Best Madonna Collaborator

So with which producer did she write her best songs?

Duh.

Leonard will win, tho.

didn't take you for a Pharrell fan

You Betts.

oops forgot David Foster

Man, was Patrick Leonard perfect for Madonna.

From her 1989 interview with Paul Zollo, the only long one about songwriting:

Q: You and Prince wrote “Love Song” together, which is a wonderful song. Did you and he work together or did he give you a track?

A: No he didn’t give me a track. We sat down and just started fooling around. We had a lot of fun. What happened is that he played drums and I played the synthesizer and we came up with the original melody line; I just, off the top of my head, started singing lyrics into the microphone. And then he overdubbed some guitar stuff and made a loop of it and sent it to me, and then I just started adding sections to it and singing parts of it. And then I sent it back to him, and he’d sing a part of it and add another instrument and send it back to me … it was like this sentence that turned into a paragraph that turned into a little miniseries.

What about Reggie Lucas? Miles Davis guitarist '72-'75, produced 6 of 8 tracks on her debut.

I limited to the people with whom she wrote songs.

First place: Leonard.
Second place: Orbit.

write-in for mary lambert

Man, was Patrick Leonard perfect for Madonna the eighties, period.

no nile rodgers? has to be bray, leonard, lucas... always surprised the prince collaboration was as good as it was.

Lenny Kravitz doesn't count? my answer's probly Mirwais anyway

Man, was Patrick Leonard perfect for the eighties, period.

I just did a quick scan, and I'm surprised (or not) that Madonna took up so much of his time in the '80s. He really didn't do much else of note as a producer/composer, at least not pop-wise. Save maybe Bryan Ferry's "Bete Noire" toward the end of the decade.

I did learn that much of Jody Watley's debut was made with Andre Cymone. I had no idea!

see if you can hear "Live to Tell" in this Ferry collab:

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

... still looking forward to the work she'll do with the Grim Reaper.

Lenny Kravitz doesn't count? my answer's probly Mirwais anyway

― Daphnis Celesta,

I thought about including him, but Madonna's contributions consisted of a couple lines. At least her one Prince co-write WAS a collaboration in every sense.

And "Love Song" > "Justify My Love" anyway

This is William Orbit for me. I just loved his psychedelic techno vibe on Ray of Light and the Austin Powers song. She should've stuck with him for a couple more albums.

she did!

He's on half of Music and returned for MDNA.

Oh. Well maybe I should actually bother to listen to MDNA, then!

"Bother" seems like the right word.

ctrl-f 'jellybean' ?????

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

Like I said, the option consist of people she's written songs with. "Sidewalk Talk" she's given sole credit.

*consists

can we retroactively set Shep Pettibone on fire

also MDNA is terrible so I expect Snrub to come back to the thread proclaiming it to be a stunning return to form

is Snrub the Tim Ellison of Madonna threads

what's your vote, DJP?

That's a poll unto itself: shittiest album resulting from anticipated reunion of once strong collaborators.

i think a bunch of those Pettibone tracks are great. obv there is an issue with duds balancing them out but still. still thinking between Mirwais and Orbit but feels sort of dishonest to deny Patrick Leonard

my vote is Leonard (duh)

Recent interview discussing LAP:

Q: When you and Madonna worked together, she would mostly do the lyrics and you would bring in the music. Was there overlap where you would suggest ideas for different lyrics, or she would suggest a change in the music?

A: To my recollection‚ the norm was that I would go in the morning -- you know, I'd get to the studio very early, 8 o'clock, 7 o'clock sometimes. I had a gym in the studio, I used to work out there. So by 8 o'clock or so, I was working. I like to start really early in the day. She would come in about 11 and I would have the musical idea on whatever piece of gear I was using. I think it was just a Yamaha sequencer or something at the time. Or we might have been up like to an MPC 60 or something like that.

I would just put the track, the chord changes, some kind of drum beat, bass line -- something simple -- and say, "here's the idea, here's what I have for the day." She would listen, then we would talk a little bit. Oftentimes I'd say, "here's the verse, and here's the chorus," and she'd say, "no, it's the other way around, switch 'em." So I'd switch 'em. This thing is an hour old, it's not etched in stone.

Then she would just start writing. She'd start writing lyrics and oftentimes there was an implied melody. She would start with that and deviate from it. Or if there was nothing but a chord change, she'd make up a melody. But, a lot of the time in my writing there's a melody implied or I even have something in mind. But she certainly doesn't need that.

She would write the lyrics in an hour, the same amount of time it took me to write the music (laughs). And then she'd sing it. We'd do some harmonies, she'd sing some harmony parts, and usually by three or four in the afternoon, she was gone.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/5944767/madonna-producer-patrick-leonard-talks-like-a-prayer-at-25

those interviews just remind how eternally grateful i am the erotica diaries exist.

"I remember when Madonna and I first started working together on Erotica. We were listening in my home studio to one of the first songs and I turned to her and said "It's great, but it's no Vogue." She told me that not every song could be Vogue - not every cut could emerge as the top-selling record of all time. She was right, but I pressed my case anyway: "I guess I'm always trying to out-top myself," I told her, "the next thing should be bigger than the last." Madonna just turned and looked me straight in the eye. It had been a long time since I'd been star-struck by her, but she was glowing differently now. "Shep," she began, "no matter how fierce something is, you can't ever do the same thing twice." She sat down to record the final vocals on Erotica and looked out onto the terrace and into the New York City night. "Ever," she repeated."

:D

lol:

At this point, I wasn't working on any remixes - just writing. Deeper and Deeper, Erotica, Rain and Thief of Hearts made up the first batch of songs we worked on together. I did the music and she wrote the words. Sometimes I'd give her some ideas lyrically and she'd go: "Oh, that's good," or "That sucks." I remember when I gave her some ideas lyrically for Vogue and she said, very curtly, "That's what I do."

can we retroactively set Shep Pettibone on fire

Seems sort of pointless. His beats are hot enough.

("Deeper and Deeper" at #3 in the Madonna poll = ILM's greatest moment.)

Let me put in a word for Stephen Bray, co-author of "Angel," "Into the Groove," "Express Yourself," and "Where's the Party."

he's definitely written several classics, and anyone involved in the making of "into the groove" deserves to have temples erected in their honour for eternity, but he's generally responsible for her flimsiest 80s tunes that are basically great because of the strength of early-madonna's charisma. also let's not pretend shep's remixes didn't render his work on like a prayer obselete.

if i were ranking them: shep > pat leonard > jlc > betts > orbit > mirwais > bray > prince >>>>>>>>> pharrell

one of my favorite Madonna-Leonard collabs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYo7xQ4UIuY

Shep Pettibone may be my most hated producer of the 80s.

He really turned it around in the '90s, then.

DJP why do you hate Shep Pettibone

locking him in a room with Introspective and a Shep compilation would be like dropping lex in a kitchen with pine nuts and a blender.

something like 80% of Shep's work involves taking artists I usually love and either creating music that I cannot abide or remixing previously great songs into personality-free bullshit

like, for every "You Know Where You Went Wrong" or "Bizarre Love Triangle" there are 5-10 dismal "I Want A Dog" or "Express Yourself" remixes

I'm a Shep detractor too, but I much prefer his remix of Express Yourself to the LP mix.

I think he ruined "Like a Prayer," fwiw.

all those LAP remixes are dire

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

vote!

Leonard
Bray
Shep
Orbit
Who gives a shit

lol