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Celebration Recalibrated

A remixed and revisited version of Celebration. 

Murder On The Dancefloor

David Guetta premieres (part of) his remix of Madonna's "Revolver," around 5:27. Sounds like a lukewarm mess. How do you dance to this? Everything he's done to it works against the song's rhythm.

The Look-Back Of Love

A behind-the-scenes look at Madonna's dress rehearsal for her Michael Jackson speech confirms that her recent new hair was all magic hair.

 

More importantly, Madonna's latest Rolling Stone cover is out, and it makes use of a 1987 Herb Ritts portrait (what happened to the new shoot she allegedly did?) that as I've blogged in the past is among her best-ever.

Highlights from her chat with Austin Scaggs (which is illustrated with much less interesting back-in-the-day images):

What's America Coming To When Mariah Carey Can't Score A #1 Album...?

Its senses.

In a week when Mariah Carey—who moved over 400,000 of her last CD in its opening frame—should have sailed to #1 easily with Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, it appears she will have to settle for #3. Final SoundScan numbers (which are different from yesterday's Hits numbers) reveal that 67-year-old Barbra Streisand goes to #1 with 180,415 units sold of her jazzy Love Is the Answer (her first chart-topper since 1997) and Paramore's Brand New Eyes is close behind with 175,112. Mariah only managed to move 167,912 copies, a shockingly low number.

Madonna's hits package Celebration comes in at #7 (matching the performance of her last best-of, GHV2) with 72,159 sold. Not bad at all for what it is, and slightly higher than expectations.

 

It would appear that Madonna's begrudging TV promos (Letterman, SNL) boosted her a bit, and that Streisand's truly committed and uncharacteristically charming TV promos boosted her a lot.

I think Mariah's issue is just Mimi fatigue—she just had an album out last year and has been in the 'bloids a lot with her hubby. I actually think tabloid coverage hurts album sales, so that is probably a big factor. Soak up the great reviews for Precious then go away for a while and she'll be back in vogue. (Though the decision to re-release an entirely remixed version of her album almost immediately doesn't signal that her people agree with my assessment!)

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One Of The Most Common Punctuation Mistake's Ever!

Oh, fer chrissakes...even Madonna doesn't know that plurals do not require apostrophes??? Was that semester at U of M-Ann Arbor for naught?

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If Madonna Calls, Have Something To Say

Kid Kraddick makes sure to namecheck Mariah Carey first thing during his radio-show call with Madonna, but Madonna namechecks Pigpen so it's cool. Sounds like Guy got the accent in the divorce—love hearing the Michigan girl return.

Pathetic that he hadn't even heard "Revolver" until this moment...it's been around for ages and he's in the industry and talks a lot about being a music lover and seeking out all new music. (Actually, a weirdly long part of the interview is devoted to himself.) He also had clearly never heard of Edith Piaf.

Interesting tidbits: She talks about Mr. Brainwash (briefly) in some quick French, demonstrating knowledge of the language, comments on Janet's MTV performance ("yeah! that was great...") and Liz Rosenberg jumps in on the call again.

Vastly preferred Ryan Seacrest, but I gotta say that Madonna is really, really on in this, fully engaged and playful...why, I'm not sure. Maybe it's the HD factor of televised interviews that inhibits her?

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Madonna & Jesus

If you caught him in his squeeze's "Celebration" video, you know Jesus Luz wants to be a DJ. Now, you can hear his DJ demo set.

Speaking of the ball and chain, after the jump is a nice, full-page ad appearing in Star and OK! (October 5, 2009, issues). This ad didn't appear in the other weeklies, which are probably remarkably more expensive...

Like A Flash Mob

Pretty awesome flash mob arranged to plug Madonna's Celebration—the dancers are great, with a couple of moves I'd never seen in other, similar endeavors. It's particularly fun seeing people dancing to "Revolver" for the first time. I guess it would be cool for WB to do this in NYC, but then the cops would assume someone was about to blow up the subways.

Celabortion

Is Madonna's Celebration hot, or a hot mess? Probably both, considering the average fan won't notice the seemingly countless errors that plague the set, and that threaten to drive audiophiles, grammar buffs and other detail-oriented types completely insane.

34 Hits That Changed The World

Another new Celebration ad, or at least a more finalized, U.S. version of what we've seen before.