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

I'M READY NOW

i'll be right over

is it OK if I play "Rescue Me"

b/c I'M SAYIN I BELIIIIEVE

it would be a travesty if you didnt

whoever shows up last wears the lion head

Brad's on the carpet, he'll wear the lion head

lol

I know this is rockist shit but I wonder why Madonna stopped writing (or claiming to write) songs by herself. I loved her excuse ("I got lazy!") except that if there's one artist who works her ass off it's Madonna. When she started playing ehh to OK electric rhythm guitar on tour in 2001 I had fantasies of her releasing a Neil Young album. It would've been the real surprise at that point in her career.

btw we haven't given enough props to Patrick Leonard, who showed her how she can adapt her songwriting and singing voice to versees, bridges, and choruses.

She said some interesting things in her last Rolling Stone interview

I mean, some of it comes off as a bit old fogey, but knowing how she worked on her most successful albums why NOT go back to one producer? I wonder if she's questioning her own writing now?

She should team up with Nile, or someone she knows. Imo

And you had a lot of new people around you this time.
With this particular record, I put myself in a funny position. Because usually I choose a producer to work with, or two, and then I write and produce everything with those people. The whole thing is just done within this little bubble. Whereas this situation was me working with a lot of writers that I'd never met before in my life — literally walking into rooms and sitting down and saying, "OK, let's write a song." Total strangers.

And some people I connected to immediately like ("Wrecking Ball" co-writer) Mozella, for instance, or ("If I Were a Boy" co-writer) Toby Gad. They're very open-hearted people, extremely musical, not inhibited in any way, shape, or form. So they were fun. And then there were other people that were really shy, and I think maybe slightly intimidated by me. I was constantly putting myself in these, like, very awkward situations, to me it was an exercise in letting go, to sit with people I'd never met with before.

How did that affect the songs?
With songwriting, you have to make yourself open to people and vulnerable to people, especially if you're writing about something personal or a sensitive subject, something close to your heart. And you're doing it with someone you've never met before. It's kind it's like that exercise where you stand with your eyes closed and you let yourself fall back, and you just, like, trust that someone is going to catch you. So I would say that a lot of working on this record was like that.

How did you grapple with the chaos of it all?
I prefer order, and I prefer to know what I'm getting every day and what I'm showing up to. I like it when the people I'm working with come to work — just them, and not their entire families or 20 of their closest friends. You know what I mean? But there's a lot of that going on, and I find it a little bit distracting. That's hard for me. I'm old school. Kanye wasn't really one of those people that had lots of people come in the room, but he himself is chaotic. So I've been lucky to work with a lot of madmen, and charming (people). Thank God they're charming, because otherwise they wouldn't get away with the things they do. (Laughs) So yeah. I mean, honestly, I don't know how people finish anything after what I've witnessed. (Laughs) Seriously!

Do you think work habits have devolved?
I think there's a lot of distractions now. I think people are really, supremely distracted, and everyone feels the obligation to be very involved with social networking. So a lot of the time of the day is spent doing that. There's a lot of people leaving to go to red carpet events or to tweet. Like, having to go out and do fast interviews or, like, go on Twitter and do this or that. I was just like, "Wow," you know? My head was spinning. But that's the world we live in, now. The age of distraction

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/madonna-on-making-rebel-heart-the-age-of-distraction-and-joan-of-arc-20150305

I read it at the time and was disappointed she'd yielded to the "top line" composing strategy of contemporary pop songwriting. That said, the current album has stronger melodies than the last two, so if she sat around with guitars and collaborators I'll give her the credit for sturdiness.

Yeah, I do like this album quite a bit so it may be somewhat of a moot point

But I would like the experienced Madge to appear at some point. I truly believe she has it in her to school everyone, I just don't know when or if she'll really *go* there, because she's almost manic about moving forward.

idk.

in unrelated news I found this weird/funny vid of her & Ellen singing Dress You Up together

http://youtu.be/hnI8GZIYBcs

OMG, the people asking for "real strings" on D&D itt.

Never in this life has a negative reaction so completely steeled my resolve to represent the opposition.

I'm still probably never voluntarily reach for Erotica when I want to listen to Madonna, but at least it's not embarrassing at the level which the most recent three albums reside.

I'm=I'll

Embarrassment is a crucial ingredient of Erotica.

Perhaps so. I'm unlikely ever to delve far enough into it to find out.

Everybody has styles of music they dislike no matter what. One of my own is early 90s pop-house, and I'm even softening my stance on some of that in my advanced age. I still can't get with much of anything on Erotica, though. *shrug*

Everybody has styles of music they dislike no matter what. One of my own is early 90s pop-house

I wanna offer sympathies, but I know there are people who no doubt feel misguidedly sorry for those who will never ever get into Neutral Milk Hotel.

I know several of those people. Lost souls, one and all.

the name puts me off

LOL, have you had that screenname for the last 2.5 years?

she sounds terrific, and the repetition of the twirl so awkward in an endearing way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffjlH4xHfWw

boy do I miss her lower range drag queen voice

I think she took it out for a spin during "Like a Virgin" on the MDNA tour.

xxpost I changed it a few weeks back when Johnny Fever revived the thread :)

It looks like she kicked ass at Madison Square Garden:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bitch-shes-madonna-nyc-stop-showcases-genius-of-rebel-heart-tour-20150917?page=2

!!

"I'm feeling very nostalgic tonight," she told the crowd. "Do you people understand I played Madison Square Garden 30 years ago?" She kissed a fan in a 1985 Virgin Tour shirt who claimed he was there — for all we know, he might have been the goth club kid doing the cobweb dance in the "Into The Groove" video. It led to the emotional highlight of the night, when she picked up her acoustic guitar for one of her saltiest and best Number One hits, a song she hasn't performed since the Eighties: "Who's that Girl," leading the audience in the question "¿Quien es esa niña?" The question hung in the air. "I still don't know," Madonna said after the song. "I still don't know. I think I'm not supposed to know — maybe that's what life's about, figuring out who the fuck you are."

:D

omg

http://fasterlouder.junkee.com/inside-madonnas-intimate-tears-of-a-clown-show-in-melbourne/858982

this sounds like a fascinating show, i hope someone filmed it

My favorite album tracks.

Vogue her greatest or close - greatest video, certainly - with Open Your Heart its closest/only rival. So great it subsumed the album that even if (or because) not entirely hers rivals its successor as her second-best after the not-quite-immaculate one that has so many hits on it who cares. So great it spun off a sequel in the very good but at least a little overrated Deeper and Deeper, which is probably not the best on that deep-benched album, which should have stolen Justify My Love from the collection as its capstone, and well behind Lucky Star and Express Yourself, to name some of the better ones that in turn probably place behind Holiday and Material Girl highest among the runner-ups that I insist also include Mandy's More, Sooner or Later, and Where's the Party, all of which I'll take most days over the well-named Borderline (Bipolar might be more like it), too-faux Like a Virgin (which shares a very particular room with other pre-adolescent sonic annoyances like Beat It), or even the somewhat-rut-bound Into the Groove, to say nothing of the Christian (Catholic, whatever) one I have no use for (not the anti-abortion one; I kinda like that one) or nearly all of the power "ballad" dreck early and late. I like a lot of the second-career EDM stuff well enough or better, but, except for the more interpretive and therefore auteurist stuff like Don't Tell Me, much of it doesn't register in the same fashion (maybe because less New York?). I'm fairly immune, for instance, to the purported glories of Beautiful Stranger, which feels a lot more disposable than, say, Independent Women, Pt. 2.

Many if not most of the above preferences vary at least marginally by mixing I couldn't identify offhand.

oh wow "Jimmy Jimmy" is actually p great? and so is "True Blue"??

fuck "La Isla Bonita" and "Live to Tell" forever tho

[oh wow "Jimmy Jimmy" is actually p great? and so is "True Blue"??

um, yes. and yes.

I TOLD U

fuck..."Live to Tell" forever tho

you mad

Get the fuck out, Stevie.

I'm ecstatic enough about Stevie (or anyone) acknowledging the greatness of "Jimmy Jimmy" to overlook the "Live To Tell" diss.

yeah stevie u still need srs help tho

"Live To Tell" is the greatest

My favorite ILM poll: the level of commitment, the writing.

it was the best of times

I like to think Patrick Leonard said "OK, we're done" and Madonna saying, "No, wait -- I have an idea. 'If I ran away...'" and Leonard losing his shit.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 11, 2013 3:43 PM (three years ago

can we do this again

YES

Fuck me, my favorite thing she's ever done, her cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" (off the Something to Remember comp) wasn't even nominated?!?!?!

There are no nominations in artist polls.