Let's take a trip

May 2, 2019 8:57 PM

Madonna, yeah, that one, released a new song a couple of weeks ago. Medellín is named after the home town of her duet partner, Maluma, a Colombian reggaton artist and rapper. Here's the video [6m30s]. Here are the lyrics. Here are the lyrics translated to English. It's playful and flirty, and the song seems to be about doing hallucinogens. (Go, Madge!) Maybe you watched their performance on the Billboard Music Awards telecast. Fascinating performance, right? However, if you were actually in the audience that night, it was entirely different.
posted by hippybear (23 comments total)

And this was utterly unplanned, but my twitter just threw the audio of her second new song, I Rise, at my face. I guess here is as good as anywhere to share that.
posted by hippybear at 9:17 PM on May 2, 2019

I...what? We're doing this now with live broadcasts? Digitally adding dancers to a performance on a live broadcast is the 2019 version of what the overlaid first down line was in the 90's. Just nuts.
posted by higginba at 9:18 PM on May 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

(I should say unplanned on my part. I'm sure the gigantic Ciccone marketing machine is hard at work engineering moments like this.) [Edit: I was mostly interested in the difference between the TV presentation and the live performance and fleshed out the post around that.]
posted by hippybear at 9:23 PM on May 2, 2019

I'm having a hard time squaring the circles on cultural appropriation vs generational predation.
posted by es_de_bah at 11:11 PM on May 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

This is so on brand for her in so many ways
posted by Hermione Granger at 11:19 PM on May 2, 2019

She's been living in South America for a while now, to get one of her sons into an elite futbol program. It's hard sometimes to tell the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural influence, and she's always had a thing for men with Spanish Eyes.
posted by hippybear at 11:21 PM on May 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's playful and flirty, and the song seems to be about doing hallucinogens.

Sounds like ayahuasca.

Which seems to be pretty on-brand. High priestess of a secret society, or just very savvy at marketing and building a career off of trendy occult symbolism?

Remember kids: if "benevolent" entities seek to break your soul contract, they only need your permission. So take some drugs, escape into the pretty lights and music, and just give in. Now taking place at your local festival, Burning Man, or warehouse party. YMMV.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 12:16 AM on May 3, 2019

Furry Conventions have dancing late into the night as a giant feature.

Honestly, dancing to fairly decent (if short-form) DJs in a room commingling with giant animals is possibly the best form of dancing ever.

If only Junior Vasquez were to do an 8 hour set at the Reno fur con. OMG!
posted by hippybear at 12:20 AM on May 3, 2019

hippybear: "She's been living in South America for a while now, to get one of her sons into an elite futbol program. "

Well, in Lisbon. Which is in Portugal. Which is in Europe. And which is where they wouldn't let her bring a horse into an 18th century palace to feature in that video.

There's been talk, especially after the horse episode, that Madonna was fed up with Portugal and on the move, though yesterday she moved into a new palace in central Lisbon even as the talk of her leaving by the end of the year continued.
posted by chavenet at 1:23 AM on May 3, 2019 [4 favorites]

Wait, I figured it out. I feel about this EXACTLY the way I feel about a story about US mathematicians creating a small black market around Japanese chalk, and then feeling wistful when a North Korean knockoff displaces their tiny empire. These are the stakes. These are the fables on my street.
posted by es_de_bah at 1:45 AM on May 3, 2019 [10 favorites]

I'm a bit surprised to see her smoking a cigar in this given her previous tough anti-smoking stance.

Is smoking fashionable again now or has big tobacco managed to change her mind with a large cheque?
posted by Lanark at 3:08 AM on May 3, 2019

Metafilter: There's been talk, especially after the horse episode.
posted by gimonca at 5:22 AM on May 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

the song seems to be about doing hallucinogens.

I completely missed that the first time I listened. Duh.

I still kinda feel like the song is missing a good hook, but I like the Latin beat, and actually after seeing the video I like it more.
posted by dnash at 5:52 AM on May 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

I thought she was gone.
posted by pracowity at 6:55 AM on May 3, 2019

Madge as always is late to the most recent cultural zeitgeist
posted by Dressed to Kill at 7:02 AM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

You thought she'd become an immaterial girl?
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 7:02 AM on May 3, 2019 [4 favorites]

Desperate-cito.
posted by glonous keming at 7:14 AM on May 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

I...what? We're doing this now with live broadcasts? Digitally adding dancers to a performance on a live broadcast is the 2019 version of what the overlaid first down line was in the 90's. Just nuts.

You're gonna see a lot more of this kinda stuff. Computing hardware is getting fast enough to do really complex, photorealistic rendering in real time; simultaneously, the broadcast industry is quickly adopting videogame tools like Unreal Engine that let them do live VFX composites integrating real footage with CG environments. The Weather Channel has been experimenting with using this technology to create weather simulations that seem to be taking place in-studio.
posted by Mothlight at 8:22 AM on May 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

As he enters Madam X he thinks of red raged faces and the sweet greenbacks
He climbed upon his honey and he covered her with money
As they do their victory dance
He thinks I hope they choke upon their laughter tracks
They can all go straight to hell while we howl down the whole hotel

Elvis Costello, "Glitter Gulch" off King of America (1986)
posted by chavenet at 8:23 AM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

Apparently the done thing for an aging dance music singer whose voice is starting to fall apart is to turn Auto Tune up to 11.
posted by slkinsey at 8:46 AM on May 3, 2019 [3 favorites]

This looks like Zach Snyder directed Evita using animated GIFs.
posted by Coda at 1:42 PM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

Still too uncanny.
posted by mantecol at 9:29 PM on May 3, 2019

And here's an Engadget story on the technology before it. As I suspected, it was done via Unreal Engine and executed by the same guys who did the weather visualizations for The Weather Channel.
posted by Mothlight at 11:19 AM on May 6, 2019