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

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.