Vogue was Peak Vadge

Yes, I agree. I was a young (22) gay living in NYC with my first roommate and we caught that performance live and were stunned. It was peak Vadge.

Agreed!

I laugh when stans try to say that 2005 "Hung Up" is a return to greatness for Vadge. IT'S AN ABBA SONG!

"Vogue" is exciting on so many levels!

Entirely stolen. Like everything else in Vadge's career.

R3, no, it was not stolen. Try again.

who cares, R3? it worked

God I loved this as a small gayling. Sat there slack jawed in our living room.

yeah I was young, too, R6 when I first saw it

bitch burned it up

Voguing was around for years before Vadge, stupid cunts.

R8, nobody said she invented it, stupid cuntbag.

How could she invent something she stole, cuntbag.

She didn't steal or invent it and nobody on this thread has claimed she invented it. You are deluded.

Even way back then as a young teen, I thinking... I can't believe she's lipsynching.

One cannot take anything away from her conceptual artistry on Vogue. EVERYTHING... even her name-dropping lyrics are is Madonna's thinking of her own internal pose-images for each downbeat. The fact that Madonna did it for a movie only enhances how masterful she pulled it off every element. If you look at the David Fincher's unedited cameras, Madonna, of course, is front and center. But she also appears to be, arguably, the most-committed dancer of all the voguers.

I was so in love with Slam. He must have gotten so much dick back then.

R12, People lipsynched all the time on Top of the Pops, American Bandstand, Solid Gold, etc. That was how things were done. With vogueing, though, that's how it was done in the drag balls.

Yes, it was stolen, but it was very well stolen and improved upon.

Peak Vadge was Desperately Seeking Susan, anything after was filler.

Gown Madonna wore for "Vouge" came from costume collection of film "Dangerous Liaisons"

r8 So was lipstick but it was nothing until that little Macedonian vixen Cleopatra broke the Internet and made it happen.

But did Rita Hayworth really "give good face?"

Why does DL hate Madonna? No one has done what she did before or since.

R21.

[quote] But did Rita Hayworth really "give good face?"

You bet your verga she did, guey!

^ r22 fragile soul with control issues.

IMO, Vogue was not a great song. That era (1990) may have been Madonna's peak in other ways, though. I don't even think the video was that great.

I like early Madonna (1980s, Dress You Up). I also like the Bedtime Stories era (1994, Take a Bow).

A lot of people like the Ray of Light album, not me.

The last time I think Madonna peaked was with the 2000 "Music" album. "Don't Tell Me" is maybe my favorite Madonna song.

I find it interesting that Madonna's 90s (after Vogue) and her early 00s material is mostly forgotten/not streamed while her mid/late 00s material does well. You would think an album as acclaimed as ray of light would do much better....but no.

I think her peak was that Superbowl half-time she did. It seemed the culmination of everything.

I've been a Madonna fan since the beginning, and I have to say that 1990 was the year of Madonna. Arguably, you could say the same about 1985 or even '86 or '87 but '90 was the year when it all came together.

It's funny because it was that year that she released probably one of the least-admired albums in her catalogue - I'm Breathless - on which Vogue was tacked on at the end (presumably to keep sales of the album up). Personally, I love I'm Breathless. It's one of the reasons why 1990 is one of the best years of her career. Here was Madonna, the biggest pop star in the world aside from MJ, making almost an entire album of songs inspired by the '30s along with some Sondheim songs, and she pulled it all off. Along with the album, we had the masterpiece that is Vogue and then at the end of 1990, we got The Immaculate Collection, widely considered one of the best greatest-hits albums of all time, and the Justify My Love controversy. Madonna was truly on top.

Best of all, though, was the Blond Ambition Tour which changed the game in how concerts were staged. Even 31 years later, it's still one of the best tours of all time. And Vogue was the set-closer for that tour, which shows you that even in 1990, Vogue had quickly become one of her career-defining songs.

I may be on the down slope of the age bell curve at 40 (80 years is rarely done in my family history, 83 was the oldest age on record that I can recall) but I'm glad that as a child entire weekends were dedicated to playing ALL if her videos on MTV, all weekend long. This was something they did for awhile but were by the time the first Real World started getting viewers.

The original vogue video got usurped by the VMA performance for a spell but these marathons were regularly a part of the programming I can remember. But this and express yourself were her peak.

Sinead O'Connor, in 1992, put out "Am I Not Your Girl." My God, check it out if you like old music. She manages to make every song heartfelt and amazing, including "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina."

^were ending around the Real World...

R26, those were the Maverick Records years, and none of the Maverick artists' catalogue get much promotion these days since that company is defunct.

The song has not aged well but the miming and costumes were cute.

I love R28 ‘s post!

Vogue has aged amazingly well. Much better than Groove is in the Heart (released in the same year).

I think Glenn wore that gown in Dangerous Liaisons, non? It's kind of odd how Annie Lennox also used an ancien régime backdrop for the video to Walking on Broken Glass, even casting John Malkovich.

R32, that'a great point, I didn't think of that.

No matter how bitchy crazy weird age inappropriate she has become, Vadge entertained a generation of queens and inspired me to go full force in life. No apologies. Love me some Madonna.

I was dancing at the Limelight one night when it suddenly came on the big screen. It hadn’t hit the television screens yet. No one had seen it. That was a magical explosion of the gay I’ve never experienced before or since. We were the most ecstatic test rollout ever that night.

R39.

What’s genius about stealing a dance from the gay club scene? Genius is coming up with something original.

R41.

She included Joe Fucking DiMaggio in the song and not me? I hated it.

R43 It really was stupid of her to leave out Joan and randomly included an athlete.

It's lip synched

R44.

Madonna tested "Vogueing" the year before at the MTV video awards during the performance of Express Yourself. "Deeper and Deeper" does not get the recognition it deserves. From there it went downhill until "Confessions On A Dancefloor". Vogue would not be nearly as popular as it is if it wasn't for Shep Pettibone. Madonna owes the late 80s and early 90s to Shep. Before that, she owes it to Jellybean.

I'm non compos mentes / And I feel like a tooth being drilled, a nerve being killed by a dentist / For I'm non compos mentes.

R28 1990 was arguably the most fun year of my life and part of that was being at The Sound Factory at approximately 5:00 am when Madonna, some of her BA dancers and other assorted entourage showed up and just about everyone on the dance floor began doing the bus stop…even now, my eyes nearly roll back into my head and my toes curl thinking about the 22 year old gay boy state of ecstasy I was in at that moment.

R47 I loved Deeper and Deeper and its “1970 Andy Warhol Factory/Superstar” vibe. It inspired me to have the last big party I had in my old Chelsea apartment before I got boring and moved to the upper east side to live with a boyfriend. I had a biggish one bedroom on the top floor of a walk up and moved half my furniture up to the roof (!) to make more room for the party. I had a lot of energy then!

Absolutely agree. It’s chic, fun, gorgeous, and she’s having so much fun!

Poor Americans, they think they are so great and that the whole world wnats to be them when in fact they are the ones to identify themselves with French history and culture from which they don't even have the excuse of being native since they are mostly Anglo-Irish-German-Spanish. The French left the US when they sold Louisiana. The only ones who have any real legitimacy are Québécois...in Canada!

*wants

R41

Actually Madonna and gays for that matter sole vouging from the black gay ballroom scene of Harlem.

Yes, things did spread to white clubs in downtown Manhattan and rest of white gay community in general, but many white Marys just didn't get it and or wanted anything to do with something so "ghetto".

R49 No worries. I'm sure everyone recognized what an insufferable cunt you were.

And many did get it, R54. The vogue crowd owned the back half of dancefloor at Roxy and the front-center half of the dancefloor at Sound Factory (along with the runway along the bleachers). It was welcomed and loved.

"Vague" by Medusa

"Let's get stupid!"

R55 Wow, anger much? What did R49 do to you?

[quote]Actually Madonna and gays for that matter sole vouging from the black gay ballroom scene of Harlem.

Your comment makes no sense. Black gays aren’t “gays”? And what did they “sole”?

R58 Suck on my lil nub, cunt.

Vadge invented cultural appropriation

R49 I loved that story. I was a Sound Factory denizen, too. Amazing dance club.

Loved the song. But yeah, mooched from the black and Latino gay subculture. She made it more palpable for the mainstream by not putting drag queens in the video. She would have been sooo upstaged. She was afraid of that.

[quote] I was so in love with Slam. He must have gotten so much dick back then.

If you watch the Netflix doc on her dancers, he said he got HIV from the first guy he slept with. Sad.

Slam revealed his HIV status as a "truth or dare" .

Happily "Slam" is still with us...

If you Tweet, hit Slam up on Twitter....

R66 How'd he survive having the aids for like 30 years? Jesus.

Some men do..

Know three men diagnosed HIV+ back in the late 1980's and early 1990's who are still living (all now in their late 60's to early 70's).

There is a small demographic of men though HIV+ remain basically asymptomatic and never develop full blown AIDS. Carriers of you will like "Typhoid Mary" who never came down with that disease though infected, and could pass it to others.

R69 I know this German guy who has had HIV since 1985. He is somehow still alive. He's been on aids meds since the 90s. His boyfriend caught hiv in the 90s, too. Not from him but just because he's a dirty slut. He's turning 64 this year. We stopped talking years ago because he was such a prick.

On the other hand there are also people like Larry Kramer who was diagnosed HIV+ in 1998 and lived until 2020. However Mr. Kramer had his share of health issues....

R60 Is this what’s known as a “charm offensive?” Actually, you seem like you have Tourette Syndrome.

R72 You have Mega-cunt syndrome. No doubt you voted for Hillary.

R73 If you consider yourself a wit and/or a raconteur, you are misguided. Nearly monosyllabic, too. At least you can spell.

[quote]I was so in love with Slam. He must have gotten so much dick back then.

I felt the same way, I was obsessed.

The fucked up thing is in 1995 I was bartending at this shitty gay bar and Slam would come in and flirt with me and I'd always kiss him hello, but I figured he was just flirty so I didn't really respond or take it seriously. One day another customer said, "It's so obvious he's waiting for you to make a move", but my chance had passed. I see him near my apartment occasionally and he doesn't recognize me, although I'm not yet a relic, lol. Oh, well.

Slam seems like such a sweetheart. He's nice to his followers on Twitter and he is still very handsome.

Isn't he in a relationship? I remember a clip from Strike a Pose where he is in his apartment with his boyfriend.

That documentary is actually really good. Slam is definitely the most charming of all of them. I can't stand Kevin, though.

Sort of sounds like how me and my straight roommates felt freshman year of college when Lady Gaga dropped Bad Romance and the song quickly reached a billion views, a milestone for YouTube videos at the time. It was artistic, different, quirky, and attention grabbing. Remember sitting around my roommate’s computer while me and 3 straight guys watched in amusement at whatever was supposed to be portrayed by that video. I loved it and still love it today.

If Vouge’s release was hugging like that then I get it. Bad Romance is still peak Gaga.

Enough about you, let's talk about me.

I was just a kid, too young to know who or what Madonna meant to the world, but I know my young self LOVED Like A Prayer. Everything about that song captivated me when I was 8 or 9.

Vogue never did anything for me.

K76, why can't you stand Kevin?

I love the part when they flip the fans. At the time, I remember thinking, "Boy, if one of those back-up dancers had dropped her fan, all hell would have broken loose back stage afterwards!"

I knew a guy like Slam who caught HIV from the guy who popped his cherry…went to join the Air Force and that’s how he found out. Became a serious drug addict and drunk. Died not from AIDS but a pill and cocaine overdose. Not even 30.

Thanks for posting that, R65.

[quote]Vogue would not be nearly as popular as it is if it wasn't for Shep Pettibone. Madonna owes the late 80s and early 90s to Shep. Before that, she owes it to Jellybean.

Madonna owes her career to Jellybean, Nile Rodgers, Steve Bray, Pat Leonard, Shep Pettibone, Babyface, Dallas Austin, William Orbit, Rick Nowels, Mirwais, Stuart Price, blah blah blah.

R79, I adore the music of "Like a Prayer" but I think the lyrics are dreck. My second fave Vadge song is probably this:

I think Like a Prayer's lyrics are some of her best. Vogue, Express Yourself, Live to TEll, Into The Groove, etc. are also well-written.

I totally agree on Live to Tell and Into the Groove (which is a long, salacious pun). Can't on Like a Prayer, which is nonsense.

R87, her songwriting abilities to vary widlely. Oh well, at least she has written SOME great lyrics.

Remember the MTV Rock the Vote Vogue commercial?

r80 I found him so obnoxious in Strike a Pose. All his lamenting that he wishes he could speak to Madonna again and saying how she was like a mother to him. Why the hell should she want to speak to him again? He sued her. She gave him a huge platform, and he, Oliver and Gabriel decided to sue her. I liked when Luis said at the end that she owes them nothing.

I wonder if any of those male dancers were straight and what they're doing now.

What happens to old backup dancers anyway? They would have to be in their 50's by now.

It's fab. It reminds me of an incredible performance I saw on an outdoor stage in downtown Sydney during the Gay Mardi back in the 80s: three stunning young guys in 18th century French gowns with fabulous white wigs with galleons etc. singing and performing a minuet to A Whiter Shade Of Pale. The front of their embroidered gowns were exposed to show off their muscular pecs and legs. I was fascinated in the reaction of the straight tourists: a clutch of Japanese were in ecstasies, but a group of Americans, who'd been comfortable with an earlier Priscilla-style drag performance, looked profoundly confronted and discomforted by the masculine genderfuck. Have never forgotten it.

R89 Vadge, "pretending" to be a clueless dolt. No irony there.

R91

Much would depend upon what sort of "back-up" dancers you are referring....

Those that were/are professional show/Broadway dancers moved onto other jobs as is common on stage, screen or whatever. Then you have the other common option for professionally trained dancers when they get on; teaching.

SALIM GAUWLOOS "SLAM" is but a case in point.

OTOH if you're talking about jumped up models or whoever that are basically "movers", hired more for their looks than actual performing arts talent, that's another ball of wax.

Then you have those like "Solid Gold Dancers", who often have professional training and end up being jobbing dancers. Moving from television, film to perhaps even stage by doing endless cattle calls to land a gig.

As stated, generally what happens in performing arts is those that can move into teaching...

Dancers - Open dance schools or get hired into one.

Actors - Ditto

Singers - Again "ditto"

Even models get in on that racket usually by opening "modeling schools" Tracy James had one in New Jersey years ago, but don't think it was much of a success.

Of them all dancing probably takes most toll on the body. Many professionals start in late teens and by sometime in late twenties or early thirties they're done or want to be; their bodies have just taken that much abuse.

R84 yeah and what did those guys accomplish without Madonna? People could make valid arguments when they say Michael Jackson owes a lot to Quincy and Janet owes a lot to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis because they were successful and accomplished outside of the Jacksons. Madonna’s producers barely did anything outside of working with her.

I think Madonna had a great intuition for pop music.

She hasn’t been the same since Confessions.

I totally agree OP, Vogue was her high point and everything afterwards has just been "meh". That sex book and crap album in the early 90's was a huge mistake and I don't think her career ever really recovered from it.

Anything after Justify My Love was mediocre.

[quote][R84] yeah and what did those guys accomplish without Madonna? People could make valid arguments when they say Michael Jackson owes a lot to Quincy and Janet owes a lot to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis because they were successful and accomplished outside of the Jacksons. Madonna’s producers barely did anything outside of working with her. I think Madonna had a great intuition for pop music. She hasn’t been the same since Confessions.

That was my point. The one consistent feature in Madonna's string of huge hits was Madonna as co-writer. Babyface and Rick Nowels are clearly songwriting legends who have written extensively for other artists and they couldn't speak more highly of her. The idea that Babyface would lie about Madonna's creative input into Take A Bow is hilarious.

[quote]I liked when Luis said at the end that she owes them nothing.

Luis is a kiss-ass suck up. Couldn’t stand him in either documentary.

The “Strike a Pose” documentary was sad. All of them were either living in shitty apartments or with their mother at 50. Just goes to show you better have a backup plan if you’re a dancer.

There are plenty of dancers who don't live with their mothers at age fifty, I'd say the vast majority don't.

These young men did not come from a traditional performing arts background of child ballet/tap classes, school plays, community ballet and theater, followed by institutional training and access to high-level professionals as employers and mentors. All they had was poor urban families, no education, very little training, and....Madonna.

They mostly (except for Salim) had little infrastructure of training and structure to guide them into a lasting career in the performing arts. It is fair to say Madonna owed them nothing. She showed them the dizzying heights, but could not supply discipline, ambition or training to stay there without her.

I've been hard on Madonna lately because of her antics and her horrible plastic surgery but those aside, as much as people bash her, let's not forget the good things she did. The Strike a Pose documentary is very good but it did not address certain things, like the fact that she rehired Carlton for The Girlie Show (the only one from the Blond Ambition tour aside from Donna and Niki to return) and she let him live at her place for a while in the '90s. The documentary did reference that she helped Jose and Luis with their song, so it wasn't like she just abandoned her dancers as people like to accuse her of. I am sure the lawsuit though didn't help things.

Kevin, as much as I dislike him, did the best of all of them. He went on to tour with other artists so he benefitted from Madonna (along with suing her).

R102 Oh yeah, she was a real sweetheart in Truth or Dare when she laughed at her hairstylist being raped. She’s a fucking sick demon.

She deserves all the misery she’s experiencing in old age after how terribly she’s treated people over the years.

^ Jabba

Yeah, OP, she sh*t that stage. I was in college and we gagged over that performance. There was a time when she DESERVED the hype.

[quote] Madonna owes her career to Jellybean, Nile Rodgers, Steve Bray, Pat Leonard, Shep Pettibone, Babyface, Dallas Austin, William Orbit, Rick Nowels, Mirwais, Stuart Price, blah blah blah.

Indeed. She has a unique talent for song craft and presentation. I can't think of any other pop star from the golden era who struck gold with so many different producers and sonic templates.

I have to admit loving [italic]Rescue Me[/italic] a lot and wondered why it was only a B side for JML.

R108, it was released as a single. But it never got a music video.

Here's a nit pick. Madonna could never do the technical footwork her dancers can do, so she didn't do a lot of it, and she often can't stick what she does. It doesn't really matter, she was great in her range. But comments up thread that she's the most committed of her dancers are Helen Keller level stanning.

I agree, r110, although I think she really stepped up her game on Blond Ambition. It was a bit more strenuous than her previous tours.

Rescue Me was a horrid wanna-be black singer torch song. She doesn't have the range to sing it properly so she sounds like anything auto-tuned by Katy Perry. Perry's songs are like getting raped by Harve Weinstein. Yuck.

Rescue Me is fantastic. I like her strained voice on it.

Cunts with no musical taste always think Vadge is the best technical singer in history. No surprise you love her horrid songs. Donna DeLory and Niki Harris were both a million times better than Vadge.

Janbot ^

R115 is Janbot calling everyone else Janbot. Don't throw your name card around, cunt. No one with a fucking brain ever thought Madonna had a great voice. She's one step above Britney.

Jabba ^

R117 is Jabba. Fuck off, cunt. We can recognize the stench of your huge diseased cunt anywhere.

Janbot ^

Here's a close-up picture of gown from DL that Madonna wore in "Vouge" video.

DL was film on a very tight budget, but costumes were magnificent.

Only those seen in opening scene (la Marquise and Valmot being dressed) were historically accurate in terms of how made. Nearly everything else was "modern" in that they were made as things would be today.

For women things were as shown for la Marquise. What we see as a complete gown was actually bits and pieces pinned or sewn together. Of course getting undressed meant all those pins, hooks, stitching, etc.. had to be undone.

IIRC it was Louis XIV who often became so impatient waiting for his official mistress to be undressed he'd go and pull a maid or some other female then return when the job was done. Having a quick one in middle of day or something in 18th century obviously required planning.

Beauty of course for Madonna and those back-up female dancers is they could move in ways Marie-Antoinette or any other lady in 18th century wearing such gowns could not.

Madonna and other ladies likely aren't wearing whalebone corsets. That garment also limited how wearer could move her body.

[quote]"Vouge"

Please stop this.

Vogue at the Moulin Rouge!

Madonna, 'Vogue' 1990 WRITER(S):Madonna, Shep Pettibone Inspired by the way men were dancing at the gay clubs she frequented, Madonna wrote some lyrics that connected the act of striking a pose to classic Hollywood glamour. Producer Shep Pettibone, who’d remixed some of the pop star’s earlier singles, whipped up a booming disco beat and synth bass, then later mixed in syncopated stabs of house piano after Madonna had recorded her vocals in a Manhattan basement. The most amazing part? They did it all on a budget of $5,000, with the idea that something so bold could probably only be a B side.

I thought her performance of Express Yourself at 1989 MTV Awards ….she sang live too. It was epic.

Mad-Donna always had a well-worn peaked vadge, so what else is new?

That's quite a list R125, thx. I can't believe they put "Like a Prayer" before "Vogue". I love the music of LAP but the lyrics are just awful. Vogue has great music AND great lyrics.

Oh and BTW I loved seeing La Winehouse's "Back to Black" high on that list.

I'd put this up there with her best.