It would seem like Madonna or Kylie would have to collaborate with a modern artist to get a number 1 which both can do much better than

Artistically, she had amazing twelve years, about the same amount of years like a Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin. Pink Floyd, Elton John, Mariah Carey, Rolling Stones. Are there artists with more years? Maybe a David Bowie, a Phil Collins (with Genesis and solo) a Johnny Cash with some comebacks, Michael Jackson but not many more.

i wouldn't say it was 12 amazing years. she had roughly a 5 year period in the 80s and dipped in the 90s and was lucky to have a revival in popularity with ray of light

and as far as "amazing" goes, it's far from as amazing as the peak of creativity of floyd, bowie, zep and the stones. she's got a great list of hit singles from that time, but not exactly a classic album in the vein of those artists. i'd say the same for queen and abba, plenty of hit singles but the albums aren't as amazing. where's floyd, zep, bowie and the stones were more known for the album, but bowie and the stones did well with singles too

i suppose you could say floyd did well with singles too in the uk as they had hits, just they didn't release many

some artists ride the nostalgia wave by touring famous albums and others use their hits, and if dolly parton can do it then so can madonna. you don't need critical acclaim or artistic integrity to do well in the nostalgia tour business. folk aren't exactly rushing to see the stones to hear them play material from the last 20 years, and i bet elton john gets a better reaction to his tracks that are 30+ years old too

Ray of Light wasn't just a popular record, it garnered huge critical acclaim. Look at its ratings across the critics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_of_Light

Madonna is like most artists her work goes through creative cycles some are more successful than others.

Springsteen's 'Magic' from 2007 stands comparison with anything he did in the 80s, 90s and I don't see him doing the nostalgia tours anytime soon.

Are Prince's 'Plectrumelectrum' and 'Art Official Age' not something of a return to creative form not evident since the early 90s? Or has Prince been in artistic decline since 'Sign o' the Times'?

Is Madonna not more like Springsteen, U2 and Prince than The Stones and Elton John(?) in this respect?

Mariah Carey?? "Artistically"? All the people in that list write their own material...she couldn't write a note for the milkman.

I think Like a prayer and Ray of light (and maybe American life) can be considered as classic albums with critical acclaim.
Confessions is a good pop record but that is it, no more no less.
Everything after is keeping up with the younger contemporaries with BIM as a very high lowpoint

Apart from the covers Mariah has done, she has co-written all her own material. She also produces most of it.

Yep. She wouldn't be worth so much otherwise because that's where the money is.

Pretty much the norm for all long-lasting artists. It's impossible to be at the top of your game consistently forever. It doesn't mean they still can't have the odd flourish but the frequency will decrease. Similar to sports persons in that respect.

She needs to stop chasing number 1's and go back to working with producers that will help her make the mature, credible tracks she was churning out around the early to mid-90s. There are younger, better pop stars out there these days making pop tracks for the kids - let them do their thing instead of desperately trying to keep up with them.

She is in a position as a pop artist to decide which producers she works with and what tracks to sign off so she only has herself to blame for the decline in quality.

do you actually think i don't know that?

the point was that she had a 5 year good period followed by huge dip, and ROL was another good period for her, as opposed to a continous 12 year stretch, then things pretty much went down the tubes from there, and certainly in the last 10 years have just got worse


i'm sure there are some bruce springstein websites you can refer to. i'm not a fan, but you will find he's been doing that for a long time now, even playing classic albums in full. he plays for up to 4 hours playing the best of his back catalogue

magic may stand up to his 90s or 80s material, but how many fans rate it as good as his creative peak in the 70s? given the chance of hearing magic being played in full in concert or darkness on the edge of town, which do you think most paying punters would prefer?


i wouldn't say so. however prince is unlike most of the other artists discussed in that he does write and record a lot of music that's not released that's often considerably better than what is released, or has albums that don't sell well or aren't distributed by traditional methods which are arguably as creative if not more creative than material in previous periods. there are unreleased projects from the last 3 years i'd rather listen to than those. throughout his entire career he's been very creative and recorded music of a variety of styles, such as instrumental jazz albums, accoustic guitar, solo piano, classical, blues, etc. some people don't like that stuff however

some of the stuff on those two albums is good, some of it is shit. if it was up to me i would have moved tracks between albums and removed some and replaced them with other tracks he's recorded in the lead up to those albums but hasn't released on albums. but then again, i would have done that with many of his albums. emancipation is one or two tracks over the running length of a 2cd set but is a 3cd set, and has enough great tracks to make an excellent single disc, without dipping into all the unreleased material from that time


i doubt many who know his work well would say that, as his mid 90s period was one of his most creative and exciting, plus later in the 90s he has the war and the truth, and early 2000s he has one night alone, the rainbox children, xenophobia, and NEWS, all released officially via different methods


no

Love Madonna but I do fear that she'll never have anything as big as Confessions again which was nearly ten years ago now.

With the exception of a couple of tracks I think Rebel Heart is by far Madonna's best album since Ray Of Light. I don't even rate Confessions (I think it's so overrated). I think apart from the excellent 4 singles released from Confessions the rest of the album is pretty damn boring and my 2nd least favourite Madonna album! Madonna was consistently successful from 1984 to 1992, that's 8 years of superstardom and constant hits. She dropped off slightly with Bedtime Stories (to me that's by far her worst album), then she did Evita, which was a break from her usual pop career and into the world of musicals instead and then she did the hugely successful Ray Of Light album followed by the hugely successful Music album. I don't see much gaps in her career there, regarding commercial success. Most of her albums throughout this period have been critically acclaimed. It's just a shame in recent years she'd had to go down the generic r'n'b route with the last 3 albums, with the usual rent-a-rappers etc, that a million other acts have (far more mediocre acts than Madonna too. I mean, bloody Nicki Minaj? Please!) I love Rebel Heart though, with the exception of crap tracks like Bitch I'm Madonna, Iconic, SEX and Autotune Baby! Beautiful songs like Ghost Town, Hold Tight, Joan Of Arc, Heartbreak City, Inside Out, Wash All Over Me, Messiah, Rebel Heart, Addicted and Borrowed Time are amongst Madonna's best works and wouldn't be out of place on any of her earlier classic albums like Like A Prayer, Erotica and Ray Of Light.

Commercial success doesn’t necessarily equal critical acclaim and artistic value, look at The Spice Girls. Contrary to popular belief Madonna, Like a Virgin and True Blue aren’t universally acclaimed albums, their reviews were only ever good. Like a Prayer was Madonna’s first album to receive universal praise, and it was her last until Ray of light in the late-1990s. She hasn’t released another universally acclaimed album since 1998. That's a long time.

Erotica and Bedtime Stories received mixed reviews in the early 1990s and are more or less forgotten today by the general public. Music and Confessions received good reviews, but American Life, MDNA and Hard Candy received very mixed reviews. So three out of five studio albums released in 12 years had a lukewarm response. If you look at The Beatles, most of their studio albums are rated five stars. Madonna has never had that level of acclaim. She’s had two universally acclaimed albums in 32 years. Some people might argue that Madonna has been active a lot longer than The Beatles, but Madonna has released 13 studio albums in 32 years whereas The Beatles released more than that in just seven years.

Rebel Heart is Madonna’s first album in a decade to receive decent reviews, but it's far from being critically acclaimed. She’s spent the last ten years of her career being artistically redundant. It’s amazing that someone approaching 60 is releasing a song called Bitch I’m Madonna but released a song like Frozen when she was 40. She's spent the majority of the last 17 years regressing rather than progressing. Her biggest problem is she tries to sell her music to teenagers and young adults who, for the most part, don't care about her. Hard Candy and MDNA turned off a lot of long-time fans and hardly enticed old fans to come back. Is anyone surprised that her upcoming tour is far from sold out?

The fact is she's no longer important to pop music. There are a lot of artists who are releasing better and more compelling pop music than her. Her diminishing success isn't just down to her age. She's spent far too long going through the motions. If it's not camp dance music, it's light-weight urban music with yet another guest rapper or younger pop star. It’s incredible that it takes between three and eight people to write the rubbish that Madonna has been peddling for the last ten years. If she's the genius her fans claim she is, then perhaps she could write a song by herself on her next album. After all, it's been 30 years since she last did it. I would love a journalist to ask her about her lack of sole writer credits. She sits there in interviews with her nose in the air while talking in that stupid, pretentious accent about how she creates her music. Anyone would think she writes, composes and produces it all herself like Kate Bush does. Madonna's talent is jumping on the latest bandwagon and teaming up with popular producers and writers to try and give her a much-needed hit single.

Her debut album is my favourite from the 1980s. I hardly ever listen to Like a Virgin, I find it embarrassing True Blue was Madonna at her commercial peak. I've always found Like a Prayer overrated. I know it's sacrilege for a Madonna fan to say that.


My friend didn't even realise Madonna had released an album in 1994. I like Erotica and Bedtime Stories. I prefer Madonna's 1990s output to any other decade.


I'm glad that Rebel Heart has received good reviews. I'm not sure I could have handled a third disappointing album in a row after Hard Candy and MDNA. Don't get me wrong, there are some good tracks on them, but they're extremely average albums. American Life is a fan favourite, but most critics dismissed it. It's too similar to Music. She repeated herself.



Madonna wrote five tracks on her debut album by herself. Even though I love that album, I will admit that her talent as a songwriter is limited when she works by herself. That probably explains why she hasn't written a song by herself since Gambler in 1985 (one of her worst, in my opinion). I'm not saying she's a bad songwriter, but I think she works better when she has another person there to help her. The songs she wrote on her debut album are very simple and straight-forward, but the production is what makes them great.

I would like to see her work with just one or two co-writers and producers next time, she's spent too long working with too many people which has affected her music. A reunion with Patrick Leonard could be interesting.

What a load of over-analysis! I'm listening to Rebel Heart right now and it's great - some of it chart-chasing cheese, but overall, Madonna is 56 years of age and by now, and with the wealth she's amassed, she can quite frankly record and release what the hell she likes. OH has bought me an o2 ticket for the December show, and I'm going to be on a high for the rest of the year.

I'm fine with journalists asking Madonna why she doesn't write the songs all by herself if they also ask male performers who write in bands the same question. But it just seems to me very sexist to imply that women must write songs all by themselves or they aren't talented, but the same standard never seems to applied to male singer/songwriters or performers. This is a sexist double standard that is applied to a lot of female songwriters not just Madonna.

Madonna has never said she writes and produces the music all by herself. Just the opposite she has always talked about the people she works with and is very generous towards them. Just in the recent round of interviews, she talked extensively about working with Avicii and his group of songwriters, Diplo and Kanye West on the RH songs.

Erotica and Bedtime Stories were highly acclaimed at the time so to say they didn't get good critical reviews is just false. But I think the reliance on reviews is very misplaced. Reviews are just subjective opinions of some people who happen to be writers. Everyone has different opinions about music. It's one of the most subjective art forms out there. There are actually very few albums that every critic loves and no one dislikes because everyone has such different tastes in music.

But of course, the usual rap against her always come to the tired ageism argument. Madonna started out as a dance artist and she is always going to have some dance element. Some people see that as appealing to teenagers but I see it as continuing in her chosen genre, although she has experimented with softer songs.

If it's not down to her age, name another artist in their fifties that is having huge success on pop radio? There isn't one.

Mostly you are right but i wouldnt class Dylan in your example. His albums since 1997 have all been rated as good as anything he ever did. He certainly doesnt do nostalgia tours even though he still averages 100 + shows a year worldwide he rarely, if ever plays songs like Knocking On Heavens Door, Like A rolling Stone, Times, Maggies Farm, I Want You, Lay Lady Lay etc though on his last tour he has been doing Blowing In The wind.
Regarding Madonna , i think she still thinks she is relevant to the younger end of the market and she simply isnt.

How much she ever contributes to a song is highly debatable Didnt Lil love have about 6 different "song writers on it, her included? A lot of the songs she recorded had multiple songwriters so if she adds a line she gets a copyright royalty

It's a big misunderstanding Madonna is trying to be relevant to the younger end of the market. She's just doing the type of music she has always done and which she does best and feels most comfortable doing. Her first album was a very dance album and most of her fans of whatever age do enjoy uptempo dance tracks.

Bob Dylan is a great artist but Madonna could not switch to that type of folk oriented more conventional "mature" music and still be Madonna.

Dylan hasnt made a folk album since the 60s other than 2 albums of covers in the mid 90s
I used to like Madonna when she first came on the scene but imo she does try to hard to appeal to an audience that simply has no interest in her

It does seem to appear that Madonna's time as a "current" or "relevant" artist is diminishing, but even if she never has another hit single or album ever again she still will go down as the biggest female superstar of her time.

Whilst many would disagree, she can be legitimately placed in the same group as Elvis, The Beatles and Michael Jackson. They are far and away the biggest selling and most famous recording artists of the 20th and early 21st centuries. In 50 to 100 years time, these 4 music acts will still be celebrated, their music careers and social impacts examined and studied. Madonna whether you are a fan or not, really did change and shape our world.

She showed girls how to be attractive, sensual, energetic, ambitious, aggressive and funny -- all at the same time. She never succumbed to the horrible ravages of drugs or depression that so many of her music contemporaries encountered.

Who would have thought way back in 1983, when Madonna released the infectious "Holiday", that she would flourish and metamorphose into an international star of staggering dimensions.

People who can sing and dance are two a penny, look at the litany of these singing reality shows worldwide. The average dullard who gets to the X Factor live shows cannot comprehend that being able to hold a tune isn't what makes a popstar, it takes the ability to market yourself as an artist. One that can command millions of people all over the world to spend hundreds of pounds to catch a glimpse of you on stage. Madonna isn't a mere popstar, she is very much a visual artist.

Aretha and Whitney maybe have the soul and the power vocals, Streisand maybe has accolades and the all round talent, but these bright lights of female artists past and present pale in comparison to Madonna's blazing star.

When she is gone it won't be surprising that we lost her, but that we ever had her at all.

rated by who though? the dylan fanbase is one of those which will typically rate things differently to most. his music is a bit like springsteins in being much of a muchness to many people, but more will rate the older material higher than the new

i would also class dylan the same as springstein when it comes to live gigs, most people will go with the expectation of hearing the old tunes and will react more to them. you could add neil young to that list too. he keeps churning them out but in concert you know what the punters are going to enjoy more. now neil young i am a fan but nothing he's done in the last 30 odd years will compare to the stuff before it. harvest moon is nice, but it's not as good as harvest

You dont read the music mags do you? You dont read the critics do you?
How on earth is Dylan akin to Springstein live? You said yourself Springstein does 4 hours and plays all the hits. Dylan does maybe an hour and a half and doesnt play the hits, Dylans last setlist
16.07.15 - Loerrach
Things Have Changed 2
She Belongs to Me 3
Beyond Here Lies Nothin' 4
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right 6
Duquesne Whistle 3
I'll Be Your Baby Tonight 20
Pay In Blood 4
Full Moon and Empty Arms 20
The Levee's Gonna Break 7
Visions of Johanna 5
Early Roman Kings 4
Shelter from the Storm 6
Blind Willie McTell 4
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum 4
Desolation Row 20
Ballad of a Thin Man 6
All Along the Watchtower
Hardly a greatest hits tour is it?

length has nothing to do with it, and old songs don't need to be hits to be popular. what does reading music mags and critics have anything to do with it, and what does this have to do with Madonna? anyone can google up setlists from Dylan or springstein or most other artists. I had a look at setlist fm to see some of his more recent setlists before posting btw