Madonna: Classic Or Dud

Her lower register = classic. Responsible for: "Angel," "Live To Tell," "Who's That Girl," "Oh Father," etc.

she should have gone away after ray of light, though even there, i think dance music brings bad qualities (and lyrics) out in her. but then her decision to write so much of her own material since then in association with a producer seems to bring out worse qualities. the only two ROL songs i really like are candy perfume girl and the title track.

I love "Skin", probably my favorite track on the album.

Actually a decent amount of that album has her in her lower register, which I agree is better than her middle/upper register.

titchy with the most boring received wisdom on her eras there

Almost twenty years later, I'll admit: Bedtime Stories >>>>>>>> Ray of Light

lex with the most contrarian, but still wrong wisdom. let me guess, you think the 99-present era is her best?

the lower register thing doesnt really hold perfectly true ill admit - eg - material girl and like a virgin arent in her lower register but are still totally classic.

take a bow is better than most of ray of light.

take a bow is better than most of ray of light.

I'd agree with that, but that doesn't mean Ray of Light is bad.

The singles off of Bedtime Stories are uniformly excellent, some of her best material ever.

Lots of solid album tracks too: the glacially melancholy "Love Tried to Welcome Me," the first "Forbidden Love," "Sanctuary."

fwiw, i think beautiful stranger is pretty good in terms of the ROL era

i think just looking at madonna post-ROL has also ruined her music for me, perhaps i need to warm to the skinny leotarded madonna more

I don't know that I've ever heard the entire Bedtime Stories album, actually! If I have, it didn't make an impression.

I think Madonna has firmly slipped into radio single territory for me after the all-out ball of weird that is American Life. Nothing she's done since has been as strong an artistic statement to me, so I haven't felt the need to own or listen to it with any regularity; AL has a confluence of ideas that should read to me on paper as a total trainwreck but instead comes across to me as a really compelling listen.

lex with the most contrarian, but still wrong wisdom. let me guess, you think the 99-present era is her best?

Anyone who doesn't rate Erotica among her 2 or 3 best albums is now actually in the vanguard, I'd guess.

ill have to relisten to AL. yeah its cohesive but i found that even that sort of unity didnt add up to enough.

I don't expect my appreciation of that album to translate to too many others; it's pretty clearly an experiment with some massive missteps but that just makes it more fun to me.

I think dance music brings bad qualities (and lyrics) out in her.

Not sure what this means, I thought Madonna always did dance music?

Also are you all ignoring Confessions On A Dancefloor on purpose or did you forget about how great it is?

I've never heard the whole thing.

Her best album from each respective decade has been her danciest (Madonna, Erotica, and COADF)

xpost - i dont think of her early soul/R&B/funk era as being 'dance music', even though yes, you can dance to it, and most people do, but thats just me.

Her best album from each respective decade has been her danciest (Madonna, Erotica, and COADF)

OTM

i don't know if i completely agree with prolego and yet those are my three favorite madonna records?

xpost- It says in the liners notes of The Immaculate Collection that her first album pretty much invented the Dance Music genre, and I have to agree with that. It's not quite soul/R&B/funk, or disco, or new wave, but it's kind of all of that at the same time.

titchy with the most boring received wisdom on her eras there

Oh come on lex, you're not going to burst into the thread with cries of "boring received wisdom" and not actually offer up your own opinion now, are you?

"xpost- It says in the liners notes of The Immaculate Collection that her first album pretty much invented the Dance Music genre, and I have to agree with that. It's not quite soul/R&B/funk, or disco, or new wave, but it's kind of all of that at the same time."

lol at that album or madonna inventing the dance music genre.

The boring received wisdom is that the nineties were a drop off but then Ray of Light was a partial return to form.

This is wrong: I'd say from Erotica though to American Life there is a consistent fall from brilliance --> excellence --> goodness --> quite goodness --> good/badness

I wouldn't say that Madonna is best at her most dance-focused, necessarily; perhaps rather that being a (modern version of a) disco diva is a good look for her, and she's better when framing her albums nominally around that idea and then branching out with other (downtempo or ballad etc) material that comes almost as a surprise. But you know, there's actually a lot of slower moments on Erotica!

A common misnomer is to think of Ray of Light as her "dance album" when really there's only 4 proper dance numbers on there at most (the title track, "Skin", "Sky Fights Heaven", "Nothing Really Matters"), the rest largely being ostentatious (though often good) high-tech balladry. I'd say Ray of Light in this sense is like the inverse of Erotica, a balladic album with dancefloor diversions.

See, that's my problem with her in album-length form: fuck the ballads, full-on disco from start to finish please. Is that so hard?

Erotica hides its ballads really well imo.

What makes Ray of Light a drag is the tension between the insistence on introspection and the buttoned-down beats; or, rather, she hadn't yet found a correlative for "thoughtful" dance music. The results are a little like Young Americans: auteurist pop with dance leanings.

Also: when her lyrics aim for "spirituality," she's embarrassing or worse. I'd forgive this if her post-Evita voice wasn't at its most pompous. The only time I hear some new kind of New Age-disco fusion is on "Sky Fits Heaven."

See, that's my problem with her in album-length form: fuck the ballads, full-on disco from start to finish please. Is that so hard?

sorry, pally: MY Madonna requires "Live to Tell," "Crazy For You," "Bedtime Stories," "Love Tried to Welcome Me," and "In This Life."

I'd forgive this if her post-Evita voice wasn't at its most pompous.

This is the nub of it I think.

Erotica hides its ballads really well imo.

Yeah, I listen to it all the time obv and I still get surprised. I think it helps that all of the ballads (as well as the other slow tunes - "Where Life Begins", "Secret Garden" etc.) really feel like an extension of the same character as inhabits the uptempo tunes. "Bad Girl" and "In This Life" are precisely the depressive songs that the all-nite-diva would sing to herself the next day, under a cloud of hangover and regret.

Yeah that's cool but why can't she relegate the hangover to another disc? Why's it so hard? (I'm being bitchy, really. The Erotica ballads/downtempos, apart from the obvious one, are decent enough. But I'd be lying if I said I ever listen to them or that I'd need to save them in a fire as with "Deeper and Deeper.")

sorry, pally: MY Madonna requires "Live to Tell," "Crazy For You," "Bedtime Stories," "Love Tried to Welcome Me," and "In This Life."

They're all yours, baby, including the overrated "Live to Tell." Come on - Dave Marsh thinks it's her best single. How good could it be then??? "Gambler" >>> "Live to Tell" Didn't know "Bedtime Story" counted as a ballad but I do dig that one. Had to youtube "Love Tried to Welcome Me" since I couldn't recall it. Made it to the chorus. Zzzz.

I knew I really couldn't stand her balladry when I listened to Something to Remember. Obviously not an ideal place to hear them since they're the entire picture rather than desert oases. But man what a chore to get through!

The only time I hear some new kind of New Age-disco fusion is on "Sky Fits Heaven."

Actually, that Shanti Shanti Shanti number on Ray of Light fuses the two nicely enough. One of my fave tracks on a pretty blah album.

Why's it so hard?

to love one another?

"Something To Remember" the song I've adored since about 8 years old.

Obviously if she couldn't sing or write the ballads no one would endorse them! She's got soggy ones too (e.g. "This Used To Be My Playground" and "The Power of Goodbye").

Now "Angel" I made it all the way through, several times, in fact. Like the Janet of "Love Will Never Do Without You," she knows how to play with her vocal limitations so that she comes off as intense as Mavis Fuckin' Staples by the end of the song. From right before the vaguely Orientalist instrumental break to the fadeout, it just burns!

I wouldn't count "Angel" as a ballad. Would you?

Not at all. Just sayin'.

I'd rescue "I'll Remember" from a fire.

Oh that's a good one -- always forget it.

this used to be my playyyyyyyyyyyyyyground

It's weird, I know I am the anti-Alfred when it comes to Madonna, and I'm not trying to be challopsy, I just have different taste but it's always strange to me how completely differently other ppl rate her stuff from how I do.

I've never been able to make it all the way through Erotica and I know that album gets a lot of love. But then again, most of the "classic" 80s era stuff, the production drives me nuts and I can't listen to it.

Ray of Light isn't "not dance" so much as it's dronerock with IDM accessories on it. Which is why I love it so much, clearly but it's kind of where I start with Madonna, not where I end. I think it completely works as being both danceable and introspective but I've got quite a high tolerance for her being spiritual and "pompous". She's one of the few artists whose songs about their kids I don't skip, probably because her feelings about motherhood seem so tied up with the loss of her own mother, and therefore sometimes quite ambivalent.

I've grown to really really rate Music - once I was able to take it out its time and place and disassociate it from that awful, awful Ali G nonsense. I'm also with DJP that American Life is such an odd little album that even when it fails, it's still interesting to listen to. And when it's good, it's amazing.

But this is when I really really want a Madonna vote-in poll because I think that tracks 40-10 on it would be a good learning experience for me to hear the stuff that I haven't explored because I can't get past the production or the setting or whatever.

I suppose one of these days I should give Hard Candy another listen and perhaps it won't seem as terrible but I kinda blame Guy Ritchie for that, I'm just gonna call it her "Here My Dear" and file it and wait for the next one.

What makes Ray of Light a drag is the tension between the insistence on introspection and the buttoned-down beats; or, rather, she hadn't yet found a correlative for "thoughtful" dance music. The results are a little like Young Americans: auteurist pop with dance leanings.

Also: when her lyrics aim for "spirituality," she's embarrassing or worse. I'd forgive this if her post-Evita voice wasn't at its most pompous. The only time I hear some new kind of New Age-disco fusion is on "Sky Fits Heaven."

otm

candy perfume girl is one of my favourite madonna songs though

here my dear is/was an amazing album btw

I've never actually heard it, to be honest, but given it's one of those albums that most people seem to agree should come with a trigger warning for misogyny, I feel it's probably better if I give it a miss.

Guess I should find another by-word for "breakup album so bitter it's actually painful to listen to." Except Hard Candy doesn't seem to be a breakup album so much as a "look at me, I'm so hot, I got it going on I don't even need to think about you" which could be interesting if executed well but my memory is, it wasn't and it just came off as clunky and try-hard. (You are welcome to prove me wrong.)

well "look at me, I'm so hot, I got it going on I don't even need to think about you" seems to be the standard approach of most modern breakup songs/albums, rather than the bitter/angry/twisted/downbeat mood of albums like here my dear. i dont know if id say HMD is misogynistic, its just very acidic (but when did i stop loving you is one of the best/most bitter breakup/relationship post mortem songs ive ever heard).

but what i like about HMD is that hes not ashamed to put it all out there - it has some of the most painfully raw (but also beautiful) and honest songs he wrote. anyway, enough about marvin.

She's one of the few artists whose songs about their kids I don't skip

I agree! "Little Star" is lovely.

Songs on ROL I like:

Swim (guitar!)
Candy Perfume Girl
Skin
Nothing Really Matters
Sky Fits Heaven
To Have and Not to Hold
Little Star

Am I the only one who didn't Madonna's Neil Young-style thrashing on "Candy Perfume Girl" when she played it on the 2001 tour?

*who didn't MIND

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/Madonna-to-play-Super-Bowl-XLVI-halftime-show-100311

Madonna to play Super Bowl halftime
NewsCore

Updated Oct 3, 2011 12:57 PM ET

Madonna will perform during the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show, fansite SB Nation reported Monday.

The site said unnamed NFL sources had confirmed the "Material Girl" singer will entertain football fans at the NFL championship game, to be held Feb. 5 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

The Black Eyed Peas played the halftime show at last year's title game, watched by over 111 million viewers.

The high-profile gig has gained notoriety after the infamous 2004 "wardrobe malfunction" that resulted in Justin Timberlake exposing Janet Jackson's breast to a live worldwide television audience.

As a result, the NFL has tried to steer clear from notably risque performers, inviting tamer acts such as Tom Petty, Paul McCartney and The Who.

watch out, Middle America – Madonna's gonna flaunt her roped, knotted Biceps of Doom.

unlike Bruce, slamming her gentles into a cameraman won't be an accident

Did they run our of old rock acts?