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

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..."

yeah absolutely, especially once taken with "secret garden". iirc she was chasing after antonio banderas hard in 1991 because she really wanted to have his child (hear-say at the time), but she got rebuffed, something i doubt she was that used to.

also thought i'd drag up a really great post from the ilx archives on the topic of erotica being a deeply personal work which I think is OTM:

Yes, Erotica can be called her ultimate moment in self-objectification or depersonalization, what she was only attempting to do in Sex, but in MY opinion, the key to the album is that you can take it both ways: it may be her most impersonal album, but strangely also her most personal as well. Before this you could always differentiate between two Madonnas: the character she was playing, and the "real person" that she was, or rather, wanted you to believe that she was, at the moment - her "personaizing moments," you could call them: "Promise to Try" = I'm a sad little girl whose mom died, "Keep it Together," = I'm the hard-working yet loving sister, "Til Death Do us Part," = Sean Penn is a shithead abuser who I lurved etc. Yet now, evreything is conflated since there are two many levels of self-consciousness, so many, in fact, that the revalations are almost unconscious: she is revealing glimpses into her personality almost in spite of herself, unintentionally as she keeps trying to chug along the album's Grand Theme. "Dita," the alter-ego she invented for herself during the Sex era, keeps revealing things Madonna wouldn't: in "Secret Garden," she almost nonchalantly mentions how she wants to be pregnant, in "In This Life" she briefly gushes forth about her dead mentor, who was taken from her by AIDS, on "Words," she lashes out at the media lying about her.

And most tellingly, in "Bad Girl" she lays bare, if only for a second, one of her true selves: the cold, selfish, romantic, lustful, unfaithful, self-loathing, well-meaning bitch who wants to have it both ways and knows its wrong, a very, very lonely person at the end of it all. It remains her most honest moment. Ever - not that authenticity is all that anyway, mind you, especially when discussing her - but for a woman who prides herself on inventing innumerable masks, it is quite significant to expose herself as a wounded, helpless demoness in an unconscious matter (as opposed to the "this is the real Me" trollop of Truth or Dare which was so strikingly staged). I still think "Bad Girl" is her best-written song, okay, ballad, topping "Live to Tell," but its very close.

― Vic (Vic), Tuesday, February 4, 2003 8:40 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I dressed up as a guy from the Beat Farmers one year, but no one really noticed.

My Erotica essay for Stylus, published years ago: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/on_second_thought/madonna-erotica.htm

Vic on "Bad Girl" is OTM but I would add or emphasise that she exposes herself by "putting on a mask", in a weird reversal of something like "Till Death To Us Part" where she creates distance from her real life by turning it into pop (brilliantly).

i.e. "Bad Girl" is more revealing because formally she's playing the part of a third person.

oh yeah -- Erotica is her most Bowiesque in the give-me-mask-and-I'll-tell-you-the-truth way.

^^^^^^

i think i've seen Truth Or Dare more times than any other movie.

my all time fave

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bg-hw-_QeE

another fave; the 'unmixed' DJ issue version of Into The Groove from You Can Dance

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

I'm a big fan of "Get Together" too.

I wonder had Madonna continued in the path of using relatively unknown electronic producers who she could have used after Orbit, Mirwais, and JLC ?
I would've liked to hear what she could have done with Hercules & Love Affair, Azari & III, or even Lindstrøm.

"Get Together" and "Jump" will probably end up knocking "Hung Up" off my ballot.

also her only AOTY grammy nom.

I'm not a huge fan of Like a Prayer on the whole, but ... um, this line-up:

Nick of Time, Bonnie Raitt
The End of the Innocence, Don Henley
The Raw and the Cooked, Fine Young Cannibals
Full Moon Fever, Tom Petty
Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, Traveling Wilburys

Traveling Wilburys for eva.

Boy, though, it's like Fine Young Cannibals was the radical sop to the youth.

Was thinking last night how, again, there is no way I can think of Madonna strictly as a singles artist - just buying her hits collections hardly does her career justice - but unlike her erstwhile compatriots Bruce, Prince and Michael, she never released a definitive album statement, either. Madonna never had a BitUSA, or Thriller, or Purple Rain. She achieved her monocultural status I think exclusively via those singles, yet unlike a lot of singles artists hasn't really been defined by them. Of course people bought the records, but she didn't have one record that sold radically more than any of other others, did she? That's another Bowie parallel, I guess.

aren't like a prayer and ray of light "considered" to be her definitive album statements? one of those cases - maybe because of the medium and the genre she works in - where her most definitive album statements to fans (madonna and erotica, i think) didn't necessarily get concomitant critical or commercial traction.

haha so of course I totally agree with lex's identification of her two most definitive album statements.

Madonna is a step below ROL and LAP in regard (to me it's her best ALBUM before Erotica).

LAV btw is certified diamond, with True Blue not terribly far behind. Those remain her sales behemoths.

maybe it's because i didn't experience it at the time, and came to it in dribs and drabs, but while true blue is obviously a v good album just by dint of sheer quantity of great singles, i don't feel much attachment to it as an album.

the thing with ROL is that i do think it's one of M's best album statements, just not for the reasons the music press argued at the time. also as outlined upthread i think bedtime stories is a great album statement, i'm just aware that even among fans i am relatively alone in that (also, i always forget how...patchy the first half is)

confessions is the best album statement ever made that only has 2 songs (and one remix) that are out-and-out keepers

also can we give a nod to wonderfully immersive, amniotic ROL bonus track "has to be"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nDJHQ0i7vI

left off ROL only because Madonna wanted the number of tracks on the album to be 13 - the perfect number in Kabbalah

LOL

she should've chucked "shanti/ashtangi" off instead

I totally agree with Lex that RoL may be the closest she has come to a definitive album statement, but at the same time, the album's far from ... defining. With those other monster selling acts, I would be confident saying, you know, grab "Purple Rain" and you'll get the idea with Prince, or grab "Born in the USA" or "Thriller" to get a sense of why those acts dominated. But I'm not sure I would tell a total Madonna neophyte that "True Blue" or especially "Like a Virgin" would do the same, let alone "Ray of Light." Same thing with Bowie. I would never suggest that "Let's Dance," his biggest selling album by far, would be in any way shape or form the place to start. I would probably say start with the singles, I guess, but as with the aforementioned three, the singles paint a slightly skewed picture of the artist.

like a prayer is totally that one album. that you would tell people to listen to. to get the whole domination thing.

i mean it has every madonna flavor. like a prayer, express yourself, cherish, oh father, keep it together. that's a whole lot of what makes madonna tick right there.

Madonna is absolutely defined by her singles; the problem is that there are 76 of them

listening to stuff from Music on youtube yesterday and it sounds fine its just the songs that i don't care that much about. sorry mirwais. i don't even own that album. i should get a copy. i always liked "don't tell me". and i DO love the sound of so much stuff prior to that. feel like i didn't give enough credit to the best stuff yesterday on here. man, oh father just kills me so hard. love the sound on that. and when will that video not give me chills? i'm 44 years old for heaven's sake. but it gets me every time.

For the first five seconds, I thought "Had To Be" was McCartney's "Secret Friend."

good call, Eric

Madonna is absolutely defined by her singles; the problem is that there are 76 of them

Yeah, exactly.

Have bands like Depeche Mode or New Order been defined by their singles? Certainly the former has a clear definitive album statement under its belt. The latter less so, I guess.

Interesting stats, Madonna's worldwide album sales:

True Blue, 25M
Like A Virgin, 21M
Ray Of Light, 18M
Like A Prayer, 15M
Music, 15M
Confessions, 11M
Madonna, 10M
Bed Time Stories, 6M
Erotica, 5M
Hard Candy, 4.5M
American Life, 4M
MDNA, 1.6M

The Immaculate Collection wins at 30M.

Was Erotica banned in a lot of countries?

I think it was greeted with gales of laughter in many countries.

I'm amazed that Music sold as much as Like A Prayer since it didn't have nearly as many hits. I think people were seeing her more as an album artist by that time and were interested in hearing the whole thing. I'm sure she sold more singles during the LAP era.

album sales were pretty much at an all-time high around 2000, is the thing i think

^^^

plus Music coming off the heels of a huge "comeback" album that didn't hit #1 thanks to Titanic soundtrack.

every album after ROL has hit #1 while none of her nineties albums did.

Surprised that "Confessions" sold as much as it did, given that was well within the download era.

i mostly focused on '80s and early-'90s madonna in my already submitted ballot but let me say how much i regret not voting for "sky fits heaven" or something deeper off american life or confessions don't make my mistake

i was listening to ray of light last night and i was like "ughhhhh so much of this is ethereal and indistinct" and then BOOM out of nowhere "nothing really matters" and "sky fits heaven"

I don't really see how "Skin" is ethereal and indistinct, personally

i never remember that one

ultimately I think that's my favorite ROL song

"I wonder had Madonna continued in the path of using relatively unknown electronic producers who she could have used after Orbit, Mirwais, and JLC ?"

JLC could have made "Celebration" sound cool. he's good at making things sound cool. oakenfold blah!

With 7 ballots, there are still 2 unanimous tracks in the results. I wish I could say what they are.

Water-wiggle overlays aside, "Nothing Really Matters" is just good '90s chug-house. It's Crystal Waters in neon blue.

oh i guess i never realized before now how garbage-y "candy perfume girl" is