Madonna deserves her own thread(s), and here's mine...

Quite frankly, I also think anyone who doesn't see how great Erotica is is a moron, but that's just my personal controversial opinion, don't take it too seriously.

Forgoing any more pretensions to familiarity, let me just strive for the direct and not pay any attention to netiquette that might demand a sensitivity towards identity-recreations:****** Lulu, is that you? ******

'Cause this is the ol' Xeva438 from the Madonna newsgroup of old. If it is you, you may or may not remember talking occasionally eons ago (like, 1998). Jesus Christ, I can't believe it if it really is the same you and Fred, even though I do think that I recognize that email address (garance something). Weren't you supposed to get married to Fred or something? Aaron really wondered what happened to you, and oh, guess what? I met "A" in person (goes to my college) and (yeah, it's a he, duh) - he is actually going to the September 13th performance of Drowned World. If I had talked to him recently (like, in the past 24 minutes?) and told him I saw YOU (youwere always his favorite), I am sure he would beseech me to tell you he says "hi" right now. So, if you really are Lulu: "hi" in advance from "A." (It's Andrew, in case you ever wondered).

Hey, you were a Virgo, right? Ok, I should stop here andnot crossthe line anymore with my freakishly random memory. I mean, look at this: I can remember British spice-girl fans' sun signs from three years ago, but I can't remember where I put my keys/books/things two seconds ago. Amazing.

I'm notkidding. Minus the jaw-droppingly compelling "Bad Girl" (still her best written ballad, greatest Fincher-helmed video) and of course, the entire record could be seen as a homosexual/transgendered narrative. I mean, with lines like "Never gonna hide it again/never gonna have to pretend!" Deeper & Deeper could be the most discofied coming-out anthem side of Diana Ross. Even the title suggests anal sex; Just a few more examples: Waiting's "what do I remind you of... a part of yourself you just can't love?" in response to a closeted lover. All the girlie songs = drag queens. All of Why's It So Hard...I mean, hello! Just look at that title. Secret Garden. And on it goes..

The genius thing is that the text forever remains as interesting as the various subtexts; oh, and if you think I'm just pulling all of this out of my ass, I may be (I have a vey interesting ass), but I am just happening to take a class that expounds on Madonna and includes an entire article on Erotica by Simon Frith which no, I haven't even gotten to reading yet. It's just that I'm not totally alone in seeing it as a remarkable album, a bit removed fromthe rest of her straightforward catalog, and well, it's undergoing a serious re- evaluation now (as the tour is sparking a slight academic revival of Madonnica). What I meant to say in this paragraph is that: you could take these songs in a surface, pop-only matter, or for their deeper subversive edge which mocks Madonna's own pop-history. Its paradoxically a very emotional album and a vey unemotional one (criticizing as it does the anonymous, frequently mechanical nature of homosexual cruising and pairing through her infamously cold delivery and its production)...one that is all about Madonna and her history, yet remains faceless, opaque: revealing absolutely everything about her and the {gay/house} culture she came from, while simultaneously revealing ***nothing at all. ***

She has never been able to do that again, prviding such an opaque one- way mirror, even though she tried on Music and failed miserably, succumbing to banal sentimentality. I am far from the type of fan who loves everything she does or puts her on a pedestal - hell no. I hated this last album, down to the generic title, andthought it was utter, witless shite; Bedtime Stories, for all of its trendy soothing charm, was objectively speaking pretty fucking boring too. Not Madonna at all, really; a reactionary, ingratiating stance, designed to win her way back into the mainstream after Erotica's individualistic ideology. Hell, I don't even really play Ray of Light or the Immaculaste Collection (and never her oldies) regularly ....Eroticais the only album if hers I really listen to, as I consider it her most complex, interesting and addictive, both musically and lyrically.

As for me saying above that this work is undergoing a serious re- evaluation right now, I wasn't kidding. Manhattan's Jim Farber (famous rock crit) just went through re-grading/rating all of Madonna's old albums in Entertainment Weekly (yeah I know, the epitome of celebrity-schmaltzing-shit)due to the frenzy over her tour and heck, he gave Erotica a B+ and gave Like a Prayer a B ! (For the record though, he gave Music an A, which makes his views circumspect). CDnow did a whole feature on Erotica and reviewed it brilliantly - and they toreup Music pretty good (thankfully) - and U.K.'s (are most of you Brits in here anyway? I'm so lost as to the backgrounds of this community) Q music mag listed Erotica pretty high (well relatively to Bedtime Stories, at least!) in their Madonna - buying guide. They hated Bedtime Stories, but NME loved it, but who actually relies on NME to purchase records anyway? They are for entertainment. Also, Erotica got a pretty nice rating in the latest edition of the Rockhound Guide, with them saying itst henext Madonna album to buy after Immaculate and Prayer...it also jumped a few hundred spots in that annual Virgin poll of greatest albums ever (not that that poll means *anything*, since if I recall, TWO Radiohead albums made the top 10!! of all time!). Of course, a total re- evaluation isn't necessary in all quarters: besides RS, Spin gave it a recommended review when it first came out (even though Guccione Jr. bashed her for Sex, vociferously), the N.Y. Times' Jon Pareles liked it from the beginning and the Village Voice's dean-critic Rob Christgau bravely championed it, giving it a glowing review (it finished tied at #21 on the Pazz & Jop poll of that year too, so any of these persistent views of it being a "critcally failed" album are just media-creations.....and NO, none of her 80s albums save for Prayer even cracked the Pazz & Jop top 40, and since the poll is regarded as the final say in annual music criticism, you can see how this is significant. Janet's Control was a crit-darling though!)He still defends it, and again gae it an A- in his latest Album Guide of the 90s. But the big one:

..this really sort of surprised me, but the biggest evidence I can cite for the Erotica-re-evaluation is none other than Jim DeRogatis. Yeah. Mr. Chicago Sun Times was also regrading her catalog a la Farber dueto her Drowned stop in that city, and while he still bashed her early material (blasphemously giving True Blue the lowest rating: 1 star out of 4!!), he gave Erotica, the HIGHEST rating of 3.5 stars, while beating out Like a Prayer's 3, remniscient of Farber. He said "I confess to seriously underrating it when it came out with a 2.5". Goddamnit, this is Jim DeRogatis, probably America's most incendiary, notorious working crit who has the "only-love-it-if-it- RAWKS" rep, who idolizes Lester Bangs...he, of all people, is going back out of his way to give Erotica high marks?

When fucking DeRogatis re-rates an album almost a decade after it's release, you can be confident that the revisionism towards Erotica has begun (surely helped in no small part by the crit-success of her last two). I would have liked to see the famous Chicago Tribune's [Greg] Kot's re-ratings as well, but he only wrote a lengthy article on her/hercontinued relevance. Oh well.. (maybe they talked about it on the rock radio show they have)

I'm really sorry to go on and on about it. =) It's just that Erotica is probably one of my favorite albums of the decade and I felt I had todefend it a bit after reading all these messages; it's sandwiched in there between To Bring You My Love and Maxinquaye in my top three. =) I had no choice butto come to its rescue. I'll leave now with these words from a friend of mine from another message board who can articulate much better than I can (I saved it), on Erotica. And he's a heavy metal fan too! - just that he loved Madonna/this album.

" On its terms, on its difficult, flawed, self-negations, Erotica is an authentic American masterwork. . In fact, beneath this cold satire belies a tortured sexuality which mirrors the Stones's celebration/condemnation of rock-n-roll hedonism.

It's conclusion? There are no answers; only pleasure that which leads to another downward spiral. Madonna dared rock to go down with her.Instead, we wore more flannel, grew stubble, and screamed some more. Like the macho, self-righteous heroic MEN we are. :) "

In other words (his Stones metaphor means, in my opinion):...Erotica is Madonna's Exile on Main Street. =)

signing off,

V

Anyway, I believe we've gone over and over the Erotica thing in the past (a big decisive split amongst the Madonna faithful - those who like Erotica and those who don't just plain don't get along at all), and you might or might not recall that I agreed with your views 100%. The subtext of the album is fascinating, but just besides that, almost all of it sounds great. Bad Girl is sumptuous, Waiting is fierce, Erotica is a classic, Deeper and Deeper is fantastic (and the self-referentialness of the ending cracks me up), Rain is one of Madonna's most gorgeous songs. I could go on and on and on. It trails off a bit towards the end but it's still a good solid chunk of music, and I find it to be her most consistent work. Like a Prayer is a good album butI still think it's terribly overrated - undoubtably Express Yourself and Like a Prayer are two of the best things Madonna's ever done, but stuff like the Prince duet and Dear Jesse make me cringe.

I've noticed a huge "reevaluation" of Erotica myself, but then again I didn't notice a huge dissing of it when it first came out. It's curious - or maybe the right word is "expected" - but it wasn't until after SEX was released that the album started getting trashed (and even worse when Body of Evidence came out). The problem with SEX was that the public wasn't ready for it combined with the fact that unfortunately Madonna didn't get her point across very eloquently. If she'd never done SEX, I don't think this would even be a discussion.

Blasphemy, alright. That album deserves 3.5/4 just for "White Heat" alone. Madonna is probably REALLY embarassed about that song, which is why it's so good. Plus it has some of her most underrated singles on it as well. Not as good as Erotica, obviously.

Yeah, believe me, I think it's really bizarre. ;) Ally, "A" always appreciated your wit. (Of course, I got to see your picture so I appreciated other things, too). I know you didn't care for Ray of Light but never minded' it was only the ("real") fan-atics and sick- sychophants who objected. And when did we ever pay attetion to them? :P As for giving Aaron a message, I'm afraid I can't do that since I haven't posted there in years myself. It sort of imploded when a schizo started spamming the place.

I don't really know if viewing the videos would have made such a great difference in your appreciation of the music, but if it's helped you on earlier albums (I myself can't stand to listen to the first one without visuals - just can't stomach the voice on half the cuts) you might want to give her '93-'99 video collection a try. The best videos, Bad Girl and Rain, are on there; Bad Girl was basically everything Body of Evidence SHOULD have been - an arresting, tragic narrative on the promiscuous life of a self-loathing "liberated" woman - propelled by David Fincher's razor sharp direction and. Another Christopher Walken contribution to the art of video (he plays an angel? demon? cigarette dispatcher? aerobics master - WHAT?), gotta love that. =) Cinematography, still the most accomplished. Rain was cultural appropriation of the highest order, with the Japanese studio-characters providing a nice contrast to the endless depth of Madonna's aquamarine contact lenses. (For cultural appropriation of the lowest order, check out "Nothing Really Matters.") I think Erotica and Deeper & Deeper are effective too; still don't understand why they got left off. Fever was the only one that was lame in spots (the flower covering the vagina spots, in particular). Deeper & Deeper was the video, after all, that spear-headed the entire 70s' retro-fashion chic with her "video shoot" in the middle of it. Well that and Eddie Vedder's neo-classical locks, : ) made the 90s into the 70s again starting in '92! Thank god we didn'tcontinue on with wherever the 80s were going, fashion-wise...

I wrote Fred Solinger an email, he never replied. Ah well...

And yeah, Sophia sucks. Virgin Suicides sucked *big* time, but I love the Air score...

:P Vic

Hey Ally, if you don't mind me asking: what *is* your sign anyway ? Still have a Spice Girl appreciation-thing going on, or has that branched out into A-teens/All-Saints fandom? Just curious. ;P

V

Anyhow, I do think Dave is right and it's been something I've thought for a while: the complete disregard for Erotica does come down to, on some level, sexism. There have been loads of male rock stars who've gone as far as Madonna, but I don't see anyone raising much of an eyebrow, besides the extreme right. Madonna does it and it becomes an "issue".

As for Like a Prayer, I think that's a good point, that it's a very girly, feminine, pink-elephants-and-lemonaide type of album. It's like a musical version of a stereotypical slumber party. Erotica, on the other hand, is a very hard edge album (by Madonna standards), and as such comes off as "inappropriately" masculine. *shrugs* But I always thought that sort of traipsing back and forth between stereotypes in art was supposed to be applauded, not vilified. At least when the aforementioned David Bowie does it ;)

revive!!!!!

great first paragraph there

best opening post to an ilx thread ever?

it just brings you back to the basic fact that, yknow, cut through everything - god i love madonna

i just found some demos dave q sent me eight years ago, for an ambitious concept album he was working on based on donna summer's 'bad girls'. i wonder if he ever did any madonna covers.