all about Madonna

10 Pictures – Madonna going to Kabbalah Center in New York (July 07 2006) – are added to the gallery.

9 Pictures – Madonna performs in Boston during “Confessions” World Tour (TD Bank Garden, Boston, July 06 2006) – are added to the gallery.

Madonna may be pressing the same old ideological buttons, but the Confessions tour is a stunning musical makeover.
The ’80s electropop sound of Madonna’s latest permeates the entire two-hour show, and last night she tore up the TD Banknorth Garden for the first of three Boston appearances.
Emerging from a one-and-a-half-ton disco ball, Madge appeared in riding gear, complete with top hat and crop. A sly grin came over her face as the crowd gave her the iconoclastic embrace that keeps her performing – it’s what gets her off. Thus truly being in her element as the center of attention, she gave us her all in return.
Bondage-noir imagery dominated the show’s first quarter, featuring a fantastic cover of the Donna Summer-Giorgio Moroder classic, “I Feel Love”? between her opener, “Future Lovers”? and latest single, “Get Together.”? Though it’s impossible to tell how much vocal management is going on during the more demanding, theatrical numbers, Madonna sounded rehearsed and on target.
The juxtaposition of her broken-boned X-rays and a video montage of equestrian accidents to soundtrack “Like a Virgin”? isn’t that much of a reach – it’s a contemplation of innocence getting shattered, much the same way bones break.
Madonna spoke to the crowd several times, inviting (and even demanding) us to sing and dance with her. She teased, asked if we loved her – asked if we’d die for her. But moreover she was spirited and friendly; the Confessions show is obviously a blast for her, but it’s also exhausting work.
“Live to Tell”? featured an authoritative and impassioned vocal performance, sang from the rumored cross-and-crown of thorns stage set. The bitchy house vibe of “Sorry”? had the entire floor jumping in a unified mass.
The muted industrial tones of “Like It or Not”? came across with deliciously sassy irreverence, as did “Let it Will Be”? later in the set.
After a series of images that seemed to feature famed liars, (George Dubyah, Condoleezza Rice, Nixon, Chairman Mao, bin Laden), Madonna transformed herself into a punk vixen, strapped on her electric guitar and launched into a raunchy “I Love New York,”? followed by a similarly edgy “Ray of Light.”?
“Music”? got a righteous mash-up with The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno”? and Maddy dressed as Travolta with a white bell-bottomed leisure suit. Her dancers sailed all over the stage on roller skates. “Erotic”? was renewed with an updated, catchy euro-disco pulse, as was “Lucky Star,”? which transcended the original’s teeny-bopping tone.
Madonna closed with “Hung Up,”? her vocally weakest number. But by that point, we’d have forgiven her for just about anything.

Anyone who attended Madonna’s show at the TD Banknorth Garden last night is hereby excused from the cardio portion of their workout today.
When the veteran pop superstar said she wanted her “Confessions Tour” to feel like one big disco, she wasn’t fooling.
For almost the entire, frenzied, two-hour performance, Madonna — whether on her own or backed by some combination of her cadre of spectacular dancers — was in constant motion, and the sold-out crowd of 15,076 got down right along with her.
You can nitpick the music (the set list had imperfections), debate the visual accompaniment — some of her “political” statements felt clunky with the glitzy, booty-shaking atmosphere — and you can gripe about the ticket prices. But never let it be said that anyone works harder onstage than Madonna.
It’s clear that the 47-year-old is enjoying her music and her incredibly toned body — apparently yoga and Pilates really, really work. That joy showed in the performance, which felt more upbeat than those in the past.
She began the night, appropriately, emerging from a giant mirror ball over a runway that ran straight through the center of the arena. Decked out in equestrian gear — the first of seven costumes — she was up to her old tricks in no time as she took a quick ride on one of her burly male dancers for the opener “Future Lovers,” which merged briefly with homegirl Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”
The night’s first big cheer came for “Like a Virgin,” which found Madge writhing atop a saddle. (Disturbing footage of riding accidents — recalling her own — on the large video screens may have been a buzz kill for some. )
And as much as she’s a diva, Madonna also isn’t afraid to let the spotlight occasionally fall elsewhere. She seems to construct her shows for her own entertainment as much as the crowd, and songs like “Jump,” featuring a group of “parkours” — urban jungle gymnasts — jumping, climbing, and running headlong toward a nutty jungle gym contraption were eye-popping.
The politicized portions of the show felt airlifted in from some other much more serious performance. “Live to Tell,” with it’s mammoth disco crucifix, was meant as a paean to survival — complete with dance interpretations of child abuse — and the reprise of “Sorry,” with visual images of flames overlaid on African AIDS orphans, both seemed heartfelt but preachy.
An ecstatic “Ray of Light,” on the other hand, got the blood pumping again, and Madonna may be the only person to ever get a Boston crowd to chant “I Love NY,” as she did during the glam rock version of that song.
An acoustic section was the best vocal showcase as Madonna simply stood still and played guitar on a tender, unadorned version of “Drowned World/Substitute For Love” and the gently computerized “Paradise (But Not For Me).”
The night was brought to its thumping conclusion with the shuddering rhythms of “Hung Up” as Madonna and her dancers alternately jumped, crawled, and threw themselves across every inch of the stage, knowing that this was their last dance.
The second of the three shows on Sunday is also sold out, but tickets for Monday’s show remain.

Well, if you couldn’t tell at the beginning when she descended from the ceiling in a giant glitter ball, the set list of Madonna’s concert (the first of three sold-out shows at the TD BankNorth Garden) confirmed she has, in fact, come back to the hardcore dance music that gave her her start.
Most people who have been around as long as she has are apologetically slipping a couple of songs from their latest album into the set list, but last night’s show included 10 songs from Madonna’s latest, Confessions on a Dance Floor. She applied that record’s mix of early-’80s styles such as house, Eurodisco and early techno to old favorites such as “Like a Virgin” and “La Isla Bonita” as well. The conventional wisdom says 2004’s American Life album was a disappointment, and if you feel the same way, this was a show for you: nothing from that record.
Of course, the experience of a Madonna show isn’t complete without the visuals, choreography and costumes, and here last night’s show topped the American Life tour as well — eventually.
The show began with “Future Lovers,” from Confessions (with a snippet of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” tucked into the middle), and went into the lush house of the new album’s “Get Together.” But Madonna, dressed up in some semblance of riding gear, punctuated the songs with dancing that looked, and felt, more like we were watching her work out. The bumped-up “Like a Virgin” was more of the same — although there was humor at work in the video projections of people falling off horses (recalling Madonna’s recent mishap), her own aerobic writhing in a giant saddle was designed to be marveled at rather than enjoyed.
From there, the jump-cut philosophy that made the American Life show a weird mess took over for a while. Here’s Madonna on a glitter-ball crucifix, complete with crown of thorns, singing “Live to Tell” while the video screen projects statistics on African children orphaned by AIDS. Here she is singing “Isaac” while the singer of the same name who sang on the record holds the melody and a robed dancer flings herself around a cage. Here she’s singing “Jump” while film-student-level clips of urban decay flash behind her. Whatever.
The hinge of the show was “Like It or Not,” another dance thumper but with a shuffle rhythm, which Madonna sang alone, with virtually no projections and nothing on stage but a black wooden chair. The song is a fairly simple declaration of independence, but the lo-tech setting gave her a chance to show sass rather than ice, and for the audience to relate rather than adore.
From there, the dance-floor fillers kept coming, and the accoutrements settled down into being impressive yet coherent recapitulations of the themes and vibes of the songs. Madonna slathered distorto-guitar onto “I Love New York” and “Ray of Light”; her dance moves were purposely ungainly during “Let It Will Be” and her banter with the audience was truly playful before the ballad “Substitute for Love,” which was followed by the lovely, doleful ballad “Paradise (Not for Me),” from 2000’s Music album.
By the time she did a virtual live mashup, singing the words and melody of “Music” while her band played the classic “Disco Inferno,” with Madonna in a white disco suit; aped the James Brown routine of being picked up off the stage and helped into a cape (with “Dancing Queen” on it); gave even more dance thump to “Lucky Star” than the original; and finished by blazing through “Hung Up,” the first single from Confessions, the rout was on. Fun won.

5 HQ Pictures – Madonna’s crew photographed by Rankin for H&M (2006) – are added to the gallery.

Hot 200 Albums :
107 (33) Madonna – I’m Going To Tell You A Secret
141 (135) Madonna – Confessions On A Dancefloor

Billboard Comprehensive Albums :
111 (33) Madonna – I’m Going To Tell You A Secret
155 (149) Madonna – Confessions On A Dancefloor

Hot 100 Singles Sales :
05 (05) Madonna – Get Together
15 (12) Madonna – Sorry
25 (33) Madonna – Hung Up

Hot Dance Music/Club Play :
04 (03) Madonna – Get Together

Dance Radio Airplay :
01 (02) Madonna – Get Together

Hot Dance Singles Sales :
01 (01) Madonna – Get Together
03 (04) Madonna – Sorry
05 (05) Madonna – Hung Up

Top Music Video :
01 (01) Madonna – I’m Going To Tell You A Secret

Billboard Comprehensive Music Videos
01 (01) Madonna – I’m Going To Tell You A Secret

Crazy for You, but Not That Crazy
Madonna gives us the world, but suddenly it’s not enough.
We should worship Madonna for her perpetual willingness to look, sound, and act ridiculous. For if we do, she will never disappoint us. So here we sit, our furniture, cars, and first-born bartered on Craigslist for tickets to Wednesday’s opening night of her robustly scalped Madison Square Garden six-show residency. And there she hangs. In the early stages of her two-hour extravaganza/ordealafter a maudlin intro wherein interpretive dancers flail about during the solemn audio testimony of, say, a child-abuse victim or a former gangbangershe emerges crucified on a life-size sparkly cross, with a mic helpfully attached so she can croon a draggy, canned-sounding version of “Live to Tell” while surrounded by Jumbotron images of destitute, AIDS- orphaned African children who’re occasionally swallowed up by CGI fireballs.
Holy shit.
This is my professional reaction. Holy shit. It’s a sequence unparalleled in its combination of blasphemy, absurdity, melodrama, humanitarian grandstanding, and preposterous narcissism, all set to her second-best ’80s torch ballad. (”Crazy for You,” dawg.) This alone should justify the $12,000-per-seat admission. So why does it feel so unsatisfying? A Madonna concert dependably supplies (a) at least one hilariously offensive religious image, (b) a bit of Bono-bred social-cause pandering, (c) copious backup-dancer copulation, and (d) a few golden oldies to balance out the “Here’s one from the new album!” hostage taking. The “Live to Tell” assault combined ‘em all for maximum impact . . . to incoherent, disastrous effect. I’ve seen Cher in concert, folks, and I’m telling you: This was ludicrous. But somehow bad ludicrous. Incoherent, disoriented, garish, light-all-the-firecrackers-at-once-and-just-see-what-happens ludicrous. The world is an infinitely more fascinating place with Madonna in it, turning empty spectacle into sincere emotion, and trendy pop bandwagon-jumping into timeless, profound beauty. Ironically, we sincerely adore her sincere attempts at irony. But she’s desensitized us to excess and lunacy merely throwing orphans, fireballs, pelvic thrusts, and crucifixion tableaux at us randomly doesn’t cut it anymore. We demand a more thought-out and sophisticated brand of mindless spectacle.
Too bad. The new album in question, last year’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, is a deliriously vapid disco assault, charming in its relentless doofiness. Even a dopey tune like “I Love New York”a less articulate ode to NYC than, say, Andrew W.K.’s, and man is that saying somethingcan sound transcendent if she sells it shamelessly enough. And she sure did Wednesday, thrashing haplessly on an electric guitar and climactically flipping off the thrilled, whooping crowd for a solid 20 seconds. That one stole (back) a bit of Kelly Clarkson’s arena-stomping thunder, as did triumphant jazzercise single “Hung Up,” though Madonna’s militaristic insistence on forcing us to shout “Time goes by! Slow slowly!” over and over and over felt less like a proud declaration and more like a desperate plea to halt the aging process. With all the retro poses she’s striking these daysof the show’s innumerable visual motifs, the Wednesday Night Fever disco phase, fusing her 2000 electro hit “Music” to “Disco Inferno” as she struck her best John Travolta pose in a shimmery white suit, hit the hardestMadonna’s eager to prove that backward is the new forward.
At 47, she remains as thin, lithe, and profoundly attractive as science (and Pilates, or whatever) will allowher outfits not too skimpy, but certainly skintightand she holds her own amid all the copious backup-dancer copulation, flailing about as they whiz by on roller skates or leap ecstatically through a maze of chain-link fences, IKEA-worthy metal office tables, and sinister-looking gymnastic equipment. She slaps one around and stands triumphant over his body as “Sorry,” Dance Floor’s finest hour, climaxes, but the Garden’s sound system fails her, watering down its bombastic, bass-heavy melody and rendering it wan and sleepy. Occasional breakdancing interludes aside, the tunes shouldn’t sound like they’re bleating from a boombox.
Even the golden oldies suffered: “Like a Virgin” earned orgasmic applause upon recognition early on, but wound up saddled with the same sweeping, robo-orchestrated Stuart Price treatment as all of Dance Floor, a newfangled clumsy chord progression robbing it of its cheesy simplicity. Undaunted, Madonna cavorted on a mechanical bull saddle/stripper pole hy-brid as the Jumbotrons flashed saucy images of . . . horse-racing accidents. Like the crucifixion debacle, you could write a term paper on that moment: precocious virginal musing vs. fear of breaking a leg and getting shot, a dorky ’80s pop classic ruined by 21st-century space-synth meddling, etc. But shit, man, it’s Madonna. Can we have the fun along with the dumb? “Ray of Light” (with more hapless guitar thrashing) got a few fists pumping, “Erotica” benefited from more Stuart Price sleaze, the “La Isla Bonita” choreography was Tony worthy, and “Lucky Star” was, uh, “Lucky Star.” Acceptable, but can you imagine a greatest-hits tour? As quietly great as Dance Floor is, will Madonna ever tour again without ramming a half-hour’s worth of feeble filler trackslike the “controversial” “Isaac,” embellished via Middle Eastern wailing into a very poor man’s take on Enigma’s “Return to Innocence”down our throats and indulge our lust for “Like a Prayer” or “Vogue” instead? How can someone so wed to outrageous decadence and shameless joy possibly not do this?
Instead, we settle for these brief flashes of old-time bravado and, even rarer, vulnerability. At one point our heroine sat down on the catwalk steps, visibly exhausted, content to merely look like an out-of-breath hot mom for a few seconds, apologizing for “fucking up words” and “falling all over the place”: a quick peek at the perfectionist insecurity that drives all this grandeur. She then sang a limp “Drowned World/Substitute for Love,” profoundly inferior to “Crazy for You” or even “The Power of Goodbye.” She gave us everything she had, but not what we wanted.

Madonna and her entire 150 person crew for the Confessions World Tour each found clothes that reflect their own individual styles while shopping at H&M. The international fashion retailer agreed to provide a complete wardrobe for Madonna and her ‘touring family’ as part of a long term agreement that includes an upcoming advertising campaign between H&M and the Material Girl.
With H&M and their world famous designers specializing in clothes for all family members, it seemed an ideal combination for the musicians, dancers, makeup artists, management and crew members of Team Madonna to have the opportunity to find exactly what they needed once they got offstage. The entire team was given the chance to choose from H&M’s latest collection which included Victorian romantics, British classics and couture inspired pieces.
In addition, Madonna worked with H&M designers to create a unique track suit to wear while she’s on the road. The tracksuit comes in black, white and purple. The top (€29.90) is narrow and feminine with a yoke and gathering and the trousers (€19.90) are fitted at the top with wide legs and detailed with zippers. ‘We are pleased to be able to offer this track suit to our customers by mid-August’ stated H&M’s head of design, Margareta van den Bosch.
In H&M’s upcoming advertising campaign, the dancer Sophia chose a black shiny nylon jacket with metallic press buttons teamed with loose fit jeans. Fellow dancer Cloud wore a striped and grey melange T-shirt with jeans and a matching hat. Madonna’s very chic makeup artist Gina Brooke wore a black pencil skirt with a matching couture style blouse and sky high heels. Dave the Rigger chose a plain T-shirt and &denim jeans and tour production manager Chris chose a checked cotton shirt to his &denim jeans. Madonna’s manager Angela Becker selected a silk camisole and black slacks under a grey melange wool vest.
H&M’s autumn collection is built around four trends: mix and match for a complete look. Retro couture inspiration – chic, coordinated, romanticism with reference from the turn of the century, Classics of the classics – British style tailoring and knitwear updated in unexpected materials and color combinations, 1980’s music scene – sleek rock style.
The advertising campaign is scheduled to begin in August.

19 Pictures – Madonna performs in Hartford during “Confessions” World Tour (Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, June 26 2006) – are added to the gallery.