Originally posted at Allenlulu.com
The entire catalog was listened to during an April trip from LA to Corpus Christi, then an RV to Houston and a plane back to Los Angeles. This retrospective was the best thing about that trip.
Madonna – Madonna – 1983
There is a programmed electronic hi-hat panned all the way to the right on “Borderline” that feels like it’s boring it’s way into the base of your brain. Tip-tip-tip-tip while the rest of the song plays out and Madonna hits all the notes without any real personality or style. And yet I can’t stop tapping my foot. Why is that?
When Madonna exploded my freshman year college I knew nothing of her. Except that I couldn’t wait for her to go away. I bet on the wrong horse, of course. Within months the Weinstein cafeteria was brimming with costume jewelry and underwear as outerwear.
She was inescapable. I came from the “Disco sucks!” era of rock. I was trained to despise this sort of stuff. Little did I know that she was the future and the rock that I had fallen in love with and was the soundtrack of my adolescence was about to be relegated to the underground.
It was a new dawn. The electric guitars on “Burning Up” are as important as the same ones on Michael Jackson’s Thriller. They say she’s got rock cred, but she doesn’t need them.
Madonna, the album, with all those hits, is made for the dance floor.
The extra 90 seconds each song eats up in repetition are there for a reason. Hypnosis. You’re supposed to forget the song is even playing. Whether you’re at Tunnel or Pyramid Club or somewhere in the midwest or elsewhere, you’re gonna be dancing to Madonna and her producers.
But what about the rest of the record. We all have the singles. We’ve heard them so much it’s impossible to really grade the record without any bias.
“I Know It” is the first song that doesn’t sound like I expect it to. It’s a little girl group, a little Go-Gos, it has a bridge, it’s not made for dance floor consumption. In other words, it’s the track I would have probably loved if I was the same me but a girl in 1983.
By the end of would have been the second side, the songs lose any impact. In fact, they are boring. “Physical Attraction” is as dull and monotonous a song as could be and “Think of Me” wouldn’t have even rated a spot of Stacy Q’s record.
Grade B-
A Side: Lucky Star, Borderline, Burning Up, Holiday
BlindSide: I Know it.
DownSide: Think of Me, Physical Attraction
Madonna – Like A Virgin – 1984
Madonna could have been written off as a dance floor diva, failed dancer, terrible actress if she wasn’t so damned determined. Her sophomore effort is a far superior record.
The songs are stronger, she is more confident and there is a defiance to her sound. Ciccone is taking her place as feminist force in culture, not just music. Smart girl this one. She knows her audience, she isn’t pandering and she’s not taking any prisoners.
Some of it falls flat. “Pretender” is stale, by the numbers dance music. But for the most part this is a strong collection of tracks. It’s also fast. But that’s mainly because there’s no filler.
There’s even a strong ballad. On “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” you get to hear a Madonna that would try to sound sincere for the rest of her career. I don’t know if she ever pulls it off, I’m sure I’ll find out. But she succeeds here.
And the fun of “Shoo-Bee-Doo” can’t be ignored.
Madonna is having a blast on this record. She’s defining herself and we are just along for the ride.
One of the best and quintessential records of the 80s.
Grade: A
A Side: Material Girl, Like a Virgin, Into the Groove, Dress You Up,
BlindSide: Shoo-Bee-Doo, Love Don’t Live Here Anymore
Downside: Pretender.
Madonna – True Blue – 1986
Um…okay, I’ll admit it. This is a really good record. Whoever picked these songs had a really good ear. Just kidding Madge. I know you wrote them. Or worked on them. Or hummed a melody and someone crafted a song. Whatever. They’re good songs. The title track is dead center and perfect 50s girl group. Bananarama have nothing on this song. There’s not much going on here that is any different from the last record except building on her idiom and that’s a great thing.. Madonna’s tackling a couple of interesting subjects besides boy-love here. “Papa Don’t Preach” is a pretty damn strong track considering the subject matter. In retrospect, I’m impressed with how cutting edge this song really is. And to lead off with it? Powerful statement, baby.
There’s not much for me to critique here. I have always loved “La Isla Bonita” and I have discovered “White Heat” which is sort of her “Smooth Criminal” in a way. And “Jimmy Jimmy” continues to embrace that New Wave-esque sound via girl pop that Madonna cornered on “Material Girl”.
This record’s good. Solid. Not a bad track on it.
Grade A+
A Side: Papa Don’t Preach, Open Your Heart, Live to Tell, True Blue, La Isla Bonita
BlindSide: White Heat, Where’s the Party?, Jimmy Jimmy
Madonna – Like a Prayer – 1989
Is “Like a Prayer” the best song of the 80s? It could be. It’s definitely in the running. I wanna dance and I’m in an airport in Texas. They arrest guys like me for that stuff. But you can’t help yourself. Like you can’t help feeling it on this whole record. It’s a monster.
Most artists really come into their own around the 4th record, I’ve come to learn. Early success buoys experimentation, then reassessment, wing spreading and, finally, brilliance.
Like a Prayer is genius.
I will admit to already loving “Express Yourself”. I dug it when it came out, loved the video and I think it’s one of the best women’s empowerment songs ever written. She is demanding equality. What the hell happened to the girls that fell in love with Madonna? Paglia used to extol the virtues of owning sexuality as the crown jewel of equality. Madonna was preaching that. But the message got lost and Howard Stern won in the end.
I think just about ever girl needs to have this record (or this song at least) pumped into her veins from early on. It’s an imperative.
And while “Love Song” sounds just like what I expect a collaboration with Prince to sound like, “Til Death Do Us Part”, a song obviously about her failed marriage to Sean Penn, is so the opposite of what I would expect. Bouncy, delicious, anything but precious.
“Dear Jessie”, a “Raspberry Beret” meets “Eleanor Rigby” piece is perhaps the best non-hit single of hers. I wish I had heard it years ago. Might have made me a convert. And the way it bleeds into the haunting “Oh, Father” is perfect. And that freakshow at the end, “Act of Contrition”? Brilliant.
As is the record.
Grade: A+
A Side: Like a Prayer, Express Yourself, Cherish, Oh Father
BlindSide: Til Death Do Us Part, Promise to Try, Dear Jessie, Act of Contrition
DownSide: None, might be one of the best records of all time.
Madonna – Erotica – 1992
How do you follow up one of the best dance/pop records of all time?
A few years ago I was hanging out with my friend, Vinny, drinking Hynotiq, playing Grand Theft Auto and listening to music. Vinny is a “guy’s guy” but, also worked in dance clubs and loves dance music. As we got drunker and drunker he explained that to know when to cue light effects in clubs, all dance music works in sets of 8 bars of 4 beats. On the next set, the song changes a bit and that’s when you hit some spots or colors or something. “Words” is the worst culprit here.
That’s Erotica. It’s a lot of house music, techno beats, rhythms and moods. And for the first half of the record, it’s not half bad. But it never recovers from that. It never changes. And that’s a shame. Because the title track and even the other single, “Rain” isn’t so bad, but it’s mired in so much meandering asexual sexuality that the album loses itself in it’s own importance.
Ciccone has traded songs for beats and lost herself doing it.
Madonna was a leader of the women’s movement. She knew it. She decided to embrace, nay, own, her erotica and prove that on this record.
But she falls flat. Such a deep abyss to fall into.
I was almost ready to forgive the 5th grade sexual metaphors. I can’t. There’s nothing on the album to redeem that.
Grade: D
A Side: Erotica
BlindSide: Fever, Bye Bye Baby, Secret Garden
DownSide: Where Life Begins, Bad Girl, Waiting, Words
Madonna – Bedtime Stories – 1994
And now we reach the point where most critics and I diverge. When I was reviewing albums for money, this one came in the mail and I recall actually liking it. I was amazed back then. But I never reviewed it. Hell, why give more ink to Madonna when there were people like Lisa Germano and Ani DiFranco to help?
So, I think I listened to it once, and only cursory then at best.
Now, hearing it again for the first time in 16 years I really really don’t like it.
I also have no relationship with raves and trance music and the only rap I enjoy is edgy and political like Public Enemy.
Bedtime Stories is replete with this stuff. It’s a much much softer record than Erotica but it’s just as dull. The hits are fine. “Take a Bow”, “Human Nature” , the former a throwback to her early songwriting and the latter a reaction to her brazen sexuality. It’s a reaction to how much people really hated her book, “Sex” more than anything else.
The rest of the record is…well…uninteresting.
I guess I like “Secret” but, again, that’s a song. Not just a reason to get on the dance floor, or drop “E” and screw.
The best song of the trance music is the title track, co-written by Bjork. It’s the most experimental.
Bedtime Stories is an album very representative of the era; the early to mid 90s. I never thought that stuff would ever sound nostalgic. Shows what I know.
Grade: C-
A Side: Take a Bow, Secret, Human Nature
BlindSide: Bedtime Stories
DownSide: I’d Rather Be Your Lover, Don’t Stop, Inside of Me
Madonna – Ray of Light – 1995
About 10 years ago I was brought to a party where a friend of my girlfriend was “Spinning”. Which really just meant that he had some vinyl albums with beats and sounds and he chose which would be the soundtrack for an evening of Ecstasy dropping and lollipops. The foundation of that movement is all in this record. Of course, those days are gone, as are much of the spines of those partyers. “E” never did much for me. I just wanted to sleep. I might have felt differently if I had Ray of Light to guide me.
Right off the bat I like Ray of Light more than the previous two Madonna albums combined. What Madonna had always been so adept at, especially on those early records, was to anticipate or lead musical trends. Being a club rat can only help when crafting club music.
I think she got ahead of herself and tried to lead a little too hard on Erotica, which just sounded flat and uninspired, too knowing. She righted her ship on Bedtime Stories following along the trip-hop, trance fad, but I found the album too precious and I’ve never been a fan of that style anyway. To read the reviews you’ll find that I am out of sync with most of them, having heralded Bedtime Stories as a triumphant achievement.
Which brings me to Ray of Light. Recognizing what was happening with electronic music and embracing it as she had with all the previous styles, Madonna teamed up with electronic artists William Orbit. The result is a classic representation of an emerging style. Electronic music is here to stay, winding it’s way through Indie Rock, blurring the lines of what constitutes a “band”. In Orbit’s case, it’s one guy and Pro Tools.
I would submit that, somehow, Madonna sounds more in touch with her music than, perhaps, ever before.
The album unfolds with water themes (which abound). “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” & “Swim” set the stage for the show (Other water tinged songs include “Frozen” & “Mer Girl”) and “Ray of Light” sets the ecstasy drenched concert in motion.
The creepiness and desperation of “Skin” makes you forget the false sexuality of Erotica. The pulse and beats provide the sensuality, she draws you in with her voice, at once cold and sexual. The Blade Runner eroticism is the most human she’s sounded in ages.
What separates Ray from a lot of dance/house music is that these are actually songs. They aren’t just loops. It isn’t just beats hung together to get people hot on a dance floor. And, as songs, there’s actually content. Madonna’s a mother now. She’s got a larger world view. It’s macro (“Shanti/Ashtangi”) and micro (“Little Star”).
And her voice is stronger than ever, the result of training to sing for Evita.
Is Ray of Light the progenitor of Kid A? In a way. (I know, blasphemy!) I think it takes a star of Madonna’s caliber to kick in the door of acceptance that allows other musicians not just the license to try this stuff but to embrace it and see it as an extension of their musical pallete.
The ballad, “Frozen”, could easily have sounded treacly had it been produced for True Blue or Like a Prayer. It would have worked, or fallen on the side of “This Used to be a Playground”, but Orbit’s production provides it with a bed so interesting and powerful that it elevates the song while at the same time, allowing it to shine. Madonna sounds great and the song is lovely, haunting, ominous, and a whole slew of other adjectives.
It’s doubtless that this record wouldn’t sound as good were it not for Orbit’s production and music. But it probably wouldn’t exist save for that, since Madonna and her team wrote words to the music Orbit created.
Grade: A
A Side: Ray of Light, Shanti/Ashtangi, Frozen
BlindSide: Drowned World/Substitute for Love, Skin, Sky Fits Heaven
DownSide: Little Star
Madonna – Music – 2000
I’m not sure how I feel about this. Music is definitely listenable. It’s earnest in it’s club appeal. But it also seems to have turned a 180 from the Girl Power of just 11 years before. When Madge sings “It’s amazing what a boy can do…” I feel like she’s left the equanimity patrol behind and has decided to pander to the burgeoning Britney crowd. Is this was a 40 year old Madonna wants? Maybe I’m being harsh here. Since that song is one of the few Orbit collaborations as Madonna has a new co-conspirator, French DJ/mixmaster Mirwais Ahmadzai whose use of vocoder and electro-beats tries to take the work on the preceding record and bore further into club culture. It’s the Orbit songs that work the least on this album. They feel like leftovers next to the new stuff. On the other hand, “What it feels like for a girl” tries at least to have a point of view. The song is crap, but she’s trying.
But that stuff just leaves me flat. And I think Madge is bored. I think she wants to raise her kid, live her life, enjoy being herself and not pressured by being an icon 24/7.
There are a few high points. The title track, for instance. And “Don’t Tell Me” which is as cutting edge and interesting as anything Madonna has ever sold.
And it’s well made. About half of the time it isn’t boring but the other half of the time, it’s not doing anything new for me.
Stick with Ray of Light and take a pass on this, save a few tracks.
Grade C+
A Side: Music, Don’t Tell Me
BlindSide: Nobody’s Perfect
Madonna – American Life – 2003
3.5minutes into “American Life” I’m thinking, “I kind of dig this!” And then this happens:
I’m drinking a Soy latte
I get a double shot
It goes right through my body
And you know
I’m satisfied,
I drive my mini cooper
And I’m feeling super-dooper
Yo they tell I’m a trooper
And you know I’m satisfied
I do yoga and pilates
And the room is full of hotties
So I’m checking out the bodies
And you know I’m satisfied
I’m digging on the isotopes
This metaphysic’s shit is dope
And if all this can give me hope
You know I’m satisfied
I got a lawyer and a manager
An agent and a chef
Three nannies, an assistant
And a driver and a jet
A trainer and a butler
And a bodyguard or five
A gardener and a stylist
Do you think I’m satisfied?
I’d like to express my extreme point of view
I’m not Christian and I’m not a Jew
I’m just living out the American dream
And I just realized that nothing Is what it seems
And you want to die.
Then “Hollywood” starts and it’s worse. Worse than that preceding rap. You read that right. It’s like Madonna moved away from America and realized that her life was a sham. She seems to hate EVERYTHING. Fame, glamour, success. This feels more confessional and at the same time a venomous contempt filled screed. And that’s just three songs in!
By “Nobody Knows Me” it’s clear that I am not interested, on this record, in Madonna. It’s Mirwai that kicks ass. The music beds are great. But anyone could have provided vox and it would have sounded the same.
“Nothing Fails” tries to emulate the trip-folk of “Don’t Tell Me” but, that trick’s been done. It’s such a good one that it doesn’t hold up a second time.
By the time songs that I actually like, like “Intervention” & “X-Static Process” turn up, I’ve sort of tuned out.
This is the mid-life crisis Madonna. Who knew that this was going to happen? Regret? Disillusionment?
Surprise, Madonna grew up.
I’ll give her a pass for that. I won’t recommend the record. But I give her props for working out her issues in public.
Grade C-
A Side: Nothing blows me away
BlindSide: X-Static Process, Intervention, Easy Ride
DownSide: American Life, Hollywood
Madonna – Confessions on a Dance Floor – 2005
70s fonts. Dance leotards. Fuck me pumps. It’s disco Madonna.
There’s no point in going song by song. They all serve one purpose. Get people grinding on the dance floor.
I refuse to say that this is a bad thing, however. What I want from my Madonna is exactly what this record provides. And I’m not talking about beats n rhythms.
From the start Madonna was the representative club rat. Disco diva. She didn’t just know the haunts. She was the queen of those haunts. As a result she was always just a nano second ahead of the trend so, whether she led the trend or just appropriated it she seemed like a pioneer.
This is what worked with her early records and later, with Ray of Light. Even, to an extent, with Music although that is the first time I feel her really slipping.
Well, not totally true. I think on Erotica Maddie was trying so hard to lead the charge that she messed up and missed it. Then she got mixed up in all that jazz of Dick Tracy and the broadway of Evita that she forgot who she was and what she was selling.
There has been a blossoming 80s revival happening for a while. Rock bands like Ima Robot, The Killers, and others have been playing the retro card to great successes. But there hasn’t been a true retro dance movement. Mainly because that stuff is so steeped in technology that the producers are always pushing forward.
So, Madonna looks back. Samples, beats, rhythms but most of all, glitter ball disco.
And it works. I couldn’t tell you one song from another if you put a gun to my head. But that’s okay. Because you don’t go to a club and say, “What song was that?” anymore. You just….go and experience.
And that’s what Confessions is. An experience. It starts off with promise, it gets darker and darker as the evening progresses. When it’s over you should know who you’re going home with and have already grinded up against her or him enough to know what’s in store.
I dig it. (And any time someone samples “the Popcorn Song” as she does on “Forbidden Love” I am so very happy)
Grade: B+
A Side: Hung Up, Get Together, Sorry
BlindSide: Future Love, Forbidden Love
DownSide: There are no real lows. As long as you realize what you’re in for.
Madonna – Hard Candy – 2008
Well, this is the single ugliest cover I’ve ever seen on a Madonna record. Considering how important packaging has always been to her how did she let this mess happen?
It looks like a rejected idea from Britney Spears circa Blackout. Only that had some =, I dunno, craft.
The shorts Madge is wearing make her look like she’s wearing old lady granny panties. And licking those straps…what’re ya selling me here, Madge? No matter how hard you try I still know you’re pushing 50 and have two kids. I can’t divorce myself from that.
And I don’t want a candy-floss Madonna. Not when she’s already taken those steps forward on Ray of Light just ten years before and shown us all what a real leader/Diva can be all about.
Blech.
For the first time ever I get the sense that Madonna isn’t trying to lead but instead she’s so concerned that the dance pop movement has moved on without her that she’s decided to follow the charts and try to capture some relevance. How else to explain the Timbaland/Neptunes/Timberlake flava on this record? Kanye West???
Madge, other people are doing this already. And they are doing it better.
When you sing “Come on into my store, cuz my sugar is sweet” I wanna throw up. I want my sexual come ons from young girls. You’re making me think about your vag and it’s a half century old and it’s pushed TEENAGERS out of it.
So many steps forward over the past 20 years undone by pandering shit like this.
It’s not easy to make yourself sound like a guest on your own record but that’s what she’s done on the single, “4 Minutes”. Pitchfork put it best: “But lead single “4 Minutes” doesn’t sound like the best working with the best: It sounds complacent, like a pop supergroup high-fivin’ each other”.
I’m not saying that I don’t want my Madonna sexy. But what makes a Milf so appealing isn’t that you can have easy sex with her. Well, not just that. It’s that Milfs know what the fuck they are doing. They aren’t begging. We don’t want cougars begging us for sex. And Madonna has always behaved as though she knew the bedroom better than you. She was in charge. This just feels like a hollow one night stand.
Grade C-
A Side:
BlindSide: Miles Away, Voices
DownSide: Hard Candy,
