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Madonna news - June 2007
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Live Earth setlist revealed
30 June 2007Fansite DrownedMadonna reveals that Madonna is going to sing four songs at the charity event next saturday. The songtitles deciphered from the lyrics are:
La Isla Bonita
Ray Of Light
Hung Up
Hey You
~ Keep in mind that the setlist is still subject to change.
New album out late this year?
29 June 2007Liz Smith mentioned Madonna's next album release in Variety, saying it would be out late 2007.
Also, fansite DrownedMadonna also talks about the same release schedule with also mentioning that currently there are no plans to include Hey You on the album, which was recorded especially for Live Earth and was out as a free download last month.
They also say that there's no definitive release date yet and the album will sound "very different" from the charity track.
Tour backup singers to join Madonna at Live Earth
29 June 2007Madonna's longtime backup singer Donna Delory and recent collaborator Nicki Richards both confirmed on their myspace pagess that they are going to perform with Madonna at Live Earth on July 7th, 8 pm. Apart from Hey You, the rest of the setlist is still unknown.
Madonna parties with Shakira
Source: Access Hollywood - 28 June 2007Another LA hotspot, Butter, was treated to a visitation by some A-list celebrities Monday night. The NY Post's Page Six reports that Madonna showed up for some fun, and was said to be "quite chummy" with fellow musician Shakira.
The two pop divas reportedly showed up "hand in hand," according to a source. Shakira wasn't the only famous friend hanging out with Madonna, though, as Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and Penelope Cruz reportedly joined her for a dance on the club's banquettes.
Also at Butter that night was Janet Jackson, who reportedly sat a few booths down from Madonna and her crew.
Madonna snaps up £6m home next door
Source: Yahoo! - 25 June 2007Pop queen Madonna has expanded her property empire by snapping up a £6 million house adjoining her eight-bedroom home.
The Material Girl is already said to own at least five properties in London, including the £7 million Marylebone family townhouse she and her family live in.
It is not yet known whether she intends to connect her new purchase to the home she shares with film-director husband Guy Ritchie and children Lourdes, 10, Rocco, 6, and adopted baby David Banda, or rent it out.
If she does decide to make it part of her own home, she will not be the first star to do so with a house next door.
Helena Bonham Carter lives next door to her film director boyfriend Tim Burton in a house linked by a single corridor, while Rolling Stone Mick Jagger has a place next to ex-wife Jerry Hall.
The singer's new 10-room Georgian townhouse was bought for £3.1 million by designer-developer Paul Davies last year.
He intended to refurbish it, but the star found out about the purchase and began calling him to try to persuade him to sell the house to her just a week after he bought it.
A source said: "Madonna knows that when Paul Davies moves into the area it means prices are going to rocket. She said she wanted to buy the whole street."
It is reported that comedienne Jennifer Saunders and photographer Mario Testino had also expressed an interest in the home, which has six floors and includes an artist's studio.
Mr Davies made headlines recently by getting £40,000 a week in rent for one of his Mayfair properties.
Justin talks about Madonna collaboration
21 June 2007Justin has talked about his collaboration on the new Madonna album in a few interviews. Here's a blurb from Entertainment Weekly:
EW: You and Timbaland have been writing and producing songs for Madonna's next album. How's that been going?
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE: The records that we've done so far are really exciting. There are some dance records, there are some mid-tempo ballads, there's all types of different stuff. But I don't want to gas it too much. People might like it or people might not. I don't want to say, like, [carnival-barker voice] "It's going to change the world!" You know what I mean? But we like it.
Earlier this week he said the following in the Daily Record:
"Some of the dance stuff hasn't the in-your-face energy of Hung Up but it's got this mellow R'n'B thing on top of dance accompaniment which Timbaland is doing the beats for. It's all still in demo phases and I don't know if it'll be an album but four or five songs will make really good records."
Madonna helps Ellen Pompeo deal with her mother's death
Source: Yahoo! Xtra Entertainment - 21 June 2007Grey's Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo has revealed how Madonna finally helped her to cope with the loss of her mother.
The 37-year-old's mother died when she was four-years-old but for years the family banned any mention of her.
It wasn't until years later that Ellen, whose earliest memory is the day her mother died, could come to terms with what happened to her.
She said: "It was very tough. I think it was probably tougher for my older siblings who were a lot more cognisant of what was going on. I think I was so young there's only so much I could understand.
"My first memory is the day she died and all the commotion.
"It's a funny thing what happened. I come from a tradition Irish-Italian background and things aren't talked about, you know, they're not spoken about.
"Her death wasn't really spoken about for years and she wasn't spoken about. It was almost as if she never existed. It was too painful for everybody to talk about.
"So I knew what happened but I was never really allowed to grieve. There was a big chunk that was missing out of the story I didn't quite understand.
"I was very confused and very unhappy as a young teenager."
It wasn't until Ellen saw Madonna talking about her mum, who she also lost as a child, that she was able to grieve.
She said: "For the first time I saw Madonna when she first came out and she was on television talking and singing songs about her mother and how her mother had passed and how sad she was.
"And it dawned on me 'oh that's what happened to me, my mother died'.
"And it makes you terribly sad and that's why I'm so unhappy and it's okay to talk about it and it's okay to grieve and I should be sad and I should be upset and I should be allowed to go through these things.
"I didn't even realise the enormity of what had happened because it had been so sort of buried for obvious reasons I suppose.
"So I did go through that process because of Madonna, because I saw her talking about it and singing about it, I was able to understand what happened to me and work through it and use my experiences in my favour to give me a lot of what I draw from when I act."
H&M profit rises 31% on new shops and Madonna range
Source: Bloomberg - 20 June 2007Hennes & Mauritz AB, Europe's second-largest clothes retailer, said second-quarter profit advanced 31 percent as the company opened stores in Hong Kong and Shanghai and sold dresses designed by Madonna.
Net income rose to 3.47 billion kronor ($490 million), or 4.19 kronor a share, in the three months through May from 2.65 billion kronor, or 3.20 kronor, a year earlier, the Stockholm, Sweden-based company said today in a statement. That missed the 3.56 billion-kronor average of eight analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
H&M, which has about 1,400 stores in 28 countries, added shops and hired celebrity designers to compete with Inditex SA, which surpassed the Swedish company as Europe's biggest clothing seller two years ago. The M by Madonna range, such as silk dresses priced at $69.90, went on sale in March. The company said today it will collaborate with designer Roberto Cavalli on a collection.
"The results came in below our expectations," said Luca Solca, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in London with a "market perform" recommendation on the stock. "We are seeing great volatility. High-profile collections such as the Madonna line are having a greater impact, so you see an upswing when the collection hits the stores, and then a swing-back effect."
Details on Confessions Tour visuals
18 June 2007Our friend Daniel from Spain has send us a link to an article on the Adobe website, which gives an insight on the production of the stunning visuals that were used on Madonna's Confessions Tour. Read it here.
Madonna to close Live Earth show at Wembley
Source: The Sun - 18 June 2007Victoria Newton from the sun chatted with Live Earth organizer Al Gore and he revealed that he had convinced Madonna to close the show at Wembley on July 7th. She also got curious and asked him if he managed to convince Madonna about stopping private flights:
He did such a good job convincing the Queen Of Pop she agreed to close the concert at Wembley. Mr Gore said: "My wife and I met her and we had a wonderful conversation and she agreed to help."
Just one thing though... did he manage to also persuade Madge to ditch her private jets in favour of commercial airlines to help reduce her own carbon emissions? I got an extremely carefully- worded answer in response.
Mr Gore said: "Well, I appreciate and respect her as an artist and as a person and there are many artists who are offsetting their role in contributing to the CO2 build-up and I understand that."
"The essence of this problem is that we live in a civilisation that has developed rather fully according to a pattern that emphasises the burning of carbon-based fuels."
"So making the shift to renewable energy is a challenge for everyone that will be a lot easier when governments around the world adopt the new strategies that will make this shift a lot easier to accomplish."
I'll take that as a "No" then!
~ Read the rest of the story @ The Sun
Hey You video
16 June 2007The Live Earth website has premiered a video for Madonna's charity song Hey You. It features a series of images from all over the world, related to energy consumption and global warming, with natural catastrophies and world leaders.
Madonna no.3 in Forbes Power list
Source: E Online - 15 June 2007They may both be billionaires, but this year Oprah Winfrey has it up on George Lucas as far as this force is concerned.
The multimedia maven topped Forbes' 2007 list of the 100 Most Powerful Celebrities, a status achieved not only by her nine-figure earnings but also via Internet ubiquity, press clippings, magazine covers, shout-outs on TV and radio and the other "popularity metrics" that factor into Forbes' analysis, based on the past 12 months.
Lucas, while a power player last year, is nowhere to be found on the new list, despite being one of the richest people in Hollywood with a net worth of $3.6 billion, per Forbes.
Apparently he generated less buzz than Winfrey, whose yearly pay is estimated at $260 million, bringing her net worth to about $1.5 billion. The talk show host (and so much more) also had the biggest Web and TV presence, according to Forbes.
[...]
Madonna, although her pay is only a piddling $72 million these days, received the most press out of all the celebrities listed, had the second-biggest Internet showing, and came in at number three. (Ranked on her biceps alone, she would have been number one, of course.)
[Here's a recap of the top 10 from Forbes' 2007 list of the 100 Most Powerful Celebrities:
1. Oprah Winfrey, $260 million
2. Tiger Woods, $100 million
3. Madonna, $72 million
4. Rolling Stones, $88 million
5. Brad Pitt, $35 million
6. Johnny Depp, $92 million
7. Elton John, $53 million
8. Tom Cruise, $31 million
9. Jay-Z, $83 million
10. Steven Spielberg, $110 million
Women are the future of Africa
Source: AZ Central - 15 June 2007Madonna believes "women are the future of Africa." The singer, who was inspired to adopt Malawian orphan David after visiting the poverty-stricken region last year, is now working on a documentary to increase awareness of the plight of African orphans.
Madonna told Vanity Fair magazine, "I want to see girls with educations. I think women are the future of Africa."
The pop superstar has teamed up with director Nathan Rissman to produce a film exploring the lives of the thousands of infants and children who have been orphaned, often as the result of HIV and AIDS.
Madonna said recently, "I asked one of the children in Malawi, 'If you've got the world listening to you, if there's one thing you could say to the world, what would you say? And the boy said, 'Please just help us forget we're orphans.' "
Madonna, 48, adopted 19-month-old David after travelling to Malawi to help build an orphanage as part of the Raising Malawi project in October.
The 'Material Girl' singer also has a ten-year-old daughter, Lourdes, from a previous relationship, and a son, Rocco, six, with her director husband Guy Ritchie.
Rupert Everett keen to see Madonna's directorial debut
Source: Contactmusic - 14 June 2007British actor Rupert Everett can't wait to see the results of Madonna's directorial debut, because he thinks it will be "amazing".
Everett starred alongside the Material Girl in the 2001 comedy The Next Best Thing and is adamant Madonna's low-budget comedy Filth and Wisdom will be a hit. He says, "She's great, I think it'll be amazing."
~ Filth and Wisdom is set to be released at the Sundance Film Festival in February, 2008, according to the IMDB.
Madonna taps Up Timberlake
Source: Just Jared - 13 June 2007After cozying up with ex-girlfriend Cameron Diaz on the green carpet, Justin Timberlake grabs dinner with music partner Madonna and her film director hubby Guy Ritchie. The trio wined and wined up at upscale Italian restaurant Locatelli's in Central London.
As reported back in March, Mr. J.T. and Madge are collaborating together for a Timbaland-produced track for the Queen's forthcoming album, which is due out in November. They were spotted around a London music studio together last month.
Madonna's secret with Kennedy Jr. exposed
Source: Contactmusic - 12 June 2007A raunchy tryst between John F. Kennedy Jr. and pop superstar Madonna was cut short when the pair failed to find a condom, a pal of the late socialite confides. The pair allegedly arranged a secret rendez-vous at a low budget hotel in Chicago in the summer of 1988. However, the sexy date was cut short because neither star had considered using protection.
Kennedy's pal Rob Littell reveals in new biography American Legacy, "They were working their way around the bases, and as they rounded third and headed for home, she asked him if he had any protection.
He didn't, so now they began discussing how they were going to get a hold of a prophylactic. "She was still legally married to Sean Penn, and he had a steady girlfriend... They were afraid of being busted. They couldn't very well just meander into a pharmacy and ask for a pack of Trojans (condoms). They were too well known.
"To John's great chagrin, the relationship was never completed." Kennedy later married Carolyn Bessette before their plane crash death in 1999. Madonna wed director Guy Ritchie in 2000.
Madonna is praised by the fickle Mr Grant
Source: Sunday Telegraph - 10 June 2007As oleaginous off screen as he is on it, Richard E Grant has been heaping praise lately on Madonna who has given him a part in Filth and Wisdom, the film which she is currently directing.
"She is somebody who is so determined to stretch in every direction and I really admire that," the star of Withnail and I simpers. "Believe me, the number of directors that I have worked with who don't have half her ability makes me believe she has a real talent."
Mandrake wonders if this could possibly be the same Richard E Grant who cheerfully retailed tittle-tattle in his 1996 memoirs about the singer's "embarassing" behind-the-scenes rows with her then boyfriend Tony Ward, how she swore like a trooper, looked over his shoulder while she talked to him and made him "feel like a wretched five-year-old".
The actor even felt at one point that Madonna warranted a "quick call to the Capone School of St Valentine's Day Messages" for upstaging a friend at a nightclub.
For good measure, he says that he asked Ward how he "coped" with being "Mr Madonna". Ward had replied "****ing insane, man." Mandrake trusts Mr Grant's performance in Filth and Wisdom will not now end up on the cutting-room floor.
Madonna at George Michael's show
9 June 2007Our visitor Dirk informed us that Madonna was at tonight's George Michael concert as the first show in the brand new Wembley Stadium, where Madonna herself will perform next month as part of Live Earth.
Madonna's latest Vanity Fair appearance
Source: Vanity Fair - 9 June 2007Madonna's back on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine, not only on one, but on two covers (out of a total 20) already! The issue is completely dedicated to Africa and Madonna gave an interview to Dr. Jim Yong Kim, a Harvard professor whose work has led to greatly improved aids treatment in Africa, about her recent visits in Malawi:
A lot of people ask me, "Why did you choose Malawi?" I always say that Malawi chose me. Victoria Keelan, a businesswoman who was born and raised in Malawi, contacted me through a mutual friend and said, "Look, if you're in the business of helping children, we have over a million orphans here in Malawi, and the problem is insane. It's an emergency. They need your help."
She reached out to me because I do a lot of fund-raising for an organization called Spirituality for Kids, which helps children in impoverished conditions everywhere in the world, whether it's Palestine, or East L.A., or New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, or the Bronx, Miami, Mexico City—all over the place.
I must admit that I didn't really know where Malawi was when I first heard about the situation there. I had certainly heard about the aids pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, and in more well-known countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda. But not Malawi. So I educated myself, and I couldn't say no, and it just seemed like a good idea. I sort of dove in.
Dr. Kim: When was your first trip?
Madonna: A year ago April. I've only been there three times, but so much has happened in a year. I'm thrilled because, as you know, it takes a lot of time and a lot of work to get things done. It was great to go back and see so many things manifested. But once you start turning over rocks and reaching out to help people, there's a whole avalanche coming right behind it. And it seems never-ending. But when you see the fruits of your labor, you feel like it's possible.
Dr. Kim: One of the things we've learned is that you've got to take lots of joy out of small victories. That's what keeps you going.
Madonna: Yes, and you have to stop fixating on things, too. I found myself getting really angry when I went into [the slums] and was visiting families or single people living with aids who we're supposed to be helping with home-based care. I would talk to people through translators and find out that they were getting all the wrong medication.
That drove me bonkers, and I almost ripped my hair out. Those little things get me down, but then you realize there are all these other great things happening: the Millennium Villages have surplus crops, and orphan-care centers are being built. So you have to focus on the things that are getting done.
~ Read the rest of the interview @ Vanity Fair.com.
Madonna used to live in a hell hole
Source: Contactmusic - 9 June 2007Soft Cell frontman Marc Almond was forced to host superstar Madonna in a prostitute and drug-ridden apartment block when she visited the U.K. in the 1980's.
The Queen of Pop was about to embark on her first promotional tour in the country and used Almond's humble bedsit while he was away.
And former drug-user Almond reveals he still hasn't gotten over the shame of his filthy apartment. He says, "It was a hell-hole. There were prostitutes upstairs, and junkies downstairs.
"I've always felt ashamed she stayed in such a pit. If I'd known how big she'd become, I'd have sold my bedsheets on Ebay!"
Madonna.com gets new navigation
8 June 2007Seems I wasn't the only webmaster who thought the navigation of Madonna's official site wasn't exactly user-friendly. The site has received a partial relooking with a much better navigation bar.
Also check out the updated lists of her videos and films (although you could find those all along on Mad-Eyes ;-)
Madonna touches the Surface
Source: Undercover - 8 June 2007Madonna has been given Microsoft's new product 'Surface' as a thankyou gift for recording the song Hey You from Live Earth.
In a blog on her website, she says "Steve Ballmer of Microsoft has sent me one of the best gifts I have ever received! It is called "Surface." It is a coffee-table shaped computer that responds to touch".
"In addition to thumbing through thousands of my favorite family photos, I can listen to my music collection watch videos, etc. My children have also had a blast fingerpainting without getting their hands dirty!"
"Steve jokingly referred to my post about the Xbox 360 Degrees! He said, "I assure you this product will not overheat!" I hope not! I will let you know if anything goes wrong with it!"
Surface bypasses the mouse and allows you to grab data with your hands and move information and objects around with natural gestures.
The device features a 30-inch tabletop screen which allows several people to use at one time.
Update: this story is reportedly FAKE.
Norton wants to interview Madonna
Source: Digital Spy - 7 June 2007Graham Norton has admitted that he is desperate to interview pop queen Madonna.
The Irish comedian has grilled female pop stars including Cher, Mariah Carey and Britney Spears during his nine-year chat show career, but has yet to meet the 'Ray of Light' star.
He told Heat: "I'm now with the same publicist (as Madonna) and I've named my dog after her - what more do I have to do? Jesus, I pay to see her in concert, I buy the albums...OK, I don't see the movies.
"Maybe if I'd seen Swept Away she'd do it. That would be the ultimate sacrifice."
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