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

Lucky Star (new mix)
Borderline (new mix)
Into the Groove (8:31)
Material Girl (extended)
Dress You Up (12“)

Obviously no-one would notice "Did You Do It" (or whatever it's called precisely) being culled. I had an Erotica cassette in the mid 90s and it wasn't even on there.

it was the clean cassette!

yep, a whole album that sounded like the space between this and "Bedtime Story" (and just generally exploiting that brief window of post-Post International Language of Megatron vibes) would have been great.

Madge would reply: "That's what I did on Ray of Light."

"Where Life Begins" is too ridiculous imo, more puns about eating pussy than in Lil Wayne's entire discography

and yet it's not a dining room conversation, idgi

the closing one-two of "in this life" and "secret garden" is unfuckwithable

i know yall queered it upthread but fwiw 'waiting' is brutally otm enough for me to actually often skip it [submits post, avoids mirror]

the uncanny thing that amazes me every single time is how on earth is 'deeper and deeper' only 5:33 long, i listen and i swear to god it's an epic journey at least three times that

"in this life" is so amazing and devastating, don't think she's ever sounded so numb and angry

More songwriting insight:

According to Pettibone in his article "Erotica Diaries", he said that he produced a tape for Madonna listen to, and went to Chicago, where she was filming A League Of Their Own. She listened to the songs, and liked all of them.[5] After the filming was complete, Madonna met with Pettibone in New York to begin recording the album, on November 13, 1991.[5] Pettibone said, "'Deeper and Deeper', 'Erotica', 'Rain' and 'Thief of Hearts' made up the first batch of songs we worked on together. I did the music and she wrote the words. Sometimes I'd give her some ideas lyrically and she'd go: 'Oh, that's good,' or "That sucks.' I remember when I gave her some ideas lyrically for 'Vogue' and she said, very curtly, 'That's what I do.'"[5] "Deeper and Deeper" was not working for Madonna. Pettibone commented, "We tried different bridges and changes, but nothing worked. In the end, Madonna wanted the middle of the song to have a flamenco guitar strumming big-time."[5

' I remember when I gave her some ideas lyrically for 'Vogue' and she said, very curtly, 'That's what I do

awesome

this feeling inside i can't explain BUT MY LOVE IS ALIVE AND I'M NEVER GONNA HIDE IT AGAIN
*flamenco guitar*

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> all music eva

"I didn't like the idea of taking a Philly house song and putting La Isla Bonita in the middle of it. But that's what she wanted, so that's what she got."

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31BD479QEGL.jpg

What happened to my phone call?

this is a p cool remix of White Heat, imo

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

i'll take "material girl" over "true blue". don't need no malt shop madonna.

this feeling inside i can't explain BUT MY LOVE IS ALIVE AND I'M NEVER GONNA HIDE IT AGAIN
*flamenco guitar*

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> all music eva

― prolego, Friday, 22 February 2013 12:33 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is ridiculously OTM however it is also necessary to stress how that echoey pause after "AGAIN!" always feels like the falling off a cliff to me, like you've just exploded from too much joy and now might actually be dead, and then you get *flamenco guitar* and it's like no, we haven't fallen off the edge of the world, we've just fallen through the other side of the mirror.

plus it always reminds me of the mtv true blue contest. ugh. 5 million horrible homemade true blue videos played for a year straight. felt like it anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iloMBY5cjAk

yep, a whole album that sounded like the space between this and "Bedtime Story" (and just generally exploiting that brief window of post-Post International Language of Megatron vibes) would have been great.

Madge would reply: "That's what I did on Ray of Light."

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 21 February 2013 11:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Madge would be guilty of a lack of distinction in that case. Ray of Light is way to pristine for this.

too pristine.

and chose the wrong producer

I've wondered whether she could have matched or surpassed Orbit just working with Patrick Leonard and Rick Nowels; and my brain reels at the thought that Wendy Melvoin co-wrote "Candy Perfume Girl." Garbage-gy guitar pop in '98 done by Madonna might have worked.

material girl is kinda terrible - sort of dead-inside, plodding

La Isla Bonita is awesome I will FITE you horseshoe

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 21 February 2013 22:12 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol otm

and I will fite you too, Scott Seward. True Blue is THEBEST.

material girl is really pretty shite. so damn ungainly and awkward. i remember hearing a thing about how awkward her costuming was in the shot where she flips her head back and is being held with her feet above her head and that description rhymes so well with how i feel about this clunky thing. its a really terrible cyndi lauper song actually. like silly in that way but without all the things that cyndi does to make up for it. its so boring the extend to which its a song that needs her mythology and it always puzzles me looking at her chronology that she was that big already.

also who wrote that pretty line upthread about holiday. how slowly it works on you, turning from optimism to something much more bittersweet. it would be so nice. what a killer. its also her best actual disco song. the end of the summer, forcing everything unfolded into a rucksack. just so much is contained in that line "if we took a holiday." and this is the other charm of her first album, the small and the big dreams intertwined, blonde ambition and scraping a living in the city.

true blue isn't the best anything! i like la isla bonita fine though. always have. true blue is just gahhhhhh. gag me with a spoon.

"true blue" is kind of a pointless pastiche yep

scott, scott. trust me, once you act out all the words in dance sign-langugae it all makes sense. IT'S SO GREAT

true blue would have been like the 8th best debbie gibson song on deb's debut.

btw how do you guys feel about the anti-climactic Madonna/Prince duet "Love Song" -- i kind of dig it so much i'm tempted to vote for it

you're a pointless pastiche xxpost >:(

even the production is just so...farty. sounds like a big fart. maybe cyndi lauper could have made it work.

I like "Love Song" too but I doubt it'll nudge its way onto my ballot.

true blue is a p pointless song but the album is great. la isla is a great song but i only realised this when somebody played me some lesbian cumbia punk band doing a cover of it.

i totally voted for "love song" it's so weird SO WEIRD i love it hooray

you're a pointless pastiche xxpost >:(

fav description of me bc it's so true

please don't get me wrong. i am definitely talking about the song and not the album.

i'm not really a fan of Lovesexy/Batman era Prince so i'm always surprised by how much i love it xp

"Love Song" sounds exactly what it is: a transcontinental collaboation (Madonna wrote one bit on synth, FedExed it to Prince, who stapled guitar and odd bits). But wow -- to me it's got the frisson. Best moment: "Embrasse-moi." "WHAT?"

Embarrass-Moi

WHAT?

my favourite LAP deep cut for so very long was "act of contrition"; as a jewish kid i was enthralled and mystified by all the strange catholic liturgical muttering, and i love the image of madonna rejected at the gates of heaven, screaming at god, expecting entrance based solely on her namesake.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT IN THE COMPUTER?!?!

Prince on guitar too.

i could at least identify with her chutzpa tho <3

Yeah, that "I have a reservation... I *have* a *reservation*... WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT IN THE COMPUTER???" transition is amazing and circa 8 year old me thought very clever as well.

it never struck me until recently how joyous and unpretentious those singles from the first album are. a large part of Madonna's success obviously has to do with how adaptive she has been and how readily she embraces change, but if i look at her career as a whole, it kind of sits uncomfortably with me; the uncompromising desire to keep her brand relevant and up to the minute every step of the way strikes me as symptomatic of an overall confused identity rather than a depth and variety that i can tap into for endless spoils. i think at some point i was intrigued by Madonna because there were so many sides of her, but only because of that, and not because i ever thought the songs consistently held up. the pure expressions of the very early stuff are thankfully there for me to enjoy, but her departures and evolution from that point leave me cold basically, save a few excellent singles along the way. look forward to voting in this, regardless :)

i suppose it's partly because we're living in a pop world she helped create, but it's weird to even think of Madonna as being someone who chases trends and covets relevance, when compared to the way so many contemporary stars now jump bandwagons constantly Madonna seems pretty dignified and self-possessed

even something like Hard Candy, while i can knock who she chose to work with and when and the underwhelming results, it seems like she did it on her terms, because she felt like it

Until the last six or seven years, I never thought of Madonna chasing trends. Like Bowie, she spotted something cool burbling just enough under the surface to explore it, or was prescient enough to see where pop would go for a couple years.

The closest approximation to a Low in her career is Erotica.