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

Did Abba manage it, except in retrospect?

Another Madonnabe single:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW2LOaCHhOg

I suppose not teenpop as such

i love alisha's "too turned on" as much as any madonna single of the 80's. and madonna could have done it circa first album. but it was alisha's fate to be a freestyle icon instead of a household name.

I think ABBA fits, but it took many years with them--don't think they were treated favorably by rock critics until long after they'd disbanded. (In North America, anyway--maybe different in Britain?) The Monkees...that one's tricky. Anyway, a separate thread. But I do think Madonna might be the blueprint for a phenomenon that happens with some regularity now.

(Cf. John Huston in /Chinatown/ on politicians and old buildings.)

True...I'm kind of a prude!

You've got to just let your body move to the politicians.

Wow, Music does not really hold up all that well. Some good tracks, of course (mainly the singles, plus I still dig "Impressive Instant") but the acoustic tracks are really quite dull.

I always forget how fantastic the lp version of "What It Feels Like..." is, because the video remix is the version I always think of first. Damn, though! It's REALLY strong in its original form.

Ok choosing her Top 5 videos is almost harder than choosing her Top 20 songs. I find myself leaving out "Rain", "Oh Father", "Express Yourself", and "Justify My Love" !

otm

power of goodbye is pretty generic, but it's really lovely all the same.

My ballot's coming out pure canon so far. Normally I cut all but the most essential singles, then fill up with deep cuts, but she has so many undeniable hits that they're crowding everything else out.

Are we supposed to order the side polls too or do all the votes count for the same amount of points?

Sub polls are scored thusly: 10-8-6-4-2

*Sigh* that makes it even harder...

Wow, Music does not really hold up all that well. Some good tracks, of course (mainly the singles, plus I still dig "Impressive Instant") but the acoustic tracks are really quite dull.

"Paradise (Not For Me)" clicked for me a few years ago.

I still think it's a decent record, but in my rush to re-listen to (almost) every Madonna record before doing my ballot, I sure wasn't expecting to like it less, in 2013, than I'm Breathless.

"paradise (not for me)" is really great, yeah

yeah "paradise (not for me)" is the one deep cut I return to, i like how she flits between being an old woman, a robot and singing in French, pretty rad.

music was seriously overrated by critics at the time (i guess due to a hold over of good will from ROL) - it's her highest placing album on pazz & jop!

Christgau was weird about Madge. He loved Erotica but gave A's to I'm Breathless and Music. To wit:

Anybody who denies that Madonna made great singles in the '80s is a boob. Run all together on The Immaculate Collection, they constitute the greatest album of her mortal life. But except for the debut, the albums per se from that period strove for schlock when they didn't stoop to filler. In the early '90s, she essayed great longforms--an ambition that presupposes good songs while cultivating consistency and flow. Then she got scared and discovered God, two not unrelated experiences that rendered her great singles and good songs more middlebrow. So rejoice that from Vocoder to cowgirl suit, she's got her sass back. Pretending to be cheap, she sometimes--as on my favorite moment, the processed-munchkin hook of the perfectly entitled "Nobody's Perfect"--really is cheap, which is essential to the illusion. All the songs are good, all chintzy. Which combo provides just the right consistency and flow.

Listening to the Something To Remember comp now. "You'll See" def sounds like she's auditioning for Broadway.

'you'll see' is pretty good but i mostly remember for its video being the sequel to the video for 'take a bow' right?

if i vote, #1 is borderline. such a great track. not sure where i'd rank the others, but probs 'take a bow', 'erotica', 'secret', 'bedtime stories', 'ray of light', 'beautiful stranger' would be up there. i'm really not much into her like a virgin/prayer run in the '80s, some singles aside. i think she really re-emerged w/erotica.

i really feel like virtually everything she released in the'90s was pretty unassailable (from what i know, i'm breathless isn't one i've heard.

)

I've got I'm Breathless on just now. I quite like it, the staginess of it and all, but it's a strange listen; more like a cast recording than a single artist, which speaks to some decent adaptability (assuming it's her on all tracks, a lot don't really sound like her at all).

Christgau largely otm about her earlier albums being largely shlock and filler btw - the debut is indeed excellent, but you can tell where the hard work's gone on the subsequent records. I guess this is as much about the filler's being overshadowed by some genuinely stunning pieces, as opposed to the filler being rubbish - most of it is perfectly serviceable - but it's hard to give much time to e.g. 'Pretender' when you've just had 'Material Girl' fill your ears.

The thing for me that's hard to get over is, I think, that for a dozen or so singles she's operating on such a high plane that even fantastic songs (e.g. 'Borderline') can lack that touch of genius, and pale in comparison. Whereas for most other artists it'd be a no.1 contender.

"He's a Man" works, I think.

Yup, that's the standout

I think that's pretty standard for a lot of acts with great singles. I mean, I love the first Clash album, but some of its tracks ("White Man," "Complete Control," "I Fought the Law") just jump out at you.

lol wth is Vogue doing on here

Just occurred to me that AC/DC and Rush are two hard rock acts with a similar dismissal to acceptance to praise career arc. And in the case of the former, AC/DC did it without changing a lick.

well...if you don't count replacing their lead singer as 'not changing a lick'

In this case, I'll let it slide. But certainly it wasn't changing singers that earned them cred. If anything, they got belated begrudging respect despite the switch!

lol wth is Vogue doing on here

I don't know why I love "I'm Breathless" so much and have listened to it as much as other favourites "Bedtime Stories" and "Erotica", maybe it was the time? but I love forever the grab-bagginess of that album, it's disarming and consistently inspired, there's never any Madge-On-Autopilot moments or the feeling that she's Building Her Career, just "Madonna @ Work" and it works for me

Well now I feel like an idjit for being 15 years late to Ray of Light. I like this a lot.

Just occurred to me listening to I'm Breathless this morning that its a definite precursor to Xtina's (vastly inferior) Back to Basics.

(then again, Xtina is a vastly inferior Madonna)

i was thinking I'm Breathless is more like Outkast's Idlewild

did Under The Cherry Moon take place in the '30s too? superstar recording acts sure do love doing movies about the '30s with companion soundtrack albums.

breathless is an interesting curio but not much more, comparison for me is batman soundtrack - artist gets to indulge in some quick tossed off digressions, awkward duets, torch ballads, and playing in someone else's backyard (sondheim for madonna, todd terry for prince). both albums more successful than artist could've imagined and spawn #1 hits but by and large are written out of artists' histories.

1986; we were quite a couple.

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/madonna_zpsf3b668b5.jpg

xp i disagree insofar as i think it reveals the cabaret side of madonna that is easy to forget yet seems fully natural on her. and sometimes i just really wanna hear i'm going bananas.

like that was part of her training.

clemenza that is great

you two were meant to be

strange she never actually did broadway outside of speed-the-plow. also a little lol (if understandable - 2, 3 songs vs an entire musical) that she didn't take voice lessons to sing sondheim but she did to sing fucking andrew lloyd webber. thank god she didn't mind you.

Thanks, VG. The photographer went on to better things; he shot Obama last month.

nice!