Madonna: Part 4 With Caryn Ganz

Yasi is joined by journalist and critic Caryn Ganz as the Madonna series enters the modern era. They discuss the glittering revival of 'Confessions on a Dance Floor,' the superstar collaborations and pop maximalism of 'Hard Candy,' the spectacle and chaos of 'MDNA,' the leaks, vulnerability, and often misunderstood ambition of 'Rebel Heart,' and the globetrotting experimentation of 'Madame X.' Plus: The Super Bowl, the ageism, the collaborators, and the globe-spanning Celebration Tour that celebrated 40 years of Madonna, along with what they feel is coming next as 'Confessions 2' looms on the horizon. Episode PlaylistListen to the Madonna: Part 4 playlist here. CREDITS:Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuests: Caryn Ganz @mehpatrolProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really like this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain.

• 0:45Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Solink. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is part four of four about, again, maybe the most iconic artist of all time: Madonna. You guys, my guest today is the one, the only, Karen Gans, the former pop music editor of The New York Times, their loss. On her very first day of freedom, she's joining us.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  I basically, I quit my job to become a full-time Madonna-ologist with you, Yasi.

• 1:19Yasi Salek?

  Karen was like, "I'm not going on vacation. I'm going straight to my new job as Madonna scholar on the Bandplain Podcast." And I so, I so appreciate it.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:30Yasi Salek?

  How are you feeling?

• 1:30Speaker 02

  I feel good. This is like exactly where I would want to be right now. It's actually, it's just like, it's all happening.

• 1:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I do find that this happens to me while I research almost any subject, but I really start to map myself onto their trajectory and I'm like, "Me too, babe." And I do took the road less traveled by, you know?

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Got to get ready to jump.

• 1:50Yasi Salek?

  Got to get ready to jump, exactly. Okay, before we get into part four of, unfortunately, the last part, for now, I just want to once again thank all of the resources that I used to research these episodes. Today in Madonna history, Madonnapedia, Madonna Underground, Madonna Tribe, the Inside the Groove Podcast, the Encyclopedia Madonna, the 2023 Mary Gabriel Madonna Biography, countless Instagram accounts, Webo Girl, Madonna Brunette, all of them. Thank you for all of your tireless work. You've helped me. All right, you guys, well, in episode three, we left off with the reinvention tour, which, based on Billboard Statistics, was the highest grossing tour of 2004, earning

• 2:35Yasi Salek?

  a cool $125 million. Did you go to that tour?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  I did. So this is, we're starting with the part of the Madonna journey where I've been like covering her this whole time and attending, so I have a lot of experience for everything. I will say, reinvention tour, not my favorite.

• 2:49Yasi Salek?

  Interesting. Go on.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Well, it's coming off Drowned World, which I think like really reset the bar for her super high.

• 2:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  So it was just, it was a little bit of a, it was a little bit of a low.

• 2:57Yasi Salek?

  It's so interesting, because like, you talk to different people, and there's so many opinions, right? I've talked to some people who thought Drowned World was like, that wasn't their favorite. Like, they were off put by it. And I love Drowned World. Again, I did not attend any of these, as you guys famously know, but I have watched them all on my television. And I'm like, this one was like, I guess like, I can see how maybe, given the like tense landscape of cops in our midst, that some of it maybe hasn't aged well. But I, I think it's beautiful and brilliant.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Drowned World was pre 9/11.

• 3:39Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  And I think I saw it in July or August 2001. I did not have a care in the world. I was the happiest person on earth with my first full arena Madonna show. And I was just like, life is amazing. And a couple of months later, I was like, oh, no!

• 3:51Yasi Salek?

  Life is terrible.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then...

• 3:53Speaker 02

  And then she made a record kind of about it, and then we got the reinvention tour. So, you know, it tells the story.

• 3:57Yasi Salek?

  You guys, not a peek behind the curtain, but I think in my state of psychosis that I've been in, me podcasting right now is Madonna crown of thorns coming down off the cross at the confessions tour, normal. I feel, I feel persecuted by my own behavior. All right, so we're kicking off at 2004. Sometime after the reinvention tour, there's kind of a major shakeup in Madonna's, you know, world of...

• 4:25Yasi Salek?

  Team where her manager, Caress Henry, is let go. Reportedly, allegedly, this was due to an affair that she allegedly reportedly had with one of Madonna's security guards. And they both had partners and allegedly reportedly Madonna felt that that violated the Kabbalah teachings of faithfulness. I don't know, it wasn't there, I'm just alleging and reporting. And then, okay, this is where I'm gonna need your help piecing it together, because this is the one I was like, full A Beautiful Mind, full red string murder board, like, math. Madonna starts working on two musicals around this time.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  I'm actually not that up on the musicals, so you're not gonna need me for this.

• 5:12Yasi Salek?

  I absolutely did watch a fan made video that's like, an hour long, by a gay man with a lisp, who traveled around the world to tell us about this background story, so...

• 5:23Speaker 02

  I will be learning along with the audience on this one.

• 5:25Yasi Salek?

  And I trust him. And I did a little fact checking with Courtney Love, which is interesting, and you'll see why. Okay, so, the mu- one of the musicals was a film, they're both meant to be films, so musical films, not like, stage musicals. One was titled, I believe, called Hello Suckers. And the other was one with Luc Besson, the director who had previously directed her video for Love Profusion. Great video, great song. So Hello Suckers centered on the life of this 1920's prohibition era, speakeasy queen named Texas Gwenen, I think is how you say it. She was like, good friends with Mae West. Apparently, from the digging I did, Martin Scorsese found, like, some footage of this

• 6:08Yasi Salek?

  woman from back in the day, and was like, oh, we need to make a film about her. So he was originally tied on as the executive producer. There was a book by Louise Berliner about her life. And so, there was already a thing that was going, Bonnie Brookheimer and Bette Midler apparently had developed this story, and Courtney Love was tied to it, to star, which makes so much sense, and she would have been amazing. Also, interestingly, just another little layer. There was a film from 1945 called Incendiary Blonde, directed by George Marshall, starring Betty Hutton, who Madonna loved, where she played Texas Gueinen, Gueinen, I'm sorry, I don't know how to pronounce her last name. Incidentally, Betty Hutton also performed a song called Papa Don't Preach to Me

• 6:52Yasi Salek?

  in the 1947 film, The Perils of Pauline, which I didn't know when we were doing episode one, but I'm telling you now.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  You've really, you've gone down the cable.

• 7:00Yasi Salek?

  I went down, oh, beyond.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  The M-hole?

• 7:03Yasi Salek?

  I live there now. Back to this, Hello Suckers. So, I don't know what happened with the original construction of the, you know, Bonnie Brook, I remember, Bette Midler, Courtney Love situation, but it kind of fell apart, and then Maverick Films acquired the rights in 2001. But then, this also fell apart, I think partially due to Madonna selling her stake in Maverick in 2004. But she had started working on some songs for it. Secondly, the Luc Besson musical, this is actually where it gets kind of really interesting. This was apparently Madonna's idea, and the concept was that she would portray a woman

• 7:48Yasi Salek?

  on her deathbed, looking back on the life she thought she had lived, but twist. She had very bad dementia and was senile, and therefore did not actually experience any of the memories she was speaking of.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  That would have been interesting.

• 8:06Yasi Salek?

  And it was apparently based on Candy Darling.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Really?

• 8:10Yasi Salek?

  It would have been a Candy Darling.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  This is pretty cool.

• 8:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, pretty cool, because I think she had seen the Peter Hoosier photo Candy Darling on her deathbed. And anyways, she had gotten, with Luc Besson, there was going to be a sci-fi element, because she's like... Thinking back to these unlived times, there was gonna be a disco scene that was kind of like tying into Fifth Element, Luc Besson. So, it's very cool, right? And so she had also started working on music for that while Luc Besson was like hard at work writing the script.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  This is classic Madonna multitasking here.

• 8:48Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. I bring it all up because she got with Mirways, Patrick Leonard, and Stuart Price to write the music. And it was gonna be from all these different eras, 20s, big band, 40s stuff, 60s, folk music, punk, and of course disco. And she went to Stuart to work on the disco music for this film, and that led to Hung Up. Hung Up was actually originally written to be part of this, from what I understand, sci-fi musical about Candy Darling's life. So yeah, is that not crazy?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  That is crazy. I didn't know that. Even though I did scan through your document, I didn't retain this.

• 9:29Yasi Salek?

  This is all like, I don't have proof of any of this. I mean, there are like a bunch of corroborations, if you can corroborate via like just various sites saying it. I definitely have proof that the Hello Suckers was real, because I spoke to Corey Love about it. It makes a lot of sense, actually. She had come to Stuart, because I guess she was imagining this disco scene, and she was like, "I want something that sounds like ABBA on acid." And he was like-

• 10:01Speaker 02

  I mean, that is kind of what they did.

• 10:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, apparently he was like, "Funny you should say that." Because about six months prior, and again, I don't have proof of any of this, this is just like stuff I've pieced together from the internet. If it's not real Stuart Price, call me. Call me anyway, honestly, babe. I'm available for calls. Apparently-

• 10:17Speaker 02

  I have to.

• 10:18Yasi Salek?

  Also Karen. So, six months prior to this situation happening, he had been DJing Liverpool. And I guess like at like 5:00 AM when he was done, he was listening to the radio, and he heard Gimme Gimme Gimme a Man After Midnight. And he was like, "You know what? This song fucks." This is my editorializing, I don't know what he said.

• 10:35Yasi Salek?

  So he went home and quickly cut a sample of the piano bit

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:39Yasi Salek?

  to put back into his DJ set the next week. And the people on the dance floor obviously went nuts for it.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:44Yasi Salek?

  And so he was just like DJing that for a while and had fun with it, but then forgot about it. And then when she was like, "Do you have anything that sounds like ABBA and acid?" He was like, "Actually, right here, I have something that sounds like ABBA and acid." And then they made that song in three days.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  I'll just say, I went to the ABBA musical. I had never seen it.

• 10:59Yasi Salek?

  Mamma Mia.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Mamma Mia.

• 11:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  I finally saw Mamma Mia and I was just like waiting for Gimme Gimme Gimme. And I was just like, this is one of the best pop songs ever.

• 11:06Yasi Salek?

  I've never seen Mamma Mia. Is it Gimme Gimme in there?

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Oh, it is.

• 11:09Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Is it?

• 11:10Speaker 02

  It is. Well, it's like all the hits.

• 11:11Yasi Salek?

  Okay, that makes sense. It is one of the best songs ever.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  It is.

• 11:15Yasi Salek?

  ABBA kind of snapped, babe, back then.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Love ABBA.

• 11:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, really good.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:18Yasi Salek?

  Just like to circle around about this musical, about Candy Darling. She ended up apparently getting a 300-page script from Luke Besson and she, I guess, allegedly reportedly did not like it, so that sort of died. But now they had hung up and I think there's a couple other songs on Confessions that are rooted in this Candy Darling sci-fi musical.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  That's wild.

• 11:44Yasi Salek?

  So if that's not real, I don't want to know.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  For the purposes of this conversation, it's real. Yeah.

• 11:51Yasi Salek?

  It makes sense, but who knows? So Madonna had been, that also kind of explains to me a little bit, even though I think Madonna loves to do this, why she was working with Stuart in his like two-room flat in Made of Veil instead of like, "Oh, we're making an album. Let's go to the studio," you know? And that kind of checks out, too. I'll say it for the record, all the best Madonna music seems to come from me and my lad in a room together.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  I don't want to skip ahead too far.

• 12:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  But the one time I interviewed her was for Rebel Heart, which we will get to.

• 12:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  And she said that her favorite way to make a record is just with one producer.

• 12:30Yasi Salek?

  And I-

• 12:31Speaker 02

  And I think it shows. What's up there?

• 12:32Yasi Salek?

  All she needs is one producer and a coffee and a dream, babe. Like one Patrick Leonard and a dream, one Stuart Price and a dream. It just happens to line up that Warner Brothers is like-

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Tik Tok.

• 12:43Yasi Salek?

  Tik Tok. We needed a fucking album, babe. And she was like, I don't want to write an album. But this just happened. She was like, OK, well, I guess we could like pull this thread. I don't want to go into it too much, but she talked a bit about choosing Stuart Price ultimately over Miriway. Even though there's some Miriway songs.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:59Yasi Salek?

  On, on Confessions. And she said that, you remember at Miriway, John Paul Sartre comes to mind. He's very intellectual, very analytical, very cerebral, very intellectual, very philosophical. You have to be in the mood for it. I didn't want to overthink things too much. I don't want to be complicated right now. That's kind of going back to like American Life, right, which is a very like political record.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  And a little bit overthought.

• 13:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  A little tortured.

• 13:23Yasi Salek?

  I'm an American Life truther. I love it.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  I love like 60%.

• 13:28Yasi Salek?

  I think that's great, but I think she was unfairly maligned, once again, for the 80th time on that one. American Life was so ahead of its time. Um, but you know, I get it. She was probably like, can we just have some fun?

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:42Yasi Salek?

  We've been in a dark place. Yeah, there was like a whole conversation where they're like, so it's like, just fuck art, let's dance. And she's like, it's fuck everything, let's dance.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 13:51Yasi Salek?

  That's how we get into... Do you know much about Stuart Price in his prior life?

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Uh, not a ton.

• 13:57Yasi Salek?

  So I, I feel like we didn't really do it on the last episode where Stuart Price comes into the story. But he had like, had his own band called Zoot Woman and produced a bunch of music under these like various personas.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  I know Jacques Lecomte.

• 14:15Yasi Salek?

  Jacques Lecomte, Le Rhythm Digital, Paper Faces, Man with the Guitar, Thin White Duke. And he's quite young still here, but he had already done a bunch, including, I guess he had a song called Born This Way. Did you know about this?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  I did not.

• 14:30Yasi Salek?

  Which sampled.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Controversy.

• 14:31Yasi Salek?

  Carl Bean's, uh, disco anthem that's like, I'm happy, I'm carefree, I'm gay. It's a little... Do what you will with that information, normal Madonna fans.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  We'll come back to that.

• 14:43Yasi Salek?

  We'll come back to that. In, in 2005, she turns 47.

• 14:49Yasi Salek?

  On her birthday, her husband, at the time, Guy Ritchie organizes for her a horse riding party.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And one of the horses was a polo horse, a thoroughbred. And her friends were like, babe, you gotta try this horse. He's so lovely. He's like a deer, babe. Just get on this horse. And she was like, great. Um, he was not like a deer. He threw her right off. And she broke multiple bones.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  I remember hearing about this.

• 15:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  And being devastated. I was like, what will happen to Madonna?

• 15:21Yasi Salek?

  What will happen to Madonna?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but what, what happened to Madonna is whatever hap- what always happens to Madonna. She came back stronger.

• 15:27Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Like a broken bone often does. Well, I think it's, I mean, she broke her collarbone, like, was pretty intense. Yeah. But it's, it's worth saying, and this is one of my favorite aspects of Madonna, is Madonna is like a professional athlete. Like, she is on a level of a professional athlete. Her body is a temple. She's so strong. She's so flexible. She's been doing professional dance in, aside from running, like, weightlifting, yoga to the max. Like, she is, her body is so, so strong that I think a normal person would not have recovered from this the way she did. The, where she's just like, you know, one smoothier later. But that was me dancing, for those who aren't, um, on audio only.

• 16:10Yasi Salek?

  And, but she had to, she had to slow down.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  She did. Are we gonna talk about the David Letterman appearance when she came back?

• 16:17Yasi Salek?

  No, I, wait, I didn't write about it. You tell me about it.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Oh, so she, uh, she has a famously fraught, you know, very fun relationship with Letterman. I don't know if you talked about it.

• 16:24Yasi Salek?

  We talked about her saying fuck forty-eight times or whatever on that.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, when he made fun of her hair and he was like, what are you wearing, a swim cap?

• 16:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Uh, absolutely epic back and forth. I love them sparring. But to show her love, because he truly did love and appreciate her. He had her on as like one of her first appearances back. And she rode a horse down like Broadway or wherever the studio was in a show of strength.

• 16:43Yasi Salek?

  Amazing.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Amazing. And then, of course, she made horses an opening theme of this tour.

• 16:48Yasi Salek?

  Which I love.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  We will get there.

• 16:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we'll get there. I, my arm hairs. I love it. She was like, I still love horses. Horses can't get me down. Also very funny, when she was in the hospital, I read this, that apparently, allegedly, reportedly, Guy Ritchie was in the room, but she screamed at him so much for morphine that he left.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  I could see that.

• 17:09Yasi Salek?

  Be a man.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:11Yasi Salek?

  You stay. No, we won't get into that. Next month, Guy Ritchie puts out his new film, Revolver, with Jason Statham. I don't know her. It was a flop, apparently. I don't think it even came out in America. One critic said, "After Revolver, swept away, now looks like Citizen Kane." It's rough.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  That's really just twisting the knife.

• 17:30Yasi Salek?

  It's hard. Madonna biographer Lucy O'Brien quoted one of her friends, anon, please, as saying, "Deep down, he blames her for his career nosedive."

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Because she got injured?

• 17:43Yasi Salek?

  Maybe because it swept away.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Oh, OK.

• 17:45Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I don't know. There's no further...

• 17:48Speaker 02

  OK, that would make a little bit more sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:50Yasi Salek?

  But, I mean, you were the director.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:53Yasi Salek?

  I saw that movie.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  She can be excellent on film. Don't blame her.

• 17:57Yasi Salek?

  You could have directed it. She looked hot. She did her job. OK, all of this is kind of the background into which Confessions on a Dance Floor is released into the world on November 9, 2005. My first question is a top-line question for you, Karen.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:13Yasi Salek?

  Do you feel that Confessions on a Dance Floor felt as lauded and appreciated at the time of its release as it does now, where it's obviously considered one of her great albums?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  I think it became canon later.

• 18:28Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  But it was definitely well-received. But it was not necessarily well-received by me. I reviewed this album, and I did not love it.

• 18:34Yasi Salek?

  Karen prison.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  I know. This is one of my biggest regrets. I've said this before, but now I will say it one more time. Back then, when they worried about albums leaking, they would make you come to an office and listen to it once.

• 18:45Yasi Salek?

  No, it's not possible to...

• 18:46Speaker 02

  It's not. I listened to it once. I will say, Liz Rosenberg, I don't know how much you've talked about Liz Rosenberg.

• 18:50Yasi Salek?

  Quite a bit. What a legend.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Absolute icon. She was dancing to Sorry in the room while I was listening to it. A little distracting, I have to say, because I love her so much. I was like, holy crap. I just, I did not fully get it. I was like, OK, this is a corrective to American life, right? She's going back to the thing that she knows she has, the dance floor. She has gay men. She has this. She has that. I thought it was, I mean, I thought it was fine. But I did not fully get it until after it came out, and then I started experiencing it. Because I went to the Roxy. We'll get there.

• 19:15Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  But I was there for one of her appearances, and I was like, oh, now I understand. This is like a thing.

• 19:20Yasi Salek?

  This is like one of, I mean, I don't have to tell you, because you're the, you have lived this, and I have only observed it, but like, one of the greatest tragedies of music writing, which is why it's largely dead... Um, is because they're like, oh, the internet's here. You need to write your review in six and a half minutes.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:38Yasi Salek?

  Oh, you can't even listen to the whole album, actually. You have to put it out before you listen to the whole album. And then you get these like unhinged reviews, which is not even their fault. Like, because it takes me like weeks for some albums. I mean, some hit you right away, sure.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  No, this has definitely been a major drawback. Also, just, I don't know how much you've discussed this, but Madonna's entire career arc has traced, like, the entire rise and fall of music journalism and artist's relationship to the press.

• 20:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  She gave so many interviews in the early days. Just think about how few interviews Beyonce, for example, gives now, right? Madonna talked to everyone all the time.

• 20:10Yasi Salek?

  And thank God.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Every, she had that giant aperture interview. She was talking to Time Magazine. She was talking to local papers. She was on TV, all that. She just, she talked. So you had all this insight into what she was thinking. And she had a lot, you know, obviously, there was a lot of thought behind it. Um, super interesting, but yes, also with the review cycle.

• 20:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  You can go through this, but she's had a lot of woes with the internet. A lot of woes, starting, you know, around American Life and forward.

• 20:32Yasi Salek?

  Who amongst us has not had a lot of woes around the internet?

• 20:35Speaker 02

  It's true. But anyway, I do think it was seen as very solid, but I don't think it became like true canon until a little bit later.

• 20:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and which I do think has happened with quite a few of her.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:46Yasi Salek?

  Songs and albums. It's funny, it just reminds me of like when we did in part three, Ray of Light, famously, Rob Sheffield gave it a bad review and then the next like day or two came back and was like, I'm so sorry, I'm just kidding. I didn't get it.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Was that his famous, she gets knocked up and she gets up again lead? Shumbawamba quoting? I do love you, Rob.

• 21:07Yasi Salek?

  I thought, but I, I thought, I took, I doffed my cap to that because I was like, it takes a strong person to like admit they were wrong and come back and republish.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  I recently came around on Mayhem. I've heard a lot about it on the internet. It happens. Sometimes we make mistakes.

• 21:20Yasi Salek?

  It happens. Okay, so it did hit number one on Billboard, so, you know, obviously it was.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  She's still Madonna.

• 21:27Yasi Salek?

  Platinum, yeah. Also, 2005 is like, this is one of my areas of interest, not because I like it, because as you guys know famously, I think the decade of the 2000s is very ugly and disgusting and terrible, but because it's the no man's land of, people aren't.

• 21:46Yasi Salek?

  Totally, fully buying CDs, they are and they aren't.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:49Yasi Salek?

  They are downloading songs for 99 cents off of the iTunes Store. There is not proper streaming yet. Napster has come and kind of gone, but there's like LimeWire and all these kind of like freaky will give you a disease to your computers, like ripping sites. So like, it's a very strange time for trying to understand charting.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:10Yasi Salek?

  Right?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  No, I agree with you.

• 22:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. This came up only once, and I don't know if it was a complete, like, misunderstanding or someone was just lying, but I felt like I would ask you if you had any information on it. Someone said that this album was meant to be made with the Pet Shop Boys at one point. I also saw one other thing that said that she had worked with Martin Gore from Depeche Mode. These are the things that I was not able to find more information about.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  I don't know a lot about that, but I know that she had like a great appreciation for Pet Shop Boys.

• 22:39Yasi Salek?

  And obviously, there is, um, not sampling per se, but there is like a sort of homage.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  I was gonna use that word.

• 22:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. To some, to some synthy.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:51Yasi Salek?

  I just liked, my mind went to a nice place where I was like, what would a Pet Shop Boys Madonna album sound like?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  There's still time.

• 22:57Yasi Salek?

  There's still time, babe. Okay, Madonna said, "Even though I didn't know I wanted to make a record, I just thought this is what I would want to do with my free time at the moment." She did not mention that there was a Lucasfilm sci-fi Candy Darling musical, and that's fine. "I was working with other people as well. I worked with Mirways, but not eventually in the same capacity. I had before because I wanted to do this quickly. He's great, but there's always the angst of collaborating with somebody. He's very intellectual, cerebral, and I wanted an easy time. That's not to belittle Stuart, but he's so relaxed and easy to work with, and I really needed that. It came out of not trying too hard. I never planned to make my whole record with him, honestly. It was just gonna be a few tracks." And then we... I liked the little details, I don't think I wrote them in doc, but like, again, I think Stuart Price is like, what, 26 or something?

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:41Yasi Salek?

  And she would come to his house, and he'd be like, just woke up, like, in his socks, and she'd be like, "Do you have food here?" And then she would like, send for someone to bring food from her like, palatial estate or whatever, and like, feed him, and then they would like, work all night.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  She is mother.

• 23:55Yasi Salek?

  She's a mother.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:57Yasi Salek?

  So, this whole time, as you mentioned earlier, Madonna, the ultimate multitasker, is... Also, or has just come off of, or it's a bit overlapping with editing, "I'm gonna tell you a secret."

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 24:09Yasi Salek?

  That's sort of a lesser-known tour document.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  For the tour that I am love, so yeah.

• 24:15Yasi Salek?

  Yes. It's a, it's kind of a great tour documentary. The, if, it's no truth or dare.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:21Yasi Salek?

  Nothing is ever gonna be truth or dare, but it's, it's quite a feast for the senses, and it's a lot of insight into what's going on with Madonna at that time.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:31Yasi Salek?

  And Guy Ritchie's in it.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Which is a source of stress, yes.

• 24:35Yasi Salek?

  This fuck-ass hat. What are you, a golf cap? What is this hat? Anyways.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  He's English. I will defend the hat, but yes, he's English.

• 24:42Yasi Salek?

  I don't know why I came away from this with just like, that man to me, dead on sight. Love and respect.

• 24:50Yasi Salek?

  I say that with love and respect.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Allegedly.

• 24:51Yasi Salek?

  Allegedly, reportedly. Okay, so, but I think it was very stressful because she had done 350 hours of filming for this. The narrative is, it's interesting, right? It's like, she's in such a different place in her career. 2005, 44?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  No, "American Life," she was 45, or, yeah, yeah.

• 25:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, sorry, I was doing math on the fly. Forty-seven. So, you know, we're, we're coming towards 50.

• 25:20Yasi Salek?

  People are dying, I know, same. People are dying to point that out at every fucking left, right, and th- They've been pointing out since she was 30, though. I, I think I read a quote in episode two where someone, like, in "The Guardian" was like, "35, she better fucking think about packing it up." And you're like, "Are you fucked?" And then you remember, and I don't want you guys to remember, that without Madonna ignoring people saying, "You're 35, pack it up," we have, Taylor Swift was what, 37 now?

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think.

• 25:52Yasi Salek?

  I don't know, I just said that off the top of it. She's definitely at least 35, I think.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:56Yasi Salek?

  We, that's not, no one even, no one looks at Taylor Swift and says, "You're too old to this." It wouldn't even cross one person's mind. And that's because of Madonna. Because she kept going when people were like, questioning her age. And so she's really not gonna stop now. But I'm just saying, it's, it's there in the ether.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 26:11Yasi Salek?

  Talk to me about the- The sound and the theme of this album.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  It's like falling in love, falling out of love, loving New York.

• 26:20Yasi Salek?

  Loving New York, Candy Darling.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Controversial.

• 26:22Yasi Salek?

  That's a song, that is a song that they said is from, which makes a lot of sense.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Really, okay, that does make sense.

• 26:26Yasi Salek?

  Because.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 26:28Yasi Salek?

  Warhol.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:29Yasi Salek?

  Candy Darling, New York.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  And you know, just like the lessons she's learned in life and during her career and reflecting on that and her relationship to fame. It's a very classic Madonna themed album. But, you know, in the songs and also as reflected in the music, it's like Madonna's always at her best when she's singing about the dance floor. Or like being on the dance floor. This is the thing. This is like, this is the place of her true origin.

• 26:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's true. I think, I agree. I think Madonna, I think Madonna's at her best when she's singing about truth. Like about her truth, you know, without obscuring it or without, because there are later songs where it's kind of, in my opinion, feels like there was like a letdown to like a previous vulnerability. And so now it's like, this? It's just vibes.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:21Yasi Salek?

  And that's fine, but I think she's such an evocative singer. She's such a like open book when she came, when she wants to be. And that's so easy to connect with for a fan like me. And then when she's kind of not doing that, I find those songs harder for me to relate to.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  That totally makes sense. I feel like this is a very open-hearted record. There's not a song on here where I'm like, I can't find a way into this lyrically.

• 27:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  I can crawl inside all of them.

• 27:47Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:48Yasi Salek?

  There's like a sense of escapism to me in this record, which like everyone I think can relate to.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:55Yasi Salek?

  And also like, not to speculate, but I'm like, some, I mean, you're, you're living in London, but you're writing an ode to how much you love New York. You know, these are, it's like.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Cracks in the foundation.

• 28:08Yasi Salek?

  And, and later she will say the words like, "I felt trapped."

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:13Yasi Salek?

  "I was in prison," or whatever. And you're like, "Okay, so putting two and two together." In that vein, David Brown in Entertainment Weekly, from his review, said this one line, which I really thought was interesting. He said, "Madonna without the marriage, the children, the British estate, such as the fantasy world conjured up in Confessions on the Dance Floor." I mean, I don't think she was wishing that she didn't have kids, but...

• 28:32Speaker 02

  No, but that's, I mean, the dance floor represents all this carefree escape, freedom, no cares. You know, every dance song is like, "Just dance around your cares. You've got no worries. Just, you know, just go dance."

• 28:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Um, you know, Jesse Ware, who makes awesome disco albums, is always like, "Yeah, I've got kids and a husband, but I'm dreaming up like life as a gay man, just twirling around under a disco ball and dreaming the dream." It's like, that is the dream. And gay men, you live the dream.

• 28:55Yasi Salek?

  Well, they also have children and...

• 28:57Speaker 02

  They do, they do, they do.

• 28:58Yasi Salek?

  And responsibilities and pay taxes. All of it, babe. We all need a little escape.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 29:03Yasi Salek?

  Richard Cromwell in the LA Times, who I actually usually really love, said, "Confessions has a bratty ode to New York City, tales of forbidden love and futuristic love, empowerment anthems, and an ethno-trans diversion into cabala-centric intersection." We'll get to that. I like that song. I'm sorry. I don't care what anyone says. That's a good song. Um, but it's actually pretty short on confessions. When she does go into self-serious mode, the album loses its charm.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  I don't need her to confess.

• 29:29Yasi Salek?

  I think she is confessing.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  I mean, she is in some ways, but like, she's, you know, she's naked all the time.

• 29:34Yasi Salek?

  She's confessed a lot, babe.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Okay, so she promoted this. Were you there by any chance? She promoted this album at Miss Shapes. Shout out, Miss Shapes, at Luke and Leroy's.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  I skipped Miss Shapes because I went to the Roxy.

• 29:46Yasi Salek?

  Okay, okay. So you, you had to choose one. Um, how was the Roxy?

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. It was insane. Um, my girlfriend at the time and all of their friends, they were at the Roxy every Saturday anyway. And it was like, Madonna's gonna be at the Roxy. It was just like, everyone's head was exploding. I think I got there at like 1:45 a.m. and she came out at 2:00. And Fernando from Warner Brothers, shout out Fernando, went out for a cigarette, missed the entire thing, came back in.

• 30:09Yasi Salek?

  That's how short it was?

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was like 20 minutes. But I was like, "You missed the entire thing." I don't have any footage from this. I don't know if I didn't take any or if I lost it. I might have had a digital camera. But I might have actually been enjoying myself because it was like 2005. Um, and I was living. It was amazing. She looked so good. This is like a peak Madonna appearance era.

• 30:27Yasi Salek?

  I agree.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  We're gonna talk about the Hung Up video, but like, absolute peak hotness.

• 30:31Yasi Salek?

  She just looks so good. Also, just like, the fashion of it, like, Patrick's not here unfortunately, so I have to do my best, but, you know, this is, she's wearing, in multiple appearances, press appearances, tour stuff, versions of the same leather bomber jacket.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 30:49Yasi Salek?

  It's Gucci Resort 2006, designed by Frida Giannini, and these lace-up, knee-high, Saint Laurent boots. And it's just like, perfect. She looks perfect. That hair.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Like, I have a thing that's just like Madonna walking. You know what I mean? Like, she's just strutting in a very specific way, and in the Hung Up video, she is strutting in that jacket at one point. It's just like, is there anything better than Madonna simply walking?

• 31:12Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Not much.

• 31:13Yasi Salek?

  Not much, babe. I don't know. I can't walk like that. This album broke some records. It charted in 40 countries, which put it in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most charts topped around the world by the same album. Okay?

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Not bad.

• 31:25Yasi Salek?

  I think Hung Up also had the same records, like, topped the charts in 41 countries. Pretty good reviews, across the board, you know? Nobody really missed it except for Pitchfork, respectfully. 6.2. Get fucked.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  I'm glad you didn't find my spin review, because it's not really on the internet, because it was not overwhelmingly positive.

• 31:46Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, we'll put you next to the Pitchfork.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  I'm in, I'm in, uh, confessions jail for that one.

• 31:51Yasi Salek?

  Pitchfork was busy being like Animal Collective is the second coming of God. And Madonna, get out of here. She wins a Grammy.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:59Yasi Salek?

  For the album, but Dance Electronic.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:02Yasi Salek?

  Love to put her in a little hole.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  She's in a genre category.

• 32:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Also, I alluded to this, but I need to talk about it because I wanna publicly shame. Um, we're definitely still doing ageism.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, we're always doing ageism, yes.

• 32:16Yasi Salek?

  This is from the Pitchfork review, which I once again got it completely wrong. "20 years ago Madonna was a postmodernist's dream. Her ability to transform herself from song to song and from album to album became a proclamation of self nullifying empowerment." I don't like that word, self nullifying, I think it's wrong. "Giving her the ability to create a stationary persona out of shifting identities. However, by the start of the 1990s, Madonna's transformations appeared more calculated as she aged, and fell behind the curve, trying to predict the next dominant style instead of confidently setting it."

• 32:46Yasi Salek?

  Incorrect.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  That is not right.

• 32:48Yasi Salek?

  That's not right. With Confessions on a Dance Floor, her 14th album, Madonna again reinvents herself and it appears she's nearly lapped herself. Her latest iteration is a pre-Madonna, then he makes a little joke for himself, pre-Madonna, disco vixen, basking in a 70s musical style that she herself, among others, helped to morph and displace in the 80s. Allowing her to accessorize creatively, love that wraparound top. This new persona has the potential to be immensely entertaining. There's something a little sad about it, too. At 47, Madonna is playing the role of someone 25 years younger, and those retro-space leotards and that feathered hair only make her look more mature and matronly, like your friend's mom dressed up embarrassingly for Halloween. I will fucking kill you. Reportedly, allegedly.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  I mean, she's really, it's again, peacockness.

• 33:35Yasi Salek?

  Imagine looking at-

• 33:36Speaker 02

  A misread.

• 33:36Yasi Salek?

  Looking at this, honey, you know, like, if you're not attracted to women, that's okay. You can just say you're not attracted to women. We don't have to write a 6,000-word Pitchfork piece.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  I feel like Pitchfork at that era felt like they had to position themselves against her.

• 33:51Yasi Salek?

  Well, you don't have to say she looks old.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Well, obviously, I agree, but yes, I can, I can-

• 33:55Yasi Salek?

  Matronly?

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:57Yasi Salek?

  Honey, have you seen a matron? Actually, I don't know what a matron is. Have you seen a matron?

• 34:01Speaker 02

  I'm like the women who work in the bathrooms at the Roxy.

• 34:04Yasi Salek?

  Also, this makes me want to kill myself. I'm like, I've never looked that good. And so, am I matronly? Okay, let's get into the music.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 34:13Yasi Salek?

  The first single was obviously Hung Up, October 17, 2005. Did you know that it was first heard in a TV spot from Motorola's iTunes Enhanced Rocker mobile phone? I don't even, you guys were-

• 34:24Speaker 02

  I remember the rocker.

• 34:25Yasi Salek?

  If you're young, which, we have some young audience, I don't think I can express to you that before iPhone was basically the only phone, besides, I guess, like, some people have an Android, there was a new cellphone every six minutes. You had a, I had one. I had a Trio, I had a Sidekick, I had a Razr. I had several Razrs because I kept getting drunk and leaving them in cabs. Right, like the rocker, there was just nonstop Motorola StarTAC. That was one of my favorites, it was so little. And I have all these purses from the 2000s where they have the special pocket that's that size. And rocker was, you remember it, I don't remember.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  I do remember it. But also, this is sort of like, people were promoting things for phones.

• 35:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Like, people were doing that.

• 35:07Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Ring tones were a thing, like, this was a real era.

• 35:11Yasi Salek?

  Ring tones were like a billion dollar industry.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:13Yasi Salek?

  I made that number up, but I think it's right.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  I actually did have hung up his a ringtone, now that I just said that out loud.

• 35:18Yasi Salek?

  On your Motorola StarTAC?

• 35:19Speaker 02

  No, on a Samsung, but I did have it, my Samsung flip phone, wow. Yeah.

• 35:24Yasi Salek?

  It was a different time. Also, I think the first Madonna song ever available in the iTunes Store. Even though iTunes had been around for two years.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  She was skeptical.

• 35:34Yasi Salek?

  Well, she said that the money wasn't good enough. She said the deal was not good before that.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  That's very Proto Taylor, who fought for everyone's rights on Spotify. Hello Spotify, hi, sorry.

• 35:43Yasi Salek?

  And?

• 35:43Speaker 02

  And Apple Music, Apple Music, it was Apple Music.

• 35:45Yasi Salek?

  It was out, yeah.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Don't, don't remove me.

• 35:47Yasi Salek?

  You're removed. This podcast is actually just gonna be me talking to myself.

• 35:52Yasi Salek?

  This was her 36th top 10 hit, so she tied with Elvis Presley.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Wow. I mean, this is like a career-making banger.

• 36:00Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  I love this song so much.

• 36:03Yasi Salek?

  How could you not?

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Impossible not. Also, just like, the sample, so inventively used. It's like, reinvented, completely in a new context. If you force yourself, you can hear the original song in it, but like, it so naturally fits into the new song. I just like, so often with samples, I'm like, this makes no sense, why are you jamming this in here? You're just trying to make an allusion to that song. It was like, no, I am inventing something new with dance music.

• 36:26Yasi Salek?

  Stuart Price is an absolute genius.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:29Yasi Salek?

  Also, just need to point out, this is only the second time ever, because ABBA's notoriously like, no.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  No, I recall that she had to ask herself.

• 36:38Yasi Salek?

  She had to ask herself. They had, you know what the first sample was? I mean, you know, because it's my dog, but I'll tell you.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 36:43Yasi Salek?

  It's the Fugees, Rumble in the Jungle from 1996. They sampled the name of the game, the ABBA song.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  I'm surprised they let that go. The Fugees were very big then, though.

• 36:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and you know, ABBA has good taste.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 36:54Yasi Salek?

  They were like, these people are cool. Madonna said, we were writing and we were like, OK, we want to make the ultimate pop dance record. We listened to lots of ABBA records and lots of Georgia Marauder, which we'll get into also. And we kept going through stuff and soaking it all up, and ultimately, ABBA found its way into our psyches. I think they might have had doubts about letting us sample their record. 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 worshiped their music, telling them it was an homage to them, which is all true. And they had to think about it. Benny and Bjorn, they didn't say yes right away. They never let anyone sample their music. They could have said no, thank God they didn't. And I saw an interview with them where they were like, well, we had to hear the song, and the song was amazing.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, these are real deal.

• 37:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Yasi Salek?

  He didn't just sample the piano. He also does like a synth version of it. Like, it's just, it's so cool what Stuart Price did with this song. And then the three layers of vocals, which are like Madonna, Madonna, and then vocoder, which is also Madonna.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  And I love that it's about impatience, which is like a classic Madonna hallmark. This woman does not like to wait.

• 38:15Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  No.

• 38:16Yasi Salek?

  How do you think she got this career?

• 38:18Speaker 02

  She does not wait.

• 38:19Yasi Salek?

  TikTok, TikTok. I also like, this is, I mean, she's done it kind of her whole career, but we really get into an era of Madonna referencing back to herself. And so, the first verse references her, one of my favorite Madonna songs, the 1989 song with Prince, Love Song. "Time goes by so slowly for those who wait." Well, Hung Up is incredible, yeah. So, the video, directed by Johan Rank, it's kind of a tribute to John Travolta in his various dance films, obviously, most famously probably Saturday Night Fever. Here's a, here's a thing. There's no one on earth that I can identify at the level of Madonna, who is a bigger proponent of crumping and parkour, mostly parkour.

• 39:04Yasi Salek?

  She is the world's leading parkour advocate.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Her and Michael Scott from The Office, yes.

• 39:11Yasi Salek?

  So this video features famed crumper Moss Prissy. I did dig up, don't worry, a 2005 AOL chat between Anthony Kiedis and Madonna in promotion of this album. They used to do that. This was like AOL.com presents

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 39:29Yasi Salek?

  an AIM chat between Madonna Confesses with a K and RH Anthony CP. Here's just a snippet. Madonna Confesses said, "There's something raw and theatrical, something Shakespearean about crumping." RH Anthony CP, Anthony Kiedis, "Crumpling is a great way to communicate with spirits of love."

• 39:51Speaker 02

  I don't know what that means.

• 39:52Yasi Salek?

  I don't either, Ben. But you know what? There's something Shakespearean about crumping is what my takeaway was from that. Okay, the next song is on the album is actually the third single, "Get Together."

• 40:04Speaker 02

  There are some like Swedish pop wizards on this album and they emerged first here.

• 40:08Yasi Salek?

  Do you know much about Pierre Ostrom and Anders Bage?

• 40:12Speaker 02

  I don't. They're not the Swedish pop wizards I know the most about, but...

• 40:17Yasi Salek?

  They did, they fucking snapped on this shit.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:20Yasi Salek?

  They... So this, I thought was very interesting. This song, which is perfect and I love it so much, originally actually featured an interpolation of the bassline from Future Lovers, which itself is a sort of a homage or sample or whatever of "I Feel Love." But because, once they were like finalizing the album, they had two songs that had this same sort of bassline. One had to be dropped and it was obviously not gonna be...

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Now try to picture this song with that bassline. That's interesting.

• 40:54Yasi Salek?

  And so Stuart, so I think, I don't know what happened. All I know is they didn't remix it. Stuart Price remixed it.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:00Yasi Salek?

  And he remixed it with that Stardust "Music Sounds Better With You" bassline sample that he had actually also used on the Drown World Tour when they reimagined "Holiday." Which itself samples Chaka Khan's faith. But anyway, so that's what Stuart did with this song.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Bless Stuart.

• 41:19Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  I love this song.

• 41:20Yasi Salek?

  So great. I like it with that. I think it's really cool.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like, I love that effect of her voice harmonizing with herself all over the place. Obviously, I love Madonna and a Nicki, but there is something very special about Madonna, just stacked.

• 41:41Yasi Salek?

  The next song is the second single, Sorry.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm just gonna say the same thing. I love, I love every song, almost every song, actually. Hold on.

• 41:48Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna say that y'all mind if a white girl speaks some Espanol?

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Just we desolé.

• 41:55Yasi Salek?

  Part seven. Well, I'm just saying, it's, this is one of my greatest theories.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Ich bin traurig.

• 42:00Yasi Salek?

  It's not a Madonna album. She doesn't speak a little bit of Spanish.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:03Yasi Salek?

  Um, yeah, there's a bunch of languages on here. Um, thank you for asking. French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Hebrew, Hindi, Polish, and Japanese. Although, actually, the Dutch that she uses, ik ben traurig, roughly translates to "I am sad" and is not actually a correct way to say "I'm sorry."

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Who told her? Who told her that?

• 42:21Yasi Salek?

  Some Dutch person.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:23Yasi Salek?

  During that same AOL interview with Anthony Kiedis, Madonna justified the usage of the other languages by saying, "Everything sounds better in another language." I would disagree, cuz I don't think things sound better in Dutch.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  It's a little global tourism-y.

• 42:42Yasi Salek?

  No, I think some things sound better in some, it just depends on the language.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:45Yasi Salek?

  Dutch, respectfully.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  You just lost your entire Dutch listenership.

• 42:51Yasi Salek?

  All six of you are like, outta here. Um, I don't know, the Australians still listen, and I'm quite unfair to them. This bassline was inspired by Can You Feel It by the Jackson 5, allegedly, reportedly. Can you hear it?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 43:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  It's a killer bassline.

• 43:15Yasi Salek?

  Are you familiar with Stuart Price's 2004 remix of "What You Waiting For", by Gwen Stefani, one of the greatest songs of all time?

• 43:21Speaker 02

  I'm not familiar with the remix. God, do I love that song, though. That's so good. Another TikTok.

• 43:27Yasi Salek?

  TikTok, TikTok, I love that. It used to be on my running playlist. It's a really good running song. Anyways, on this song and on that song, he uses the same sort of cracking noise, like a baseball hitting a bat. So it's a 2:44 mark on this song, if you guys want to ahead. This one, this song has a Pet Shop Boys remix, which is incredibly good. It's incredibly good, not just because the Pet Shop Boys remix it, because Neil Tennant put himself on it, because he said he always wanted to do a duet with Madonna.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  OK, that's adorable.

• 43:54Yasi Salek?

  I love that. And the video, the video's fun.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  I don't remember the video as much.

• 44:00Yasi Salek?

  We're in a van.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Oh, I do, I do, yeah.

• 44:01Yasi Salek?

  We're picking up some cool men.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  That's, she likes to be in a car picking people up. That's just like a definite recurring Madonna video.

• 44:08Yasi Salek?

  Madonna as Uber driver.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They have a boombox, they end up at a roller rink.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  She also loves the boombox. These are, yeah. We're there, and she loves a roller rink.

• 44:17Yasi Salek?

  OK, the next song is "Future Lovers".

• 44:19Speaker 02

  This is an example of like, Madonna could put out an album and I'll be like, OK. And then I see the show and I'm like, oh.

• 44:26Yasi Salek?

  It's so true. So many songs were transformed for me in this particular era by watching them performed live, where I was like, didn't really grab me when I listened to the album. And so this is one for you.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  100%. Making this the opener of the Confessions tour, when she's in this gigantic disco ball and it claws itself open and she's standing there, holding a riding crop. And on the official video she put out with like a cute little evil smile, oh, my God, I thought I was going to die. And then they mix it right into Donna Summer's "I Feel Love". Like, they literally, the mixes for this tour were unbelievably epic. But you know, Madonna always had unique mixes for tour, because she just, she does not like to repeat herself. She wants to be interesting, interested in her own work.

• 45:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she's not, she's not doing a greatest hits.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 45:11Yasi Salek?

  Review.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Which is why "Celebration" really was interesting, and we will eventually get there. But yeah, no, this, this song is so killer.

• 45:28Yasi Salek?

  Here's a fun one. This one also, I believe reportedly allegedly written for the Candy Darling Unmade Musical Sci-Fi Biopic.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  I can actually see that because it's got this like really long spoken word intro where it's like almost like it's theatrical and then it really has a drop when the verse comes in.

• 45:45Yasi Salek?

  Totally. The bassline, we talked about Madonna summer, I feel, but also inspired by the score, a part of the score of the Luc Besson 2003 film District 13, which is about, that's right, parkour.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 46:05Yasi Salek?

  Stars David Bell, the founder of parkour. But the point back to District 13 is that there is a dotted bassline sin in the score by this guy DeOctopus. And this also has that dotted bassline.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Yes. Pixelated, kind of like, oh, it's so good.

• 46:30Yasi Salek?

  Okay, the next song is, I don't like cities. I don't like cities, but I like New York. Other places make me feel like a dork.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Los Angeles is for people who sleep. Paris and London, baby, you can keep.

• 46:43Yasi Salek?

  Here's the thing. She's right about Los Angeles and I do love to sleep and I will stay there because I love sleeping.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  She's not wrong. It's just, I remember hearing this. So to me, Madonna cringe era begins with American Life, with the rap on the song.

• 46:56Yasi Salek?

  I love that rap.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  I love it, but there is an element of cringe to it.

• 47:00Yasi Salek?

  I feel, okay, my argument would be that the American Life rap is meant to be cringe because it's satire? Because she is satirizing a kind of person who would say those things? That's my view of it.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  That is very Axl Rose's excuse for saying some really bad slurs on One in a Million. I was playing a character. I, my, my-

• 47:23Yasi Salek?

  She didn't say slur.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  No, I know, I know.

• 47:24Yasi Salek?

  She said Mini Cooper and soy latte.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  I know. No, yes, soy latte.

• 47:28Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was very proto Kesha TikTok, which is also what I said. I feel like, like, when Kesha did it on TikTok, everyone loved it.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  I don't mind her rapping, but I do think that it was, it introduced for the first time to me. I had never cringed at her before. I'd never seen her be like, a little bit outside the cool box.

• 47:45Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  And I was actually, when I thought I was talking about American Life, I was mapping how old she was when she made that to Robyn's Sex Existential rap.

• 47:52Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  They're only a year apart.

• 47:54Yasi Salek?

  That's the one that just came out?

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 47:57Yasi Salek?

  I had a hard time.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Just with that, just like a little bit of cringe from a person who is just so perennially cool.

• 48:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  So, I Love New York, it just took me so aback, because I was like, what are you doing? It has grown on me. I love it. It's a favorite now. But I remember when I was reviewing this album, I was like, what the hell is she thinking?

• 48:12Yasi Salek?

  I kind of feel like if she just had not said the word dork.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, dork is a nightmare word.

• 48:16Yasi Salek?

  We wouldn't have had this conversation, but...

• 48:19Speaker 02

  Other places always make me mad, other places sad. I know, I love it. Yeah. I mean, that really is, that's the word. You don't want that word.

• 48:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Yasi Salek?

  But, you know what I'll always go back to, is that I do think that Madonna, at her heart, is a comedian.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  She has a very specific sense of humor. I did see you speaking about this in prior episodes, and I do agree.

• 48:43Yasi Salek?

  There was a very funny line in Christopher Shikoni's book where he like, mentions that like, she's constantly making bad jokes and everyone has to laugh at them because they're scared of her. And I was like, that's relatable. Me too.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  She is funny, but she's so, she has a very specific sense of humor. But I would put this more in cringe than humor.

• 49:02Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  But, again, great song.

• 49:03Yasi Salek?

  But it's, it's, yeah, it's, listen, it's Candy Darling musical biopic, because she's playing a character.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  And she has...

• 49:08Yasi Salek?

  Candy Darling feels like a dork, or felt like a dork when she was in other cities.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  I mean, I can see that. And, this is a song, you know, Madonna loves to play electric guitar, starting around this era. And she plays electric guitar to this, a lot.

• 49:19Yasi Salek?

  I've been getting into a new hobby of mine, um, parkour, just kidding. No, it's, um...

• 49:26Yasi Salek?

  Responding to mean comments or corrective comments on Instagram. It used to raise my blood pressure and now I just enjoy it.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, don't read the comments.

• 49:36Yasi Salek?

  No, but sometimes, now it's fun because I'm like, don't try me. You think I didn't do, you think I didn't make 600-page Google document? You think I don't know what I'm talking about? Because they want a well-actually me to death.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Well, you know, just like Madonna, it's sexism and ageism.

• 49:48Yasi Salek?

  So someone came and was like, oh, really guitar? Because I had talked about her prior, pre-Madonna-era bands. And, oh, I think this is fake news because she famously had to learn guitar in the 2000s. And I was like-

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Was she like, re-learned guitar?

• 50:04Yasi Salek?

  No, I was like-

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Brushed up, yes.

• 50:07Yasi Salek?

  Just because she knows how to play guitar. I know many friends who play guitar who need to get better at it. Guitar is an incredibly difficult instrument. You can play remedial guitar and make plenty of music that way. I know, have you ever heard of power chords, babe? Have you ever heard pop punk? Those people can't shred.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 50:24Yasi Salek?

  So she wanted to play at a level that she could perform in concert. Bitch. Okay, anyways, that was my, just aside. Here's what Madonna said about "I love New York." The person was like, oh, it's very funny. And she said, "Oh, I don't mean that. I love London and Paris and hello, I live in London. It just sounded cool."

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 50:42Yasi Salek?

  "I wrote the song when I was in New York on tour. I have a history with New York that I don't have anywhere else in the world. Even though I grew up in Michigan, I really grew up in New York."

• 50:50Speaker 02

  That's true, yeah.

• 50:51Yasi Salek?

  And she goes on in a part where she's like, actually, it was an homage to the police and then I had to skip that because of ACAP.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  There's sirens, police sirens on that song. And I'm often driving to that song and I'm immediately looking in my mirror.

• 51:02Yasi Salek?

  You're like, I'm getting pulled over, yeah.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Every time.

• 51:03Yasi Salek?

  Alexis Petridis in The Guardian said, "I love New York may be the most agreeably ridiculous thing Madonna has ever released. Tim Pawnee, a riff stolen from the Stooges, 'I Want to Be Your Dog,' and a Lou Reed deadpan." Those all sound good to me.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  I mean, it works.

• 51:16Yasi Salek?

  I like it.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:17Yasi Salek?

  Um, the next song is "Let It Will Be." This one is a Miriway song, but also written with Stuart Price.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  I actually really like this song.

• 51:25Yasi Salek?

  I do too. Someone was trying to criticize her. I don't want to use the word preoccupation, because that's not the right word, but her sort of like dealing with the theme of fame not being satisfying, or fame being.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Like, have you heard of any pop star, contemporary pop star, that's all people sing about? This is Drake's entire career.

• 51:45Yasi Salek?

  They're like, they're like, oh, as if she invented it. And I'm like, okay. Fucking pick something. Do you want an artist to write honestly about their experience? Or do you not? Because that's what happens when that's your experience.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Also, very few people were and has ever been as famous as Madonna.

• 51:58Yasi Salek?

  No, and also, actually, whoever it was, whose name I can't remember.

• 52:04Yasi Salek?

  In 2005, not so much, but now, I think that's an incredibly relatable sentiment for a lot of people who have, you know, micro to minimal amounts of fame via the internet, you know?

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:16Yasi Salek?

  And are, and more people than ever are chasing it, and I don't think it's a bad thing to hear. Guess what? It sucks. Although, sometimes it doesn't suck. Sometimes someone like buys you a nice thing and sends it to you.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Like the sex book, I believe, right?

• 52:31Yasi Salek?

  Thank you so much, Andrew Garrison. I love you, babe.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  I would not forget that.

• 52:36Yasi Salek?

  He said I could use his full name. I know.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  Inspired me to buy my own. I'd never had it. I went on eBay and I started like frantically scouting them after you received yours as a gift.

• 52:44Yasi Salek?

  It's a gift. Can you even believe? I love it so much. I, I was paging through it, actually, the other day in, in bed. It's so wonderful.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  I did not open mine. It's sealed.

• 52:54Yasi Salek?

  I had to.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  I'm gonna have to buy a second one.

• 52:55Yasi Salek?

  I was like, I'm not doing this. I'm not leaving it up. I'm not leaving it unopened. I want to go and look at it.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Respect.

• 52:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, maybe I'll buy it.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  We used to look at it on the bus in middle school. It was salacious.

• 53:04Yasi Salek?

  Who had it in middle school?

• 53:05Speaker 02

  I cannot remember.

• 53:05Yasi Salek?

  Someone's dad, probably.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Somebody had it, and I was like, oh, my god.

• 53:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, my uncle had it, and I remember we were all like, what's going on here?

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:11Yasi Salek?

  But then, when I revisited it now, and I don't want to, maybe like I'm too porn-brained or whatever, but like, I was like, this is not that bad. Like, this is actually like so tame compared to like what I was imagining. One thing about Let It Will Be, Madonna said it's kind of expressing the same theme of the opening of my film. There's more to life than fame and fortune. After all the years I've been famous, 22 years or something, I don't remember. I know that sounds like a really stupid thing to say, but I, like, I can't remember, but it's just been this immensely long ride, and I just feel like I've earned the right to be able to step back and look at it and say, it is what it is. I don't feel cynical about it. I don't feel overjoyed by it. I don't feel let down by it. It just is what it is. That's the road I took, less traveled by, and hopefully I've made the best of it.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  It's a very thoughtful statement.

• 53:54Yasi Salek?

  I think so, too. Forbidden Love. Isn't it so interesting that she used the same title of one of her existing songs off Bedtime Stories?

• 54:04Speaker 02

  She can do whatever she wants.

• 54:05Yasi Salek?

  As she said. She said, "I did all of that on purpose. If I'm gonna plagiarize somebody, it might as well be me, right? I feel like I've earned the right to rip myself off."

• 54:13Speaker 02

  That's funny.

• 54:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I like this song a lot.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  I love this song. I liked the choreography at the tour.

• 54:20Yasi Salek?

  I like it.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Where they were, like, doing, like, the arm tango.

• 54:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Representing peace in the Middle East.

• 54:28Yasi Salek?

  I'll be Islam. Listen, the thing is about this is, this was still, and I think for Madonna always, but maybe it changes a little bit when we get further on, this is an album that's meant to be consumed as a whole.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:44Yasi Salek?

  And so you need pacing, right?

• 54:45Speaker 02

  No, you do.

• 54:46Yasi Salek?

  This is a beautiful song to have the pacing.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Kind of catch your breath for a second.

• 54:51Yasi Salek?

  We're taking a smoke break.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, we are.

• 54:53Yasi Salek?

  We're on the dance floor, but we need to get a drink, you know, we need to fix our hair, powder our nose. Okay, the next is the Karen Gans.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 55:00Yasi Salek?

  Peak, the apex of.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  Honestly, Jump is like one of, it's not my number one. It might be my number one. It's like in my top three Madonna songs ever.

• 55:08Yasi Salek?

  This is my opportunity to be like, unsung hero of a lot of Madonna tracks that I love, Joseph Henry, babe. Joseph Henry, what a weapon.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  And a relative.

• 55:20Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like, right there. Oh, my God. I literally, I listened to this song so much before I quit my job recently that I can't even tell you.

• 55:29Yasi Salek?

  You're welcome. Here I go. Yeah, it's a fantastic song, has a great message. Also, obviously, I'm me, so anything that has a little guitar on it, I'm like, you had me at hello.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna say parkour, because it's a parkour video.

• 55:42Yasi Salek?

  As you know, I am the second biggest advocate of parkour.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  And behind the guy who invented it?

• 55:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, no, behind Madonna, he's there. This is the song that I was talking about, that the strings are inspired by West End girls from Pet Shop Boys.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 55:55Yasi Salek?

  It really has a very similar shimmering strings.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  I'm right in it.

• 55:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 56:00Yasi Salek?

  It's just, there's only so much you can learn in one place, as you said.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. The longer I wait, the more time that I waste.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  I have heard this song in the wild twice in the past month. Once at Xanadu Roller Rink, at my friend Metric's album release party, coincidentally. And then at Club Coming recently. And I was like, this song is literally, it's like, speaking to me directly.

• 56:31Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna tell you what, you need to follow Karen Gans on Instagram.com, because this woman is out here in these streets. Every day, I'm like, Karen, amazing. She's having a different kind of martini, and going to a different musical event, and I'm like, I haven't been outside in six days.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  This is the difference between New York and LA, literally, at the table.

• 56:49Yasi Salek?

  I feel like a dork. Yeah, Jump is great. Also, I think you can read the messaging in several ways, right? It's like, it can be leaving a thing, or it can be entering a thing, together, you know? Like, let's jump into...

• 57:00Speaker 02

  It's like, you gotta take a risk. You have to make change in your life, you have to go all in. I love every message of this song.

• 57:06Yasi Salek?

  Love it.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:07Yasi Salek?

  Fantastic. Joe Henry, "Let's Fucking Go," king. Also, very clever. I'm sorry, I like it, to go straight into "How High."

• 57:13Speaker 02

  I know. And I also love "How High," it's one of my favorites.

• 57:17Yasi Salek?

  These are your Swedes, that you were talking about before. Bloodshy and Avant, who famously won a Grammy for writing "Toxic" with Britney. For Britney, with Britney, I'm not sure, I don't know if she has a writing...

• 57:26Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go with "For."

• 57:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They actually were not there at the Grammy to accept it, because they were with Madonna, working on this album.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  I didn't know that, that's amazing.

• 57:35Yasi Salek?

  Madonna said, although she obviously was familiar with Britney, because they did a song together.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  Me Against the Music.

• 57:42Yasi Salek?

  I bring that up to say, because she had said she had found Bloodshy and Avant, because Lordis was listening to a lot of Rachel Stevens, and ours I'm not familiar with.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  I did not know.

• 57:49Yasi Salek?

  Who Bloodshy and Avant also produced, and Britney, and she liked what she heard. Which she obviously already knew Britney, so maybe she was talking about Rachel Stevens.

• 57:57Speaker 02

  Man, I, when I went to review that Britney album for Spin a million years ago, I heard a version of that song without Madonna on it, and they were like, oh, we're gonna add a guest. So then when I heard the real thing, I was like, oh, my god. Also, that video with the two of them.

• 58:10Yasi Salek?

  Wonderful.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  Peak.

• 58:11Yasi Salek?

  It's wonderful. It's a great song.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, I was just, this is a cute moment I had this morning with the barista at my hotel, uh, coffee shop. There was two baristas. One walked by just singing, um, Britney Spears. And then he walked away and I was like, is this bummed that I'm singing that, Britney? He was like, oh, I know, right? A bop. And then I forgot I was wearing this Madonna t-shirt, and he goes, by the way, I love your t-shirt. And I was like, I know. And at the same time, we, I'm not joking, we said, she's the blueprint. I was, and he was like, I was like.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  Wow, I love New York.

• 58:45Yasi Salek?

  I love New York.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 58:46Yasi Salek?

  So true.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  But I love this. It's, it's funny. I spent my whole life wanting to be talked about. I did just about anything to see my name in lights.

• 58:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Was it all worth it?

• 58:56Yasi Salek?

  You know, I can relate.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  And then, "Nobody's Perfect." I guess I deserve it. Once again, quoting herself.

• 59:01Yasi Salek?

  Quoting herself from "Nobody's Perfect," and "I deserve it."

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Very direct here.

• 59:07Yasi Salek?

  Off music, yeah.

• 59:15Yasi Salek?

  This is not about age in the sense of like, what you can and can't do. I think it's more about like, the arc of someone's life.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:23Yasi Salek?

  This is around the time where you might start to look back and, and assess what's happened.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Well, she's also like, can I do more? Is there more for me? What will I accomplish? And this is again with the blueprint thing. It's like, almost everything in pop music, she pioneered. People were not making albums like this at her age. I mean, I'm not ageist, but like, it's just, no one had really done it, women.

• 59:46Yasi Salek?

  They weren't allowed.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  No. So she's like, she's carving the path. She's trying to figure out, what is left for me to do? Will there be room for me? How will I make it happen?

• 59:54Yasi Salek?

  And thank god this happened, because again, like, we kind of touched on this, but she didn't want to make another album. Not maybe ever. But at this time, she was like, uh.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  She was busy.

• 1:00:03Yasi Salek?

  I'm making a sci-fi musical about candy darlings dementia, which I really, can someone just make that anyways?

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  It's gonna happen now.

• 1:00:10Yasi Salek?

  It's gonna happen now. Let's spar. I love it. I love Isaac.

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  I don't love Isaac.

• 1:00:16Yasi Salek?

  I think, okay, I'm not to be like, whatever. I'm Middle Eastern. So to me, this is like-

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  You're just gonna make me feel like crap for being like, I don't like this song.

• 1:00:24Yasi Salek?

  I just think it like, no, that's fine. It's just like, for me, there's a familiarity and this shit hits for me. Like, I love how, I love the music.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  I love the melody.

• 1:00:33Yasi Salek?

  I just like this, it's giving to me. It feels like it would have fit really well on like Ray of Light.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  I agree with that.

• 1:00:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  I just found it jarring to hear another person's voice, like suddenly, because it's so like, deep in her and it's like, the whole album is so throby and womb-like and you're in the club, whatever, and then suddenly, it's like, you're not.

• 1:00:56Yasi Salek?

  One of the songs, one of the bonus tracks was meant to be in that spot, but they end up removing it for some reason. And that's, this was the last song to be added to the album. So I get, I can see what you mean, that it's like, feels lightly out of place. But also, just like, a white girl's gonna speak some Espanol, Madonna's gonna put some god up in this bitch.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  Not opposed to that, but it does feel like this is the turning point where the album changes direction a little bit and the last three songs are kind of like a little bit, you're taken out of the vibe, a teeny, teeny bit.

• 1:01:26Yasi Salek?

  Well-

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  It's not a bad song. I just, it's jarring.

• 1:01:29Yasi Salek?

  I'll put it, I'll put it, like Primal Scream's "Scream Adelica."

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  Scream Adelica.

• 1:01:34Yasi Salek?

  You know, perhaps it's in the arc of a night out, you know, and the night out doesn't continue, at some point, it winds down.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  Never ends.

• 1:01:43Yasi Salek?

  Never ends.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  At the Roxy till 10 a.m.

• 1:01:46Yasi Salek?

  That's all, that's all I'm saying. Um, I will mention Isaac, you know, had some controversy, I think, because there also is no Madonna album without controversy. There, there was a group of rabbis in Israel saying it was blasphemous, um, before they even heard the record. The song is named after Yitzhak Sinwani, who is the singer singing, uh, in Yemenite.

• 1:02:10Yasi Salek?

  And it's a popular Yemeni song called Im Ninnalu.

• 1:02:16Yasi Salek?

  And he's saying, "If all of the doors of all the generous people's homes are closed to you, the gates of heaven will always be open."

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  I mean, that's nice.

• 1:02:23Yasi Salek?

  That's nice.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Yasi Salek?

  The next song is Push.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  I really don't have too much to say about that song.

• 1:02:27Yasi Salek?

  Me neither. I didn't write one note on it.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  I wrote eh.

• 1:02:29Yasi Salek?

  It's not, it's, again, like, I like it in, while I'm listening to the album, there's not a part where I'm like, ugh, you know, like, it's like a nice way to like, sort of like, wind the album down.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  It's just, it's just there.

• 1:02:41Yasi Salek?

  And then the last album on the regular release is Like It Or Not, which is also written with Stuart and Bloodshy and Avant. This song always remind, I really like this song, actually. I don't know, maybe that's a controversial. It reminds me of her version of Fever off of Erotica.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  That is what I wrote in the review.

• 1:02:58Yasi Salek?

  Right?

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  That is like a fever-biting closer.

• 1:03:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  But I said it offered a neutered retread of her raison d'etre. This is who I am. You can like it or not. I guess I like the other songs in that vein a little bit more. But I do appreciate her, like, Never Gonna Stop. I mean, like, this is, she's relentless.

• 1:03:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Madonna is impatient and she is relentless. I love these qualities.

• 1:03:16Yasi Salek?

  I do think also, like, like, the framework of, like, this is who I like, who I am, you can like it or not, you can love me or love me because I'm never gonna stop, becomes like, way more sharpened and focused by like, what we hear about later with the ending of her marriage and how she said she felt, and how she like, kind of had to fight to like, be herself and do what she wanted, you know? And I just like how it sounds. I like the sound of it.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  I like it.

• 1:03:51Yasi Salek?

  Okay, and then the bonus tracks are Fighting Spirit, which, again, the instrumental to that one was maybe from Hello Suckers. Super Pop, also maybe from Hello Suckers, originally called Funny Game, and History, which was maybe written for that Candy Darling musical.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  Personally, I'm not that into bonus tracks.

• 1:04:07Yasi Salek?

  Okay, on this one, me no, but on some of the other albums, I'm like, I need to re-sequence this album, and you guys fucked up.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Definitely rebel heart. We'll get there.

• 1:04:20Yasi Salek?

  Alright, so on the, you know, Madonna's back on top of the world. I've seen people refer to this as her third imperial phase.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  I could do that.

• 1:04:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's definitely the third, I mean, her whole career is littered with peaks, but I think this is one of the third major peaks.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  There was like genuine excitement about this when it actually started to get out in the world.

• 1:04:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  So then 2006, when she shows up at Coachella, it was like the place went off.

• 1:04:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and you were there. So right before that, she did the Grammys.

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:04:48Yasi Salek?

  Which I wanna just mention because it's fucking so cool. Cause it's with the gorillas as holograms and then herself as a hologram, dancing around them until she appears in that purple Dolce & Gabbana corset. It's so sick. You can watch it on YouTube.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Yasi Salek?

  And I'm also like, I love those gorillas cartoons. I just think it was a cool. But yes, and then in April, she surprised everyone at Coachella in the Sahara tent.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  Well, I think it was announced.

• 1:05:10Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it was announced, okay.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Because I was out there, I was interviewing people for some photo shoot for GQ. I had just gotten fired from Spin, I think, yes.

• 1:05:18Yasi Salek?

  Because you were mean to Madonna.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  No, no, no, because someone bought it and fired all of us. Again, the story of media in this era. And everyone I interviewed, I was like, we excited to see, and everybody, I was like, CeeLo, like everyone was like, Madonna, we all gotta see Madonna. And I'm like, this is gonna be crazy. I gotta get over it. And it was a dance tent. She was not headlining, she was not on the main stage. It was like, it was dark, but it was not, it was not like, you know, the last night, the last set of the night, and I could not even get anywhere near the tent. I was watching it on a big screen. I sent you some of my grainy one megapixel.

• 1:05:50Yasi Salek?

  I literally was like, was this filmed on a black bread?

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:05:53Yasi Salek?

  I don't understand.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  Definitely, it looks like that. I have like seven more clips that look like that. And it is insane. And I mean, like, you hear screaming. I'm like, is it me? Who is screaming? There's just screaming. She looks unbelievable. I remember at one point, someone spilled water on the stage and she yelled at them. Cause she's like, I'm gonna break my neck. You're gonna spill water on my stage? And then people were like, you know, drying it off. It was actually insane, but like the energy everywhere was just nuts. It was like, it was Madonna-chella.

• 1:06:17Yasi Salek?

  That's awesome.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  It just, it just happened.

• 1:06:18Yasi Salek?

  Also, 2005 was still like the salad days of Coachella. It was like really a wonderful time. I didn't go that year, but it was still like normal.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  Oh god, it was so much fun. It was two days, it was one weekend.

• 1:06:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I went, I personally saw Groove Armada in that same tent in 2003, and I did lose my ever-loving mind to Super Style in. But yeah, that tent is not big.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  No, it really, it felt like a true moment and it felt like Madonna owned everything once again and I was so excited.

• 1:06:44Yasi Salek?

  So cool. Yeah, I think, again, I think this is another apex. And then you get into the tour.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:49Yasi Salek?

  Which you went to.

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. I love this tour so much. This is my favorite Madonna tour.

• 1:06:53Yasi Salek?

  It's so well done. Again, I wasn't there, but I have watched it multiple times on the TV and computer. It starts May 21st, 2006 and ends September 21st, 2006. Grossed nearly $200 million.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Deserved every penny.

• 1:07:09Yasi Salek?

  That point is the most ever for a tour by a woman artist, second only to the Rolling Stones that year.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  She just keeps breaking that record.

• 1:07:15Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  And over and over again.

• 1:07:17Yasi Salek?

  Stuart Price is back as musical director. Donna DeLorey came back. She had a three-year-old child and she said, "I'll only come if you give me a car for my nanny and my child." Madonna was like, "Done." And then Nikki Richards is doing back and forth because our other Nikki is no longer touring with Madonna.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  She replaced her with another Nikki.

• 1:07:38Yasi Salek?

  She doesn't want to remember another name, which I totally understand as someone who can't remember anyone's names. This I love. Yasi's Fashion Corner. Sorry, Patrick's not here, so I have to do it. For the first time since Blonde Ambition, Jean-Paul Gaultier would be the sole designer of this show, which is very cool because at the time, he's the creative director, Hermès. He made that shoulder Birkin that I love and if anyone wants to gift me, I'm here to receive. But this is very cool because it fits perfectly with the equestrian themes in the show. I mean, what's more equestrian than Hermès? You know, like, ugh.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  Even I will say yes.

• 1:08:16Yasi Salek?

  Love, I love that, that coming together. There's a bunch of new dancers, but I'll just point out one or two of them. One, Charmaine Jordan, also known as Charm La Donna. She was 17 years old when she was recruited to join this tour. There was a former ballerina turned breakdancer named Sofia Batella. And then Sebastian Fukon, who does parkour.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Okay, I know.

• 1:08:40Yasi Salek?

  He's the one who does parkour in the Hung Up video.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  I love, I love in all of the Madonna tour movies where you see the scenes of her casting the dancers and how seriously she's like studying them.

• 1:08:50Yasi Salek?

  And how good she is at it.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Her eye is so good.

• 1:08:52Yasi Salek?

  She doesn't choose the best possible dancers. She chooses the most interesting people, which is so major. Also, I just want to point out Sebastian Fukon, I don't know if you guys have seen Casino Royale. He is the parkourer, the man parkouring in the opening.

• 1:09:07Yasi Salek?

  Chase scene. Parkour was really big for a second. Around this time. There's two parkours dancers on this tour. Anyways, not important. So, tell me more about the tour.

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  Can I talk to you about some of my favorite moments?

• 1:09:20Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  I have a list of them, because I rewatched it. Of course. Okay, obviously, I already referenced when the disco ball splits open and she's there. I was just like, I mean, I think the entire place levitated. Also, the disco ball came down from the ceiling and I was like, I don't know what I was on, but I was like, oh, my God, was she up there the entire time? No, she was probably below the stage and popped up into the disco ball. But for like, an hour, I was like, she was up there the entire time.

• 1:09:45Yasi Salek?

  She's just on her phone. She's on her rocker, listening to some tunes.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like, oh, my God. Okay, so that was one of them. Liptetella on the mirrored crucifix, which made the Vatican so mad.

• 1:09:55Yasi Salek?

  When I watched that, I was like, what?

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  With her arms pinned.

• 1:10:00Yasi Salek?

  The crown of thorns.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  And the crown, but they got the mic just like, coming out, because she has no hands, because they're pinned. She's

• 1:10:04Yasi Salek?

  Because she's crucified.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  Being crucified. I love guitar Madonna, so she does I Love New York, and she does Ray of Light, which I couldn't, you know, she, I didn't love it on Ray of Light.

• 1:10:11Yasi Salek?

  This starts her doing Ray of Light only on guitar.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is like, kind of pisses me off, because that, to me, is not a guitar song.

• 1:10:17Yasi Salek?

  I kind of like it.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  We disagree there.

• 1:10:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  You, me, and Madonna, we are going to disagree. That's just the one thing. I'm like, no. Ray of Light is just like a shimmery disco-y song to me.

• 1:10:26Yasi Salek?

  But it's a guitar-y song.

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  I mean, obviously, it could be.

• 1:10:37Yasi Salek?

  You just want to see her do this.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  I do. Oh, my God. You know I do, which is actually, at least, the exact next one. The unhinged dancing on Let It Will Be, where she's just kind of like, stuttering around with just the mic. She's in like, a black t-shirt and jeans. And I'm like, pure.

• 1:10:51Yasi Salek?

  It's wonderful.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  There's a couple more, I'm sorry.

• 1:10:52Yasi Salek?

  No, please.

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  But the next one is key. Music Inferno.

• 1:10:56Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Where she is, literally, the dancers are roller skating to music. Then she comes out in like, a white Saturday Night Fever suit with Donna and Nikki. What, now I know the other one is in Nikki, too.

• 1:11:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  Didn't know. And then she's just like, literally, like disco pointing, and like, bopping down.

• 1:11:11Yasi Salek?

  And then that's when she removes the suit.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  She opens it.

• 1:11:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. One of the, I, when I worked at Rolling Stone, I literally would make people come into my office and watch this on YouTube. I'd be like, have you seen Music In For Now?

• 1:11:23Yasi Salek?

  Look, you can't be my friend until you've watched Music In For Now.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  People from Rolling Stone, if you remember this moment, I would literally bring people into my office and close the door and be like, we're watching this. It's important, it's indoctrination. This is canon.

• 1:11:34Yasi Salek?

  That's amazing.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Oh my God, I love that moment. And then there's, it ends with a hung up Lucky Star mix, where she is blending Lucky Star with the hung up bassline and track.

• 1:11:45Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  I mean, you, tours do not get better than this.

• 1:11:57Yasi Salek?

  I also just love, I'm such a Stuart Price stan. I like, cause he's hot, but like, just him in the background, he's always kind of like doing something while smirking. He's like DJing while smirking, playing guitar, smirking. Also, he can do everything.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:08Yasi Salek?

  Just a big fan.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  God, this tour, epic, epic, epic.

• 1:12:11Yasi Salek?

  It's really great. If you could time travel and see one Madonna tour, what would it be?

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Oh, Blonde Ambition.

• 1:12:17Yasi Salek?

  Same.

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Yasi Salek?

  Obviously, I think that's the only correct answer.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, good, okay.

• 1:12:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Yasi Salek?

  I mean, they're all good, obviously.

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  No, I mean, that's the one that does like reinvent what a pop show is.

• 1:12:27Yasi Salek?

  Yes, exactly. Well, I think like, again, blueprinted it.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, 100%, ground zero.

• 1:12:33Yasi Salek?

  All right, so she's high, she's not, not off drugs, she was famously quite sober as a judge during this time, but she takes her second trip to Malawi. The previous fall, she had received a phone call from a businesswoman from Malawi named Victoria Kealan, who had heard about Madonna's program, Spirituality For Kids. I believe this was a Kabbalah-related situation.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  That kind of sounds like a racket, but yeah.

• 1:12:59Yasi Salek?

  It sounds like 1-800-CARS-FOR-KIDS. Which recently had a bit of scandal, I don't know if you know, that a judge allegedly, reportedly, because I'm now paraphrasing a tweet, but fined them because they present the ads with eight children of various ethnicities, and actually they only give the money to, um... Jewish children.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:13:20Yasi Salek?

  Orthodox Jewish children.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:13:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Nothing to see there.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:13:24Yasi Salek?

  One eight hundred cars for kids. Spirituality for kids. But Madonna said that this woman, Victoria Kealan, was like, if you're in the business of helping children, we have over a million orphans here in Malawi and the problem is insane. I believe she also said, and then Madonna was like, I don't even know where Malawi is. And the lady was like, look it up on a map and hunger up. Hung her up, hung up on her, which is kind of sick.

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  I mean, who talks to Madonna like that? Go off, queen.

• 1:13:46Yasi Salek?

  Victoria Kealan, which is like, I don't care about you right now. We have a billion orphans. So that is Madonna went ahead and looked at a map and did some research and ended up creating a foundation called Raising Malawi. I'm like really speeding this because this is, I mean, it's part of the story, but I don't think it's like incredibly pertinent to the music.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  It's all good.

• 1:14:05Yasi Salek?

  With a focus on supporting Malawi's orphans and vulnerable children. And she had gone one time that past April to visit the country. So at this time on her second visit, the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles, which she was heavily involved in, was going, undergoing some pretty intense scrutiny over mismanaged funds, I believe, reportedly, allegedly. And critics were using this as a way to devalue Madonna's charitable efforts. This I'll never understand. I'm like.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Why are you coming for a person's charitable efforts?

• 1:14:37Yasi Salek?

  She literally is just giving millions of dollars to try to help things. And you're like, can you believe this fucking bitch?

• 1:14:44Speaker 02

  This is how people treat a Madonna. Like even the kindest things were seen with skepticism.

• 1:14:49Yasi Salek?

  And then the press picked up on a news story, which was that there was a potential adoption of it. On October 4th, a Malawi government spokeswoman announced that Madonna intended to adopt a baby boy. She'd been making a documentary in Malawi directed by Nathan Rissman. This I love.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Is this I Am Because We Are?

• 1:15:08Yasi Salek?

  I Am Because We Are. I just need you to know Nathan Rissman had been her gardener. And the reason that she had tapped him, this is, I love Madonna for this.

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  Is that just like LA, though? Like, everyone in LA is like-

• 1:15:18Yasi Salek?

  This is London, I think.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  Oh, it is, okay.

• 1:15:20Yasi Salek?

  He had made movies of Lourdes and Rocco while Madonna was away and sent them to her, so to cheer her up.

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  And she's like, "These are good, you should direct a movie."

• 1:15:28Yasi Salek?

  I just feel like this is Madonna's, one of her greatest talents.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  Scouting.

• 1:15:32Yasi Salek?

  Scouting and tapping people like Alec Cheshian was a, hadn't basically done anything, you know? Like, he was a Harvard graduate with a thesis and a couple of things, and she was like, "You will do my biggest tour documentary."

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  You will set the tone for every music documentary ever made.

• 1:15:46Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:15:47Yasi Salek?

  So that Nathan Rissman was hired for "I Am Because We Are," which I'm so sorry, I did not watch.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  I mean, I saw it a million years ago, but I just love saying "I am because we are." I've said that for years, and it's fun.

• 1:15:55Yasi Salek?

  It's, I believe it's a translation of a Malawi sentiment or whatever.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  I'm sure it's something very serious, and I am making a mockery of it, but it's-

• 1:16:02Yasi Salek?

  Um, that's fine, Karen, that's fine. Um, you already said you don't like Middle Eastern music, and now you're mocking the Malawi language, and, uh-

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  Here to be canceled.

• 1:16:10Yasi Salek?

  Um, okay, so anyways, she'd watched all these videos that were coming from Nathan Rissman from Malawi over and over, and she had become really feeling a connection to the children of them, particularly a baby boy called David Banda. So she finally goes there and meets the 13-month-old at Home of Hope Orphanage, um, where he had already survived malaria and tuberculosis, and at the time was having active pneumonia. He had been born into a family that lost two of its three children to malaria, and his mother, Merida, had died six days after giving birth to him. And his father, Johan Banda, was, basically had no money and was desperate, and was like, "I can't care for this five-week-old child," and so he placed him in the orphanage. Um, and October 12th, the courts gave Madonna permission to assume temporary custody of David

• 1:16:54Yasi Salek?

  and take him out of the country while the adoption process continued. This also caused some controversy.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  I just remember this was like a shit show.

• 1:17:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because human rights activists were saying that Madonna and Guy were circumventing the laws that they had in place in Malawi, which was like that people had to live there for 18 months before they adopted a child, which I, I think is a good thing to prevent trafficking.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Yasi Salek?

  Um, but obviously Madonna was not trafficking a child. She was like, "I can't stay, I can't live in Malawi for 18 months, I'm Madonna, I have stuff to do." The point is, they really dragged her through the mud. There was like an ABC News story called "Black Babies: Are They Hollywood's Newest Accessory?"

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  My god, rude.

• 1:17:34Yasi Salek?

  I think, because I didn't write it down, but I'm sure it's around the time, also that maybe Angelina Jolie- Adopted her first child. It was all kind of in the same timeframe.

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:17:47Yasi Salek?

  Madonna said the blowback crushed her. She said, "I have to say it was one of life's great disappointments." However, the ray of light, if you will, is that because she's Madonna, it raised a shit ton of awareness for a situation that probably people had no idea was happening or didn't pay attention to, which was this crisis of orphans in Malawi.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  Right, and people really didn't know Malawi. I remember being like, "That country is new to me."

• 1:18:08Yasi Salek?

  Right, yeah. As Caitlin Moran put it in the London Times that year, "In a single act of altruism, she has managed to ignite a debate that encompasses immigration, Africa, working mothers, modern parenting, international adoption law, race, money, and fame."

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  Yep, that's right.

• 1:18:23Yasi Salek?

  Madonna bit. Also, around the same time she met David, she met a little girl named Mercy, who was just a few months younger than David. She'll ultimately adopt both of them. I'm just not going to get into the whole details of the timeline. She also starts to make a film around this time. Not "I Am," because we are.

• 1:18:39Yasi Salek?

  Filth and Wisdom.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:18:40Yasi Salek?

  I did not see this film because it's pretty much impossible to watch.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  I don't think I've seen it.

• 1:18:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. But when that's done, it's time to make another album because she has one that she's owed to Warner Brothers.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:52Yasi Salek?

  2007, February. Timbaland. You know him?

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:18:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. He announces that he's working with Madonna on her next album, which she had already begun with Pharrell Williams, but wanted additional songs that had more of a groove. I'm just going to give you guys a quick Timbaland sidebar for those of my rocker heads slash young people and people who just are not familiar. Because, and Karen's going to help me with this because Karen was a very active music journalist at this time. I need you to understand how massive Timbaland is in music and culture and the sound of music of this time.

• 1:19:26Speaker 02

  I'm going to say he was like the Jack Antonoff of pop at that moment.

• 1:19:30Yasi Salek?

  This is not to shit on Jack Antonoff, but maybe it is on...

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  Just in terms of omnipresence.

• 1:19:34Yasi Salek?

  Omnipresence.

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:19:35Yasi Salek?

  To me, I can't, I, and maybe, again, I'm not a music journalist, so don't, you know, come for me, but... Unless someone tells me Jack Antonoff produced it.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  You don't hear it?

• 1:19:44Yasi Salek?

  Maybe a little bit. There's no way that you can't hear a Timbaland song and not know it's fucking Timbaland. First of all, mostly because he puts himself on a lot of them, but also it's such a specific sound.

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he's one of the producers where there's like a sonic signature.

• 1:19:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and probably there is about Jack Antonoff too, but I'm probably.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  There is. Some artists let him do it more than others, but yeah.

• 1:20:03Yasi Salek?

  Okay. So, Timbaland had started, you know, producing for R and B acts. He had done Jodeci's Sista. He kind of had his big breakthrough producing the majority of Aaliyah's One in a Million album, which is a god tier. And Ginuwine's album, We're Riding the Pony.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  Close collaborator with Missy Elliott.

• 1:20:20Yasi Salek?

  Super close collaborator with Missy Elliott. And then they started doing tons of hip hop, Jay-Z Nas, The Locks, UGK, Big Pimpin', ever fucking heard of it?

• 1:20:31Yasi Salek?

  He's just done so much. But then by here, he had done Justin Timberlake's second solo studio album, Future Sex Love Sounds.

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was massive.

• 1:20:41Yasi Salek?

  Sexy Back.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  That song, because I checked, 1.4 billion streams on Spotify. I've rarely seen the billion.

• 1:20:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:50Speaker 02

  Billion.

• 1:20:51Yasi Salek?

  Do the Arctic Monkeys have like 8 billion streamed songs?

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:20:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:56Yasi Salek?

  Fun fact for you.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go check that out right after this.

• 1:20:58Yasi Salek?

  Fun fact for you. Yeah, that's a massive song. What Goes Around Comes Around. There's so much. He had also, I think, kind of importantly, maybe to our purposes, Justin Timberlake, very important, but also Nelly Furtado's 2006 album, Loose. Fucking banger after banger on that one.

• 1:21:14Speaker 02

  Amazing album.

• 1:21:15Yasi Salek?

  Love, I love Nelly Furtado.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  A little, actually, Canadian queen? She's Canadian, right?

• 1:21:19Yasi Salek?

  Yes, she's definitely very Canadian. I also love I'm Like a Bird.

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 1:21:23Yasi Salek?

  Sorry, it's a wonderful, worked with Coldplay, whatever. He is, would you agree that he is like one of the most major architects of the sounds?

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:31Yasi Salek?

  Of this era.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely massive. And Justin Timberlake, you know, this album comes out in 2008, so they're making it in 2007. He's just one year removed from like this massive pivot. Where everyone's like, oh my god, he's a genius. He figured out how to go from being kind of like a cheesy boy band guy to like this sort of like futuristic, you know, like sonic engineer. You know, like this clever pop star. This is the highest that Justin Timberlake ever rode.

• 1:21:54Yasi Salek?

  And also, sorry, not to discount Pharrell, obviously, the Neptunes had had a major moment.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:00Yasi Salek?

  All through the early 2000s, and they had done some of the greatest songs and were continuing to do, so like.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  I mean, yes, I mean, Neptune's just, their popularity seemed to never wane. They kind of like always had their fingers in something. But also, I was gonna say, another of the collaborators with Justin and Timberland was Danger.

• 1:22:15Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Who goes on to make Britney Spears' Black. Actually, it was, might have been even simultaneous.

• 1:22:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and he's all over the album.

• 1:22:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:22Yasi Salek?

  So apparently, so she started with Pharrell, she wanted to seek out Timberland, who also at the same time was wanting to work with her, so it kind of worked out perfectly. And apparently, Guy O'Seary was like, you guys should also bring in Justin Timberlake. This, I didn't love. So, she does an interview with John Norris, I think this was in public, right? It was like a, not in public, but it was like at an event, like people were there.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:44Yasi Salek?

  About why she wanted to work with these big producers and Justin Timberlake, and she was like, because they're good and I like their shit. I mean, I don't like to repeat myself, and I was sitting around thinking, what music do I love right now? And it was actually your record, and she points to Justin Timberlake. And she goes, I was listening to it obsessively, and he touched his heart.

• 1:23:04Speaker 02

  I would be touched if Madonna was listening to my album obsessively. I know, I know.

• 1:23:09Yasi Salek?

  You're never, never knocking me in Mickey Mouse Club, you know what I mean?

• 1:23:11Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:23:12Yasi Salek?

  But this is the part I didn't like, not that part.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:23:14Yasi Salek?

  Justin Timberlake is asked, like, oh, well, how did you, you know, Pharrell's already here, Timberland, now you're in, like, what are, how are you gonna do this? And he goes, we decided to co-produce together and just throw, you know, Madonna into the mix.

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't like that. Nobody throws Madonna into the mix.

• 1:23:29Yasi Salek?

  That's kind of what they did on this album.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Well, okay, so my analog for this album, from this perspective now, was like, this is kind of like her Taylor Swift reputation, where it was like, she's gonna engage with the actual sound and aesthetics of pop music at the moment.

• 1:23:42Yasi Salek?

  Of the current culture.

• 1:23:43Speaker 02

  She never really did that. She was always kind of doing her own thing. It was like her version of disco, her version of dance music, her version of like whatever, you know, erotica.

• 1:23:50Yasi Salek?

  That's true.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  All those things. So I felt like this was the first time where she was like, you know what, I am listening to the radio, this is what's happening, I'm gonna see how I insert myself into this. But she was certainly not their plaything, although.

• 1:24:01Yasi Salek?

  I feel like you're, you're a hard candy truther.

• 1:24:03Speaker 02

  I am. This album, this is my first lead review for Rolling Stone. I took this so seriously, like I, you know, you get Stockholm syndrome sometimes when you listen to, obviously.

• 1:24:12Yasi Salek?

  I sure do.

• 1:24:13Speaker 02

  Yes, this album, I was completely indoctrinated.

• 1:24:16Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, so right before this album comes out, Madonna is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, right alongside Leonard Cohen, John Mellencamp, the Dave Clark Five and the Ventures. And because she was the coolest ever, she chooses Iggy Pop and the Stooges to perform her songs Burning Up and Ray of Light.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 1:24:32Yasi Salek?

  I couldn't find the Burning Up, but you couldn't watch the Ray of Light performance on YouTube. So cool, he's just shirtless. To introduce her, she chose Justin Timberlake.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  She was doing a little album promo.

• 1:24:43Yasi Salek?

  That's right. Guy Ritchie does not attend this.

• 1:24:47Speaker 02

  Further cracks in the foundation.

• 1:24:50Yasi Salek?

  And then Hard Candy comes out, April 18th, 2008. I've come around to some of this album. I think, okay, this is a total me thing and not a Madonna and this album quality thing. I just have a aversion to this time period and things that sound like this time period. And it's because I was a miserable person in 2008. And there I am in my Gucci bucket hat, you know, just trying to live. It's just also like, she swung so far from like, I feel like the last few albums were like very European sensibility with the producers, you know, you have Mirwah, you have Stuart Price, and then she goes so American.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:29Yasi Salek?

  Which is great. She's American.

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  Well, she was shaking the accent at that point, but yes.

• 1:25:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  No, you're 100% right. And it was, it was like, I think I even said in my review, it was like unusual for her to make herself so available to these American hitmakers.

• 1:25:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  I mean, this was, this was a swerve, but like, you know, you want Madonna to swerve.

• 1:25:48Yasi Salek?

  Sure, of course. I guess like, okay, we'll get into it.

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:25:52Yasi Salek?

  I love Four Minutes. I surprised myself at how much I love Four Minutes.

• 1:25:55Speaker 02

  This is my favorite of the Timberland, Timberlake ones.

• 1:25:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's the best one.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:01Yasi Salek?

  I do, okay, it's, it's awesome.

• 1:26:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:04Yasi Salek?

  Danger also a writer on the song. Apparently this is the first Madonna single to ever have a feature on it.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  I believe that. Which that opened a real Pandora's box.

• 1:26:14Yasi Salek?

  Can of worms.

• 1:26:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:26:16Yasi Salek?

  I love this song. I think it's a banger. The bridge is a little corny. I wish they had, the brass was real and live.

• 1:26:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:24Yasi Salek?

  Because, once you hear, and these words will never again come out of my mouth, but once you hear the Glee version, where they did use a marching band, like, it sounds so fucking good. And I just kinda wish it had been on here. But, even without, this is a great song.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  I love a marching band song. I actually, I did a story spin on unhinged, experimental marching bands.

• 1:26:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  And one of the examples was Pharrell, just ironic since he's the other half of this album.

• 1:26:57Yasi Salek?

  This shit is bananas.

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  Yes. And he was like, "We made hollaback girls specifically for the marching bands."

• 1:27:02Yasi Salek?

  My favorite story, I mean, that's about Courtney Love.

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  Interesting. Courtney Love, you're all over this app.

• 1:27:08Yasi Salek?

  Babe, she's all over my heart and mind and culture.

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Yasi Salek?

  And also, literally, pop culture, because she did inspire that song. Um, I love, "Four Minutes" is apparently, it was the first single. She said it was about having a sense of urgency and living on borrowed time.

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:24Yasi Salek?

  Especially regarding the environment. This is where I'm gonna go into like, my thing where I'm like, I don't know what this album is about.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  Can I quote my review?

• 1:27:32Yasi Salek?

  Yes, please. Please.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  To remind myself, I called it "her midlife meditation on her own relevance." I think that's probably like, an overarching theme, but it's like, I don't, you know, there's, there's stuff about, oh god, I mean, there's, okay, there's that environmental song, there's stuff about her being sort of relentless, there's stuff about her escaping on the dance floor, stuff about people loving her when they're far away, being jealous of others biting her, or perhaps taking her place in her relationship. Then there's a song that's literally pure chaos, we'll get there, she's back in the disco. You know, okay, it's not coherent.

• 1:28:08Yasi Salek?

  I, I think it's not explicitly autobiographical.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:12Yasi Salek?

  It's like, unconsciously autobiographical, which is totally fine. Um, it just makes it a little harder for me to like, chooch, in. But there's high moments on here for me.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  I think that the songs with Pharrell are just like sizzling. Just like they had some sort of wild creative tension. And that they're really, really good. And the other songs are like, okay. Some of them are okay. Some of them are not so great.

• 1:28:35Yasi Salek?

  It feels like a little retreading the themes that you just mentioned, though. Like, we've kind of like, that's okay.

• 1:28:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. She was experimenting because she was working with these pop producers.

• 1:28:44Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  And she was like, you know.

• 1:28:45Yasi Salek?

  I think it's interesting to like, try something different in the way she's making an album, you know? She's, to this point, kind of mostly worked with producers who, the power imbalance is quite strong. You know? Whereas not to say that these people are more powerful than Madonna, because they're obviously not. But it's a little different of a tension, you know?

• 1:29:05Speaker 02

  And she was saying when she was making it that they were so busy working with so many people that she was kind of ping ponging back and forth, trying to get into their schedules. It's like, you know.

• 1:29:12Yasi Salek?

  Which happens a lot more when we get to the next couple of albums as well. But the visual theme, boxing, championship, candy.

• 1:29:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:23Yasi Salek?

  All of those.

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  A little incoherent. Yes.

• 1:29:26Yasi Salek?

  I think, I think from what I understand, listen, I love this cover image. I think it looks so fucking cool. From what I understand, it was actually meant to be completely this boxing, I am the champion thing. And then the candy was a late, I don't want to say afterthought, but a later thought. Which is why it's sort of just like photoshopped into the background of this. They didn't redo the imagery, you know? I kind of would have preferred, it's not up to me, but.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  Just the boxing?

• 1:29:54Yasi Salek?

  It's such a cool image. Like, it's almost like.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  And she loves putting boxing in her live shows. It's a total Madonna thing.

• 1:29:59Yasi Salek?

  And she looks fucking cool.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  She does.

• 1:30:02Yasi Salek?

  But yeah, but then a lot of the songs reference candy, so it kind of makes sense. Also, did you know that she wanted to call this album The Black Madonna?

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  So I learned this from your Google Doc.

• 1:30:12Yasi Salek?

  That's right.

• 1:30:13Speaker 02

  And I was like, thank God she didn't, because there was a Black Madonna, the artist. And she ended up changing her name to The Blessed Madonna in 2020, when it was like, that's not so cool.

• 1:30:21Yasi Salek?

  Well, you know, I don't want to, now I'll get canceled, but it's a real thing, The Black. It's a reference, you know, it's not.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  But people don't.

• 1:30:29Yasi Salek?

  Not now.

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:30:30Yasi Salek?

  It might have, it might have went okay then. But by now it would not have.

• 1:30:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:30:37Yasi Salek?

  And she said it. She was like, "I thought 25% of the world might get this, probably less. It's not worth it." And she was like-

• 1:30:44Speaker 02

  That's a wise calculation, Madonna.

• 1:30:47Yasi Salek?

  Liz Rosenberg said to Entertainment Weekly, "She loves candy. The title is about the juxtaposition of tough and sweetness." Or as Madonna so eloquently expressed, "I'm gonna kick your ass, but it's gonna make you feel good."

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  I have to tell you how I heard this album.

• 1:31:00Yasi Salek?

  Please.

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  In Liz Rosenberg's office.

• 1:31:03Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  At Warner Brothers Records, at Warner Brothers Records, sitting on a piece of, I think it's the girly show set with the hair dryers.

• 1:31:12Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:13Speaker 02

  She had them in her office.

• 1:31:14Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  And I was sitting at a hairdryer, listening to this album in her office, and I was like, "I think I'm, this is my peak."

• 1:31:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think I'm gonna-

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  That might have been it, actually.

• 1:31:21Yasi Salek?

  Did it hit you right away?

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  I liked it, but I was like, a little like, hmm. And I might-

• 1:31:26Yasi Salek?

  It's just so, it's such a different sound for-

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was hard to get my head around all of it.

• 1:31:31Yasi Salek?

  Again, I've come around a lot of it. I guess my thing is like, I don't want, I don't wanna go to a Madonna album and hear some, someone else so strongly. And I hear Timbaland so strongly on here.

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:44Yasi Salek?

  And I love Timbaland. It's just, you know, okay, but let's go through the actual tracks.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 1:31:49Yasi Salek?

  I didn't mention the cover image, by the way, shot by the fabulous Stephen Klein, obviously, because he's been doing most of her imagery at this, around this time. Candy Shop is the first song.

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  The lyrics are not amazing.

• 1:32:00Yasi Salek?

  It's a, it's a tried and true, uh, sex as candy metaphor.

• 1:32:07Yasi Salek?

  This one was produced by Pharrell, or sorry, written by Pharrell and Madonna and produced by the Neptunis. I like the sticky and sweet refrain-

• 1:32:14Speaker 02

  My sugar is raw.

• 1:32:15Yasi Salek?

  Sticky and sweet.

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  My sugar is raw.

• 1:32:17Yasi Salek?

  I like it. That part I like.

• 1:32:27Yasi Salek?

  We already kind of discussed four minutes. Fucking banger. Again, the junky XL remix is my fucking shit.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  I'll spend time with that.

• 1:32:35Yasi Salek?

  I love it. There's also, someone put me on to like, a house remix that's on YouTube, and that's fucking amazing, too. Just shows how good the song is, you know? "Karen Gans, Take It Away, Second Single, This Is Your Jam."

• 1:32:46Speaker 02

  Oh my god, "Give It To Me."

• 1:32:47Yasi Salek?

  To Me.

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  All time. Banger. I, I was listening to this on the way over. It's another one of these just like relentless, it's like jump. It's like, I'm gonna take what I want. Life is for the taking. I'm like, you know, I am, I'm powerful. Um, I love this song so much and I have, I have two, two Pharrell points on this. So one was, I went to South, Southwest.

• 1:33:10Yasi Salek?

  As we used to do. Oh, this year?

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  Oh, that year, that year, sorry. The year of this album. And I had just heard just like five songs at that point.

• 1:33:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:17Speaker 02

  And one of them was Give It To Me and I was like, oh my God. I remember, I think I still have the notebook where I just like wrote the name of the song. I was like, oh my God.

• 1:33:22Yasi Salek?

  It immediately grabbed you.

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  Immediately. So I go to interview Pharrell. I cannot remember the circumsta- like why, what, what he was promoting. And he's in a hotel room with a bunch of men and I walk in and they were telling some sort of crude sex story. And I walked in, everybody was like, oh, and I was like, oh no, woman in the room, this is gonna be terrible. And I sat down across from him and I was like, this man is not taking me seriously. And I was like, you know, I just heard some of the Madonna music that you worked on. He was like, no, you didn't. And I was like, no, I did.

• 1:33:43Yasi Salek?

  You're like, I'm Karen motherfucking.

• 1:33:44Speaker 02

  Well, no, but he was like, how would you have heard it? And I was like, I, I worked for Rolling Stone and they played it for me. He's like, okay, what'd you like? And I was like, give it to me. And he was like, oh, and he knew that I had actually heard it. And he was like, okay. And then we had like a real interview and he took me seriously.

• 1:33:57Yasi Salek?

  He could have afforded you the respect of being a human.

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  I know. He, at that moment, he was not. Anyway, oh my God, I love this song. It's just, I love the synth stuttering.

• 1:34:13Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Pharrell's a fucking god. I, I will say, this is a song that I didn't fully appreciate till I saw the tour footage.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:34:24Yasi Salek?

  Bro.

• 1:34:25Speaker 02

  But.

• 1:34:26Yasi Salek?

  That, the energy that she brings to that song, cause it's, it's the closer, right?

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  It is, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:32Yasi Salek?

  It's astonishing.

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's been dancing for two and a half hours.

• 1:34:35Yasi Salek?

  That's Madonna peak athlete time. And again, I mean, I think this is the year she turns 50.

• 1:34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Don't need to hold my breath. I can go on and on and on. However, one drawback.

• 1:34:45Yasi Salek?

  Tell me.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Explain to me how Pharrell convinced her to say, get stupid, get stupid, get stupid. I overlook it because I like the song that much. It's bothersome.

• 1:34:55Yasi Salek?

  She, you know, she talks about being stupid on American Life.

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:35:00Yasi Salek?

  She talks like to.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  It feels like a different get stupid, but then he does the panning with it to the left, to the right, to the left, to the right.

• 1:35:05Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry, don't forget this is also the era where we're involving LMFAO. It was just 2008 was a terrible time.

• 1:35:10Speaker 02

  It was, it was an era of foolishness, let's say.

• 1:35:12Yasi Salek?

  There were a lot of things that maybe felt, that felt good in the moment that we all deeply regret. I won't even show anyone photos of what I looked like during that time.

• 1:35:21Speaker 02

  Well, I was evidently using a digital camera, like two pixels, so we, you know, I, God knows what I look like.

• 1:35:26Yasi Salek?

  I was wearing all over print hoodies and like, it was just a bad time.

• 1:35:30Speaker 02

  But the next song also, which I do love, Heartbeat, he somehow also gets her to say, see my booty get down. And then she goes, get down.

• 1:35:39Yasi Salek?

  It's still with the music.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  Oh, God. I mean, but.

• 1:35:41Yasi Salek?

  It's American pop music at this time. We're seeing booties get down.

• 1:35:44Speaker 02

  But I do love that song. It's another, uh, don't you know, can't you see when I dance, I feel free.

• 1:35:48Yasi Salek?

  M. Dollar. These are.

• 1:35:51Speaker 02

  That's a good song. I do like Heartbeat. It kind of encapsulates just like the vibe of confession. It just like ports it over to this record.

• 1:35:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it with a totally different like sensibility.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:36:10Yasi Salek?

  Miles Away is my favorite song on here, but of course, I mean.

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  That's my second favorite.

• 1:36:13Yasi Salek?

  Little guitar and you have me like catnip.

• 1:36:15Speaker 02

  I love Miles Away. Oh, my God.

• 1:36:20Yasi Salek?

  That is a reference to I'm So Stupid. I'm So Stupid. I Used To Live In A Fuzzy Dream.

• 1:36:25Speaker 02

  Oh, that makes sense.

• 1:36:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, from American Life.

• 1:36:37Yasi Salek?

  It's a wonderful song.

• 1:36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:39Yasi Salek?

  To me, it's the high of the song. Besides Four Minutes, those are my two highs.

• 1:36:42Speaker 02

  This is my, it's, it's my second favorite. Also, not a great sign for her marriage. If somebody is only loving her when she's, uh, 6,000 miles apart, is that the distance?

• 1:36:51Yasi Salek?

  There is.

• 1:36:52Speaker 02

  3,000?

• 1:36:53Yasi Salek?

  There is like a couple of parts in I'm Gonna Tell You A Secret where I'm like. Where it's like, she does the London show and he didn't come, because he was at the pub.

• 1:37:03Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:37:04Yasi Salek?

  And I was like.

• 1:37:05Speaker 02

  That's not a good sign.

• 1:37:07Yasi Salek?

  Sorry.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. But the song is just so melodic. It's got that little shuffling beat. It's just like, ugh.

• 1:37:13Yasi Salek?

  It is.

• 1:37:14Speaker 02

  It's not a ballad.

• 1:37:15Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:37:16Speaker 02

  It's like a mid-tempo.

• 1:37:17Yasi Salek?

  It's a mid-tempo, but it's, it's like, it's the most emotionally.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:37:21Yasi Salek?

  Explicit or like evocative song on here. This is Madonna and Timberland and Timberlake and Danger wrote this song all together.

• 1:37:29Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 1:37:30Yasi Salek?

  She's Not Me, written by Madonna and Pharrell.

• 1:37:33Speaker 02

  So things start to get a little weird at this point in the album. You know, it's got that little funky chic bassline. This album, all of these sort of like toot-toot beep-beep.

• 1:37:42Yasi Salek?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:42Speaker 02

  Disco references are on this record. Um, it's chaotic. And it leads into something that's even infinitely more chaotic.

• 1:37:51Yasi Salek?

  I guess it's like in the vein of Thief of Hearts. Which is also sort of a jarring moment on erotica.

• 1:37:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:58Yasi Salek?

  She said that they were listening to a lot of Debbie Harry records and Gloria Gaynor. I will survive.

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I can, I guess I can kind of hear that. It's more about the subject matter. Like, at the time, I remember trying to parse, like, is this about, like, another woman in her husband's life, or is this about another pop star?

• 1:38:13Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  And I was like, is it Britney? Is it Gaga? Like, I remember like going through.

• 1:38:16Yasi Salek?

  I was trying to remember Gaga.

• 1:38:18Speaker 02

  Gaga existed yet. It must have been Britney.

• 1:38:20Yasi Salek?

  She just put out The Fame in 2008 also, so I don't know that she had been.

• 1:38:24Speaker 02

  I think I referenced Britney in my review, so that, I mean, but.

• 1:38:27Yasi Salek?

  And then she was, she spent her whole Confessions press tour keeping for Britney. Like, she had the shirts and, so I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe that part of the song that's cool is that it can be read both ways.

• 1:38:40Speaker 02

  The, the less said about this, the better. It's just.

• 1:38:42Yasi Salek?

  We'll just go to the next one.

• 1:38:43Speaker 02

  Chaos, yeah.

• 1:38:45Yasi Salek?

  Beat Goes On featuring your close personal friend, Kanye West. Why don't you want, why don't you want everyone to know that you guys are best friends?

• 1:38:53Speaker 02

  We did meet at Rolling Stone. We tweeted at him and we got him to come to the office. Those were really, they were wild days back then.

• 1:39:00Yasi Salek?

  I met him, um, a thousand years ago.

• 1:39:03Speaker 02

  How was he?

• 1:39:05Yasi Salek?

  You know what, it was twenty, was it twenty twelve or twenty thirteen? Whatever the first year was that he was showing his, um, collection at Paris Fashion Week. And I had like, this was like peak party Aussie, and I had somehow like talked my way into Karine Royfeld's black tie Paris Fashion Week ball.

• 1:39:21Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 1:39:21Yasi Salek?

  I'm hammered. I'm wearing like a leather jacket and a football jersey at a black tie ball, so everyone thought I was like a rock star. And they kept taking photos of me, but they didn't know who I was. And then I just kind of sidled up to him. He was the only person in there with a bodyguard, even though it was all only like famous people. And I was like, hey, what's up Kanye? And then, I don't know, I just started chatting to him and I was like, how are you feeling about showing your collection? And he was like, it's, it's like trying to ollie in front of the whole world. I'll never forget it.

• 1:39:46Speaker 02

  Oh man, that's weak. We came to Rolling Stone, he did like a Q and A session, and he talked about loving Billy Joel and stuff. We had, it was actually really interesting.

• 1:39:54Yasi Salek?

  Listen, problematic.

• 1:39:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:39:56Yasi Salek?

  Many bad things.

• 1:39:58Speaker 02

  I don't hate him on this song, actually, to be honest with you. In fact, I think, it's just like, what he's saying is silly.

• 1:40:04Yasi Salek?

  I have beef. I'm gonna tell you what I have beef with.

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  I know you do, okay, you tell me. But I like the vibe. I like the vibe of his flow.

• 1:40:09Yasi Salek?

  I'm like a vampire under a full moon now. I mean, he's technically a vampire, could be under a full moon, just like any of us could be under a full moon, but that's a werewolf thing. He's conflating.

• 1:40:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:40:19Yasi Salek?

  Get your occult right, you know what I mean? That's all.

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  He thinks he's gonna do something new now. See what to do now.

• 1:40:24Yasi Salek?

  See what to do now. Um, this song is fine.

• 1:40:27Speaker 02

  He's going from E to F now.

• 1:40:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I know, this is.

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  I mean, this, this is deeply embedded. This is danger zone.

• 1:40:32Yasi Salek?

  You love hard candy.

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  I do, I really. I went, I went very in. Oh, I don't hate it. I don't hate it. We're back in the disco. And then we're, we're staying in the disco for Dance Tonight. It's just harmless. These are harmless songs.

• 1:40:44Yasi Salek?

  Y'all mind if a white girl speaks some Espanol? Part four hundred and eighty-seven Spanish lesson.

• 1:40:49Speaker 02

  I do not like this song. You like this one?

• 1:40:52Yasi Salek?

  I just welcome Madonna speaking Espanol on one of her albums as she is wont to do. Um, no, I don't like this song. I don't ever think about this song. I don't put it on.

• 1:41:04Speaker 02

  I think live, it was okay, if I'm remembering, like, I didn't hate it live. I mean, again, I really hate any of these things live, but it's just like, it's, it's kind of like an unnecessary song.

• 1:41:12Yasi Salek?

  Yo te quiero means I love you. Mucho gusto means I'm welcome to you. Um, the next song is Devil Wouldn't Recognize You.

• 1:41:20Speaker 02

  Literally what goes around, comes around.

• 1:41:22Yasi Salek?

  I find it's a bit Crimea River. We have it at home. We have Crimea River at home.

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:41:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's maybe either one of those. The rain sounds, I think, is what kind of...

• 1:41:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:31Yasi Salek?

  I believe they were asked about that and Justin Timberlake was like, "No, just because they're both mid-tempo."

• 1:41:36Speaker 02

  It's like, "No, that sounds exactly like that song."

• 1:41:38Yasi Salek?

  Um, this illustrates my kind of ongoing thing with, I'm like, it sounds too much like other people.

• 1:41:44Speaker 02

  No, I agree with you.

• 1:41:45Yasi Salek?

  I'm glad we have it and I love Four Minutes. This "Devil One Recognize You," by the way, was, again, a song that was written for Hello Suckers. The musical about the woman.

• 1:41:53Speaker 02

  I wouldn't have guessed that. That's interesting.

• 1:41:55Yasi Salek?

  Um, with Joe Henry, because Joe Henry's a co-writer on this song. And then it was reworked by Timberlake and Justin Timberlake and Danger. It's not a bad song.

• 1:42:03Speaker 02

  It's not. This is not, this is not bad.

• 1:42:04Yasi Salek?

  I like it. It's just, it's a little, we have Justin Timberlake at home. And then the last song is Voices.

• 1:42:09Speaker 02

  I don't need it.

• 1:42:11Yasi Salek?

  This is also a song that was written for, uh, Hello Suckers.

• 1:42:14Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:42:15Yasi Salek?

  Or the other Luke Bissell. I actually don't know. It was definitely written for one or, one or the other.

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  I made like the theme of my review of this album to be about like Madonna is like a dominant. She's a dom. She likes to be in charge.

• 1:42:25Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:42:25Speaker 02

  And the interesting thing to me about this record was this sort of like the tension between her allowing herself to be a little bit played with. But she is both the master and the slave. I mean, it's not like, she's not, she's not fully either one of them here.

• 1:42:36Yasi Salek?

  The criticism that I saw lobbying against this album was that it sounds like she is doing a feature on, on the album that should be her album. Which I think is unfair, but I get the kernel of that.

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. It has less of her signatures and more of theirs. I agree with everything you were saying about that.

• 1:42:53Yasi Salek?

  But it still yielded some great songs, some great, amazing imagery, some good videos. We should talk about the reviews. They were not that good.

• 1:43:03Speaker 02

  I think I was the most positive one.

• 1:43:05Yasi Salek?

  Well, no, it's across the gamut. I think it's kind of polarizing because like, for example, Blender, which had good writers.

• 1:43:13Speaker 02

  R.I.P. Love Blender.

• 1:43:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So Blender gave it four stars. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+. The Guardian gave it four stars. And Ame gave it a five out of 10.

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:43:23Yasi Salek?

  Pop Matters gave it a five out of 10. I always forget about Pop Matters, respectfully. Rolling Stone, was that you?

• 1:43:28Speaker 02

  That was me.

• 1:43:28Yasi Salek?

  Four stars. Good job.

• 1:43:29Speaker 02

  I gave it four stars. That's good.

• 1:43:30Yasi Salek?

  That's what it says. Slant Magazine, three and a half.

• 1:43:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:33Yasi Salek?

  The Times London, three. So it's like Metacritic is 65.

• 1:43:38Speaker 02

  Okay, so it's like meh.

• 1:43:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's like a D+.

• 1:43:42Speaker 02

  But I like it better than that.

• 1:43:43Yasi Salek?

  But but that doesn't tell the whole story because it's polarizing. It's like a lot of people were like four stars and a lot of people were like, no, thank you. That alone for me, it makes this album so worth it because like, I'm glad Madonna was still doing something that was unexpected and pushed buttons and made people feel uncomfortable. Exactly, because that's fucking cool.

• 1:44:00Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. And then she takes it on the road and she reinvents it and you're like, oh, and it just starts clicking again.

• 1:44:05Yasi Salek?

  Hundred. What I, watching that Sticky and Sweet tour, I was like, okay, you know what? Let's fucking go to the candy shop.

• 1:44:12Speaker 02

  Honestly, even some of these songs, I was just like, ah, whatever. Like, they were really, they do pop live. And she just, she just figures it out. So she emerges for the first song, it's Candy Shop, and she's on a throne with a cane. She loves a throne. I use this as an inspiration.

• 1:44:26Yasi Salek?

  About, do you think?

• 1:44:27Speaker 02

  It's just a prop.

• 1:44:29Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:44:29Speaker 02

  She likes holding something. She likes twirling it.

• 1:44:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Madonna with object.

• 1:44:32Speaker 02

  You know, she could poke you with it. It's powerful. This was inspiration for my 40th birthday party where I had a throne and a cane. FYI, I also had a step and repeat with a cardboard cutout of Madonna that people posed with.

• 1:44:44Yasi Salek?

  That's really good stuff.

• 1:44:45Speaker 02

  True inspiration for my life. Thank you, Madonna. Human nature with the electric guitar and then later borderline.

• 1:44:51Yasi Salek?

  Okay, is this the first border, is this the first borderline appearance in a tour?

• 1:44:56Speaker 02

  I've seen. So this is a contemporary era.

• 1:44:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:59Speaker 02

  She hadn't done it in ages. And then she also did guitar Ray of Light and also Hung Up. And then I was like, okay, you know what? That was actually a little too much guitar. I don't like Ray of Light with guitar as previously mentioned. And Hung Up? No, that's a hard no.

• 1:45:13Yasi Salek?

  I like that she tried something different.

• 1:45:15Speaker 02

  I mean, she, you can do it. That just proves, you know, again, the strength of the songwriting and everything, but it's like, I don't, I don't want that. And then she did Miles Away on acoustic guitar. And I cried.

• 1:45:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:24Speaker 02

  I recall crying.

• 1:45:25Yasi Salek?

  It's so lovely.

• 1:45:27Speaker 02

  I did, okay. But then we got to talk about her jumping rope, which I wrote in all caps, with Keith Haring figures on the screens behind her.

• 1:45:33Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  Then she gets on a pole and she does Into the Groove. Then she gets back down and she jumps Double Dutch.

• 1:45:39Yasi Salek?

  Who, I mean, my knees.

• 1:45:41Speaker 02

  But just like the degree of difficulty, if you fuck up on Double Dutch, like you're in the ropes and then the whole thing is over.

• 1:45:46Yasi Salek?

  Well, famously Madonna rehearses things till an inch of their life, so it was not gonna happen.

• 1:45:50Speaker 02

  But you're talking about a woman. How old is she?

• 1:45:53Yasi Salek?

  Fifty. Yeah. But she's in

• 1:45:56Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:45:57Yasi Salek?

  Incredible shape.

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  She is, but I make I'm not jumping double Dutch, that's all I'll say.

• 1:46:01Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  Um, she does music. I, you need music in the set, and she does it on the sort of like subway car set.

• 1:46:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:08Speaker 02

  She does "Like a Prayer." That was the first time I had seen that, and then she ends on "Give it to me."

• 1:46:12Yasi Salek?

  It's so great. I also like the rain. Here Comes the Rain again, interlude with the video. That was nice. I love, Rain is one of my favorite songs.

• 1:46:18Speaker 02

  Oh my god. My one drawback on Sticking in Sweet Tour?

• 1:46:21Yasi Salek?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:21Speaker 02

  The blonde wig with the bangs.

• 1:46:23Yasi Salek?

  I can't talk about it. I can't get into the fuck ass bangs and the fuck ass wig.

• 1:46:27Speaker 02

  That wig

• 1:46:28Yasi Salek?

  I can't get into it.

• 1:46:29Speaker 02

  Damaged me.

• 1:46:30Yasi Salek?

  I was upset.

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  It's the weakest part of that entire tour.

• 1:46:33Yasi Salek?

  What's happening? Why is, why is?

• 1:46:34Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's just, okay, it's bad. Okay.

• 1:46:36Yasi Salek?

  It's really bad. Especially like, at one part, it's like askew.

• 1:46:41Yasi Salek?

  In, in the, in the

• 1:46:43Speaker 02

  In the film version, yes, yeah.

• 1:46:45Yasi Salek?

  Just after this tour, I think, or during, um, Christopher Chacony's book, Life with My Sister Madonna, comes out.

• 1:46:52Speaker 02

  I did read it when it came out.

• 1:46:54Yasi Salek?

  Madonna liked it.

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  Why would she?

• 1:46:57Yasi Salek?

  She was quite mad. I think, I think that effectively ended their, um, friendship.

• 1:47:03Speaker 02

  But they reconciled before his death, I believe.

• 1:47:05Yasi Salek?

  Yes, I do believe, because, I mean, of course, right? It's a fun read.

• 1:47:11Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but

• 1:47:13Speaker 02

  There's a lot of tea.

• 1:47:14Yasi Salek?

  You know, look, you have to like triangulate everything, knowing that everyone's living their own story. Everyone's the main character on their own story. Everyone's understanding things through their own prism, and then you kind of just like, be like, okay, you know, this is more his story of what she was to him and his life than it is like fact-based.

• 1:47:37Speaker 02

  But you do get a sense of what a critical role he played, a lot of creatively.

• 1:47:42Yasi Salek?

  Which I think he deserves a lot of credit for. Personally.

• 1:47:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:47:46Yasi Salek?

  I think he was amazing. In the midst of the tour, also, Madonna announces her divorce from Guy Ritchie.

• 1:47:53Speaker 02

  Not a surprise.

• 1:47:53Yasi Salek?

  Not a surprise. And also, again, I don't want to speculate on people's personal lives, but obviously I'm just about to do it right now. It seems like perhaps the adoption needed to be finalized

• 1:48:05Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:48:06Yasi Salek?

  of David Banda. And then we could divorce, you know?

• 1:48:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:12Yasi Salek?

  So, um, according to a statement, this I thought was very interesting. According to a statement from Liz Rosenberg, he walked away with ninety-two million dollars of her money, which was, I guess, the most any man had ever received in a divorce settlement from a woman.

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  Fuck that man.

• 1:48:28Yasi Salek?

  Proud badge of honor for you, Gary. Mister, Mister, I'm, I'm the man's man. Um, also, I think he, like, pretty explicitly said in the beginning of their marriage that he would never take a dollar from her. He was like, I won't take a dollar. I will take only ninety-two million dollars.

• 1:48:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:43Yasi Salek?

  Um, but this led to one of my favorite Madonna quotes of all time, which is, apparently joking about the settlement, years later, she said, "If I think about it for even five seconds, it's more than I can take. Did he deserve a hundred million dollars for putting up with me? Hell, if I thought he was gonna get that much, I would've been a much bigger bitch. Much bigger." That's my queen.

• 1:49:03Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 1:49:03Yasi Salek?

  That's my fucking queen. So they share custody of Rocco and David. Um, obviously, Lourdes is Madonna's, uh, daughter, so. And then, unfortunately, their divorce put the adoption of Mercy, which was still pending a bit in jeopardy, but it ends up getting, it's fine.

• 1:49:22Speaker 02

  Mercy, my favorite of Madonna's children.

• 1:49:24Yasi Salek?

  Interesting, how come?

• 1:49:26Speaker 02

  She's like a quiet intelligence to her.

• 1:49:28Yasi Salek?

  Okay, okay. Um, I love them all equally.

• 1:49:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:49:32Yasi Salek?

  No, I just, I don't have a favorite.

• 1:49:34Speaker 02

  And she played piano on the celebration tour, which now you're gonna say, you didn't know, because I didn't take you.

• 1:49:39Yasi Salek?

  I didn't have to say it, because you said it for me. She did a 2017 interview with Roxane Gay for Bazaar. Um, it was a different time.

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:47Yasi Salek?

  And she said, "That is one of the arguments I would get into with my ex-husband. He used to say to me, 'But why do you have to go do this again? Why do you have to make another record? Why do you have to go on tour? Why do you have to make a movie?'" And I'm like, "Why do I have to explain myself? I feel like that's a very sexist thing to say. Does somebody ask Steven Spielberg why he's still making movies? Hasn't he had enough success? Hasn't he made enough money? Hasn't he made a name for himself? Did somebody go to Pablo Picasso and say, 'Okay, you're eighty years old. Haven't you painted enough paintings?'" She's making points.

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:50:16Yasi Salek?

  "No, and I'm tired of that question. I just don't understand it. I'll stop doing everything I do when I don't wanna do it anymore. I'll stop when I run out of ideas. I'll stop when you fucking kill me. How about that?"

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  Don't tell her to stop.

• 1:50:26Yasi Salek?

  Period. Don't tell her to stop. Don't tell anyone to stop.

• 1:50:29Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 1:50:30Yasi Salek?

  She also told The Sun in 2015, "I did sometimes find myself in a state of conflict. There were times where I wanted to express myself as an artist in ways that I don't think my ex-husband was comfortable with. There were times I felt incarcerated. I really wasn't allowed to be myself." Happens to the best of us. Even Madonna, babe. Even Madonna.

• 1:50:48Yasi Salek?

  All right. In December of 2008, she goes to shoot a two-day photo shoot with Stephen Klein in Rio for W Magazine. She's 50. She's radiant. She's stunning. She's gorgeous. She's surrounded by gorgeous young men, including one especially gorgeous 22-year-old named Jesus Luz.

• 1:51:05Speaker 02

  Forgot about him.

• 1:51:06Yasi Salek?

  One of my top Madonna boyfriends.

• 1:51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:08Yasi Salek?

  Tony Ward and Jesus Luz are right here for me. He was an aspiring DJ who had also studied Kabbalah for two years prior to their meeting.

• 1:51:16Speaker 02

  Very compatible.

• 1:51:17Yasi Salek?

  God is good.

• 1:51:18Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:51:18Yasi Salek?

  You know? She said later to a tablet, "Once you reach a certain age, you're not allowed to be adventurous. You're not allowed to be sexual." I mean, is there a rule? Are you just supposed to die?

• 1:51:28Speaker 02

  Go off?

• 1:51:28Yasi Salek?

  Again, good quotes here.

• 1:51:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:31Yasi Salek?

  We don't put out music for a while.

• 1:51:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:33Yasi Salek?

  2009, she works on her first, I guess her second directorial film, because Filth and Wisdom, which no one has seen. But the next one is WE.

• 1:51:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:51:43Yasi Salek?

  So that's what she's doing for most of 2009. She also puts out the greatest hits album, the third one, Celebration.

• 1:51:47Speaker 02

  Celebration, yeah. I actually like the song Celebration.

• 1:51:51Yasi Salek?

  I don't have any thoughts about Celebration.

• 1:51:54Speaker 02

  It's like, you know, B-minus Holiday.

• 1:51:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so we have Holiday at home. But it's good. It's fun. The video's kind of fun. It has, it's directed by Jonas Sockerland. It has Madonna dancing and, you know, posing provocatively, and Lourdes is in it and says, "Jesus Luz is so hot." Jesus Luz is so hot. I like, I like Revolver featuring Lil Wayne.

• 1:52:16Speaker 02

  I had forgotten about it.

• 1:52:18Yasi Salek?

  I like it.

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  I don't know that I like it.

• 1:52:19Yasi Salek?

  I love Lil Wayne, and I think it's a fun song. I'm glad Cherish made it on here because I have an ongoing debate with many people about Cherish. Cherish is a fucking good song.

• 1:52:28Speaker 02

  Pro Cherish. And I recently met someone named Cherish, named after the song.

• 1:52:32Yasi Salek?

  All right. In 2010, so you guys remember, she's out of her Warner Brothers contract now. She signs with Interscope.

• 1:52:39Speaker 02

  This wasn't the Live Nation 360 thing?

• 1:52:41Yasi Salek?

  So she also, yes, I missed that. It was right before the Sticking in the Sweet Tour.

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:52:44Yasi Salek?

  So she signs with Live Nation, but not for music. It's a 360 deal, $120 million for 10 years, plus a $17.5 million signing bonus.

• 1:52:54Speaker 02

  She's just making back that Guy Ritchie money.

• 1:52:56Yasi Salek?

  She was like, "Oh, really, bitch? Don't worry, I made it in spades." Um, this is for, but this is 360 touring merch, right?

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:04Yasi Salek?

  But not music.

• 1:53:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:53:06Yasi Salek?

  Music, she signs with Interscope. And then she took to her Facebook page. Her official artist Facebook page announced, "It's official. I need to move. I need to sweat. I need to make mu- new music. Music I can dance to. I'm on the lookout for the maddest, sickest, most badass people to collaborate with."

• 1:53:25Speaker 02

  You don't find that cringe?

• 1:53:27Yasi Salek?

  Low. Just, as a, as a 44-year-old woman who absolutely uses slang that is not appropriate to my age, because I'm so chronically and terminally online, I can relate.

• 1:53:41Speaker 02

  I mean, but relate, but isn't it a tad cringe?

• 1:53:43Yasi Salek?

  Yes, when both of us do it, it's cringe. But as I've said about myself, and I will apply to Madonna, we are cringe, but we are free. I don't know why she posted that, because obviously she's not gonna like go on Craigslist and get producers, but but it was a fun announcement.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:58Yasi Salek?

  So she reconnected with William Orbit, which she had already, I think, not even related to this album. Guy O'Seary had basically been like, "Okay, I'm glad you're making this movie, but you need to put a song in it." And she's like, "I don't want to, I'm busy, I'm an auteur." And he was like, "You need to put a song in it." And he pushed her and pushed her until she teamed up with William Orbit, who brought in some songwriters, and they did "Masterpiece," which I fucking love.

• 1:54:20Speaker 02

  Love that song.

• 1:54:21Yasi Salek?

  And it's in the closing credits of WE, a movie that is uneven, but cool, and I'm glad she did it. It's visually, at moments, very captivating. She also recruits, then, so she has William Orbit on deck and has, you know, started working three Europeans. So we're leaving America again. Italian DJ Benny Benassi, who had won a Grammy for the best remix recording of Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise," the Pumpkin remix. And he had opened for her on the Sticking in Sweet Tour in Rome. Um, and he did a remix of "Celebration." His cousin Alessandro Benassi and the French producer Martin Solvig.

• 1:54:54Speaker 02

  Mmm.

• 1:54:56Yasi Salek?

  WE premiered at Cannes, Cannes.

• 1:54:58Speaker 02

  When was that?

• 1:54:59Yasi Salek?

  2011.

• 1:55:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:55:01Yasi Salek?

  That's the next year. Didn't get great reviews.

• 1:55:07Yasi Salek?

  All right. February of 2012. You already know we have an album coming because we're doing the Super Bowl.

• 1:55:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:55:16Yasi Salek?

  By we, I mean Madonna. Because you know the last time a woman had headlined the Super Bowl prior to this was 1996?

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  That's absurd.

• 1:55:25Yasi Salek?

  So she tasked Bea Ackland, who's Jonas Ackland's wife. By the way, it might be Jonas, and I'm so sorry for my cultural insensitivity, but I'm just gonna keep saying Jonas because I've said it for three episodes and...

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  You can't stop now.

• 1:55:37Yasi Salek?

  Can't stop now. Um, so she was tasked with the costuming of 100 Drumline performers, 150 gladiators, and 200 choir members. In addition to Madonna's guest artists, LMFAO, Nicki Minaj, MIA, and CeeLo Green. It was 2012!

• 1:55:56Speaker 02

  Only one of those acts has not been canceled.

• 1:55:59Yasi Salek?

  And it's LMFAO.

• 1:56:00Speaker 02

  And it's LMFAO. That is correct. 100% right.

• 1:56:03Yasi Salek?

  Listen, I kind of ride for LMFAO, I'm not gonna lie. When I was like, kind of revisiting, I was like, that shit, that shit was fun.

• 1:56:09Speaker 02

  I recalled it being cringey, and then when I rewatched it, the part that was cringey was the guy balancing with a lute on the string.

• 1:56:15Yasi Salek?

  I didn't understand what was happening. I was like, is he...

• 1:56:17Speaker 02

  I thought he was LMFAO for a second, and then I saw them over on the side, and I was like, oh, they're fine. They were just, they were party rocking. What are you gonna do?

• 1:56:23Yasi Salek?

  They were party rocking in the house tonight. Everybody wanna have a good time. Um, they're rich as hell, babe, and they mind their own business and keep their noses clean, and I have nothing but respect for them.

• 1:56:32Speaker 02

  I kind of forgot how big those songs were.

• 1:56:34Yasi Salek?

  Massive.

• 1:56:36Speaker 02

  She did not need to do "I'm Sexy and I Know It" with them and do the little, like, shuffle.

• 1:56:41Yasi Salek?

  (mumbling)

• 1:56:42Speaker 02

  It was a little bit of a bummer to watch her do that, but then, you know, I mean, it was, for a pop spectacle of that order on the Super Bowl field, like, she had like a million of those gladiators. It was mega. By the way, she arrived on a throne, I just wanted to point that out.

• 1:56:58Yasi Salek?

  You know, I hope this is what The Odyssey looks like, Christopher Nolan's film. I hope it's taking some strong, uh, visual inspiration from Madonna's 2012 Super Bowl performance.

• 1:57:09Speaker 02

  That would be a film that I would then see.

• 1:57:12Yasi Salek?

  Um, just before the game, the first single from M-DNA had come out, "Give Me All Your Lovin'".

• 1:57:18Speaker 02

  I like it.

• 1:57:19Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:57:20Speaker 02

  We'll, we'll come back to it.

• 1:57:21Yasi Salek?

  The Vogue performance in the Super Bowl is fabuloso.

• 1:57:26Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:57:26Yasi Salek?

  It is gorgeous. I live. I think it's one of the best Vogue performances, live ones.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  It is. And it's got like, sort of like, the magazine font on the floor. They got the overhead shot and stuff. It's really good.

• 1:57:40Yasi Salek?

  And I don't hate the LMFAO or CeeLo bits.

• 1:57:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:57:43Yasi Salek?

  CeeLo does "Like a Prayer," makes total sense.

• 1:57:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:47Yasi Salek?

  Um, she told Howard Stern that she was so nervous before and during the performance that she collapsed in the bathroom when it was over. She said, "I laid down on the floor and cried because I got through it and I knew everything went off without a hitch."

• 1:57:58Speaker 02

  It's hard to imagine her getting nervous for anything.

• 1:58:00Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:58:01Speaker 02

  That's kind of crazy. One incongruous, but a little bit bizarre thing, do you remember at the very end, she like gets sucked out of the stage? And then they have, they show the overhead from the stadium, it just says, "World peace."

• 1:58:12Yasi Salek?

  Well, yeah. That reminds me of when I went and saw, um, U2 at the Sphere to do "Octune Baby," and there was like a whole part where they're just like flashing words on the screen that's like, "Feminist." You know what I mean? Like, "Black Lives Matter."

• 1:58:25Speaker 02

  People just, they're just saying words.

• 1:58:26Yasi Salek?

  Just saying words. Everything didn't go off without a hitch, though.

• 1:58:30Speaker 02

  Oh, no, it didn't. But she didn't know that yet.

• 1:58:32Yasi Salek?

  She didn't know that yet.

• 1:58:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:34Yasi Salek?

  MIA and Nicki Minaj, who were obviously there to perform the song with her, had flipped off the audience.

• 1:58:39Speaker 02

  Just, just MIA.

• 1:58:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:41Speaker 02

  Nicki was fine.

• 1:58:42Yasi Salek?

  Nicki was minding her own business. She wasn't, she had, she hadn't...

• 1:58:46Speaker 02

  She actually looks great in that performance. It's like, peak Nicki.

• 1:58:49Yasi Salek?

  Peak Nicki. Honestly, MIA looks amazing, too.

• 1:58:52Speaker 02

  She does. And they're both in little gladiator outfits with like their first initial on the crotch.

• 1:58:57Yasi Salek?

  It's very cute. Um, 222 of the 114 million people who watched the football called the FCC to complain about MIA flipping.

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  Because she showed her fucking middle finger.

• 1:59:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And the NFL was like, "No problem, we'll fine her $17 million."

• 1:59:13Speaker 02

  Except she's MIA and she doesn't have a dime. I mean, I would imagine, I don't know, paper planes money?

• 1:59:18Yasi Salek?

  A little money, yeah.

• 1:59:20Speaker 02

  Madonna was not happy about this because something had happened that was unplanned.

• 1:59:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that she doesn't like that.

• 1:59:26Speaker 02

  No. And like controversial, but not in a way that she would want it to be.

• 1:59:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she told Ryan Seacrest, "I was really surprised. I didn't know anything about it. I wasn't happy about it." I understand it's punk rock and everything, but to me, there's such a feeling of love and good energy. Energy and positivity and world peace. It seemed negative. It's such a teenager irrelevant thing to do. What was the point? It was just out of place.

• 1:59:44Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, but it was on the lyric. I don't give a shit.

• 1:59:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  So it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like a kiddie show.

• 1:59:50Yasi Salek?

  But you're right.

• 1:59:51Speaker 02

  It was censored. She's like, I don't give a sh-

• 1:59:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:54Speaker 02

  But she flips the bird. Come on, MIA.

• 1:59:55Yasi Salek?

  You're right that MIA didn't maybe have money and she didn't end up paying this. There was some undisclosed settlement. Um, she had not yet made her money from her tinfoil hat clothing line.

• 2:00:06Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 2:00:07Yasi Salek?

  MIA did point out something, again, a good point, that there was a quarterback who flipped the bird on TV and he only got fined $12,000. And she was like, that's interesting.

• 2:00:17Speaker 02

  It is.

• 2:00:18Yasi Salek?

  And this is, this leads us into M-DNA. March 23rd, 2012. Produced by the aforementioned Benassi Brothers, The Demolition Crew, Michael Malley, Hardy Indigo, Mozza, William Orbit and Martin Solvick.

• 2:00:35Yasi Salek?

  Lots of collaborators on this one, not just producers, writers. Um, someone pointed out that Ray of Light had 26 people credited on it and this one has 92.

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:45Yasi Salek?

  Which is quite common-

• 2:00:48Speaker 02

  Well, I was gonna say-

• 2:00:48Yasi Salek?

  -in pop music now.

• 2:00:50Speaker 02

  Okay, so this is like her foray into contemporary pop hit making, where every song has like eight or nine writers and producers.

• 2:00:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:58Speaker 02

  And it does make the music a little more anonymous. It is a little bit of a... There are some issues with this record, but I actually do like it on balance. Evidently, I gave it a seven out of 10.

• 2:01:08Yasi Salek?

  Okay. You know who didn't like it that much?

• 2:01:11Speaker 02

  Uh-oh.

• 2:01:11Yasi Salek?

  William Orbit.

• 2:01:14Yasi Salek?

  Well, he said later, if it was up to me to executive produce and overview the whole process of Madonna's M-DNA, I do feel like I could have done an absolutely exceptional job.

• 2:01:23Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:01:24Yasi Salek?

  Something as powerful as Ray of Light, but I guess I don't have the ability to inspire this kind of managerial level of confidence. On M-DNA, it's important to say that I jumped on the project later. She had already started it. She had a lot of stuff going on. I honestly don't know any, how any human being could cope with making an album, directing and producing a movie, launching products and everything that comes with just being her. Anyway, we were just not really able to lock the door and everybody out for M-DNA, which as we pointed out, is kind of the best way-

• 2:01:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:01:47Yasi Salek?

  -to make music if you're Madonna. She was having such a great time at first, but it somehow became very complex for everybody. I would have mixed it myself if I could, or only together with Madonna in front of the mixing decks, because she's a great mixer. We have spirited debates about things, but we always end up in the same direction. I would have dropped three of the six tracks that she had already made with the other guys. They were not good enough, in my opinion. Too puerile.

• 2:02:12Speaker 02

  I like that he's talking real shit.

• 2:02:13Yasi Salek?

  He's, yeah, he was quite honest about this. I thought that was kind of interesting. I don't disagree with him on maybe that some of the tracks could be stronger and some could be

• 2:02:24Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 2:02:25Yasi Salek?

  exercised. Also, something I just absolutely loved when I learned is that he said he showed Madonna. See, they didn't listen to any contemporary music while making this album, except that he showed Madonna the recently released Crayshawn song, Gucci Gucci.

• 2:02:42Speaker 02

  Now we're really of a moment.

• 2:02:44Yasi Salek?

  I'm putting you, we're putting us

• 2:02:45Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:02:46Yasi Salek?

  Because it had the lyric, Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada. I'm looking like Madonna, but I'm flossing like Ivana. MIA apparently came up with an album title, M-DNA, which has multiple meanings. Like MDMA, like Madonna. Also, like mitochondrial DNA.

• 2:03:03Speaker 02

  I hadn't thought of that one.

• 2:03:04Yasi Salek?

  It only is transferred from the mother to the child.

• 2:03:07Speaker 02

  Did you do scientific research for this?

• 2:03:10Yasi Salek?

  A little bit. We do all kinds of research in this, in this house. The artwork, it's, again, for me, like, with hard candy, where like, I love aspects of it and part of it, I'm like, I don't know about this. The photo is shot by Merton Marcus.

• 2:03:27Speaker 02

  I like the photo.

• 2:03:27Yasi Salek?

  Photo's great. Directed by Giovanni Bianco. And I like the kind of obscuring, as if looking through like panels of glass. But it's the typeface that I don't really understand, because it's also in that vein. So you, it kind of gets lost a little bit, you know? I love the colors, though. It's a striking album cover.

• 2:03:45Speaker 02

  I like the cover.

• 2:03:46Yasi Salek?

  Would you agree that this is a very divorced album?

• 2:03:49Speaker 02

  Yes. Exceptionally divorced.

• 2:03:51Yasi Salek?

  Exceptionally divorced album, which is great. I love that. I love that we're mining, like, we're really, like, putting it out on Front Street, like, how we're feeling about this relationship and divorce.

• 2:04:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And, like, I had forgotten some of this, like, what she was going through. So I had not, obviously, revisited my own review of this album in quite some time. Apparently, I said she was staring down a unique triad of crappitude.

• 2:04:12Yasi Salek?

  Oh, wow. Look at you.

• 2:04:14Speaker 02

  Not bad, 2012 me, right?

• 2:04:15Yasi Salek?

  Fucking Yates over here.

• 2:04:17Speaker 02

  Not bad. Writing for Spin, a little looser. Um, public divorce.

• 2:04:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:22Speaker 02

  There was shit going on with her schools in Africa.

• 2:04:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:25Speaker 02

  And...

• 2:04:26Yasi Salek?

  Poorly reviewed film.

• 2:04:27Speaker 02

  And Lady Gaga had arrived and was kind of biting her shit.

• 2:04:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:31Speaker 02

  And I was like, she was sort of like, where do I fit in? And I think this is a little, this is like a, maybe a little panicky of an album.

• 2:04:38Yasi Salek?

  When does Born This Way come out? Later than this.

• 2:04:42Speaker 02

  No, before.

• 2:04:43Yasi Salek?

  Right, okay.

• 2:04:43Speaker 02

  2011.

• 2:04:44Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so, yeah. And, obviously, for my part, when I heard Alessandro, Alejandro?

• 2:04:49Speaker 02

  Alejandro.

• 2:04:50Yasi Salek?

  I was like...

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  Oh, my god. Alejandro, one of, I mean, god tier, one of the best pop songs ever made.

• 2:04:54Yasi Salek?

  Sure, but we, it's a little, we have Lysle Bunny Tad.

• 2:04:57Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 2:04:58Yasi Salek?

  It's a great song. It's a great song.

• 2:05:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:01Yasi Salek?

  And I'm, I love Lady Gaga. I'm not here to choose sides.

• 2:05:03Speaker 02

  No, no, it's all good, it's fair.

• 2:05:04Yasi Salek?

  Um, I, one of my one, most wonderful experiences was the Monster Ball Tour with my mother, in which I did wrap Diet Coke cans in my hair.

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  Oh, my god. But, I mean, literally, Madonna walked here so she could run, we all know this, but and I think at this point in Madonna's career, she didn't have, like, a, the album before was not a hit.

• 2:05:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:23Speaker 02

  The tour was huge, obviously, it was record-breaking once again. But, like, you know, she's kind of like, where do I fit into this stuff? And then we end up with M.D.N.A.

• 2:05:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I love Girl Gone Wild.

• 2:05:32Speaker 02

  I love Girl Gone Wild. I listened to it on the way over. I was like, I forgot how good this is.

• 2:05:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:36Speaker 02

  Girls, they just want to have some fun.

• 2:05:38Yasi Salek?

  This one's written by Madonna, Jensen Vaughan, and the Benassi Brothers. I think the song, the opening, which is like the spoken god.

• 2:05:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:05:44Yasi Salek?

  Is...

• 2:05:44Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 2:05:45Yasi Salek?

  And it's a reference to active contrition, right?

• 2:05:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:05:49Yasi Salek?

  Love active contrition. I love when Madonna says god.

• 2:05:53Speaker 02

  I, honestly, that is one of my absolute favorite things ever.

• 2:05:59Speaker 03

  I'm heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins.

• 2:06:05Yasi Salek?

  It's a good song.

• 2:06:06Speaker 02

  It is, it is.

• 2:06:07Yasi Salek?

  Um, it was the second single, which I kinda lowkey think it should've been the first single. Did you remember the beef she had with 50 Cent at this time?

• 2:06:14Speaker 02

  I didn't. I was reminded when I was reading.

• 2:06:16Yasi Salek?

  This made me laugh, but I guess 50 Cent was mad at Interscope because of something they had like leaked some album artwork of his.

• 2:06:23Speaker 02

  It was like the same name or something.

• 2:06:25Yasi Salek?

  But yeah, and then he all, he's like, "These people are gonna make me kill one of them. Now Madonna's single is called Girls Gone Wild." This is some bullshit, cuz I guess his song was called Girls Gone Wild. His first song was called Girl Gone Wild, singular. Um, I also think, what's his name? The Girls Gone Wild guy?

• 2:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:40Yasi Salek?

  Tried to sue her.

• 2:06:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:41Yasi Salek?

  Joe?

• 2:06:42Speaker 02

  It was Joe.

• 2:06:43Yasi Salek?

  Um, no, he didn't try to sue her, but he did try to block her from performing at the Super Bowl, and she didn't perform at the Super Bowl. So I don't know if it was cuz he said so, or probably not, but I love the video.

• 2:06:53Speaker 02

  I do too.

• 2:06:54Yasi Salek?

  Directed by Martin Marcus, it features this Ukrainian synth pop band called Kazaki, who actually, if you can go watch, I can't remember the name of the song, I'm sorry, I didn't write it down, but they made a video just like this. And that's why they're in the video, yeah. YouTube thought this video was really provocative.

• 2:07:09Speaker 02

  Did they censor her?

• 2:07:10Yasi Salek?

  Apparently they made it available only to people over 18.

• 2:07:13Speaker 02

  Oh god.

• 2:07:14Yasi Salek?

  It's not that crazy.

• 2:07:16Speaker 02

  What it feels like for a girl was not crazy either, when MTV banned it. I mean, it made absolutely no sense.

• 2:07:22Yasi Salek?

  Gangbang!

• 2:07:24Speaker 02

  I don't mind that either.

• 2:07:26Yasi Salek?

  I don't either, actually. It's written by Madonna and William Orbit with Mika, Priscilla Hamilton, Keith Harris, Jean Puphtist, Don Juan, Demo Casanova. I'm sorry, I might've got some of his names wrong, there was just so many, and I was like copying and pasting.

• 2:07:38Speaker 02

  There were, there were a lot of names on this one. The song also has, just so you're 100% certain it's 2012, it has a dubstep wobble drop in it.

• 2:07:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she was like, "I like Spurlix too."

• 2:07:50Speaker 02

  But you know what? It doesn't, it does no harm.

• 2:07:52Yasi Salek?

  It does no harm. I like that she said, she cited that Quentin Tarantino was an inspiration for this song, which is a very full circle moment because if you guys remember from episode one, the opening of the first film of Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs, starts with the words, "Let me tell you what Like a Virgin's about."

• 2:08:11Speaker 02

  I didn't remember that.

• 2:08:12Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's Quentin Tarantino at the table, telling them what Like a Virgin's about. She had actually wanted him to direct the video, but I guess when he was asked about it, he said, "I don't know. I've been asked to direct commercials and music videos. Madonna and Jay-Z asked me, but I refuse. I'm not interested. I'm just not as interested." And I was like, "Well..."

• 2:08:29Speaker 02

  I could see them clashing.

• 2:08:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, totally. My thought on this, and just stay with me, stick with me. Had we dropped a little of the dubstep?

• 2:08:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:40Yasi Salek?

  Produced it maybe like a little differently. It's giving to me like murder ballad in the PJ Harvey style, which I love.

• 2:08:46Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 2:08:47Yasi Salek?

  Right?

• 2:08:47Speaker 02

  Yes, I'm with you.

• 2:08:48Yasi Salek?

  That's what I like about it. It's like Nick Cave, PJ Harvey murder ballad.

• 2:08:52Speaker 02

  Yes. Super dark.

• 2:08:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:54Speaker 02

  Grindy.

• 2:08:55Yasi Salek?

  It's great.

• 2:08:55Speaker 02

  Narrative.

• 2:09:05Yasi Salek?

  "I'm Addicted" is the next song.

• 2:09:06Speaker 02

  I like the texture of that synth kind of arpeggiating all over the place. I don't know. I'm into it. I find it engrossing. The bridge that gets like super just sort of like lush. Something happens to me, you want to hear your voice, something happens to me, I have no choice. And it's like,

• 2:09:22Speaker 02

  it's like a club moment.

• 2:09:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:09:24Speaker 02

  I actually really like this one.

• 2:09:25Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:09:26Speaker 02

  I feel like this is like the really, the only kind of deep club moment on this record. I'm like, I could have, I could have done like five more of these.

• 2:09:44Yasi Salek?

  Turn up the radio?

• 2:09:45Speaker 02

  I like this too.

• 2:09:48Speaker 02

  And I was not Stockholm syndrome by this record. I just like, I always like her little like, it's a Beautiful Stranger kind of throwback to me.

• 2:09:53Yasi Salek?

  I love Beautiful Stranger.

• 2:09:54Speaker 02

  That is, I mean, one of the best songs in her catalog. This has like an element to that. It's kind of like a kicky 60s thing a little bit.

• 2:10:00Yasi Salek?

  Sure. I get it.

• 2:10:01Speaker 02

  You know, it's kind of harmless. You know, I would love to turn up the radio.

• 2:10:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I don't know why. There's just something about this song that doesn't resonate with me, but I can see why people like it.

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  Okay. It's not, it's not like special, but like, I don't know. I have a soft spot for it.

• 2:10:15Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I'll give it to you.

• 2:10:19Yasi Salek?

  Let's

• 2:10:19Speaker 02

  I love

• 2:10:20Yasi Salek?

  I'm opening the floor. Give me all your love in featuring M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj.

• 2:10:24Speaker 02

  I mean, there's parts of it, it sounds like a novelty song. It has that kind of like, oh, Mickey. You know, hey, Mickey, oh, Mickey.

• 2:10:31Yasi Salek?

  Hey, Mickey, you're so fine.

• 2:10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it has that kind of a vibe to it. I don't know. I kind of like the cheerleader-y vibe a bit.

• 2:10:46Yasi Salek?

  Those are aspects in general that I like, but I just don't know why this song. It's not for me.

• 2:10:52Speaker 02

  It didn't offend me, and I will start, I will introduce an idea here that will carry on through further songs. I like her songs with Nicki Minaj. I really do. I like every single one of them.

• 2:11:02Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:11:03Speaker 02

  Obviously, I have like complicated feelings about Nicki Minaj now.

• 2:11:07Yasi Salek?

  She's made some unique choices.

• 2:11:09Speaker 02

  Yes, but she was, when she was good, she was good, and I feel like she and Madonna bizarrely compatible. I remember reading a couple of quotes from Madonna, just like, oh, I love when I get in the studio with Nicki. Like, she really wants to hear the songs. She wants to know what it's about. She wants to really dig into it.

• 2:11:23Yasi Salek?

  Makes sense. I feel like in some ways, they're similar types of artists where like, they're very disciplined and very like controlling and thoughtful and like really want to do like an excellent and perfect job, you know?

• 2:11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, just when Nicki was good, you know, like she's articulate, you know, she's like literate. There's just interesting word choices and stuff like that, you know, more than one flow. I don't know. I like her, I like her Madonna songs. This was the first, and I was like, I dig it.

• 2:11:50Yasi Salek?

  I'm glad that you like it.

• 2:11:51Speaker 02

  You're like, I'm glad, that's good for you.

• 2:11:53Yasi Salek?

  I just feel, listen, I know everyone's afraid to criticize Madonna, but I don't think me and Madonna are ever going to be friends, so I just don't like this song.

• 2:12:01Speaker 02

  I am not, I'm not doing this to be friendly with Madonna.

• 2:12:03Yasi Salek?

  No, I know you're not. I know, no, I know you're not. No, you are a pure of heart. I just, I'm just want to be honest to my experience, which is, you know, music is subjective, and I just don't like this one.

• 2:12:13Speaker 02

  I like some girls, too.

• 2:12:17Yasi Salek?

  Karen loves M V N.

• 2:12:18Speaker 02

  I can't help it. You know who worked on this song was Robyn's secret weapon, Klaus.

• 2:12:22Yasi Salek?

  Klaus.

• 2:12:24Speaker 02

  Allend.

• 2:12:24Yasi Salek?

  Klaus Allend. Also, the original demo is sang by B B Rexha. Did you know that?

• 2:12:28Speaker 02

  I didn't know that. That's cool.

• 2:12:29Yasi Salek?

  You can still hear it somewhere out there. I don't mind this song.

• 2:12:31Speaker 02

  I like it. It's harmless. It's sing-songy. It has that kind of Swedish poppy quality to it.

• 2:12:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:36Speaker 02

  It wasn't in my head. I forgot that Klaus had done it and I looked it up. I was like, oh, yeah.

• 2:12:40Yasi Salek?

  I really want to like Superstar. I want to. And I don't understand why it's not happening for me.

• 2:12:46Speaker 02

  It's generic. I think there's really not much going on there.

• 2:12:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I like, you know, I like her songs where she talks about old Hollywood stars. That happens a lot. Um, so you love I Don't Give A featuring Nicki Minaj?

• 2:12:57Speaker 02

  I do. Now I've introduced the idea and I'm going to carry it through to the end of the episode, but it's 100% true.

• 2:13:02Yasi Salek?

  This is a very explicit divorce song.

• 2:13:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:05Yasi Salek?

  Wake up, ex-wife. This is your life. I'm gonna be okay.

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  I'm gonna be okay. I don't care what the people say.

• 2:13:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:13Yasi Salek?

  Didn't have a prenup. Ninety-two million dollars.

• 2:13:15Speaker 02

  Yep, but she's gonna be okay. She already made it back. She made that deal.

• 2:13:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:18Speaker 02

  Um, you know, I like the production on that song. It's kind of glitchy.

• 2:13:21Yasi Salek?

  I don't mind it.

• 2:13:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:13:33Yasi Salek?

  I'm a Sinner.

• 2:13:34Speaker 02

  I kind of like this one, too. I'm sorry. I know.

• 2:13:37Yasi Salek?

  This is gonna be us when we get to Madame X where I, the tables are turned.

• 2:13:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:13:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because I quite like Madame X.

• 2:13:44Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. I really, we'll, we'll get there. It, this isn't the same camp as, to me, as Turn Up The Radio and Give Me All Your Love is kind of like one of those 60s.

• 2:13:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:52Speaker 02

  Just like poppy songs.

• 2:13:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, that's an interesting thing. I kind of feel, one of my like little secret theories is that maybe she wanted to make a lot of songs like that on this album.

• 2:14:04Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:14:05Yasi Salek?

  And was kind of pulled in a different direction. Not that she could be pulled or whatever, like pulled between two different directions. Because then you get to like. Masterpiece and Falling Free, and I don't wanna, I don't wanna skip Love Spent.

• 2:14:17Speaker 02

  We could, we could skip it.

• 2:14:18Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:14:19Speaker 02

  There's illusion hung up there.

• 2:14:21Yasi Salek?

  The only reason to talk about Love Spent for me is that randomly, one of the writers is Alan White, who is Morrissey's main songwriting partner and guitarist, and has been since 1991.

• 2:14:32Speaker 02

  How did they meet?

• 2:14:32Yasi Salek?

  I don't know!

• 2:14:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:14:33Yasi Salek?

  I couldn't figure it out. I'm dying to know.

• 2:14:36Speaker 02

  That's weird.

• 2:14:37Yasi Salek?

  And what, maybe, you know, it's, it's possible that, again, it's hard to find this information, but it's, it's possible that they sampled one of his guitars.

• 2:14:46Speaker 02

  I was wondering about that.

• 2:14:47Yasi Salek?

  And that's why he's a credited writer, so that makes a little more sense than like, he got in the stew with William Orbit and Madonna, but I, I think it's worth pointing out that he's a credited writer on here.

• 2:14:58Speaker 02

  The problem with that, with Love Spent is that it's trying to like, make six songs in seven genres, and it doesn't work. But then, I do agree with you, Masterpiece is great.

• 2:15:06Yasi Salek?

  Masterpiece is wonderful, written by Madonna, Julie Frost, and Jimmy Harry, which were the two people that William Orbit introduced her to when Gaiusiri was like, "You need to make a song for this thing." It won Best Original Song at the Golden Globes. Um, I love this song. It's one of the only Madonna songs in which she spans two octaves, like hitting that upper register, like she does in Ray of Light. And it's thought that William Orbit is, really likes that, so he's the one that always kinda pushes her to do that, and it's really cool. Um, I wish she had written a whole album of songs like Masterpiece and Falling Free. I really like Falling Free.

• 2:15:38Speaker 02

  I like Falling Free too.

• 2:15:39Yasi Salek?

  It's kind of like, dreamy, it has synth, but it's like piano and violin. It's just, I, I like, I'm only speculating, but I'm like, it almost feels like she wanted to make these kinds of songs, or maybe like, maybe not wanted to, but was more attuned to making these kinds of songs, because to me, these are the highlights of the album.

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  They are, and I'm like, why are you sticking them all at the end?

• 2:16:00Yasi Salek?

  Because they don't fit in with the, with the like,

• 2:16:03Speaker 02

  They don't.

• 2:16:03Yasi Salek?

  Nch, nch, you know, MDMA, club, Nicki Minaj, MIA theme of the album.

• 2:16:09Speaker 02

  True. I like, I think Falling Free is just like, it's really like, a really vulnerable moment, that you're not finding anywhere else on this record. I mean, it's like-

• 2:16:17Yasi Salek?

  It's one of the most sorrowful songs on this record.

• 2:16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just like Mask Off.

• 2:16:20Yasi Salek?

  So open. Yeah, exactly. It's, yeah, it's really beautiful.

• 2:16:34Yasi Salek?

  Then there are some songs on the deluxe in which you say you don't fuck with deluxe.

• 2:16:39Speaker 02

  Not really.

• 2:16:40Yasi Salek?

  I love Birthday Song. I know this is a bizarre take. Birthday Song. It's kind of like what you were saying about one of the other songs, I can't remember which one. To me, this is the, hey, this is like a new wavy,

• 2:16:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was my, yeah.

• 2:16:52Yasi Salek?

  hunky, the head coatsy, kind of like, simple, cute, song. And it's just catchy and I love it with M.I.A. I think it's nice.

• 2:17:10Yasi Salek?

  I also like, I fucked up a lot. I think it could have been produced a little differently.

• 2:17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:14Yasi Salek?

  But it's also like, really also vulnerable and honest, and I love the lyrics. And, I don't know, to me, these two songs are better than some of the other songs on the deluxe.

• 2:17:24Speaker 02

  No, no, I agree.

• 2:17:25Yasi Salek?

  And I'll, I'll bring up Beautiful Killer just to mention that, um,

• 2:17:30Yasi Salek?

  they, they name check Alain Delon on this because her and Martin Solvig were like really into French films and Les Amouries and stuff. Um, Best Friend also, again, not my favorite song, but I think the lyrics are incredible. I don't remember. She's like, "I miss your brain, the way you think, but I don't miss the way you used to drink. I miss our talks." She's really, really honest here, you know, about her marriage and about, you know, there's a part where she says, "Maybe I challenged you a little too much. We couldn't have two drivers on the clutch."

• 2:17:58Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:17:59Yasi Salek?

  Or as Patrick would say, "You can't have two Miss Piggies in a relationship. That'll be karate." Um, that's, that's my thoughts on those bonus tracks. Yeah, M.D.N.A. Listen, has some high points. I love how vulnerable she is in some of it.

• 2:18:13Speaker 02

  She's dealing with a lot.

• 2:18:15Yasi Salek?

  She's dealing with a lot.

• 2:18:15Speaker 02

  She's all over the place.

• 2:18:16Yasi Salek?

  She's spread thin, as William Orbit said.

• 2:18:18Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:18:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:19Speaker 02

  It's interesting, after going through and talking about all the songs, I think what he said is, is true. Like, he could have brought a coherence to it if he had just rearranged some things.

• 2:18:26Yasi Salek?

  And in fairness, he, he disses himself too. I left that part off the, the,

• 2:18:30Speaker 02

  Quote.

• 2:18:30Yasi Salek?

  quote where he says, "I would have also wanted to go back and like, strengthen my songs." It did okay. I mean, it charted at number one. Remember bundling?

• 2:18:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:18:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So this sold its most in the first week, three hundred and fifty thousand, which is actually more than she had the last several albums.

• 2:18:51Speaker 02

  Because it was like with tickets?

• 2:18:52Yasi Salek?

  Because it was bundled, yeah. By the end of the year, it only sold two million copies. Again, no one's really buying CDs at this time, so it's kind of a hard metric, but it was not a commercial success.

• 2:19:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:19:01Yasi Salek?

  Highest grossing tour of the year, again, three hundred million dollars this time. Ariane Phillips, the Queen, doing the costumes, more Gautier, more costumes just by Ariane Phillips, plus some from Jeremy Scott, Alexander Wang. Dolce and Gabbana created the suits for the band, Prada did the high-heeled boots for the male dancers to wear during Vogue. A lot of good fashion. All her children are at work. Lourdes is working in the costume department. Rocco is dancing on stage. David and Mercy are with her, but with nannies. One notable thing about this, and then I want to hear the full Karen Gans breakdown, is that there's a few dates in Russia. Another thing to put us in a place in time. They were just after the Pussy Riot.

• 2:19:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:19:43Yasi Salek?

  Protests and arrests. And she spoke up for them at the Moscow show, and then during her St. Petersburg show, the city had passed a law that banned the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations. She had received death threats, but she spoke out against that legislation from stage. She passed out pink armbands and rainbow flags for the crowd to like, really like, support and raise solidarity, and actually eighty-seven people were arrested.

• 2:20:05Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 2:20:06Yasi Salek?

  After.

• 2:20:06Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 2:20:07Yasi Salek?

  For showing support of gay rights. And also three Russian groups sued her for ten million dollars for damaging morals. Madonna's still doing her Madonna thing.

• 2:20:17Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:20:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Okay, tell me about Karen Gans's experience.

• 2:20:21Speaker 02

  I have less to say about this tour. I don't know why.

• 2:20:24Yasi Salek?

  Are you going to talk about the express yourself?

• 2:20:26Speaker 02

  I am, of course.

• 2:20:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, let's go.

• 2:20:28Speaker 02

  This is literally the only moment that I noted. So, we did note moments ago

• 2:20:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:34Speaker 02

  that Lady Gaga's Born This Way had come out, and there was a bit of a controversy about whether it sounded too much like express yourself. So Madonna.

• 2:20:42Yasi Salek?

  It does sound a bit like express yourself.

• 2:20:44Speaker 02

  It does. And it was also like, why did nobody notice this before? Like, why, how could you get through the entire process?

• 2:20:49Yasi Salek?

  Somebody must have noticed. Yeah.

• 2:20:51Speaker 02

  I would like to think that somebody noticed, but it's like, did you think that it wasn't going to be a thing? They wanted it to be a thing. I don't know what the thinking was, but Madonna, bless her, mashes them up and even adds a dash of she's not me.

• 2:21:06Speaker 02

  It's so shady. And it was so fun live. I remember being like, I can't believe this is happening. This is so shady. I love her. And it sounded great. And you can sing it directly, right over it. It works perfectly.

• 2:21:15Yasi Salek?

  So wonderful. Yeah. And she was like, she was like, interesting how it works perfectly.

• 2:21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. But this is like a boss bitch move.

• 2:21:22Yasi Salek?

  I loved it.

• 2:21:22Speaker 02

  Like, I'm gonna take you out onstage in front of millions of people.

• 2:21:34Yasi Salek?

  Liz Rosenberg, God bless.

• 2:21:36Speaker 02

  Icon.

• 2:21:37Yasi Salek?

  Came out to, you know, she was asked about it and she was like, whether it's an homage or a smack in the face or just being funny, I don't know. People can decide what it means. Madonna isn't one to explain herself. God bless.

• 2:21:48Speaker 02

  Really, Liz Rosenberg, one of one.

• 2:21:51Yasi Salek?

  What a job.

• 2:21:52Speaker 02

  It does not get better than that. Yeah.

• 2:21:53Yasi Salek?

  That was really fucking cool.

• 2:21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:55Yasi Salek?

  The thing, and we've, we've kind of talked about it throughout, but I think it's worth mentioning, and if you haven't watched all of these tours, you need to watch them. They are incredible. What Madonna and her team do with these tours, how thought out they are, how incredibly every piece goes together, how it's one, it's one work of art, even though it's containing all songs from different eras, she makes it into the most cohesive experience.

• 2:22:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:24Yasi Salek?

  And I think that's so cool.

• 2:22:25Speaker 02

  And the video segments are like so high end and so well produced. And, you know, fans were always bitching like, I want, I came here to hear Into the Groove. It's like, she's not gonna do that. She is touring the album. She's still making new music. She will give you versions of old songs in ways that you might not like. I've never been to one of these Madonna tours without hearing like a middle aged person, I am now, uh, next to me being like, oh, there's all these new songs, whatever. It's like, she's not the Eagles, babe. You not know who you've come to see?

• 2:22:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:53Speaker 02

  This is the whole entire point. But yeah, just again, you were saying before about her being an athlete, just the level of athleticism that is involved, but just all the singing and dancing, the costume changes, the acrobatics, the stage design, all of it, you know, her little fingerprints on it.

• 2:23:07Yasi Salek?

  She's almost 55.

• 2:23:08Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:23:09Yasi Salek?

  It's incredible.

• 2:23:10Speaker 02

  Still really at her peak, this and the next tour.

• 2:23:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And she looks fab.

• 2:23:14Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 2:23:14Yasi Salek?

  In 2013, Forbes ranks Madonna the highest paid musician in the world and number five in their list of most powerful celebrities. Did you watch Secret Project Revolution, the Stephen Klein film?

• 2:23:25Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:23:25Yasi Salek?

  It's kind of cool. It's cool.

• 2:23:27Speaker 02

  I should go back to that.

• 2:23:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's cool. At the New York premiere...

• 2:23:31Yasi Salek?

  Of Secret Project Revolution, this is really important to me and for the Band's Playing audience, Madonna sang the Elliott Smith song Between the Bars.

• 2:23:38Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, that's very important to me as well.

• 2:23:40Yasi Salek?

  While a dancer in a balaclava spun behind her, Pussy Riot. Were you there?

• 2:23:44Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:23:44Yasi Salek?

  No, that's really, there's a, don't worry, there's a YouTube video.

• 2:23:47Speaker 02

  This is the one thing I missed. I was like the biggest Elliott Smith fan. I still am, obviously.

• 2:23:52Yasi Salek?

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:23:54Speaker 02

  I found out he died when I was at Roseland seeing Interpol. Really puts her finger on a moment, doesn't it?

• 2:24:00Yasi Salek?

  You're really fucking, yeah. I loved that she did that. I thought that was, you know?

• 2:24:05Speaker 02

  Just proves her taste.

• 2:24:06Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. Alright, 2014, in February, she's joined onstage by the two newly freed members of Pussy Riot, Maria Alokina and Nadia Tolokonikova, onstage at an Amnesty International-sponsored event called Bringing Human Rights Home on the eve of the Sochi Olympics. She's still supporting, she's still supporting human rights, rights to protest, Pussy Riot. You guys don't remember how big Pussy Riot was for a second there?

• 2:24:33Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:24:33Yasi Salek?

  The balaclavas were everywhere. Even I, I believe I put on a Pussy Riot benefit at the smell, and if I'm correct?

• 2:24:40Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:24:40Yasi Salek?

  And you guys needed to, I'm almost positive he had performed. They were-

• 2:24:45Speaker 02

  It's believable.

• 2:24:46Yasi Salek?

  It's 2012, so they hadn't, you know, they weren't, I don't even think they've put out their first album yet. Okay, so now it's time to start thinking about her new album, because she has a three album deal with Interscope and they're like TikTok. So Guy O'Seary's like, well, what if you work with Tim Berling, 24 years old, also known as Avicii? Who had risen to prominence in 2011 with his single Levels. One of the best songs ever created, I'm sorry, I'll say it, that song is fucking god tier.

• 2:25:17Speaker 02

  He's great.

• 2:25:17Yasi Salek?

  And you know what? Whenever Wake Me Up When It's All Over comes on, I will be slapping my fucking knee and living my life, and I don't care what anyone says. I told my roommate, who's like 10 years younger than me, she was like horrified, and I was like-

• 2:25:29Speaker 02

  It was a moment, though.

• 2:25:30Yasi Salek?

  You're wrong, honey.

• 2:25:31Speaker 02

  We all did it.

• 2:25:32Yasi Salek?

  It's a good song. It holds up the test of time.

• 2:25:35Speaker 02

  It's like Mumford Hop.

• 2:25:36Yasi Salek?

  And I love, famously, I love the Lemoniers and Mumford and Sons, so it really brought together some, anyways, he's, he's fucking killing it.

• 2:25:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:44Yasi Salek?

  Madonna had worked with him actually prior to this in Miami at the Ultra Music Festival. He had remixed Girl Gone Wild, and then he had opened the LA shows on the MDNA tour. This is really when we get into like songwriting camp.

• 2:25:58Yasi Salek?

  Writing of an album.

• 2:26:00Speaker 02

  There's, there's, there are a lot of names.

• 2:26:01Yasi Salek?

  Avicii would work with groups of songwriters. And I guess you, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's like, the idea was like, some introspective songs, some bops. We were going for Rebel and Heart.

• 2:26:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:26:20Yasi Salek?

  And Madonna was like going between these two songwriting groups to like, put in her ideas. However, I don't know if this, okay, I want to ask you because you might know better since you were covering this beat at the time. In the Mary Gabriel book, she says the reason that the Avicii of it all was toned down or pulled back, was because he got very sick.

• 2:26:40Speaker 02

  I don't know if that is the reason, but you know, he, poor Avicii, you know, he really struggled. And this was the era of like the superstar DJ, globe trotting, playing everywhere, Vegas residencies. And it was like, all the drugs and alcohol were a lot for him.

• 2:26:53Yasi Salek?

  If you haven't seen the documentary, it's really good and really sad. I mean, they basically, from what I understand, it's like, the management was like, I'm sorry, you have to be on tour 360 days a year. And he was like, well, I have to do drugs.

• 2:27:04Speaker 02

  I'm going to die. Yeah. I mean, and, and he did, and it was really, really tragic. So I think he pulled back because he was not well.

• 2:27:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And yeah, I think he had some, he was having some drug problems. Anyways, to me, this is the most tragic, besides, obviously, Mary, rest in peace, because I love the Avicii parts of this album. If this had been a full ass Avicii album.

• 2:27:28Yasi Salek?

  But it's not.

• 2:27:29Speaker 02

  So what you're saying is you don't like the Diplo parts of the album?

• 2:27:32Yasi Salek?

  I think you should go to prison. Okay, let's move on. Um, she does turn to Diplo.

• 2:27:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:27:36Yasi Salek?

  Wes, Wesley Pence, who is, you know, at a peak of his own at this time. He was also too busy, because, you know, Vegas residencies, making money, to sit with Madonna in the style of, that she was accustomed to. So she, quote, "had to catch him on the fly and try and create in the moment." Madonna told Karen Gans.

• 2:28:00Yasi Salek?

  You know when you meet somebody and you work with them and you recognize that you both look at life the same way? I'm one of those people. I travel the world also and I engage in other cultures. And I absorb and see the beauty in other cultures from many different perspectives. Through art, through literature, through music. And reference a lot of those things that inspire me through my work. And I think Diplo does the same thing. So we recognize each other's spirits. I don't know why this people loves.

• 2:28:23Speaker 02

  She was just explaining.

• 2:28:25Yasi Salek?

  It's like this Spider-Man meme with a cultural appropriation.

• 2:28:28Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:28:29Yasi Salek?

  They're not, I don't think it is, but it's very funny because they were both kind of like, oh, hold my beer.

• 2:28:34Speaker 02

  They were curious.

• 2:28:35Yasi Salek?

  They were curious. They were easily inspired.

• 2:28:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:39Yasi Salek?

  But because Diplo is so busy, you know, globe trotting.

• 2:28:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:42Yasi Salek?

  She got even more collaborators. She told Cosmo Magazine, "The whole writing process was like a train that kept running. I kept picking people up. Some stayed on the train longer than others. We're living in an age when these DJs and producers are working with lots of artists. So I was going crazy thinking, can't I just have you for a whole week? Why don't I just get you for two days? There was a constant battle and it drove me bonkers."

• 2:29:01Speaker 02

  I could see that.

• 2:29:02Yasi Salek?

  Can hear it too. I like Rebel Heart. We're gonna get into it.

• 2:29:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:29:07Yasi Salek?

  I think there's, I'm like, I'm just imagining what could have been.

• 2:29:10Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:29:10Yasi Salek?

  In December of 2014.

• 2:29:13Speaker 02

  So this is a pivotal time.

• 2:29:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:16Speaker 02

  Because this is when I first physically crossed paths with Madonna.

• 2:29:20Yasi Salek?

  Oh, oh yeah, because we just read your interview quote. Was that, that was after the leak, obviously.

• 2:29:25Speaker 02

  So this is, I have Liz Rosenberg emails in my Google Doc.

• 2:29:30Yasi Salek?

  Saved.

• 2:29:31Speaker 02

  Dead. So I was at Rolling Stone then, and December 10th, a handful of us went to hear a few of these songs at Jungle Studios, which is Alicia Keys' studio on the West Side. And no one told me anything other than like, you're gonna go hear a couple of songs. I'm like, okay. So we go, we sit down. They played us like two or three versions of "Living for Love." And they're like, which ones do you like? And, you know, we're gonna play you two or three other songs. I'm taking notes on my little pad.

• 2:29:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:54Speaker 02

  And then somebody, I think it was Liz, goes, "Cool, she'll be here in five."

• 2:29:58Yasi Salek?

  So you weren't even prepared?

• 2:29:58Speaker 02

  So no one told me she was coming. It was like a surprise. Bless my colleagues, they knew that I was gonna lose my mind. So I was just like, I don't even know what to do.

• 2:30:06Yasi Salek?

  You're like hyperventilating.

• 2:30:07Speaker 02

  No, I was legitimately freaking out. I was like, we had never met. I was like, I don't know what to do. I mean, there are other people there from other magazines, too. There were like eight people.

• 2:30:13Yasi Salek?

  Who was there? Anyone we know?

• 2:30:14Speaker 02

  There was someone from Spin. I cannot remember who it was. I apologize. And like, maybe somebody from Billboard. And she just like entered. And she like shook everyone's hand and she was like, which version of "Looking for Love" do you like? And I was like, duh, the housey one. Obviously, the right choice. Um, and she like, she chatted for a few minutes, she left, and then like, literally, November, uh, December 19th.

• 2:30:38Speaker 02

  It's a lot of detail, but I'm telling you, that's worth it. I was at a J. Giles Band, Bob Seger show.

• 2:30:44Yasi Salek?

  I just, again, back to my former statement, Karen Gans will go and see music. Is it J. Giles? Yes. Is it whoever is playing? Karen Gans is gonna slam back a martini and be in that audience.

• 2:30:57Speaker 02

  The reason I was at the show was that I had recently returned to Rolling Stone and Jan Wenner was walking the aisle looking for somebody to come with him and everyone said no. And he got to my office and I was like, I have to say yes. Like, I just started working here again. So I was like, sure, I'll come. He apparently had seats at MSG. He's like, just go meet me at my seats. Somebody came and brought me a glass of champagne when I sat down.

• 2:31:19Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I would go that way, too. You're right. I take it back.

• 2:31:21Speaker 02

  So I'm sitting there at the show, 10:31 PM, I get an email from Liz Rosenberg. And I'm, I mean, cause I-

• 2:31:28Yasi Salek?

  That's how, that's how entranced you were by J. Giles Band, that you were like-

• 2:31:31Speaker 02

  I was looking at my phone constantly. And, uh, they were opening for Bob Seger. I'm not a huge fan. "Hi Karen, sorry to bother you on the weekend," was it? I don't think it was the weekend. Uh, "but due to the leaking of the early demos of Madonna's new album, we're considering releasing some songs via preorder. This is tentative and confidential. If it happens, I would like Madonna to speak with you." And I was like-

• 2:31:52Yasi Salek?

  They handpicked you.

• 2:31:53Speaker 02

  Well, I was just like, this is ridiculous. So I remember, I was like, what? Then, the next day, December 20th, Liz Rosenberg email. "Would you like to speak to Madonna tomorrow at approximately 12:30 for 15 minutes about the new music? I have a feeling I know the answer."

• 2:32:07Yasi Salek?

  She fucking fucked your ass right there. She was like, what if you were like, no, I'm busy, I'm sorry?

• 2:32:12Speaker 02

  I'm sorry. So this was the first time I ever interviewed Madonna and it was just about the six songs that were like leaked, basically.

• 2:32:18Yasi Salek?

  That was, that's the one, that quote I read.

• 2:32:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I basically milked, I mean, every single thing she said to me went into that interview and it was just like extremely exciting.

• 2:32:26Yasi Salek?

  It's so cool. I thought, okay, so this ties into what happened because it's interesting that you say this. This is not a normal behavior, but Madonna was so furious and so upset and so violated.

• 2:32:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:32:39Yasi Salek?

  Because the songs that leaked were not finished.

• 2:32:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:32:42Yasi Salek?

  They were like in various states of, you know, being done. And so what her solution was like, I'm just gonna release six of them before Christmas, which that's, that was like not a common thing to do.

• 2:32:56Speaker 02

  No, and they had to get the music to iTunes. It was apparently like a whole.

• 2:32:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the guy was going on vacation for Christmas break or whatever, yeah.

• 2:33:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, Guy O'Shea was like, we had to make, I mean, I can imagine Madonna was freaking out. They had to make it happen.

• 2:33:07Yasi Salek?

  And it did. And apparently that six-song album hit number one in 41 countries.

• 2:33:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:12Yasi Salek?

  In January, they did arrest that hacker. He was in Tel Aviv, Eddie Landerman. He had access to Madonna's staff emails for years.

• 2:33:19Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 2:33:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. But then they released the whole thing, which is I guess when we will acknowledge the release of the album.

• 2:33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. This, I mean, ultimately, this was a mistake, you know, I feel, I feel like.

• 2:33:31Yasi Salek?

  You think to pre-release?

• 2:33:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that like this was not, it was not representative of the whole album. It gave people a false idea of what it was all gonna sound like. I think that she's been way too reactive to these leaks and stuff. I don't know if you discussed this during American Life, but like file sharing was so big then, so she like populated a bunch of like fake songs that said like.

• 2:33:50Yasi Salek?

  Which is kind of amazing.

• 2:33:50Speaker 02

  What the fuck do you think you're doing?

• 2:33:52Yasi Salek?

  Kind of amazing. But then that hacker who like took that.

• 2:33:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:56Yasi Salek?

  And hacked her whole website and then put, this is what the fuck I think I'm doing. Touche.

• 2:34:01Speaker 02

  I know, I mean, also kind of epic. But like she, I just feel like she, she was, obviously, we know she's into control, she's into dominance. She clearly wants to be in charge of how this music gets out and who gets what and what it sounds like. But I feel like this was just like a snap decision that she probably shouldn't have made. Also, don't forget, she described this as artistic rape and terrorism. That did not go over well either. There are a lot of like actual terrible things happening in the world. Obviously, having your art stolen is not great, but poor choice of words.

• 2:34:26Yasi Salek?

  I do think that people go too hard in the relativism paint. Like, okay, yes, there's always gonna be a worse thing happening to a worse person. Like, doesn't mean someone can't feel away.

• 2:34:36Speaker 02

  I know, but you know, because everything she says is blown out of proportion.

• 2:34:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:40Speaker 02

  You know, so of course it was, but yeah, so those, those songs arrived.

• 2:34:43Yasi Salek?

  I feel for her, cause I do, again, she spent most of her career with this not being a going concern at all. And then all of a sudden, and it is fucking, it's invasive to know that someone's spying on your shit. And taking your things that like, that you've worked really hard on. Like, what if they released banter episodes before they were done? Artistic rape. Um, okay, let's get into Rebel Heart.

• 2:35:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:35:08Yasi Salek?

  In full. Just a few cooks in the kitchen, like we mentioned, just a couple.

• 2:35:13Speaker 02

  Just a few, just a few producers and writers.

• 2:35:15Yasi Salek?

  Here, um, she said, everyone I worked with is tremendously talented, there's no question. It's just everybody I worked with also had agreed to work with 5,000 other people. I just had to get in where I could fit in.

• 2:35:28Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:35:28Yasi Salek?

  Bitch, you're Madonna, to paraphrase.

• 2:35:31Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 2:35:31Yasi Salek?

  I was like, this is not. Toby Gad is one of the main songwriters on here. And he wrote If I Were a Boy for Beyonce in 2008. I think that's what kind of capo-

• 2:35:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:42Yasi Salek?

  Catapulted it up to. She also said, I never leave the room. Sometimes I think that makes them mad. Like, don't you have to go to the bathroom? Don't you have somewhere to go? Don't you want to go make some calls? But Madonna famously is a very hands-on, it's another reason which I, I fell into a full Reddit K-hole about, um, your former employer's, um, incendiary list of the top songwriters, which I'm not even gonna engage with that. But, um, but these people were like, you left Madonna off.

• 2:36:07Speaker 02

  I did not work on the list and they did leave Madonna off.

• 2:36:10Yasi Salek?

  It's really funny, actually, cause I'm not, we don't have to go into, but be, just knowing the people that did work on the list. It's so easy to go through and be like, that's this person, that's this person, that's this person. If Karen had been on, this person would have been on.

• 2:36:21Speaker 02

  Yes, Madonna has had a writing credit, um, like, or a producing credit on every song since like 1986.

• 2:36:26Yasi Salek?

  Which, I mean, I know all pop singers, so is Beyonce, you know, but like-

• 2:36:29Speaker 02

  It's a different thing with the Beyonce thing.

• 2:36:31Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. And like, she's, it's documented.

• 2:36:34Speaker 02

  Yes, no, there's what she's-

• 2:36:35Yasi Salek?

  Writing, it's not vibing. It's just that she's never cared to like, go on the PR campaign of presenting herself as a songwriter.

• 2:36:44Speaker 02

  Mariah has, and she ended up on the list. Mariah has been, it's very important to me that I'm a writer. They both are.

• 2:36:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I just, I thought that was interesting.

• 2:36:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:51Yasi Salek?

  She told Karen Gans.

• 2:36:53Speaker 02

  This is the best part of the podcast.

• 2:36:55Yasi Salek?

  15 minute interview. Karen Gans said, "This album focuses on two themes, listening to your heart and being a rebel. When you sat down to write, were you guided by these ideas above any musical plans?" Madonna said, "I never sit down and consciously think I want to write a song about a subject. Music leads me to ideas and to where I want to go emotionally. When I first started, I was writing with Avicii's team of writers and they were separated into two different groups. One of them had a much more upbeat approach to songwriting, sonically speaking, and the other team chose darker chords. The music leads me, so I get lost in the sound of the music and that creates an emotional palette."

• 2:37:27Speaker 02

  I'll just say, when she started saying these things, I was like, "Holy shit, she's so smart." I was so blown away. It was the briefest conversation, but she, I mean, I always knew she was smart. It was leveling up.

• 2:37:38Yasi Salek?

  She's incredibly intellectual. I think that it always, I'm always astonished by the blessings that God bestowed upon Madonna. Because everything coincided to make the world's perfect pop star. Like, she's so ambitious. She has a mother wound, so she needs attention and love, which she's said herself, so I'm not, you know. She is incredibly beautiful. She's incredibly driven. She's all of the things.

• 2:38:06Speaker 02

  She can dance. She cares about fashion and presentation.

• 2:38:08Yasi Salek?

  Totally. It's like, everything that you need, and, and she's incredibly, like we said, intellectual and creative, so she's gonna push things forward.

• 2:38:16Speaker 02

  Audacious, cares about the right social issues, friend of the gays. I mean, it's like, you literally, it's, it's designed from the...

• 2:38:22Yasi Salek?

  From the heavens, Ben. This album did not hit number one. It hit number two, which is kind of interesting.

• 2:38:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:27Yasi Salek?

  Also mixed reviews. Here's Karen's review.

• 2:38:30Speaker 02

  I know, I can't believe that. They let me review it too.

• 2:38:34Yasi Salek?

  "For many years Madonna avoided the internet like gluten." I thought that was really funny.

• 2:38:38Speaker 02

  It was a real 2015 vibe.

• 2:38:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally. Now it would be seed oils.

• 2:38:41Speaker 02

  It would.

• 2:38:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Okay, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but I liked this passage. "Rebel heart is a long, passionate, self-referential meditation on losing love and finding purpose in chilling times. It's also a chance for the queen of pop to floss a bit and reflect on how she painstakingly carved a path others have happily torqued down in the years since her 1983 debut."

• 2:39:01Speaker 02

  True.

• 2:39:01Yasi Salek?

  Good stuff, Ben.

• 2:39:02Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:39:02Yasi Salek?

  That was good stuff. You did point out the unfortunate line, "Yeezus loves my pussy best."

• 2:39:07Speaker 02

  Oh, God. There's some, there's some cringe, there's some cringe Madonna on this record. Do you want to, do you want to go track by track?

• 2:39:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but I want to read your last, this last great line. The album is at its strongest when Madonna shoves everyone to the side and just tells it to us straight. Which is what we've been saying. Okay, let's go track by track. "Living for Love", written by Madonna, Diplo, Maureen McDonald, all over this album. She wrote "Wrecking Ball", from Miley Cyrus, also goes by Mozzilla.

• 2:39:33Speaker 02

  Love "Wrecking Ball".

• 2:39:34Yasi Salek?

  One of the greatest songs of all time. Toby Gad and Ariel Rexstad.

• 2:39:38Speaker 02

  Heim.

• 2:39:38Yasi Salek?

  Heim. Heim associate.

• 2:39:40Speaker 02

  Yep. Sky Ferrera.

• 2:39:42Yasi Salek?

  Sky Ferrera, yeah. He's worked with tons of people.

• 2:39:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:44Yasi Salek?

  You love.

• 2:39:45Speaker 02

  I love it because it's like a housey, you know, there's a house piano. It's a jam.

• 2:39:50Yasi Salek?

  I like how it's a jam breakup song, which we love those. Like, what's the great Kelly Clarkson one?

• 2:39:56Speaker 02

  Uh, "Since You Been Gone"?

• 2:39:57Yasi Salek?

  Oh! Heroin.

• 2:40:00Speaker 02

  I mean, it, obviously.

• 2:40:01Yasi Salek?

  Pump it in my fucking veins. Anyways, love that.

• 2:40:05Speaker 02

  When you do Kelly Clarkson, you have not, right?

• 2:40:07Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:40:09Speaker 02

  Do not laugh.

• 2:40:10Yasi Salek?

  I love, and just.

• 2:40:11Speaker 02

  I will be, I am claiming it right now.

• 2:40:14Yasi Salek?

  It's mostly a Pearl Jam type podcast.

• 2:40:16Speaker 02

  I'm aware, I did do the Breeders with you, yes.

• 2:40:18Yasi Salek?

  You can have Kelly Clarkson.

• 2:40:20Speaker 02

  Coming by for Kelly.

• 2:40:21Yasi Salek?

  I love it. "Living for Love" is good.

• 2:40:25Yasi Salek?

  The video is quite cool because she plays a bullfighter, which is sort of an inversion of "Take a Bow".

• 2:40:32Speaker 02

  Bullfighting, boxing. She likes like these hyper masculine pseudo sports.

• 2:40:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Parkour.

• 2:40:39Speaker 02

  Parkour.

• 2:40:39Yasi Salek?

  Sorry.

• 2:40:40Speaker 02

  I forget parkour.

• 2:40:41Yasi Salek?

  I'll point out that that video was directed by French directors Julien Charcot and Camille Haragoyen, who had done a video that was very similar in 2014 for Christine and the Queens.

• 2:40:50Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:40:51Yasi Salek?

  The song "St. Clair" and Madonna loved that, and so they kind of applied this.

• 2:41:02Yasi Salek?

  I can't believe "Devil Pray" was in a single, because that's my that's my favorite song of the actual album tracks.

• 2:41:12Speaker 02

  It's a great song.

• 2:41:12Yasi Salek?

  It's fucking good.

• 2:41:13Speaker 02

  I know, it's really, really good. I'm happy that you like it that much.

• 2:41:17Yasi Salek?

  I really like it.

• 2:41:17Speaker 02

  But you really like these Avicii songs.

• 2:41:19Yasi Salek?

  I love the Avicii songs. I love, because they have, they have a lot of heart and soul and like, but they're still bang, you know, it's like such a great, and that was kind of his magic trick, I think. A lot of writers on this song, a lot of writers on this song.

• 2:41:32Speaker 02

  There are a lot of writers.

• 2:41:34Yasi Salek?

  Madonna said about it, "It's about how people take drugs to connect to God or to a higher level of consciousness." I kept, I keep saying, "Plugging into the matrix." If you get high, you can do that, which is why a lot of people drop acid or do drugs, because they want to get closer to God. But there's going to be a short circuit, and that's the illusion of drugs. Because they give you the illusion of getting closer to God, but ultimately, they kill you, they destroy you.

• 2:41:52Speaker 02

  It's sad, when you think about ultimately Avicii's arc. Obviously, these quotes were given before he passed.

• 2:41:58Yasi Salek?

  Of course, of course. Well, it is funny, because like, if you don't take a time to think about it, and you just take like a surface level, like people could think this song is promoting drug use.

• 2:42:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:10Yasi Salek?

  Because that's kind of what she's saying, right?

• 2:42:13Speaker 02

  But then she said, "No."

• 2:42:14Yasi Salek?

  "We can get high, and we can get stoned, and we can sniff glue, and we can do E, and we can drop acid." "We can sniff glue" is really funny, sticking that in there.

• 2:42:20Speaker 02

  I know. She's like, the message of the song, it's not about the drugs, it's about like togetherness and unity.

• 2:42:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's about how you actually find God through other people.

• 2:42:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:30Yasi Salek?

  Through love and connection and world peace.

• 2:42:42Yasi Salek?

  I fucking love "Ghost Town 2." Here's a fun fact about

• 2:42:45Speaker 02

  All-time favorite.

• 2:42:46Yasi Salek?

  "Ghost Town," written by Madonna, Jason Evigan, Sean Douglas, and Evan Bogart, whose brother Joyce used to manage Kiss.

• 2:42:52Speaker 02

  I have an Evan Bogart story for you.

• 2:42:54Yasi Salek?

  Do you?

• 2:42:54Speaker 02

  Yes. Via MNDR, who I took to the show.

• 2:42:57Yasi Salek?

  Instead of me.

• 2:42:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:42:58Yasi Salek?

  Heartful, go on.

• 2:42:59Speaker 02

  They're very good friends, they've worked together for years. Five years ago, maybe, I went to a like murder mystery dinner in LA with them. He apparently was very into this.

• 2:43:10Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:43:10Speaker 02

  And Amanda Mndr was like, we gotta, we gotta go. And we brought another one of our friends, Baby Daddy from Scissor Sisters. And it was like one of these things where you're running around the house. And there was like, you know, clues and stuff. I was hiding under a bed with strangers. Hiding from like somebody banging on the door.

• 2:43:25Yasi Salek?

  Fun, actually.

• 2:43:26Speaker 02

  It was fun. It was in a mansion somewhere. You know, I do not know LA very well. I know you do. And it was really, it was like absolutely nuts. And then, yeah, at the end, it was like revealed who the killer was and it was our friend. It was Baby Daddy. And we went back in the house and they had him at the table in a ball gag. And I was like, I didn't know him that well at that point. And I was like, this is really frickin weird. But that was my night with Evan Bogart. And I did not realize at the time that he had written this song where I would have said something to him.

• 2:43:50Yasi Salek?

  You would have been like, I didn't talk to you about this.

• 2:43:51Speaker 02

  I love Ghost Town.

• 2:43:53Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 2:43:53Speaker 02

  I cried during this, during the show too. I think it wasn't an every night song. I think it was a surprise where she did it one of the nights I came.

• 2:43:59Yasi Salek?

  That's amazing.

• 2:44:00Speaker 02

  But I'm a sucker for one of these, if the world is ending, we're gonna be together. And I love these songs. It's just so good.

• 2:44:04Yasi Salek?

  I just, yeah, I love it. I can see like, so I guess like, Jason Evigan and Sean Douglas had written Jason Derulo's Talk Dirty. And she really liked that. That's why she tasked them with it.

• 2:44:14Speaker 02

  That's completely random. Also Evan wrote Halo with Beyonce.

• 2:44:17Yasi Salek?

  Kind of a big song.

• 2:44:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, a big song. Um, yeah, I love it. I don't know what else to say. It's dramatic. It's, it's just a good.

• 2:44:25Speaker 02

  This isn't, like, this isn't all timer. This is like in the Madonna canon.

• 2:44:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:37Yasi Salek?

  Ghost Town was a single, second single.

• 2:44:39Speaker 02

  Yes. Should have been bigger.

• 2:44:41Yasi Salek?

  The video is pretty cool too. Really high production value.

• 2:44:45Speaker 02

  I don't remember the video.

• 2:44:46Yasi Salek?

  It's like really gothy, like Anne Ricey.

• 2:44:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:44:50Yasi Salek?

  She looks gorgeous. Terrence Howard, isn't it?

• 2:44:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:44:54Yasi Salek?

  There's a real wolf. It's really cool.

• 2:44:57Speaker 02

  Big budget. Thanks Interscope.

• 2:44:59Yasi Salek?

  The next song is Unapologetic, bitch.

• 2:45:01Speaker 02

  I love this song so much. I can't even tell you.

• 2:45:04Yasi Salek?

  Go off.

• 2:45:04Speaker 02

  I listened to it on the way here.

• 2:45:05Yasi Salek?

  Go ahead.

• 2:45:06Speaker 02

  I mean, it's diplo, obviously. Uh, and Ariel.

• 2:45:11Yasi Salek?

  Jail.

• 2:45:11Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a super fun, you know, she's flipping everyone off.

• 2:45:17Yasi Salek?

  Right. Rumored to be about her breakup with the dancer Brahim's about.

• 2:45:22Speaker 02

  I could see it.

• 2:45:23Yasi Salek?

  Dancer on the last tour.

• 2:45:24Speaker 02

  This was near the end of the tour, of the Rubahar tour. And she kinda skanked offstage. It's got, you know, it's like a reggae dance hall, whatever.

• 2:45:32Yasi Salek?

  Because one thing Diplo's gonna do.

• 2:45:35Speaker 02

  Well, it's a Diplo song. There's an air horn.

• 2:45:36Yasi Salek?

  He's gonna take you to the fucking dance hall, or he's gonna fucking take you to the favela. And you know what, babe? You don't need to take everyone to the dance hall or the favela.

• 2:45:43Speaker 02

  There's something about Unapologetic Bitch, the vibe, the lyrics, and the track of this song that just like, it's a perfect marriage for me. And when she was skanking off, and then the last image on the screen, it just said, "Bye, bitches." I loved it. This is for me. I love this.

• 2:46:05Yasi Salek?

  I think also she said it was partly inspired by the mid-eighties Playboy penthouse nude, nudes debacle. Not debacle, because she didn't care, but then printing, or she did care, but you know, then printing her nudes against her will.

• 2:46:17Speaker 02

  Absolutely no regrets.

• 2:46:20Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely no regrets.

• 2:46:21Speaker 02

  Don't forget it.

• 2:46:22Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely no regrets. I'm not ashamed. Um, Illuminati. That is a song that is on here.

• 2:46:30Speaker 02

  That's a song. It's a Kanye, Mike Dean, Travis Scott somehow is a writer on the song.

• 2:46:34Yasi Salek?

  Involved in the song. Also 800 other people.

• 2:46:37Speaker 02

  And it has like a painful Madonna rap. Although I will say, when she raps, she's like Gaga when she speaks, it's like this low register.

• 2:46:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:46:44Speaker 02

  Always cracks me up.

• 2:46:45Yasi Salek?

  It's very interesting.

• 2:46:46Speaker 02

  It's not Jay-Z or, you know.

• 2:46:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So the song is about how people are misusing the word Illuminati.

• 2:46:53Speaker 02

  Well, she educated me on this. I did not know what she was talking about.

• 2:46:56Yasi Salek?

  She's not wrong.

• 2:46:57Speaker 02

  No. But when she started saying this stuff during the interview, I was literally like Googling. I had no idea what she was talking about. She's like, "I know the real Illuminati," and I was like, "LOL."

• 2:47:05Yasi Salek?

  And it's Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci.

• 2:47:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, who knew?

• 2:47:08Yasi Salek?

  I'll just move on from this song. That's for me. So no, thank you.

• 2:47:11Speaker 02

  It's "Bitch, I'm Madonna" with Nicki Minaj. I'm sorry, but I like this too. And Sophie. The hyperpop genius Sophie has credits on this song.

• 2:47:21Yasi Salek?

  The line, "Bitch, I'm Madonna."

• 2:47:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:23Yasi Salek?

  Originally appeared in the 2013 Cool A.D. song, "Eroica." He said, "Bitch, I'm Kevin Sorbo. Bitch, I'm Madonna." It's a great song, actually. Um, Diplo, I guess, showed that to her. He also explained to Interview Magazine that they were like drinking one night at the studio, and he played Madonna, a Japanese pizzicato melody with a drop, and she liked that, so they kind of built a song around that. Sophie comes in when there's a full demo. And what she did, she added the arpeggio synth in the chorus. It's like that ethereal.

• 2:47:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:47:55Yasi Salek?

  That's to me, one of the only good parts of the song.

• 2:48:05Yasi Salek?

  She talked to the Face in 2020 about it and about like her different working styles, like how Diplo works so different and she works so different, how you could hear so clearly

• 2:48:18Yasi Salek?

  their signatures and stuff.

• 2:48:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:19Yasi Salek?

  She also said that this song was written on acoustic guitar originally because Madonna likes guitar and so West went and added some guitar.

• 2:48:26Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 2:48:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:27Speaker 02

  I don't know. I really like it.

• 2:48:29Yasi Salek?

  You know, and maybe this is just like a taste thing. I wonder how this song could have sounded produced completely differently because it has really catchy elements and like, "I just wanna have fun tonight." Like.

• 2:48:39Speaker 02

  Okay, I could see that being a completely different song.

• 2:48:42Yasi Salek?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 2:48:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:43Yasi Salek?

  But, I mean, again, it's just a taste thing, whatever.

• 2:48:45Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 2:48:46Yasi Salek?

  What are you gonna do, take me to Madonna jail? Sorry, I don't like it. I don't like Bitch I'm Madonna. Fucking put me in prison.

• 2:48:50Speaker 02

  It went off.

• 2:48:50Yasi Salek?

  Put me in prison next to Diplo.

• 2:48:52Speaker 02

  The end of the.

• 2:48:53Yasi Salek?

  In Brazil.

• 2:48:53Speaker 02

  But it really went off at the end of the Celebration Tour and all the dancers were just dressed in different Madonna guises over the years. And it was like.

• 2:49:00Yasi Salek?

  I saw it.

• 2:49:01Speaker 02

  Bitch, I am Madonna. I'm all these people. Oh, it was good.

• 2:49:04Yasi Salek?

  The video.

• 2:49:06Speaker 02

  Was this, there were famous people in this video?

• 2:49:07Yasi Salek?

  This is directed by Jonas Sacklerland, the standard Highline, and it has tons of cameos. Chris Rock, Katy Perry, Rita Ora, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, but on a TV, so I think she wasn't actually there. Miley Cyrus, Diplo, Beyonce. Beyonce is in this video.

• 2:49:22Speaker 02

  That's a get. Beyonce doesn't show up.

• 2:49:24Yasi Salek?

  I know. That was surprising. Alexander Wang also.

• 2:49:27Speaker 02

  Queens were like, "So break my soul. Madonna came to the Beyonce show I was at to see the other queen."

• 2:49:32Yasi Salek?

  That's very cool.

• 2:49:32Speaker 02

  I love that they like each other.

• 2:49:33Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 2:49:34Speaker 02

  That's like actually very important to me.

• 2:49:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. The video's crazy. The video is like, what are we wearing? It was a different time. David Banda does a little solo dance, Rocko's in it. I hate the, I hate the, I hate the aesthetic of this time. It's not their fault. I just hate the aesthetic.

• 2:49:54Speaker 02

  We did not talk about the album cover.

• 2:49:55Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my God, we did not talk about the album cover.

• 2:49:57Speaker 02

  Because when you said the aesthetic of this time, I'm picturing her face all scrunched up and bondage.

• 2:50:01Yasi Salek?

  We really need to talk.

• 2:50:04Yasi Salek?

  I like it.

• 2:50:04Speaker 02

  You like it?

• 2:50:05Yasi Salek?

  I do really like it. Is that bad?

• 2:50:07Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:50:07Yasi Salek?

  I think it's cool.

• 2:50:09Speaker 02

  I like that it it is a little bit ugly and that she let that be.

• 2:50:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:14Speaker 02

  I like that aspect of it.

• 2:50:16Yasi Salek?

  I think it's very striking.

• 2:50:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:18Yasi Salek?

  It's very memorable. I'm not sure I love the font of the this is a kind of an ongoing thing for me with these.

• 2:50:24Speaker 02

  The fonts?

• 2:50:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're just like, I'm like, this is an unusual choice.

• 2:50:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:28Yasi Salek?

  But I love the imagery. I actually really love it. It caused a little controversy.

• 2:50:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:34Yasi Salek?

  When she was posting it on other people's faces on Instagram dot com.

• 2:50:40Speaker 02

  Sometimes we make mistakes with filters and things like that.

• 2:50:42Yasi Salek?

  Martin Luther King, I believe, was one of them.

• 2:50:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was not good.

• 2:50:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:45Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 2:50:46Speaker 02

  One move past that.

• 2:50:47Yasi Salek?

  Listen, she might, you know, that's a, that's a bad faith reading of what she was doing. I'll say it.

• 2:50:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hold tight. It's very unremarkable. I'm like, if you're gonna do that song, just make it goes town and delete this one.

• 2:50:58Yasi Salek?

  I'm okay on this song.

• 2:50:59Speaker 02

  Okay. Joan of Arc.

• 2:51:01Yasi Salek?

  I really like this song.

• 2:51:02Speaker 02

  I did too. I'm so glad we finally agreed.

• 2:51:04Yasi Salek?

  Don't, but do you feel like we like it because it sounds like a Taylor Swift song?

• 2:51:07Speaker 02

  Well, what, how could you say that?

• 2:51:09Yasi Salek?

  It, to me, it sounds like it could totally be a Taylor Swift song. But you don't feel like it?

• 2:51:12Speaker 02

  It's strummy. It's super melodic.

• 2:51:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I could absolutely hear Taylor Swift singing this song and, and writing it. Not that I'm saying she wrote it, but.

• 2:51:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no, no, I could see it. I could see it.

• 2:51:22Yasi Salek?

  I love it. Again, of course, I'm gonna love it because this is like a.

• 2:51:25Speaker 02

  Well, so it's one for vulnerable, like.

• 2:51:27Yasi Salek?

  It's an analog. Yeah, it's guitar, it's vulnerable, you know.

• 2:51:31Speaker 02

  Say shit about me my entire career, but you know what? Sometimes it hurts. She does not admit that all the time.

• 2:51:36Yasi Salek?

  No, and I think that's really, you know, it's, it's a nice counterpoint to bitch, I'm Madonna.

• 2:51:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:51:41Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's a nice, inside you, there are two wolves, you know?

• 2:51:44Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:51:56Yasi Salek?

  Toby Gad, I think being the lead songwriter on this one makes a lot of sense because of the wrecking ball of it all, you know?

• 2:52:03Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:52:04Yasi Salek?

  Okay, iconic. I'm gonna say I kinda like Mike Tyson because I think it's cool.

• 2:52:08Speaker 02

  Oh my god, I do not like this. I was gonna say the less said about this, the better is literally what I wrote in my notes, but I don't.

• 2:52:14Yasi Salek?

  I didn't say I liked the song.

• 2:52:15Speaker 02

  Oh, just the idea that she had Mike Tyson?

• 2:52:17Yasi Salek?

  I think it's just cool that she like went and saw Mike Tyson's show and was like, I do believe he's iconic. He's one of the people that survived so much, has been to hell and back, and there's no one like him, which is not wrong.

• 2:52:27Speaker 02

  She's not wrong, but she loves a boxer.

• 2:52:29Yasi Salek?

  She loves a boxer, she loves a controversial figure. I just have a soft spot for Mike Tyson, so much like Madonna. The song is fine.

• 2:52:39Speaker 02

  It's fine. It's actually a pretty good Chance the Rapper verse.

• 2:52:41Yasi Salek?

  I don't believe in that. Um, okay, the next song is Heartbreak City. They're notable because it has 22 writers. It's not 22, but Madonna, Avicii, Arash Purnuri, Tobias Jimson, Tobias Jimson and Michael Flaygar, from the Swedish band No No No, Paloma Stalker, AKA Delilah, Saleh Al Fakir, Magnus Littlehall, and Vincent Pontare.

• 2:53:04Speaker 02

  That's a lot of writers.

• 2:53:05Yasi Salek?

  A lot of writers.

• 2:53:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't know, it's kinda heartbreaking.

• 2:53:08Yasi Salek?

  It's fine.

• 2:53:08Speaker 02

  A little dramatic.

• 2:53:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's good. I said it's good, but it's fine. Um, okay, I like Body Shop.

• 2:53:14Speaker 02

  I like Body Shop, and actually, it was really great live, too, on the Rebel Heart Tour.

• 2:53:18Yasi Salek?

  I watched it.

• 2:53:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:53:19Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was very cute.

• 2:53:20Speaker 02

  Very charming.

• 2:53:20Yasi Salek?

  Again, it goes into true blue, because I wrote here before I saw that this, very true bluish to me.

• 2:53:25Speaker 02

  It was a little bit of a sock hop part of the show, where it was like, just like, kinda cutesy.

• 2:53:29Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:53:29Speaker 02

  Um, but it's like, and again, the lyrics are a little literal, you know, a little...

• 2:53:34Yasi Salek?

  It's a little candy shop that we're at the Body Shop now.

• 2:53:37Speaker 02

  It's a little on the nose with these metaphors, but it's actually very cute.

• 2:53:39Yasi Salek?

  Holy water, that's your favorite.

• 2:53:41Speaker 02

  Yeezus loves my pussy best, no. But bitch, get off my pole, yes.

• 2:53:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:53:46Speaker 02

  I'm okay with that.

• 2:53:47Yasi Salek?

  Get off my dick.

• 2:53:48Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:53:57Yasi Salek?

  Natalia Kills is on this song?

• 2:53:59Speaker 02

  Yes, I was gonna say, do you remember Natalia?

• 2:54:00Yasi Salek?

  I do, but most people won't.

• 2:54:02Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:54:02Yasi Salek?

  Respectfully.

• 2:54:03Speaker 02

  Dan Krebs from Rolling Stone, if you were, if you were watching or listening to this, he, I remember going with him to see Natalia Kills.

• 2:54:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. She had a big moment around this time.

• 2:54:10Speaker 02

  She did.

• 2:54:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:11Speaker 02

  Very fun.

• 2:54:12Yasi Salek?

  But then, nothing happened.

• 2:54:13Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:54:14Yasi Salek?

  It's a song about cutting and inglegus. Cunnilingus.

• 2:54:16Speaker 02

  I think it is, Holy Water.

• 2:54:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, and that's fine. Next song isn't quite out.

• 2:54:23Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, it's another one from the Ghost Town Crew.

• 2:54:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but this one is.

• 2:54:27Speaker 02

  It's not really a winner.

• 2:54:28Yasi Salek?

  This one's not for me. Wash All Over Me.

• 2:54:31Speaker 02

  My note on this is that it's sort of like a classic Madonna closer, where she's going to, you know, an emotional place. It's an Avicii one, so I assume you like it.

• 2:54:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I like it, okay. It's not the best of the Avicii bunch, but I think it's, it's okay.

• 2:54:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54:44Yasi Salek?

  This is where I'm like, what in the fuck?

• 2:54:46Speaker 02

  Things get dicey here.

• 2:54:47Yasi Salek?

  Is going on.

• 2:54:49Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:54:50Yasi Salek?

  Now we've entered deluxe. This album has three versions.

• 2:54:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54:53Yasi Salek?

  Regular, deluxe, and super deluxe, which I presume was for sales purposes, right?

• 2:54:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I would say, keep in mind.

• 2:55:00Yasi Salek?

  Proto-Taylor Swift has seventeen versions of the voice memos or whatever.

• 2:55:04Speaker 02

  Yes, but remember, again, going back to the beginning of this album, that there was the leak and the six songs released.

• 2:55:09Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 2:55:10Speaker 02

  Everything about the way this album came out and where the songs are and everything, they're all impacted by that. Yeah, and it's like, it fucked up the record.

• 2:55:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:16Speaker 02

  Because I know there's other songs we're gonna wanna talk about, but Rebel Heart, the title, track.

• 2:55:22Yasi Salek?

  I need, I, I need to scream it from the rooftops. This is the best song on here. It's the number one best song on here.

• 2:55:28Speaker 02

  It might not be my number one, but it's very up there. I love this song.

• 2:55:31Yasi Salek?

  Your number one is Holy Water. We've already established that.

• 2:55:34Speaker 02

  You're killing me.

• 2:55:35Yasi Salek?

  Rebel Heart is the fucking god-tier jam.

• 2:55:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:37Yasi Salek?

  It, yeah, fine, is it a little barncore? Yeah, and I like barncore, but, come on!

• 2:55:44Speaker 02

  I took the roadless travel by.

• 2:55:45Yasi Salek?

  I took the roadless travel by, and I barely made it out alive. It's like anthemic, it's like, it has the entire, like, it's so Madonna, it has all the themes she's trying to talk about. I've spent some time as a narcissist.

• 2:56:01Speaker 02

  Yep. Narcissists generally don't say that.

• 2:56:04Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:56:04Speaker 02

  It's nice to hear it.

• 2:56:05Yasi Salek?

  Talking about how, how much she was dying to be seen.

• 2:56:08Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:56:09Yasi Salek?

  And how maybe it didn't fulfill her the way she wanted.

• 2:56:12Speaker 02

  Maybe there were sacrifices she made in other elements of her life in, in her single-minded focus. Oh, it's a great song. It's so, so, so good.

• 2:56:19Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. And it's like, I feel sad because I think it's not, it will not be remembered because it wasn't a single or put out in that way.

• 2:56:28Speaker 02

  I know. It was good on the tour, though. And it went over big.

• 2:56:41Yasi Salek?

  From what I understand, and you correct me if I'm wrong, Madonna fans really love Vinnie Vidi Vici featuring Nas.

• 2:56:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, they do. I don't, I do not like this song.

• 2:56:48Yasi Salek?

  It's not really my favorite.

• 2:56:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:56:50Yasi Salek?

  I like, I like it in the sense that she's celebrating herself and it's like, it's basically, bands playing Madonna, parts one through three. She's like, look, like reflecting and celebrating her own career.

• 2:57:00Speaker 02

  But we are like, this album begins a slippery slope that continues on Madame X where it's like, how many rappers need to be on the record? Not this many. No offense to Nas, who I do like in general.

• 2:57:11Yasi Salek?

  A little offense to Nas.

• 2:57:14Speaker 02

  It's a little.

• 2:57:14Yasi Salek?

  It's a little. A little offense to Nas. Great rapper, perhaps not a great person. S E X, this is gonna be a no for me.

• 2:57:21Speaker 02

  No, that's a no.

• 2:57:21Yasi Salek?

  I'm an open door, let you come inside of me.

• 2:57:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:57:24Yasi Salek?

  I just want you to know there's a Gina, Genius comment, and I live for Genius commenters because they are the most demented mutants alive. And this one just says, Madonna here is playing with the word come, for it sounds like C U M, that has an entirely sexual meaning. As a 57-year-old woman, the material girl still has a very active sexual life, but she no longer has to worry about getting pregnant.

• 2:57:49Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:57:50Yasi Salek?

  Do you think that this-

• 2:57:51Speaker 02

  Also making some assumptions.

• 2:57:53Yasi Salek?

  Okay, yeah. I mean, so, listen, it do be happening. I think Janet Jackson was like 55 when she had her baby.

• 2:57:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:59Yasi Salek?

  I just like the idea of this Genius commentator like Googling menopause.

• 2:58:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:58:03Yasi Salek?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 2:58:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, it's not a good song.

• 2:58:06Yasi Salek?

  I need to ask you a really important question, and we need to be honest with each other.

• 2:58:10Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:58:11Yasi Salek?

  What's with the lisp?

• 2:58:12Speaker 02

  I think she's wearing the grill.

• 2:58:15Yasi Salek?

  On purpose.

• 2:58:16Speaker 02

  And it makes me insane. Take the grill out.

• 2:58:20Yasi Salek?

  You know, once we got to, uh, Madame X.

• 2:58:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:26Yasi Salek?

  And she has that song.

• 2:58:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

• 2:58:29Yasi Salek?

  And then I'm like, okay, maybe this was also a stylistic choice. It must have been. She doesn't not, she doesn't do anything by accident. It's not like she's like, didn't notice she was lisping with the grill in.

• 2:58:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:39Yasi Salek?

  I just don't, I don't get it. It's a little distracting, the lisp.

• 2:58:42Speaker 02

  It's a little, it's not good.

• 2:58:43Yasi Salek?

  It's also like, singing extremely sexual innuendo with a lisp is so funny.

• 2:58:49Speaker 02

  This is cringe, Madonna.

• 2:58:50Yasi Salek?

  So funny.

• 2:58:51Speaker 02

  It's cringe.

• 2:58:52Yasi Salek?

  Messiah, I like it. I'm sorry, I don't care. Take me to the fucking favela prison. I like it. It's not a favela song, it's an Avicii song, that's why I like it. Autotune, baby, I don't like it. Again, you can take me to the favela prison.

• 2:59:05Speaker 02

  No, that's not, that's no good. God, there's so many songs.

• 2:59:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, there's four more that I actually don't have a lot of thoughts on. Beautiful Scars, Borrowed Time, Addicted, and Graffiti Heart. Graffiti Heart means what?

• 2:59:16Speaker 02

  I honestly don't remember any of these songs. It's not, it's not the I'm addicted from M-DNA, I presume.

• 2:59:20Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:59:21Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:59:22Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, alright, that was Rebel Heart.

• 2:59:24Speaker 02

  But we can talk about the tour.

• 2:59:25Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:59:25Speaker 02

  So I think I saw this one three times. I really loved it. I think this was, I mean.

• 2:59:29Yasi Salek?

  You went three times?

• 2:59:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59:31Yasi Salek?

  But you went seven to Celebration.

• 2:59:32Speaker 02

  One of them was in Atlantic City, which was a wonderful opportunity to go gamble before the show.

• 2:59:36Yasi Salek?

  Seven times you went to Celebration and not one of them?

• 2:59:39Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:59:39Yasi Salek?

  You didn't take Jossie, that's so interesting.

• 2:59:41Speaker 02

  There's a lot to talk about with Celebration, but I really, I really, really, really did love the Rebel Heart tour. I thought it was great. Um, Iconic, a song that we both sort of dismissed from the album, really worked as the opener of the show. I don't know why, but it did. It just... I still don't think it's a good song, but it worked as the opener, which just proves she can pretty much save everything alive. She's back with the electric guitar.

• 3:00:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:00Speaker 02

  Burning up. Yes.

• 3:00:02Yasi Salek?

  Really good.

• 3:00:03Speaker 02

  Which she, she ported that over to the Celebration tour, I'm sorry. She's spinning on a pole for holy water.

• 3:00:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:09Speaker 02

  And then she's doing Vogue while she is spinning.

• 3:00:13Yasi Salek?

  It's incredible.

• 3:00:14Speaker 02

  She does Deeper and Deeper, dressed like a naughty cop, and she turns it into a line dance. Everyone should be line dancing to Deeper and Deeper. I just like, this is a thing that should be happening. Heartbreak City, while she's climbing up a giant staircase. Like a Virgin, she's prancing down the catwalk. She looks like she's 20.

• 3:00:30Yasi Salek?

  I know, it's crazy.

• 3:00:31Speaker 02

  I love those moments. There are moments like that in Celebration 2, which I absolutely loved. Rebel Heart on acoustic guitar, so heartfelt.

• 3:00:37Yasi Salek?

  Really good.

• 3:00:37Speaker 02

  Really, just like, amazing moment. And then she did this like, sort of old timey, black and white gangster movie thing. For Candy Shop into Material Girl. I don't know, I liked it. She busts out La Vie en Rose. Why not?

• 3:00:49Yasi Salek?

  Why not?

• 3:00:50Speaker 02

  And then, Unapologetic Bitch. That's when, there's one thing I did not like about this. This is when she started having a gimmick every night.

• 3:00:58Yasi Salek?

  Was that the word on the back of her?

• 3:01:00Speaker 02

  No, when she had people come up and like, eat a banana. Amy Schumer opened the first show.

• 3:01:05Yasi Salek?

  Oh, so did Madonna invent this as well?

• 3:01:08Speaker 02

  The co- yes.

• 3:01:09Yasi Salek?

  The like, picking someone from a crowd, like the, I'll put you in jail or whatever.

• 3:01:13Speaker 02

  I mean, this was like, 20...

• 3:01:16Yasi Salek?

  Okay, back to the blueprint, yeah.

• 3:01:17Speaker 02

  So yeah, she did. It made me crazy, but there's a montage of them in the live thing of all the people she brought up. And I was just like, I mean, it was just dumb. But then she skanked out, she came back for holiday, holiday killer ending.

• 3:01:27Yasi Salek?

  Great to go back to the roots, you know?

• 3:01:30Speaker 02

  God, I really love that show.

• 3:01:32Yasi Salek?

  Is this when Liz Rosenberg left?

• 3:01:34Speaker 02

  It was around now, yes, because, um, yes. I was gonna say, it's been a litany of public since then. My friend Brian Bunbury took over around now. And he was kind enough to invite me to Miami, so that's why I was in, at Art Basel for her Tears of a Clown show.

• 3:01:51Yasi Salek?

  So was, was, so Rebel Heart was the one where in Australia, or was that the tour before, where she had that like, really weird?

• 3:01:57Speaker 02

  So she did that, and then she replicated it at Art Basel with a couple of things. Dressed like a clown.

• 3:02:02Yasi Salek?

  She had the sort of meltdown. It wasn't a meltdown, but it was like... An unplanned tears of a clown show that people were like, what are we doing here?

• 3:02:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:02:10Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 3:02:11Speaker 02

  That did happen during this tour. People were very confounded. Yes. But then she did it purposefully as a fundraiser at Art Basel.

• 3:02:18Yasi Salek?

  I think it's so cool.

• 3:02:19Speaker 02

  It was super cool and she did Toxic. She did Britney Spears Toxic, like in a grindy, weird way. It was an epic experience. I can't even believe I experienced it. It was crazy.

• 3:02:29Yasi Salek?

  I love that.

• 3:02:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:31Yasi Salek?

  This is very cool. We forgot to mention one quick thing before the tour.

• 3:02:34Speaker 02

  I noticed what it was. I'm ready.

• 3:02:35Yasi Salek?

  You're like, I don't want to talk about it. Well, two things. She appears with Taylor Swift unannounced at the iHeart Radio Awards.

• 3:02:40Speaker 02

  That was cool.

• 3:02:41Yasi Salek?

  They do Ghost Town. Then in April, I remember this very well.

• 3:02:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:45Yasi Salek?

  She goes onstage with Drake at Coachella. Drake had a song called Madonna.

• 3:02:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:51Yasi Salek?

  On that album where he promised to make a girl as big as Madonna. So she wore a shirt that said, "Big as Madonna," and her hat that says, "Threat." She thinks she's also wearing in the "Bitch at Madonna" video. And she sang "Human Nature" and hung up. And then she kissed him.

• 3:03:03Speaker 02

  So I'm gonna be honest with you. I had eternal sunshine to this from my memory.

• 3:03:07Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry.

• 3:03:07Speaker 02

  And I had to re-watch it this morning.

• 3:03:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Not church tongue.

• 3:03:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:03:12Yasi Salek?

  Um, he grimaced. And then later said it was because of her lipstick.

• 3:03:16Speaker 02

  So I disagree.

• 3:03:16Yasi Salek?

  You think he didn't grimace?

• 3:03:18Speaker 02

  So first, he kind of reached up to touch her hair and she was like, "No," and she pushes him away. Love that.

• 3:03:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:24Speaker 02

  I think he was like, "Damn."

• 3:03:26Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 3:03:27Speaker 02

  I didn't read it as a grimace. I read it as like, "Can you believe this just happened?"

• 3:03:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Yeah, I could see that.

• 3:03:32Speaker 02

  Like, what?

• 3:03:34Yasi Salek?

  Who wouldn't be?

• 3:03:34Speaker 02

  Madonna just made out with you. Come on. So yes, I read it as a positive thing, but I know that all the press was like.

• 3:03:40Yasi Salek?

  Was like, oh.

• 3:03:41Speaker 02

  Oh, Drake was turned off.

• 3:03:42Yasi Salek?

  Probably an Aegis thing where they're like, oh, he had to kiss an older woman.

• 3:03:45Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 3:03:46Yasi Salek?

  He should be so fucking lucky.

• 3:03:47Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:03:52Yasi Salek?

  All right. So we just talked about the Haiti fundraiser in which, she started doing a couple of Haiti fundraisers around here. She also performed at the Billboard Awards in May and honored Prince and did "Nothing Compares To You" and "Purple Rain" with Stevie Wonder. So at this point.

• 3:04:10Speaker 02

  The big three from the 1980s, she's the only one left.

• 3:04:14Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 3:04:14Speaker 02

  And she makes a big point of this in the celeb-- I'm sorry, the celebration tour.

• 3:04:18Yasi Salek?

  And then she raises, okay, this is the one you went to, in Art Basel, seven and a half million dollars from Malawi during Art Basel.

• 3:04:26Speaker 02

  That's what it was, yeah.

• 3:04:27Yasi Salek?

  By auctioning off pieces from her own art collection, a costume from her tour, modeled by Ariana Grande, black and white photos from her wedding, Tasha Penn. And then she's named Billboard's Woman of the Year at the end of that year.

• 3:04:41Speaker 02

  And that's what she gives this incredible speech that I have quoted a billion times.

• 3:04:45Yasi Salek?

  Because Donald Trump had just been elected president, we need to remember, the month before.

• 3:04:49Speaker 02

  The night before the election, Madonna did a pop-up, like Hillary thing, in Washington Square Park. And I was down there with all my friends and I was like, wow, this is really a moment. History is going to be made tomorrow. I'm seeing Madonna right before it happens. And then obviously, that did not happen.

• 3:05:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we all thought something different.

• 3:05:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. But I believe, I might be wrong, but I believe that was the billboard speech where she said, like, the most controversial thing I ever did was, like, stick around.

• 3:05:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's one of my, like, the things that is so inspiring to me about her and so, such a point of interest for me, how much it infuriates people.

• 3:05:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:05:26Yasi Salek?

  And we obviously haven't talked much about the plastic surgery. I don't want to, like, get too into the weeds about it because, you know, on one hand, I am sort of of the mind of like, okay, well, we don't need to, like, criticize or, like, assess people's looks. But I'm also of the other mind of like, well, this is a person who has her whole career kind of invited

• 3:05:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:05:51Yasi Salek?

  discussion and attention of her looks. So it, I guess, could continue or should continue. I'm still working out how I feel about it, but I think maybe the most compelling thing to me is that it is like a cipher for Thought, like, you can't help but like, and I know some people have knee jerk reactions one way or the other, but you can't help, for me, I can't help but think about what it means on like every level, like, what does it mean to be a woman of a certain age in the public eye? What does it mean to be beautiful? What does it mean to be beautiful as one of your defining characteristics for over two decades of your life? What does it mean to let that go? What does it mean to not let that go?

• 3:06:34Yasi Salek?

  What does it mean to try to be part of a beauty standard that was not set by you? You know? Why are, why are women criticized for aspiring to a beauty standard that they did not architect? You know, like, it's just, it's, it's a really interesting, and like, why is there a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it? Why is it okay if you get tasteful surgery and not okay if you get different surgery? Like, it's such a labyrinth that for me, it's just like, it gives you a lot, again, my pink pussy hat right back on my head, but like, I, I do find it really interesting as, and as like a woman who is like, of cour-, I'm afraid to age, every day of my life, I'm

• 3:07:16Yasi Salek?

  afraid to age, because I see, you know, there was a great quote in Mary Gabriel's book, that's from Jermaine Greer, who wrote a book about menopause, and she talks about how one of the greatest horror monsters in a culture is aging women. People, there's nothing more off putting and fear inspiring to people than a woman who is aged.

• 3:07:39Speaker 02

  Yes. A hundred percent everything you said. I'm of like sixty minds of this myself.

• 3:07:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, makes me like schizophrenic, right?

• 3:07:45Speaker 02

  It's so hard, because like, one thing that I wish is that like, you know, Madonna broke every mold and she set every trend and she set every bar, and it would have been super cool if there was a world in which she could also set the bar for aging naturally.

• 3:07:58Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 3:07:58Speaker 02

  And that it wouldn't matter.

• 3:07:59Yasi Salek?

  But it's her choice.

• 3:08:00Speaker 02

  But it does matter. It is her choice.

• 3:08:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:03Speaker 02

  And, um, yeah, we're about to enter an era where, you know, something started to look different, and it was hard not to notice.

• 3:08:08Yasi Salek?

  It's hard not to notice.

• 3:08:09Speaker 02

  And it became very, like, people were going for quotes to her publicists all the time, you know, like, oh, did she get butt implants? Did she do this, she was this, and it's like... People are always gonna be talking about her, that's part of the whole thing. It's like a shame that it overshadowed everything else because like, that wasn't, that's not the art. And that's not the art of Madonna. And I completely understand, she's literally, she exists to be looked at.

• 3:08:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:29Speaker 02

  And she's choosing how she wants to be looked at, how she wants to be regarded. I can, I can go a million ways on it, I think it would have been amazing if there was a way.

• 3:08:37Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 3:08:38Speaker 02

  But I don't know that there's a way, not in this world, maybe in a hundred years. Probably not.

• 3:08:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I just, I, I just don't know what the altern-, I mean, I'm sure there's many alternatives. I also think it's worth pointing out that like, a, a person who's a meticulous planner like this, there's some things you can't meticulously plan, and plastic surgery is one of them, like, there are so many ways that it can go, there are so many advances that will happen later, you know, like, it's, it's a constantly changing field, like.

• 3:09:05Speaker 02

  There's also so many elements of getting older that there's absolutely no way to rewind. You know, like, her muscles will weaken at a certain point, you know what I mean?

• 3:09:12Yasi Salek?

  They have not yet, like,

• 3:09:13Speaker 02

  She's had this knee injury, you know, that happened around Madame X time, that, you know, plagues her to this day, you can see her wearing the tape under her outfits and stuff. It's like, there's something she's not gonna be able to control. But she can control this, and we, and we've discussed how much she likes to control things.

• 3:09:26Yasi Salek?

  I just think she is unfairly made the like, target

• 3:09:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:09:31Yasi Salek?

  of all of the ire around plastic surgery.

• 3:09:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:09:36Yasi Salek?

  I mean, obviously, everyone gets it, but like, she just seems to get it more than anyone else.

• 3:09:39Speaker 02

  She gets everything more than everybody else, that's it, there was a video montage, I apologize again, at the end of the celebration tour, where it was like, uh, I think Patrick actually mentioned this during his episode, where it was like, look back to all the ti-, like, every, she was a headline every second. And it's like, you know, it's another day, and there's a new Madonna controversy, like, every day she was the nightly news.

• 3:09:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:56Speaker 02

  Every day she was front page news. Everything she does will always be a little bonus controversy.

• 3:10:01Yasi Salek?

  I'm just, I'm really tired of like, it's usually men, but it's like, the, this puritanical, like, I can't, she shouldn't do that, I can't believe she should do that, when like, there are women up in your face.

• 3:10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:13Yasi Salek?

  If you see a woman on television, she's had plastic surgery. I, I will lay down my life.

• 3:10:17Speaker 02

  Oh, since HGTV.

• 3:10:18Yasi Salek?

  Ninety-eight percent, no, even ones that you do, even, I'm su-, like, I'm not gonna dox people, but like, you name an actress. She's done something to her face.

• 3:10:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:28Yasi Salek?

  All of them, every single one, except for like with a very few exceptions and you can tell when they have it. You just can't tell with the ones who have because the way they do it. And then you think that that's the beauty standard. You think, no, Anne Hathaway just looks amazing. She sleeps well. Okay. You know, like, but there's no criticism of that. I just, it really infuriates me and I'm sure it infuriates me because I'm a woman that has to live under the gaze.

• 3:10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:54Yasi Salek?

  For now, you know?

• 3:10:55Speaker 02

  Cher has taken it for Dolly Parton, though, but I mean, because Dolly turned it into the joke.

• 3:10:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:59Speaker 02

  You know, she's, she's approached it differently. Madonna just doesn't want to talk about it.

• 3:11:02Yasi Salek?

  She doesn't want, yeah, she's, she's not putting it, you know, front and center and she doesn't have to. She can do whatever the fuck she wants. Um, all right, speaking of pink pussy hats, Madonna attends the Women's March.

• 3:11:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:11:13Yasi Salek?

  On Washington. I was also there.

• 3:11:15Speaker 02

  Were you there?

• 3:11:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:11:16Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 3:11:17Yasi Salek?

  Welcome to the revolution of love, to the rebellion, to our refusal as women to accept this new age of tyranny where not just women are in danger, but all marginalized people. Where being uniquely different right now might be truly considered a crime. It took this horrific moment of darkness to wake us the fuck up. She told the crowd of 500,000 and performed "Express Yourself in Human Nature." Remember back then when we thought Women's March was going to fix stuff?

• 3:11:40Yasi Salek?

  Oh, were we ever so young? The next one, she adopts the twins from Malawi, Esther and Stella. Um, they were four at the time. And then that September, she picks up the whole family and moves to Portugal, which I understand many people.

• 3:11:56Speaker 02

  Well, she, under the guise that she had become a soccer mom and that David was like a budding soccer star.

• 3:12:00Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if it was a guise.

• 3:12:01Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, he, he is. He's very, he was a gifted athlete. He's very.

• 3:12:04Yasi Salek?

  I think it was, it was a one-two punch situation. It was like, I don't want to be in America anymore. This shit sucks, which like, who can fucking relate? And my son, and also I'm, um, and one of the richest people in the world. I can live wherever. I would not live.

• 3:12:17Speaker 02

  Why not go to Lisbon?

• 3:12:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. This is, and then Lisbon is where the seeds are definitely planted for Madame X. I'm gonna, I'm gonna stand up when no one else will.

• 3:12:28Speaker 02

  Please, because I'm not going to.

• 3:12:30Yasi Salek?

  I'll read this little quote in 2000, from Billboard. In 2017, Madonna thought she was moving to Portugal to be a soccer mom, but instead, the 61-year-old icon found inspiration for her then upcoming album Madame X. Thanks to a friend she calls her musical plug, Dino de Santiago. One night, the Cape Verde-born, Lisbon-based singer, who coached Madonna on how to speak Portuguese and sing in Portuguese in Creole, had arranged a concert for her by. Batucaderas Orchestra, a group of female drummers specializing in Batuca, a rhythmic call and response style created in Cape Verde during the early days of the slave trade. I'd never seen anything like it, never heard anything like it, so of course I couldn't get it out of my head, says Madonna.

• 3:13:06Speaker 02

  Respect.

• 3:13:07Yasi Salek?

  She loves to be inspired.

• 3:13:08Speaker 02

  She does.

• 3:13:10Yasi Salek?

  It's 2018 now. She debuts her new song Beautiful Game at the Met Gala.

• 3:13:16Speaker 02

  Oh, I forgot about that.

• 3:13:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. People tell me to shut my mouth, that I might get burned. She's saying during the religious theme set to coincide with the event's heavenly body scene. That was one of my favorite Met Gala themes. Keep your beautiful lies because I'm not concerned.

• 3:13:28Speaker 02

  That's not bad.

• 3:13:29Yasi Salek?

  Not bad. Do you remember the tribute to Aretha Franklin at the VMAs?

• 3:13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I do remember. That was not, that did not go over well.

• 3:13:37Yasi Salek?

  People didn't like it, but I was like, kind of like, well, apparently from what I read, they had asked her to come talk about how Aretha inspired her and her career, and that's basically what she did. And they were like, you talked about yourself too much.

• 3:13:48Speaker 02

  Well, also, fun fact, so for Madonna's 60th birthday, I did a, please, every, no. Everyone, please find the feature we did at the New York Times called 60 Ways Madonna Changed Our Culture. It's like one of my favorite things I have, we ever did as a team. And we published it on Madonna's birthday, and it had like five hours on the homepage, and then Aretha Franklin died.

• 3:14:06Yasi Salek?

  You're like, god damn it, Aretha.

• 3:14:08Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, devastating news, because she's another queen. It was a very, a day for queens.

• 3:14:13Yasi Salek?

  And a very inspirational queen too, Madonna, who she talked about a lot in the early days.

• 3:14:17Speaker 02

  Incredibly so. But it meant that 60 Ways Madonna Changed Our Culture left the homepage, and all the Aretha stuff rolled out. So I was like, Madonna, I understand why you're a little bit sensitive about Aretha.

• 3:14:29Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And again, she just did what they were, they asked her to do.

• 3:14:31Speaker 02

  She did.

• 3:14:32Yasi Salek?

  In 2018, she collab, sorry, in October 2018, she collaborates with Quavo and Cardi B for the song Champagne Rosé.

• 3:14:40Speaker 02

  Forgot about that.

• 3:14:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, me too, honestly, because it's a kind of a forgettable song. Drink me up Champagne rosé, it's my game, please fill my cup Champagne rosé, it's my name. It's important because this is how she meets Quavo.

• 3:14:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, well.

• 3:14:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay, in 2019, it's now time for the full Madame X album to come out, June 14th. Listen, Mary Gabriel said that this represents a marker in Madonna's career as important as like a prayer or ray of light, and I say yes.

• 3:15:08Speaker 02

  I say no.

• 3:15:09Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 3:15:11Speaker 02

  Um, oh my god. We also keep in mind, we are on the other side of sixty here.

• 3:15:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:19Yasi Salek?

  I, one of my longest held beliefs is that I want Madonna to go Bjork mode.

• 3:15:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:15:26Yasi Salek?

  Now, you know?

• 3:15:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:15:27Yasi Salek?

  And I think this is kind of, in a way, going Bjork mode, you know?

• 3:15:31Speaker 02

  Go on.

• 3:15:32Yasi Salek?

  We've left the candy shop and the like, here's what's hip right now, I'm part of it. We've left songwriter camp, which I, I think, in my opinion, Rebel Heart has so much good stuff and I think it could have been so much better.

• 3:15:46Speaker 02

  No, no, totally true.

• 3:15:47Yasi Salek?

  Okay, listen, stay with me.

• 3:15:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15:49Yasi Salek?

  And then she was like, I'm just gonna go back to what I like, which is doing whatever the fuck lights me up and working with one producer. Well, I don't know if it was actually in the end one producer, but, well, you know, there were some leftover songs, so we have credits, the way credit is done. But really, I think the primary architect of this album with her was Mirway, right?

• 3:16:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:16:08Yasi Salek?

  She sent that Batu Kara things, she sent it to Mirway and said, I don't know if I'm crazy, but is there something here? And he started working on tracks. I like that she made a character?

• 3:16:19Speaker 02

  Okay, yes.

• 3:16:20Yasi Salek?

  I like the eye patch, I'll say it.

• 3:16:22Speaker 02

  Okay. I like that she's sort of like a, a global detective, you know, an international woman of mystery. But she had to wear that frickin' eye patch for the entire-

• 3:16:32Yasi Salek?

  I think it weakened her eyes.

• 3:16:32Speaker 02

  Promo thing, and like, it obviously was not working out for her. She wore it onstage during the show, you could tell that she was like worried about getting up and down a lot of these steps.

• 3:16:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I thought it was cool, I think visually is very striking. Is every song on here good? No, okay, I'm, I'm not deaf.

• 3:16:50Speaker 02

  You can ride for this, we're, we're gonna have to go track by track, though.

• 3:16:53Yasi Salek?

  There are some tracks that I'm like, okay, I would love to die, but we'll get into them.

• 3:16:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:16:57Yasi Salek?

  Um, so the Madam X Ultra ego is named after, uh, the nineteen oh eight play written by Alexandre Besson, as well as the eighteen eighty-four portrait by John Singer Sargent. Um, she, she said in the album teaser, I decided to call my record Madam X. Madam X is a secret agent, traveling around the world, changing identities, fighting for freedom, bringing light to dark places. She is a dancer, a professor, head of state, a housekeeper, an equestrian, a prisoner, a student. A mother, a child, a bitch, I'm just kidding. A teacher, a nun, a singer, a saint, a whore, a spy in the house of love. I am Madame X. Housekeeper really threw me out there, but I am also a housekeeper in my house, so. She also said that Martha Graham, one of her early dance teachers, would call her Madame X because every day you come to school and I don't recognize you. Every day you change your identity.

• 3:17:41Speaker 02

  I like that. That's the best thing I like about this. Yeah.

• 3:17:45Yasi Salek?

  The artwork is, again, by Stephen Klein. She's wearing, uh, I bet, diamond art deco earrings by Panisi Jewelry. Black hair, pale skin, arched eyebrows, thin smile, red lipstick. I think the Frida Kahlo knot is cool.

• 3:18:01Speaker 02

  It's her icon. Of course, I like that.

• 3:18:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the writing here. And again, like you said about Rebel Heart, it's not flattering.

• 3:18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:07Yasi Salek?

  Which I think is really cool.

• 3:18:08Speaker 02

  It is. That is. That is.

• 3:18:09Yasi Salek?

  And the lips shown shut, you know, we already know what that is. I'm not, if you want me to shut up, I'm not shutting up, bitch. But Medellin is a good song.

• 3:18:17Speaker 02

  Medellin is a good, I can't even say it.

• 3:18:19Yasi Salek?

  Medellin?

• 3:18:19Speaker 02

  Medellin.

• 3:18:20Yasi Salek?

  Medellin. Medellin is a fucking banger. And Maluma is hot as hell.

• 3:18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. She did, she put him on two songs on this album so she could hang out with Maluma.

• 3:18:28Yasi Salek?

  You mind if a white girl speak a little Espanol? And I love it. I love it. Yeah, I would put Maluma. I'll put Maluma wherever he wants to go. He can be the second chair of this podcast.

• 3:18:39Speaker 02

  But let's, let's hit a little bit of cringe here. "We built a cartel just for love." No. But the rest of the song is okay. And Edgar Barrera, who works on this song as a writer, is like a, like a total, you know, like bona fide Latin music mega producer superstar.

• 3:19:02Yasi Salek?

  I didn't experience this in real time. Like, I told you this before, like, kind of like after Confessions, like, I was like, who? Madonna? Unfortunately, that's my bad, but I was, like, busy doing other stuff.

• 3:19:11Speaker 02

  Well, now you're really back.

• 3:19:12Yasi Salek?

  And now I'm so, I'm so back. Of course, I heard Four Minutes. I mean, things break through, but I didn't sit with the albums. I was working here at Spotify.com at that, at this time. And Viva Latino playlist was huge. And there was so much around those artists. And I feel like she was quite early in adopting collaboration with these big artists.

• 3:19:35Speaker 02

  Yes, because Anita's on this record.

• 3:19:37Yasi Salek?

  Anita's on the record.

• 3:19:37Speaker 02

  It was very early for Anita, which is super fucking cool. But you know, Madonna's had a taste for Latin things her entire life, so.

• 3:19:45Yasi Salek?

  Yes. I also have a taste for Jesus Liz. I think it's cool.

• 3:19:48Speaker 02

  It's not a bad song. I like it. When it came out, I was excited. I went to some premiere of it at MTV.

• 3:19:53Yasi Salek?

  With the video?

• 3:19:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:19:54Yasi Salek?

  The video's great.

• 3:19:55Speaker 02

  I mean, if you, listen, if you invite me to a Madonna event, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I will show up.

• 3:19:59Yasi Salek?

  She looks like a woman's toe.

• 3:20:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. But I thought she was gonna be there and she was like in another country. And I was like, oh.

• 3:20:05Yasi Salek?

  Being Carmen Sandiego?

• 3:20:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:20:07Yasi Salek?

  They get married in the video?

• 3:20:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:20:09Yasi Salek?

  They ride horses. They bonded over their love of horse riding at the MTV Awards.

• 3:20:13Speaker 02

  But then after this, things get really...

• 3:20:15Yasi Salek?

  Okay, you know what? I like dark ballet. I'll say it with my whole chest. I like dark ballet. Upon first listen, I was like, I did the full kombucha meme.

• 3:20:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. It's one of my favorites, yes.

• 3:20:27Yasi Salek?

  And I'm here. I'm like, you know what? It uses the dance of the reed flutes from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. Iconic.

• 3:20:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:20:37Yasi Salek?

  At first, I was like, did you just say Supreme hoodie? But that's my personal trauma that jumped out. I had nothing to do with Madonna.

• 3:20:45Speaker 02

  No, but she can dress like a boy, she can dress like a girl. We've been there before.

• 3:20:48Yasi Salek?

  We're talking about Joan of Arc.

• 3:20:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:20:51Yasi Salek?

  She's talking, she's talking, she's talking about Joan of Arc, who fought the English and she won, and still the French were not happy. Still, they judged her, she said. They said she was a man, they said she was a lesbian, they said she was a witch, and in the end, they burned her at the stake, and she feared nothing.

• 3:21:02Speaker 02

  But she has a song called Joan of Arc that's good.

• 3:21:05Yasi Salek?

  Well, why can't we have favorites that we mine? You know, she's been talking about Frida Kahlo since fucking nineteen eighty-two.

• 3:21:11Speaker 02

  I know.

• 3:21:12Yasi Salek?

  Um, I like it. I think it's, okay, here's...

• 3:21:15Speaker 02

  It's also, it's too slow for me. I can't.

• 3:21:17Yasi Salek?

  It's so weird.

• 3:21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21:19Yasi Salek?

  I like how fucking weird it is. Nobody is making a Tchaikovsky referencing kind of rap about Joan of Arc in the year twenty-eighteen.

• 3:21:28Speaker 02

  I give you all that, so, yes.

• 3:21:40Yasi Salek?

  And she put Miki Blanco in the video to play Joan of Arc. So fucking cool. Miki Blanco, in the culture at the moment, had-

• 3:21:48Speaker 02

  Was kind of on the way out, but yes.

• 3:21:50Yasi Salek?

  Had done the Beyonce stuff, yeah. It starts with a Joan of Arc quote in the video. "One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying." And then it ends with one from Miki Blanco. "I have walked this earth, black, queer, and HIV positive, and no transgression against me has been as powerful as the hope I hold with him." I find it very moving, Supreme hoodie and all.

• 3:22:14Speaker 02

  Madonna loves a powerful quote. She's got a lot of Baldwin quotes in the live show for this. She knows what she's talking about.

• 3:22:20Yasi Salek?

  This song is like seven minutes long.

• 3:22:22Speaker 02

  This song is such a no for me, I'm sorry. But I love that you love it.

• 3:22:25Yasi Salek?

  I love it.

• 3:22:26Speaker 02

  It's cute.

• 3:22:26Yasi Salek?

  I think it's cool.

• 3:22:29Yasi Salek?

  God control.

• 3:22:30Speaker 02

  Okay, so I will say this.

• 3:22:31Yasi Salek?

  This is where I'm-

• 3:22:32Speaker 02

  This is rough, but Madonna played Pride-

• 3:22:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:22:36Speaker 02

  Like, two weeks after the album came out, and it was like-

• 3:22:39Yasi Salek?

  The LA one or the one here?

• 3:22:40Speaker 02

  No, the one here. It was on Pride Island, on the west side of Manhattan.

• 3:22:43Yasi Salek?

  Got it.

• 3:22:44Speaker 02

  God, getting into this thing, I have a lot of issues with, like, gay men at Pride not, like, letting anybody else have any space.

• 3:22:51Yasi Salek?

  Got it.

• 3:22:51Speaker 02

  Like, I was literally being punched in the face as I was trying to get through the crowd to this thing. It was like an actual nightmare, but she did Vogue, which was like epic. And it was like preview of the Madame X show, but she did the song, and it was good. And I was like, okay, this works live in a way that really does not work on the record. She's singing like through clenched teeth, perhaps the grill is in, I'm not 100% sure. It's a very didactic song about gun violence.

• 3:23:13Yasi Salek?

  If I wanted to sing as if someone had wired my jaw shut and I wasn't allowed to speak, and that's why she sounds like that.

• 3:23:18Speaker 02

  Okay, well, yes, that track is what she sounds like. But there's some really cringey rap in here that includes, "That's why I don't smoke that dope." That's really bad.

• 3:23:27Yasi Salek?

  That dope is a little, I felt like a dork of-

• 3:23:29Speaker 02

  It is, and it ends with some sort of Dr. Seuss-y thing, and it's just like very processed-

• 3:23:33Yasi Salek?

  It's not my favorite song on here. I don't really like it.

• 3:23:36Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna say that it did work live. Everything I'm saying sounds very negative, but it really did work live.

• 3:23:40Yasi Salek?

  This song-

• 3:23:41Speaker 02

  It kind of had a choir, it had like a vibe, it had like an energy.

• 3:23:44Yasi Salek?

  Even when she said, "That's why I don't smoke that-"

• 3:23:46Speaker 02

  It did, even, yeah.

• 3:23:48Yasi Salek?

  And this song is Madonna and Miri Way and Casey Spooner.

• 3:23:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:23:51Yasi Salek?

  Which I'm not gonna get in, again, into the weeds, but there was-

• 3:23:54Speaker 02

  Let's not give any oxygen to that.

• 3:23:56Yasi Salek?

  Some drama, but it was very funny. At one point, he posted that he was poor in Berlin.

• 3:24:01Speaker 02

  Because Madonna had not paid him for his track, I know.

• 3:24:04Yasi Salek?

  I'm poor.

• 3:24:05Speaker 02

  A lot of people have tried to talk to me about this.

• 3:24:07Yasi Salek?

  It feels like a result of your own choices.

• 3:24:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24:10Yasi Salek?

  But anyways, I love Fisher Spooner, we're not gonna shit on Casey Spooner, but I just thought that was very funny.

• 3:24:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24:15Yasi Salek?

  The video is very controversial.

• 3:24:20Speaker 02

  Well, it's a gun violence thing.

• 3:24:21Yasi Salek?

  I understand what she was trying to do. I agree that I don't think it was successful. But I think I have to give it to her that she's constantly trying to provoke people into thinking about things differently and to paying attention to things. Again, it's not maybe with the skittish of gloves.

• 3:24:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:24:44Yasi Salek?

  And I think a lot of people were very upset by this.

• 3:24:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:24:47Yasi Salek?

  And I personally don't also enjoy watching it.

• 3:24:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24:50Yasi Salek?

  But I think it's cool that she was really passionate about gun control and was trying to like make a statement in some way about it.

• 3:24:57Speaker 02

  Yes. Pulse nightclub shooting.

• 3:24:59Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:25:00Speaker 02

  There are a lot of things that she was referencing here. Again, it works live. That's all I'll say. It did not, it does not work in many other contexts, but it did work live.

• 3:25:09Yasi Salek?

  Future.

• 3:25:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:25:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's also kind of a no for me. This is how I learned that Quavo's name is Quavius Marshall.

• 3:25:16Speaker 02

  I did know that for some reason.

• 3:25:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:18Speaker 02

  But yeah, this is, this album is just like larded with rapper features. And I'm just like, I hate features in general.

• 3:25:24Yasi Salek?

  I don't want to point fingers, but there's a writer on this song and his name is Diplo. Okay, moving along.

• 3:25:28Speaker 02

  I know. And Starra, who was, who was coming up at that time.

• 3:25:31Yasi Salek?

  Do you feel like this was a leftover from Rebel Heart?

• 3:25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it sounds like unapologetic bitch.

• 3:25:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. That's how I kind of go.

• 3:25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:25:39Yasi Salek?

  I think it's cool. Again, I'm not gonna like listen to it.

• 3:25:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:25:43Yasi Salek?

  For pleasure, per se. I'm like physically uncomfortable with this record.

• 3:25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can see that.

• 3:25:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Listen, I think for me always I would prefer something completely off the Richter scale than something mid.

• 3:25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 3:25:56Yasi Salek?

  I have a fucking, like, all these, I listened to them for the past two weeks, we just talked about them, I couldn't, gun to my head, I couldn't name you one of those songs that we, if you were like, what does Addicted sound like? I'd be like, I don't know, I've never heard that song.

• 3:26:07Speaker 02

  See, all those I can, there's, all these I've literally just like, I've erased them from my memory.

• 3:26:10Yasi Salek?

  How could you forget Batuka?

• 3:26:12Speaker 02

  I know. There's, I know there's, there's a troupe of drummers, but then she's got her vocals are like mega processed and I don't like the sort of like natural sound of the organic drumming with the extra processing.

• 3:26:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:26:22Speaker 02

  It's, it doesn't work for me.

• 3:26:34Yasi Salek?

  I just, I like how striking it is.

• 3:26:37Speaker 02

  It is striking.

• 3:26:38Yasi Salek?

  Killers who are partying is very...

• 3:26:42Yasi Salek?

  It's like, I wanna like it.

• 3:26:45Speaker 02

  I wrote, "I have fully forgotten this song and I think that's okay."

• 3:26:48Yasi Salek?

  "I'll be Islam, you don't remember?"

• 3:26:51Speaker 02

  I do now.

• 3:26:52Yasi Salek?

  "If Islam is hated, I'll be Israel if they're incarcerated." Apparently at the Madame X tour, she said Palestine instead of Israel.

• 3:26:58Speaker 02

  I don't remember that, but I believe you.

• 3:27:00Yasi Salek?

  Good for you, Manah.

• 3:27:01Speaker 02

  I can't.

• 3:27:03Yasi Salek?

  I know. Listen, we don't have to.

• 3:27:04Speaker 02

  This is Crave with Sway Lee.

• 3:27:06Yasi Salek?

  I like Crave. You don't like Crave?

• 3:27:08Speaker 02

  What I wrote was, "These songs have no tempo. I hate the singing style. It's like she's wearing her grill."

• 3:27:15Yasi Salek?

  I know the singing style is polarizing for some fans on this song. I just think she sounds fabulous. I think the song is really...

• 3:27:21Speaker 02

  These songs have no shape to me. They're like...

• 3:27:23Yasi Salek?

  Soulful and sexy.

• 3:27:23Speaker 02

  Okay. To me, they're just sort of like blobs.

• 3:27:26Yasi Salek?

  I get it. I guess I'm like, I have a really high tolerance for that.

• 3:27:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:27:30Yasi Salek?

  Look, I don't, I don't need it.

• 3:27:32Speaker 02

  We're learning a lot about each other.

• 3:27:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, you're, well, you're a pop music person, right? I'm not really. Like, I like pop music, but not because it's pop music. So I don't really care about the contours of pop music. I don't care that things have song structure. You know, like, obviously, I mean, like, I like, you know, punk and weird, you know, like...

• 3:27:48Speaker 02

  I mean, I like that stuff too, you know?

• 3:27:49Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 3:27:50Speaker 02

  It contains multitudes.

• 3:27:51Yasi Salek?

  I know you do, but I know you do. I guess I'm just, yeah, this is fine for, I just, I think Sway Lee has a really cool voice. It's an interesting pick.

• 3:28:09Yasi Salek?

  I find Crazy to be very whatever.

• 3:28:12Speaker 02

  I don't get it.

• 3:28:13Yasi Salek?

  That's why y'all mind if a white girl speaks in Portuguese, eh?

• 3:28:15Speaker 02

  And it has like a sort of like a, it's another like a doo-wop tempo thing where I'm like, I don't know, I don't know what you're doing.

• 3:28:20Yasi Salek?

  It's not my favorite.

• 3:28:21Speaker 02

  No. Okay, I have a lot to say about Come Alive. This was so incredible at the show. I think I cried.

• 3:28:27Yasi Salek?

  Because of the like, North African kind of...

• 3:28:30Speaker 02

  It was, there was so much energy to it. It actually does have a great melody. It was like...

• 3:28:34Yasi Salek?

  I love, I think it's a banger.

• 3:28:35Speaker 02

  It's good. It does work on record, but like, seriously, like, everybody was on stage, like, a lot of people, a lot of musicians, all wearing like very colorful garb. Everyone really just singing their hearts out. It was very euphoric and powerful and stirring. It was like, it was a peak moment of that show.

• 3:28:50Yasi Salek?

  I think it's a really good song.

• 3:28:51Speaker 02

  Tough show, by the way, because it was a no-phone show. We were locked in yonder pouches. And she did go on like, two hours late. So I was sitting there without my phone for two hours, like, losing my mind.

• 3:29:00Yasi Salek?

  She was trying to teach you, once again, to be in the moment, be present with yourself and your thoughts.

• 3:29:04Speaker 02

  I know, I filmed so much of the celebration. I can actually put together a supercut on YouTube.

• 3:29:10Yasi Salek?

  I bet you could.

• 3:29:10Speaker 02

  I could, I'm sorry. But yeah, this was, and also on the album, I'm like, okay, so finally, there's some momentum. Like, something is building here. I really love this song.

• 3:29:19Yasi Salek?

  I think it's great. I also really like the song with Anita. Faz gostoso. I think it's cool.

• 3:29:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:29:24Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was interesting that she had to kind of relearn. Oh, no, I don't think Madonna speaks fluent Portuguese, but because Anita wanted to do it for her Brazilian fans, which is a very different style of Portuguese than Portugal Portuguese. And so she kind of did that to do it with her. I think it's a, I think it's a pretty cool song, and Anita's cool.

• 3:29:41Speaker 02

  I'm totally okay with it.

• 3:29:43Yasi Salek?

  I also really like Bitch, I'm Loco, because I love Maluma, and I think it's fun. It bangs. I'm afraid to say it bangs.

• 3:29:47Speaker 02

  I said, "Not bad."

• 3:29:48Yasi Salek?

  I fear it bangs.

• 3:29:49Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a sequel to the opener. I don't, I don't hate it. I know you just love Maluma.

• 3:29:54Yasi Salek?

  I really like "I Don't Search, I Find."

• 3:29:57Speaker 02

  This is the winner! I mean, this is, this is, this is an all-time Madonna banger. I mean, this is on the list. This is an amazing song. She did this at Pride 2. And I was just like, "Oh, my God, it's happening."

• 3:30:06Yasi Salek?

  It is a high point of the album.

• 3:30:09Speaker 02

  The only. I mean, come alive in my number two, but like, I remember when I was listening to this, and I was, I had it early, I was playing it for like, just a handful of gay men. And we were just like, "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God." And we hit the song, and it was like, "Oh."

• 3:30:20Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's very much like...

• 3:30:21Speaker 02

  Like water in a desert.

• 3:30:23Yasi Salek?

  Back to roots. Like, it's a housey, clubby, vogey kind of sounding song, and it's, it's wonderful.

• 3:30:39Yasi Salek?

  It becomes her record-breaking 50th number one on Billboard's Hot Dance. Just a fun fact for you. The spoken interlude, "It's our gypsy blood, we live between life and death, waiting to move on, and in the end, we accept it." That's actually an adapted version of a speech in full from a character from Peaky Blinders named Paulie Gray.

• 3:30:56Speaker 02

  Really?

• 3:30:57Yasi Salek?

  Literally, almost exactly.

• 3:30:58Speaker 02

  Did not know.

• 3:30:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:59Speaker 02

  That is a great song, though. I mean, like...

• 3:31:01Yasi Salek?

  It's wonderful.

• 3:31:02Speaker 02

  It's not, it does not justify all of Madame X, but it's really, really good. Because then, we have another no-tempo song, "Looking for Mercy." And then, I'm sorry, I'm skipping to the end. I hate "I Rise."

• 3:31:13Yasi Salek?

  I hate "I Rise," too.

• 3:31:14Speaker 02

  It makes me legitimately angry, and she ended the show with it, and I wanted to leave. I was like...

• 3:31:18Yasi Salek?

  It's kind of like the video that we just talked about where it's like, the intention is good. The road to hell, though, paved with those.

• 3:31:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:31:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this song is not good. This is not good. I like Extreme Occident, which is from The Deluxe. I think it's quite good. I think when Madonna and Merwey's are left to cook, we get some cool and interesting stuff. Back that up to the beat is just bad. It's clearly a leftover.

• 3:31:42Speaker 02

  I thought all the other extras were really rough.

• 3:31:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:31:45Yasi Salek?

  To Nana, kind of bad. Uh, Child Bella, not bad with Akimi Jabute. And that's kind of interesting. I like Madam X as a whole. There are some low points, but I just find it, I find it far more interesting than the last three albums that we talked about, even though maybe the last three albums have some better songs. I just, as a project, I find it more compelling.

• 3:32:07Speaker 02

  I cannot agree with you.

• 3:32:09Yasi Salek?

  So, okay, we're all, there's many flavors of Madonna fan.

• 3:32:12Speaker 02

  There's room for debate.

• 3:32:13Yasi Salek?

  In the world. I think everyone should have their personal opinion, and they don't have to convert other people.

• 3:32:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:32:20Yasi Salek?

  That's what art is for, is for enjoyment.

• 3:32:23Speaker 02

  Artists are here to disturb the peace, was the Baldwin quote she opened The Madam X Show with.

• 3:32:28Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:32:28Speaker 02

  Where I actually really liked the show. People hate the show.

• 3:32:32Yasi Salek?

  Why?

• 3:32:32Speaker 02

  People were rioting.

• 3:32:33Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was visually very stunning.

• 3:32:36Speaker 02

  People were angry.

• 3:32:37Yasi Salek?

  I kind of like how she was like, oh, did you think, Brown world was culture appropriation? Here's my fan.

• 3:32:44Speaker 02

  But I like that she was like, I'm gonna make a cabaret, basically. Like, a lot of crowd work, a lot of it. Like, I saw it twice, so I knew that some of it was repeated. But like, a lot of crowd work, interaction.

• 3:32:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:32:55Speaker 02

  It felt so accessible. It was like, you know, sort of like, it was, she did opera houses and theaters. It's like when you see a Broadway show.

• 3:33:00Yasi Salek?

  It was smaller, yeah.

• 3:33:01Speaker 02

  And you're like, wow, I'm really close to these performers. Like, I thought that was really cool. John Parella's reviewing for The New York Times. I was his editor.

• 3:33:07Yasi Salek?

  The god, JB.

• 3:33:08Speaker 02

  From Madam X Show, reimagines pop spectacle for a theater stage. Merging her newest music and calls for political awareness with striking intimacy. That actually was the deck. I might have written that, not him, but it was great. John's review of the show was so good, as they always were. John Prellis on Madonna, by the way, unheralded, but he is like one of the best critics on her ever.

• 3:33:26Yasi Salek?

  We, I quote him a bunch of times throughout our, our, because as I like to always say to John, other John, care of Monica, like if there's someone I'm looking up, guess who interviewed them?

• 3:33:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, every time.

• 3:33:36Yasi Salek?

  John Prellis.

• 3:33:37Speaker 02

  Every time I'd be like, oh, we written about this before. Yes, and then John did. Anyway. Amazing. But just a couple of moments from that tour, if you don't mind.

• 3:33:44Yasi Salek?

  Please.

• 3:33:45Speaker 02

  Just a couple. Okay. Well, the, the real, I mean, the one everybody talked about, because it was, was Frozen. Unbelievable moment. She is standing, singing, delivering unbelievably great vocals. And behind her, massive on screens, is Lourdes dancing.

• 3:33:59Yasi Salek?

  Oh, and it's like this big, huge Lourdes, right? And she's kind of like small. It's so awesome.

• 3:34:05Speaker 02

  Really powerful. And it was just, I love that song.

• 3:34:07Yasi Salek?

  Especially given that Ray of Light was such a song about motherhood and her first child was Lourdes. It's like so beautiful.

• 3:34:22Speaker 02

  And Batuca was great with all the drummers and the singers. There were so many staircases. And she really started messing up her knees and stuff. And by the end of this tour, COVID had hit. So like it was impacting the end of it, which was, I mean, again, everything about this was like, Jesus. Um, you know, it was a little cringe, but uh.

• 3:34:38Yasi Salek?

  We're all going there.

• 3:34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:34:40Yasi Salek?

  I'm cringe as hell already, and I'm gonna keep going there. There's no way to age and not become cringe.

• 3:34:46Speaker 02

  This is, it was one of her biggest experiments. So when you say you love this, I'm like, I, I love it from the perspective of like, she really put herself out there. It was very, it was ultimately a vulnerable thing.

• 3:34:55Yasi Salek?

  Also left a lot of money on the table.

• 3:34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, she made it all back on the Celebration tour, but yeah. Uh, sorry.

• 3:35:01Yasi Salek?

  She could have made double, you know?

• 3:35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:35:04Yasi Salek?

  Um, I, I, yeah, I have.

• 3:35:06Speaker 02

  It was brave, which is not always a compliment, but I do, I do think it was brave. It was just like, you know, at this point, she's performed in every size venue and every kind of place. And then she sets up these little weird residencies.

• 3:35:16Yasi Salek?

  I just, that to me is old Madonna. Not old, sorry, old school Madonna. It's like going back to like, following, I think she's at her strongest when she follows her. Interests and whims and desires and no matter how weird they are and like and still and picks collaborators. But I thought again, the collaborators on Madame X, you know, short of Puebla or whatever, were just far more interesting.

• 3:35:41Speaker 02

  I just like, I really, I'm just like anti-feature in general.

• 3:35:44Yasi Salek?

  I get it.

• 3:35:44Speaker 02

  Like whenever I see an album larded with features, I'm just like, you don't need these, it's you.

• 3:35:48Yasi Salek?

  Um, well, the good news is that our arc is not done because as of obviously, about what, a month or two ago, I don't remember the time, what day is it?

• 3:35:58Speaker 02

  It actually was almost exactly four weeks ago.

• 3:36:00Yasi Salek?

  And then by the time this comes out, it'll be like a month and a half or two months, whatever, but Madonna surprised us all.

• 3:36:06Speaker 02

  Well, we knew she was working on it.

• 3:36:07Yasi Salek?

  Yes, that's true. I wasn't actually that surprised. Although I didn't know she was working on it when I first conceived of this Madonna month because I'm just a witch.

• 3:36:14Speaker 02

  You are a very powerful witch.

• 3:36:16Yasi Salek?

  Thank you.

• 3:36:16Speaker 02

  You know, the dream of a Confessions 2 had long been, you know.

• 3:36:20Yasi Salek?

  In the ether.

• 3:36:22Speaker 02

  Yes, I, I think I tweeted about it like a couple of million times, just like, give us Confessions 2. And then when it seemed like it was actually coming to pass, then I start to panic. Because I was like, what if it isn't as good as Confessions 1? And I got worried. But then we did get something and it was great.

• 3:36:34Yasi Salek?

  I think I'll Feel So Free is really good.

• 3:36:36Speaker 02

  I love.

• 3:36:36Yasi Salek?

  I genuinely like it a lot.

• 3:36:38Speaker 02

  Also an iconic song for my new era, yes.

• 3:36:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. Jump, I Feel So Free.

• 3:36:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:36:42Yasi Salek?

  I actually also, I kind of like the Sabrina Carpenter song. It's not as strong as I Feel So Free to me, and I'm not a huge, personally, a Sabrina Carpenter fan. But I think, again, I like the messaging. It's kind of subtle, but it's very much like, oh, sorry, you wanted me to lay down and die, I'm not doing that.

• 3:37:00Speaker 02

  And she returns to Coachella with Sabrina and you sort of show everyone how it's done.

• 3:37:04Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Um, I, we both heard some songs off the, uh, off the new album and I thought they were very good.

• 3:37:11Speaker 02

  I was really relieved.

• 3:37:13Yasi Salek?

  I'm stoked.

• 3:37:13Speaker 02

  Which seems obnoxious. I was not relieved, I'm happy. You know, like, I'm just like, I relieved just for a personal thing because I didn't want to set myself up for disappointment. But this is like, this is truly Madonna's milieu. And if like, Confessions was seen as a little bit of a corrective after American life, to me, Confessions 2 will definitely be a corrective after Madame X.

• 3:37:31Yasi Salek?

  Which makes sense. No, I mean, I, I think just also like spiritually, it makes sense. Like, it's, it's very similar where like, you know, Madame X is, is austere and like.

• 3:37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:37:42Yasi Salek?

  Making kind of statements, whereas like, we're back to having fun.

• 3:37:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:37:46Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 3:37:47Speaker 02

  We're back to the dance floor where it really all begins for her.

• 3:37:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so I can't wait. And then if I could be so greedy, I think I would love to hear one more Madonna album with, I want to reunite with Patrick Leonard. To me, some of the best music she's ever made in life is with Patrick Leonard, and I would just love a couple more songs.

• 3:38:08Speaker 02

  Well, I would say it's not an impossibility, because also remember that Confessions 2, she's returning to Warner Brothers.

• 3:38:14Yasi Salek?

  Oh.

• 3:38:14Speaker 02

  She's home.

• 3:38:15Yasi Salek?

  So maybe we'll get some bonus tracks or super deluxe or whatever. Anyways, I would take it. Let's close out by me asking you, because I think it's only fair, what's your, what's your number one favorite Madonna album?

• 3:38:26Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 3:38:26Yasi Salek?

  And I'm very sorry to do that to you.

• 3:38:28Speaker 02

  I didn't, I didn't prepare.

• 3:38:29Yasi Salek?

  You should know it.

• 3:38:30Speaker 02

  I know. It's Confessions are music.

• 3:38:33Yasi Salek?

  Wow, interesting.

• 3:38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:38:37Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 3:38:37Speaker 02

  I am later.

• 3:38:38Yasi Salek?

  Our friend Cody, um, Crystal Toe, who is an incredible artist and director and creative director and songwriter and artist, all in one, uh, also his favorite is music. He thinks the best Madonna album.

• 3:38:52Speaker 02

  What is your favorite?

• 3:38:53Yasi Salek?

  It's hard. I, I kind of oscillate back and forth between Like a Prayer and True Blue.

• 3:38:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:38:58Yasi Salek?

  Those are like my, the two I listen to probably the most. But I love, I mean, I fucking love erotica. I fucking love Bedtime Story. So that era is kind of my favorite, like, that time period.

• 3:39:11Speaker 02

  I mean, I obviously love these records.

• 3:39:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're favorite.

• 3:39:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:39:15Yasi Salek?

  I've been listening to a lot of True Blue. Like, even though I'm like up to here with Madonna, some days I'm like, I'm putting on True Blue. Because it's just wall-to-ball hits.

• 3:39:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:39:27Yasi Salek?

  Um, Karen Gans, this has been an honor and a pleasure to spend your first day of freedom. Indulging ourselves in Madonna-ology. It's a dream come true. I hope people enjoyed it. I hope we don't go to jail, Madonna Prison, for Cancellation. For saying some things we don't like, but I think that if you're honest with yourself about an artist that you love, you're allowed to like and don't like some stuff. And I hope you guys really enjoyed this 77-hour, four-part history of Madonna arc. And we can't wait for Confessions 2. Oh, my god, yes. All right, come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplain.

• 3:40:20Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain. Our guest today was Karen Gans. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Olivia Creary. Thanks to Belle Roman. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Dalback and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clayton and graciously recorded by Carlos Delgarza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy and Sugarfish. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 3:41:08Yasi Salek?

  You know what, Madonna, you can dance for two hours, but come podcasts for four hours. We'll see how that goes.