Madonna news - Aug. 2015


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'Bitch I'm Madonna' video gets VEVO Certified

Source: Vevo - 29 August 2015

MBitch I'm Madonna video The music video for Bitch I'm Madonna has been certified on Vevo, meaning it gathered more than 100 million views. Vevo announced the news on their Twitter account.

It's Madonna's first video to become Vevo certified. Her video for Hung Up - which is on Warner's Youtube channel, not on Vevo - comes second with 67 million views.

The video by Jonas Åkerlund premiered on June 17th.



Madonna reality TV series could be in the pipeline

Source: The Mirror - 26 August 2015

Madonna, Diplo, Kanye & Kim at the MET Gala Madonna's never been one to follow the trends, but this time the trailblazer might be coming second with rumours she's in talks to make her own reality TV show.

The word on the grapevine is that the Material Girlhas been chatting to production company Bunim Murray,who make Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

Apparently she's been impressed with how well KimKardashian West and Kanye West have done on the smallscreen and have made reality TV "cool".

The megastar wowed fans with the fly-on-the-wall InBed with Madonna documentary in 1991, but thecelebrity tittle-tattle and Truth or Dare games whichcharacterised that big screen outing would be a longway off the private life of the mum of two.

The 57-year-old star is keen, an insider revealed:"Nobody would ever have expected a star as huge asMadonna to ever star in a reality show but it justshows how much times are changing that she's evenhumouring talks.

"She is friends with Kim Kardashian through KanyeWest and Madonna has noticed how Kim and her familyhave made reality TV very cool and current - it's notjust for Z-listers any more."

The Living For Love singer - who released her 13thstudio album Rebel Heart in March - would be expectedto involve her kids Lourdes, 18, Rocco, who recentlyturned 15, and David and Mercy, both nine, in theshow, as well as her potential love interests.

The source told The Sun newspaper: "She's not madeany decision, she loves giving fans an insight intoher life, especially when touring.

"Bunim Murray have proven with Caitlyn Jenner's showI Am Cait that they can tackle sensitive topics andnot just make trash TV."

However, Madonna - who will embark on her Rebel Heartworld tour next month - previously said she doesn'tactually watch TV.

She said: "I don't watch television. Everyone's abit contest obsessed. I don't actually like the ideaof being a judge. It's so, I don't know, subjective -what's good and what isn't. "I think perhaps we're tooobsessed with it."

The original blonde bombshell's not exactly beenkeeping a low profile recently, as police were reportedly called to her 57th birthday bashat M Bar in the Hamptons she partied with friends andfamily.



Rebel Heart Tour higher secondary ticket prices than previous MDNA Tour

Source: Forbes - 22 August 2015

Rebel Heart Tour The Queen of Pop is set to hit the road, and may be on track to break tour records yet again as well. Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour, a tour in support of her thirteenth studio album, which she released in March, is scheduled to kick off on September 9 in Montreal. The North American leg of the tour will wrap up in October (although several additional dates are scheduled in North America for 2016), and will cover Europe and the U.K. in November and December.

In her touring past, Madonna has smashed records on the road. According to the Billboard Boxscore, Madonna's MDNA Tour in 2012 grossed $305 million and moved 2.2 million tickets to 88 shows. That year, it was the highest grossing tour. On that run, the show made a stop at London's Hyde Park, a stadium with a massive 65,000 capacity. The average ticket price for that show was $250, with a get-in price of $170. In the U.S., Madonna played two shows at Yankee Stadium, a venue with a 49,642 capacity, and the average ticket price was $204.70, with a get-in of just $28. On the second night, the average ticket price was $171.13 with a get-in price of $51. To compare, on her upcoming Rebel Heart Tourthe average Madonna ticket is $331 on the secondary market for her US dates.

She is set to play two London dates in December at the O2 Arena, a 20,000 capacity arena. For her first show on December 1, the average ticket price to see Madonna  is $366, with get-in ticket prices of $334.  She is slotted to play two dates in New York City in September, one at Madison Square Garden (18,200 capacity), and the other at The Barclays Arena in Brooklyn (18,103 capacity).  The MSG show on September 16 has an average ticket price of $387, with a get-in price of $114, and the Barclays Arena show has an average ticket price of $475, with a get-in price of $77, according to Ticketbis.

Rebel Heart Tour higher secondary ticket prices than previous MDNA Tour

Madonna’s 2006 Confessions Tour grossed $194 million and had 1.2 million tickets sold to 60 shows. Her most successful run yet, her 2008-2009 Sticky & Sweet Tour, grossed $408 million for 3.5 million tickets sold.  It continues to hold the record for the biggest tour ever for a female artist. With her ticket sales already competitive on the secondary market, Madonna may be on track to break more records with Rebel Heart.



In Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour, Expect the Unexpected

Source: Huffington Post - 22 August 2015

Where were you when you first heard Madonna?

Rebel Heart Tour It's a question that pop fans who devoured the offerings put forth by MTV and top-40 radio during the Eighties and Nineties can probably answer without thinking. Mine: "Borderline," off her self-titled debut and an MTV staple thanks to its video, which mixed high art and graffiti and hopscotch. The song's wounded, yet bubbly production made me dance; Madonna's effortless cool gave me a glimpse at what bohemian adulthood might be like.

The songs of hers that I probably remember best, though, are the ones on her 1986 album True Blue, which served as the official warm-up album for a dance class I took during sixth grade; any mention of the pugilistic actor Jimmy Cagney, to whom Madonna dedicated that album's feisty "White Heat," flashes me back to the afternoons of leotards and stretching at the barre.

No matter what era of Madonna one remembers most fondly -- the crumpled white dress of the "Like A Virgin" era, the negligee-and-brown-hair "Like A Prayer" period, the glossier, wiser Madge that emerged after she discovered EDM -- quite a few Madonna memories will be conjured by the "Rebel Heart Tour", which kicks off in Montreal on September 9.

But don't expect memories of past chart-toppers like "Dress You Up," "Holiday," and "Who's That Girl" to match themselves exactly to what'll happen on stage.

"I realize that people want to hear my older stuff, so for me it's always a tricky balance trying to keep some continuity, not only with sound, sonically, but also thematically," Madonna told Bravo head honcho Andy Cohen in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview. "That's why a lot of times I have to take the songs and turn them inside out and make them more ironic than straightforward so that they work for me."

Madonna' s 10th worldwide tour is being promoted with a poster of the chameleonic singer with a sword plunged into her chest, a direct reference to the title of her most recent album, Rebel Heart, the cover of which depicts her face bound in black wires. Her playing with provocative imagery will continue on tour -- a teaser for the tour released last month offers a glimpse of someone sporting a nun's habit while dancing on a stripper pole. The image isn't surprising given Madonna's past, from "Like A Virgin" on.

Rebel Heart, the album to which Madonna is pegging this tour, is a fairly solid effort. Always one to be hyperaware of what's trending around the pop world, Madonna collaborated with the EDM titan Avicii and the globe-trotting producer Diplo, as well as next-generation pop auteurs like Ariel Rechtshaid and Natalia Kills. It's a move into the 21st century's second decade that, while not perfect, often has moments of bliss -- on the sumptuous "Joan Of Arc," a worthy successor to other downtempo tracks like "La Isla Bonita," Madonna sings over a delicately plucked acoustic guitar, while she sighs over a gently bouncing beat on "Body Shop," a playful dude-as-car metaphor. Then there's the brash "Bitch I'm Madonna," in which the Material Girl reminds everyone of her formidable legacy.

The tour's set list will likely feature some of those songs, but the prospect of her reinventing her back catalog yet again -- not just for younger audiences who might not have been around for their first trips up the charts, but for diehards who have followed her around the world -- is exciting, especially given the way she's turned her songs inside-out in the past.

The 1991 documentary Madonna: Truth Or Dare offered a raunchy, sometimes tense glimpse at Madonna's tour life. (Her openness was unsurprising to her then-boyfriend Warren Beatty: "She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk... What point is there of existing off-camera?" he asked at one point.) But it also allowed viewers a chance to see how she reinvented her songs top-to-bottom on tour, and didn't simply remake her MTV-saturating videos onstage: Her reworking of "Like A Virgin" into an extended vamp that ended with a simulated masturbation scene was so scandalous to early-'90s audiences, police officers in Toronto threatened to arrest her after the show if it went on -- but it also became an MTV staple thanks to the way it wholly updated a song that was so crucial to the channel's earliest days.

The reigning doyenne of the "pop stars who can fill stadia" set, Madonna last went on the road in 2012 to promote her push into EDM MDNA. That 88-date run, which was kicked off by her appearance at Super Bowl XLVI, wound up being the year's highest-grossing tour. It made $305 million and featured a full-on fashion show (and an update of her storied cone bra) during "Vogue":

Madonna also turned the empowerment anthem "Express Yourself" into an explosion of majorettes (and nodded at the many similarities between that 1989 jam and Lady Gaga's 2011 ode to self-love, "Born This Way"):

These treatments have a .0000001% chance of being repeated this time around, but they do offer a glimpse at how Madonna treats her back catalog as germs for bigger ideas -- sometimes serious, sometimes silly, always with her trademark blend of bravado and sock-it-to-you hooks. While she might not be the most technically gifted singer, live shows allow Madonna to create a fully realized pop world into which she invites her fans -- a place where she not only trades in the kind of titillating shock that defined her earliest days, but where she unearths surprises in the already known.



Madonna throws gypsy-themed Birthday party

17 August 2015

Madonna threw herself a Spanish Gypsy-themed birthday party over the weekend.

On Instagram she posted selfies with her kids Lola, Rocco, David & Mercy.

Also present were twin models Jonathan & Kevin Sampaio - we know Kevin as the bare-chested hunk who smooched with M in the Bitch I'm Madonna video.

Also among the guests: American talk show host and author Andy Cohen, actress and TV producer Kelly Ripa and Spanish actor Mark Consuelos.

Madonna: Gypsy Queen 💘💘🎉💘💘🎉💘🎉❤️#livingforlove️ Madonna: Birthday Fun with Princess #1💘💘💘🎉️ Madonna: In case we got lost.............🍷👻🔛🎉🎉️ Madonna: Gypsy Rosa Lee...........best birthday present ever! 💘💘🎉🎉💝💝🙏🏻🙏🏻❤️#rebelheart️ Madonna throws gypsy-themed Birthday party️ Madonna throws gypsy-themed Birthday party️ Madonna throws gypsy-themed Birthday party️ Madonna: This cake is everything! @divinamadinna ❤️#rebelhearttour️



Happy Birthday Madonna!

Source: HollywoodLife - 16 August 2015

Happy birthday, Madonna! The Queen of Pop is turning 57 today, August 16, and she's just as sexy as she was during the '80s. Keeping being your amazing self, Madonna!

Madonna at the MET Gala️ Bitchh, she's Madonna! She's turning 57, today, August 16! We've been treated to such great music from her this last year. This included fantastic duets with some of our favorite artists, and one amazing star-studded music video! We can't wait to see what this superstar has in store for us this next year. Let’s help her celebrate her special day!

Madonna is a straight-up legend, and it's incredible that we're still getting new music and performances from her to this day! Rebel Heart was her 13th studio album, and it was just as good as her first. What an amazing accomplishment to reach! But Madonna doesn’t need this kind of validation or introduction — she's Madonna for God's sake!

That's why she was able to get everyone and anyone to appear in her incredible video for “Bitch I'm Madonna.” Stars like Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé and Kanye West showed up to party with the Queen, and they all looked like they were having a blast!

Taylor Swift wasn't invited to that bash, but she did get the chance to duet with Madonna earlier in the year — a dream come true for the pop princess! That was far from her only collaboration of the year. She infamously made out with Drake onstage at Coachella while performing "Human Nature." Still shocking! In January, Madonna got down and dirty with Miley during her MTV Unplugged special. Dream team!

Madonna truly proved that age is meaningless. She can rock the stage in pretty much anything she wants, party with the pop stars with hot pink hair, and still pose topless for magazine shoots. Age ain't nothing but a number, and Madonna is hot hot hot!



Madonna taps Gucci, Moschino for Rebel Heart Tour costumes

Source: WWD - 13 August 2015

Throughout her long career, Madonna has enlisted the world's top designers, most famously Jean Paul Gaultier, to collaborate on the costumes for her globe-trotting tours.

She's again recruited a murderer's row of fashion talent for her latest, the "Rebel Heart Tour", named after her 13th studio album of the same name.

On Wednesday, she revealed exclusively to WWD the designers who made the cut, including Jeremy Scott and Alexander Wang. And add Madonna to the Alessandro Michele fan club: the Gucci creative director also pitched in.

Just like she's been teasing her setlist on Instagram for months — yes, "Vogue" and "Holiday" will make appearances on the tour — Madonna has also been posting snippets of looks she's been working on with her longtime costume designer, Academy Award-nominated Arianne Phillips.

Ahead of the tour's opening in Montreal on Sept. 9, she is revealing the full list of designers today: Fausto PuglisiPrada and Miu Miu, Swarovski and the Lebanese designer Nicolas Jebran are the others. She'll show sketches at a later date.

The pop singer's predilection for some of these names has been evident for a while: she wore Scott for Moschino to the Costume Institute gala in May, on the red carpet as well as to various after parties, for instance. And she was also in full Moschino regalia in her last video, "Bitch I'm Madonna," where Wang made an exuberant cameo. Before that, she was spotted around town wearing the platform moon boots from Wang's fall show, practically straight off the runway.

Curiously, Versace, in whose 2015 advertising campaign Madonna appeared, is not involved in this tour. Phillips, who has been nominated for two Oscars, including her work on Madonna's own "W.E.," is marking her sixth tour with Madonna and will also contribute costumes.

Some of the other designers, though, like Michele, are more surprising, underscoring the singer's knack for spotting new talent.

Long before pop acts fraternized with fashion designers, it was Madonna who asked Gaultier in 1990 to design costumes for her famous "Blonde Ambition" World Tour. He delivered the now iconic coned bra and the two have since collaborated on several tours, on 2001's "Drowned World," 2006's "Confessions" and 2012's "MDNA," which included a reinterpretation of their best-known garment.

Previous tours included costumes from Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Christian Lacroix — he designed the crystal-studded corset that opened the "Reinvention" tour in 2004 — and Riccardo Tisci, who designed the costumes the singer wore during the halftime show at the 2012 Super Bowl.

"People say everything has a limit," Tisci told WWD at the time, "but limits do not exist with Madonna." With today's news, that still seems to be the case.



Madonna gives tour spoilers in interview with Andy Cohen

8 August 2015

Fansite Madonnarama has transcribed the entire interview with Andy Cohen in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly.

Andy Cohen on the cover of Entertainment Weekly️ Madonna talks about her grueling rehearsal schedule, about Truth or Dare, her stance on social media, her favourite songs of Rebel Heart, and even about certain 80s hits that she will be performing on tour.

If you're ready for these spoilers, read all about it here.



What feud? Taylor Swift reveals future Madonna collaboration

Source: Dish Nation - 7 August 2015

Madonna and Taylor Swift performing at the iHeartMusic Awards️ When Taylor Swift released her star-studded "Bad Blood" music video it was immediately compared to Madonna's "Bitch I'm Madonna" music video — and thus, a media-generated feud was born.

But Taylor, 25, addresses the topic in her upcoming spread with Vanity Fair saying "it really bothered her" that people assumed she and Madonna didn't get along, and she even felt "resentment" about it.

Dish Nation has exclusively obtained an early blurb from Taylor's interview — which hits the stands on August 11 — in which she talks about a future collaboration with Madonna, and even reveals a thoughtful gift she received from the Material Girl.

"I felt so much resentment that they would take two women who made ambitious music videos and use that as a qualifying factor to comparing and contrasting them," Taylor said.

"I hated that because Madonna and I have gotten along and been fans of each other…"

Taylor recalls performing at the iHeartRadio Awards in March with Madonna and says while visiting in her dressing room she complimented the smell resonating from a candle and diffuser she was using.

"A week later, I get this box in the mail, and she had sent me the same diffuser, and all these essential oils," Taylor said.

"And the exact candle I had complimented."

Confident there is zero animosity between the two, Taylor added, "Madonna and I will collaborate again, and then [the media] will realize there was no weird tension or competitive tension."



Madonna: 'Social media is art gallery of my thoughts'

Source: EW - 7 August 2015

In this week's issue, Cohen, 47, is serving as guest editor — and he's delivered a doozy of an issue. The pages are packed with revealing interviews with some of his favorite celebrities—it's like a portable version of his show.

Cohen, who has made no secret about wanting to interview Madonna on WWHL , sat down with the Queen of Pop as she gets set to launch her Rebel Heart Tour in September. It's the first time he has ever interviewed his favorite singer — and no question was off limits. The two discuss everything from her setlist to her thoughts on Taylor Swift and Beyoncé to why she loves using Instagram. "It's an important part of my work now," she says of the social media platform. "I like to think of it as a kind of art gallery for my thoughts, my dreams, my wishes, my state of mind. Can't ignore social media."



Second remix video for 'Bitch I'm Madonna'

6 August 2015

A new remix video for Bitch I'm Madonna has premiered. This one is set to the Sick Individuals Remix.



Madonna breaks down the rigorous work going into her upcoming Rebel Heart tour

Source: EW - 6 August 2015

SPOILER ALERT!

Andy Cohen guest-edited EW's latest issue so of course he had to talk to his favorite pop star Madonna about her massive Rebel Heart tour, which kicks off Sept. 9 in Montreal. By her own estimation, the Material Girl has been spending 10 to 12 hours a day prepping for the string of gigs—a schedule so rigorous that an aide follows her to make sure she stays nourished. "I call her the food police," Madonna tells Cohen. "'Are you eating? Did you drink enough water?' I'm like, 'Bitch, get off my pole!'"

Speaking of poles, Cohen gets the scoop about the dancing nuns on stripper poles that Madonna teased in Rebel Heart's trailer. "I just like the juxtaposition," she says of the risqué routine. "I'm very immersed in deconstructing the concept of sexuality and religion and how it's not supposed to go together, but in my world it goes together."

As for the show itself, Madonna hasn't revealed much, but she offers some insight about how she balances her setlist with greatest hits like "Vogue" and her new Rebel Heart material. "Of course, the thing Im most excited about doing is my new stuff, because I haven't done it yet and it's fresh," she tells Cohen. "But I realize that people want to hear my older stuff, so for me it's always a tricky balance trying to keep some kind of continuity, not only with sound, sonically, but also thematically … a lot of times I have to take the songs and turn them inside out and make them more ironic than straightforward."

Cohen also inquires about whether Madonna's 14-year-old son Rocco would appear on the tour. "I think he's probably gonna work behind the scenes," she says. "He's not interested in performing on stage with me right now. There's way cooler things. Your mom is not that cool when you're 14."



Madonna scores 46th no. 1 on Dance Club Songs Chart

Source: Billboard - 1 August 2015

"Bitch I'm Madonna" extends her record for most No. 1s on a single chart.

Madonna's back at No. 1 on the Dance Club Songs chart, as her latest single, "Bitch I'm Madonna" rises 2-1 on the chart dated Aug. 15.

Bitch I'm Madonna, the single️ It's the diva's 46th No. 1 on this chart, and extends her own record for the most No. 1s on a singular Billboard chart. (She broke the record in May, when she surpassed George Strait's 44 leaders on the Hot Country Songs chart.)

The new Aug. 15-dated Dance Club Songs chart -- which measures reports submitted by a national sample of club DJs -- will post to Billboard's websites on Aug. 4.

"Bitch I'm Madonna," featuring Nicki Minaj, is the third single from Madonna's Rebel Heart album. The set debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, marking her 21st top 10 effort.

For Minaj, "Bitch I'm Madonna" is her fifth No. 1. She also hit the top with "Turn Me On" (David Guetta featuring Minaj), "Give Me All Your Luvin'" (Madonna featuring Minaj & M.I.A.), "Pound the Alarm" and "Beauty and a Beat" (Justin Bieber featuring Minaj).

Here is an updated look at Madonna's 46 Dance Club Songs No. 1s, beginning with the double-sided single "Holiday"/"Lucky Star," which reached the top the week of Sept. 24, 1983. You'll notice that one of her No. 1s is an entire album: You Can Dance (1988), a collection of mostly remixes of previously-released songs (and one new cut, "Spotlight"). Prior to Feb. 23, 1991, the chart wasn't always song-specific and full albums were, at some points, allowed to chart.

(For titles that spent multiple weeks at No. 1, total frames in the lead are noted in parentheses.)

Madonna's 46 Dance Club Songs No. 1s

1983, "Holiday"/"Lucky Star" (five weeks at No. 1)
1984, "Like a Virgin" (four)
1985, "Material Girl"
1985, "Angel"/"Into the Groove"
1987, "Open Your Heart"
1987, "Causing a Commotion (Remix)"
1988, "You Can Dance (LP Cuts)"
1989, "Like a Prayer" (two)
1989, "Express Yourself" (three)
1990, "Keep It Together"
1990, "Vogue" (two)
1991, "Justify My Love" (two)
1992, "Erotica"
1993, "Deeper and Deeper"
1993, "Fever"
1994, "Secret" (two)
1995, "Bedtime Story"
1997, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina"
1998, "Frozen" (two)
1998, "Ray of Light" (four)
1999, "Nothing Really Matters" (two)
1999, "Beautiful Stranger" (two)
2000, "American Pie"
2000, "Music" (five)
2001, "Don't Tell Me"
2001, "What It Feels Like for a Girl"
2001, "Impressive Instant" (two)
2002, "Die Another Day" (two)
2003, "American Life"
2003, "Hollywood"
2003, "Me Against the Music," Britney Spears featuring Madonna (two)
2004, "Nothing Fails"
2004, "Love Profusion"
2005, "Hung Up" (four)
2006, "Sorry" (two)
2006, "Get Together"
2006, "Jump" (two)
2008, "4 Minutes," Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake & Timbaland (two)
2008, "Give It 2 Me"
2009, "Celebration"
2012, "Give Me All Your Luvin'," Madonna featuring Nicki Minaj & M.I.A.
2012, "Girl Gone Wild"
2012, "Turn Up the Radio"
2015, "Living for Love"
2015, "Ghosttown"
2015, "Bitch I'm Madonna," featuring Nicki Minaj

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