FEATURE:
Madonna at Forty
How Holiday Confirmed Her as a Future Icon
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THIS Thursday…
Madonna’s debut album turns forty. It is a huge moment that will be celebrated by fans around the world. There is no anniversary edition or anything especially huge going on because, as we all know, Madonna takes to the stage soon to start her Celebration Tour – one that has been delayed due to her recent hospitalisation. The tour is to mark forty years of Madonna, but I think it is also a chance to mark forty years of the breakthrough song, Holiday. After 1982’s Everybody and the first single of 1983, Burning Up (released on 9th March), Holiday arrived at a very crucial time. Out on 7th September, it came at the very end of summer – or maybe we were in autumn/fall at that point?! Her most confident song to that point, there is something about Holiday that instantly sticks in the mind. One of the things that has always interested me about Madonna is the track order. Sequencing is always a crucial thing for any album. In the case of Madonna, it is a classic album that is beyond fault. I do wonder about the sequencing choices, mind! Everybody ends the album, yet I sort of thing it should be higher up. The rest of the tracks are where they should have been – though, if we are moving Everybody somewhere, then it could nestle between Holiday and Think of Me.
Holiday is the opening track of the album’s second side. It is the perfect spot for it! Rather than go in all guns blazing and have it as the opening salvo, it is the introduction to the second side. Lucky Star opens Madonna. Followed by the epic Borderline, I like the fact a Madonna-penned song opens her debut album (she wrote five of the eight tracks, including Everybody). Many might think an eight-track debut is quite short, yet most of the songs are over four minutes. At a time when Pop music was typically shorter, Madonna was mixing Disco into the blend. Making songs a bit longer and giving them room to breathe and unwind, Holiday is a typical example. It could have been this tight three-minute song. Instead, it runs in at over six minutes! I think that might be one of her longest-ever songs. On a debut album, there is this bravery and huge confidence having a song at 6:08 not only being released as a single (though the 7-inch single was just over four minutes), but also not really giving it a bigger music video. I guess the budget was a bit tight, so it would have been costly making a high-concept video for a song so long. I have always wondered why the video for Holiday has not been remastered. I will end with why I feel Holiday not only came into the world at a crucial time. It also confirmed Madonna as a Pop artist who would soon take over the world! I want to collate some features about the majestic Holiday.
To start things off, I want to source from Wikipedia. A song that dominated the charts and was a massive success in the U.S. and U.K., Madonna has performed Holiday numerous time during her tours. The most recent time she performed the song was in 2016. Covered or sampled by the likes of Kelis and Cassandra Peterson, the song has been acclaimed and celebrated through the years. In 2018, The Guardian ranked it as Madonna’s eighth-best single; Entertainment Weekly placed it third last year; Dig! put it among their top-twenty essential Madonna cuts; Parade placed Holiday seventh in their rundown of the one-hundred greatest Madonna songs. Written by Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens-Crowder, and produced by Madonna’s then-boyfriend John ‘Jellybean’ Benitez, Holiday is a giddy masterpiece:
“Holiday" is a song by American singer Madonna from her self-titled debut album (1983). It was written by Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens-Crowder for their own musical act Pure Energy, and produced by John "Jellybean" Benitez. Hudson came up with the lyrics of the song while watching negative news on television, and together with Stevens-Crowder worked on the music. They recorded a demo, which was turned down by their label Prism Records. Afterwards, Benitez pitched the track and offered it to several artists, including former The Supremes singer Mary Wilson, but it was rejected. Around the same time, Benitez was working with Madonna on her album; after realizing they needed a song for the project, Benitez thought of "Holiday" and approached Hudson and Stevens-Crowder.
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna with John ‘Jellybean’ Benitez in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: David Mcgough/DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Recording for the song took place at New York City's Sigma Sound Studios; although Madonna and Benitez did not want the final version to differ too much from the demo, minor alterations were made in the composition, including the addition of a piano solo, which was done by their friend Fred Zarr. Described as a dance-pop, post-disco song, the lyrics talk about the "universal feeling" of needing and wanting to take a holiday. It features instrumentation from guitars, electronic clapping, a cowbell, and synthesized strings. Initially released as a double-sided single with "Lucky Star" on August, "Holiday" was published by Sire Records as the official third single from the album on September 7, 1983.
Holiday" has received positive reviews since its release. Rooksby deemed it, "as infectious as the plague. One listen and you could not get the damn hook out of your mind". On a similar note, it was described as a "festive, infectious anthem [that] caught fire almost immediately [...] in dance clubs all across the country" by J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of Madonna: An Intimate Biography. Writing on Encyclopedia Madonnica, Matthew Rettenmund referred to "Holiday" as a "prime example of Madonna's reliance on infectious optimism", that has "aged remarkably well". It was considered a "simple song with a fresh appeal and a good mood" by author Mary Cross. For Lucy O'Brien, it is the song that "cemented [Madonna's] style. With its bubbling Latin undertow, crunchy bassand strings, and Fred Zarr's elegant closing piano riff, it's one of her most persuasive numbers". Adam Sexton, author of Desperately Seeking Madonna: In Search of the Meaning of the World's Most Famous Woman (1992), named it a "loping disco ditty" with an "ineffable charm".
To the staff of Billboard, "Holiday" is a "pretty standard dance tune, but [Madonna] has the pipes and presence to make [it] special". On the same vein, Don Shewey from Rolling Stone named it, alongside "Burning Up", simple but clever. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine singled out "Holiday" as "effervescent", and as one of the "great songs" on his review of the Madonna album; from the same portal, Stewart Mason highlighted its "undeniable electronic groove". According to Entertainment Weekly's Jim Farber, "['Holiday'] satisfied both worlds". While Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani deemed it airy, it was referred to as "sparkly" by the Portland Mercury's Mark Lore. From Pitchfork, Jill Mapes applauded the song's "feel-good wiggle", and opined it "helped resituate electronic dance-pop at Top 40’s apex".
While reviewing The Immaculate Collection on its 25th anniversary, the Daily Review's James Rose referred to "Holiday" as a "fairly sappy, empty [...] conventional '80s dance number", with vocals that are "ordinary, even chirpy", and "gidgetish" lyrics. On his review of the 2001 re-release of Madonna, Michael Paoletta from Billboard pointed out that, "such tracks as 'Holiday' [...] remain irresistible".The same opinion was shared by The Quietus' Matthew Lindsay, who also added that it "bubble[s] with joie de vie", and compared it favorably to Kool & the Gang's "Celebration" (1980). A 2012 poll conducted of Rolling Stone readers found the song to be Madonna's tenth best, as well as one of her "most enduring". In another occasion, the magazine named it the singer's 22nd best song. It was named Madonna's ninth and eight best song by Gay Star News' Joe Morgan and Matthew Jacobs from HuffPost, respectively; the latter wrote that, although it didn't reach the Hot 100's top ten, "it's certainly her most infectious song". For The Arizona Republic's Ed Masley, "the production hasn’t aged as well as, say, 'Into the Groove', but the melody? That’s timeless"; he deemed it Madonna's 20th best”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Corman
In 2018, when looking ahead to the thirty-fifth anniversary of one of the most important and best debut albums in music history, the New York Post wrote how Holiday almost didn’t happen. I don’t think many of us can imagine music without it now! Even if the Madonna album was a little bit slow to explode and get into people’s hearts, there was something instantly anthemic about Holiday:
“It’s hard to imagine Madonna’s namesake debut album — which came out 35 years ago, on July 27, 1983 — without “Holiday,” the classic party anthem that became her first mainstream hit and has given people all over the world cause to celebrate on the dance floor. But the song almost didn’t happen: It was a last-minute substitute for another track on her first LP.
“Madonna’s album was finished,” says “Holiday” producer and New York DJ legend John “Jellybean” Benitez, who was dating Madonna at the time and had been hired to do some remixes for her. There was just one problem: Madonna found out that a song she had recorded called “Ain’t No Big Deal” had already gone to disco act Barracuda, so the track was no longer an option. “She wasn’t so thrilled about that,” says Benitez.
With the “Madonna” LP then down to just seven songs, a replacement was urgently needed. “And I had a demo of ‘Holiday,’ so I played it for her, and she loved it,” the producer says.
Benitez, who had remixed “tons of records” but had never produced one from scratch, was given a one-week deadline by Madonna’s label, Warner Bros., in February 1983. “They said, ‘If you could have this song done by next Friday, you can make the album.’ I started on Monday and finished on Friday, and we delivered it.”
And deliver it did: After “Everybody” and “Burning Up” failed to make the Billboard Hot 100, “Holiday” became Madonna’s first single to hit that chart, reaching No. 16. The track also became her first No. 1 dance song (as a double-A-side single, with “Lucky Star”).
While “Holiday” jump-started one of the biggest careers in pop history, the tune was written by ex-spouses Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens-Crowder for their own group, Pure Energy. “I started out playing that chord progression as a ballad,” recalls Stevens-Crowder of the song’s keyboard inception. “But as I kept playing it over and over for a couple of days, I sped it up. And then Curtis came up with that bass line.”
“The whole song just kind of poured out of me,” says Hudson, who came up with the musical arrangement while writing the uplifting lyrics in response to all of the bad news he was watching on TV. “I was like, ‘Man, what’s going on? We need a holiday or something.’ The melody just came to me. I wrote the lyrics in, like, 30 minutes. That’s why I always think of it as a gift from God.”
But Pure Energy’s label, Prism Records, passed on “Holiday” for them. So Benitez, who knew Pure Energy from their performances at the Fun House club where he was resident DJ, offered to shop the song around. “I originally played it for Mary Wilson from the Supremes,” says Benitez. “She liked it, but she wasn’t in love with it.” Then after also pitching the song to the R&B singer Phyllis Hyman and the disco group the Ritchie Family, Benitez found “Holiday” a home with Madonna.
“We were a little nervous at first,” says Hudson about the then-unknown Material Girl recording “Holiday.” “We were thinking of black artists, so it kind of put a whole different spin on it. But once we met Madonna, I knew she was gonna go somewhere. I just didn’t know to what level.”
Hudson played guitar on the final recording of “Holiday,” cut at Sigma Sound Studios in New York. Madonna herself also got in on the instrumental action, playing the cowbell that kicks in early in the song. “It was just sort of like, ‘You got to play something,’ and it worked,” says Benitez, who also added a piano solo by Fred Zarr toward the end of the six-minute track.
Stevens-Crowder — who, as Pure Energy’s lead singer, had done the main vocals on the demo — thought that Madonna made the song her own: “She captured the soul I put into it, but she added her own flavor. She didn’t try to copy it. Madonna did Madonna.”
Because of Madonna’s soulful delivery on “Holiday” and the fact that the song was getting played on black radio, there were those who didn’t realize that the singer was actually white. “Back then, people thought she was black,” says Benitez. “They didn’t know.”
Benitez went on to produce Madonna’s 1985 smash “Crazy for You,” while Hudson also co-wrote “Spotlight,” off Madge’s 1987 remix album “You Can Dance.” It’s the legacy of “Holiday,” though, that truly endures.
“I’ve run into so many people who ‘Holiday’ has had some kind of impact on,” says Hudson. “It defies race, age and all of that stuff.”
Of the song’s iconic status, Benitez says, “It’s amazing to see. Madonna still performs it on her tours, sometimes as an encore. It always gets an amazing reaction. It’s a song that they remember.
And it’s a song whose message is more relevant than ever, 35 years later. Pointing to “the political climate and crazy things that are going on in this world,” Stevens-Crowder says, “We need a holiday today in 2018”.
The final feature I want to highlight is from Dig!. They looked back at the track last year. As they lead, nobody expected the monster success and record-breaking brilliance of Holiday. Considered to be one of Madonna’s signature songs, it shook up and inspired the scene in a year when there was nothing as thrilling and fresh as this in Pop!
“While finishing sessions for her self-titled debut album, Madonna seized on the demo of Holiday, enlisting then boyfriend John “Jellybean” Benitez to produce it and add it to the collection of songs she had already cut with producer Reggie Lucas. It was the first of many decisive moves that would change the direction of her career. “The songs on Madonna were pretty weak and I went to England during the recording, so I wasn’t around for a lot of it,” the singer later reflected. “I wasn’t in control.”
Issued in July 1983, the album proved a slow burn – Everybody and Burning Up had already been released in some markets, gaining traction on the dance listings. With no video being filmed for Holiday, which was issued in the US on 7 September 1983 (its UK release would follow in January 1984), Madonna’s promotion of the track was gruelling: scores of lip-synching appearances on TV shows of the day, including American Bandstand, the UK’s Top Of The Pops and Discoring in Italy. As the single climbed the charts in Great Britain, she made a legendary appearance on The Tube, performing Holiday, Everybody and Burning Up at the Factory Records-owned Haçienda nightclub in Manchester, alongside backing dancers Erica Bell and her brother Christopher Ciccone, who would go on to be the art director on Madonna’s classic Blond Ambition Tour of 1990.
Holiday would become a staple of Madonna’s live shows. It was placed second on the setlist of her debut The Virgin Tour, in 1985, and was heard as recently as the Rebel Heart Tour, which ran across 2015 and 2016. The song’s most famous staging was arguably at Live Aid, where Madonna performed at Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium. That appearance triggered “Madonna Mania” across the globe, igniting the growing hysteria that had been building around the star since the release of 1984’s Like A Virgin single.
Madonna’s record label were quick to seize on the momentum by reissuing Holiday with a new picture sleeve (and as a collectable 12” picture disc) which would see the single soar back up the UK charts to peak at No.2 in the summer of 1985, just behind Into The Groove, the third in what would be an unstoppable run of Madonna No.1s, taken from her first major film, Desperately Seeking Susan. This notable chart double saw the soon-to-be “Queen Of Pop” enter the record books for the first time, becoming the first woman to achieve simultaneous hits at the top of the UK charts in the rock era. The single also did well again across the rest of Europe.
Six years later, Holiday received a third issue in the UK, following the incredible sales of Madonna’s first hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection, and the critical and commercial triumph of the seminal Blond Ambition Tour, which was then concluding its final European leg and featured Holiday in an infamous sequence that got some conservative cities hot under the collar (the Truth Or Dare documentary, aka In Bed With Madonna, reveals how close the singer came to being shut down ahead of the Toronto shows). This time, the single would have to settle for a No 5.peak in the UK, but its place in the history books was secured.
Madonna still recognises the track’s anthemic appeal, and has remained comfortable revisiting it across the years. Now one of the best summer songs, it’s guaranteed that, as soon as the seasons change and the sun comes out, streaming services and radio programmers will return to the track that first got the “Queen Of Pop” noticed”.
I have said how Holiday was released at a crucial time. With Madonna’s eponymous debut out in the world for over a month by this point, she was being heralded as a contemporary queen of Pop. A bold artist mixing in older Disco sounds to a current and exciting Pop blend, Lucky Star was released in the U.K. and Europe a day after Holiday came out in the U.S.. Holiday was first released in the U.K. in 1984, so we got a slightly different order and experience here. I wonder why artists would release different singles in different countries years ago. We don’t really have that now. I guess Holiday needed to come out in America in 1983, to highlight the album and it seemed to a perfect moment to launch one of the standouts from Madonna. Maybe the U.K. market was not as instantly receptive. We got the amazing but slightly less energised Lucky Star. We also got a different visual representation of Madonna. Lucky Star has this more professionally-looking video. Holiday, whilst quite basic, is memorable in its simplicity. Lucky Star hit fourteen in the U.K. I think that Holiday was a seismic moment in Pop. From this promising artist who had released a couple of great singles to that point, Holiday blew Madonna up! We mark forty years of Madonna’s debut album on 27th July. In September, Holiday has its fortieth birthday. I think Madonna will be playing it a lot through her Celebration Tour this year and next. A timeless and utterly thrilling and legendary song, I wanted to use this final Madonna anniversary feature to look at a cut that confidently opened the album’s second side. I can only imagine how exciting and head-spinning it must have been hearing Holiday for the first time in 1983. In 2023, it remains like nothing else! This is a song that showed Madonna was an artist who would soon…
RULE the world!