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

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.