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

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