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

american life is like her 808s & heartbreak - when it doesn't work it's horrible and it's wildly uneven and the ratio of great to awful is not what it should be, BUT when they pulls off what they're going for it can be pretty amazing AND they get major points for ambition, for trying to do something completely unobvious and genuinely bizarre-sounding

oh yeah – it's an ambitious record

It is definitely an underrated album

Listening to Music again this morning. My god "Nobody's Perfect" is gruesome.

"music" might be the most underrated madonna single. there's so much going on in it. that weird guitar motif, the electrofunk synth line towards the end, the deliberately funkless "uh. uh."s. the main synth riff contains one note. the way her voice is distorted is almost anti-pop in that it works against what few melodic hooks the song has, keeps disrupting the groove. one of those songs where you feel like just the recognition that it would work as a catchy single is a kind of genius in itself

I totally agree and I put it high on my ballot!

Last week I said "Paradise (Not For Me)" was my (re)discovery. I was wrong: I meant "Gone."

"Gone" is a great closer and so is "Easy Ride" from American Life.

OTM

i mean i do kind of go back and forth over "easy ride", the lyrics are definitely tell too much instead of show (though no way near as bad as gets later on with something like "give it 2 me"), but when she has this kind of revelation in the middle when she sings "what I want is to live forever..." it feels so piercingly true for her (for someone that's always fought against mortality) that I'm impressed she's just come out and said it with such honesty that it always takes me back a bit and even at times makes me quite emotional. plus i love the production especially the strings and the way at the end the beat stutters and gets stuck and has this false ending cos look she goes round and round in this endless bind of life

She achieves a comparable effect on "Gone" imo.

it's a superstar sentiment: wanting to fade

Listening to Music again this morning. My god "Nobody's Perfect" is gruesome.

― Tim F, Wednesday, February 27, 2013 4:15 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol note that that was the closing track to my deep cuts mix :)

i'm glad we're talking about the Mirwais era now -- i love that dude's fucked up sound so much. not sure if any of his stuff will be on my ballot besides obviously "Don't Tell Me" and maaaaybe "Die Another Day" but i want to fit American Life on my albums ballot

Listening to HC for the first time since it was new and was abt to argue that there's nothing on it that compares go the badness of American Life, but then Spanish Lessons happened.

American Life really is a wonderful fiasco of an album. funny how the only time she worked with the same producer for the bulk of two back-to-back albums, there was such a night-and-day contrast to how they were received by the public. biggest difference of course being Madge's own nascent guitar playing all over the record. Lauryn Hill did her own learning-guitar-in-public disaster album a year earlier, but it was live without a net, Madonna just picked the strangest possible producer to accompany her acoustic reflections.

have we confirmation it's Madonna's guitar? I like to think it is -- it sounds like it a few times. But then in 2001 I reviewed Mirwais' own record and the guitar lines were fairly similar.

"Music" is like a healthy "Piece of Me."

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2313/2486029046_3728b1e59d.jpg

she did the whole thing of going on Letterman a month after she started taking guitar lessons and playing "Don't Tell Me," and American Life was the product of that, she talked about playing guitar on it in interviews, etc. no idea if she did all/most of the guitars or if she's just peppered in with Mirwais's guitars thoug. xp

I watched the Letterman thing with her greasy-haired guitarist at the time but thought it a publicity stunt in advance of her tour. She got flak for her electric work on "Candy Perfume Girl" that tour but it didn't bother me; the live arrangement was more unbuttoned.

Everyone asleep? Good. I wanted to dissent on "Music" and say that I think it's one of her blandest singles.

yeah i don't hate it like i used to but it's never been of any real value to me. same goes for "Ray Of Light," while we're talking about the big latter day hits, kind of hoping that one gets totally snubbed in the poll results.

http://img.over-blog.com/420x537/1/52/29/59/Photos_25/Madonna-s_1994_Handwritten_Letter_to_David_Letterman_1.jpg

I watched the Letterman thing with her greasy-haired guitarist at the time but thought it a publicity stunt in advance of her tour. She got flak for her electric work on "Candy Perfume Girl" that tour but it didn't bother me; the live arrangement was more unbuttoned.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 27, 2013 10:00 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean everything madonna does or thinks is filtered into her public persona, but is it really a 'publicity stunt' if a musician picks up a new instrument?

It sort of is when someone not perceived to be a musician like Madonna does!

Also: symmetry. She's giving a guitar a WTF look on the cover.

ehhh in a world where Lil Wayne walks around with a guitar in public and occasionally fumbling at it with oven mitts for 6 years straight, i'm not gonna doubt the sincerity of any star who actually bothered to take lessons and write an album on guitar

everyone asleep? good. i suddenly can't get "did you do it?" out of my head and i'm concerned there's something wrong with me.

Madonna just picked the strangest possible producer to accompany her acoustic reflections.

― steeny HOOSer (some dude), Thursday, February 28, 2013 2:03 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm it was a bizarre contribution but it probably served to enhance the acoustic fumblings - mirwais' stop-start glitchiness were an oddly complementary frame for her rudimentary (and, listening back, unusually close-miced) guitar pluckings - the entire thing gives off this air of mechanical brokenness. it's the furthest thing from a "hi i am doing Real Honest Acoustic Music now" move because it sounds like it's refracted through so much smoke & mirrors

also that letterman letter <3

mirwais' stop-start glitchiness were an oddly complementary frame for her rudimentary (and, listening back, unusually close-miced) guitar pluckings

otm

Now that the Springsteen poll is actually (slowly) taking place, I should probably expand the voting by at least a day. Instead of tonight at midnight EST, it now ends exactly 24 hours later. Basically, if you haven't voted by the time Friday becomes Saturday wherever you live, you either need to send it right then or before I wake up on Saturday morning.

I need the weekend to make images!

How many ballots so far?

Just pulled the trigger. No point in pretending I'm going to cut any more Erotica songs from my ballot.

xp 34 when Eric H. submitted his.

wow lots of ballots, v exciting!

will submit before deadline, promise!

Done.

I still need to do albums/remixes/videos

Yeah, I still have quite a few ballots I haven't plugged into the spreadsheets yet, so I don't know how the subpolls are shaping up. At last check, they were getting a reasonable amount of participation.

it's probably far too late to make much difference, but ray of light had some great remixes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI5jcOQxwuA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmieKxlCcCY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G49E-Q3iBYg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tupRZROTGh8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI-WD8C0zLo

the "Ray of Light" remixes >>>> the album version (sounds embalmed)

Can't abide by Club 69

Just whittled my ballot down to the absolute essential, cannot-live-without tracks and was surprised to find that I only had 15. So, 5 more slots to play with and then my ballot will be submitted!

Early spring '01 soundtracked to Tracy Young remixes of "Don't Tell Me."

also more handwritten madonna stuff - draft erotica lyrics

http://i47.tinypic.com/34focwi.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pzFi71gD8Wg/UIWoAorv6HI/AAAAAAAAGhU/63TCXWsQ2dk/s1600/youthrillme4.jpg
http://p2.la-img.com/207/953/428754_1_l.jpg
http://cbswdok2.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/img_1187.jpg?w=620

i'd love for all her notes to be released one day

aagh amazing

i gotta be real, i don't know how to fill out a ballot

but i will find out

surm you are not getting away with not voting

i abstained from voting for videos because i actually don't think of madonna as a videos artist - i didn't really grow up in a house where music videos were played so i think the first madonna video i saw was, like, "beautiful stranger" or something

<3 her handwriting, esp her g's

^^^^ this a hundred times. She was always to me a radio presence.