Madonna: Classic Or Dud

I know most people disagree with me but I've hated "Cherish" since it first appeared on radio.

it's part of your charm

DAN CAN'T MAKE ME CRY

Oh Father is terribly GOOD

'Cherish' and 'Oh Father' two of my favourite things she's ever done! I disagree about Like a Prayer being uneven... at a push, there's maybe two songs that aren't as good as the rest, but neither are horrible (I'm not saying which ones!)

'Dear Jessie' is a firm favourite of mine too... a song that would work equally well being covered by either Erasure or The Cure.

"Dear Jesse" works in context but is kind of irritating as a standalone song, if that makes any sense.

It's one of only two songs that's managed to move me to tears, so I disagree.

Her duds: https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2017/07/06/worst-madonna-songs/

alfred u abandoned me

'American Life' is garbage.

Glad you included the unbearably turgid "Love Don't Live Here Anymore," which I suspect normally gets a pass by part of her (first) classic era.

yr unbearably turgid

A day late, but the four classic album reviews (s/t, Like a Prayer, Bedtime Stories, Ray of Light) that Pitchfork did for Madonna's birthday are worth a read. Alex Frank's analysis of her potentially problematic "earth mother" RoL phase is spot-on and provocative, and Owen Pallett OTM on BS being mostly a pleasant bore.

Thanks! I know lots of stans for that record but it's really a misfire to my ears. Somebody called the genre experiment as being one in "neo-soul", not "R&B slow jam", but whatever it was, Madge didn't make it work, especially compared to other chart music that year imo

I don't understand why you (or they?) chose to review Bedtime Stories while Erotica is called a 'masterpiece' and the idea was to review four of her 'key records'.

Would love to read fgti on Erotica.

or you or Eric.

I wrote this about "Papa Don't Preach" last month: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/songs-of-the-summer-1986/

I'm daunted by Erotica. I think I'd have to lay down my arms.

You screw it, you fake it.

I would have chosen True Blue but that's an argument I've failed at making many a time

Erotica is the only album I think is a masterpiece, but I'll stunt for True Blue, s/t and, yes, Bedtime Stories (probably because it's in the context of the walk back from Erotica).

True Blue to my ears is Madonna at her most effortlessly brilliant and fun, that and the s/t.

i love True Blue

I once wrote half a manifesto about Erotica and taste and criticism and communities of meaning and appropriation and what we talk about when we talk about transcendence, and then I lost it and I wasn't upset because I couldn't do any of those topics justice.

Always a highlight of Madonna's brief seaquarium residency

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz2GvkiTWYo

its a strange track, its all in that last sixty seconds! but there it is!

Erotica is excellent, Like a Prayer is better.

Confessions is my go-to Madonna album these days

I thought they were going to be getting every Madonna album reviewed! They offered me that one or Like A Prayer but I picked Bedtime Stories because I kind of have a weird relationship to Like A Prayer. I haven't until yesterday been able to figure out what it is about that album's 'sound' that weirds me out but yesterday it hit me that it's her "Swedish album"

explain!

Dunno if I can! But s/t and Like A Virgin always sounded thin in this kind of tensile, New Wave, exciting way, and then certain parts of True Blue ("Live To Tell") started doing this kind of lush widescreen sort of production/songwriting thing that hit its peak on Like A Prayer, which sounds as much like Abba or a Broadway musical as it might sound like club music.

I can't really break down the genes of those first four albums, some people say R&B and others disco and others new wave but it definitely had a vector toward "whatever-it-is-that-Like-A-Prayer-is-doing" which is closer to my ears to Celine Dion-schmaltz than actual club music

And then she did "Vogue" which was the first Madonna song that sounded like it belonged in a club instead of a high school gymnasium

I'm on board with every bit of that.

I genuinely don't much like Like a Prayer as an album.

And then she did "Vogue" which was the first Madonna song that sounded like it belonged in a club instead of a high school gymnasium

great line.

and absolutely spot on.

"Burning Up" and "Into the Groove" belong in a club.

Many Madonna songs belong in a museum.

I was gonna say, "Burning Up" and "Everybody" are 100% club fodder and those are on the first album.

Til death do us part is the song on LaP that gives me first album feelings (it's also my favorite LaP track)

First album is anything but timbrally thin to me! It's full of juice!

Clubbing in NYC in the mid to late 80s you heard "Burnin' Up", "Lucky Star". Maybe "Sidewalk Stories". I don't recall anything else from her getting played to a full club.

Oh yeah and of course "Into The Groove".

Man, that "Songs of the Summer 1986" chart from Alfred's "Papa Don't Preach" review... holy white people!

First album is extremely thin! I'm not using "thin" as a negative adjective, just an actual description of where the content lies in the frequency spectrum. Her later records fill up with mid-range information that doesn't exist on that first album.

s/t def was clubby through and through, certain 2nd album stuff too, but I mean like "Like A Virgin" and "Material Girl" and "Live To Tell" and "Like A Prayer" and "Cherish"-- gymnasium music

I have this weird idiot idea about "Like A Prayer", which is that it's a great Madonna lyric tied to a "end credits of The Neverending Story" style song/production. I can imagine the lyric to "Like A Prayer" being repurposed toward a song/production more like "Into The Groove" and hear a much more effective track.

I dunno, I guess I just like Madonna when she's at her least-sounding-like-Cyndi-Lauper or something

"Like a Prayer" doesn't sound much like Lauper, or, indeed anyone else to my ears

No, not that one, but it sounds like Abba to me, or at least, it's built like an Abba song. idk! Swedish. Or something

the neverending story tie-in idea is making me very happy

life is a mysteryyyyyyyyy-eeeeeeee- eeeeeee

I get what fgti is saying and I agree. The distinction between the club and the Broadway stuff became only more pronounced as she started to grow into the "diva" role. It says something that even though I don't like about half of her output she's still comfortably among my favorite artists.

'Like a Prayer' is brilliant enough as it is and doesn't require fucking with or re-imagining in any way. Talking strictly about the LP version here, of course.

I listened to Erotica earlier today and still think it's a superb record, even though it's a little overlong.

The single mixes of "Like a Prayer" and "Express Yourself" are the only things keeping The Immaculate Collection from being a perfect greatest hits comp.

And then she did "Vogue" which was the first Madonna song that sounded like it belonged in a club instead of a high school gymnasium

as an old dude who spent time in clubs in the mid-eighties I can tell you that "Burning Up" was completely incredible in a club tho

If you're going to deliver an ace in the hole for an event inspired by Catholic themes, and given your own dress didn't really measure up compared to a lot of other guests, this is how to do it. Also I want the full version of this ASAP.

Madonna performing “Like A Prayer” inside the @metmuseum!!! 😍 #MetGala #MetaGala2018 pic.twitter.com/bUdC1dCalh

— Madonna Nation (@MadonnaNation) May 8, 2018