Madonna - Rebel Heart (2015)

http://i.imgur.com/sThvcL0.jpg

December 19, 2014
MADONNA RELEASES SIX SONGS FROM NEW 'REBEL HEART' ALBUM AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW
Full Album Scheduled for Release in March

Pre-order the album on iTunes now: http://smarturl.it/RebelHeart

December 20, 2014. For immediate release....New York, NY.....Madonna has just released six songs from her new studio album 'Rebel Heart'. The six songs are currently available for purchase now via preorder at iTunes and other music outlets with purchase of the album and a la carte as well. The music will also be available on all streaming services. Additional music will be released on Feb. 9th. The full album of "Rebel Heart" on Interscope Records is scheduled to be released the first week in March 2015.

Song titles that are currently available from the new album are Living For Love, Devil Pray, Ghosttown, Unapologetic Bitch, Illuminati and Bitch I'm Madonna which was recorded with Nicki Minaj. Producers include Madonna, Diplo, Kanye West, Billboard, was recorded in NY, LA and London.

The decision to release the songs much earlier than anticipated was due to the leaking of several work-in-progress demos earlier this week.

"I was hoping to release my new single 'Living For Love' on Valentine's Day with the rest of the album coming in the Spring. I would prefer my fans to hear completed versions of some of the songs instead of the incomplete tracks that are circulating. Please consider these six songs as an early Christmas gift," commented Madonna.

less waiting hesitating and anticipating, more... trepidating

All six of those "Christmas gifts" are awful, so, uh, thanks?

This seems like a huge mistake from a PR/marketing standpoint

i dunno, it's pretty shitty to have so many demos leaked so shortly before the songs were due to be released, i feel like what they did is one of the better possible responses to a situation they didn't create or ask for.

By the time the actual album comes out no ones going to give a shit about this album

Though tbh this mag generate a shit ton of preorders so

yeah it being done as an album pre-order (as opposed to just an EP released before the album) seems shrewd.

also, to be cynical -- this album is probably going to be terrible and have no hits and no reach beyond her hardcore fanbase and be a footnote to a very profitable tour just like her last album, so it all feels to me like a question of whether they're maneuvering to make the best of that inevitable situation.

It's so strange, she can afford any writer/producer she wants, and plenty of people have a way with hooks and dance music and whatnot. I can only assume she is as awful as she want to be and exactly as she wants to be.

now there's a press release

Does Lourdes have any interest in making music? Because she's probably got a better ear for it than her mother at this point.

"Hey mom, you should make an EDM album. There are some kids at school who can make you some sick beats. You could call it 'Good Drop, Bad Drop.'"

"You could appear on the cover in an S&M styled cop uniform with, like, a ball gag, holding up a sign that says #ICANBREATHE. Everyone will be talking about it."

this is totally rocco's influence.

"You could totally turn Eric Garner's death throes into 'the I Can't Breathe' dance and rock that shit on an international tour."

People will talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ox2rAuhE4

I like Living for Love and not much else.

living for love - total banger crippled by, once again, the stiffness and rigidity of madonna's voice these days
devil pray - prolego was right on the other thread, this is really good. drug refs should be cringe but somehow work
ghosttown - boring
unapologetic bitch - clipped voice actually works, not sure cod-reggae/stefani cast-offs are a good look for her though
illuminati - i think this is so odd that it might actually work
bitch i'm madonna - no

I'm sort of discouraged Bitch I'm Madonna made it to the album, I thought she might nix it at demo stage.

The line about doing X in "Devil Pray" is sung so coyly that I'm ready to think she's never touched the stuff, but so far, yeah, it's the strongest and weirdest tune.

Given the trajectory of her career I would have found it faintly astonishing if she hadn't touched the stuff in the 80s or 90s but yeah probably not in the molly era.

Isn't her line that she's tried everything at least once, but is too much of a control freak to take drugs?

so, as has happened before, will this album kill diplos career ?

Pareles likes: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/24/arts/music/madonna-6-songs-offers-preview-of-rebel-heart-album.html?hpw&rref=arts&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

surprised by that ^^ cause i heard "living for love" yesterday and wasn't impressed. maybe it's a grower? her superbowl halftime travesty aside, to my ears madonna has sounded like her heart's not in making music for the last half-dozen years or so. going through motions cause she doesn't know what else to do. not bad, or sad, just meh.

look I'm the same age as her and totally relate. it's like a middle-aged thing.

This seems like a huge mistake from a PR/marketing standpoint

― fgti jaq, it's chinavision! (Stevie D(eux)), Sunday, December 21, 2014 1:23 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The "huge mistake" is that she didn't retire at some point after Music and before American Life.

I won't make an effort to hear this album, but eventually I'll hear some songs, and I'll probably really like one or two. I always do.

MOJO! available on the 27th.

http://scontent-a.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xfp1/t51.2885-15/e15/10632073_391823004312549_846959512_n.jpg

Wait, isn't Mojo a mag for old farts...oh, I see.

tbf it's got the highest circulation figures out of all the british music mags so it's a better move than chasing the youf in... nme (?)

edgy

also chance the rapper & mike tyson feature on one of the album tracks. idek.

Madonna should name her next album "Whatever."

This leaked...again.

more like bevel shart

"This leaked...again."

old age...

The more she talks about this the more it makes me think she might actually be putting serious effort into her music instead of just going through the motions to make a promotional tool for her next tour

is it just me or is this actually...good?! and not stiffly going through the motions? not all of it obv but this entire era will have been worth it for "joan of arc"

"iconic" is either the best or worst thing ever

It's like rain on your wedding day--isn't it iconic?

I like that one too.

Your love's coming down like, raaaaiiiiiin, on your wedding day

Joan of Arc is incredible. She's obviously trying this time but the "romantic" half beats the "renegade" half hands down.

http://www.spin.com/articles/madonna-rebel-heart-album-edit-new-track-list/

and this demo isn't bad at all: http://mexicoindie.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/10-Rebel-Heart-feat.-Avicii.mp3

Joan of Arc could be better, but it's probably the best that 2015 Madonna can be expected to do.

A big Madonna fan at work thought she was terrible last night. I found the song ordinary (for a while, anyway, then it got hokey towards the end), but I thought she was basically okay, or at least as okay as one can be dancing alongside refugees from the Eyes Wide Shut orgy scene. I felt sorry for her at the end, when she got lifted into the air like Vincent D'Onofrio in The Cell.

She seemed a bit puffed by the end but I dug the spectacle & she looked amazing!!

Not terrible.

Not bothered.

cant listen to bitch im madonna or the minaj duet, but this has some of the best stuff ive heard from her in a while. inside out, and autotune baby in particular are seriously good. lots of the album sounds quite of the moment, i could easily imagine several other singers being handed these songs, but her voice somehow lifts them up. i forgot how much i love madonna purely as a singer.

Her first album not to hit #1 in the States since 1998.

also, is that a hype williams/blunt and copeland sample on autotune baby?

whoa @ the yeezus line

http://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show/segments/118461
she is terrible

Queen of second-hand embarrassment at this point.

Who cares, I blame Jimmy Fallon's writers 100% for that shit, that show calls lip sync battles comedy. Her performance of Bitch I'm Madonna was hilarious and awesome

https://twitter.com/Q1047/status/587508774459441152

HAHA HIS FACE AFTER

Now that I'm not invested in her music anymore I am endlessly amused by her antics

Looks like he found a horse radish flavour jelly bean in amongst the cherries and lemons or something

maybe she bit him?

charliebitme.mov

lol

this whole promotional cycle has been so excruciating to watch, like she tries to be so effortless but it comes off as so, so desperate and inorganic and just PAINFUL, LIKE UGH GOD STOP WEARING THAT, STOP SAYING "Bitch, I'm Madonna" STOP TRYING TO DO STANDUP

she's ALWAYS been like this though, we're just not used to someone a few years away from a free bus pass doing it. madonna has never been effortless and frequently ott. The Sex Book was about nine thousand times more try hard and gross than anything for this era.

Can't wait for the reaction when she releases a sequel to coincide with her 70th :)

yeah but was it as facepalm/out-of-touch as it is now? at least before she was being somewhat transgressive and making really interesting music and now she's being really safe and making very uninteresting music.

i'm having a hard time not considering this whole project trash

it is trash, she's turned into a john waters character.

and no I guess it wasn't as out of touch before because she was in many respects avant-garde whereas now she's just trailing and yeah, the music sucks. but there have been many, many, many facepalm moments in her career. the tragedy is that even her critics used to sound secretly intimidated and outraged by her whereas now it's mainly, Shady Pines ma

The more I consider all of this the more I feel like this whole promo cycle is the nadir of her entire career, going beyond simply dull into full-out Joan Crawford desperation trainwreck. The Fallon stand-up set I think is really the lowest of the low of anything she's ever done. Like, of course her last 2 or 3 albums were equally blah but there seems to be something so much more painful about this current thing ("Bitch, I'm Madonna" as some triumphant proclamation of authority that she lost idk 15 years ago, making out with Drake in the most awkward way possible, THAT STANDUP SET, the edginess she chases so hard but has no idea how to capture); she's doing "whatever she wants" and not enough ppl are telling her (or are able to tell her) no or steering her in the right direction and she's making very bad and very sloppy choices and she's not aware of any of it and it's Valerie Cherish-level deluded and painful to watch except that it's real. It's really sad when your shtick is edginess but you truly have absolutely no clue what edgy even is anymore, and also on top of it you're making music that sounds really fucking bland.

I tried to listen to the album and got 3 or 4 songs in and it was too awful and I just couldn't. Is it worth sticking through the whole thing?

And the album is actually not bad.

"Devil Pray" and "Unapologetic Bitch" work. So does "Ghosttown" now that I actually heard it on the radio.

Hey, she's being more true to herself than if she did Standards Vol. 1 or just stopped going out in public.

Needs a new self then

I should be more embarrassed than I am but I just still really enjoy the bravado. Like, she just floors it, pedal to the metal while you're like"heyyyy um this is kinda weird & you are embarrass---" and she's already 100 miles down the freeway standing up in the convertible with her top off

like, even if i don't love the new look entirely (girl, since when did you start dancing with yr mouth open like that, come ON) -- it's not like I can say "that's fake, that's not Madonna". That's what I really like. She commits. Even to awkardness.

Committing to bad things isn't rly a virtue

i guess I also don't find it as heinously bad as u guys

Nah I just meant in general, anything that upsets Drake is Ok by me

i'd be cool with it if this felt like "whatever she wants" as opposed to her seeming immensely awkward and inwardly grim, like she knows there's only so many of these left and the gloss is off the rose. it's not because of her age, she' s just deeply irrelevant and flailing and there's an understanding all round that's the case, seems like.

i guess I also don't find it as heinously bad as u guys

Same here. The MDNA promo cycle/album was far worse.

Album maybe but promo cycle? This feels way more flailing and desperate

agree with vegemitegrrl, i couldn't say i'm actively on board with her antics but i'm less embarrassed than i have been in, like, a decade. it feels less desperate than it has in some time, she's come across well in her interviews and there seems to be a degree of embracing her role as pop's batty old aunt

also the thing with promo cycles is that you really can tune the worst bits out, i've still no idea what this standup thing you're referring to is but i've no intention of finding out and would not have gone out of my way to watch in the first place

it's this right here, look, you don't even have to go out of your way, just click it, i implore you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbFSQX6DMas

it'll confirm everything you already hate about all the comedy you've never seen

lol that is the first time i've seen that and she is about 1000000 times more interesting and funny and genuine than 90% of the standup comedians i've seen

like, i'd rather watch her ramble goofily about younger men and her artwork than whatever poisonous shit her erstwhile friend sandra bernhard is doing these days

not a high bar, admittedly

but yeah i'm with VG and lex (and maura elsewhere) that the "lol, old" jokes are basically older than madonna herself at this point

There's no precedent for a woman Madonna's age still scoring #2 albums and interested in recording pop music, so while the albums will continue to be of mixed value at best the gross shit I've seen on my FB feed regarding the Drake kiss makes me want to place "Devil Pray" on the same level as "Deeper and Deeper" or "Into the Groove" and throw Drake off a building.

her standup was like watching a precocious kid perform for a bunch of adults at a party, i thought it was corny & awkward & kinda cute in a weird way

xpost alfred otm

twitter reactions to madge/drake really bummed me out

i'm not watching the standup thing, c'mon

the thing is, it is very old news that madonna has Lost It in terms of being a cutting-edge relevant-to-the-youth pop icon - although never forget that she had that longer than anyone else in pop history. now is an odd time to make the desperate/flailing/awkward criticisms though, because now is the first time in a while that she's looked like she's INTO her role as pop star, whatever it involves. awkward and embarrassing applied to the hard candy and mdna eras but at least it looks like she's having fun these days. and yeah as alfred said the album is more than salvageable.

also not all of her choices on the album work but it is really very far from safe and bland, it's all over the place and kind of loopy.

at least it looks like she's having fun these days

well experience is subjective blah blah blah but the step up in commitment compared to her past two albums is pretty obvious to me

There's no precedent for a woman Madonna's age still scoring #2 albums and interested in recording pop music,

Didn't Cher's album a couple years back do well?

xp that "step up in commitment" at every public event is reading much more to me as "oh god what the fuck am i even doing here" but maybe that has something to do with the relative inelasticity of her face these days
btw, i have a LOT of good faith love for Madge and the same twenty to thirty years of listening that all you have; i bear her no ill will. and it's heartening to see the playing field leveled so that women in their fifties and sixties can tour and release in the same way that men in pop can and do. but the material is poor and the presentation is confusing.
tbh i tried listening to the album and i genuinely don't remember any of it. i'll put it on again now.

Madonna is singing about sniffing glue on a whirly-reel style brostep track; I seem to recall this being a point at which I gave up on a prior listen

I think Madonna has another classic album in her. Remember Ray of Light came off Evita. Evita! Also, the video for Ghost Town is fantastic.

more like Mayawna

lol