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

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

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.

this was rather famously not the case when she worked with Pharrell

I think the real problem is that her songs tend to really, really suck nowadays

i think madonna's voice is seriously one of her most underrated qualities, not just how truly great an instrument it was in the 80s but how chameleonic in the 90s it proved to be - she switches up her vox on every one of her 90s albums to fit the style she was working in - the powerful brassiness on i'm breathless, the ragged slightly claustrophobic half-spoken nasalness on erotica, the mature sultiness on bedtime stories, the didatic aloofness of ray of light (even if i dislike her opera lessons i can't imagine this album being sung any other way).

*sultriness

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
--lex pretend

tho lol forever at her exchange in dick tracy

'look everyone, Dick made a record!
...what you can't sing?
- well neither can I, and look how far I've gotten...'

A few points:

(1) When she dies -- it won't happen when she's alive -- we'll finally read The Definitive Stories of M's compositional habits. Does she bring demos to the studio these days? Does she work from scratch? Does she play guitar on those demos? One of the early Paul Zollo books of songwriter interviews provides one of the few clues; it dates from 1989 and described her methods with Patrick Leonard, which consisted of working from his finished demos or she occasionally bringing a melodic idea to which he'd attach chords and a rhythm.

(2) She def thrives with songwriter-producers like Patrick Leonard, Stephen Bray, and Rick Nowels. But Shep Pettibone isn't really a songwriter -- he was mostly a remixer in '92! Somehow she formed songs around what he gave her.

(3) I actually admire her picking the likes of Mirwais. French house/techno background? Sure! Why not? The results were mixed but no one can accuse her of not keeping an ear open.

I think she and JLC probably had another great batch of songs in them, but she hasn't really repeated herself since Erotica and it just wasn't going to happen. Unfortunately, the result of that was Hard Candy.

I guess Hard Candy was the first time she used producers (Timbaland/The Neptunes) that everybody had used before her. Like she was desperate to have a hit again in the US, although the rest of the world still treated her like The Queen.
I'm so glad she hasn't gone to Max or Luke or RedOne yet. That would be the worse. She might do it on her next album though...

well, "Hung Up" was a hit -- just not MASSIVE.

speaking of "Hung Up," there's an example of working with songwriters, i.e. Benny-Bjorn. No wonder it was massive.

Alfred otm re the whole when she dies thing. I wonder about her creative process!

I bet it's not that different than that of other pop singer/producer collaborations. Producer brings songs/beats/whatever, Madonna picks the ones she likes best, and then they develop them together. Don't know if she writes her own melodies or not, though clearly she writes all or most of her own lyrics. Are there any songs of hers credited exclusively to "Madonna?"

By the way, at the drug store today the old woman in front of me was named Madonna!

a chunk of the Madonna songs ("Lucky Star" and "Burning Up" fer instance) plus one on "Like a Virgin" plus "Sidewalk Talk" and "Gambler" are solo credits.

Skimming the early stuff at least, it looks like a mix of stuff where Madonna is either not credited at all, or credited as a co-writer. But a song like "Lucky Star" is a solo Madonna credit, which begs the question: does that mean she wrote the song herself? I wonder if she writes like Stevie Nicks, who supposedly brings in these not quite song-like sketches which are in turn polished into songs. But I'm not sure Madonna can write on an instrument, though maybe she can!

Nicks has always written on piano despite not knowing chords.

Madonna admitted in the Zollo interview from '89 that she wrote on keyboards and guitar. Like I said upthread, I like how she explained the disappearance of solo songwriting credits with "I got lazy." It demystifies the whole thing.

Wasn't it a big deal when she was taking guitar lessons c. 2004 or whatever, when she would play the (very simple) Burning Up chords live on her black Les Paul? I'm not sure she's sophisticated enough of a musician to come up with a lot of the heavy lifting stuff. Phil Collins is a better example of a non-keyboardist plinking his way to hits, but his solo stuff is a lot more remedial than hers.

Looks like there aren't any other solo "Madonna" credits after the first few albums, though she obviously worked closely with a lot of her producers/writers, esp. Leonard, who I forgot co-wrote a hunk of "Ray of Light."

maybe she needs to get UNlazy again

well, "Hung Up" was a hit -- just not MASSIVE.

I think it was a Top 10 hit due to sales, not radio play. "Hung Up" went to #1 everywhere but only to #7 in the States. "Sorry" only made it to #58 on Billboard whereas it went Top 5 pretty much everywhere else. Confessions was HUGE around the world. The album sold 12 million, compared to American Life's 4 million.

I really think she was trying to break the US again with Hard Candy, and she did go higher with "4 Minutes" (#3), but the album ended selling much less than the previous one.

I think it's fascinating how these big budget hit records are made. That New Yorker profile or whatever was very telling, with the producer guys having a stack of songs, and discarding all but what they consider the hits. You can see that in the Jay-Z doc, too, where he goes through a trove of beats with Timbaland until he hits "Dirt Off Your Shoulders" and lights up. Timbaland, iirc, like a lot of producers, prices his beats differently based on how big he thinks they might get.

Madonna is a little different, I guess, since she often works in close collaboration with one guy, but I bet someone like JLC came to his audition prepared with a pile of demos and ideas.

like plax said a couple hours ago, I don't doubt JLC and Shep do, but they're remixers-producers instead of songwriters, so I give Madonna a lion's share of the credit for giving these songs melody and hooks.

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

Confessions Tour is on youtube. I've never gotten around to watching it before, but it's amazing so far.

It was an amazing tour.

"4 Minutes" got far more airplay than "Hung Up" even in club-happy Miami, and it was a recurrent too. "Hung Up" vanished after a couple weeks.

"Hung Up" is awesome. There's an example: I've always wondered if the ABBA sample was Madonna's idea, or if JLC was simply confident that if anyone can afford an ABBA sample, it's Madonna.

I interviewed Robyn once, and she talked a bit about Max Martin, who she said pretty outright considers himself a hitmaker rather than a songwriter. His songs are made to be hits, not as artistic expression or whatever. Obviously Madonna is nowhere near that cynical - even a lot of her piffle is personal. I think she's a really hard worker, and even if she might not to be able to come up with great stuff on her own, she's smart enough to surround herself with people who can help her get there. I think there are a lot of musicians like that. Bowie, for example, albeit to a lesser extent. He's full of ideas, but needs people around him when it comes to the execution.

I meant to vote for "Hung Up" and it completely slipped my mind; if you notice this post, JF, you can add that to my ballot in place of "Give Me All Your Luvin'" (and if you don't, no big deal).

I disagree with Martin's binary: how is a hit not an example of artistic expression?

I guess if its sole purpose is to be successful? Above all else? Like painting a house: it's paint, you're painting, but is it artistic expression? I dunno. I was just impressed Martin could be so blatant about it.

in 1992 I was SO disillusioned when Al Green admitted in a Details oral history on Stax that he wrote those great songs "for fast women" and money, to get those "fast women" and to keep them. This admission doesn't mitigate the qualities of one of the most perfect runs in modern music.

(not arguing with you, Josh, just Max Martin's delusion)

Reminds me of Greil Marcus's line on Rod Stewart (paraphrase): that all he wanted to do from the outset was fuck movie stars, and if he had to spend a few years as a brilliant artist to do that, he'd make the sacrifice.

A lot of damage done by quickly skimming a sentence with the words "Al Green," "details," "oral," "stax" and "fast women."

maybe she needs to get UNlazy again

I think the opposite has happened with the last two albums unfortunately.
She is much less invested in them and seems to view them like things that need to be done to go out on tour again.
You can even tell that a lot of the lyrics aren't written by her anymore, but probably by someone who was thinking "what could Madonna sing about? Oh I know! She's not me!"

shipz otm upthread about how some madonna's more under-the-radar singles feel like deep cuts themselves

― lex pretend, Wednesday, February 20, 2013 10:39 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didn't say this, alfred did!

the ROL wiki is so stupid, it has big pictures of britney and xtina with the caption

Ray of Light has been hailed as bold and refreshing in contemporary music of the late 1990s, which was dominated by teen pop artists such as Britney Spears (left) and Christina Aguilera (right).

yes, the album was a breath of fresh air compared to two artists that nobody heard of until roughly a year after the album came out!

Yeah, Madonna's stiffest competition on the pop front at that point was Third Eye Blind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PgY5GVSUMk

she sure showed xtina what's what

well xina had that hit from the mulan soundtrack which was that summer and britney blew up on the box late summer so it's not inconceivable that 'the power of goodbye' would've been heard after that mulan song on some ac station or the vid would've popped up after 'baby one more time' on the box, but yeah that context is misleading at best.

ray of light really has become the gold-standard for grown-up mature ~deep~ records in the pop world tho, i've heard so many times fans of other female pop artists (including of britney & xtina) hoping for their ray of light.

the pop context rol entered was 'the boy is mine' and 'are you that somebody' and 'torn'. i'm not sure what on the radio in 98 would've been an obv counterpart to 'frozen'. well, other than maybe this, which was still getting played a ton on radio in early 98:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eBZqmL8ehg

also wondering about the extent she turned to late sixties trippy rock ('ray of light' obv pretty much a curtiss maldoon cover, 'beautiful stranger' owing some debt to love - was her kabbalah instructor a hippie? her au pair?), then her guitar fetish for a little while after that. obv impossible w/ her temperament and her responsibilities to her label/marketplace but a beardo disco album from madonna might've been an interesting way for her to approach her fifties.

I meant to vote for "Hung Up" and it completely slipped my mind; if you notice this post, JF, you can add that to my ballot in place of "Give Me All Your Luvin'" (and if you don't, no big deal).

― clemenza, Wednesday, 20 February 2013 23:37 (Yesterday) Permalink

JF it might be more convenient/efficient to build in a script that turns all votes for "Give Me All Your Lovin" into votes for "Hung Up".

like plax said a couple hours ago, I don't doubt JLC and Shep do, but they're remixers-producers instead of songwriters, so I give Madonna a lion's share of the credit for giving these songs melody and hooks.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 20 February 2013 23:25 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wait what did i say???

i guess i just completely ignored the 'her most personal' album nonsense at the time (it was her first post-baby album so ppl were chomping at the bit for new, mature, no more dita madonna), she'd been plenty personal before - 'til death do us part', 'human nature', 'oh father', 'promise to try', half of true blue being having the subtext of 'omg i'm so in love w/ sean guys'.