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

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.