FEATURE:
Madonna at Sixty-Four
My Favourite Track from the Queen of Pop: The Majestic Take a Bow
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I didn’t intent…
to do a series of features about Madonna ahead of her sixty-fourth birthday on 16th August. I am not doing many, but there were a few things I wanted to explore. One of them is my favourite song of hers. From the 1994 album, Bedtime Stories – one that isn’t considered her best or most essential -, Take a Bow is a sophisticated, emotional, and accomplished song from an artist sounding a million miles away from what we heard in 1992’s Erotica. Many feel her 1994 album was an apology to people after the more explicit and sexual Erotica and the book, Sex. Not that she needed to apologise to anyone. There was a need to create a more commercial album that had hits and was less evocative and provocative than its predecessor. It would take until the follow-up album, 1998’s Ray of Light, until Madonna released something both challenging, deep and true to who she was. Not that Bedtime Stories is a compromise or an album where we do not hear the Queen of Pop shine. It contains some of her best material. My favourite song closes the album. A stunning swansong, Take a Bow is only really marred by its video (where Madonna, looking like a prototype for Eva Perón (who she would play in the 1996 film Evita) is involved in a rough break-up with a bullfighter). I am not sure whether the video was meant to depict Madonna like a bull: something being played with and teased before being tortured and killed. I am a bit uncomfortable that a real bull was used, but the song itself is beyond fault. Stunning songwriting from Madonna and Babyface (who also provides vocals and co-produced with Madonna) has turned Take a Bow into an ageless and sublime song.
Although Stereogum did not rate Take a Bow among Madonna’s best songs when they covered it for their The Number Ones (the single, released in December 1994, went to number one for seven weeks) feature earlier this year, they did provide some interesting context:
“Madonna could tell which way the wind was blowing. For the longest time, this was her superpower. Part of the reason that Madonna maintained her place near the top of the hierarchy for so long was that she could recognize shifts in fashion and aesthetic. She could see those changes coming in real time, and she could adjust her style to meet those changes. Often, Madonna made those adjustments artfully. Sometimes, though, you just need to go out and get yourself a hit. That’s what Madonna did when she made “Take A Bow.”
Bedtime Stories, the album that Madonna released in 1994, was Madonna’s version of a clear, unambiguous commercial move, a blatant attempt to get back in the good graces of the American record-buying public. In the years before Bedtime Stories, Madonna had tested our collective patience. After she reached #1 with the soundtrack ballad “This Used To Be My Playground,” Madonna’s next few artistic statements — the Erotica album, the Sex book, the movie Body Of Evidence — all came off as try-hard attempts to be risqué. Erotica is a pretty good album, but that didn’t really matter at the time. Erotica sold half as much as Like A Prayer, Madonna’s previous album, and it yielded no chart-topping singles. That’s not a career-killing reception, but it’s not great, either.
But the big hit from Bedtime Stories was the one that Madonna made with Babyface, who was the final boss of the Hot 100 in 1994. That’s when Babyface wrote and produced Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love To You,” an absolute monster record that happened to be sitting comfortably at #1 when Bedtime Stories came out. That year was also when Babyface reached his peak as a solo artist, getting to #4 with his tender ballad “When Can I See You.” (It’s an 8.) Madonna loved that song.
When Babyface got the call to meet with Madonna, he was surprised to find that she was a relatively low-key presence with no big entourage. Madonna and Babyface were both pros, and they had a relatively easy time working together. Maybe that was a mutual-respect thing. Madonna had made a lot of songs with a lot of collaborators, but she hadn’t worked with a superstar producer on a #1 hit since she and Nile Rodgers made “Like A Virgin” together a decade earlier. Madonna drove to Babyface’s house, and they wrote a couple of songs together.
Madonna wrote most of the “Take A Bow” lyrics to a track that Babyface had already written. The song is all about an affair with an actor who blows a relationship by taking Madonna’s narrator for granted: “All the world is a stage/ And everyone has their part/ But how was I to know which way the story’d go?/ How was I to know you’d break my heart?” The whole actor bit isn’t necessarily literal; it could be a metaphor for a partner who’s way too concerned with personal image. But given Madonna’s own dating history, there’s always been speculation that the song is about a particular movie star.
Specifically, rumor has it that “Take A Bow” is a song for Madonna’s ex Warren Beatty. At least in theory, this could mean that Beatty directly inspired two #1 hits that came out decades apart from each other, “Take A Bow” and Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.” That’s a pretty wild swing for one man. Of course, by the time “Take A Bow” came out, Madonna’s dating life had taken its own twists and turns; she’d already had public flings with Dennis Rodman and future Number Ones artist Tupac Shakur. That’s some serious range. Madonna ain’t got no type.
Although Take a Bow only reached sixteen in the U.K., the chart success she experienced in the U.S. and around the world turned her into a record-breaking artist. Why I love Take a Bow is that it is a different sound. A sweeping and mature ballad with Madonna’s voice near its peak, this was a perfect response to anyone who had written her off, condemned her as being too explicit and controversial or felt that she was too attention-seeking. Showing her heart and soul throughout Take a Bow, it ended an album that deserves more praise. Indeed, the next studio album (four years later) opened with Drowned World/Substitute for Love. Both are bookends that have this sort of core of Madonna embracing and wanting love rather than fame and attention. An artist who was not to be taken for granted or written off. I want to end with a Wikipedia article that combined critical reaction to Take a Bow. Her strongest single since, arguably, Like a Prayer in 1989, Take a Bow was met with a lot of respect:
“Upon release, "Take a Bow" received general acclaim from critics. Peter Calvin from The Advocate praised the lyrical flow of the song, saying that the "effect is truly heartbreaking. The song... shows that ultimately Madonna... is just like you and me". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic referred to "Take a Bow" as "tremendous", listing it as one of the best songs from Bedtime Stories and stating that it "slowly works its melodies into the subconscious as the bass pulses". He goes on to say that it "offer[s] an antidote to Erotica, which was filled with deep but cold grooves". Louis Virtel, from TheBacklot.com, placed "Take a Bow" at number 27 of his list "The 100 Greatest Madonna Songs".
He wrote; "Madonna's most successful single to date is a melancholic evisceration of a lover's artifice, and its hopeless plain-spokenness makes it one of the finest examples of 90s balladry". J. D. Considine of The Baltimore Sun stated that the song, about "innocent romance" has a "gently cascading melody". In his review of Bedtime Stories, Billboard's Paul Verna called it a "holiday feast for Top 40, rhythm crossover, and AC". Reviewing the single, Billboard gave the single a particularly positive review; "The follow-up to the top five smash 'Secret' [...] is as perfect as top 40 fare gets. This single has a delightful, immediately memorable melody and chorus, engaging romance-novel lyrics and a lead vocal that is both sweet and quietly soulful. A lovely way for [Madonna] to kick out '95".
PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Demarchelier
In his 2011 review of Bedtime Stories, Brett Callwood of the Detroit Metro Times called the song "spectacular". Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Chuck Arnold called it "one of the most elegant, most un-Madonna-sounding things she’s ever done". While ranking Madonna's singles in honor of her 60th birthday, Jude Rogers from The Guardian placed the track at number 38, calling it a "compellingly cinematic orchestral drama". Matthew Jacobs, from The Huffington Post, placed it at number 19 of his list "The Definitive Ranking Of Madonna Singles", calling it her "most poetic ballad". Bianca Gracie from Idolator noted it as a "timeless ballad", adding that it "has warm strings and soaring harmonies with a hint of tragedy from Madonna’s somber vocals, which makes the end result all the more beautiful."
Music writer James Masterton said it is "arguably one of Madonna's best records for ages". Pan-European magazine Music & Media deemed it "an elegant ballad, a perfect alternative to prosaic lullabies." They added, "The intro could be mistaken for jingle bells and fits in well with the season." A reviewer from Music Week gave it five out of five, calling it "an old-fashioned ballad, full of sweeping violin and vaguely oriental sounds. A natural single for Christmas." John Kilgo from The Network Forty described it as "sexy and smooth”. NME's Alex Needham, opined it was a "gorgeously constructed song by any standards". NPR Multimedia senior producer Keith Jenkins gave a positive review of the song, stating that it "washes over you and gets your blood boiling. You may not walk on water after hearing it, but you may want to get your focus back by walking on broken glass".
Ahead of her sixty-fourth birthday on 16th August, I wanted to feature Madonna in a few pieces. Take a Bow, released in 1994, arrived in the world when Britpop was raging here, and orchestral Pop/R&B was perhaps not as dominant as other genres. A lot of people did not expect a song like this to come from an artist who, a couple of years previously, was stirring up a lot of attention because of more sexually challenging and risqué songs. It is the mark of a true great that she weathered undue criticism and judgement and reacted with a song as beautiful as this (from an album that more than holds its own). Bedtime Stories has many highlights. I don’t think there is a finer song than Take a Bow. A song whose title could very much apply to Madonna. Such a gorgeous and heartbreaking gem, Take a Bow is a song that always elicits a reaction from me. It is a phenomenal Madonna track that proves…
WHAT talent she has!