Reinvention is what Madge is all about. I have reminded myself of this every time in the last ten years that she has made a disappointing endeavour.
That’s not to say I was a massive fan of anything she released before 1996, but at least I understood where she was coming from; an enterprising, intelligent and innovative businesswoman who knew how to set the style.
In a review of last year’s Confessions On A Dance Floor, I wrote that Madge was losing touch and leaning much harder on younger and more talented discoveries to stay on top. This is no more evident than in her first ‘live’ CD ever, a release which is coupled with a didactic and unnecessarily moralising two-hour DVD.
The live album is nothing to write home about really. Madonna never was much of a singer and without the mandatory stage show, her live songs really lack the spark of her studio recordings.
There are only 14 tracks in this her first live album, which supposedly span a three-decade career. The most notable track is the opening monologue ‘the beast’, where Madonna spends five whole minutes reading from The Bible and putting the fear of God into her loyal fans about their ‘evil’ ways.
Which brings us to the DVD. Harnessing the exact format of her 1991 documentary In Bed With Madonna, we are introduced to the ‘re-invented Madonna’ on her 2004 ‘Re-Invention World Tour’. This is a souped-up, spiritualised version of the old cross-dressing, foul-mouthed, bed hopper we all came to know and love.
Here, Madge is portrayed as the born-again Cabbalist, earth mummy battling to find a balance with her sour-pussed husband, precocious, over-exposed kids and job as she jets across the world tour arena. It might have even been an interesting portrayal if she hadn’t marketed the exact same exploits as fun and exciting 15 years ago. As such, it only turns out depressing and a touch pointless.
There are fundamental flaws in this DVD. Anyone who has ever paid to see Madge live will know that the privilege costs upwards of £50. As such, I find it strikingly hypocritical that this should be Madge’s chosen platform from where she preaches against materialism, hedonism and a way of life that has lined her pockets since the mid-1980s.
I won’t even go into her 45-minute ‘spiritual pilgrimage’ to Israel that’s tacked onto the end for good measure. Coupled with the flippant ‘religious references’ in the course of her tour’s floorshow, the whole schlimazel was so gallingly phoney that I switched off ten minutes in.
By Kath Toumbourou
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