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

D.A.M. I've counted your ballot and sent a reply. Odd if you still haven't received it.

I'm still adding ballots, so if you don't have a reply yet, don't sweat it. If you don't have one by Sunday, definitely let me know.

SPOILER ALERT: this was my #1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv4nCDbdBV8

I really like Express Yourself, its a little baffling that it's only got lukewarm accolades so far itt

express yourself is great! I guess it's overplayed and maybe that's the yawn factor...but idk, it's actually a great song to dance to and even when I think, 'uh maybe I'm kinda over that song' as soon as Madge says C'MON GIRLS and I'm like YES MADONNA? OH HEY THAT'S ME! SURE LET'S GO!

Maybe I'm the only "Express Yourself" contrarian!

Kinda ridic how much better the Shep Pettibone version of "Express Yourself" was, made the album version sound so little and limp by comparison.

How futuristic that percolating synth and the machine gun snares must have sounded. And that piano vamp in the second half!

Yeah Pettibone's version is killer

Word! I don't much care for the album version and was surprised to see some animosity early on in this thread regarding Shep's remix.

I can't stand Express Yourself. She sounds so full of herself.

If I was full of Madonna I'd sure as hell sound it.

Kinda ridic how much better the Shep Pettibone version of "Express Yourself" was, made the album version sound so little and limp by comparison.

Ugh this is so so so so wrong. I fucking hate that remix with the fury of a thousand suns.

Otm

I agree, the album version is joyous and full of life, the remix is really static.

Polling now officially closed. Only 56 ballots in the end, as one of the emails was from someone asking if they could still vote. Never followed up with an actual ballot, though.

I'll probably get this rolling on Tuesday, when the Springsteen poll will (maybe?) be done with its reveal.

Ha! Make that 57. It came while I was writing that post.

My "Express Yourself" vote was implicitly for the Pettibone remix, but I have no objections to it going to either version. My "Like a Prayer" vote was implicitly for the album version, and I'd pitch a fit if I thought it was going toward the Immaculate Collection mix. More or less, I think Celebration went with the definitive versions.

The last 10 songs I cut from my ballot:

Borderline
Everybody
Causing a Commotion
Oh Father
Sooner or Later
Where Life Begins
Love Tried To Welcome Me
Impressive Instant
Hung Up
Gang Bang

58? Just discovered mine was sitting in my drafts folder :(

The clichéd horns are way too prominent in the mix in the LP version of "Express Yourself." I'm fairly surprised that anyone prefers that mix. Yeech.

Great turnout for an 11-12 day polling window. I think these things live or die on the energy and participation of the poll-runner.

You guys realise that the Shep remix is the one used on the video, played on the radio etc. etc.

I can understand people railing against Shep's "Like A Prayer" remix with its unexpected rave-whistle breakdown, but the "Express Yourself" one is a case where I'm constantly surprised that the original is a thing that exists.

Certainly the Shep remix was all I heard in the summer and fall of '89, and it took on enough life on its own to wind up on TIC, but it sounded garish to me.

I'll probably get this rolling on Tuesday, when the Springsteen poll will (maybe?) be done with its reveal.

― Johnny Fever, Saturday, March 2, 2013 11:02 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

aw c'mon no overlaps, let it breathe a day or somethin'

i submitted a ballot, but only 12 cuts. i don't have a particularly strong opinion about madonna but the 12 songs i picked are epic jams (albeit probs predictable picks.)

It's probably not a debate worth pursuing but the idea that the Shep remix sounds more garish than the original is an astonishing proposition to me.

The arrangement of the original sticks fairly close to eighties ideas about R&B/soul.

Possibly my position on this is influenced by the fact that "Express Yourself" was one of the first videos to really have an effect on me (this is due to seven year old me being weirdly obsessed with Metropolis), and so the video plays an outsized part of what I think of when I think of the song. If they'd matched the video to the original version the result would have been comical, the song needed the slightly menacing propulsive undercurrent of house in order to sell its vision.

otm

A large part of what's made this nominations thread among the best I've read is learning how the rest of you experienced Madonna: radio first, video/radio, Erotica, ROL.

The big surprise for me is learning how early Borderline came. It was on the first ever tape I made of the chart countdown, which lasted me for years, and I'd always assumed she was well into her imperial phase by then. Instead it's like her third or fourth single. I guess it's because she never dipped below the radar again, for me she's just always been there.

1. 8th grade, was in Rochester, NY, for my cousin's bar mitzvah and in the motel room watched Madonna co-host an episode of New York Hot Tracks, speaking some Spanish. They showed the "Lucky Star" video.

2. Must've heard her on the radio and saw her on Friday Night Videos, etc.

3. 10th grade, my mom came home having driven by the big arena in town and said she saw all these girls on the street dressed in t-shirts that said The Virgin Tour. She asked if I knew what they meant.

4. Age 18, saw her on Broadway.

5. I realized one day that my college roommate only owned CDs that had gone platinum. Only CD of a woman in his collection was The Immaculate Collection.

6. Age 20, danced a lot in all-ages clubs. Getting to see the "Justify My Love" video in a club felt like getting to see something taboo. Also remember hearing that song on headphones for the first time and it was like Madonna was talking dirty in my ear.

7-15. Almost all of the songs I like most were after these stories, but nothing special about how I heard them.

I remember when new Madonna videos premiered after the nightly news, like MJ videos. It was exciting!

You guys realise that the Shep remix is the one used on the video, played on the radio etc. etc.

They played the original first; it wasn't until Madonna pawing her crotch became a Thing To Be Upset About that I started hearing the remix on the radio, and that was usually in the context of Friday night dance mixes on the local pop station.

Shep Pettibone is a musical scourge, I often think that when his work succeeds it is in spite of his terrible musical ideas rather than because he has any idea of what he's doing

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

Ismael Klata's account more or less describes my experience too. I happened to start paying attention to pop music almost exactly the same time "Borderline" made the charts. "Holiday" was apparently already well known amongst slightly older kids, so she may as well have been a chart fixture forever for all I could tell. Her ubiquity since means I was able to construct a ballot despite having absorbed great chunks of her oeuvre by (almost) passive diffusion. eg. heard all of the albums up to Bedtime Stories at release without needing to possess my own copy!

I was 13 and tuned-in to pop radio when "Holiday" came out, so I was aware of her from the start. Did not like her much, and specifically was irritated that she got more attention than Cyndi Lauper, who I loved.

(But the Lucky Star video was still an object of fascination and desire for me. She's probably the first pop star I consciously thought was sexy.)

I was rooting for Cyndi too at first, but it became clear pretty fast that Madonna had the better songs.

First albums head-to-head I'd take Cyndi, but after that, obviously not a contest.

Someone will correct me, but watching the "Open Your Heart" video for the nth time I asked myself, "Had any woman on MTV ever presented herself as a sexual object without shame -- as if being a sexual object was exactly how she wanted to be viewed? I started eliminated the big MTV stars like Benatar, Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett, Cyndi Lauper. None of them made a video in which the men -- even the gay men -- get their turn watching her pose or stretch provocatively.

Wendy O. Williams, though she probably went about it a bit differently.

Was Grace Jones on MTV?

The early videos maybe. "Slave to the Rhythm" too? Maybe "I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect For You)."

First albums head-to-head I'd take Cyndi, but after that, obviously not a contest.

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), dimanche 3 mars 2013 00:33 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Would make an interesting poll. At the time I would've picked She's So Unusual too, but today I think I would go with Madonna.
Both classics though. Tough choice.

She's So Unusual still slightly better than Madonna, I think, but yes.

I let Lauper have that victory because she never would again.

Cyndi's Sisters of Avalon remains a very underrated record, I think, enough so that were I to measure it against it's closest Madonna contemporary, Ray of Light, I'd have to call it a draw.

True Blue vs True Colours, though is a no-contest.

xxpost Alfred - Gaga's 'Bad Romance' has a touch of that but it's still done with a slight note of reluctance vs the Madonna 'Open Your Heart' vid.

oh wait I misread - at the time. I can't think of anyone?

FIrst exposure to Madonna was hearing "Borderline" on the radio a ton. In retrospect, I aligned it with Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You," both being totally gentle and pleasurable to my 5-year-old ears. Very kindergarten friendly pop.

Throughout elementary school, my gym teacher would have us do warm ups to s/t, so "Lucky Star" became the sound of me being forced to run laps.

I'm sort of surprised that I ended up voting for "Lucky Star" and not "Borderline" given my earliest memories of them were, respectively, of pain vs. pleasure, but I guess that's easily explained away through my current love for the torment of Erotica.

Can't honestly remember which Madonna video was my first. I didn't get cable/MTV until I was in fourth grade, and by then I was sort of off Madonna's wavelength (remember actively disliking "Who's That Girl," which was pretty big on Nick Rocks). I didn't hop aboard again until "Vogue," which hit me basically the same as it did this little bitch-in-training-wheels. My life was so awesome for months thereafter.

I got scared when I intercepted a mash note in sixth grade from someone who quoted, at length, the lyrics to "Justify My Love." Then I realized it was meant for someone else.

But by the time she redux'ed "Justify" a couple years later with "Erotica," I was caught in the deep end of junior high hormones, and the template just made so much more sense to me. I called in to KDWB multiple times to request it, something I rarely ever did, but I figure I probably hadn't quite learned how to touch myself then...? Nah, they probably happened concurrently.

to be con't.

great stuff Eric