As you most likely well know, Madonna is back with her new brand album Hard Candy (Warner) which hit Amoeba Music shelves earlier this week. Brad Schelden wrote about it in his Out today: 4/29... Amoeblog. What is interesting about this new album from the "Queen of Pop" is that while the artist, who built a career on controversy -- usually via her music videos-- is at perhaps the very least controversial portion of her long extended, ever shape-shifting pop life, she somehow manages to still stir up controversy.
The controversy (or heated discussion) this time amongst the Madonna fans and haters is not about the music, but about age-- her age. Can a woman still be sexy and/or act sexy at almost 50? (Her birthday's in August.) That is the real question posed by the masses and the issue says more about our culture than about the pop singer who inspired the discussion.
Pop music doesn't have a history of being particularly kind to its aging stars, especially its female stars, and especially its aging female stars who choose to still act sexy. So the floodgates of debate or controversy over whether Madonna should still be making catchy contemporary pop music -- and, what's more, shaking her stuff while collaborating with the likes of the much younger Timbers -- Timbaland and Timberlake (Justin) -- have opened up.
Not too surprisingly, the best place to go to put a finger on the pulse of what the Madonna fans and haters are really thinking of Madge Version 008, you need go no further than YouTube -- a place where no one minces words, as proven by the swath of comments posted for the video to the new single "4 Minutes" featuring the aforementioned two Timbers. In the time since the video (see below) was posted three weeks ago, the opinions have poured in: divided into the diehard Madonna fans on one side and the Madonna haters on the other, with a substantial group of in-betweeners who are undecided or have mixed feelings in the middle ground.
Tonight was the broadcast of the MTV video music awards. I grew up loving MTV and I loved watching the music videos of my favorite new bands. I was introduced to a lot of new music by seeing their videos for the first time on MTV. I didn't even have cable for years, but I would watch MTV whenever I got a chance at a friends house or my grandparent's house. I even watched that first little reality show called "The Real World" when if first aired. Back when it was one of the only non music video related shows. The times they have changed on MTV. This is the schedule for MTV tomorrow. 
So in one 24 hour period on MTV there are only 6 1/2 hours devoted to anything that is remotely related to music videos. Of the remaining 17 1/2 hours, only one show has anything remotely to do with music or music videos. The other shows really have no place on a show calling itself "Music Television." This is seriously a typical day for MTV. The only difference this year is that in order to try and get better ratings for the live airing of the awards show, they decided to not repeat the show over and over again the next day. I can think of countless shows they could have on MTV that would actually fit into a station supposedly devoted to music videos. They should obviously play more videos. Even Justin Timberlake realized this. He
made a little shout out against MTV when he won his awards tonight, begging them to play more videos and less reality shows. There are so many interesting people in the music business. They could have hours and hours of interesting documentaries on so many different musicians. There are also so many amazing videos that they could still show. They could have hour long shows devoted to old 80s and 90s videos or have shows that showed artists earlier videos. They could have great themed video hours. Indie (alternative) videos, metal videos, hip hop videos, r & b videos, electronica vidoes. They did have shows like this before. Alternative Nation, Yo! MTV raps, and Headbangers Ball were on every single day. 120 minutes was on every Sunday and always showed some amazing videos that did not usually get shown on MTV. They did have a game show called remote control, and a couple cartoons like beavis & buthead, daria and aeon flux. But even Beavis & Buthead showed music videos. And these shows never took over the programming. There was always more than just a couple hours of videos. I know that MTV now has MTV2 and some other shows on the higher up cable packages. But the original MTV should still have music as their focus. If they really feel that people need reality shows or fake reality shows, they could at least try and make them about music.