I'm burning up, burning up for your VOTES! — ILM Artist Poll #31 is Madonna

http://i.imgur.com/KflPzET.jpg

* Vote for the standard 20 tracks using this scoring system: 1:40, 2:36, 3:33, 4:30, 5:28, 6:26, 7:25, 8:24, 9:23, 10:22, 11:21, 12:20, 13:19, 14:18, 15:17, 16:16, 17:15, 18:14, 19:13, 20:12.
* Optionally, vote for your 5 favorite remixes of Madonna songs.
* Also optionally, vote for your 5 favorite Madonna albums.

Voting begins as soon as this post is published and it ends at midnight EST on Thursday, February 28th (that's 9pm PST for left coasters and 5am on Friday, March 1st for Britishes and other GMTers). Send your ballots to johnnyilxfever [at] gmail [dot] com. Enjoy!

1. OMG

2. Anyone who dares vote in this without having heard Erotica in full will have their life SB'd.

JOHNNY FEVER YOU MUST BE MY LUCKY STAR

sorry

omg excited

Hey, just a request y'all...

If, when voting, you could include the points alongside the tracks on your ballot, that would be super helpful (since I'm tabulating by hand one at a time). ex:

First place song - 40
Second place song - 36
...
Nineteenth place song - 13
Twentieth place song - 12

It helps me make sure I don't leave anything out or give a particular song too many or too few points.

I've had a ton of different favorite Madonna songs over the years, but I think at some point over the past few "Open Your Heart" has cemented itself in my mind as the most Madonnest song Madonna ever Madonna'ed. If it's not somewhere on your ballot, I may discard it. ;)

I got the urge last week to put on some Jellybean Benitez - couldn't be entirely sure Sidewalk Talk and (especially) Who Found Who weren't actually *by* Madonna. I think they may even have been written by her.

Anyway wfw is my vote for the most Madonna thing I've ever heard - not just the soundalike vocal or JB production, something in the melody and phrasing is pure, distilled Madonna.

i was in a pizza parlor the other day and they were playing "open your heart", not all that loud, and i'd never thought about it much before but it literally sounded like the most beautiful thing ever made. very high. (on my ballot i mean. although since you ask.)

another ridiculously gorgeous one for me is "don't tell me", with all that space and the clipped postmodern acoustic guitar loop.

if you gave me half the chance you'd see, my desire BURNING INSIDE of me.

the early group of madonna songs where by it feels that madonna is with absolute self-assurance just commanding things into existence by sheer force of ambition & willpower are one of the best things ever (see also: burning up, gambler). and her voice pulls it off in spades.

love the extended mix, because "open your heart" can never be too long

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsdcX_5dS0A

"what's the matter, are you scared of me or something?" <3

i don't know why i don't listen to that every morning, it makes me feel like i can do anything

Wow @ that extended mix!

i'm gonna be posting a lot of youtubes of standout non-singles itt (johnny lemme know if you'd prefer i don't embed them all), will have a Spotify playlist done soon too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feQXMGG0vpM

"Till Death Do Us Part" is the track from Like A Prayer that most explicitly deals with the Sean Penn split, pretty amazing song imo

woop, at last. thanks again for taking this over johnny.

that extended 'open your heart' is definitely going top 5 for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KA5Vp0tynA

Madonna way ahead of the curve on the sampling Aaliyah trend -- the same year "Back & Forth" dropped, it was sampled on "Inside Of Me" from Bedtime Stories

2. Anyone who dares vote in this without having heard Erotica in full will have their life SB'd.

Only the one that inflicts SB can take it away.

Seriously, tho, I move that any ballot that doesn't include at least 2 songs from Erotica is null and void.

what are the consensus Erotica tracks though? i don't hold any of the singles in especially high regard and the whole thing is kind of cohesive and hard to break down into highlights imo. "Waiting" probably my favorite.

The deepest of deep cuts from that album's fan base seems to be "Thief of Hearts."

I'm pretty fond of her uncompromisingly icy version of "Fever," though.

I'm digging through pre-"Everybody" demos on youtube right now. A lot of stuff I've never heard before. This one in particular makes it sound like she was way into The Go-Go's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkFJ5v_lQLA

Also, holy shit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fisl3SOrtpY

Original Stephen Bray "Burning Up" demo is foine!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiTtkvFFtc

all those mentioned on erotica and i also rly like "words" including and especially the clickity-clack typewriter noise at the end cuz see words

what are the consensus Erotica tracks though? i don't hold any of the singles in especially high regard and the whole thing is kind of cohesive and hard to break down into highlights imo. "Waiting" probably my favorite

"Secret Garden"!!!

After an album of heartbreak, pain, disease and death Madge tries to reconstruct her existence over early drum and bass yearning for the one thing she feels she can unconditionally love and be loved back in return - a child.

I can't think of a better line to sum up Madonna in an existential crisis in 1992 than her sighing "I just wish I knew the color of my own hair".

"Till Death Do Us Part" is the track from Like A Prayer that most explicitly deals with the Sean Penn split, pretty amazing song imo

That woozy, almost tentative guitar solo!

"Deeper and Deeper" is the best song on Erotica and one of her best singles period.

"Words" is my favorite of the faster Erotica numbers.

from the Bruce thread:

Madonna has so many singles that some of them qualify as deep cuts ("Angel," "Causing a Commotion," "Hanky Panky," "Nothing Lasts Forever").

As long as "Angel," "Sky Fits Heaven," and "Til Death Do Us Part" get mentioned, I'm ok.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, February 18, 2013 8:08 PM

Madonna released at least one single every year between 1982 and 2003; in that time period, only one of them did not make the top ten of a chart somewhere (and, as far as I can tell, it's the only single of her career that didn't hit the top 10 somewhere)

That means 75 out of 76 singles hit the top ten on the pop and/or dance charts

She sounds so alive on "Open Your Heart." It's one of those songs that makes me feel invincible.

djp you just blew my mind

Predict a massive span of singles, album cuts and other stuff spread out over her entire career. So much stuff from virtually every album/era that I outright love, up to and including "Confessions..." I'd say. After that she started trying to hard and therefore failing harder. I'm sure "Hard Candy" and "MDNA" have their defenders, though.

"Secret Garden"!!!

After an album of heartbreak, pain, disease and death Madge tries to reconstruct her existence over early drum and bass yearning for the one thing she feels she can unconditionally love and be loved back in return - a child.

Always wondered why that song felt like a bonus track, but now it makes sense. It's the baby song on an album in which she assumes the role of a gay man.

I can't think of a better line to sum up Madonna in an existential crisis in 1992 than her sighing "I just wish I knew the color of my own hair".

OTM.

I almost think her ballads deserve their own mini-poll.

The countdown thread is going to, what, 50? 75?

I was originally just going to do a top 40, but may stretch it out to 50 depending on the results of the voting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKjm-zdcPHM

this needs love.

The normal version of "Open Your Heart" is so perfect I'm not sure I could vote for the extended remix.

The Big Orange SPIN Book dismissed Bedtime Stories as Madonna jumping on board the R&B train but working with Dallas Austin, Babyface, and Dave Hall showed how shrewdly she figured out that R&B would dominate the decade. She even looks ahead to the cavernous electronic chill of her next studio album.

True Blue probably counts as a key album for me as a listener. Just circumstances--that was the one that was out when I started working at a record store in 1986. Rediscovered Top 40 pop music after a long time away from it. "Open Your Heart" in particular was key (as was Janet's "When I Think of You").

Madonna way ahead of the curve on the sampling Aaliyah trend -- the same year "Back & Forth" dropped, it was sampled on "Inside Of Me" from Bedtime Stories

HOW did i never know this before?!

1986 was a fantastic year in pop music

"Gambler," people!

YOU'RE JUST JEALOUS CUZ YOU CAN'T BE ME

After that she started trying to hard and therefore failing harder. I'm sure "Hard Candy" and "MDNA" have their defenders, though.

not trying hard enough imo

"Gang Bang" is a terrible song but weirdly compelling, I feel like campaigning for it just to be perverse

The tour finally sold me on a couple of MDNA's tracks, but Hard Candy was ... um, not a tough act to follow.

xp "Gang Bang" was one of the ones I came around to!

I didn't particularly love Erotica at the time (and still don't) and, for some reason, my mind has never identified Bedtime Stories as a proper Madonna album since it seemed to come so quickly after Erotica (though now I see it was a full two-year gap). She was just so omnipresent during those years that it all seems like a blur. In hindsight, I appreciate her attempts at spreading her wings into unfamiliar styles, but neither of those records means a lot to me.

"Hung Up" and maaaaaybe "Sorry" will make my ballot. More than half of Confessions is amazing and has aged well.

Strange overlapping of tastemakers: MBV samples the "Security of the First World" beat two years pre-Madonna/Leny Kravitz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZueurvWak0

I still maintain that "4 Minutes" is unfairly maligned

"Give It To Me" is not maligned nearly enough, though (and yes, I know that everyone hates it)

also looking at how her singles charted on the Wikipedia list is kind of lol

like for example, the US was completely OTM re: "American Pie"

Really think the results are going to have to be larger than 40 to allow some of the non-greatest hits fodder to sneak in.

Already, I'm mulling arbitrarily limiting selection of #1s to no more than 5 on my ballot, but that's dumb.

the beat for "4 minutes" remains so banging

erotica and bedtime stories were the albums that made me fall in love with madonna - i discovered her '80s stuff in retrospect

the U.S. not otm re "Bedtime Stories."

erotica & bedtime stories def her artistic & creative pinnacle

That may be true, but I've got little use for either of them.

I do like "Rain". And "Bad Girl". And the track "Bedtime Stories". Dunno if I'll vote for any of them with only 20 votes to spend, though.

I think the singles from Bedtime Stories are amazing but the album itself doesn't support them.

Erotica is just okay really, but I do love "Rain".

Madonna released at least one single every year between 1982 and 2003; in that time period, only one of them did not make the top ten of a chart somewhere (and, as far as I can tell, it's the only single of her career that didn't hit the top 10 somewhere)

That means 75 out of 76 singles hit the top ten on the pop and/or dance charts

― Ima R.A.E.D. (DJP), Tuesday, 19 February 2013 15:45 (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

what was the fuck up?

JF, I'm not gonna hurt you. Just close your eyes.

http://www.magia2000.com/images/madonnadolls/erotica/madonna-erotica-fever.jpg

xp: "Love Don't Live Here Anymore"

I much prefer "I'll Remember" to all of Ray of Light.

Open Your Heart definitely one of my all time favorites.

In Grade 6, I put together my own choreographed dance to it. Oddly I don't remember performing it though? I can't exactly remember what I happened but I definitely remember many many nights in front of my bedroom mirror working out my steps :D (Also I recall a lot of time writing out the lyrics.) I remember when I told my teacher that I had chosen Open Your Heart to dance to, he said jokingly, "A song about open heart surgery! Wonderful! Very uplifting."

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8bl6e_wayne-s-world-sketch-1990-featuring_fun

also I am the world's biggest stan for 'True Blue' (single) -- another grade-school dance in front of the mirror favorite, to the point where I recorded the music video off the tv and my friends and I learned the dance she did in the video. I'm right back at 10 years old every time I hear it.

This is a pretty good remix, imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ma3pqYDxO4

Madonna way ahead of the curve on the sampling Aaliyah trend -- the same year "Back & Forth" dropped, it was sampled on "Inside Of Me" from Bedtime Stories

― some dude, Tuesday, 19 February 2013 14:35 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

haha this is a most un-shipsy fanciful stretch re "the curve"

isnt the sample just of kells on the intro, and isnt dave jam hall continuing the jackin 4 beats bad boy steez he invented of no great surprise anyway

soz for the pedantry but yunno

maybe there should be a little thread of difficult albums that inspired popular artists

joi 'pendulum vibe' for madonna, aaliyah loving lewis taylor, that sort of thing

"Vogue" was the life-changer for me. It'll be hard not to give it the #1 slot.

I like "True Blue," too. Sort of whitewashed from her greatest hits.

Agree this has to be a high number vote, because otherwise it will not only just be her hits, but several hits will get the shaft, too.

All of Freaky Trigger's Madonna blurbs are worth reading and boast good comments: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/search/?cx=001133180466749097833%3A3chbiorvjmy&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=madonna

Raise your hand if you're old enough to remember Madonna's pre-"Virgin" breakthrough (raises hand). Have such love for the first album, oddly ambivalent about "Like a Virgin" (the album). "True Blue" is closest to my heart, love that it was preceded by "Into the Groove" and "Crazy For You," both of which are all-time and would have fit on the album.

Best use of Madonna might be the diffusion of "Live to Tell" throughout "At Close Range." Patrick Leonard ftw.

ah Johnny has sent me down the rabbit hole of demos and unreleased tracks, because "Take Me (I Want You)" was an AWESOME find. pleasantly surprised at how long and detailed this list is, good job Madonna stans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unreleased_Madonna_songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmFe83QiEaI

"Ain't No Big Deal" was apparently at one point supposed to be her first single before "Everybody," and was demoed and recorded several times before finally ending up a True Blue era b-side. one of the demos was produced by Mark Kamins, the boyfriend who produced "Everybody" and got Madonna signed who passed away last week, not sure if this 1981 one is his but it's pretty fun to hear.

I think the singles from Bedtime Stories are amazing but the album itself doesn't support them.

nah the suite from "forbidden love" to the end is so immaculate, and seriously sad as fuck - love how it slowly builds from she singing about rejection ("forbidden love") to absolute loneliness ("love tried to welcome me") to desiring death ("sanctuary") to oblivion itself ("bedtime stories") to then bringing the curtain down completely on "take a bow". and i love how she pillows all the tragedy under such luscious sonics to hide it away.

Patrick Leonard definitely helped her refine her melodic gifts.

haha rtc thanks for illuminating -- i was just following wikipedia's lead, only did a pretty half-assed comparison between the 2 tracks to confirm there was a sample, but obviously i was kinda joking about THE CURVE, still interesting imo

http://open.spotify.com/user/djperry1973/playlist/4b5pRHtluXpNzZWeQgxNbr

A playlist of the 74 Madonna singles available on Spotify; missing are "Gambler" from the "Vision Quest" soundtrack (#3 in Italy, #4 in the UK) and "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" from "Evita" (#4 in Italy, #7 in the UK)

re: "True Blue", I think it's a sweet, underrated song that Madonna loved so much she went back and turned it into "Cherish"

I have been waiting for this!! (duh)

I remember "Bedtime Stories" as landing right in the middle of her, er, overexposure, post "Erotica," "Truth or Dare," "Body of Evidence," etc. It was as if, in that brief window, no one really knew what they wanted from Madonna, so the album sort of floats in this weird purgatory. To my mind, at least. Obviously "Ray of Light" restored her balance, but I agree that "Bedtime Stories" is due some exploration. I do remember the title track's video being one of the first CGI extravaganzas to blow my mind.

"I'll Remember" was the Let's Clean Up My Image single.

also the "soundtrack song with bearded Joe Pesci clips galore in the video" single

an important staple in every megastar's career

"I'll Remember (Theme from With Honors)"

well MJ had his "Joe Pesci in sunglasses" videos from Moonwalker, Pesh was a hot pop accessory

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/60/With_honors_poster.jpg/220px-With_honors_poster.jpg

many xposts to Josh In Chicago: I definitely remember Madge pre-Virgin - the first cassette I ever bought with my own money was 'H'Its Huge 84', which included 'Holiday' that I could.not.stop.dancing.to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H'its_Huge_'84

Pesci should have been in Rihanna's "S&M" video

"This Used To Be My Playground" probably wouldn't make the results even if stretched out to 100, but I love that song a lot for some reason (probably because I like the film it's from so much).

ahh With Honors' director did Truth Or Dare and a couple of her videos, now it all makes sense

I have gone on abt this elsewhere on this borad I'm sure but "Future Lovers" is totally the strongest track on "Confessions..." and it's really bizarre to me that it was never released as a single (esp considering it's the only Mirwais production on the album). Also the fact that "In the evidence of its brilliance" is sung at 7/4 time both on its own and then later mixed over a verse sung at 4/4 makes me super giddy every time I hear it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGSZKjTEaTs

God, my ballot is going to be so fucking challopy.

important question: can we do a madonna boyfriends poll while this is happening

xxpos JF otm - League of Their Own makes me love playground soooooo much

man it sucks thinking back to how true blue was like the big family car tape of my youth and it was actually all about sean penn

God, my ballot is going to be so fucking challopy.

If it's going to have a chunk of songs from 'Confessions...' on it, then we'll be of like mind.

Also, for your consideration (look there's a fucking ORBITAL remix!!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0R8MYGREmg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si3GJdpe_ro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_sMHc3Tsx4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h44AGRkobIU

I'm adding another sub-poll for Top 5 Videos. This one wins IT ALL for me (also love the Above & Beyond remix used in the video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYwgG2oyUbA

yes, I love that video to death

I'm strictly a non-voting Immaculate Collection guy, but my #1 would be the time I had to step around her and Sean Penn making out in the aisle of the Metropolitan Opera after Robin Williams' 1986 stand-up show there.

Also love (and will vote for) "This Used to Be My Playground."

yes, I love that video to death

It's the only video I ever bought on a dvd single.

I was listening to Immaculate Collection on my way in to work bcz it's the only Madge I had on my ipod -- they cut off all the songs at least 10-15 seconds early!! All my favorite hummy parts off the early singles are gooooooooone. Jerks.

Yes, the Immaculate Collection mixes are garbage.

Plus the remixes of the LAP songs = ehhh

I was already voting for at least 2 tracks off Erotica but Tim F and Eric otm --- relistening to it this morning goddamn it's a gorgeous album

love the lyrics of "Bad Girl" and she straining at the limits of her pre-opera-snob voice.

"Bad Girl" = her greatest video and ballad

Yeah Bad Girl is awesome.

oh man if we're gonna talk about best videos maybe there should have been a video sub-poll

I'm adding another sub-poll for Top 5 Videos.

Already did.

ahhh you should get that added to the top of the thread, i missed it

Who here is a mod? Can I get a mod to add that to the op, plz?

try asking on MRF, you will probably get a faster answer

signed, an ex-mod who would have been all over that request back in the day

done.

i only got into madonna about three years ago. i think its because of how much i hate contemporary madonna. not just the music although the last time she released a single i could stand was maybe don't tell me. a big thing that stopped me hearing the back catalogue properly was my projections of her current gay icon golden statue media presence, that is there is something beyond iconic about her, she's kindof hardened into a set of signifiers. its really boring to me. this is her curse and her blessing i think, the thing that makes her textually convoluted and judith butler and paris is burning and all that but on the other hand makes her kindof static and monolithic and so overcoded. its the very earliest stuff i like most, Borderline, the shiny scruffiness of it. arriving in new york with $35 in her pocket. something so sly and canny about it. a whiff of the street, the warm air out of subway stations. i think of her first album as being such a great new york album in tradition of like vu&nico or parallel lines. i just love this ballsy girl in these songs. and its a shame that her media persona has congealed around her. ray of light is her only good album after the first three i think, though obviously there's highlights out of most things along the way. remembering that thing she used to do, a hint of the underground. the blissed out bubbling of a rave on another beach down the coast, parts of it almost wild but so soft and distant and so clear and liquid. i also like her singing on that album, how she was suddenly a grown up. Also don't vote for vogue because of cultural imperialism guys.

i have to vote for "Vogue." it's an amazing song. kind of feel like ~principles~ have no place in a Madonna poll. my top video picks are going to be largely dictated by male gaze.

must resist terrible pun

Don't like "Vogue," never have, for some reason.

great post, plax

yeah vogue also kindof sucks and the video is gross

VG OTM, that was a great plax post

Oh man, just cued up "Oh Father" for the first time in far too long. Those strings still give me the goosebumps.

it has been far too long since I've listened to the singles from her first album

my best friend met her in the Danceteria days when she was dating Basquiat.

also I want to make sure no one forgets about "White Heat" from True Blue

http://youtu.be/w-MtJ9Pgslk

lovely post, plax

For me her boringness now isn't how she's a set of hardened signifiers so much as an artist who's lost considerable songwriting talent AND, to be expected, isn't as interested in keeping her ear on the ground listening for distant rumblings.

Still, I don't have a problem admitting that she's responsible for the greatest collective body of singles since Washington became president.

White Heat is fantastic. Last night, I developed a new affection for Where's The Party? as well.

Here's another forgotten one: "Keep It Together." I love both the singles remix and the guitar-bass-drums album version.

the shimmering glissando that opens "Lucky Star" is one of the most important moments in pop music in my lifetime

^^^

so so so so so stoked for this!

(that's actually not quite true, but Lucky Star is a shoe in for top 3, this whole thread is OTM X 10000)

oooh I almost forgot to rep for my favorite Like a Virgin album track

it's a great combo of slow-dreamy but groovy enough to dance do, it's just so hooky and dreamy and lovely
her voice sounds so young and BIG here. it makes me v nostalgic and happy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWbgHnzMltI

I'm pretty unschooled in Madonna, but I'm tempted to vote just because "Borderline" deserves all the #1 votes it can get.

xpost **dance to

from what I remember of Like A Virgin the album, I loved all of the singles and detested all of the non-singles

"White Heat" is great, was probably the next deep cut i was gonna post. instead, the only Madonna song from the Who's That Girl soundtrack that wasn't a single, "Can't Stop," which is awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXb4aQnnG-c

True story: I've never seen any of the Madonna movies from the 80s.

I really, really dig Ray of Light album tracks as well, particularly "Skin":

http://youtu.be/mtOCIHLLqz4

also I've always liked "Angel" and "Dress You Up" more than "Material Girl" and "Like A Virgin"

has there ever been another artist who parcelled out so many of their biggest hits to album soundtracks? xp

Johnny Fever!!!

you gotta see Desperately Seeking Susan at LEAST.

If you've never seen her monologue from SNL in 1985, you aren't alone. It's especially hard to find now. Just tracked it down on a sub-youtube video site: http://facedl.com/fvideo.php?f=aowokxoikwnnoqw&madonna-snl-monologue-1985

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdoeM1DMdy4

do you remember her promo commercials from then when she was standing next to a scared-looking Anthony Michael Hall and introduced herself with "Hi. I'm Madonna and this is a virgin"

Yeah, don't like "Material Girl" or "Like a Virgin," really, though I'm OK with the latter. Highlight of the Nile Rodgers book, though, was the debate over which of those two songs should be the lead single. Also, getting "Material Girl" to work despite it being the absolute wrong key for Madonna.

Actually, all the Madonna stuff is great. When he meets her, after the first album, she's sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a shit apartment. Also, "Like a Virgin" (the album) was in the can forever, since the first album started blowing up after they had already written it off. Also, Madonna had some incredible pop instincts, knowing exactly which songs and why, which clubs and why, and so on.

It took years to warm to Like a Virgin. "Pretender" is my jam now.

Dress You Up is likely my favorite of the Like a Virgin singles but Crazy For You is likely my favorite song ever written

Pretender is great. I also really like Stay except it gets a bit dead-sounding after a while.

LAV was the first single-artist album I ever bought with my own money. $13 on cassette. I wore that thing out.

oh wow I totally forgot how great 'Til Death Do Us Part' is. That loop that runs through it reminds me of a sped-up We Belong (ie Pat Benatar)

Ray of Light non-single highlights:

Swim
Sky Fits Heaven
Candy Perfume Girl
Little Star

"Sky Fits Heaven" and "Little Star" are so so great

The piano in the chorus is what makes it.

I love that you think all those things about Madonna, (ico), but I'm with Alfred: she's responsible for the greatest collective body of singles since Martha Wash became president. Plus I don't hear imperialism in "Vogue" so much as endorsement and co-opting, but I'm a straight white male, so what do I know?

Sorry to be a drudge, but I'd estimate 4th, 5th, 6th greatest body of singles. Or thereabouts.

Oh, I guess I'm not a straight white male.

I'm currently trying to get through MDNA. Didn't a couple of people upthread rep for "Gang Bang"? It's more goddamned stupid than I even remembered.

it's also one of the best songs on that album

(it ended up being the first song on a Spotify playlist I created called "I am as shocked that I like this song as you are")

She can't do fun convincingly anymore, so I'll take the inverse.

it's weird that for such a definitive or at least defining singles artist, I have such a hard time considering Madonna a mere singles artist.

the last convincingly fun and clever thing she did was that shirt that said mother on the front and f***** on the back.

oh don't worry: I don't.

a Spotify playlist I created called "I am as shocked that I like this song as you are"

Ha! Is it still active?

Yay!

JF: http://open.spotify.com/user/djperry1973/playlist/4JOk6Ujsdg4fbD6tfe1L5O

I stopped adding things to it shortly after Farrah Abraham melted my brain

Oh, curse you for making me aware this Train cover of "Umbrella" is a thing that exists.

I blame some dude, he introduced me to it

I don't know if this counts as a remix but I love love her version of Erotica on the Confessions Tour, based on Erotica's original demo You Thrill Me (almost wish she'd never changed the lyrics in the final version, they fit the album so well):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRvgtVaJMAc

okay so I went to the used cd store and bought a copy of Confessions (as I lol'd at the sheer number of copies of MDNA in the racks)

this is happening this afternoon

I figured spotify was too 'optional'. i've committed now. i'm all in.

GOOD DAY!

Sometimes, Confessions is my favorite Madonna album (and it's never not in the top 3).

I also snagged a $3 copy of Erotica. such is my level of commitment

(those three, kind of like a carousel of favorites, are True Blue, Ray of Light and Confessions)

she's kindof hardened into a set of signifiers

fantastic post, plax.

it's always seemed to me that she was pretty much born as a set of signifiers. as a celebrity, i can't stand her. every word she's every uttered in public sounds scripted, calculated and pre-cleared. and forced. and almost intentionally irritating. and she's one of my three or four favorite artists of the last 30 years. i fell in love with her the first time i heard her sing "it would be/it would be so nice," which remains one of my favorite moments in all of pop. the melodic lift, the spiritual lift, the physical release and the welcoming arms of those eight syllables is just so impossibly beautiful and heartbreaking and happy. the artist she most reminds me of in her strange balance of charmlessness and musical grace is paul mccartney. and i really really do love her. i'm currently shuffling a spotify playlist of her entire catalog and am newly amazed at both the depth and the breadth of it.

xp Don't worry. I got S/T, I'm Breathless and Erotica covered.

one of my all-time fave mashups

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgjRNpie9y0

man, "Oh Father" is not her best performance

it's always irked me how abruptly it jumps into the chorus

the transition from "dear jessie" to "oh father" tho >>>>>>>

speaking of "Dear Jessie", I really want to shake this song and make it less precious-sounding

*calls child services*

i keep thinking of things i want to rep for in this thread and songs i want to talk about but every time i'm just like there's TOO MUCH of it! circa american life, i remember thinking, it doesn't matter in the slightest what embarrassing or cringey things M does now, she just has way too much stacked on the credit side to ever be a net bad thing. post hard candy and mdna, i still feel that's true.

the first time i heard "dear jessie" i assumed it was parodying the kind of girly-girl fluff madonna, as a young female pop star, might have been ~expected~ to sing about, lol

i still kind of do, the fact that it transitions into the kinda raw & complex "oh father" is evidence i think

ok a couple of remixes

JUSTIFY MY LOVE (THE BEAST WITHIN): madonna recites verses from the book of revelation over the JML beat in the same sultry voice. it is fucking terrifying in certain situations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWNu3Un7_5Y

SORRY (MAN WITH GUITAR MIX): jacques lu cont turns it UP. i think that snaking riff throughout this remix is one of the greatest ever penned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up6TOv8y7nA

also, i think my three favourite madonna songs are "burning up", "deeper and deeper" and "die another day", all separated by roughly a decade. that's kinda incredible.

i think a really good thing is that madonna constantly changed so much, every era was so different - different look, music style, voice even (the way she adapted her voice to suit her material is mad underrated) - that I just don't associate the madonna we have now and who she was then, it's just another version of many madonnas. she can release shit forever (and I think she probably only has one great album in her left tops) and it won't ever infect any of her old material.

playing the Spotify playlist of her singles that I put together, the first song I hit that wasn't amazing was "The Look of Love" (#9 in the UK)

of course since then I've hit "Spotlight", "Cherish", "Oh Father" and "Dear Jessie"; I am really not on team Like a Prayer at all

her performance of "Spanish Eyes" bothers me more than "Oh Father," in part because the latter's a better song.

I still can't believe "Hanky Panky" actually happened

I really like "Oh Father" ;_;

"Gang Bang" is a terrible song but weirdly compelling, I feel like gangbanging for it just to be perverse

Cherish is v cloying. I kinda like it though? I don't think it'll be in my 20 though

i appreciate "gang bang" for being a latter-day madonna song that makes me go huhhhhh? rather than siiiiigh

Def voting for both those remixes, lex.

"cherish" sounds so perfect in summer. sometimes "romeo and juliet, they never felt this way i bet" sounds the most romantic line ever to me

for being a latter-day madonna song that makes me go huhhhhh? rather than siiiiigh

^ valid point

"cherish" sounds so perfect in summer. sometimes "romeo and juliet, they never felt this way i bet" sounds the most romantic line ever to me

every time I hear or read that line I want to go on a kitten-stomping spree

okay Johnny Fever I concede that Confessions is good. Surprisingly good! I haven't facepalmed not even one time.

prolego otm about the romeo & juliet line

xp not even when she sings "dork"?

oh VegGrrl wait till you get to "Let It Will Be/Forbidden Love."

I need to be very dim for a moment and ask a clarification question re plax's post upthread.
re: Vogue = cultural imperialism.
can someone or plax explain this to me more? I'm not sure I really get what the argument against it is.

smart ppl, elaborate plz!

"I Love New York" is so full of terrible throwaway lyrics, but I think that makes me like it more.

xp: I believe plax is talking about the co-opting and mainstreaming of an underground gay dance scene into an ubiquitous pop culture dance that you wouldn't be surprised to see someone's grandmother do at a wedding

oh yeah I forgot that -- I did facepalm over the whole effing off thing

Self-titled, True Blue, Ray of Light and Confessions are her best start to finish listens, from memory - when Confessions came out, I pretty much listened to it every day for a couple of weeks - but I do really need to listen to "Bedtime Stories" again.

Lyrics of "I Love New York" >>> "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down."

xpost DJP: ah! thank you. I thought that was probably what it was but I wasn't sure if I was missing something

"I Love New York" is so full of terrible throwaway lyrics, but I think that makes me like it more.

JUST GO TO TEXAS
ISN'T THAT WHERE THEY...GOLF

still dunno how I feel about "Jimmy Jimmy" and "Love Makes the World Go Round" but it's closer to "let me stomp on babies."

Lyrics of "I Love New York" >>> "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down."

otfm

btw any consideration of Madonna albums has to rank You Can Dance high.

Is that the 12" collection?

yep

it's certainly her best compilation album.

my fav confessions on a dancefloor deep cuts are push which flips like a prayer's melody and let it will be because "JUST WATCH ME BURN!"

man, Madonna listened to a lot of Soul II Soul before recording the song "Erotica"

"JUST WATCH ME BURN" is such an incredible moment yeah

Cosign the Confessions Tour version of "Erotica" and the Man With Guitar remix of "Sorry" - some of JLC's finest work.

Erotica deep cut no 1 is "Waiting", unbelievably sultry and unexpectedly heavy. But "Thief of Hearts" and "Secret Garden" and even "Fever" are all amazing too.

I'd also like to rep for "Something to Remember" from the Dick Tracy album, one of her most convincing straight ballads.

I find that incredibly difficult to believe, mostly because it comes from the Dick Tracy album

"waiting" is filled with so much great real talk and it rhymes together so well too

i'll forever read it as a song to a closeted lover - "what happened? what do I remind you of? your past, your dreams, or some part of yourself that you just can't love?". it's so easy to queer erotica's text, but i guess that's part of the reason it's so dear to my heart. i will never not have a million ~feelings~ about "deeper and deeper".

I don't know if it was even in the film, so it may be an inclusion on the order of "Vogue".

I might sing "Bye Bye Baby" at karaoke tonight.

Have never understood 'Open Your Heart'. I thought it kind of mediocre as a kid and since I found out that discerning adults rate it have listened intently with no joy. Something like 'Causing a Commotion' sounds the same to me but much much better. I should be excluded from this poll for this I realise.

I feel that way about "Papa Don't Preach."

"Open Your Heart" is just a perfectly arranged song, a pure, if perhaps sentimental, expression of joy.

Wrote this years ago about her two diamond-certified albums: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/diamond/madonna-like-a-virgin-the-immaculate-collection.htm

Another great angle in the Nile Rodgers book was how hard he pushed, and Madonna agreed to, a live band sound for "Like a Virgin," which set it apart from programmed stuff and put it more in line with (at the time) black music (enough so that the label pushed back a little). But I think "True Blue" is really live band plays top 40 pop perfection. It's all put together so well it might as well be programmed, but there's a real groove to the stuff that machines, in this instance, might not have provided.

oh yeah -- it's Chic backing her on that track.

i.e. "Virgin"

Chic is all over the album, no?

Yeah, it's mostly all Rodgers, Edwards, Thompson and Sabino on that disc, with a few other ringers involved. The Chic guys were so far down the cocaine line that Nile was the most in control of the bunch. He apparently struggled to keep Thompson and Edwards involved despite their self destruction.

One of the best things about Madonna ballads like "Live to Tell" and "Oh Father" is how the drums have a little bit of a swing to them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYc2jR5yGDs

VOTED, went w/ first thought best thought, didn't think about it, could submit another ballot of twenty different songs very very easily

s/t - 2
lav - 2
tb - 3 (! i usually regard this as her weakest album til american life)
lap - 3
ib - 1
e - 2
bs - 1
e - 0
rol - 0 (!)
m - 1
al - 0
coadf - 2
hc - 0
mdna - 0
multi-artist soundtracks, standalone singles, compilation add-ons, etc - 3

didn't vote for this vid (went w/ a mix of faves now plus 'historic' faves ie the ones that provoked the most discussion in jr high and hs) but do want this noted somewhere:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iloMBY5cjAk
the winner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVPxKtdRRVI

would like to go back to the "greatest collective body of singles" discussion. who is in her league? Elvis, James Brown, the Stones, Prince.

Is that it?

Chuck Berry, Al Green...

michael jackson...

The other examples that occur to me (Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson as solo artist) don't have such a sustained run.

Amazingly, Madonna made 9 albums in a row with at least one great single, and all of those except I'm Breathless and Music at the end actually had two or three singles that would be career-best for anyone else.

Thing with "Papa Don't Preach" is that these days it's a total club-banger, the synth-strings and general mid-80s-ness mean it doesn't sound early-to-mid-00 revival obvi in the same way that her earlier work does (not knocking her earlier work which is amaze but it fits into sonic trends of the last ten years more neatly).

not on my ballot and too blatant a 'don't tell me' cop but for an american life single this is pretty decent i think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUtvUFsPA6Y

I thought about the body-of-work (singles) question driving home, and I was surprised to realize that, subjectively, the only people I'd place ahead of her would be the Beatles and Rolling Stones. Could not think of anyone else with a greater number of singles I love/like a whole lot.

More objectively, I thought of James Brown, Stevie Wonder, maybe Aretha Franklin, Prince, Michael Jackson, and Elvis. Possibly Chuck Berry--his greatest is greater, but maybe too concentrated in a short time frame. Ditto Al Green and the Who.

remember this like it was yesterday
http://vimeo.com/38684862

two ballots already in. be an early voter! don't stand in line for 7 hours next Thursday!

american life really isn't a total dud (tho maybe it just sounds much better in hindsight relatively after her last two albums) - "nothing fails", "x-static process" and "easy ride" are all keepers (and obviously "die another day" is brilliant).

it's completely embarrassing and gauche but that's kinda charming?

no sale

would toss New Order, Pet Shop Boys, and George Jones in there too.

Another favorite Madonna on SNL moment was the Coffee Talk sketch when Roseanne was hosting and Barbra Streisand made a surprise cameo. Roseanne and Madonna looked genuinely shocked.

prolego otm about american life

Saw the "American Life" tour and was impressed that despite its weak reception, she played a lot of the album, and I didn't mind the songs I heard. I've still played that record a total of zero times, though.

here's that coffee talk - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ms6m_saturday-night-live-coffee-talk_fun#.USQMUKWsiSo

love that coffee talk sketch!

Her singing "Happy Birthday" to Hartman/Clinton was pretty great too (I think that was a real sketch...I'm not wishing it into existence, I hope).

Another question: who was Madonna's best collaborator?

Patrick Leonard?
Stephen Bray?
Shep Pettibone?
Babyface?
William Orbit?
Mirwais?
Stuart Price?

Only the most notable; she's got a half dozen more.

I'm big on all of them besides Shep and Babyface, but especially Patrick Leonard and Stuart Price.

BESIDES SHEP???????????????

talking of snl here's her only ever live performance of "bad girl"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCnNb41UoE8

i'd wager she's written it out of her history because out of all her songs it cuts too close to the bone

patrick leonard over shep, jellybean needs to be on the shortlist i think

Andre Bettis helped her with the most tonally dark Erotica tunes.

jellybean needs to be on the shortlist i think

Absolutely.

I always loved her response to the question "Why don't you have any solo songwriting credits after 1985?" -- "I got lazy."

Same show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlijD0OZsps

part of me wonders how much of erotica's relative lack of success was due to the actual music, due to its tie in w/ SEX, or due to madonna just being overexposed after nearly three years (including the months of hype in leadup to erotica/SEX) of nonstop unavoidable madonna from like a prayer-dick tracy/blonde ambition-truth or dare-league of their own.

yeah she's had several imperial phases: 1985-1987, 1989-1992, and 1998-2001. I'd totally negotiate over the dates though.

in retrospect it was a canny move to disappear for 15 months between "Causing a Commotion" and "Like a Prayer." Like U2 claimed they did, she rested to dream it all over again.

xps ALL of these things.

in Bill Flanagan's U2 book he and the band hold her up for ridicule in '92 and '93 -- at one point Flanagan calls her a "nightclub act" of the kind you used to watch on Ed Sullivan while anticipating The Beatles.

By 92 and 93, people were just tired of her because she was always on the radio, on tv, on the news, in the magazines, in the movie theaters, the bookstores....EVERYWHERE. Erotica could've been her finest album (I know some people here think it is), but people had reached their saturation point.

btw I didn't think it was her finest album at the time.

I wrote a bit about that overexposed early-'90s period reviewing Music. I don't know if "Erotica" would sound any better to me today--will give it a try, and see if I can get the Wayne's World parody out of my head. But I basically agree with fact checking cuz way above: her command of pop music on the likes of "Holiday" is a thousand times more compelling than she herself is. I used to find her provocations clunky and/or embarrassing, and sometimes I still do. Like when she started out supporting Hillary in '08--hope I'm remembering correctly--latched onto Obama at one point, and promptly said something about McCain that was ridiculously over the top. "Please, sit this one out" I thought at the time.

I remember getting into an ill-advised debate about this album and the general sound of early 90s house around here a few years ago. It's still a style that I really just can't stand—the drum sounds/beats, the piano rolls, the snare fills—but that's really the only thing that turns me off about her early 90s material. If the songs had come earlier with the True Blue/Like a Prayer arrangements and production, I'm sure I'd like them just fine. Shep Pettibone's influence is just a total dealbreaker for my ears.

I VOTED IN THIS LIVE TO TELL FOR THE WIN!

BESIDES SHEP???????????????

― balls, Tuesday, 19 February 2013 11:45 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^^^^

But yeah also the three tunes she did with Andre Betts on Erotica all sound amazing and forward-thinking and I always wish she'd done more with him, in my head there's a secret 1993 transition album which is halfway between "Waiting" and "Secret" and is all throbbing dusty grooves and throaty spoken word interludes, and it's basically the greatest album of all time.

that's a terrific review, clem. I wish you had the space to elaborate on: "It was disappointing last year to see "Beautiful Stranger" lose year-end polls to a pleasant bit of nothing like "No Scrubs." I count it as Madonna's masterpiece, her own "Erotic City," with a hypnotic abandon that a friend correctly identified as rooted more in Creedence Clearwater than "Ray of Light" 's electronica."

Thanks. I was actually swoods who clued me into "Beautiful Stranger"'s CCR resemblance--it really does sound like "Born on the Bayou." I was already in love with it, but that cast it in a whole new light.

Thinking about the comments re loving her music but not her image etc. Maybe it's an age thing? I think I was at the right/marketable age because I bought into her hook line and sinker right up until post-Erotica.

I always found her completely intriguing. God I think back to when I was little, I think I wanted to BE her before I even knew about her songs. I was NINE when I bought Like A Virgin. I think about that now and I'm like, that's kinda O_O.
But each phase of her image choices, from Borderline up through Erotica were totally compelling to me. There was Madge, there was Michael Jackson, and Cyndi Lauper maybe a close third, at least for a little while.

I mean, I didn't WORSHIP her like some of my friends did. But it wasn't til later that I'd be like, "ugh Madonna wtf sigh."
Again, I dunno if I was just wide-eyed and naive enough to buy in, but she was always pretty fascinating to me growing up.

The problem with "Beautiful Stranger" for me is its vocal, the nadir of her Opera Snob phase -- the vibrato, the elongating of syllables. A flip because I loved it at the time.

since people are going down memory lane i think this still holds my record for the most i have ever cringed watching t.v. (and i even taped it onto vhs when it aired!)

such a perfect storm of unfunny/awkward/uncomfortable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOwHJZtLgZ8

Will watch that. Here's her two-part Letterman interview from '94 that I remember as brutally awkward:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6TXleO99PA (part 1)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va8440xJAb4 (part 2)

when was the last time somebody smoked on live teevee?

Live? Dunno. Chappelle smoked all the way through his Actor's Studio episode(s), though.

school memories:

1) fourth grade, a friend of mine won passes from a radio station to a sneak preview of desperately seeking susan. the next day we crowded around him for details, his disgusted report: 'maaan, she ain't no virgin'.
2) still fourth grade, talent show, i 'perform' 'material girl' by having a rabbit hand puppet lipsync the song while i stand in my suit, expressionless, lipsyncing the 'liv-ing in a material world' backing part. eat yr heart out john epperson. that same month i see madonna on the virgin tour at the omni, the first concert i go to by choice (i have no recolletction of the beastie boys). we move from east point to athens that summer, before my friends can get enough distance to realize how weird and dorky this performance was exactly.
3) sixth grade, lunchroom, reports surface that there is an x-rated version of the 'open yr heart' video that mtv shows late at night. despite several hours spent watching mtv late at night this x-rated 'open yr heart' is never seen which is ok cuz the normal version was 'enough' really. (two years later similar reports would surface re: sam kinison's 'wild thing' video). at some point in jr high i have a who's that girl tour poster in my room.
4) sophomore year, homecoming: VOGUE
5) junior year, i purchase a wall poster, 6 feet X 4 feet i would guess (at least as wide as my bed iirc), of this image: http://nuwavepony.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/justify-1-e1327687752676.jpg. the poster hangs above my headboard until i move out of the house.
6) senior year, erotica is out - doesn't do as well as madonna must've hoped but local radio plays the hell out of every single single - erotica-deeper and deeper-bad girl-fever-rain-bye bye baby - so i'm fine. more to the point SEX is out. we'd all bought this vanity fair - http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3473/3242211797_153b09b026.jpg - but none of us had the type of cash to throw around to go buying an art book. but one of our friends, a rich friend, did and so as a group at lunch we tell him after school he needs to go to the mall and buy SEX. he counters w/ 'i think you have to be 18 to buy it, they're not going to sell it to me'. we tell him after school he needs to go to the mall w/ his mother and buy SEX. the next day he brings SEX to school. it was awesome. a year and a half later i'm out of bootcamp and 'i'll remember' is all over radio and i've already seen most of these ppl for the last time in my life, which i probably could've predicted at the time. a few years later i download a pdf of SEX - kinda tame! erotica though? holds up.

You know something that's always struck me about Madonna? Is that high note at the end of "Ray of Light" the only time she really pushes her register that far up?

Will try to copy the Nile Rodgers description of her range.

Great timeline! Last part reminds me of Bart Simpson and his friends rushing off to see Barton Fink.

yeah that's awesome stuff, balls

Via Nile, re: "Material Girl:" "To begin with, the song's key wasn't right for Madonna's natural singing voice. She's comfortable and very warm sounding between alto and mezzo-soprano (think of her voice on her song "LIve to Tell" or "Holiday"), but this version forced her to sing mezzo-soprano going up to a B-flat, which was less than flattering, to my ears, She was singing it all with a slight nasal quality. Unfortunately, she'd learned the song that way and she loved what she was hearing. I tried to convince her to let me change the key, but strongheaded Madonna? She was not having it."

He goes on to praise her for working so hard pre-auto tune to nail it: "The thing is, Madonna's voice is actually very in tune. And even when it's not, she has enough control of it to make it sound like music. Pitch is important but expression and emotion make a performance."

He later notes that: "Like a Virgin" was even further out of the pleasant part of her natural range, in the key of F-sharp, and getting it on tape required the exact same arduous process."

Obviously later she took her some lessons.

kollege skot approves...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2084/1784362672_0abd03e2dc_b.jpg

Metallica! Madonna! LL Cool! RASTA!

I like to think the boy in "Open Your Heart" comes out in a few years -- that's how his performance and character are filmed.

haha i saw barton fink w/ said rich friend at said mall. he had a huge poster of it in his room, along w/ some andre agassi posters (dude played tennis shocker), and this: http://www.cyber-cinema.com/british/MorrisonJimC_BRT.jpg. senior year kegger at his house he's doing the tour, get to his bedroom, head heather asks: 'how come you have all these posters of dudes in yr room? wait - how come you ONLY HAVE POSTERS OF DUDES IN YR BEDROOM?'. hilarious moment, everyone laffs, nights you'll never remember w/ friends you'll never forget, etc. same party we decide to roll some dude who's not there's house. but before we go i insist we listen to 'sunday bloody sunday' to 'set the mood'. to roll some dude's house.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhTuYKR-ejo

btw the cutaway to Madonna's smile after kissing him is the most delirious, erotic thing she ever did

My favorite Madonna nostalgia memory only vicariously involves Madge.

I was about 10 and I was going over to my friends' house, who lived around the corner from us. I knocked on the door, and her cousin answered the door. Her cousin was almost 10 years older than me, so she would have been 18-20 ish. Which was cool enough in itself because I didn't really know that many 'grownup' girls.

but the best part was she was dressed head to toe in almost the exact same outfit Madonna wore when she was dancing on the gondola in the Like a Virgin video. HUGE earrings. Tons of makeup and eyeliner. Black midriff shirt, visible black lace bra, mini skirt, blue metallic leggings, high heels, a Queen Mom's worth of pearls, crucifix, and an armload of black rubber bracelets.

I stood there with my mouth open because she looked AMAZING. I can still see her standing in the doorway.

the funniest part is that this was not The City. I didn't live in a cool place where anyone dressed like this, EVER. This was a tiny country town that didn't really have a nightclub scene or flamboyant people aside from art teachers who really didn't count. I mean we were in country Victoria a milliion miles away from New York, let alone Melbourne or anywhere that might even welcome that kind of behaviour. So yeah, the fact that was dressed like this, living where we were, was, at the risk of belaboring the point, AMAZING. It was like having Madonna visit our town for real!!!

madonna wannabes for all time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TolJ9igNAV4

what's embarrassing about the Arsenio appearance is how he and the crowd act like imbeciles.

also obviously borderline is her best song. she's so seductive and coy and brittle and wired in it. and the plasticky riff that starts it. and the metaphor is really cheeky and filthy and she walks the line with it so well. so freshly moulded.

oh man i want a big fucking madonna poster on my wall actually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPdra7S35Rg

http://thestylesharkblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/madonna-celebration-12th-album-true-blue-review-cover.jpg?w=953

this is maybe my favourite record sleeve of all time btw

Oh, curse you for making me aware this Train cover of "Umbrella" is a thing that exists.

― Johnny Fever, Tuesday, February 19, 2013 3:03 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I blame some dude, he introduced me to it

― Ima R.A.E.D. (DJP), Tuesday, February 19, 2013 3:04 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol XD

plax otm re True Blue cover.

dunno about Borderline. I go back and forth. Sometimes it feels boring? idk. I'll change my mind in an hour

"Gambler," people!

YOU'RE JUST JEALOUS CUZ YOU CAN'T BE ME

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, February 19, 2013 7:57 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this this this! YOU CAN'T STOP ME NOW

WOAH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFagkYDkQyo

love that the choreography for 'everybody' had advanced too much on that tour from this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_6TfEUP3NU

hadn't rather

Let's clap our hands for the execrable performance at Live Aid.

Stories of a Young Rockist: The only letter I ever wrote to Rolling Stone was when I was 15 or so and decried some gloopy feature on Madonna. (They didn't print it, thank god.) All I remember is something about how "this material girl should take her lucky star and head over the borderline."

Meanwhile of course, the "Lucky Star" video was the stuff of my teen dreams.

I will definitely vote for her Bjork song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSaFgAwnRSc

dunno about Borderline. I go back and forth. Sometimes it feels boring? idk. I'll change my mind in an hour

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 20 February 2013 3:22 AM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love "Borderline" but man is the album version long, mostly at the end rather than the beginning (where padding could be forgiven as tension-building slash mood-setting).

i've found myself aggressively disagreeing w/ conventional wisdom about later albums -- Ray of Light and Confessions are straight up dull imo, American Life and MDNA are more unpredictable and interesting and have something to them beyond the singles (Music good too, Hard Candy just awful for the most part).

"Forbidden Love" from Confessions is one of her best album tracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cyo7uodeyA

I like Ray of Light but don't listen to it much and definitely disagree with the idea of it being her return to form.

In fact the run from Erotica to American Life was basically an unbroken line of deterioration (though I'm excluding Evita from this for obvious reasons).

A lot of the general assumptions about Madonna's 90s output are wrongheaded and based on what I suspect are superficial assessments - e.g. the idea of Ray of Light as a return to a more personal/autobiographical style (the preceding two albums actually fit that line just as well if not more so).

people just didn't know what to do with her for a lot of the '90s, and she didn't fight as hard to remain an unavoidable spectacle as MJ or even Prince for a while

Four ballots in, and there's already only three unanimous tracks.

ray of light hype/reaction due to widespread cw that in the wake of evita and "take a bow" that madonna's future was as an adult contemporary artist. mind you she'd had an ac presence since "live to tell" (if not earlier) and the year of SEX/erotica her biggest hit was "this used to be my playground". also madonna had been pretty vocal about being ambivalent at best towards techno, so there was some anticipation of what her 'electronica' album would sound like (i think some might've been anticipating a desperate fiasco like the last two albums)(cf u2's pop, or at least the common perception of it by the time ray of light came out), nevermind her being more responsible than any one else you could name in breaking house in the american mainstream, nevermind her starting out at fucking danceteria, hell nevermind her being from detroit. the techno aspect of it was overplayed up, what i remembered today listening to it was reading madonna interviews from before talking up air (this was before moon safari had been released even). would've loved to hear that collaboration.

Ray of Light also got the biggest real artist type hype of her career (did any of the earlier albums bring about a lot of arguments for her artistic legitimacy? Like A Prayer?) -- my brother and I were too alt rock to own any Madonna albums before that but he picked that one up.

also her only AOTY grammy nom.

Ray of Light came out the same time she was turning 40, so there was a whole "wow, a female artist can still make challenging music at such an advanced age" thing that was both empowering and gross.

savvy crits were on board day one, less savvy w/ "live to tell", like a prayer was when cw of real artist solidified, pomo angle unavoidable, conduit for underground apparent (comparable stage would be station to station, where even the last bowie skeptics gave in). at the same time she'd dated basquiat, was tight bros w/ haring.

"i'm not the same, i have no shame - i'm on FIRE"

she sings those lines like she's scrawling them in lipstick on a club mirror

"waiting" is filled with so much great real talk and it rhymes together so well too

i'll forever read it as a song to a closeted lover - "what happened? what do I remind you of? your past, your dreams, or some part of yourself that you just can't love?". it's so easy to queer erotica's text, but i guess that's part of the reason it's so dear to my heart. i will never not have a million ~feelings~ about "deeper and deeper".

― prolego, Tuesday, February 19, 2013 10:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Post is great and OTM

I can verify that plenty of friends who'd been, er, at best ambivalent about Madonna bought ROL at the time (which explains in part the sudden spike in sales; check the figures), and for a lot of fans the promotion (her most PERSONAL album yet!) + William Orbit's inert wooshes made it her best and most adventurous.

As for me, it boasts too many songs I like (not the title track, though -- talk about stiff) to dismiss but no way do I like it more than Erotica or Confessions.

Still don't know how to respond to Music. Critics repelled by the Serious Artist air of ROL preferred it but it's got more outright dogs than ROL.

My favourite video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS6FCoq349o

The song "Music" is super embarrassing on several levels and yet I can't help but grin and boogie when it comes on

OTOH I never need to hear "Don't Tell Me" again even though I think it's a better song

I like that piece, clemenza, even though it reflects a view 180 degrees diametric to my own interactions with her '90s music. Madonna is one of the artists that I think benefits from a diversity of opinions surrounding her.

Admittedly, I'm flattered by everything leading up to Evita (as per prolego & Tim F's reads), and constitutionally bored by the double whammy of motherhood and spiritual rebirth thereafter. So far as Madonna (and not the Rolling Stones) goes, I'll always have sympathy for the devil.

I don't hear "Don't Tell Me" too often, so I'm not sick of it. It's got a bittersweet quality to it I appreciate. "Music" I never liked originally, but I tend to enjoy it a lot now, for some reason.

I was amazed that she could come back with yet such a strong single as "Music" after all these years. I thought it was right up there with her best and it sounded so good in clubs. Love those Daft Punk synths.
The album was good, but didn't really live up to the title track imo. I wanted more booty shaking and there wasn't much. I like "Impressive Instant", pretty bonkers for her.

that is why the Above and Beyond remix of "What It Feels Like For A Girl" is so important

when i listen to ray of light i'm not that bothered about it as a confessional personal artistic record. i just like the way her voice sounds, how those synths sound. its warm and beach and chilly and goth all at once. its appropriations don't feel mangled by being reformatted for top 40 radio. i also think its a p inventive manifestation of her persona, weirdly remote so stoned so glazed over. she's just sortof staring at you as everything swells under her. drowned world is a great update of the sound of live to tell. chill out as the new adult contemporary, enough detail enough space. that zoned out feeling of fast streams of city traffic, everything just drifting by you at a remove. i love all the singles. i don't think ray of light sounds stiff though i understand the criticism. i like how weighted her voice is even when it drifts upwards and opens with the song. frozen seems like a really big part of my childhood, i think of it together with teardrop by massive attack and that trance-y song with sarah mclachlan in it as being always on the radio when i was a kid, its exoticism is really kindof banal but seems perfectly framed in my memory by long journeys in the back of the family car, the moment when everyone is finally too tired to argue, that halflight part of the evening. the album is by no means great all the way but power of goodbye is a really good annie lennox song. but that little guitar detail at the beginning of swim is misleading and the song could do without her vocals, this is sometimes the biggest of all the problems.

a lot of her later stuff is almost good or interesting but then just isn't. basically all of mdna is dull as shit, love profusion and hollywood are songs that seem to have at least one good idea but

When all's said and done, the only ROL song I'm even considering is the one concession to cheap dance floor bounce -- "Nothing Really Matters."

(Cheap, albeit with lyrics that fall all too in line with the rest of the album.)

I think "Love Profusion" is a profoundly underrated song

The unexpected guitar riffs that pop up on ROL ("Substitute For Love," "Swim") are among my favorite things about the album.

I love "Frozen." Beautiful song, beautiful video.

She's a terrible actor in movies, but a great actor in videos!

yeah "Frozen" is another song I could listen to on endless repeat

in these polls, I often want to balance my votes between singles, b-sides and album tracks; this is the first time I'm considering just voting for 20 singles and calling it a day

oh yeah just do that

i might vote for jimmy jimmy but otherwise its like, they had good people picking the singles

Yeah, I doubt any album tracks outside of those on Erotica will even remotely figure in for me.

oh look a song finally gave up its pleasures after 25 years: LAV's "Stay" ("dahhh-liiiiiinnnnn"!)

i agree all the "comeback! real, personal music!" angle was completely wrong-headed - but i really love ROL anyway; i think it fits more with erotica and bedtime stories, the new agey hippy-trance mother as thoroughly fleshed out and secretly complex a character as erotica's raddled old club queen or bedtime stories' bad-girl-trying-to-be-a-grown-up. those three albums are three of madonna's most sonically coherent; they may not have the Cultural Moment singles but they're where she really mastered the album format to present a character and to tell her story. and while the singles are mostly excellent, especially in erotica's case, the heart of the album - the complex, ambivalent, disturbing stuff, where she gets beneath the surface of the character - comes with the deep cuts for the only stretch of her career: "waiting", "in this life", "secret garden"; "inside of me", "love tried to welcome me", "sanctuary"; "sky fits heaven", "to have and not to hold". (i was gonna put "the power of goodbye" but that was actually a single iirc?)

when it came to music, it was back to normal: an image she maintained consistently for the duration of the campaign that wasn't really reflected in the songs, a surface commitment to a particular sound and some knockout singles that disguised the album itself being a bit of a grab-bag, and massively inconsistent quality-wise.

"love profusion" is nice but the real overlooked cut from american life is "nothing fails" - one of the most bizarre rip-offs i've heard too, the guitar riff is straight outta...suzanne vega's "rosemary", the bonus track on vega's greatest collection that there's literally no reason for anyone to have heard of ("rosemary" is really awesome though)

I'd agree she learned how to record albums in the nineties.

xxxxp Hah, I'm finally starting to get into "Oh, Father."

the only non-singles I'm considering:

Physical Attraction
White Heat
Where's The Party
Skin
Sky Fits Heaven
To Have and Not To Hold

Is "Impressive Instant" the "I like to singy singy singy/Like a bird on the wingy wingy wingy" song?

yes

(xposts) Thanks, Eric. I was very much in the minority about "Erotica" in the fanzine I used to do at the time--everyone else loved it. (Didn't buy the album till much later...I don't know it that well.)

Oh yeah, I like "Impressive Instant" a ton, too.

I don't know where I got this impression but I thought more ppl appreciated "Nothing Fails" than "Love Profusion"

btw "Human Nature" still pwns

I don't know where I got this impression but I thought more ppl appreciated "Nothing Fails" than "Love Profusion"

my impression was that very few people appreciated either - both lost in the "embarrassment" (that wasn't really) of the american life era

the only non-singles i'm considering come from erotica, bedtime stories and ray of light - but i actually think i could fill a ballot with deep cuts from those albums and be happy

shipz otm upthread about how some madonna's more under-the-radar singles feel like deep cuts themselves

yeah human nature is amazing, it seems like her version of that's the way love goes though i still prefer the janet one. so much less obvious.

i really hope "american life" gets a few votes everyone btw

I DO YOGA AND PILATES AND THE ROOM IS FULL OF HOTTIES SO I'M CHECKIN OUT THE BODIES never 4get

express yourself don't repress yourself

yeah human nature is amazing, it seems like her version of that's the way love goes though i still prefer the janet one. so much less obvious.

that's kinda otm for most of the songs on bedtime stories EXCEPT "human nature", which is righteously grumpy and sour and full of contempt ie not really sexy or inviting.

i remember being so embarrassed by how sexy the lyrics were when this came out. i would have been like seven.

idk i guess i just like how janet sings about ~love~ instead.

omg human nature is so sexy though.

"Human Nature" is more like Madonna's "Scream."

lol

I'm not surprised it bombed though.

lol plax, have you read the lyrics to "That's The Way Love Goes" recently?

http://www.metrolyrics.com/thats-the-way-love-goes-lyrics-janet-jackson.html

I do like the sinewy sleaziness of "Human Nature" a ton, though

Coming off an acoustic ballad and the biggest hit of her career to date, I suppose fans didn't want a reminder of the Dita error.

A lot of album tracks on Bedtime Stories (which I'm re-listening to right now) would qualify for a ballot strictly out of the pleasure principle, though I'd still be hard-pressed to pick some over others since my favorites ("Inside of Me") are so breezy.

uh, *era

my memory of Bedtime Stories was that I loved the singles and hated everything else

which really, aside from Madonna, True Blue, Ray of Light and American Life, is par for the course with me and Madonna albums

Hey everybody, clemenza just sent me a split ballot. The first five tracks are ranked accordingly, but the remaining points are split evenly by the next fifteen. I hadn't planned on anything like this, but I guess it's okay if you do the math yourself and make sure the entire ballot is 452 points in total. Be absolutely sure to tell me this when submitting, though.

Title track is still my least favorite thing on Bedtime Stories. It was at that point I realized the only person who can sing a Bjork song is Bjork.

"Love Tried To Welcome Me" is so downy-soft.

I also really hate material girl

holy shit how did I forget about "Love Don't Live Here Anymore"

dan i really urge you to hear "inside of me" (lush, murmuring seduction - this if anything is M's "that's the way love goes"), "love tried to welcome me" (lush, murmuring bleakness and cursed solitude) and "sanctuary" (tactile, drifting trip-hop with PAN PIPES) off bedtime stories

Lol at the guy in the velvet to hat in the video for that's the way love goes. Such a pick up artist

"Inside of Me" falls so nicely in line with George Michael's laidback post-jack stuff from the same era.

what do we think of "You'll See"? Talk about a forgotten hit, but notable for the debut of the Opera Snob voice. Worth noting that co-producer David Foster hadn't sounded this restrained in years, so let's give Madge the credit.

Is "Love Tried To Welcome Me" based on George Herbert's "Love Bade Me Welcome" and does it incorporate any bits of Vaughn Williams' setting of it in "Five Mystical Songs"? That's what keeps leaping to mind whenever I see that song title.

i thought "you'll see" was really boring at the time but i kind of love it now

don't forget Carson McCullers.

I can't not laugh anytime I see Tisha in a janet. video.

I'm glad some people are finally thinking outside of the received notion about American Life. To me it sounds like she was doing what she wanted and not caring about commercial succes, just doing it for the music. She wasn't following the current trends at radio at all.
But people wanted hits and called it shit. It may not have worked perfectly as a whole, but a lot of it is pretty good or interesting. You have to give it to her for being so "experimental". I can't think of another singer of her stature that would ever try that.

pump it boo!

Yeah, Hard Candy really put American Life in a new light.

Now let's see...which single should bump "Hung Up" out of my top ten?

just reposting my Spotify playlist of singles for those who missed it upthread:

http://open.spotify.com/user/djperry1973/playlist/4b5pRHtluXpNzZWeQgxNbr

I really want to put Love Don't Live Here on my ballot but holy shit this is getting harder and harder to narrow to 20. Worst game of lifeboat ever

I'm beginning to collect images for the countdown, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Madonna is one of the most photographed human beings on the planet today.

I currently have a list of 41 songs I'm trying to narrow down to 20

this sucks

also man, what the hell was everyone thinking re: "Beautiful Stranger"

there's a good song lurking in there somewhere though

I never cared for Beautiful Stranger.

oh dear god, I'd forgotten exactly how pathetic "American Pie" is

I would really like to sit both Madonna and William Orbit down in front of an automatic slapping machine for doing this cover

hahaha

Down to 29. Five from Erotica still in the mix, and I'm pretty proud of myself for managing to whittle it down to that.

I currently have a list of 41 songs I'm trying to narrow down to 20
this sucks

Same here, give or take. I'm tempted to select by 'most overlooked' and/or 'was on a movie soundtrack album'.

I will report anyone who doesn't mention "Angel" to the IRS.

oh shit, I always forget that the original album version of "What It Feels Like For A Girl" is devastating

goddammit the Just Dance remixes complicate EVERYTHING for me now. I blame you for this Alfred. *cries*

:)

I thought remixes were explicitly a separate side poll?

They are.

"human nature" is the best song in the world for basically all of its harmonies which are perfectly chilled

xpost. Ooops! Duh. Well then that uncomplicates things. thank god other people ITT can read :/

in yr face, Alfred :)

oh my god i just realized "sanctuary" samples the beer bottle from the head hunters version of "watermelon man" oh man i probably gotta put this on my ballot on principle

second side of bedtime stories is all time

holy shit i forgot that "you'll see" ever existed but i think i had the chorus in my head for the majority of third grade

The longer this thread gets, the harder it becomes for me to make a decision. Please start a new thread that begins with the supposition that choosing 20 songs will be easy, thanks.

If this were easy, it wouldn't be any fun.

Fun shmun. I'm tempted to just sit this one out and watch what happens.

I still can't believe the song with Lil Wayne on it isn't Madonna's most embarrassing single

It doesn't matter what the rest of your catalogue contains; if there's a cover of "American Pie" in there, it's the worst thing you've ever done.

i love "cherish" so much, i am a puppy

xpost OTM

lol

"Give Me All Your Luvin" is definitely giving "American Pie" a run for its money tho

The day the music died, iirc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXTVZf0sZQ

Dear fans,

Aren't you glad I didn't release this as a single?

Love,

Madonna

i always kinda wished that she had worked with better people. genius people. i mean i love the stuff that i love so it all worked out and everything but her desire to be top dog might have stopped her from working with people who would have pushed her harder or made her try things in a different way? i'm not a huge fan of anyone she has collaborated with really. not even shep or jellybean. and i never liked the like a virgin album much even though i like nile. i like 70's nile. i had never listened to anything william orbit had done prior to ray of light and i didn't listen to anything he did after it. same with mirwais. i'd never even heard of mirwais until madonna. and then i never heard about him again. i liked bedtime stories okay. i think the babyface thing worked for her. would have killed for a timbaland album though. and it could have sounded even better. that album. i dunno, feel like the latter-day stuff SHOULD be state of the art and cyber-madonna cuz lord knows she's got the money to do it, but it rarely sounds like a million bucks.

what does madonna even listen to? what's on her ipod? she definitely was the proud owner of one of the most baffling record labels in history. her albums should sound at least as good as janet jackson albums. but i don't think they do.

(speaking of which, ever hear any 12 inches on jellybean's dance label? yeah, there's a reason for that. what did nile do after like a virgin? what did anyone do after working with madonna? the plot thickens...)

what did nile do after like a virgin?

Released his own albums. Also, formed a "supergroup" called Outloud, which was unforgivably terrible.

Nile's done a ton of stuff.

i'm sure he doesn't lack for work.

What happened to Mirwais? Dude was everywhere for a minute, and then vanished.

but for real just hand daft punk a million bucks and be done with it. all that money and you get...mirwais? wait, mirwais isn't actually in daft punk, is he? i'm clueless about that guy.

madonna as delilah to her producers' samson is a known pattern. jlc was the last example before she moved on to producers whose genius had already run dry.

where did william orbit go? he's on an island with mirwais. madonna keeps them there in case she needs them.

feel like the latter-day stuff SHOULD be state of the art and cyber-madonna

if "die another day" isn't this then what is? i mean, "music" certainly qualifies

also, most times madonna HAS worked with acknowledged big name geniuses, it's been a damp squib - prince, neptunes etc. and

would have killed for a timbaland album though

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41-iGzRxPFL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

he didn't do that whole album though? it wasn't "his" in the sense of a producer and an artist collaborating. it was a mish-mash of people.

but yeah they have worked together. and i was thinking more of when he was at the top of his game. not, uh, now. or five years ago even.

imagine Shock Value as a Timbo/Madonna collaboration

Imagine all the people refusing to buy Madonna's album.

Imagine there's no heaven

Madonna's biggest problem of the last decade plus is working with producers who aren't songwriters. There's a grace to even the most anonymous songs on Bedtime Stories which is absent from her post ray of light work. Even the great material on Confessions is more like monolithic groove plus earworm hook rather than decent song.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. It's all hat and no cowboy, to coin one of my favorite phrases :)

which is what drives me crazy. she could work with ANYBODY. for real. anybody. if she pays them enough. makes no sense. the woman makes no sense.

money can't buy cowboy

max martin madonna album would slay all foes.

has anyone talked about EVITA yet?
what about the man who plays guitar in the video for "la isla bonita"?

but madonna's ability to be truly great does not correlate to the established greatness of her collaborators.

in the past i think this was true. i don't know about now. she could use a boost of someone else's greatness.

yes i just called max martin great.

Not established greatness, no. But I think her greatness collaborators had a songwriting sensibility even if they were formally producers - undeniably, people like shep coaxed certain songs out of her. These days there's much more of a sense of the song and the arrangement being prepared in separate rooms.

Certain KINDS of song, I mean.

unrelated: When I was a kid I thought when she sang 'I'm gonna keep my baby' in Papa Don't Preach that she was singing about her boyfriend, ie I love u baby etc. Did not catch on for years that ohhhhhhhhh she's pregnant, lol

I recall being a fan of solo William orbit in another life. Strange cargo, was that him? some connection to eno, Gabriel, Lanois...

madonna as delilah to her producers' samson is a known pattern.

i used to wonder if madonna sat at a desk doing her bookkeeping while her co-writers and producers did all the writing and producing and music-making. and then maybe she poisoned their orange juice after she was done with then. but then i listened to some of the other stuff her collaborators had done, like, for example, patrick leonard's own band, toy matinee. i have no memory whatsoever of that album, which is the nicest thing i can say about it. then it occurred to me that, through all the years and all the singles and all the styles and all the beats, the one consistent name in the credits of all those amazing songs was, duh, madonna. i don't think she her producers' downfall. i think she was the very thing that made them great, and i think it may well have been they, and not she, who benefited most from the collaboration.

which is another way of saying that this...

but madonna's ability to be truly great does not correlate to the established greatness of her collaborators.

...is extremely otm.

i just want to lock her in a room with patrick leonard again for several months

i think though that she's just exhausted everything she's had to say - she has really gone through just about every topic imaginable for a pop star - there's nothing left for her to do now but coast on her laurels and get the $$$. there's nothing for her to express anymore

fact checking cuz completely otm

madonna's biggest flaw right now, even more than the perfunctory relationship between song and arrangement, is her completely charmless delivery - it's like her voice has ossified into this stone instrument incapable of bringing ANY song to life

Yeah my point was that I think previously producers pushed her or helped her to push herself to be great. But I sounds like these days even the big name people she works with (when she does) are kept in their box.

like, even on mdna, several times i felt like - ok this isn't a great song but it could be totally fine if it was sung breezily or insouciantly or just winningly. madonna just thuds didactically these days.

(this is actually true of confessions as well, but to his great credit, JLC masks it with the unstoppable riffs)

Also led otm. It makes me miss the opera period!

Lex. iPhone probs.

madonna's biggest flaw right now, even more than the perfunctory relationship between song and arrangement, is her completely charmless delivery - it's like her voice has ossified into this stone instrument incapable of bringing ANY song to life

which is even more tragic considering her early voice did the exact opposite - i can't think of many vocals ever that sound more hungry or alive than on "open your heart" or "burning up" or "into the groove".

even on ROL through American Life, her voice obviously changed, became less hungry and more precise, but even then she could bend it to what the material demanded (or craft material that suited it)

its all that working out.

Yeah. I'm listening to 'White Heat' / True Blue right now and her voice is so vibrant, she was ~emoting~ all over the place back in the day

Yeah my point was that I think previously producers pushed her or helped her to push herself to be great. But I sounds like these days even the big name people she works with (when she does) are kept in their box.

this was rather famously not the case when she worked with Pharrell

I think the real problem is that her songs tend to really, really suck nowadays

i think madonna's voice is seriously one of her most underrated qualities, not just how truly great an instrument it was in the 80s but how chameleonic in the 90s it proved to be - she switches up her vox on every one of her 90s albums to fit the style she was working in - the powerful brassiness on i'm breathless, the ragged slightly claustrophobic half-spoken nasalness on erotica, the mature sultiness on bedtime stories, the didatic aloofness of ray of light (even if i dislike her opera lessons i can't imagine this album being sung any other way).

*sultriness

madonna's biggest flaw right now, even more than the perfunctory relationship between song and arrangement, is her completely charmless delivery - it's like her voice has ossified into this stone instrument incapable of bringing ANY song to life
--lex pretend

tho lol forever at her exchange in dick tracy

'look everyone, Dick made a record!
...what you can't sing?
- well neither can I, and look how far I've gotten...'

A few points:

(1) When she dies -- it won't happen when she's alive -- we'll finally read The Definitive Stories of M's compositional habits. Does she bring demos to the studio these days? Does she work from scratch? Does she play guitar on those demos? One of the early Paul Zollo books of songwriter interviews provides one of the few clues; it dates from 1989 and described her methods with Patrick Leonard, which consisted of working from his finished demos or she occasionally bringing a melodic idea to which he'd attach chords and a rhythm.

(2) She def thrives with songwriter-producers like Patrick Leonard, Stephen Bray, and Rick Nowels. But Shep Pettibone isn't really a songwriter -- he was mostly a remixer in '92! Somehow she formed songs around what he gave her.

(3) I actually admire her picking the likes of Mirwais. French house/techno background? Sure! Why not? The results were mixed but no one can accuse her of not keeping an ear open.

I think she and JLC probably had another great batch of songs in them, but she hasn't really repeated herself since Erotica and it just wasn't going to happen. Unfortunately, the result of that was Hard Candy.

I guess Hard Candy was the first time she used producers (Timbaland/The Neptunes) that everybody had used before her. Like she was desperate to have a hit again in the US, although the rest of the world still treated her like The Queen.
I'm so glad she hasn't gone to Max or Luke or RedOne yet. That would be the worse. She might do it on her next album though...

well, "Hung Up" was a hit -- just not MASSIVE.

speaking of "Hung Up," there's an example of working with songwriters, i.e. Benny-Bjorn. No wonder it was massive.

Alfred otm re the whole when she dies thing. I wonder about her creative process!

I bet it's not that different than that of other pop singer/producer collaborations. Producer brings songs/beats/whatever, Madonna picks the ones she likes best, and then they develop them together. Don't know if she writes her own melodies or not, though clearly she writes all or most of her own lyrics. Are there any songs of hers credited exclusively to "Madonna?"

By the way, at the drug store today the old woman in front of me was named Madonna!

a chunk of the Madonna songs ("Lucky Star" and "Burning Up" fer instance) plus one on "Like a Virgin" plus "Sidewalk Talk" and "Gambler" are solo credits.

Skimming the early stuff at least, it looks like a mix of stuff where Madonna is either not credited at all, or credited as a co-writer. But a song like "Lucky Star" is a solo Madonna credit, which begs the question: does that mean she wrote the song herself? I wonder if she writes like Stevie Nicks, who supposedly brings in these not quite song-like sketches which are in turn polished into songs. But I'm not sure Madonna can write on an instrument, though maybe she can!

Nicks has always written on piano despite not knowing chords.

Madonna admitted in the Zollo interview from '89 that she wrote on keyboards and guitar. Like I said upthread, I like how she explained the disappearance of solo songwriting credits with "I got lazy." It demystifies the whole thing.

Wasn't it a big deal when she was taking guitar lessons c. 2004 or whatever, when she would play the (very simple) Burning Up chords live on her black Les Paul? I'm not sure she's sophisticated enough of a musician to come up with a lot of the heavy lifting stuff. Phil Collins is a better example of a non-keyboardist plinking his way to hits, but his solo stuff is a lot more remedial than hers.

Looks like there aren't any other solo "Madonna" credits after the first few albums, though she obviously worked closely with a lot of her producers/writers, esp. Leonard, who I forgot co-wrote a hunk of "Ray of Light."

maybe she needs to get UNlazy again

well, "Hung Up" was a hit -- just not MASSIVE.

I think it was a Top 10 hit due to sales, not radio play. "Hung Up" went to #1 everywhere but only to #7 in the States. "Sorry" only made it to #58 on Billboard whereas it went Top 5 pretty much everywhere else. Confessions was HUGE around the world. The album sold 12 million, compared to American Life's 4 million.

I really think she was trying to break the US again with Hard Candy, and she did go higher with "4 Minutes" (#3), but the album ended selling much less than the previous one.

I think it's fascinating how these big budget hit records are made. That New Yorker profile or whatever was very telling, with the producer guys having a stack of songs, and discarding all but what they consider the hits. You can see that in the Jay-Z doc, too, where he goes through a trove of beats with Timbaland until he hits "Dirt Off Your Shoulders" and lights up. Timbaland, iirc, like a lot of producers, prices his beats differently based on how big he thinks they might get.

Madonna is a little different, I guess, since she often works in close collaboration with one guy, but I bet someone like JLC came to his audition prepared with a pile of demos and ideas.

like plax said a couple hours ago, I don't doubt JLC and Shep do, but they're remixers-producers instead of songwriters, so I give Madonna a lion's share of the credit for giving these songs melody and hooks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcdogxxQt_o

Confessions Tour is on youtube. I've never gotten around to watching it before, but it's amazing so far.

It was an amazing tour.

"4 Minutes" got far more airplay than "Hung Up" even in club-happy Miami, and it was a recurrent too. "Hung Up" vanished after a couple weeks.

"Hung Up" is awesome. There's an example: I've always wondered if the ABBA sample was Madonna's idea, or if JLC was simply confident that if anyone can afford an ABBA sample, it's Madonna.

I interviewed Robyn once, and she talked a bit about Max Martin, who she said pretty outright considers himself a hitmaker rather than a songwriter. His songs are made to be hits, not as artistic expression or whatever. Obviously Madonna is nowhere near that cynical - even a lot of her piffle is personal. I think she's a really hard worker, and even if she might not to be able to come up with great stuff on her own, she's smart enough to surround herself with people who can help her get there. I think there are a lot of musicians like that. Bowie, for example, albeit to a lesser extent. He's full of ideas, but needs people around him when it comes to the execution.

I meant to vote for "Hung Up" and it completely slipped my mind; if you notice this post, JF, you can add that to my ballot in place of "Give Me All Your Luvin'" (and if you don't, no big deal).

I disagree with Martin's binary: how is a hit not an example of artistic expression?

I guess if its sole purpose is to be successful? Above all else? Like painting a house: it's paint, you're painting, but is it artistic expression? I dunno. I was just impressed Martin could be so blatant about it.

in 1992 I was SO disillusioned when Al Green admitted in a Details oral history on Stax that he wrote those great songs "for fast women" and money, to get those "fast women" and to keep them. This admission doesn't mitigate the qualities of one of the most perfect runs in modern music.

(not arguing with you, Josh, just Max Martin's delusion)

Reminds me of Greil Marcus's line on Rod Stewart (paraphrase): that all he wanted to do from the outset was fuck movie stars, and if he had to spend a few years as a brilliant artist to do that, he'd make the sacrifice.

A lot of damage done by quickly skimming a sentence with the words "Al Green," "details," "oral," "stax" and "fast women."

maybe she needs to get UNlazy again

I think the opposite has happened with the last two albums unfortunately.
She is much less invested in them and seems to view them like things that need to be done to go out on tour again.
You can even tell that a lot of the lyrics aren't written by her anymore, but probably by someone who was thinking "what could Madonna sing about? Oh I know! She's not me!"

shipz otm upthread about how some madonna's more under-the-radar singles feel like deep cuts themselves

― lex pretend, Wednesday, February 20, 2013 10:39 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didn't say this, alfred did!

the ROL wiki is so stupid, it has big pictures of britney and xtina with the caption

Ray of Light has been hailed as bold and refreshing in contemporary music of the late 1990s, which was dominated by teen pop artists such as Britney Spears (left) and Christina Aguilera (right).

yes, the album was a breath of fresh air compared to two artists that nobody heard of until roughly a year after the album came out!

Yeah, Madonna's stiffest competition on the pop front at that point was Third Eye Blind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PgY5GVSUMk

she sure showed xtina what's what

well xina had that hit from the mulan soundtrack which was that summer and britney blew up on the box late summer so it's not inconceivable that 'the power of goodbye' would've been heard after that mulan song on some ac station or the vid would've popped up after 'baby one more time' on the box, but yeah that context is misleading at best.

ray of light really has become the gold-standard for grown-up mature ~deep~ records in the pop world tho, i've heard so many times fans of other female pop artists (including of britney & xtina) hoping for their ray of light.

the pop context rol entered was 'the boy is mine' and 'are you that somebody' and 'torn'. i'm not sure what on the radio in 98 would've been an obv counterpart to 'frozen'. well, other than maybe this, which was still getting played a ton on radio in early 98:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eBZqmL8ehg

also wondering about the extent she turned to late sixties trippy rock ('ray of light' obv pretty much a curtiss maldoon cover, 'beautiful stranger' owing some debt to love - was her kabbalah instructor a hippie? her au pair?), then her guitar fetish for a little while after that. obv impossible w/ her temperament and her responsibilities to her label/marketplace but a beardo disco album from madonna might've been an interesting way for her to approach her fifties.

I meant to vote for "Hung Up" and it completely slipped my mind; if you notice this post, JF, you can add that to my ballot in place of "Give Me All Your Luvin'" (and if you don't, no big deal).

― clemenza, Wednesday, 20 February 2013 23:37 (Yesterday) Permalink

JF it might be more convenient/efficient to build in a script that turns all votes for "Give Me All Your Lovin" into votes for "Hung Up".

like plax said a couple hours ago, I don't doubt JLC and Shep do, but they're remixers-producers instead of songwriters, so I give Madonna a lion's share of the credit for giving these songs melody and hooks.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 20 February 2013 23:25 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wait what did i say???

i guess i just completely ignored the 'her most personal' album nonsense at the time (it was her first post-baby album so ppl were chomping at the bit for new, mature, no more dita madonna), she'd been plenty personal before - 'til death do us part', 'human nature', 'oh father', 'promise to try', half of true blue being having the subtext of 'omg i'm so in love w/ sean guys'.

Britney and Xtina kinda brought about the end of the long era were Madonna had no real competition as far as white female pop stars, which is easy forget now in the deluge of Gaga/Katy/etc. i guess early on Cyndi Lauper and a few others were contemporaries, don't even know who you could say for most of the 90s -- Shania? Celine? xpost

xpost not to mention:

"Bad Girl", "In This Life", "Secret Garden", "Love Tried To Welcome Me".

and "Into The Groove."

wait what did i say???

― plax (ico), Wednesday, February 20, 2013

sorry! It was fact checking cuz (whom I needed here lol)

I can't imagine anything more personal than writing a song about a hot Puerto Rican boy. Not even the Pet Shop Boys pulled that of.

*off

it all seemed like

yeah there were white chicks in a similar vein but madonna had established herself as icon megastar by virgin, her peers then prince, bruce, and michael, someone like stacey q as a challenge would've been laughable. the best i can come up w/ is janet (and that's only cuz i was thinking about starting a velvet rope vs erotica poll), and that's still a pretty poor 'rival', not even as true as prince/bruce, nevermind beatles/stones.

I think moreover the hype around Ray Of Light was indicative of a very narrow and IMO shallow conception of the "personal" (not Madonna's, but that of the critical reception).

e.g. per prolego's comments upthread I find Erotica to offer up a very consistent and compelling persona that feels totally true of a certain part of Madonna's life up to and at that time - this was Madonna's actual "confessions on a dancefloor" album, capturing pretty truthfully for me the pleasures and pitfalls of hedonism (this is something that became clearer to me later on even though my initial infatuation with the album was at about age 15).

One of the most inadvertently sad lyrics in Madonna's work is this line in "Thief Of Hearts": "Here she comes, Little Miss Thinks-she-can-have-his-child, well anybody can do it..."

i wonder if the looking for mr goodbar theme for the 'bad girl' vid was madonna's idea or fincher's or just the obv way to go w/ that song.

the best i can come up w/ is janet

I don't like Mariah Carey nearly as much, but my guess is she had a better chart run through most of the '90s (if you mean commercial rival).

I seem to remember a derisive comment or two about Mariah Carey from Madonna at the time, as if she a) was aware of a chart rivalry of sorts, and b) considered the competition vastly inferior.

yeah i can't imagine either ever regarding the other at the 'competition' or considering the other when making any decisions.

it's part of Madonna's savvy that in 1994 she saw the future in R%B-influenced balladry, of which Carey was its main practioner.

yeah madonna said she'd kill herself if she was mariah or something and mariah zinged her back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mvgB44H1eA

A Spin interview from '96:

I was talking to k.d. lang about it last night. I don’t want to get into slagging off other artists, but we were talking about her record versus someone like Mariah Carey’s — and I think she’s a very talented singer — but we have to realize that the same country that acquitted O.J. is the same country that makes a complete piece of shit movie No.1, that buys Marian Carey records. It’s this homogeneity. But it’s got nothing to do with art.

Just rambling on in an interview, I know, and rather pompously, too--she sounds like Peter Bogdanovich. But I don't think she was much of a fan. (Not that she'd ever actually slag Mariah Carey, no chance...)

By the way, I was talking to k.d. lang about this just the other night.

That era where every female artist working in the field of popular music claimed to have a crush on k.d. lang.

lol those gals

That Mariah clip is an amazingly dry putdown--Randy Newman couldn't do any better.

is that the Bob Guccione cover story?

The same country that acquitted OJ turned flannel into fashion.

oddly enough, I never considered Madonna, Bruce, Michael, and prince peers. I chalk that up to a rare confluence of uniquely all powerful performers and their overlapping Imperial phases.

(xpost) Yes--here's the full thing:

http://allaboutmadonna.com/madonna-interviews-articles/spin-january-1996

great thread! no, really, i mean it. i've been reading it.

all those guys were kinda lumped together back then. pop-culturally. people would dress up like michael and bruce and madonna and prince for halloween.

they were totally lumped in together. but it was like each 1 had his or her own planet to devour.

I wonder if four friends ever dressed up like Madonna, Michael, Bruce, and Prince. Best Trick or Treat Posse ever, since Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, and mummy.

But shared fans xpost

I wonder if four friends ever dressed up like Madonna, Michael, Bruce, and Prince

when this happens they're referred to as "fanta girls" fyi

Boy George, Cyndi Lauper, Annie Lennox, George Micheal, Tina Turner, Robert Smith, Billy Idol. The 80's pop scene were the best for Halloween costumes!

One of the most inadvertently sad lyrics in Madonna's work is this line in "Thief Of Hearts": "Here she comes, Little Miss Thinks-she-can-have-his-child, well anybody can do it..."

yeah absolutely, especially once taken with "secret garden". iirc she was chasing after antonio banderas hard in 1991 because she really wanted to have his child (hear-say at the time), but she got rebuffed, something i doubt she was that used to.

also thought i'd drag up a really great post from the ilx archives on the topic of erotica being a deeply personal work which I think is OTM:

Yes, Erotica can be called her ultimate moment in self-objectification or depersonalization, what she was only attempting to do in Sex, but in MY opinion, the key to the album is that you can take it both ways: it may be her most impersonal album, but strangely also her most personal as well. Before this you could always differentiate between two Madonnas: the character she was playing, and the "real person" that she was, or rather, wanted you to believe that she was, at the moment - her "personaizing moments," you could call them: "Promise to Try" = I'm a sad little girl whose mom died, "Keep it Together," = I'm the hard-working yet loving sister, "Til Death Do us Part," = Sean Penn is a shithead abuser who I lurved etc. Yet now, evreything is conflated since there are two many levels of self-consciousness, so many, in fact, that the revalations are almost unconscious: she is revealing glimpses into her personality almost in spite of herself, unintentionally as she keeps trying to chug along the album's Grand Theme. "Dita," the alter-ego she invented for herself during the Sex era, keeps revealing things Madonna wouldn't: in "Secret Garden," she almost nonchalantly mentions how she wants to be pregnant, in "In This Life" she briefly gushes forth about her dead mentor, who was taken from her by AIDS, on "Words," she lashes out at the media lying about her.

And most tellingly, in "Bad Girl" she lays bare, if only for a second, one of her true selves: the cold, selfish, romantic, lustful, unfaithful, self-loathing, well-meaning bitch who wants to have it both ways and knows its wrong, a very, very lonely person at the end of it all. It remains her most honest moment. Ever - not that authenticity is all that anyway, mind you, especially when discussing her - but for a woman who prides herself on inventing innumerable masks, it is quite significant to expose herself as a wounded, helpless demoness in an unconscious matter (as opposed to the "this is the real Me" trollop of Truth or Dare which was so strikingly staged). I still think "Bad Girl" is her best-written song, okay, ballad, topping "Live to Tell," but its very close.

― Vic (Vic), Tuesday, February 4, 2003 8:40 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I dressed up as a guy from the Beat Farmers one year, but no one really noticed.

My Erotica essay for Stylus, published years ago: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/on_second_thought/madonna-erotica.htm

Vic on "Bad Girl" is OTM but I would add or emphasise that she exposes herself by "putting on a mask", in a weird reversal of something like "Till Death To Us Part" where she creates distance from her real life by turning it into pop (brilliantly).

i.e. "Bad Girl" is more revealing because formally she's playing the part of a third person.

oh yeah -- Erotica is her most Bowiesque in the give-me-mask-and-I'll-tell-you-the-truth way.

^^^^^^

i think i've seen Truth Or Dare more times than any other movie.

my all time fave

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bg-hw-_QeE

another fave; the 'unmixed' DJ issue version of Into The Groove from You Can Dance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_mbtRJiIsQ

I'm a big fan of "Get Together" too.

I wonder had Madonna continued in the path of using relatively unknown electronic producers who she could have used after Orbit, Mirwais, and JLC ?
I would've liked to hear what she could have done with Hercules & Love Affair, Azari & III, or even Lindstrøm.

"Get Together" and "Jump" will probably end up knocking "Hung Up" off my ballot.

also her only AOTY grammy nom.

I'm not a huge fan of Like a Prayer on the whole, but ... um, this line-up:

Nick of Time, Bonnie Raitt
The End of the Innocence, Don Henley
The Raw and the Cooked, Fine Young Cannibals
Full Moon Fever, Tom Petty
Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, Traveling Wilburys

Traveling Wilburys for eva.

Boy, though, it's like Fine Young Cannibals was the radical sop to the youth.

Was thinking last night how, again, there is no way I can think of Madonna strictly as a singles artist - just buying her hits collections hardly does her career justice - but unlike her erstwhile compatriots Bruce, Prince and Michael, she never released a definitive album statement, either. Madonna never had a BitUSA, or Thriller, or Purple Rain. She achieved her monocultural status I think exclusively via those singles, yet unlike a lot of singles artists hasn't really been defined by them. Of course people bought the records, but she didn't have one record that sold radically more than any of other others, did she? That's another Bowie parallel, I guess.

aren't like a prayer and ray of light "considered" to be her definitive album statements? one of those cases - maybe because of the medium and the genre she works in - where her most definitive album statements to fans (madonna and erotica, i think) didn't necessarily get concomitant critical or commercial traction.

haha so of course I totally agree with lex's identification of her two most definitive album statements.

Madonna is a step below ROL and LAP in regard (to me it's her best ALBUM before Erotica).

LAV btw is certified diamond, with True Blue not terribly far behind. Those remain her sales behemoths.

maybe it's because i didn't experience it at the time, and came to it in dribs and drabs, but while true blue is obviously a v good album just by dint of sheer quantity of great singles, i don't feel much attachment to it as an album.

the thing with ROL is that i do think it's one of M's best album statements, just not for the reasons the music press argued at the time. also as outlined upthread i think bedtime stories is a great album statement, i'm just aware that even among fans i am relatively alone in that (also, i always forget how...patchy the first half is)

confessions is the best album statement ever made that only has 2 songs (and one remix) that are out-and-out keepers

also can we give a nod to wonderfully immersive, amniotic ROL bonus track "has to be"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nDJHQ0i7vI

left off ROL only because Madonna wanted the number of tracks on the album to be 13 - the perfect number in Kabbalah

LOL

she should've chucked "shanti/ashtangi" off instead

I totally agree with Lex that RoL may be the closest she has come to a definitive album statement, but at the same time, the album's far from ... defining. With those other monster selling acts, I would be confident saying, you know, grab "Purple Rain" and you'll get the idea with Prince, or grab "Born in the USA" or "Thriller" to get a sense of why those acts dominated. But I'm not sure I would tell a total Madonna neophyte that "True Blue" or especially "Like a Virgin" would do the same, let alone "Ray of Light." Same thing with Bowie. I would never suggest that "Let's Dance," his biggest selling album by far, would be in any way shape or form the place to start. I would probably say start with the singles, I guess, but as with the aforementioned three, the singles paint a slightly skewed picture of the artist.

like a prayer is totally that one album. that you would tell people to listen to. to get the whole domination thing.

i mean it has every madonna flavor. like a prayer, express yourself, cherish, oh father, keep it together. that's a whole lot of what makes madonna tick right there.

Madonna is absolutely defined by her singles; the problem is that there are 76 of them

listening to stuff from Music on youtube yesterday and it sounds fine its just the songs that i don't care that much about. sorry mirwais. i don't even own that album. i should get a copy. i always liked "don't tell me". and i DO love the sound of so much stuff prior to that. feel like i didn't give enough credit to the best stuff yesterday on here. man, oh father just kills me so hard. love the sound on that. and when will that video not give me chills? i'm 44 years old for heaven's sake. but it gets me every time.

For the first five seconds, I thought "Had To Be" was McCartney's "Secret Friend."

good call, Eric

Madonna is absolutely defined by her singles; the problem is that there are 76 of them

Yeah, exactly.

Have bands like Depeche Mode or New Order been defined by their singles? Certainly the former has a clear definitive album statement under its belt. The latter less so, I guess.

Interesting stats, Madonna's worldwide album sales:

True Blue, 25M
Like A Virgin, 21M
Ray Of Light, 18M
Like A Prayer, 15M
Music, 15M
Confessions, 11M
Madonna, 10M
Bed Time Stories, 6M
Erotica, 5M
Hard Candy, 4.5M
American Life, 4M
MDNA, 1.6M

The Immaculate Collection wins at 30M.

Was Erotica banned in a lot of countries?

I think it was greeted with gales of laughter in many countries.

I'm amazed that Music sold as much as Like A Prayer since it didn't have nearly as many hits. I think people were seeing her more as an album artist by that time and were interested in hearing the whole thing. I'm sure she sold more singles during the LAP era.

album sales were pretty much at an all-time high around 2000, is the thing i think

^^^

plus Music coming off the heels of a huge "comeback" album that didn't hit #1 thanks to Titanic soundtrack.

every album after ROL has hit #1 while none of her nineties albums did.

Surprised that "Confessions" sold as much as it did, given that was well within the download era.

i mostly focused on '80s and early-'90s madonna in my already submitted ballot but let me say how much i regret not voting for "sky fits heaven" or something deeper off american life or confessions don't make my mistake

i was listening to ray of light last night and i was like "ughhhhh so much of this is ethereal and indistinct" and then BOOM out of nowhere "nothing really matters" and "sky fits heaven"

I don't really see how "Skin" is ethereal and indistinct, personally

i never remember that one

ultimately I think that's my favorite ROL song

"I wonder had Madonna continued in the path of using relatively unknown electronic producers who she could have used after Orbit, Mirwais, and JLC ?"

JLC could have made "Celebration" sound cool. he's good at making things sound cool. oakenfold blah!

With 7 ballots, there are still 2 unanimous tracks in the results. I wish I could say what they are.

Water-wiggle overlays aside, "Nothing Really Matters" is just good '90s chug-house. It's Crystal Waters in neon blue.

oh i guess i never realized before now how garbage-y "candy perfume girl" is

The verse melodies she sings on "Nothing Really Matters" brings out the opera-lesson hater in me.

The live version of "Candy Perfume Girl" fro 2001 is amazing for her two-note guitar solo and the power chord freakout at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf5Xzzeoz4w

xp All comes back to that.

Drove to work listening to Erotica today. I am really quite infatuated with this now that so much time has passed.
I was still in high school when it came and truth be told, a bit of a prude w/r/t ~all of that~ so I think however good it was got drowned out by all the sensationalism surrounding it. For me, anyway.

Confessions I do definitely like now that I've had a chance to hear it but I'm not really hearing anything that I'm in love with - above the tracks I've already selected for my ballot, that is. I mean, I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy listening to it but I'm not really feeling any of the distinguished tracks as far as voting goes, aside from Hung Up which I was going to vote for anyway.

oh now i remember "skin"! the chorus just kind of meanders and i'm not a fan

I re-listened to the Let It Will Be-Forbidden Love-Jump sequence and it blew me away anew.

I love the chorus in "Skin"! So melodic after the manic and erratic verse.

Also "Candy Perfume Girl" was totally Garbage-y. (x-post)

the blooms of percussion in "frozen" still sound totally awesome imo

there are literally a zillion remixes of "frozen" on youtube. many of them from 2011/2012. people really love to mess with that song. and rightfully so.

The video's color scheme matches the song's mood.

i love that video

me too. i didn't see it until years after the ROL era had passed and remember being totally confused by her goth hair. ROL the album seemed to have such a strong visual identity and colour scheme and for the video of the lead single to go so totally against that...

Yeah I was psyched about the black hair and that, i dunno, stillness that she has in that video. Plus it felt like at any moment Trent Reznor would appear and it would be the most normal thing in the world

It peaked at #2 in the United States. It became her sixth number-two single in the United States, making Madonna the artist with most number-two hits in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The others:

Material Girl
Causing a Commotion
Express Yourself
Cherish
I'll Remember

I feel like there is a line where Madonna went from "singer with flawed technique" to "sound effect with vocal training" and the main reason ROL works so well as an album is because it lies directly in the center of that transition.

i always forget how many incredible sonic details there are in ROL's big dancefloor moments - they're almost designed to be like the tracky, immersive bits of the set rather than the peak-time anthemic bits (which is what confessions was shooting for)

the incredible percussion on "skin" >>>>
the dual vocal lines at the end of "nothing really matters" >>>>>>

Surprised that "Confessions" sold as much as it did, given that was well within the download era.

"worldwide" album sales figures tend to be a little bit made up.

William Orbit was really a fantastic producer pre-"American Pie"; I also highly recommend the remix he did of The Cure's "Inbetween Days" which first put me on the Orbit bandwagon back in 1990

also his remix of The Shamen's "Hyperreal" which went on to subsume and overshadow the original mix

also his stuff for ALL SAINTS

"pure shores" is a classic and "black coffee" is even better

burn what he did to barber's adagio for strings tho obv

I don't actually mind that tbh, it's no "American Pie"

omfg i forgot about the moment when "sky fits heaven" brings ALL THE BEATS BACK at once including a DRILL SOUND

Used to really like this album:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/bc/Strange_Cargo_III.jpg/220px-Strange_Cargo_III.jpg

I'd never heard this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc8wCCwGUSg

Must find room for "The People Behind These Masks" on my ballot.

http://video.adultswim.com/childrens-hospital/the-big-dance.html

probably orbit's biggest pop work outside madonna?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJxG2wBmqLA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2WP1yNypHo

How high did his Blur stuff chart?

Quite well in the Yoo Kay.

THIEF OF HEARTS

this poll is impossible though

i mean deeper and deeper is even better than thief of hearts, but everybody better be voting for deeper and deeper already

YOU SCREW IT
YOU FAKE IT

Stop bitch! Now sit your ass down!

I'm not in charge, but it would be nice to see this as a two-part poll, with a second poll excluding all the songs that place in this poll.

ooh that would be interesting

Listening Bedtime Stories again. "Survival" and "I'd Rather Be Your Lover" and "Don't Stop" are so inane but still so pretty.

I remember when "Secret" came out with its black and white video clip and replaced Kylie's "Confide In Me" at the top of the charts here and I was like "woah the ladies of pop are taking it ~deep~..."