distraction: frothy and nonsensical and joyous. With an extravagant sample of ABBA's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)," the song delivers instant familarity, but Stuart Price and Madonna add a chug-along groove and singalong call to arms that build "Hung Up" into its own worthy creation. Yes, Madonna, we still believe in the beat.
source : billboard.com

Madonna got back up on the horse again - with a little help from David Letterman.
The talk show host and Madonna rode horses along 53rd Street in Manhattan on the Late Show, the singer's first ride since being thrown from a horse in England.
The superstar suffered three cracked ribs, a broken collarbone and a broken hand in the August accident.
Letterman, a novice rider himself, traded stories about tumbles.
Madonna explained that she hadn't been back on a horse since her fall "because my record company is not very keen on the idea of me injuring myself".
"I have a bit of excitement tainted with fear," she said before climbing on.
source : ap

Former basketball player Dennis Rodman claims Madonna ordered him to fly from Las Vegas to New York City to impregnate her during their short-lived relationship.
Rodman, who dated the Like A Virgin singer in 1994, was gambling in a Sin City casino when he received an urgent phonecall from his ovulating girlfriend.
He writes in his autobiography I Should Be Dead By Now: "Madonna wanted to have my babies One time I was in Las Vegas at the craps table doing my thing when I got this frantic call.
"It was like the 'somebody died call' from New York. I picked up the phone and Madonna was like, 'I'm ovulating, I'm ovulating. Get your ass up here.'
"So I left my chips on the table, flew five hours to New York and did my thing. We got done and she was standing on her head in an attempt to promote conception - just like any girl trying to get pregnant.
"I flew back to Las Vegas and picked up my game where I left off."
Despite their efforts, Madonna and Rodman never had a child and split after only a few months together. Madonna gave birth to her first child - daughter Lourdes - in 1996 following a fling with personal trainer Carlos Leon.
source : iol.ie

Click here to download interview with Madonna that was broadcasted yesterday.

The All New Interview Special (30 min.) This Sunday, October 23rd - 9pm ET on MuchMoreMusic Plus... Interview Highlights: Tonight on MuchMoreMusic's 'The Loop' beginning @ 6:30pm ET and on http://www.muchmoremusic.com.
MuchMoreMusic presents an all-new primetime profile of multi-award-winning music icon, Madonna - direct from New York - as she prepares to release her upcoming album, 'Confessions On A Dance Floor'.
MuchMoreMusic's own Traci Melchor spoke one-on-one with Madonna in NYC - capturing new insight into the superstar's life, including thoughts on her spiritual evolution, the growth of her relationship with daughter Lourdes, the inspiration behind the new record, and a candid update on the effects of - and recovery from - her recent horseback riding accident.
In addition to the revealing, all-new interview, "Madonna: Confessions", airing Sunday, October 23rd @ 9pm ET will also showcase a peek at her upcoming video "Hung Up", as well as choice clips and context from the extensive CHUM entertainment archive.
On Sunday, November 13th @ 6pm ET, The CHUM Radio Network will present the Exclusive Canadian Radio Premiere of the new album on 'Confessions On A Dancefloor': The Radio Special. In addition to new tracks from the disc, the special will also feature the best of the 104.5 CHUM FM interview with Madonna, by Maie Pauts.
source : newswire.ca

From CBS.com - Tonight's Guests :Madonna, Melissa Etheridge

"I'm not in the mood for a ballad," says Madonna of her first album since 2003. "I can't be bothered - I wanna dance!" Uptempo and bristling with energy, Confessions on a Dancefloor sees the singer, whose musical career began in the predominantly gay club scene of early '80s New York, return to her roots. In this extract from her interview with gay lifestyle magazine Attitude, she talks to Matthew Todd in the tiny home studio in London where the album was recorded. They talk initially about how she came to make the record with British producer Stuart Price, and the problems she had persuading Abba to allow her to sample their 1979 hit Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) for her new single.

Madonna: I had to send my emissary to Stockholm with a letter and the record, begging them and imploring them and telling them how much I worship their music; telling them it was a homage to them, which is all true. And they had to think about it, Benny and Björn; they didn't say yes right away. They never let anyone sample their music. They could have said no. Thank God they didn't."

People would be surprised to see you tucked away in the loft of a small flat in north-west London.

Oh, I love it here, it's very magical. I'll be very sad when Stuart leaves here. I've told him that he has to keep this place because so many great things have happened here. It feels historical to me. We've been to a thousand recording studios in New York, London, LA, everywhere, and you cannot get the same vocal sound anywhere as you get here.

How did you come to work with him?

Well, first he was my musical director on the Drowned World tour [2004]. He was just the keyboard player, but he stepped up after I fired the first one. I'm very fond of him. I love his sensibility; I love his sense of humour. He has impeccable taste in music. He's sort of all over the place musically, and I like that about him. He's capable of doing lots of things. I never planned to make my whole record with him. It was just going to be a few tracks.

The track I Love New York begins with a chunk of lyrics from Love Song [her duet with Prince from 1989's Like a Prayer album] and there are lots of references to your past records. It seems like this album's almost like a retrospective of your whole career. Is that what you were aiming for?

No, I just feel like I can plagiarise myself whenever I feel like it. [Laughs] It's all part of my past, and I'm dragging my past into the present and hopefully into the future.

Let's talk about Live8. You did very well there, didn't you?

I did. It was fun. Although I didn't want to do the show. It was during the only holiday I had with my children. When Bob Geldof started writing me letters, I thought, "Oh no, I just finished recording, and I just finished my film", and I promised my children I'd go to the countryside. They'd just finished school, and they were really mad at me. Bob was like [screeches], "Africa's more important than your children!"

Yeah, he gets like that.

He's really pushy, that guy. I said, "OK, let me think about it", and the next thing, I read in the newspaper that I was doing it, and I hadn't even answered him yet.

I don't regret that I did it; it turned out to be an amazing thing. It's just I don't like to do half-arsed shows, and I didn't have any time to rehearse. Everybody else in the show was on tour already, and they had their bands and were just stopping in to do a song. I had to think, "What am I gonna do?"

But it turned out good. I got all the paparazzi to clap their hands. That was my favourite moment. They were all at the front, and everyone in the park was clapping their hands except them. They were taking pictures and I looked down and said: "You too!"

I know one of the paparazzi, Richard Young, and I said, "Come on, Richard, do it!" and he dropped his camera and the rest of them did.

You broke your collarbone in a riding accident recently, but I've just noticed you haven't got your sling. How are you?

Yeah, I took it off two days ago. My left arm is flapping around like a chicken wing, and I don't have any strength right now.

I wasn't even meant to be riding that horse. It wasn't my horse. It was a gift for my birthday, and someone said try it. So I did, and I was literally on it for a minute and got thrown off. I want to get back on a horse, but my manager has said not until I've done all the promo stuff for the album.

I'm doing the video in the next couple of weeks, it's very exciting. I want this to be all about dance.

How are you going to dance with your damaged collarbone?

Watch me. I'm going to invent some new dance move that doesn't use the bad bits. I'm still a tough girl.

The new film I'm Going to Tell You a Secret [which premières on US MTV tomorrow] is very different from In Bed with Madonna.

How did it come about?

Michael Moore was very instrumental in helping me, even before I began filming. He actually offered to direct it, but he was editing Fahrenheit 9/11. He said, "Can't you delay your tour and do it later?", and I said no.

He said: "I'll be there for you if you want to show me stuff, or want me to help out. But just remember one thing: you write the script in the editing room. Just shoot as much as you can." And we did. We had 350 hours. The hardest thing is to edit.

The thing that seemed to make you cry was the part where you acknowledge that you didn't have time to party with the dancers...

I always become very attached to everyone - not just the dancers and the band, but the tech guys who help me up on the stage - you look into their eyes every night. Anyways, I'm a big cry baby.

This film features Kabbalah quite heavily, which is probably the most controversial thing you've ever been involved with.

Yeah, yeah Strange. People get very upset about the fact that I decided to study a spiritual belief system. It's very strange. I may as well have announced that I've joined the Nazi party.

But isn't it hard for people to understand you studying something that is all about brushing aside superficiality when you're dealing in the most superficial medium there is - pop music, pop culture?

But it's only superficial because the people who make the music don't want to think deeper or have opinions, for the most part. And what I've tried to do is walk that thin line between making something entertaining and also making something that's political and provocative that makes people question things.

But I still think people are going to be cynical because you're seen as the queen of pop culture and you're biting the hand that feeds you...

Yeah, but life is a paradox isn't it? To tell people that, you know, the material world isn't important is upsetting because we've all bought into this idea, and it seems like I'm criticising people.

All I'm saying is that it took me a very long time to grow up and realise how myopic my world was, and I'm just sharing my story. If you're going make a documentary about yourself, you've got to tell the truth. I'm sharing my journey and people get something out of it, great; and if they don't, then that's fine, too.

People always have a problem with celebrities doing things for charity and so on. There's a perception that celebrities do everything for publicity.

I don't understand that. Listen, you know some people think I fell of my horse as a publicity stunt. If you're a celebrity, everything you do is perceived as a way to get attention.

The press has reported that, if any of your friends don't study Kabbalah then you freeze them out [she rolls her eyes]. But that doesn't seem to be the case in the film, with Stuart Price taking the piss at your prayer meetings before the show.

He's always taking the piss. I love Stuart because he always has the opposite point of view. He just pretends he doesn't care. I love his responses when we were in the prayer circle and everyone's being really earnest, and he's smiling at the camera and hamming it up. I considered writing "Typical Brit" on the screen, when he says he doesn't believe in God.

We don't tend to, really.

In a way, it's kind of good that you don't. In America, it seems everyone's a born-again Christian, and in Britain it seems like no one believes in God. I think people here think in a far more analytical way, and they often think religion or God or whatever, is just nonsense, which I think is a healthier attitude than just accepting things without asking questions.

Religion is seen as very uncool.

But that's why it's cool. It's so cool to be uncool. It's subversive to be spiritual! Yes! [Laughs]

It's really nice to see that stuff in the film with your dad

That he's forgiven me Yeah, for a while we did have a strained relationship. I love my dad - even though he did vote for George Bush.

Did he?

Yeah. But here's the irony of all ironies: he's now really good friends with Michael Moore. They live near each other in northern Michigan, where my father has his vineyards, and several things happened. It was Michael's birthday, and I wanted to send him a gift. I said: "Dad, would you drive over a case of your wine? Can you do that for me?" He put a whole basket together with pasta and sausage, and he and my stepmother went bearing gifts.

He called me later and casually said: "Oh, yeah, we stayed and had a cup of tea. He's so nice; we really liked him." I'm like, "You are kidding me, Dad!"

Michael's just started a film festival this year in Michigan, and my dad's involved with the community, and they ended up having the opening function in my father's barn. Then, finally, every time I got a new cut of the film, I would send someone on a plane to show Michael. They'd stay at my dad's house, and he went over to Michael's house, and they all watched it together!

Now they're all friends. I think there's something beautiful about that. [Laughs] My dad knows he made Fahrenheit 9/11, and he was very opposed to it. I love the fact that they're friends now.

I love the part where you mention being photographed naked in a gay porn cinema as something a father can be proud of...

Yes, I think he had a little bit of trouble with that.

Do you regret the Sex book now?

I struggle with it. I go back and forwards. There's a part of me that thinks that, if I hadn't done that, there would have been so much shit I wouldn't have had to take. On the other hand, I don't know - it sort of turned me into a renegade, albeit unwittingly. It certainly made me stronger.

You say in the film that you were "very careless with people's feelings" in those days. That's a bold admission.

It's true. I was really shitty to my boyfriends in the past. I feel horrible for that and I'm not proud of it. I was careless to friends, not everyone, but, you know, sometimes. I went through a period of my life where I was just going forward. It's not like I wasn't capable of acts of generosity, but I was careless.

But you grow up - usually when you suffer. It isn't until you feel pain that you feel the pain you caused other people. Hopefully, you then wake up and say, "That's what it felt like."

There's the line from 1998 - "I had so many lovers who settled for the thrill of basking in my spotlight" - which seems to be you complaining about them, but really that must have been as much your fault...

Sure. I created it. It felt great to have some gorgeous man on my arm, idolising me. I created that for myself. I resented it but asked for it at the same time.

Aren't you naughty?

[Laughs] Yes. I deserve a spanking!

source : telegraph.co.uk

Either you do or you don't believe Madonna's midlife conversion to a more spiritual way of life. If you do, you will be touched by her documentary, "I Am Going to Tell You a Secret." If you don't, you can still savor brilliant concert footage from last year's "Reinvention" tour. The film, directed by Jonas Akerlund, was screened Tuesday night for an audience of dyed-in-the-wool fans. They screamed and applauded throughout. There is intimate and revealing material with her father, her husband, Guy Ritchie, and her two children, Lourdes and Rocco. (Rocco provides rambunctious comedy relief. Lourdes is a soulful beauty.) And while M does quite a bit of "enlightened" proselytizing here, she has not lost her rowdy sense of humor, her pop-star "attitude" or her sense of the ridiculousness of her position " seeking serenity in the world of showbiz. It's the flip side of "Truth or Dare" " the decadent diva of 1990 versus the searching wife and mom of 2005. Fifteen minutes of sharp editing would help, but I'd say the same of "Truth of Dare," too. ("Secret" airs tomorrow night on MTV.)
M, who looks stunning on film and in real life (must be those oxygen facials!) partied joyously after, at the Morgan Hotel " those broken bones have healed! To everyone who approached with a compliment, the star said earnestly, "Did you get it? Did I make my point? I want people to feel better, to be uplifted." She couldn't be more sincere. And I am not in the least surprised. I never quite believed in Madonna the sexual outlaw. Though she freely admits, "I had a good time back then." The good times aren't over, just altered. Life is change.

from TheSun.co.uk : Anyone who thought Madonna might have abdicated as the Queen of Pop can kneel at her throne once more.
I'm the first journo in the world to have heard her new album - and it is an absolute belter. Confessions On A Dance Floor wipes the, er, floor with her critically acclaimed CDs such as Ray Of Light. It is an hour of pure electronic dance/pop heaven. Madonna says: "I want people to jump out of their seats. It's about having a good time straight through and non-stop."
And she's absolutely right about that. There are no gaps between tracks so listening feels like you are having a private DJ session at the Ministry Of Sound. I can't find a weak track, and I'm confident the album will be hailed a masterpiece on its November 14 release.
Click here to read the full "track by track" review.

More pictures are available on Icon.
source : madonna.com

No matter what Madonna does, she courts controversy " and her latest album and documentary are no different.
Confessions on a Dance Floor made news last week when Israeli Kabbalist rabbis declared one of "I'm a big fan of being spiritual.
I'm not a big fan of being religious in [an] elitist way." " Madonna the album's songs to be a "great sin," while the tour documentary "I'm Going to Tell You a Secret" has just started making headlines for some of the religious commentary in it.
"What are you going to do?" Madonna asked in exasperation at the movie's premiere Tuesday night in Manhattan.
The song that has religious leaders up in arms is called "Isaac," which the rabbis said was about the 16th century Jewish mystic Yitzhak Luria, whose name, according to Jewish law, is not to be used for profit. Rabbis Rafael Cohen and Israel Deri told the Israeli newspaper Maariv that Madonna singing a song about Luria was "unacceptable" and that they're asking that she be thrown out of the Kabbalah community.
"The absurd thing is that it's not what they think it is," Madonna said. "It's not a song about Isaac Luria. I don't know anything about Isaac Luria, so I couldn't write a song about him. The song is called 'Isaac' because the man who is singing on it is named Isaac. I think one person saw that name and decided that they were going to go out and say I was doing something blasphemous, and it's just not true."
It is true, though, that religious ideas play a large part in the documentary " they're just not addressed in a shocking way, as the headlines would have you believe.
Yes, she read from the book of Revelations, and yes, her dancers dressed in religious garb and marched down a runway during "American Life" " but that's old news to anyone who saw her Re-Invention Tour (see "Madonna Twirls Rifle, Lifts Up Her Kilt At Tour Opener"). Madonna's glib commentary about priests and nuns shouldn't shock anyone who's seen her videos, but all the attention on those brief moments undermines the larger themes she tried to get across " bridging religions, bringing people together, hoping for peace.
Perhaps her message was most clearly expressed through her cover of John Lennon's "Imagine," which she played each night on the tour. "I think John Lennon was a prophet in so many ways," Madonna said. "It could have been written 100 years ago or 100 years from now, the words still mean the same."
The song doesn't present a message particular to her Kabbalist leanings, she emphasized. "I would make a distinction between spirituality and religion," she said. "To a large degree, religion does separate people, you know: 'This is my group; if you're not in this group, I'm better than you.' And there's a lot of discrimination in the world because of that. I'm a big fan of being spiritual. I'm not a big fan of being religious in that sort of elitist way."
Madonna said spirituality is even more powerful than politics when it comes to changing the world for the better. "Historically, you get rid of one despot, another pops in his place," she said. "You have to get involved in the community around you, and there's a way you can use politics to make a change, but I don't think it's going to change everything."
That's why she went to Israel, she said " an experience that caps the end of the documentary. She was originally supposed to perform there, but the shows were canceled for security reasons. While she was there, she gave a fundraising speech in Tel Aviv for Spirituality for Kids, a group whose goals include bringing Israeli and Palestinian kids together.
"They bring kids in from abused homes and they bring them in with their parents and teach them how to relate to one another and to relate to each other with human dignity," she explained. "My daughter, who attends classes, is learning about her e