Word: madonna
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Audiences have been building, meanwhile, for Desperately Seeking Susan, a funny, likable film comedy in which Madonna co-stars (with Rosanna Arquette) as a rambunctious East Village vagabond whose free life becomes the obsession of a repressed New Jersey housewife. Madonna's current 28-city, 38-date concert tour, of which she is not only the lead singer and dancer but the director and driving force, has sold out almost instantly just about everywhere tickets have gone on sale. Sheer velocity of box office is watched very closely by concert promoters. Big stars are supposed to sell out, but stars...
What is more, Madonna paraphernalia -- posters, at least ten different kinds of shirts, bracelets and cross-shaped earrings like the ones Madonna wears in salute to herself for having survived a strict Catholic upbringing -- are selling at concerts at a rate not seen even in the mega-meltdown tours of Michael Jackson and Prince. This is very important, and not just because it brings in money by the front-end loaderful. Fathers new to the bubblegum rock ramble (though they may have hung out at the Stones' concerts only a few years ago) may think that all they have...
...hard little hearts of all of the Jennifers, and quite a few of the Kevins, ache for Madonna is another question. Big-time show biz is three- fourths mass hysteria, especially when teenagers and rock music are involved, and anyone who thinks he can explain it fully is dreaming. But incredibly lucky timing is clearly part of the Madonna craze. As it happens, few other big rock stars are diluting media attention. Also the neoconservative mood of the kid culture seems to be just right for an entertainer whose personality is an outrageous blend of Little Orphan Annie, Margaret Thatcher...
...Madonna's best bit of luck may be her uproariously appropriate part in Desperately Seeking Susan. Here too, the timing was superb. As Director Susan Seidelman points out, when the movie was cast in the summer of 1984, Madonna was not quite a star. She was just another pretty pop singer, just beginning to be widely known. Madonna's style and attitude got her the part, though not without a lot of hesitation among male executives of Orion Pictures who had never heard of her. A year later she would have been too famous and too expensive for a nonsinging...
...things are, Susan gives Madonna an audience she can't reach with MTV or disco. When she sings she lacks the all-there quality of a great pop singer like Linda Ronstadt or Tina Turner. She disguises this with vocal intensity and good dance moves. The kids are so caught up in their own emotional storms that they don't notice it, but in the love songs Madonna is not in love, and in the heat songs, like Burning Up, she is not in heat. But in the funny songs, like the pop reggae Material Girl, she is very funny...