Madonna - Turn Up The Radio : Official Video

Fans have been rewarded after more than 3 months of waiting. Turn Up The Radio's video is here!

With a looming August 5 release date in the UK, Interscope ultimately made something a little bit right for Madonna's latest single. It cannot be forgotten that blunder after blunder ruined the queen's last few releases (Give Me All Your Luvin', Girl Gone Wild, Masterpiece) thus undoubtedly messing up the supposed "new era". Perhaps learning from their mistakes, radio play and video are being used to hype TUTR's debut by a few weeks. These early buzz tactics give just enough time to drum up interest from the buying public. Radio 2 has gratefully playlisted it! Also, a couple of new mixes (Offer Nissim & R3hab) surfaced a week ago which are hopefully included in the EP. And of course, the video.

The seemingly instagram-shot soft-resolution video is helmed by Give It 2 Me director Tom Munro. There is nothing to be excited about this fact since he did a less than impressive job in 2008 (ok, it wasn't that bad). Thankfully, most if not all of the scenes in TUTR were shot outdoors thus a would've been dreadful remake of GI2M was avoided. The daytime video set in Florence tells of Madonna exiting her hotel to a horde of ecstatic paparazzis snapping at her every move (Drowned World pops into memory, only it was set at night). She looks displeased despite the dark glasses and shields her face from them which looks as if she has a headache on the way to her car! The next scenes have her pick up interesting people (street dancer, gasoline boys, pimp & hookers, hip guys in suits) along the way to ride in her convertible (in Sorry, she snatches guys into her van). True to the lyrics of the song (" I just wanna get in my car. I wanna go fast and I gotta go far.."), she rides a car the whole time but with a handsomely serious driver. Nothing much happens all throughout aside from fans and photographers chasing the vehicle when it passes populated areas. The video ends with a tired Madonna dropped lying on the backseat as her driver tells her in Italian: "Party's over now. Fasten seat belt, bitch!"

Trying to keep cool...

" I'm pissed ! "

" Get that away from me ! "

More than 4 minutes of summer fun is being highlighted on the video but it falls short. It may actually look funny in it's vapidness but not as fun as it should have been. Madonna's facial expressions of displeasure (00:09-00:39) are priceless but her gesture of hiding her face (00:41-00:44 and 00:52-00:56) while tapping her driver to go is just something off. Wasn't there any other action to show she wants to hide without really "hiding" her face? We need to see her lovely ageless face, not her head of hair! An awkward acting moment is seen at 01:35-01:41 as she "takes" the streetdancer. She looked unsure and even shy of what she did. Editing is the most serious problem. A normal viewer can say that the merging of scenes look amateurish making the whole thing sluggish. This wasn't a problem for GI2M with its snappy assembling so why did it fail in this aspect? Ugly parts at 03:07, 03:15, 04:12, 4:16 horribly show the film equipments and crew! How could Tom Munro allow these to be seen?

Are THESE behind-the-scenes footages on the FINAL video ???

Despite Madonna's lovely 60s-Step Back In Time get-up (hair, outfit, boobs and all), as a whole, the video is just PLAIN. It fails in comparison to Girl Gone Wild in terms of artistry and appeal. The beauty of Florence wasn't captured that much. No scenic background shows much of the city just passing street shots. A brief dance routince could have been helpful and should have substituted the many raw-looking footages of running fans. With this video, the song's charting future becomes questionably uncertain. I really pray that fans would just forgive this misstep and look forward to the fabulous mixes on the EP. But then again this languid output is a million times better than a recorded MDNA Tour performance of TUTR.

The verdict for the video : 5/10