Albums: Erotica (1992), GHV2 - Greatest Hits Volume 2 (2001), The Confessions Tour (2007), Celebration (2009)
Songwriters: Madonna/Shep Pettibone/Tony Shimkin
Producers: Madonna/Shep Pettibone
Contains samples of “Jungle Boogie” by Kool & the Gang, and “El Yom ‘Ulliqa ‘Ala Khashaba” by Fairuz

“In a sense, Erotica was the biggest one of her career. It was the one that moulded her, that gave her the access code to what she’s doin’ now. True Blue etc. - it was good to get those numbers out the way first… Set up the template for what you wanna do when you get older. Fifty million plus records under your belt, you’re good. If the label can’t support what you’re trying to do, fuck ‘em. On one level she’s asking, how much do y’all really believe in me now?”
“She was bringin’ it from her point of view as a woman, bringing it to the forefront for real. That set the template now, for your Christina Aguileras, Britneys, Beyoncés. She paved the road for a lot of that. You can be nice and clean and then a freak. And there’ll be a lot of money for you in the end!”
- Doug Wimbish of Living Colour, bassist on the Erotica album

The majority of Madonna’s music is, simply, inseparable from its imagery and the cultural context in which it was originally heard. And rightly so; the full extent of her artistry cannot be appreciated via listening alone. But for the last eighteen years, fans have been trying to hear the Erotica album without the backlash Madonna experienced around its release. Seeing it for what it really is, the music - and by extension, the imagery - has a depth that belies the public opinion. And yet, it’s stylistically scattered, Madonna’s aims not quite clear; perhaps all too appropriately for an album as vaguely named as Erotica.

Though the title track did surprisingly well, peaking at #3 on the Billboard charts, the Erotica album has sold a mere five million worldwide - just more than a fifth of True Blue’s sales. But with Madonna just about excising the sense of ’80s pop euphoria from her music, that was to be expected.

On the surface, Erotica’s hip-hop beats and alternately whispered/distant vocals sound like a continuation of Justify My Love. But where Justify My Love was sincere - Ingrid Chavez’s deepest fantasies set to music - Erotica is ironically devoid of the romance Madonna, or more accurately, Dita, supposedly invokes from the outset.

Though Madonna dictates the terms - “I’ll be your mistress tonight”, “if I’m in charge” - her soft intonating uses the power of suggestion gently, taking the reins as if for your benefit. In a way, it’s the same dominant role she always had in her relationship with her audience, but instead of the Blond Ambition era’s take-me-or-leave-me boldness, she pillow-talks the listener into loving her back.

Unlike Justify My Love’s stripped-bare feel, Erotica casts a smoky backdrop, with Kool & the Gang’s horns and the uncredited, vaguely Arabic vocal sample emerging intermittently from the haze. Even with only one hook, a chorus just explicit enough to make singing along in public awkward, it’s an appealing enough production that maybe, when they drove it to #3 on the Billboard charts, the public were merely buying into a pop song, not Madonna’s sugar-coated idea of sexual liberation.

More than any other Madonna song, Erotica is masquerade, encapsulating the Sex book’s occasional tongue-in-cheek tone without all its aspirations of being transgressive art. Gently seducing the world into accepting her ideals of sexual openness - perhaps her final sex-positive feminist act - was likely the best way to go about attempting to remove the taboo from sex. But unfortunately for her, the not-so-forward rest of the world found the idea considerably harder to swallow when exposed to actual nudity.

“Give it up, do as I say
Give it up and let me have my way
I’ll give you love, I’ll hit you like a truck
I’ll give you love, I’ll teach you how to…”

(browse the Sex book above, or view the individual pages, or just download it in high quality - because we all know you’re going to buy a copy one day… yeah, right.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone actually own one?!)

The Sex book.

Unlike just about everything else Madonna (except her acting career as a whole, successes and all), it hasn’t been reevaluated. The consensus seems to be not to consider it a misstep, nor to forgive and forget - merely to forget about it entirely. And though Madonna has never once expressed regret over the project, with the book long out of print, she may as well have disowned it. Here’s a typical after-the-fact quote:

“Well, I didn’t write a book about sex. I wrote a book that — I mean I published a book that basically was sort of a — an ironic tongue-in-cheek, sticking-my-tongue-out-at-society photo essay…”
“Yes, well it worked, obviously. It sold and people reacted to it.”
“It pissed off a lot of people, too… I think that there were a lot of people that were freaked out about it, yes. “
- Madonna with Larry King, on Larry King Live in 1999

All entirely true, and yet she gives no insight whatsoever into why she had to create the book. She’d evoked both irony and social commentary in the past without having to literally bare herself (much), nor to stretch her public reputation for boldness to its breaking point. That her nature was never to do anything by halves simply doesn’t explain why she went as far as she did. Was she really trying to change people’s views on sex, or just challenge them, inevitably offending the usual suspects whilst destroying her last shred of self-consciousness at the same time?

“And by the way, any similarity between characters and events depicted in this book and real persons and events is not only purely coincidental, it’s ridiculous. Nothing in this book is true. I made it all up.”

The book itself is… well, interesting. That a celebrity would bare themself for more complex reasons than publicity, titillating the opposite sex or showing off their physique is, perhaps, a shocking concept. Maybe, even after Justify My Love, it was still jarring to see Madonna looking glamourous as ever whilst dressed in leather S&M gear, or writing occasionally sophomoric tributes to masturbation or her vagina. But the images are more confrontationally blush-inducing than shocking - except maybe those of her cavorting with Vanilla Ice, a metaphor for life’s abject unfairness.

There’s no question that it’s an erotic art book, not so much pornography; each image feels as if it is presented as art with a purpose. It’s just not always clear what that is - Madonna vying for the attention of a gay man may be a fascinating image, but her in a Big Daddy Kane/Naomi Campbell sandwich may just be self-indulgent.

Not quite celebratory, not quite shocking, the Sex book wants to provoke a reaction, but really just is - an odd state of being for something so difficult to produce. Songs such as Like a Prayer and Vogue inspire a vast number of interpretations and associations - all of which feel entirely intentional on Madonna’s part. But Sex is more postmodern - devoid of a strong sense of intent, little else remains but the subjective interpretations it provokes, even amongst those who never even read it. Perception becomes reality.

Doctor: “Have you ever been mistaken for a prostitute?”
Dita: “Every time anyone reviews anything I do, I’m mistaken for a prostitute.”

And that’s exactly it - without the surrounding controversy, perhaps only the most dedicated of fans would have gotten anything out of the book. Instead, with all 1.5 million copies worldwide of the first edition sold out in three days, it quickly became the highest-selling coffee table book of all time. The merely curious bought something they would never quite appreciate; the apathetic grew entirely sick of her overexposure, beginning the backlash against her. Madonna did everything with an awareness of how her audience would react, but in selling a decidedly un-mainstream erotic art book to the world, what did she overestimate - the wider public’s tolerance, or her own power?

“You’re supposed to stay popular, and do things that are popular, that’s what the word means. Once you cross that line there’s a lot of fury to reckon with. I think that because everybody did buy the Sex book in spite of the fury it caused, people made up their minds that they weren’t going to be duped, and they punished me… I’m proud of the way I acted because it set a precedent and gave women the freedom to be expressive. I’m proud to be a pioneer.”

YouTube / AOL

Director: Fabien Baron

The Erotica video is more of the same, using footage from which many stills were taken for the Sex book itself. The concept is a little more powerful when visually brought to life - seeing Madonna dressed as Dita with the mask, single gold tooth and Freddy Krueger nails illustrates just how much of a character she was. Full of fleeting, grainy images, that overall sense of vagueness remains.

Perhaps the best ever version of Erotica was performed on the Confessions Tour; using lyrics from the original demo, it trades the erotic for a deep romantic longing, and is generally AMAZING.