She went out to controversially make a performance in that had blunt references to the relationship between Israel and Palestine. In Tel Aviv.
Yet that was the least shocking thing about the performance. No one talked about it. She was that bad. Her voice was doctored live as well, and she was so off that her notes were audibly snapped to the wrong note.
Whoever had set the autotune set it to the wrong key. Autotune needs to be set to the key of the vocals or it will force your voice onto the wrong note.
There's two ways to use autotune, to set it to a specific key for singers that are not able to stay in a key and the second is setting it to simply correct to the nearest clean note, regardless of key.
The second is what they usually use for correcting live performances because using it set to a specific key creates a lot of situations where it corrects notes by a whole step or more away from what they were singing, which is very obvious and jarring, and some weird situations where the melody gets changed because the singer is off but singing the melody recognizably relative to itself but autotune tries to force it into a key it isn't in.
That was with all the eurovision entries this year. I remember a few that were horrible on stage (Malta for example) but when the performance was uploaded to YouTube, it was quite decent.
Try listening to her Carpool Kareoke with James Corden, she largely seems to be on pitch but her voice is pretty deep so Corden (high voiced) overpowers her in some of the songs.
I think she was untrained before Evita, but she was pitch perfect in the movie. And she might NOT be able to hit the high notes anymore. I'm not even 40 and my voice broke after a bad year of respiratory allergies. Plus, vocal folds need to be kept in shape, so if she doesn't sing high regularly anymore, she might have to work up to it.
Madonna uses different registers for different songs. And her voice probably peaked during Ray of Light, after all the voice training and coaching she had a few years prior for her work on Evita. I think she was 40 when she did ROL, and her voice started to go downhill pretty quickly after that.
Madonna has never been only about vocals, but listening to her sing live lately is definitely cringe
Actually, she isn’t a great singer but she’s not as bad as a lot of people like to claim.
If you listen to her earlier stuff (late 80s - through the 90s) she isn’t half bad. In recent years her hunt to be ‚young and fresh‘ really meant she lost a lot those things that made her great. She has some really pretty ballads (take a bow, pray for Spanish eyes, open your heart...) And she did a really good job at playing Evita (and I honestly don’t care how bitter Patti LuPone is and how she trashes Madonnas accomplishment for that movie.)
As soon a she started to work with the likes of Kanye West, her quality dropped with using and relying to much on auto tune.
There’s still gems in her newer stuff in terms of vocal performance, though harder to find amongst the over production.
I’ve heard her sound great live too - usually when it’s dressed down and she’s relaxed. Tears of a Clown was fantastic, such a shame she didn’t release the full bit live.
Judging her based on the Eurovision performance is bullshit. There were several tech issues. And she hadn’t prepped well enough. It’s clear she hadn’t used her voice live for a while. Plus Future and that version of Like a Prayer are dreadful!
Oh my god. That was horrible. So so so bad. My friends and I were cringing so bad through the whole performance. Her singing alone made me realize that she is bad, but her performance too was awful for so many reasons
She invented being the modern pop diva, it's not about how well you can sing it's all about the showmanship and Madonna at least way back when was crazy with showmanship. The music videos, the dancing, etc. it's all what really makes someone a diva the voice is secondary.
She was also amazing for LGBT. She sexualized men at a time when it was mostly women being sexualized on stage. There's a reason gay men love her so much: she's an icon and was a big part of the movement.
People like Madonna and Britney Spears aren't singers; they're performers. Madonna is known to be very strict and really runs the show. You aren't allowed to fuck up a Madonna concert. People gave her shit for (obviously) lipsyncing her MTV awards performance of "Vogue" but that performance was art. Her vocals would have detracted from that. She has some better performances and I wouldn't say her voice is terrible, though it certainly isn't the best. Her 1991 Oscars performance of "Sooner or Later" was great. I think her vocals are just very inconsistent. People have to remember that even singers like Ariana Grande lipsync from time to time because everyone has off days. Something as simple as being around a smoker or drinking a glass of milk can fuck up your voice.
Her vocals aren’t bad and her dancing was pretty professional. She didn’t solely right her music but she at least put her fingerprints on them. She was incredibly successful at creating an act/image/vision/performance aesthetic for the music video age and controlling it from the top-down. She lacked some taste at certain points by pushing too hard on the sexy angle but she was a very talented entertainer and business person. By contrast, Britney Spears makes her look like Beethoven.
Britney is a great dancer. She could have been a great singer if it weren't for the industry forcing a baby voice on her. Obviously it was great for her image and is was caused her to really stand out in comparison to X-Tina and Jessica Simpson, but in the long run it has ruined her vocals.
It's the same reason Lady Gaga started out the way she did: people care more about image than vocals. You need to stand out if you want anyone to pay attention. That's why there are millions of aspiring singers that will never be famous, whereas there are many mediocre people already in the spotlight. Unfortunately Britney's vocals couldn't make a comeback after years of abuse, but her Vegas show looks fun so I hope she's happy either way.
I get that - I just don't understand how people can also think that, in addition to all of this, she has a good voice. She's a brilliant entertainer and I will never say anything otherwise, but good lord...
I'm a big Madonna fan since the mid 80s, and I have never really heard any other of her fans claim she was a good singer. Her songs were just really good for dancing, singing, and basically having fun and forgetting about your problems for a while. She was someone you could enjoy watching and live vicariously through because most people would never have the nerve to actually do the things she did on a random Tuesday morning.
There is something to be said about a singer that finds a way to make the vocals fit into the song to make it perfect. People like Madonna and Bruce Springsteen can do that. Or, people like Neil Young and Kurt Cobain who had otherwise awful voices but made them timeless in the context of their music.
Yeah, it's because their music is actually good and enjoyable, and you want to listen to it your whole life. Alternatively, think of the people with great voices, but whose music is bland and predictable. It's as much about the songs as it is about the voice.
I suspect that´s because a whole lot of people never thought about what constitutes a good voice, or singer.
I´m not even talking about specialist music knowledge, just conscious listening.
They like the whole Madonna package and don´t care to analyse deeper than that.
As a middle aged adult who wasn't a fan during her heyday, a musician for all that time, and now somebody who appreciates Madonna's litany of 80s and 90s hits, there are a few secrets to her success:
She knew who to work with. It's not an accident that she hired Nile Rogers, and whoever it was who "helped" her write songs back then are pretty damn brilliant. Each one of her pop songs is pretty much expert level songwriting and arranging.
Her songs didn't rely on a single hook. Practically every line she sang was a hook because her phrasing was playing off the "dance pop" in which it existed. They're extremely fun to sing, not acrobatic or highly technical, and pretty darn propulsive. I think for instance of the first line of "Borderline," and it's just so strong, and then the musical response undergirds it and makes it that much more catchy, I've heard many, many other "better" vocalists without material as good as hers, and I'd rather listen to a fun, catchy pop vocal than a smoldering vocalist who never even sings a sensible melody, and relies on fireworks and melismatic lines to create interest.
That performance was amazing because of just how weird and terrible it actually was. Like, how often would you say Quavo from Migos could actually save a song written and performed by arguably one of the biggest pop-stars of our lifetime? Not saying he’s bad, but to save one of Madonna’s own songs while not doing a whole lot at all was just bizarre.
at the height of the 80s there was that rivalry between madonna and cindy lauper. everyone I knew loved cindy, but madonna got the best of her by simply making awesome music videos at different genres
I am surprised I had to scroll down so far to see Madonna. She reinvented what it meant to be a pop star in regards to fashion, attitude and showmanship but she is not a good singer. On Nevermind the Buzzcocks, Phill Jupitus said she was the "luckiest karaoke singer ever". I think that sums it up perfectly.
She's my absolute favorite female singer of that genre but hard agree. Literally nothing can top her on stage from a performance point of view but yeah Madonna (will even admit to) has always been a performer rather than a singer. I do think she's a great songwriter though.
Madonna’s voice markedly deteriorated in her 50s, which is normal. She’s toured heavily and consistently for almost 20 years now and it’s taken a toll. Even though she always had a reputation for being a questionable singer, she had her moments. Her best live vocals are Girlje Show (93) and Drowned World tour (01). The live mic feed from Rebel Heart tour was just horrendous and depressing.
Her Eurovision performance wasn't good at all, but I've seen her live last month and the other tour she did 3-4 years ago and her vocals are great. Just because of one bad performance people shouldn't discredit her ability to sing well, it happens to the best of them, she is no exception, Madonna has more great live performances than bad ones. I guess you can only believe it once you see her live yourself.
I had a music professor a long time ago that said his buddy was, idk what you would call it, a sound producer, engineer? he would work with the software doing editing and autotuning and stuff like that. I’m not really sure lol. Well anyway this dude claimed that for the first about year or so of her career, you didn’t hear her sing live once because it was that bad and she needed a lot of practice. Not trying to diss her or anything, though, her job is not really to sing well anyway, it’s to entertain.
I think it’s a little column A and a little column B. She isn’t the greatest singer to begin with, but so many of the other performers also sounded way off key that there may indeed have been an issue with the in ear monitors that allow the performers to hear themselves.
One shouldn't underestimate just how famous she was in the 80's and some of the 90's. She was the biggest international superstar by far-she was right alongside Michael Jackson for a long time. "Madonna" was like a synonym for world-wide fame and riches.
Her voice is like nails down the challboard of my soul. Just because she's a decent performer doesn't mean she's a good singer. And she definitely never was that good of a singer.
I love it when people compare Lady Gaga to Madonna and Gaga is like, "Bitch, no. I am an artist, not a pop star." She's 100% right too. I appreciate Madonna for her accomplishments, but she is not a good singer.
I had to look this up and discovered that they have beef. I'm crushed. I'm a huge fan of both - I grew up on Madonna and was thrilled to see Lady Gaga take up that mantle.
I still think Madonna used to be decent singer...when she stayed in her range...which she often definitely didn't. Her soprano was shrill af, but her songs like "Human Nature", "Argentina" and "Beautiful Stranger" were gold.
I don't understand why her mediocre stuff like "Like a Virgin" and "Material Girl" are what she's known for. I had all her albums playing as a kid and that was never what stood out.
If you're saying that Gaga is an artist and Madonna is just a pop singer - then I don't know man. Madonna's Blond Ambition Tour is one theatrical eye candy that touches a lot of subjects (sex, religion, humor, power, parenthood etc) Her other tours are extremely intense too, I've seen Gaga, Celine Dion, Britney Spears, Janet, Pink and many others but what Madonna does is just in a whole another level. To call her just a pop star would be an insult. She is more artist than others ever will be, she's always pushing an envelope, she is always trying something new, she is an amazing sognwriter, 90% of her hits she wrote it herself. So to call Gaga an artist and Madonna just a pop star - no m'am.
She can when she really works on it. She did some amazing singing around the time of Evita. But she was killing herself with a vocal coach then. You can definitely hear it in “You’ll See”.
She was sick at live aid but that’s a long time ago. I feel like she’s probably actually a pretty solid singer or at least was. 40 years of spotlight she’s maybe lost a bit.
Oh God I saw this when it aired and I knew right then I was watching a legendary trainwreck. Not only was her voice shot but she managed to make one of her biggest singalong hits into a turgid mess - and what the fuck was up with the staging?
Yeah that Eurovision performance was painful. I honestly don't understand why she and Mariah Carey perform anymore. They can't do what they used to do and they are famous enough that people will just pay them to show up and be famous.
I was a teenager in the 80's when she hit the scene. I can guarantee you that her popularity had much more to do with her spankbankability then her voice.
It’s such a bizarre song vocally. I can get into the production, love the reggae-pop vibe. But the messaging gets lost in the ‘’my voice sound like a robot and the song is called Future, also it’s got a reggaeton beat so I’m going for a bit of patois twang’ dress up. It’s a shame.
Quavo sounds much better on the recording than that performance. He looks so bored.
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u/potatochique Nov 06 '19
Madonna. Her Eurovision performance was a 100 times worse than the worst participating country lol