DS Forums

 
 

Would "Rebel Heart" have been succcessful if it hadn't leaked?


Reply
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 07-09-2015, 06:15
Moon Goddess
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Kent, UK
Posts: 346

I think Rebel Heart is one of Madonna's best albums in recent years. It's one of her more personal records and has some really good songs that deserved a chance but I can't help but wonder if the fact she got hacked and had the album release totally messed up as a result totally ruined any chance of success this era had.

I think if this hadn't happened the release would have been totally different and people may have been more wililng to give the album a chance, as bad publicity would not have been the focus but the music as it should be.

What do you think?
Moon Goddess is offline   Reply With Quote
Please sign in or register to remove this advertisement.
Old 07-09-2015, 07:24
mkirilenkofan
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 719
Nope.
mkirilenkofan is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 07:28
dearmrman
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Utopia
Posts: 10,192
I doubt it these days, the fans would get it regardless, others would have listened to it via other sources before purchase i.e Spotify etc...
dearmrman is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 07:43
Aneechik
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Mount Olympus
Posts: 18,239
No it wouldn't. She phoned it in, as she's been doing since Confessions.
Aneechik is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 08:42
AdzPower
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 4,789
No it wouldn't, mainly because of the huge amount of prejudice older female artists are receiving these days.
AdzPower is offline Follow this poster on Twitter   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 10:38
dearmrman
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Utopia
Posts: 10,192
No it wouldn't, mainly because of the huge amount of prejudice older female artists are receiving these days.
What a load of rubbish, artists with long careers, popularity will always fade male or female no matter how good an album is.
dearmrman is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 10:44
Daily Dreams
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 1,431
I think it'd have performed slightly better but not a lot. I mean, when she slowly released songs before the album release, I remember them being 1, 2 and 3 on iTunes that day which is pretty good. Looking back though, if the Rebel Heart era had more organisation and hadn't leaked, it would have worked better.
Daily Dreams is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 13:26
NicoleRich
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 2,026
Sadly, I don't think so. Her career has remained in the gutter ever since she parted ways with Warner. It's a shame as Rebel Heart is one of her best albums in years.
NicoleRich is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 13:35
FMKK
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 26,181
No it wouldn't, mainly because of the huge amount of prejudice older female artists are receiving these days.
If Madonna were 30 years younger, Bitch I'm Madonna would still be unlistenable muck.
FMKK is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 15:30
SpaceCake
Inactive Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Manchester
Posts: 288
I think Rebel Heart would have been a little more successful but not much. After all MDNA has only sold 135,000 copies in the UK since 2012. Her success and appeal on the charts has been dwindling since the end of the last decade. I don't think it matters that Rebel Heart is her best album in ten years. It was never going to have high sales.

No it wouldn't, mainly because of the huge amount of prejudice older female artists are receiving these days.
Madonna's age doesn't matter one bit when it comes to the album chart. A singers age is only an issue when it comes to the Top 40 singles chart. Barbra Streisand is 73 years old, but it hasn't stopped Partners selling 300,000 copies in the UK and over two million copies worldwide in the last year.

I wish people would stop using ageism as an excuse for everything.

If Madonna were 30 years younger, Bitch I'm Madonna would still be unlistenable muck.
I agree. I'm embarrassed that it's Madonna's most viewed video on YouTube.
SpaceCake is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 16:30
cf80
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Montana (via Dublin, Ireland)
Posts: 124
Well, considering the whole 'leak' thing wasn't really a leak and was actually orchestrated by the label themselves I don't think it really matters. They had realistic expectation for sales and are happy with how it has performed.
cf80 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 17:21
Hitstastic
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 4,744
If Madonna were 30 years younger, Bitch I'm Madonna would still be unlistenable muck.
Agree.

I really don't get how anyone can regard this as a great song, it's so painfully abysmal. :s It probably says a lot that it was chosen to be the latest single from the album.

As for Rebel Heart, the quality of songs isn't there so it probably would've done as well as it has done anyways. I still think Ghosttown is brilliant even though some people disagree.

Had Rebel Heart not leaked, the only thing that might've done better would've been the lead single Living For Love. Instead by putting all those songs up to pre-order the album, that botched up any chance for singles success.
Hitstastic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 18:47
FruityLoopy
Inactive Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Durham
Posts: 495
I think it did actually. She released 12 songs to iTunes before the album was officially released. So most of the people who wanted the album already had it. Who on earth releases 12 songs from an album months before its release?

I can understand why the first batch of 6 songs were released at Christmas but releasing a further 6 in February was very short sighted. Even more so when you consider that Iconic, Joan Of Arc and Hold Tight took the top 3 spots on iTunes within hours of becoming available and the sad thing is for Madonna that had stupid chart rules not made the songs unable to chart then Hold Tight would have entered the top 40 at number #9 that week....

Yep that's right, a small fact no one seems to realise (or perhaps not even know about) is that Madonna actually topped UK iTunes earlier this year with Hold Tight. So interest was most certainly there. The label blew Hold Tight from being a huge success because of the way in which it became available.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/ne...pnCFefJAKbSJUy

I can't remember the last time a female of Madonna's age topped the UK iTunes chart. It might be another record for her.
FruityLoopy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 19:44
Cloudy2
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 3,984
No it wouldn't. She phoned it in, as she's been doing since Confessions.
I don't think the album would have performed any better. I mostly agree about 'phoning in' there are some great songs on MDNA, something which is missing on Rebel Heart (there are good songs though).

The only way Rebel Heart could have sold more was to cut the c*** of which there is a lot of. I could have cut the album to 10 songs and made the album more coherent. An actual lead single that was good would have helped.
Cloudy2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2015, 23:18
Hitstastic
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 4,744
I can understand why the first batch of 6 songs were released at Christmas but releasing a further 6 in February was very short sighted. Even more so when you consider that Iconic, Joan Of Arc and Hold Tight took the top 3 spots on iTunes within hours of becoming available and the sad thing is for Madonna that had stupid chart rules not made the songs unable to chart then Hold Tight would have entered the top 40 at number #9 that week....

Yep that's right, a small fact no one seems to realise (or perhaps not even know about) is that Madonna actually topped UK iTunes earlier this year with Hold Tight. So interest was most certainly there. The label blew Hold Tight from being a huge success because of the way in which it became available.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/ne...pnCFefJAKbSJUy

I can't remember the last time a female of Madonna's age topped the UK iTunes chart. It might be another record for her.
Some interesting points here that even I didn't know about.

I knew all those tracks were put on iTunes as pre-orders for the album but I didn't know Hold Tight had sold enough during that week to officially make #9 - had those sales been allowed to count towards the chart.

The whole era has been badly handled from start to finish. I downloaded Ghosttown back in December and when the music video was released, I really thought it was going help sell the song. Nothing!!!

I think the poor performance of Living For Love (which would've been a top 10 hit with a held back release) was the key factor so that UK music channels snubbed Ghosttown. I've never seen the video once of any of the multiple music channels, and yet around the time of the Brit Awards, you couldn't avoid seeing the music video to Living For Love. It was being shown numerous times a day.

As you rightly say, nobody puts half an album up to pre-order the whole thing. In doing so, a lot of people (myself included) would've previewed all the songs and made a judgement based on what they heard. Ghosttown was the only song that appealed to me so why would I want to buy the whole album?

I also think making Ghosttown a single was a huge mistake. It was one of the first songs added to iTunes as a pre-order. Anyone who wanted the song when the music video was released had more than likely already bought the song in December.
Hitstastic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-09-2015, 00:13
Tether
Forum Member
 
Join Date: May 2015
Posts: 332
Madonna is like a chameleon, constantly changing colours, giving everything for love, taking life's blows and coming back for more.

She lives in 'screen time', in a world bigger and bolder than our own, but the honesty of her gaze makes her fans truly feel like she is one of them.

She already has her own place in history, in the future she will most certainly be revered and remembered like other past icons like Marilyn, Garbo and Elizabeth Taylor, I would bet even more so.

I'd even wager that she and Michael Jackson will eclipse Elvis and the Beatles are the most examined and celebrated visual and musical artists of the 20th century, purely because their entire body of visual work is far greater.
Tether is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-09-2015, 00:22
FMKK
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 26,181
I don't think the album would have performed any better. I mostly agree about 'phoning in' there are some great songs on MDNA, something which is missing on Rebel Heart (there are good songs though).

The only way Rebel Heart could have sold more was to cut the c*** of which there is a lot of. I could have cut the album to 10 songs and made the album more coherent. An actual lead single that was good would have helped.
She still has a good record in her if she can cut out all the faux-club shit, edit out some of the rubbish and stick to 10 or 11 well produced tracks. Instead, it seems like she just throws all sorts of shit at the wall invites on ten million featured rappers and producers and ends up with an overlong, incoherent mess.

Madonna is like a chameleon, constantly changing colours, giving everything for love, taking life's blows and coming back for more.

She lives in 'screen time', in a world bigger and bolder than our own, but the honesty of her gaze makes her fans truly feel like she is one of them.

She already has her own place in history, in the future she will most certainly be revered and remembered like other past icons like Marilyn, Garbo and Elizabeth Taylor, I would bet even more so.

I'd even wager that she and Michael Jackson will eclipse Elvis and the Beatles are the most examined and celebrated visual and musical artists of the 20th century, purely because their entire body of visual work is far greater.
Hi Madge. Good luck with the tour.
FMKK is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-09-2015, 22:06
Cloudy2
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 3,984
She still has a good record in her if she can cut out all the faux-club shit, edit out some of the rubbish and stick to 10 or 11 well produced tracks. Instead, it seems like she just throws all sorts of shit at the wall invites on ten million featured rappers and producers and ends up with an overlong, incoherent mess.

)
I agree she has another outstanding album in her if she can stop chasing trends and starts setting them again. I also think a return to Warners would help, Interscope appear to give her free-reign to do what she wants and it's not working.

I don't get the fan love for Rebel Heart, it's too long, self indulgent in places and doesn't flow, a lot of the album reminds me of Bedtime Stories which is my least liked Madonna album. Ray Of Light followed Bedtime Stories so I am hoping another major improvement is in the pipeline.
Cloudy2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-09-2015, 22:46
Grabid Rannies
Inactive Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 4,456
I do wish people would stop all this over-analysis. The drastic changes in chart composition over recent years, combined with Madonna's ineluctable slide into super-annuity, mean her career has naturally reached the point that singles just won't cut it any more and nor will album sales set the world alight as they once did. Someone cited Barbra Streisand, but then MOR artists like that have always had their 'special place' when it comes to 'silent' success. When was the last decade Shirley Bassey had a top 10 hit anywhere in the world? Yet I'm sure she's profited enough since that time to keep on bathing in champagne every morning, dine on pureéd diamonds for lunch and shag an endless queue of Monacanian James Bond lookalikeys for dinner, for as long as she continues to please to do so.

Fact is Madonna reached number 26 in the singles chart this year at 56 years of age. Has anyone older than her had a #26 or above this year?? (As in active acts releasing new material, not just re-releases/revisions of dead folks' stuff etc.) Just asking because I genuinely have no idea.
Grabid Rannies is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-09-2015, 22:55
FMKK
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 26,181
I agree she has another outstanding album in her if she can stop chasing trends and starts setting them again. I also think a return to Warners would help, Interscope appear to give her free-reign to do what she wants and it's not working.

I don't get the fan love for Rebel Heart, it's too long, self indulgent in places and doesn't flow, a lot of the album reminds me of Bedtime Stories which is my least liked Madonna album. Ray Of Light followed Bedtime Stories so I am hoping another major improvement is in the pipeline.
I don't think she needs to set trends or chafe them. Just divorce herself totally from that whole scene, pick out a single producer that she trusts and go away to write some songs. Maybe even get in a few musicians so they can try out stuff live in the studio. Then when there are ten tracks she's happy with that actually fit together as a whole, she can release it. No features either!
FMKK is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-09-2015, 19:30
boysforpele
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 3,585
the whole album as it was meant to be listened to was shelved...such a shame as control leaden artist.

She intended the album to have two halves - rebel and heart

such a shame that she had to master tracks in 5 days to release them before the start of the Christmas holiday period ...to stem the leak....but all credit to her as a producer .... but yes it did affect sales and promotion ....but it was always going to be an under performing album ....in terms of Madonna's sales history ...owing to lack of promotion, radio airplay, infamous Brit performance with no follow up in the UK/Europe, lack of buzz for song release..and perhaps wrong choice of single promo that inter scope has had been plagued with for many artists....

but her tour looks marvellous intimate, connected, fun and artistically stunning


lead songs should have been:

unapologetic bitch
hold on
ghost town
rebel heart
bitch i'm madonna or inside out ... but judging by the vevo count i may have been wrong ... in my choice
boysforpele is offline   Reply With Quote
 
Reply




 
Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 14:35.