Don't go for second best, baby. Put your ILM ARTIST POLL #31: MADONNA to the test.

she really needs to do a proper box set like Depeche Mode did; remixes, B sides, all the non-album stuff. although it would be huge.

yeah listening to the LAV version of "Over and Over" and there isn't even a redeeming portion to it like the "why oh why" bit in "Jimmy Jimmy" that makes that song tolerable

otoh "Angel" is severely, severely underrated

best Madonna cover ever; the Drop Nineteens doing Angel.

jesus, dan, the ah-ah-ahs and SHOUT IT AGAIN FROM THE HIGHEST MOUNTAINNNN

"Angel" is in my top five iirc

"jimmy jimmy" is just so in love with itself and with pop and with being alive in nineteen-eighty-whatever that i will happily continue to overlook any flaws in its writing.

for pretty much the same reason, happy to see "who's that girl" on here even though i didn't vote for it.

DJP yr ears are broken imo, 'Over and Over' is fantastic

I was wondering earlier, piscesx, if you saw her at the Haçienda

http://i.imgur.com/A9jBo6d.jpg

40. "CAUSING A COMMOTION" from the motion picture soundtrack Who's That Girl (1987) [11 votes, 201 points]

^^^^ usually what I have in mind when thinking bout "deep singles"

voted for Causing A Commotion, fabulous pop moment

heh no i'm not.. quite that old. she doesn't remember it supposedly.

I'm sure I read once about her sleeping on someone's floor during her stay

the (awesome and gorgeously unified) pictures are making me realize that it may now be unconscious and thus a lot subtler and source-decayed but half the girls i know are still ripping her off, and thank goodness

This is absolutely my favorite of her "deep singles". I was positively livid when it was left off Celebration in favor of shit from Hard Candy and American Life.

otm xp

broke for lunch and missed a buncha stuff, so...

Have never seen Who's That Girl. Worth watching?

― Johnny Fever, Thursday, March 7, 2013 2:00 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No. Make that HELL no.

listening to "Secret Garden" right now, which is striking me as a poppier version of "I Am Stretched On Your Grave"

― "Bellini." (DJP), Thursday, March 7, 2013 2:10 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM!!!

"jimmy jimmy" is just so in love with itself and with pop and with being alive in nineteen-eighty-whatever that i will happily continue to overlook any flaws in its writing.

― fact checking cuz, Thursday, March 7, 2013 2:41 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It made my ballot for this very reason (though you articulated it much better than I could have)

^^ that's why I love "Open Your Heart."

cept "Open Your Heart" is flawless.

I was like 11 & suddenly girls in my classes were wearing underwear outside their clothes & it was very lacy & oh my & that was basically the best thing ever & still is

I once thought that I could give it a go during karaoke but I realized 40 seconds in that the song was going to defeat me and I still had more than three minutes left. It made me realize what an underrated vocalist she is and how much I suck.

Causing A Commotion is fab, I love it

xpost Yeah that would be hard to karaoke - you forget how much 'oomph' she has in her voice, it's hard enough to GET up there let alone stay up there for the chorus, it's exhausting. I give up just singing it out loud in the car, lol

Oh fuck yes for "Waiting" placing

Proof of how, just, overflowing with hits Madonna was in the 80s: when "Causing a Commotion" hit the charts, the TV version of Casey Kasem's Top 40 that aired on Saturday mornings after cartoons, they didn't even have a video to show, so the clip was just the song playing over a spinning image of the Who's That Girl album cover. Like the song hit so fast its like they didn't even have time to prepare for it.

"Causing a Commotion" was at #2 for three weeks in the U.S. I should poll her #2 hits.

http://i.imgur.com/rMv8Onl.jpg

39. "RAIN" from Erotica (1992) [11 votes, 217 points]

Cut Rain from my ballot in favour of Waiting at the last second. Glad to see it place anyway.

"Rain" and "I'll Remember" were record company exhalations of relief after sexxytime Madonna.

cept "Open Your Heart" is flawless.

i could write a book about "open your heart." and i probably still wouldn't discover any flaws.

late late single from erotica, after the album had (relatively) flopped, the only erotica song i ever hear on the radio anymore

I never heard this song on the radio but saw the video a bazillion times

the bridge is beautiful

I remember thinking the double tracked vocals on Rain were the coolest thing I'd ever heard at the time.

Erotica album tracks > Erotica singles IMO.

the bridge is incredible yeah

i read somewhere that the song is actually about a dead lover (or maybe her mother cf. "kisses from heaven above" in "deeper and deeper"), which actually makes a lot of sense. even the straight up radio friendly love ballad on the album is dark stuff

Let's say that the album tracks are as fab as "Deeper and Deeper" and "Bad Girl."

My first vote to place so far!

only two of mine have placed so far ('i'll remember' and 'white heat') but my ballot beyond the top five or so was just throwing stuff at the wall, there's only a couple of tracks so far i really doubt could pop up in my top twenty at any random moment ('dad' and 'who's that girl').

http://i.imgur.com/QauiGvo.jpg

38. "BEDTIME STORY" from Bedtime Stories (1994) [13 votes, 238 points]

Lots of people dislike "Bedtime Stories" but I get off on its garishness: she Madonna-izes trip-hop like she'd do with "electronica" four years later.

I still dig the shit out of this song

didn't make my ballot though

I didn't think I liked this, but when I heard it again I was really impressed. It missed my 20 but not by much.

an impressive instant?

trying to remember how much pop house was still getting on the radio when erotica hit, it was definitely all over the radio circa 90 when 'vogue' blew up (and credit madonna for being a factor in that moment happening), wondering if maybe the moment passing (on radio, the moment never passed in my heart) was a secret factor in erotica underperforming. when did cece peniston hit? totally want to dj a night of house of style bumper music.

I remember seeing her do a rubbish performance of it at The Brits I think, it soured me unfairly.

CeCe Peniston was '93 IIRC

and after two consecutive top fives, one of which became her longest-running #1 ever, she thought she could release an "experimental" single and get it into the top forty.

Peniston's "Finally" was very late '91 and early '92