Album: The Immaculate Collection (1990)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Shep Pettibone

Even if it was the final track on end-of-an-era the Immaculate Collection, Rescue Me remains one of Madonna’s more forgotten singles. Peaking at #9 on the Billboard charts due to a commercial release after much of its radio airplay, and with a post-Blond Ambition/Dick Tracy Madonna too overcommitted to shoot a video, it still performed better than half of Erotica. So what exactly does Rescue Me represent - if not, finally, a single mostly devoid of subtexts?

Partly because it’s simply not as good, Rescue Me is just as odd a new contribution to the Immaculate Collection as Justify My Love. Next to its ever-futuristic Public Enemy sample, Rescue Me is indelibly time-stamped with the early ’90s via Shep Pettibone’s trademark synth piano, bass and machine gun-snare house beats. But unlike Vogue, Rescue Me sounds a little cheap, the production suffocating Madonna’s vocals. Give her credit for the uncharacteristic soul influence in the chorus - she even spells out “R.E.S.C.U.E. me” Aretha Franklin-style in the throes of her passion - yet on the other hand, the half-spoken, half-rapped flow of her vocals in the verses give off their own kind of ’90s cliché. Though Madonna, ever the symbol of independence, finally admitting she needs another’s love to be truly empowered is a welcome sentiment, the self-evaluating lyrics are almost uncomfortably comprehensive. She’s never been quite as convincing singing unsubtle exposition like “I am hungry for a life of understanding” as simply exuding it; projecting feeling rather than explaining it. Rescue Me is no exception.

As arguably the sole inferior track amongst 16 genuinely iconic classics (and a few sorely-missed exclusions), it’s also an odd conclusion to the Immaculate Collection, too. Nonetheless, with all its faults - namely the limitations of CD lengths, the QSound mixes’ exaggerated panning and the Like a Prayer remix - it remains a perfectly, chronologically sequenced concentration of the height of Madonna’s fame. Few records have ever been so brilliantly named (who else has ever capitalised on their birth name so well?), or so deserving of sales of over 30 million worldwide - in fact, the Immaculate Collection is the highest-selling compilation ever released by a solo artist, and is at least in the top 30 best-selling albums of all time. Though it should have gone out on a high with Vogue, it ends predicting both the controversy, with Justify My Love, and the commercial inconsistency - ironically, the appropriately-named Rescue Me - of the start of the next era. Forward-thinking as always?…

So allow me a cliché for once while I can get away with it: long live the queen.