Iconography

Deeper and Deeper

richaod — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:40:00 +1100

Albums: Erotica (1992), GHV2 - Greatest Hits Volume 2 (2001)
Songwriters: Madonna/Shep Pettibone/Tony Shimkin
Producers: Madonna/Shep Pettibone

“‘Deeper and Deeper,’ from the same album, lowered some of the upturned noses caused by the ‘Erotica’ single. But they were soon raised again when they discovered that the track was about a miner coming to terms with his homosexuality, ‘I can’t help falling in love, I fall deeper and deeper the further I go,’ he sings as he disappears into the dark shaft.”
- Dan Cadan, only slightly joking, from the GHV2 liner notes

Miner metaphors aside, Deeper and Deeper may be Madonna’s single gayest track - or at the very least, her most unabashed attempt at recreating the string-heavy disco sound she was born half a decade too late for. And though it resembles Vogue, even quoting its euphoric final chorus to great effect, it’s not exactly a direct sequel. Instead of falling back on the era’s dominant house beats, Shep Pettibone’s production does what Stuart Price’s would fourteen years later: update disco for the (then-)present.

As perhaps the only overt pop song, and therefore the one truly commercial single on the Erotica album, Deeper and Deeper sounds like a contradiction on paper; what detractors would call a last-ditch sell-out to radio. And yet in classic Madonna fashion, it nails the sense of conflict at the heart of Erotica over one of her most danceable tracks ever, whilst maintaining her artistic vision - she notably insisted on including the flamenco guitar interlude, which, radio be damned, even gets a full, glorious airing on the single edits.

“I can’t help falling in love
I fall deeper and deeper the further I go
Kisses sent from heaven above
They get sweeter and sweeter the more that I know”

Though pop is filled with similarly lovestruck choruses, it’s not hard to see where Deeper and Deeper’s particular gay appeal stems from - it may be about a man she loves, but it deliberately reads like an argument for homosexuality as individual nature, not a choice. Whilst Celebration may have inadvertently summed up Madonna’s entire ethos with “If it feels good, then I say do it”, Deeper and Deeper - evoking Like a Prayer - even suggests God himself endorses homosexuality. Why resist what feels natural, and above all, right?

“Someone said that romance was dead
And I believed it instead of remembering
What my mama told me
Let my father mold me
Then you tried to hold me
You remind me what they said
This feeling inside
I can’t explain
But my love is alive
And I’m never gonna hide it again”

Furthermore, if your parents taught you the values of independence and intuition - “think with your heart, not with your head” - why not take that advice, even if they disapprove of homosexuality? As the song’s tension builds, it takes on an almost I Will Survive-like combination of celebration and determination (minus the camp), whether or not it’s directly about coming out. And though Madonna never quite had the vocal power to truly be one, her final, infinitely triumphant “never gonna hide it again” is one of her greatest diva moments on record.

So Deeper and Deeper was the obvious choice, the reassuringly danceable follow-up single to the controversial Erotica - yet it only peaked at #7 on the Hot 100. Why did such a predestined-sounding hit never quite make it big? Looking at the 1992/93 charts, R&B and ballads dominate - Whitney Houston’s cover of I Will Always Love You spent a mind-boggling 14 weeks at #1 - and the Erotica album was not so blatantly of its time, though it holds up far better than most of the time-stamped music of its era. With Madonna carving out her own, not-entirely-hip musical path, her star power alone was simply not enough (and never again would be), especially with the public backlash against her during the Sex era. It’s telling that in a time where Mariah Carey reigned, Madonna would have to conform to top the charts (albeit while producing excellent music) - the R&B-styled Take a Bow was her second-last ever #1 in 1995.

YouTube / Dailymotion

Director: Bobby Woods

The video for Deeper and Deeper is not so much deliberately uncommercial as totally unconcerned with MTV airplay. Perhaps the bigger problem is that although its treatment is a clear tribute to the ’60s and Andy Warhol, with Madonna as Edie Sedgwick (ironically, without eyebrows), it’s difficult to find any meaning in the visuals, or story in Madonna’s wanderings. There’s something impersonal about the whole affair - Madonna doesn’t lipsync, and barely looks at the camera bar a photoshoot scene - but for once, her makeover doesn’t feel like yet another extension of her personality. Nor is she reincarnating Edie Sedgwick like she did Marilyn Monroe in Material Girl; it feels like another person altogether, someone clearly enjoying herself, but hard to relate to. Seeing her under disco balls doesn’t make us feel like dancing. Nothing wrong with mildly baffling music video treatments that bear no resemblance to their songs (Madonna has many!), but this one just wasn’t compelling enough to work.

Erotica

richaod — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:28:00 +1000

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.

This Used to Be My Playground

richaod — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:08:00 +1000

Albums: Barcelona Gold (1992), Something to Remember (1995)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Shep Pettibone

The main reason why Madonna’s non-album tracks are so forgettable is, simply, because her instinct for self-editing is generally so spot-on. Naturally, there are plenty of examples from periods where she was overflowing with great material - but for each Into the Groove or Crazy for You, there are ten Supernaturals or It’s So Cools. Of course, good songwriting is more about an artist’s highs than the consistency of their every bootleg-recorded breath; no one is that good. So in retrospect, an offcut from Erotica - beloved by some, yet deeply inconsistent - from the soundtrack to a women’s baseball film doesn’t sound too promising. But at the time, as her first new material in over a year, This Used to Be My Playground became her tenth number one on the Billboard charts.

Despite being one of the last songs recorded during the Erotica sessions, This Used to Be My Playground stylistically had nothing to do with the then-upcoming album; its MOR balladry instead foreshadowed Madonna’s Something to Remember era three years later. Strangely, likely due to issues Warner had with Columbia/Sony distributing the film, its initial release was not on the soundtrack to A League of Their Own, but the entirely forgotten Olympic-inspired Barcelona Gold compilation.

Though Madonna’s previous musings on innocence in Live to Tell and Oh Father expressed a dark, yet incredibly complex range of emotions, This Used to Be My Playground simply wallows in the past. It’s not necessarily more sentimental than heartfelt, but there’s no sense of resolution, none of her trademark determination - just grey skies as far as the eye can see. As an artist who’s always steadfastly refused to look back or mythologise her own achievements, the self-indulgent nostalgia of “don’t hold on to the past/well that’s too much to ask” is thoroughly unconvincing. Shep Pettibone’s slightly plodding production - complete with stock pop-ballad strings and a synth-glockenspiel intro - only serves to push the song into borderline schmaltzy territory; something Madonna should always have been above. But she had much better songs up her sleeve - when literally half her singles that decade were to be ballads, she damn well needed them.

Director: Alek Keshishian

The video is nothing special - someone flips through a photo album as Madonna sings from the various pictures inside. Everyone involved is on autopilot; though the video obviously strives to depict snippets of memories, the scrapbook motif makes the budget look low, and Madonna static.

For once, Madonna’s cinematic ambitions here far outweigh her musical interpretation; A League of Their Own is, simply, a great film. Its solid, witty screenplay was exactly what Madonna’s last four major efforts lacked - and she held her own amongst the ensemble cast, her performance and the film her most critically acclaimed since Desperately Seeking Susan.

Given the prefeminist World War II setting, it’s easy to see why Madonna was eager for the part - with the men away and a female baseball league in demand, it was the perfect opportunity for women to express their talent in a traditionally male role whilst, most importantly, remaining themselves. Despite the patronising nature of making women’s baseball appealing, from etiquette classes to their impractical, skimpy uniforms, the players impress even where they don’t succeed. Dramatised or not, the film forces the audience to admit that the women of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League were, though not always intentionally, true pioneers - both athletic and feminist.

“What if at a key moment in the game, my uniform bursts open, and oops - my bosoms come flying out? That might draw a crowd, right?”
“You think there are men in this country who ain’t seen your bosoms?”
- Mae Mordabito (Madonna) and Doris Murphy (Rosie O’Donnell), not entirely acting

Madonna is cast perfectly as “All the Way” Mae Mordabito, something of an exaggeratedly promiscuous, 1940s baseballer version of herself - alongside Rosie O’Donnell, their brash charisma is a highlight of the first half of the film. But just as importantly, she knows her place despite her top billing, downplaying her role to make way for a fierce Geena Davis and a wonderfully over-the-top, immediately pre-fame Tom Hanks as manager. Director Penny Marshall offsets the action by bookending it with scenes of a fifty-years-later Hall of Fame reunion - though often derided for their sentimentalism, there’s nonetheless a truth in athletes (or anyone, really) wanting to relive their glory years. But as a now-and-then team picture fades into the credits over the strains of This Used to Be My Playground, one can’t help but feel the film ends on the wrong note. As with most sports movies, the point should be the glory of being, triumphing in the moment - but without the nuance of the past two hours, the final impression portrays it as a nostalgic period piece; saddened in the present, hence not quite uplifting enough. You’d think there’d be no one better than the real-life Madonna Ciccone to teach the value of that lesson.

After eight months writing Iconography, I present to you the track-by-track review of the ENTIRE...

richaod — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 04:07:00 +1000

After eight months writing Iconography, I present to you the track-by-track review of the ENTIRE Immaculate Collection… I can only hope it’s as rewarding to read as it was to write.

See you soon in 1992!

Rescue Me

richaod — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:46:46 +1000

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.

Justify My Love

richaod — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 04:34:00 +1100

Albums: The Immaculate Collection (1990), Celebration (2009)
Songwriters: Lenny Kravitz/Ingrid Chavez, additional lyrics by Madonna
Producers: Lenny Kravitz/André Betts

“But, if you really want to raise eyebrows, try telling a Madonna fanatic that you’re a huge fan of her Dark Era, a period that runs roughly from the release of The Immaculate Collection in 1990 to her disastrous appearance on “Late Night With David Letterman” in 1994. This was when she tackled the politics of sexuality head-on — whether it be with the “Justify My Love” video, or the “Sex” book, or the Erotica album — and got down and dirty (the “Deeper and Deeper” video, the “Body of Evidence” movie) and basically wasn’t afraid of offending anyone ever. “
- James Montgomery of MTV on the Celebration video

After eight years and eight Billboard number ones, tens of millions of records sold and, finally, undeniable critical acclaim with her most personal album yet… For a Madonna with no perceptible end to her creative or commercial peak in sight, where do you go? How better to demonstrate the potential for true, unreined artistry in the mainstream than to seductively whisper your way to number one?

But the fact that Justify My Love is also the highest-selling video single of all time reinforces the role of controversy in her work - largely to generate dialogue and keep her in the public consciousness, but also what her fans understate and her critics overemphasise: to sell records. And despite MTV’s banning of the Justify My Love video, the resulting debate over censorship and video single sales - the first of their kind - served to continue their symbiosis with Madonna in the long run.

“You put this in me
So now what, so now what?”

In a way, Justify My Love is controversial for the wrong reasons. Each individual sound in the minimally produced song - the warm yet never-quite-resolving synth strings, the mind-bending drum loop, the generous reverb on Madonna and Lenny Kravitz’s backing vocals - is perfectly executed. The lyrics are poetic, sensual; possibly the most direct, genuine expression of desire Madonna ever put to record. But they weren’t exactly her expressions.

Our culture has matured beyond viewing popstars who don’t necessarily write all their own material as some sort of discrediting fact. Were the Beatles or Aretha Franklin in any way diminished as artists for including so many covers on their albums, or Thriller worse because Rod Temperton wrote it? Pop music is about interpretation through performance - as vital an aspect of artistry as anything else. But Justify My Love’s original writer never intended for Madonna to record it. Ingrid Chavez - a poet, Prince collaborator and actress (for a part Madonna rejected) in his widely panned film Graffiti Bridge, originally wrote it as a poem, recording the song in its initial form during a studio session with André Betts and then-lover Lenny Kravitz. In search of commercial interest, Kravitz wrote the chorus and other instrumentation, eventually bringing the song to Madonna of his own accord. Kravitz convinced Chavez to sign a document granting her no songwriting credit, with a mere 12.5% of publishing royalties for the song’s airplay - but at least invited her to the studio whilst the final mixes took place. She was stunned by the quality of Madonna’s vocals, stating:

“She did an amazing job of copying my vocals. I couldn’t even tell the difference between my voice and hers. It was exactly like the demo. She got the honesty of the song, the intense emotion and the real strong desire. Smart move on her, she’s always been smart. She’s always taken that thing that was unique, that would take her to another place musically.”

“Maybe [Madonna] just felt like she didn’t want another woman to take credit for the creative style of the vocal… Madonna’s voice when she speaks is not the voice on that song. She’s copying the rhythm and the way I speak and the quality of my voice which is probably my greatest gift.”

Chavez sensed an unspoken awkwardness from Madonna, who may or may not have been fully aware of Chavez’s role in effectively ghostwriting the song. Her feelings lay dormant until after the song’s release when Prince, recognising her vocal style, warned of the copycat accusations that could arise upon the release of her own, similarly styled solo album. When a journalist finally confronted her directly, she admitted she wrote the song - the article sparking widespread condemnation of Madonna’s “wholesale thievery”. Chavez ended up suing only Lenny Kravitz, reaching an out-of-court settlement where she received credit and another 12.5% of disc royalties on subsequent pressings.

“Basically I think Lenny wanted to say it was him who wrote the song and she interpreted it. I don’t regret Madonna doing it. I just felt betrayed, especially when it was so intimate. It wasn’t her dreams, it wasn’t her desire.”

Kravitz had also, discovering the beat by picking the album up from a pile off the studio floor, sampled Public Enemy’s instrumental Security of the First World as the backbone for Justify My Love without credit - ironically, taking from a group who often sampled and reinterpreted dozens of uncredited songs on single tracks, turning sampling into an art form. Though their producer Hank Shocklee expressed vocal affront via the Young Black Teenagers’ answer record To My Donna, the lack of credit for the sample was generally accepted - or perhaps ignored, either in the face of its incredibly effective reappropriation, or due to the much further-reaching issue with Ingrid Chavez. The latter raises many questions - though the song itself is undeniably brilliant, does attempting to pass it off as belonging to someone else diminish our perceptions of the artist? Lenny Kravitz certainly appears to deserve the blame on both counts - yet he also deserves praise for the song’s production.

By suing Kravitz, what did Ingrid Chavez gain in the long run besides further royalties? In a world where the misconception that Madonna does not write her own songs still exists, how many casual listeners are even aware of songwriting credits? Taking that into consideration, Justify My Love is perhaps not so different from Like a Virgin - another song where Madonna skilfully adopted (some would say imitated, or stole), and likely surpassed the vocal style on the original demo. Madonna’s performance should not be underestimated - for example, compare her version to Vita and Ashanti’s cover for The Fast and the Furious soundtrack - in an act of extreme irony, Madonna denied permission to release a cover with Vita rapping her own original verses, allowing only the direct cover’s release. As a result, it fails completely at both interpretation and imitation - its stilted, read-aloud delivery over the exact same beat effectively renders it mediocre karaoke.

In the end, though Ingrid Chavez is entitled to feel betrayed, her lack of regret is the most mature response possible. No matter what it did to/for her, the song’s far greater exposure through Lenny Kravitz and Madonna was ultimately a victory for the art, if not the original artist. And we’re all a little bit more fortunate for it.

Producer: Phillipe Dupuis-Mendel
Director: Jean-Baptiste Mondino

The video takes place in the rather intimate setting of a hotel room, instead of the song’s sweeping “kiss you in Paris/hold your hand in Rome” visions. But on the other hand, where the song is an intimate exchange between lovers, the video shares Madonna and then-boyfriend Tony Ward’s oddly surreal experience with a number of androgynous, contorted figures - perhaps reflecting the very public context in which anything pop or celebrity-related, however personal, is viewed and dissected. The initially burned-out Madonna meets her lover in a hotel corridor, he submits, she takes control and delays his pleasure as the onlookers become participators… and rejuvenated by the end, the message is simple: sex (or at least Madonna’s idealised view of it) as an equalising force is empowering, rewarding, self-improvement. As always, Madonna lends weight to the marginalised - depicting elements of S&M in such an open, unselfconscious manner asserts that there’s nothing wrong with experimentation, going beyond the vanilla.

Where Madonna presented the sexual openness of her Erotica period as a borderline crusade, interwoven with a tongue-in-cheek irony not so decipherable to the mainstream, Justify My Love can more easily be taken and understood at face value. As a result, it is easily her clearest, most resonant message regarding sexuality. Feminism was never so seductive.

“When someone goes through that financial barrier, they don’t do it to be rich, they have a desire to be exceptional. The lady isn’t just a businesswoman, she has a deep ingrained musical sense.”
- Stuart Price commenting on the Drowned World Tour, but really, applicable to anything Madonna

Infamously, MTV banned the video, more due to its suggestive themes than its very brief nudity - apparently they found “the whole tone” too threatening to even consider playing it late at night. Madonna’s impassioned appearance on Nightline to defend the video is essential viewing - it’s still inconceivable to imagine a popstar cutting through the record companies and press releases to make such a public, vocal statement. Though she acknowledges the resulting video single sales with a wink - “lucky me” - and though she deems MTV an “important marketing tool”, it’s entirely Madonna-as-artist, explaining that as the necessary visual expression of the song, the video was shot without concerns over censorship or an intention to sell it. With Nightline as a legitimising platform, she expresses two main concerns: firstly, and less overtly, that “businesswoman” is as much a compliment as an artistic dismissal. Her conviction and sincerity are convincing - though combined with, secondly, her agenda to promote public discussion of censorship, she elicits even more of a reaction from conservative detractors.

Without wishing to paraphrase excessively, she touches briefly on other important issues:

Scenes of her chained in the Express Yourself video were “by my own volition”, consensual

A belief in labelling, not censorship

An ironic suggestion that MTV should perhaps have a “violence hour” and a “degradation to women hour”

That the aforementioned are potentially far more harmful to children than onscreen presentations of consenting adults expressing affection via sex.

That adult themes are something parents should be contextualising (probably with more difficulty than she imagines) for their children

“You want me to promote… my up-and-coming, button-pushing product?”
“The point is, will you continue to explore sexuality in the fashion that you have; will you try to carry it a little further?”
“Absolutely - well, I don’t know, I can’t predict what I’m going to feel artistically - I don’t think anyone can, but it is a very important issue to me, and I’m sure I will be dealing with it more in the future.”

Madonna’s vision of the future… how telling. And yet, another 19 years later, in a victory for practicality, Justify My Love appears with breasts censored on her Celebration: The Video Collection DVD. I refuse to suggest there’s a single conclusion to be drawn here.

Hanky Panky

richaod — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:26:31 +1100

Album: I’m Breathless - Music from and Inspired by the Film Dick Tracy
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Patrick Leonard

How do you follow a career watershed, let alone one of the greatest singles of all time? In the case of Vogue, by not changing your plans one bit. It would’ve been bleedingly obvious - to Madonna, to Warner, to everyone - that Hanky Panky is nowhere near Vogue’s league, but more importantly, it’s stylistically different enough that its inferiority is not the listener’s only impression. Either way, the song was successful enough to reach number 10 on the Billboard charts, and number 2 in the UK, even if it’s now been eclipsed by everything around it.

Hanky Panky has nothing to do with sexual innuendo. No, innuendo involves hinting at the sexual - Hanky Panky’s “I just want you to spank me” come-ons are just blatant. The rather detailed (yet like the film and ’30s society, somehow PG) fantasies pile irony upon irony to the point that no one could possibly mistake it for a literal statement by Madonna. Though it works as a depiction of Breathless Mahoney’s blonde-bombshell archetype, it’s also self-parody, ridiculing the public’s oft-exaggerated perception of Madonna as some hypersexual nymphomaniac - that is, if statements like Oh Father weren’t enough. The song’s still somewhat novelty - but it at least helps that the lyrics are set to a rollicking, energetic take on swing.

Overall, I’m Breathless does succeed as a character study - an extension of the Breathless Mahoney character’s nightclub repertoire, it’s a near-total immersion in pre-rock and roll period music few popstars (Christina Aguilera aside) would attempt, let alone pull off convincingly. But though it works as a recreation of ’30s style, there’s nothing especially compelling about the album. He’s a Man - effectively Dick Tracy’s own Bond theme - and the Breathless-on-her-deathbed Something to Remember are hugely underrated, but offset by the mind-numbing, unlistenable camp of I’m Going Bananas and Cry Baby. The rest - even Stephen Sondheim’s contributions - doesn’t really stick. Singing from Breathless Mahoney’s perspective holds the album together conceptually, but the problem is that Madonna herself is a more interesting character - playing a lesser archetype’s role, it comes off as mere posturing. Madonna’s jaw-dropping performance of Sooner or Later at the 1991 Oscars is proof - free of Breathless’ shadow, and armed with a far more dynamic arrangement and vocal delivery, she instead aims for the heights of Marilyn Monroe, and practically outdoes her. Its ambition is everything I’m Breathless wasn’t - though the album in itself is a huge step outside the comfort zone of pop, its strict adherence to period authenticity makes it, in the end, not ambitious enough for a Madonna album.

(Sooner or Later, live from the 63rd Academy Awards)

Hanky Panky didn’t have a music video - not that any treatment would’ve worked anyway - instead, the studio version of the song was apparently dubbed over not-on-YouTube live footage from Toronto. The Blond Ambition performance has strangely minimal choreography - though expanded upon slightly on the Re-Invention Tour, the song’s now lost whatever relevance it had. And sure, it’s performed surprisingly well by a 46-year-old Madonna, but the irony of using the song’s original arrangement on a tour named after her greatest ability was somehow lost on her.

(live from Yokohama on the Blond Ambition Tour)

Vogue

richaod — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:37:00 +1100

Albums: I’m Breathless - Music from and Inspired by the Film Dick Tracy (1990), The Immaculate Collection (1990), I’m Going to Tell You a Secret (2005), Celebration (2009)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Shep Pettibone

vogue /voʊg/
–noun
1. Popular acceptance or favour; popularity:

March 20, 1990: Madonna releases Vogue; until Hung Up tops the charts of over 45 countries in 2005, it is her most successful single worldwide.
April 12-August 5, 1990: Madonna embarks on her Blond Ambition World Tour, playing 57 shows in Japan, North America and Europe. Widely considered one of the most iconic tours of all time, its combination of religious and sexual imagery also courts controversy when the Pope calls for a boycott of her performances in Rome.
May 22, 1990: I’m Breathless - Music from and Inspired by the film Dick Tracy is released, featuring Madonna originals alongside songs by famed musical theater composer Stephen Sondheim. It sells over five million copies worldwide, and Sondheim wins an Academy Award for Best Original Song for Sooner or Later.
June 30, 1990: Dick Tracy finally hits cinemas after years in development. Warren Beatty directs, produces and stars as the titular character; Madonna has a supporting role as nightclub singer Breathless Mahoney. Despite mixed reviews, the film wins three Oscars between seven nominations, and is a commercial success.
November 13, 1990: The Immaculate Collection, Madonna’s first greatest hits compilation, is released. It goes on to become one of the highest-selling albums in history, with over 30 million copies sold worldwide.
May 10, 1991: Truth or Dare (known outside the U.S. as In Bed with Madonna), a film documenting Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour, is released, becoming the sixth-highest earning documentary of all time.

Vogue is, amongst many, many things, the sound of a woman on top of the world. But there’s no sense of arrival, no self-congratulatory platitudes; in fact, not one “I” in the entire song. No, what makes Vogue her crowning glory is that it is entirely empowering - both her most refined, universal “express yourself” call to her audience, and a true tribute to her predecessors, yesterday’s icons. Yet even without a single mention of Madonna herself, it’s still very much about her - for the true measure of her achievements in seven years of fame is that no one else could have convincingly written, sung or performed Vogue whilst coming off as even more of an icon than the Hollywood giants mentioned.

The embodiment of “pop” in every sense of the word, Vogue is also a celebration of the entire concept of popular culture and its power to move people, both literally and figuratively. For what is the greater art - an epic that touches a few people profoundly, or a brief, fleeting moment that reaches the entire world? Madonna would answer with disregard - having proven over and over that complex artistic statements and zeitgeist -level popularity can go hand in hand.

“Look around, everywhere you turn is heartache
It’s everywhere that you go
You try everything you can to escape
The pain of life that you know…”

The cultural backdrop upon which Vogue (both song and dance) was built was not an especially happy time. The late ’80s was particularly devastating for many of Madonna’s most dedicated fans in the gay community, and the deaths of close friends, especially her dance teacher Christopher Flynn and artist Keith Haring, made AIDS a very personal tragedy. Her response was to include safe sex educational inserts with the Like a Prayer album, and to dedicate the first Blond Ambition date in New York to Haring’s memory, donating all proceeds to AIDS charities. But the most anyone could do to help would never have been enough.

“When all else fails and you long to be
Something better than you are today
I know a place where you can get away
It’s called a dance floor
And here’s what it’s for, so…”

Her artistic response, however, varied - though Spanish Eyes was a poignant, sympathetic prayer for the suffering, Vogue urges the listener not to dwell on it. LGBT magazine Advocate may have deemed “Madonna’s dance tracks… a necessary escape that was nearly transcendental during an era when our community was seeing more than its share of heartbreak and horror”, but while the archetypal modern depiction of dance may be that of clubbing in various levels of inebriation, dance to Madonna has never merely been about escapism. Stemming from her classical training, it represents first and foremost a form of self-improvement and artistic expression - confessions on a dance floor, not hedonistic partying. Madonna offers an empathy through dance, an emotional resolve that goes beyond mere escapist entertainment - leave that to other pop tarts. Great art exists to reflect upon, to empower the person experiencing it - and hence, Vogue cannot turn a blind eye to the suffering and hardships in life. If anything, they make the best of times even more glorious in contrast. She once sang “forget about the bad times” - but here, it’s “look around”. Don’t ignore them.

The utter perfection of Vogue’s title becomes even more apparent when considering its musical applications - though hardly the first house-influenced song to hit the mainstream, Shep Pettibone’s beats breathed new life into the drum machine after its omnipresence during the ’80s. Though that sound, itself a product of the trends of its time, imprinted itself irremovably on the pop of the next few years - heard everywhere from Saint Etienne to C + C Music Factory - the rest of Vogue is inimitably unique. Such minute-long, breathlessly anticipatory intros are virtually outlawed in pop - and with the out-of-nowhere rap and soaring final chorus, the song is peak after peak of the pure elation Madonna so consistently delivered in the ’80s. Vogue ushered in the ’90s with an unshakeable confidence that’s odd in hindsight, considering the fallout from the Erotica period that followed. But perhaps Madonna knew she’d by then taken dance-pop joy and her popularity to the limit. With her one musical consistency, the desire to never repeat herself, maybe it was best to close the first chapter of her career with a bang, and move on, whatever the cost.

2. Something in fashion, as at a particular time:

Having been originally written as a mere b-side to Keep It Together (but universally recognised by Warner executives as deserving more), Vogue is often cited as being out of place amongst Madonna’s Dick Tracy contributions on I’m Breathless. But as far removed as its house beats are from the authentically jazzy period pieces, their overall aims of glorifying pre-rock ‘n’roll-era imagery are similar. In fact, Dick Tracy is a film utterly obsessed with such style (perhaps to the detriment of its plot) - its unique visual presentation remains loyal to the original comics whilst at the same time being unlike anything else seen in cinema. Vogue aims for the same kind of retro; a tribute to the fashions of yesterday through a modern lens (courtesy of technological advances), with one major difference - Vogue doesn’t just imitate the 1930s. Revivalism without reinterpretation is inevitably inferior to the original - and Vogue was utterly current, a cultural high point of how retro should be done; not a recreation, but a celebration of the past.

“Greta Garbo, and Monroe
Dietrich and DiMaggio
Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean
On the cover of a magazine

Grace Kelly; Harlow, Jean
Picture of a beauty queen
Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire
Ginger Rogers, dance on air

They had style, they had grace
Rita Hayworth gave good face
Lauren, Katherine, Lana too
Bette Davis, we love you

Ladies with an attitude
Fellas that were in the mood
Don’t just stand there, let’s get to it
Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it
Vogue”

It’s populist. Superficial. Style over substance. A passing fad. Talentless. Artless. It promotes sexual promiscuity and moral deviance amongst today’s easily influenced youth.

Those are all criticisms that’ve at one point been made of Madonna, pop music in general and many of the above stars. In such a context of cultural superiority complexes, Vogue becomes a statement of defiance, a defence of the mainstream as a delivery for the farthest-reaching, most broadly affecting of art. The rap effectively canonises the greats of Hollywood’s golden age; proof in hindsight that fame justified by talent sticks, and gross critical underestimations do not. Only (ironically) the most superficial could fail to draw parallels - for who else had the stardom, the cultural influence to have such a generous tribute serve as their own coronation? Such names hardly towered over Madonna as early as 1990, let alone twenty years later. On the other hand, Madonna is still too divisive a figure to (perhaps ever) be viewed so fondly by all of popular culture, but it’s just possible that - with Lauren Bacall sadly the only one still living - she has surpassed their fame. But that’s beside the point - with the immeasurable contributions of so many greats to the cultural iconography, everyone wins.

“I think that at the end of the day, people remember authenticity. They remember what’s true, and the rest falls by the wayside. They’ll remember what comes from someone’s heart.”
- Madonna, Rolling Stone (2009)

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness”
- John Keats, from Endymion (1818)

To have incredible style is to have substance. For that and much more, Vogue suggests that they will be remembered.

–verb
To dance by striking a series of rigid, stylized poses, evocative of fashion models during photograph shoots.

MTV / YouTube

Director: David Fincher

Though Madonna had well and truly mastered the art of storytelling in the music video by Like a Prayer’s release, Vogue is just as compelling without one. Watch it 20 times and you’ll still notice new details, facial expressions, shots that last only a handful of frames - watch it 50 times and you still won’t be able to recreate the choreography. The visual performance is, of course, where the dance truly comes to life - and Madonna is as generous with the video as with the song, allowing her future Blond Ambition dancers much of the screentime. Vogue is as much a showcase for their incredible talent as for the complex art of voguing itself; not just a dance, but a lifestyle for practitioners of ball culture, where the dance originated.

Best known via its depiction in the 1991 documentary Paris Is Burning, ball culture was practised by a scene populated by the marginalised - largely poor, black/Latino and gay. The ballroom competitions themselves involved “walking”, model-style and usually in drag, as a kind of performance art - with the aim to be as convincing as possible. Their status as social outcasts, survivors banded together as “houses” or “families” (often due to rejection by their actual, homophobic parents) led to voguing as a form of aspiration. Though a tribute to fashion and models, the most popular of figures, it aims to elevate the performer via those poses to something better than they are. Madonna’s video does exactly that - she, the very definition of popularity, puts complete unknowns performing a fundamentally weird-looking underground dance in the mainstream spotlight. Yet, dressed impeccably in timeless suits, their radiant star quality nearly approaches hers. As much as it should ideally fit the song’s everyone-is-a-star theme, they nonetheless got there due to their exceptional talent. Yet as (mostly) gay dancers performing a gay dance, their place in Vogue is also the heart of Madonna’s enduring appeal to the marginalised:

“At a time when other artists tried to distance themselves from the very audience that helped their stars to rise, Madonna only turned the light back on her gay fans and made it burn all the brighter… As long as she delivered what we came to expect—a soundtrack that gave us hope and allowed us, in our more somber moments, to believe that there was a place where we could be better than we were today—we continued our devotion.”
- Steve Gdula, of Advocate

Naturally, the other side to Vogue’s black and white is Madonna’s own presence. Whilst the dance was current, many of Madonna’s shots pay tribute to classic images - such as the Dietrich-esque close-ups, or her portrayal of Horst P Horst’s Mainbocher Corset, bringing the still photo to life. Significantly, the one section where she doesn’t share screentime is during the rap, which consists solely of close-ups of her embodying utterly total confidence, even as she invokes her predecessors’ names. It’s as if she dares you to think any less of her, with the monochrome ensuring a level playing field - viewed in the same way they once were, with the same sense of awe.

Madonna’s return to the MTV Video Music Awards in 1990 was perhaps her single greatest television performance. The incredibly complex choreography - done in authentic French period dress - is as far removed from the writhing Like a Virgin as humanly possible. It’s her equivalent to the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, or Michael Jackson at Motown 25 - a expression of such pure, unique talent it renders even the lipsyncing (as with MJ) irrelevant. But there may just be a message in there, too - her drawing of parallels to Marie Antoinette shows that Vogue is truly universal.

And yet the final word must be that in relation to Madonna’s overall career, Vogue is a single pose in a lifetime of choreography. It may be her legacy, but it cannot summarise her more than any other song; the only thing it represents is the extent of the highs a true cultural icon can scale. “Fame” and “celebrity” aren’t worth much anymore, but Madonna, arguably the most famous woman in the world, has truly earned hers.

Keep It Together

richaod — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:22:00 +1100

Album: Like a Prayer (1989)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Stephen Bray

As the final single from Like a Prayer, Keep It Together - like Oh Father, unreleased in the UK - never quite managed the zeitgeist-level impact of the album’s first three singles. For where True Blue felt more like a collection of massive, individually brilliant singles, the Madonna on Like a Prayer subdued her larger-than-life persona in service to the more consciously sequenced music. Even Keep It Together, one of the outright catchiest tracks, didn’t sound quite like a radio smash, and perhaps as a result, it took a good two months from its release on the 30th of January, 1990 to peak at #8 on the Billboard charts - only to be swallowed whole as Vogue became something of a cultural phenomenon.

Musically, Keep It Together is pure funk - though very much its own song, it was a less mellow tribute to Sly & the Family Stone, to the extent that Madonna would sing a full verse of their classic Family Affair on the 10-minute version that closed each Blond Ambition performance. Along with Express Yourself, it was her final collaboration with Stephen Bray - so it was natural that they’d mature beyond drum machines for the more complex sounds of pre-disco black popular music. However, the single remix does opt for a more current sound with more piano and synthesised beats, as the album version would’ve sounded rather incongruous on pop radio at the time.

At its core, Like a Prayer is an album about relationships - the spiritual, the romantic, the parental, and on Keep It Together, the familial. Perhaps the most plainly autobiographical lyric Madonna would ever write, it’s practically her life story - from her crowded, oppressed childhood to the even more crowded loneliness of stardom. Through all this, there’s still something fundamentally accepting, sympathetic about her brothers and sisters, who shared her formative experiences of love and loss. But she doesn’t idealise them, either:

“When I look back on all the misery
And all the heartache that they brought to me
I wouldn’t change it for another chance
‘Cause blood is thicker than any other circumstance”

But in practice - and more so for the pre-motherhood/Kabbalah Madonna, her actions sometimes spoke louder than words. The above lyrics from Keep It Together effectively sum up her entire relationship with brother Christopher Ciccone, always her closest, most artistically linked sibling, but also the person she cast the greatest shadow upon. From taking dance classes together with Christopher Flynn, to backup dancing in her track dates and Lucky Star video, from dressing and directing her live shows to designing her houses, his life was always defined by his famous sister - to the extent that he found his final independence, rather ironically, in writing his autobiography Life with My Sister Madonna. It’s a depressingly honest read - though very much maligned by certain optimistic fans for his accounts of mistreatment by Madonna’s hand, he admits as much that his resulting life as something of a hanger-on was much better off for her achievements and assistance. And in dedicating The Immaculate Collection to Christopher by his nickname “‘The Pope’, my divine inspiration” - one would hope Madonna acknowledges him in kind.

(Family Affair/Keep It Together live from Japan on the Blond Ambition Tour, complete with bizarre British accent)

The idea of family - literally, and through Madonna’s apparent mothering of her dancers - is central to Truth or Dare (known outside the US as In Bed with Madonna), the 1991 film chronicling the Blond Ambition Tour. To call it a documentary would be wrong - for the mere presence of director Alek Keshishian’s black-and-white cameras created an observer effect, where Madonna would play to the cameras. Hence, there’s little of the honesty on the Like a Prayer album to be found, as the film presents her entire onscreen life as performance art - the dare is the truth. This explains many of the film’s more surreal moments - like her infamous fellating of an Evian bottle, or the simulated sex games with her dancers - but many of the more ordinary scenes are just as put-on. Calling it “the best acting of her whole career”, Christopher Ciccone’s book sheds much light on her less overtly contrived interactions - how brother Marty and childhood friend Moira McPharlin would never have been allowed backstage without cameras, or how he would have waited until after the show to inform her of the Canadian police’s threat to arrest her over obscenity charges. One of the truly sincere moments is Madonna’s tribute to her father, where onstage after the Detroit show, she claims “I worship the ground that he walks on”, and sings Happy Birthday to him with the crowd. On the other hand, the strangest scene comes from visiting her mother’s grave - though the devastatingly honest Promise to Try provides the soundtrack, it’s entirely contrived for the cameras, and perhaps the audience’s sympathy. Christopher looks on with an expression somewhere between bemused and utterly furious; he later wrote “that my sister used my mother’s grave as a movie location, her death as the impetus for her performance, wounds me deeply.”

Overall, Truth or Dare is compelling, entertaining, but highly questionable viewing - perhaps it says a lot that three of her dancers later sued for the film’s supposed invasion of privacy, fraudulent depiction of their private lives and resulting emotional distress. It also created a rift between Madonna and then-boyfriend/Dick Tracy co-star Warren Beatty, who summed up the movie perfectly with the quip that “she doesn’t want to live off-camera”. Personally, I vastly prefer the genuine sincerity of her 2005 Re-Invention Tour documentary I’m Going to Tell You a Secret - though the format is basically the same, the rampant egotism of Truth or Dare’s Madonna at 32 has given way to a 45-year-old at peace with herself and the people around her. Indeed, much of this stems from her family - her beautiful children Lola and Rocco, and her somewhat comically depicted polar-opposite husband Guy Ritchie. Though it’s a shame that relationship didn’t last, I get the feeling she as usual has no regrets - she wouldn’t change it for another chance. Just as the hardship of her childhood molded her into the driven, disciplined personality determined to succeed, her motherhood transformed the self-centered figure into a better, more whole person.

“It’s not easy having a good marriage - but I don’t want easy. Easy doesn’t make you grow. Easy doesn’t make you think.”
- Madonna on Guy Ritchie, in I’m Going to Tell You a Secret

Dear Jessie

richaod — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:48:00 +1100

Album: Like a Prayer (1989)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Patrick Leonard

The question I believe everyone asks themselves upon hearing Dear Jessie for the first time is “…why?” If the greatest sex symbol (and so much more) of the ’80s wanted to prove once and for all her mettle as a serious adult artist, why did she write and release a kids’ lullaby? Why, on Like a Prayer, was it sandwiched between the album’s purest pop song and its most serious, heart-wrenching ballad? And why was it released as a single at all, let alone Madonna’s final single of the 1980s?

Dear Jessie was originally inspired by Jessie, Patrick Leonard’s daughter - though the idea and most of the music was likely his, how its collaboration and recording with Madonna came about remains a mystery. Though the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is always mentioned as a reference point, to me the overall feel is closer to Disney’s iconic Fantasia - perhaps referenced by Madonna’s Minnie Mouse ears on the single cover - albeit with the colours flipped around, the general sense of darkness removed. In the sense that Dear Jessie was intended as a lullaby to a young girl, it works fine, but the “pink elephants and lemonade” imagery that makes up the song is just gratingly cutesy to adult ears. The same goes for the music, which is so bright and major-key it’s saccharine - but at least the composition and fluttering string arrangements are complex enough to make the song an interesting, maybe even a rewarding listen.

So standalone, the song achieves what it aims for - but why its inclusion on Like a Prayer? Compared to Promise to Try, Madonna’s powerful, bittersweet dedication to her motherless childhood self, Dear Jessie comes off as both musically weaker and insincere escapism coming from a woman who’s lived the fact that childhood is not always innocence and happily-ever-after. And though the segue between the two songs helps, putting Dear Jessie right before Oh Father practically invites listeners to think less of the prior track. But in asking why, one has to consider that Dear Jessie was written for a child - and that Madonna would certainly never have wished her own hardship on anyone else’s, let alone her own. Though she had good intentions, one wishes the song wasn’t so jarring as to detract from the flow of the overall album. To hear her write truly mature, uncontrived music for a child, we’d have to wait nearly a decade for the birth of her daughter Lourdes, the inspiration behind the genuinely affecting Little Star… and another few years for the English Roses, her series of children’s books with morals! (if you’re into that kind of thing)

With all this considered, why was Dear Jessie released as a single - infuriatingly, instead of the far more deserving Oh Father in the UK? Well, it came out on the 10th of December, and perhaps as a result of the end-of-year spirit, it may have tapped into the Christmas market more than the Madonna market, peaking at #5 in the British charts. And though it’s now barely remembered, it was once fitting as an adopted Christmas song, even if it’s no Winter Wonderland.

YouTube - official

The slightly low-budget cartoon music video is, um… appropriate. Hardly MTV fare, and Madonna herself only appears as an animated Tinkerbell knockoff, but the technicolour images admittedly suit the music perfectly - even if for most, they probably turn the whole affair into death by sugar overdose. No wonder it wasn’t included on the Celebration DVD - as much as the fans are completionists, I’m sure nobody really misses it.

(if you’re not convinced and want to feel slightly better about this whole affair, just check out this offensively atrocious Eurodance “cover” of Dear Jessie by Rollergirl, recorded ten years later but already a thousand times more dated)

Oh Father

richaod — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:08:00 +1100

Albums: Like a Prayer (1989), Something to Remember (1995)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Patrick Leonard

“‘Oh Father’ is not just me dealing with my father. It’s me dealing with all authority figures in my life.”
“Does that include God as well? You say, “Oh Father, I have sinned.”
“Absolutely.”
- Madonna, in a 1989 interview with SongTalk

The most undeservingly overlooked song of Madonna’s entire ’80s body of work, Oh Father was by far her least commercial single to date. Its original release as a single in late 1989 (excluding the UK, where it was finally released as the second single from Something to Remember in 1995) took guts - predictably peaking at number 20 on the Billboard charts, it ended her run of 16 consecutive top five singles. But it was a necessary sacrifice - for more than sales or populism, the already-world dominating New Madonna wanted respect no matter the cost.

The first shock is how outright lush the song sounds - the piano alone is beautiful enough, but Bill Meyers’ sweeping string arrangement just soars. In a true departure from precedent, there’s not a single synthesized instrument in the song. The second shock is the sheer rawness of Madonna’s vocal performance - where almost any other singer would have scaled typically balladic heights, she’s restrained, but resolute and infinitely more honest for it.

“It’s funny that way you can get used
To the tears and the pain
What a child will believe
You never loved me

You can’t hurt me now
I got away from you, I never thought I would
You can’t make me cry, you once had the power
I never felt so good about myself”

Whilst Promise to Try, a pledge to her younger self, was about the pain of her mother’s death, Oh Father appears to open with the same childhood anguish, but from her father’s side. Coming from a 30-year-old Madonna, “you never loved me” sounds like an accusation, and the chorus virtually an account of child abuse - but is it really? Or is the act of blaming her father merely “what a child will believe”? The girlish, pure backing vocals in the chorus feel like a memory - nothing like the wounded vibrato of Madonna’s lead vocals.

“Seems like yesterday
I lay down next to your boots and I prayed
For your anger to end
Oh Father I have sinned

You can’t hurt me now
I got away from you, I never thought I would
You can’t make me cry, you once had the power
I never felt so good about myself”

On the other hand, the second verse casts some of the blame on herself. In 1985, she told Time, “I have a lot of feelings of love and warmth for her but sometimes I think I tortured her. I think little kids do that to people who are really good to them. They can’t believe they’re not getting yelled at or something so they taunt you. I really taunted my mother.”

There is a common story that Madonna Fortin Ciccone, exhausted from her treatment for breast cancer, sat down to take a break from looking after her kids - and a five-year-old Madonna Louise Ciccone climbed on top of her, hitting her, demanding attention. But her mother lacked the strength - “I was so little and I put my arms around her and I could feel her body underneath me sobbing and I felt like she was the child.” No doubt the young Madonna had feelings of guilt, however unfounded, over her mother’s death. But on the other hand, the way “Oh Father I have sinned” prefaces the second chorus, it becomes as much an indictment of Catholicism, and perhaps God himself, for taking her mother away prematurely. “I never felt so good about myself” - but was that God’s fault, or her own, or her father’s?

“Oh Father [if] you never wanted to live that way
[If] you never wanted to hurt me
Why am I running away”

As honest as the song may be, there is not much literal truth to be found here. Madonna has never claimed her father intentionally abused her, physically or mentally, but as for the metaphorical? The art ultimately exists for its own sake - it doesn’t have to be literally true to be honest or biographical.

Interestingly, the Like a Prayer album booklet prefaces those two lines with an “if” that’s not on the recording. It’s a minor detail, but left in, it changes Madonna’s faith in her father’s good intentions into a questioning cynicism that would’ve been at odds with the song’s more reconciliatory conclusion.

“Maybe someday
When I look back I’ll be able to say
You didn’t mean to be cruel
Somebody hurt you too

You can’t hurt me now
I got away from you, I never thought I would
You can’t make me cry, you once had the power
I never felt so good about myself”

That “maybe” is as cautious as forgiveness gets - she knows it’s true, but she doesn’t quite feel it in her heart yet. Essentially, Oh Father concludes with the understanding that the trauma of her mother’s death, subsequent guilt and her repressive Catholic upbringing weren’t truly her father’s fault - in a way, all three stemmed from God himself, a higher Father. But she never quite points the finger; and when she finally sings the last choruses in full, she knows “you can’t hurt me now”. It’s a bitter Madonna, but one who’s now at peace.

MTV / YouTube

As with most of Madonna’s more personal, biographical efforts, Oh Father has a fairly literal visual interpretation of the music. The black-and-white, wintry look draws inspiration from the grand, archetypal cinema of Citizen Kane - and more than any of her other videos, there’s something truly cinematic about the moody low-key lighting. There’s an incredible attention to detail - from her mother’s death and funeral (the sewn lips representing her silence, a true story), to having three separate actors with uncanny resemblances to her father Silvio Ciccone, to recurring themes like the scattered pearl necklace. Most remarkable is how it blurs the past and present - the adult Madonna comfortably observes from the fringes of her childhood memories, and vice-versa towards the end, where she and her father cast the shadows of their arguing younger selves. Most significantly, she seems to take on the spirit of her own mother, the older Madonna, at the bedside of her younger, 20-something father. She delivers her final forgiveness with a kiss, whilst her present-day bond with her father goes unspoken - they simply share the memory and love of her mother. This was somewhat true of their real-life relationship as well - when asked by MTV’s Kurt Loder if her father had seen the video, Madonna replied, “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if he’s seen it. I’m kind of afraid to call him up and ask him.”

Oh Father is absolutely one of Madonna’s greatest works, and crucial to understanding her psyche both as an artist and a person. But despite all this, it seems to warrant little mention in present recaps of her career. Celebration seems content to portray most of her career as a party, defining her greatest songs as hits more than anything else. But why wasn’t it even on the supposedly completionist DVD? Really, the Madonna of today can do whatever she likes - unlike the Madonna who was once compelled to prove herself as a serious artist. It’s a shame that Oh Father doesn’t have a place in the canon of her body of work, because it certainly deserves it - its exclusion is selling herself short on both artistic and personal levels.

Cherish

richaod — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:38:00 +1100

Albums: Like a Prayer (1989), The Immaculate Collection (1990), Celebration (2009)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Patrick Leonard

“Don’t underestimate my point of view…”

As an album, Like a Prayer is often lauded for its incredible diversity - but rarely is it remarked upon how plain odd its sequencing is. This is an album that delights in its jarring transitions - the way it goes from the divorce and domestic violence of Till Death Do Us Part to the sunny, entirely optimistic Cherish within only three songs would be utterly baffling if they weren’t pulled off so well. To call Like a Prayer Madonna’s “divorce” or “religious” album, as it is so commonly labelled, would be to ignore songs like Cherish - which, however contradictory, are a big part of Like a Prayer as a whole. Instead, call it her most personal album - one where Madonna shows her true complexity as an artist by portraying practically the entire range of human emotion.

Cherish is certainly the most outright pop song on Like a Prayer, but its origins lie in the girl-group sound Madonna had been pursuing since Like a Virgin. But where Shoo-Bee-Doo felt cliché, True Blue simply shone - and Cherish takes the style to its final conclusion and greatest heights. It’s the feelings of a woman shedding all the baggage of past failures and relationships for a pure, instinctive infatuation - but one that’s never blind to the need for something lasting, “more than just romance”. Though songs like Vogue and Ray of Light still had the feeling of boundless elation that made so many of her ’80s singles great, such statements of optimism as Cherish were something she’d literally never again attempt. Madonna’s recent Rolling Stone interview shed some light on her present feelings:

“The songs that I think are the most retarded songs I’ve written, like ‘Cherish’… end up being the biggest hits. ‘Into the Groove’ is another song I feel retarded singing, but everybody seems to like it.”
- Madonna, Rolling Stone 2009

Fair enough - one can’t blame her for seeing their optimism as her own youthful naïveté. But she still sings Into the Groove, reinterpreting it mercilessly on the Sticky & Sweet Tour, and Cherish makes for a brilliant transition to the title track on Celebration. Whatever her personal feelings, it’s hardly fanservice when the songs themselves are that great.

MTV / YouTube

Herb Ritts, the man responsible for the True Blue album cover, along with many of Madonna’s most iconic images, had at some point actually become a punchline for photographic style over substance.

“In the advertising industry, there was a joke that lazy or desperate art directors would say: ‘I’ve got an idea, Herb Ritts!’, when they couldn’t come up with anything original.”
- via an article on True Blue’s cover from the excellent blog Sleevage

But just as Madonna’s huge mainstream appeal doesn’t imply a lack of artistry, nor did the sheer glamour of Ritts’ photography detract from the incredibly evocative nature of his portraits. Though he had no experience in film, Madonna somehow roped him into directing her video for Cherish, and the results are one of the purest distillations of his signature style. Despite, or perhaps because she wears a swimsuit only revealing by 1920s standards, Madonna’s toned figure is as sexy as ever as she rolls around in sand and frolics with mermen. And though shot entirely by Ritts himself on a handheld camera in freezing weather, the blue-tinged monochrome of the beach is nothing but bright and sunny. With none of the extended metaphors of her last two videos, Cherish is just an incredible visual spectacle, but it does it so well that it’s nearly faultless.

(the making of Cherish, from an interview with Herb Ritts - R.I.P.)

Express Yourself

richaod — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:21:00 +1100

Albums: Like a Prayer (1989), The Immaculate Collection (1990), Celebration (2009)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Stephen Bray

“Come on, girls! Do you believe in love? ‘Cause I got something to sing about it, and it goes something like this…”

N.W.A., the seminal hip-hop act and pioneers of gangsta rap outrage, have a lot more in common with Madonna than you’d think… that is, besides both having classic 1989 singles called Express Yourself. When N.W.A.’s version called for rappers not to hold back, to forget the censorship pop music demands, they might as well have been rapping about Madonna - for who else could successfully funnel counterculture and controversy into the confines of a #1 single? Her take on Express Yourself is an insistent denial to anyone who ever took her mock-Material Girl image at face value, and one of the clearest, most inclusive feminist messages ever put to song.

Madonna’s brand of sex-positive feminism is true equality in that it acknowledges men - with no possible accusations of man-hating, any objections can be blamed on the insecurities of domineering macho types. Though she uses every bit of her iconic status to call on women to “make him express himself”, the song’s title, Express Yourself, is also an appeal to male listeners to prove they deserve the women they’re with. “Long-stemmed roses are the way to your heart, but he needs to start with your head” - not the other-way-around double entendre, for material gifts are one thing, but intelligence and empathy go a long way. It perfectly reinforces Madonna’s oft-misinterpreted sexual politics - firstly, that to be desired is empowering, and secondly, that a visible, free-spirited sexuality can be for one’s own sake, and not imply a come-on to any man that’ll have her. As she’d soon whisper on Justify My Love, “poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another” - and of course, the same goes for women. The heart of the song isn’t a series of demands towards men, but a celebration of womanhood - beautiful, empowered, self-sufficient, but partial to a partner who really can “lift you to your higher ground”… mutually.

Madonna’s original roots may have been in disco, an essentially black form of music, but Express Yourself turns time back to the late ’60s, a perfectly authentic tribute to soul if there ever was one. The album version’s horn section, effortlessly bouncy bassline and generous backing vocals make it a Respect-level anthem for the 1980s, with the difference that Express Yourself (despite having some of Madonna’s strongest vocals) could actually be sung along to. However, Shep Pettibone’s 7” remix was released as the single and video, and included on both The Immaculate Collection and Celebration. With most of the band replaced with synthesisers and house beats - the kind that’d be explored more fully the subsequent year on Vogue - it lacks the album version’s depth, though it’s a little more danceable, more commercial and still excellent nonetheless.

MTV / YouTube

The video for Express Yourself is really the start of Madonna’s Blond Ambition phase - the queen taking place on her throne, revelling in the attention, but always shining the light back onto her subjects. Ever since Material Girl, her ability to pay tribute to the icons before her time and not steal from, but reinterpret them, was much of what cemented her own timelessness. Express Yourself effectively takes the surreal industrial imagery of Fritz Lang’s classic film Metropolis and spins it into something else altogether. It puts Madonna at the top, the epitome of the successful career woman - stunningly beautiful, totally feminine, but also able to dominate in traditionally male roles - as shown by the contrast between her usually curvy appearance and that tense dance in an oversized tuxedo. She oversees a bunch of almost-as-beautiful male factory workers, but while they work, exercise and engage in the traditional competitive male form of conflict resolution - fighting - one man aspires to a little more. Instead of taking part in the macho cockfighting, he looks after Madonna’s adventurous black cat, giving him the balls to take the elevator straight to her bedroom and seduce her. The way I see it, his disregarding of “traditional” masculinity, and his empathy symbolised by the cat are proof of his worth as a lover, a partner - and perhaps Madonna’s crawling to lap up a bowl of milk shows that she is the cat? Throw into the mix a creepy suited observer (her husband? the boss?) and his wind-up horn section and you have a work of art every bit as metaphorically complex as Like a Prayer. And you have to give her credit for gender equality, as always - rather than reducing the female sexuality on show, getting half-naked male models to work out on MTV was a pretty effective way to even out all the eye candy on display. A classic in every sense of the word.

Like a Prayer

richaod — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:25:00 +1100

Albums: Like a Prayer (1989), The Immaculate Collection (1990), I’m Going to Tell You a Secret (2005), Celebration (2009)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Patrick Leonard

How strange that a work as immense as Like a Prayer begins with guitar by none other than Prince, the consummate pop artist - and almost immediately, the sound of a door slamming shut. In that single second of sound lies a symbolism that is both entirely fitting - Madonna enclosing herself in stridently spiritual feelings, discarding the past - and entirely unsuitable - for surely art this distinctive does nothing but open metaphorical doors? Like a Prayer is a near-six minutes of reconciled contradictions; where most artists say one thing and mean it, Madonna speaks with a myriad number of connotations - each one completely intentional, completely true.

Essentially, the most resonant, transcendent moments in Madonna’s career have been where her music, lyrics, video, image and public perception align in a way that allows her to, for a brief point in time, embody the concept of the song or album itself. Though their musical brilliance is undeniable, they are not so much songs as cultural experiences inseparable from the visual and emotional associations they carry.

Where Like a Virgin both flouted and winked at Madonna’s Catholic roots, Like a Prayer is its inverse - the reverent atmosphere feels like the more mature sacred to Like a Virgin’s playful profane. But the truth lies in between; the religious context allows Madonna to be more subversive than ever before, elevating the romantic sexual experience to that of a spiritual epiphany. On the surface, some would see it as her repenting at confession, disowning her past behaviour, but if anything, Like a Prayer in fact justifies her sexuality. This process of unification is really what she’d been doing all along; with the Virgin Mary’s name reclaimed by the sex symbol of a whole generation, perhaps one of her feminist aims was to shatter the Madonna-whore complex at the heart of the religious patriarchy?

The sheer density of Like a Prayer’s lyrics is stunning - Madonna uses the brevity of pop lyrics to great effect by fitting so many associations into each phrase. Lines like “When you call my name, it’s like a little prayer” refer to the Catholic reverence of her namesake like literally no other artist could, and “I’m down on my knees, I wanna take you there” - both a position of prayer and a suggestion that she wants to give as much as she receives - truly make the sacred and the profane inseparable. At the song’s core is the concept of “la petite mort” - French for “the little death”, a reference to the post-orgasmic state of bliss that borders on the transcendent. One theory goes that in that state of creation, removed from the worldly and material, such pleasure is where we are closest to God - similarly to the idea of prayer as conference with God. My interpretation of Like a Prayer is essentially that Madonna views love, taken to its most intimate point, as an experience so natural and overwhelming it borders on evangelizing. Make of it what you will.

And I’ve barely touched on the music, which is as conflicting and brilliant as every other aspect. Despite having arguably the single best use of a gospel choir in all of popular music, theirs is a Protestant form of expression, not Catholic - but it’s also Madonna being as racially and musically inclusive as ever to the point of stepping out of the vocal spotlight for much of the song. The atmosphere, as established by Prince’s (uncredited) guitar, Guy Pratt’s jumpy bass and in particular the massive choir and church organ is truly unique - few songs have ever managed to be both funky and expansively epic. Patrick Leonard is arguably Madonna’s most consistent collaborator, and on Like a Prayer, their immense ambition pays off. To quote Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine, “‘Like a Prayer’ climbs to heights like no other pop song before it—or after.”

Controversy: the first sign of a cultural event. Madonna received $5 million for her endorsement of Pepsi - firstly appearing in the “Make a Wish” commercial and extending to the company’s sponsorship of her next tour. But upon seeing Like a Prayer’s full music video, Pepsi executives pulled the advertisement, attempting to remove their brand’s association with the “inevitable” of outrage they knew would result. It was only ever aired twice, which is a shame - for what now seems like an excellent, surprisingly uncontrived bit of cross-promotion would then have been utterly mind-blowing, considering it was the song’s world debut. Indeed, the images contrasting Madonna at the height of her success with a younger, dreamy version of herself are genuinely touching. Though nowhere near enough people saw the ad for it to make an imprint on the public consciousness, any publicity was good publicity. Madonna probably gained more from its cancellation, if anything - she kept the $5 million advance, and historically, the song is undiluted by any commerciality, having lost any associations with Pepsi in the eyes of the public.

(This excellent 1992 article runs through the series of events as only one who lived through them could.)

MTV / YouTube

And what a video it turned out to be. In the present day, we’re too far removed to feel the full force of the reactions - but in 1989, many viewed it as completely sacrilegious in both its adoption and subversion of Catholic imagery. As usual, this was the result of misinterpretation, a superficial reaction to the images and not their intended meaning. But in a way, it’s hard to blame the conservative outcry - though the video is stunning on a purely visual level, the out-of-order narrative it presents requires multiple viewings to understand, though it is all the more rewarding for it. Madonna herself explains the chronological order of events best:

“A girl on the street witnesses an assault on a young woman. Afraid to get involved because she might get hurt, she is frozen in fear. A black man walking down the street also sees the incident and decides to help to woman. But just then, the police arrive and arrest him. As they take him away, she looks up and sees one of the gang members who assaulted the girl. He gives her a look that says she’ll be dead if she tells. The girl runs, not knowing where to go, until she sees a church. She goes in and sees a saint in a cage who looks very much like the black man on the street, and says a prayer to help her make the right decision. He seems to be crying, but she is not sure. She lies down on a pew and falls into a dream in which she begins to tumble in space with no one to break her fall. Suddenly she is caught by [an African American woman] who represents earth and emotional strength and who tosses her back up and tells her to do the right thing. Still dreaming, she returns to the saint, and her religions and erotic feelings begin to stir. The saint becomes a man. She picks up a knife and cuts her hands. That’s the guilt in Catholicism that if you do something that feels good you will be punished. As the choir sings, she reaches an orgasmic crescendo of sexual fulfillment intertwined with her love of God. She knows that nothing’s going to happen to her if she does what she believes is right. She wakes up, goes to the jail, tells the police the man is innocent, and he is freed. Then everybody takes a bow as if to say we all play a part in this little scenario.”
- Madonna (via a brilliant in-depth essay by Shmoop)

What’s astonishing is that the video manages to add more layers of meaning to the song, turning it into something of a parable as it likens the black man, punished for giving assistance, to a saint. Though he was in fact meant to be Saint Martin de Porres, Madonna and director Mary Lambert would have been well aware that his character would be interpreted as a black Christ, with the outrage towards that suggestion highlighting a modern racial inequality. With the breathtaking scene of a fierce-looking Madonna dancing in a field of burning crosses, it’s a little harder to say - perhaps an attempt to reclaim traditionally racist imagery? And finally, Madonna’s act of attesting to his innocence borders on the orgasmically rewarding; her stigmata a possible indication that she is doing as Jesus would, and will be punished for it (not in the video, but for spreading its message in real life).

For the images indelibly burned into the collective cultural consciousness; for the power of its message - for even having a message; and for the sheer fervor of the public response, Like a Prayer has my vote for the greatest music video of all time.

Spotlight

richaod — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:58:00 +1100

Album: You Can Dance (1987)
Songwriters: Madonna/Stephen Bray
Producer: Stephen Bray

Spotlight resembles Everybody via Stephen Bray’s more recent drum machine/synth bass sound - Madonna’s roots, but not as flawless as you remember them. It was originally recorded during the sessions for True Blue, though left off the album for obvious reasons. Madonna’s innate ability for quality control is a big part of her success - hence why the majority of her many unreleased tracks are so vastly inferior. Spotlight is no exception, with clunky lines like “When you feel the rhythm, I’ll be by your side/Now you have the power baby, love is on your side” - and it doesn’t help that the melodies are perhaps the most uninspired she’d put to record that entire decade.

The thing is, the Who’s That Girl singles may have been a letdown after the sheer strength of True Blue, but at least they approached Madonna’s music from a slightly different direction. The entire You Can Dance release, however, is and was redundant beyond belief. It was marketed as an album of remixes - and they’re adequate, though heavily dated, not that anyone needed an eight-minute version of Into the Groove in 1987 either. The songs also segue together continuously, but it’s a botched job - despite being in totally different keys, Spotlight and Holiday crossfade into each other without any editing, and clash spectacularly. The promise of an unreleased track may have been quite the selling point, too, but Spotlight is on par with the rest of the release - mediocre.

Despite being more of a stopgap than a serious release, Madonna’s first compilation still sold over a million copies; similarly, Spotlight was only released as a physical single in Japan, but gained enough circulation to appear on Billboard’s Top 40 airplay chart in 1988. They were the last gasp of Madonna the teen idol - by then, an outdated style that she would thankfully never revisit. And good riddance - with Like a Prayer arriving a little over a year later, the music and the self-empowerment message would become vital like never before.

The Look of Love

richaod — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:29:00 +1100

Album: Who’s That Girl (1987)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Patrick Leonard

For a such a commonly titled song, Madonna’s take does at least offer something a little different. Unlike her other contributions to the Who’s That Girl soundtrack, The Look of Love actually sounds like part of the score - Madonna could well be singing over what was previously just the moody character development background synth music apparently present in every film in the ’80s. In the context of the film, even if such a combination is entirely predictable, it’s an ideal accompaniment to the shots of a dejected Louden wandering the streets. But its slow-burn feel means the song is four minutes of not-particularly-intense brooding that never peaks - unlike a ballad. Not one of her more successful singles - despite reaching number 9 on the UK charts, it never saw a US release.

(at 0:27, the song’s appearance in the film, prior to Madonna’s rather stunning change of appearance in one of the film’s more ridiculous settings)

As with Causing a Commotion, there was no music video, but a promo clip of film footage was used in place, as well as the live performance from Ciao Italia - Live From Italy - a more vibrant, dynamic improvement on the studio recording.

Causing a Commotion

richaod — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:53:38 +1100

Album: Who’s That Girl (1987)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Stephen Bray

In2 the Groove. It has to be said - in the same key, with the referential “and get into the groove” lyrics, you can even sing one over the other and they’ll fit together perfectly. The thinly veiled calculation behind Madonna and Stephen Bray essentially rewriting the vastly successful Into the Groove is arguably not as odd as the fact that an entire album, with its more mature sound and image, came between the two songs. Causing a Commotion subsequently feels more like a regression than a sequel - which is perhaps true of the Who’s That Girl era as a whole, but at least the other two singles, though slightly subpar, treaded new ground. With that said, Causing a Commotion is not a bad song at all - but its sheer similarities to Into the Groove mean it’ll always be rightfully heard as the inferior.

(and thankfully it’d seem Madonna learned something from this - Vogue and Deeper and Deeper share a similar relationship, but are far more distinct)

Ironically, Causing a Commotion did lead the way in one aspect - its bassline shares a remarkable similarity to both Vogue and the Shep Pettibone remix of Express Yourself (featured on the video, the Immaculate Collection and Celebration).

(Causing a Commotion opens part 1 of, erm, the entire film - how else are you going to watch it?)

It’s easy to forget the song’s role as the opening theme of Who’s That Girl - and at least in context, it does a great job soundtracking Nikki Finn’s cartoon backstory. It never had an official music video, but the extended, far more energetic live version from Ciao Italia - Live From Italy was used in place.

Who's That Girl

richaod — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:52:00 +1100

Albums: Who’s That Girl (1987), Celebration (2009)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Patrick Leonard

To me, the entire Who’s That Girl era (tour excluded) is one of the few phases in Madonna’s career where she was more regressive than forward-thinking. Though popular enough to warrant inclusion on Celebration (but not on the Immaculate Collection, thankfully), it’s hardly on the level of True Blue’s five deeply consistent singles. The backing sounds closer to Stephen Bray’s co-writes (via La Isla Bonita’s Latin feel) than Patrick Leonard’s own generally moodier compositions - and it succeeds as a movie theme, but not so much at attempting Bray’s more rhythmic style. As effectively quirky as the Spanish phrases, flourishes and bouncy bassline are, whimsical simply can’t compete with the more compelling intensity Madonna delivered for much of the decade. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop Who’s That Girl from becoming Madonna’s sixth US Billboard chart-topper.

Ironically, nor could the overwhelming success of the eponymous song or tour ensure the same for the film. Who’s That Girl is a strange beast - coming after Madonna’s first “serious” acting role alongside Sean Penn in the critical and commercial flop Shanghai Surprise, it was an odd choice considering she needed more than ever to prove herself. It shares many similarities with Desperately Seeking Susan - from Madonna’s impulsive characters to the ludicrously complex plot - but with an awkward screenplay and dialogue that make it instant bait for a critical panning. However, the film’s not short on gags (some unintentional) or personality - playing ex-convict Nikki Finn, Madonna manages to both not derail the film into a vehicle for her real-life persona and make the absurd, grating Noo Yawk squawk of a character into something genuinely endearing by the end. The ’80s excess of Who’s That Girl, though convoluted and at times utterly ridiculous, can be an enjoyable watch provided you check your logic at the door.

NIKKI FINN
Jump! Come on!

LOUDEN TROTT
Are you insane?

NIKKI FINN
I did it, you can do it!

LOUDEN TROTT
You’re a criminal, I’m a tax attorney!

HOWEVER. With no real sense of credibility, Who’s That Girl did little to further Madonna’s reputation as an actress. Fun enough to satisfy its young target audience, but otherwise, the film wasn’t a success on a critical, financial or career level.

MTV

Yet again, the music video has two different Madonnas - Nikki Finn shown in footage from the film, and a more girlish continuation of the oversized tuxedo-wearing Madonna from Open Your Heart. She really just lipsyncs and dances along with some randoms - fun at best, but there’s not much personality on show (and Nikki Finn just looks strange out of context).

La Isla Bonita

richaod — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:41:00 +1100

Albums: True Blue (1986), The Immaculate Collection (1990), The Confessions Tour (2007), Celebration (2009)
Songwriters: Madonna/Patrick Leonard/Bruce Gaitsch
Producers: Madonna/Patrick Leonard

“[Madonna] is super great at bastardizing other people’s heritages in the sexiest, most gap-toothed way possible…”
- Cracked.com: partly true, partly completely inaccurate (mostly amusing)

Though at this stage of her career, Madonna had appropriated/reinterpreted - not copied, of course - the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn’s classicist images before, La Isla Bonita was the first of various times she’d take on an entire culture. La Isla Bonita is the sound of a time and a place as much as it is one of the first Latin-flavoured pop songs to truly enter the Western consciousness. Songwriters Patrick Leonard and Bruce Gaitsch originally offered the song to Michael Jackson, though it was rejected, and probably for a good reason. Madonna’s vocal performance (especially the dreamy backing vocals) necessarily removes the focus from herself to suit the song’s mood in a way that’s hard to imagine MJ pulling off quite as convincingly, incredible talent aside. What makes the song so successful is how effortlessly it creates a Latin feel; despite being as driven by synths and drum machines as much as any ’80s pop song, the acoustic guitar and Cuban drums still make the most lasting impression. It’s both moody and exotic; light but never disposable like Holiday, and incredibly vital for the fifth(!) single and top-five hit from True Blue.

(for anyone still unconvinced of Madonna’s vocal abilities, compare the original to this competent yet entirely robotic cover by singer Alizée, whose version inexplicably reached number two on her native French charts)

La Isla Bonita is an odd nomination for one of Madonna’s most enduring live songs - but aside from the rather flat, slowed-down Drowned World Tour version, the recent re-inventions are all excellent. Turning a mildly elegiac memory as a song into a sped-up international party sounds like a terrible idea, but the Confessions Tour version segues into a percussion/dance breakdown to great effect. Her Live Earth performance takes that direction to its logical(?) conclusion with an unlikely collaboration with Gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, with the Sticky & Sweet Tour version even segueing into the genuine Romani-Gypsy folk song Doli Doli. It says a lot about the skill of the original songwriting, the current arrangements and Madonna’s live performances that it sits so well aside sets full of far more disco/hip-hop/electronic-influenced songs.

MTV / YouTube

The music video is one of Madonna’s most lushly romantic - even if its setting is more streetside than island. It disregards the song’s love story for a greater focus on image that nonetheless fits the song perfectly. As with Papa Don’t Preach and Open Your Heart, Madonna again embodies two different images - a restrained religious girl and an incredibly passionate dancer, she of the jaw-droppingly stunning red flamenco dress. The former stays in her room and sheds a tear watching the outside celebrations, praying at what seems to be a shrine to (dead?) relatives, whilst the latter leaves an apartment with mostly candles as residents to dance with the locals on the street. On one level, it could be Madonna’s commentary on the way religious dedication - separate from spirituality - restricts people’s lives, but it doesn’t condemn, instead treating both characters with equal respect. But as with many of her videos, it gets by on sheer beauty regardless of how conclusively it’s understood.

Open Your Heart

richaod — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:39:00 +1000

Albums: True Blue (1986), The Immaculate Collection (1990), Celebration (2009)
Songwriters: Madonna/Gardner Cole/Peter Rafelson
Producers: Madonna/Patrick Leonard

“Determined” is starting to become a seriously overused word here, but indulge me one last time - for Open Your Heart genuinely represents Madonna’s determination at its strongest. “You make me wanna hang my head down and cry” is her sole nod to the usual self-pity and resentment of unrequited love - but otherwise, the song is a good four minutes of sheer will fuelled by self-assurance, without even a second for indulgences like doubt.

Honestly, the idea that any man in the world would turn down Madonna in her prime, let alone require pursuit on this level, is, well, absurd. But it’s not all about her - for once she’s singing as the Everywoman as much as for herself. Empowerment comes from empathising with; singing along to (though Britney can shut it) Open Your Heart - in contrast, later songs like Express Yourself and Vogue feel more like a call to arms in the sense that Madonna all but commands the listener to empower themselves.

The writing process behind Open Your Heart is particularly interesting - originally written as Follow Your Heart by Gardner Cole and Peter Rafelson for Cyndi Lauper before it found its way to Madonna’s then-manager Freddy DeMann. His request for a female demo was fulfilled by none other than Donna De Lory, Gardner Cole’s ex-girlfriend, which led to both her 20-year on-and-off gig as Madonna’s live backing vocalist and Madonna’s recording of Open Your Heart.

Strangely, in March 1986, Venezuelan singer Melissa released a Spanish version called Abre Tu Corazón three months before the release of Madonna’s True Blue album. It’s instantly recognisable as the same song - though the arrangement, likely the same as the demo, is very different. Comparing the two versions shows a rare insight into the brilliance of Madonna’s contributions - Melissa hams up the vocal delivery a little, but Madonna brings a more nuanced performance, contrasting the husky verses with the passionate choruses. But what really turns the song from decent (and heavily dated) to an instant classic is the far more complex instrumentation - where Abre Tu Corazón is straightforward, Open Your Heart has two separate basslines in different octaves, layers of synth brass and swells, funk guitars along with that distinctive glockenspiel main riff. The driving percussion is especially powerful - with bongos and dead-note strummed guitars below the technical, almost post-punk drumming. It’s one of the single best recorded examples of ’80s, synth-driven production - as complex as it is, it never detracts, only ever propels the song forward.

Though thematically the music may have a fairly simple message, Open Your Heart kicks off a good decade’s worth of deceptively complex Madonna videos, each carrying a myriad number of possible interpretations. The “correct” interpretation, if one even exists, is elusive - buried under the weight of all the images’ and settings’ various associations, none of which Madonna ever suggests unintentionally. For the sheer difficulty of analysing these music videos, I don’t apologise.

Like Papa Don’t Preach, there’s a sense of duality running through Open Your Heart’s video. Madonna first appears as an exotic dancer - but instead of being a vessel for male pleasure, she dances as their superior, with the onlookers reduced to a mere fraction of her vitality and life. And like Material Girl, it’s both homage - this time out-Lizaing Liza Minelli at the start - and personal reinvention. What’s completely new is when Madonna leaves the club in an oversized suit, kissing, dancing and running off with the young boy who unsuccessfully tries to sneak in to watch her. To this day I still don’t understand his role - calling it the stripper’s redemption through a child’s innocence is far too condemning a perspective for Madonna to take. Not to mention that it’s barely obvious how the song relates at all to her already-empowered point of view in the video - perhaps commenting on the men’s ironic inability to open her heart? Regardless of how well it’s understood, Open Your Heart is a fascinating video - and the one that set her standard for many years to come.