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.

I really wanted to spend this blog talking about the new releases from our old favorite bands Def Leppard and White Lion, but there are some other more important albums out this week that might have more people excited. Both Madonna and Portishead have some highly anticipated albums coming out today. I wanted Madonna to have to battle with Mariah Carey for the #1 album of the week, but Mariah came out a couple of weeks before Madonna, so we are left with Portishead instead to battle it out with Madonna-- a much better competitor I think.

So yes really, Def Leppard and White Lion both have albums out today. And there is a new Brett Michaels on the way as well. It has been over 20 years since White Lion released their second album Pride back in 1987. The album featured the massive song "When the Children Cry." You really could not get away from that song back then. The album did really well and I remember being obsessed with it myself. I ordered the cassette of it along with Hysteria by Def Leppard from one of those record clubs that  shipped you like 7 albums for 7 cents. Hysteria was Def Leppard's fourth album but it also came out in 1987. This was the album that really got me obsessed with Def Leppard. I was listening to the deluxe reissue version of Hysteria a couple days ago. I always forget until I listen to it, but the album is still amazing. I still have every song memorized. I am sure the album was overplayed for many and there are still many people out there scarred for life because of this album, but I really do love it. I could probably live my life without listening to White Lion again, but that one song still gets me whenever I hear it.

Just in case you were trying to remember 1987, Madonna did not release an album that year. It was the year after True Blue and we were all still in love with "Papa Don't Preach" and "Live to Tell." We had no idea of the controversy that lied ahead of us with Like A Prayer in another couple of years. I am sure there were a lot of Def Leppard fans out there that did not like Madonna, and I am sure they are still out there, but I really did love them both. I was young and really did just love myself some popular radio music. These albums made a huge impact on my life and are still somehow a part of me. It is a bit crazy to think that 20 years have passed since then, but they all have new albums out this week. I have not ventured into the new albums from White Lion or Def Leppard, and I might just skip them altogether so I can keep my memories somewhat sacred. But Madonna has been quite the busy lady since 1987-- it does really seem like her last album just came out. She seems to be always ready with a new one just when you have finished the last one. You have either worn it out or been sick of it since it came out and finally got it out of your head. I have pretended to not be a fan of Madonna a couple times over the last 20 years, but I just can't resist her or her music. She got me back then and I have not really been able to shake my love of Madonna. I have had mixed feeling about the last couple albums. I always sort of love it and like many of the songs, but I also always hope for a bit more that I get. I do respect the lady for continuing to be relevant and make albums that sound different than the last. The new album is mostly a Timbaland and Justin Timberlake album, but it is also most definitely a Madonna album. Justin Timberlake would not really exist without Madonna, so if you think about it that way, she is just using the people that she influenced to help her create a new album. I have been trying to get coworkers to place bets on what album will come out on top at Amoeba this week. Madonna will most certainly have the top album in the country this week. But I have my faith that Portishead will win the competition at Amoeba. Although based on first day sales today, the race will be much closer than I thought.

The Rolling Stones, Madonna, and Jamiroquai are among recent music entrants into the Guinness World Records, formerly known (up until 2000) as The Guinness Book of Records.  Mick Jagger & company entered by beating previous records by earning $437 million on their "Bigger Bang Tour" earlier this year while Madonna set the Guinness record for "most successful female artist" by earning almost $200 million on her sixty date "Confessions" tour. Meanwhile Jamiroquai may not have earned the most money but earned an award for setting the record for "the highest concert" given by performing in a converted Boeing 737 (for winners of  a competition in the UK) at an altitude of 35,000 feet.  And among the other music related new entrants into the 2008 issue of the book,  the band Electrasy won an award for featuring the world's biggest custard pie fight captured on film in a 1998 video (Best Friend's Girl) of theirs that  featured 50  pie- throwing fanatics (all members of the Laurel and Hardy Fan Club) hurl a total of 4,400 custard pies at each
                                                                                   other in 3 minutes.

Inevitably, sometimes life kicks us in the ass.

When it does, we all have things we turn to in order to cope.

This week, while spending most of my time at home either in bed with the covers over my head or on the couch, blankly staring at the wall, twiddling my thumbs, I felt an utter loss of inspirado.


I mean, after spending most of last week happily indulging in Bridezillas, where does one go from there?  Where CAN one go from there when life shifts irritatingly and becomes a pathetic time of need?

Well, welcome to my schizo mind.  As much as something as ridiculous as my aforementioned obsession with The View can cheer me up, I also turn to things that are much more nostalgic and "serious" and I do like to allow myself a good wallow every now and again when circumstances call for it.

The supreme wallowing record, at least for the last year or so, for me has been Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts of the Great Highway.  Have you heard it?


It's by Mark Kozelek, who formed Red House Painters, made a lot of records I never really got into, got sick of the business and that name and released this record as something completely different.

It's fantastic for a good wallow.  In fact, I find it's actually fantastic any time.  It's one of those fabulous and few records that morph somehow with my mood and mean different things whether I am ecstatic or down in the dumps or somewhere in between.