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

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