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

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'.

Britney and Xtina kinda brought about the end of the long era were Madonna had no real competition as far as white female pop stars, which is easy forget now in the deluge of Gaga/Katy/etc. i guess early on Cyndi Lauper and a few others were contemporaries, don't even know who you could say for most of the 90s -- Shania? Celine? xpost

xpost not to mention:

"Bad Girl", "In This Life", "Secret Garden", "Love Tried To Welcome Me".

and "Into The Groove."

wait what did i say???

― plax (ico), Wednesday, February 20, 2013

sorry! It was fact checking cuz (whom I needed here lol)

I can't imagine anything more personal than writing a song about a hot Puerto Rican boy. Not even the Pet Shop Boys pulled that of.

*off

it all seemed like

yeah there were white chicks in a similar vein but madonna had established herself as icon megastar by virgin, her peers then prince, bruce, and michael, someone like stacey q as a challenge would've been laughable. the best i can come up w/ is janet (and that's only cuz i was thinking about starting a velvet rope vs erotica poll), and that's still a pretty poor 'rival', not even as true as prince/bruce, nevermind beatles/stones.

I think moreover the hype around Ray Of Light was indicative of a very narrow and IMO shallow conception of the "personal" (not Madonna's, but that of the critical reception).

e.g. per prolego's comments upthread I find Erotica to offer up a very consistent and compelling persona that feels totally true of a certain part of Madonna's life up to and at that time - this was Madonna's actual "confessions on a dancefloor" album, capturing pretty truthfully for me the pleasures and pitfalls of hedonism (this is something that became clearer to me later on even though my initial infatuation with the album was at about age 15).

One of the most inadvertently sad lyrics in Madonna's work is this line in "Thief Of Hearts": "Here she comes, Little Miss Thinks-she-can-have-his-child, well anybody can do it..."

i wonder if the looking for mr goodbar theme for the 'bad girl' vid was madonna's idea or fincher's or just the obv way to go w/ that song.

the best i can come up w/ is janet

I don't like Mariah Carey nearly as much, but my guess is she had a better chart run through most of the '90s (if you mean commercial rival).

I seem to remember a derisive comment or two about Mariah Carey from Madonna at the time, as if she a) was aware of a chart rivalry of sorts, and b) considered the competition vastly inferior.

yeah i can't imagine either ever regarding the other at the 'competition' or considering the other when making any decisions.

it's part of Madonna's savvy that in 1994 she saw the future in R%B-influenced balladry, of which Carey was its main practioner.

yeah madonna said she'd kill herself if she was mariah or something and mariah zinged her back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mvgB44H1eA

A Spin interview from '96:

I was talking to k.d. lang about it last night. I don’t want to get into slagging off other artists, but we were talking about her record versus someone like Mariah Carey’s — and I think she’s a very talented singer — but we have to realize that the same country that acquitted O.J. is the same country that makes a complete piece of shit movie No.1, that buys Marian Carey records. It’s this homogeneity. But it’s got nothing to do with art.

Just rambling on in an interview, I know, and rather pompously, too--she sounds like Peter Bogdanovich. But I don't think she was much of a fan. (Not that she'd ever actually slag Mariah Carey, no chance...)

By the way, I was talking to k.d. lang about this just the other night.

That era where every female artist working in the field of popular music claimed to have a crush on k.d. lang.

lol those gals

That Mariah clip is an amazingly dry putdown--Randy Newman couldn't do any better.