FEATURE:
Madonna at Sixty-Five
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: Herb Ritts
Five Underrated Studio Albums Worth Exploring
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THIS is my final feature…
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: Herb Ritts
about Madonna ahead of her sixty-fifth birthday on 16th August (Wednesday). I have compiled a couple of Madonna-related playlist recently. There is debate as to which of her albums are the best. Some would say 1989’s Like a Prayer or 1998’s Ray of Light. Early work like her eponymous 1983 debut and 2005’s Confessions on a Dancefloor are up there. I think some of her later work gets overlooked. That said, even early-period albums such as Like a Virgin (1984) and True Blue (1986) are not as treasured, discussed and explored as they should be. It is a subjective measure, but below are the five Madonna solo albums I think are underrated. I have also looked at critical lists and there is some crossover. In terms of not getting all the high praise they deserve and deeper cuts being ignored, in chronically order, below are five studio albums from the Queen of Pop that deserve a second look. As she turns sixty-five on Wednesday, I wanted to publish one more feature about…
THE tremendous and iconic Madonna.
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Like a Virgin
Release Date: 12th November, 1984
Labels: Sire/Warner Bros.
Producers: Nile Rodgers/Steve Bray/Madonna
Standout Tracks: Angel/Like a Virgin/Pretender
Review:
“Madonna had hits with her first album, even reaching the Top Ten twice with "Borderline" and "Lucky Star," but she didn't become a superstar, an icon, until her second album, Like a Virgin. She saw the opening for this kind of explosion and seized it, bringing in former Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers in as a producer, to help her expand her sound, and then carefully constructed her image as an ironic, ferociously sexy Boy Toy; the Steven Meisel-shot cover, capturing her as a buxom bride with a Boy Toy belt buckle on the front, and dressing after a night of passion, was as key to her reinvention as the music itself. Yet, there's no discounting the best songs on the record, the moments when her grand concepts are married to music that transcends the mere classification of dance-pop. These, of course, are "Material Girl" and "Like a Virgin," the two songs that made her an icon, and the two songs that remain definitive statements. They overshadow the rest of the record, not just because they are a perfect match of theme and sound, but because the rest of the album vacillates wildly in terms of quality. The other two singles, "Angel" and "Dress You Up," are excellent standard-issue dance-pop, and there are other moments that work well ("Over and Over," "Stay," the earnest cover of Rose Royce's "Love Don't Live Here"), but overall, it adds up to less than the sum of its parts -- partially because the singles are so good, but also because on the first album, she stunned with style and a certain joy. Here, the calculation is apparent, and while that's part of Madonna's essence -- even something that makes her fun -- it throws the record's balance off a little too much for it to be consistent, even if it justifiably made her a star” – AllMusic
Key Cut: Material Girl
Erotica
Release Date: 20th October, 1992
Labels: Maverick/Sire/Warner Bros.
Producers: Madonna/Shep Pettibone/André Betts
Standout Tracks: Fever/Deeper and Deeper/Rain
Review:
“IT TOOK MADONNA ten years, but she finally made the record everyone has accused her of making all along. Chilly, deliberate, relentlessly posturing. Erotica is a post-AIDS album about romance — it doesn’t so much evoke sex as provide a fetishistic abstraction of it. She may have intended to rattle America with hot talk about oral gratification and role switching, but sensuality is the last thing on the album’s mind. Moving claustrophobically within the schematic confines of dominance and submission, Erotica plays out its fantasies with astringent aloofness, unhumid and uninviting. The production choices suggest not a celebration of the physical but a critique of commercial representations of sex — whether Paul Verhoeven’s, Bruce Weber’s or Madonna’s — that by definition should not be mistaken for the real thing. It succeeds in a way the innocent post-punk diva of Madonna and the thoughtful songwriter of Like a Prayer could not have imagined. Its cold, remote sound systematically undoes every one of the singer’s intimate promises.]
Clinical enough on its own terms when compared with the lushness and romanticism of Madonna’s past grooves, Erotica is stunningly reined in; even when it achieves disco greatness, it’s never heady. Madonna, along with coproducers Andre Betts and Shep Pettibone, tamps down every opportunity to let loose — moments ripe for a crescendo, a soaring instrumental break, a chance for the listener to dance along, are over the instant they are heard. Erotica is Madonna’s show (the music leaves no room for audience participation), and her production teases and then denies with the grim control of a dominatrix.
Against maraca beats and a shimmying horn riff, “Erotica” introduces Madonna as “Mistress Dita,” whose husky invocations of “do as I say” promise a smorgasbord of sexual experimentation, like the one portrayed in the video for “Justify My Love.” But the sensibility of “Erotica” is miles removed from the warm come-ons of “Justify,” which got its heat from privacy and romance — the singer’s exhortations to “tell me your dreams.” The Madonna of “Erotica” is in no way interested in your dreams; she’s after compliance, and not merely physical compliance either. The song demands the passivity of a listener, not a sexual partner. It’s insistently self-absorbed — “Vogue” with a dirty mouth, where all the real action’s on the dance floor.
Look (or listen) but don’t touch sexuality isn’t the only peep-show aspect of this album; Erotica strives for anonymity the way True Blue strove for intimacy. With the exception of the riveting “Bad Girl,” in which the singer teases out shades of ambiguity in the mind of a girl who’d rather mess herself up than end a relationship she’s too neurotic to handle, the characters remain faceless. It’s as if Madonna recognizes the discomfort we feel when sensing the human character of a woman whose function is purely sexual. A sex symbol herself, she coolly removes the threat of her own personality.
Pure disco moments like the whirligig “Deeper and Deeper” don’t need emotional resonance to make them race. But the record sustains its icy tone throughout the yearning ballads (“Rain,” “Waiting”) and confessional moods (“Secret Garden”). Relieved of Madonna’s celebrity baggage, they’re abstract nearly to the point of nonexistence — ideas of love songs posing as the real thing. Even when Madonna draws from her own life, she’s all reaction, no feeling: The snippy “Thief of Hearts” takes swipes at a man stealer but not out of love or loyalty toward the purloined boyfriend, who isn’t even mentioned.
By depersonalizing herself to a mocking extreme, the Madonna of Erotica is sexy in only the most objectified terms, just as the album is only in the most literal sense what it claims to be. Like erotica, Erotica is a tool rather than an experience. Its stridency at once refutes and justifies what her detractors have always said: Every persona is a fake, the self-actualized amazon of “Express Yourself” no less than the breathless baby doll of “Material Girl.” Erotica continually subverts this posing to expose its function as pop playacting. The narrator of “Bye Bye Baby” ostensibly dumps the creep who’s been mistreating her, but Madonna’s infantile vocal and flat delivery are anything but assertive — she could be a drag queen toying with a pop hit of the past. Erotica is everything Madonna has been denounced for being — meticulous, calculated, domineering and artificial. It accepts those charges and answers with a brilliant record to prove them” – Rolling Stone
Key Cut: Erotica
Bedtime Stories
Release Date: 25th October, 1994
Labels: Maverick/Sire/Warner Bros.
Producers: Madonna/Dallas Austin/Babyface/Dave Hall/Nellee Hooper
Standout Tracks: Survival/Secret/Human Nature
Review:
“AFTER THE DRUBBING she has taken in the last few years, Madonna deserves to be mighty mad. And wounded anger is shot through her new album, Bedtime Stories, as she works out survival strategies. While always a feminist more by example than by word or deed, Madonna seems genuinely shocked at the hypocritical prudishness of her former fans, leading one to expect a set of biting screeds. But instead of reveling in raised consciousness, Bedtime Stories demonstrates a desire to get unconscious. Madonna still wants to go to bed, but this time it’s to pull the covers over her head.
Still, in so doing, Madonna has come up with some awfully compelling sounds. In her retreat from sex to romance, she has enlisted four top R&B producers: Atlanta whiz kid Dallas Austin, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Dave “Jam” Hall and Britisher Nellee Hooper (Soul II Soul), who add lush soul and creamy balladry. With this awesome collection of talent, the record verily shimmers. Bass-heavy grooves push it along when more conventional sentiments threaten to bog it down. Both aspects put it on chart-smart terrain.
A number of songs — “Survival,” “Secret,” “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” (to which Me’Shell NdegéOcello brings a bumping bass line and a jazzy rap) — are infectiously funky. And Madonna does a drive-by on her critics, complete with a keening synth line straight outta Dre, on “Human Nature”: “Did I say something wrong?/Oops, I didn’t know I couldn’t talk about sex (I musta been crazy).”
But you don’t need her to tell you that she’s “drawn to sadness” or that “loneliness has never been a stranger,” as she sings on the sorrowful “Love Tried to Welcome Me.” The downbeat restraint in her vocals says it, from the tremulously tender “Inside of Me” to the sob in “Happiness lies in your own hand/It took me much too long to understand” from “Secret.”
The record ultimately moves from grief to oblivion with the seductive techno pull of “Sanctuary.” The pulsating drone of the title track (co-written by Björk and Hooper), with its murmured refrain of “Let’s get unconscious, honey,” renounces language for numbness.
Twirled in a gauze of (unrequited) love songs, Bedtime Stories says, “Fuck off, I’m not done yet.” You have to listen hard to hear that, though. Madonna’s message is still “Express yourself, don’t repress yourself.” This time, however, it comes not with a bang but a whisper” - Rolling Stone
Key Cut: Take a Bow
American Life
Release Date: 21st April, 2003
Labels: Maverick/Warner Bros.
Producers: Madonna/Mirwais Ahmadzaï
Standout Tracks: American Life/Hollywood/Nothing Fails
Review:
“When Entertainment Weekly inexplicably placed Madonna’s debut LP at number five on its list of modern classics, aptly calling the eight post-disco, post-punk dance songs that comprise the album “scrappy,” it failed to acknowledge that Madonna (and Madonna) would likely have been forgotten along with jelly bracelets and headbands fashioned out of torn scarves had the album not been followed by at least a decade’s worth of some of the most captivating pop music ever recorded. Madonna herself even likened the album to music for aerobics classes and was eager to shack up with Chic’s Nile Rodgers and flex her creative muscle for her career-defining follow-up, Like a Virgin.
This summer, Madonna turns 25, but 2008 also marks the fifth anniversary of a wholly different Madonna album, one that couldn’t possibly be any further removed from that scrappy debut: American Life. You’d never even know the same artist made both albums. Aside from “Holiday,” a song she didn’t write, Madonna seemed more interested in ruling the world than saving it back in 1983; two decades later, American Life found the pop singer at her most political, confrontational, and to many, abrasive. It was her first and, to date, only flop, scanning less than a million copies despite its platinum certification and sporting no hits besides the forward-thinking Bond theme “Die Another Day,” which cracked the Top 10 the previous fall and was—dubiously, at least it seemed at the time—tacked onto the tracklist in a move that ultimately insured that American Life wouldn’t be Madonna’s only hitless album.
As with almost every Madonna album, save for the first one, it’s nearly impossible to talk about the music without addressing the cultural and social context that produced it. Some have claimed that’s why the singer’s image and marketing has always been the focus of her career, at the cost of fairly assessing the actual music, but this fact only strengthens the case for Madonna as a true artist. Art without cultural context is like war without a political one. And this time around, politics and war itself played a pivotal role in the construction, marketing, and ultimate perception and consumption (or lack thereof) of American Life—despite there being very little in the way of political commentary throughout the album.
More so than any other artist who emerged in the video era, Madonna’s songs can’t (and shouldn’t) be divorced from the images she assigns to them, and American Life’s failure can be traced directly to the video for its title track (we’ll ignore, for a moment, the actual song). “American Life” may have been the first time in Madonna’s career where she voluntarily censored herself; moreover, it may have been the first time she made a creative choice out of fear.
In the original unreleased version of the video, directed by Jonas Akerlund, Madonna and a band of unconventional beauties storm a fashion show that includes models dressed in military garb and gas masks, Middle Eastern children modestly strutting their stuff, video screens depicting scenes from war, and limbless soldiers trailing blood down the catwalk. Madonna and her fashion terrorists pummel the paparazzi with water from an industrial-size hose while the audience continues to hoot and holler at the spectacle.
The backlash Madonna likely would have suffered from an already-emboldened and not-so-far-anymore far right would have made the whipping she endured following Sex seem like harmless roleplay. But the video turned a trite, self-aggrandizing, and often awkward song about privilege into a startling comment on the obscenity of war and materialism—one that would have undoubtedly been looked back on as brave.
Madonna couldn’t possibly have intended to make a pop album. American Life is a folk album in the purest definition of the term—and it’s reflected right in the title. Though it owes plenty to the protest folk of the 1960s, the album’s anti-capitalist bent presented a dichotomy that’s been endemic in Madonna’s work since she co-opted “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” and transformed it into an anthem for self-empowerment back in the ’80s. “What I want is to work for it,” she sings nakedly on “Easy Ride,” “feel the blood and sweat on my fingertips.” It’s the complete antithesis of what it means to be a Material Girl.
American Life is deeply personal (Madonna writes candidly about her relationships with her husband, children, and God) but only immediately relatable if you just so happen to be grappling with what it means to be one of the most famous people in the world. In other words, it’s profoundly truthful, but its audience is limited by design.
On the hymnal folk ballad “X-Static Process,” Madonna sounds almost childlike when she begs: “Jesus Christ, won’t you look at me/I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.” Mortality is a key issue on American Life, an inevitable existential crisis for an artist who reached godlike levels of idolatry and fame and stayed there longer than anyone else in modern pop-culture history without self-destructing. Questions like “Why am I here?” and “What is the purpose of all of this?” were inescapable. Madonna’s vocals are reminiscent of her pre-fame days on the guitar-driven “I’m So Stupid,” a track with a decidedly punk-rock sensibility on which she reassesses the value of the material world: “Please don’t try to tempt me/It was just greed/And it won’t protect me,” a sentiment she reprises on the wall of a bathroom stall in the “American Life” video.
In hindsight, American Life isn’t the masterpiece that Erotica so quickly revealed itself to be. It’s frequently self-indulgent, misguided, unpleasant, difficult to listen to, silly yet somehow humorless, but it’s also consistent, uncompromising, and unapologetic. The album is a testament to the artist’s willingness to take risks and her refusal to stay inside her comfort zone.
In the grand scheme of things, the album might rank as one of the weakest in Madonna’s extensive catalog, and the ones that followed have been as good, if not better, but American Life stands as the last time Madonna seemed to make music without the primary objective of scoring a hit. It’s interesting to imagine what Madonna’s career would look like today had American Life been a success: For better or worse, that pink leotard and Justin duet might never have existed” – SLANT
Key Cut: Love Profusion
Rebel Heart
Release Date: 6th March, 2015
Label: Interscope
Producers: Madonna/Diplo/Ariel Rechtshaid/Avicii/Blood Diamonds/Billboard/Jason Evigan/Shelco Garcia & Teenwolf/Kanye West/Mike Dean/Toby Gad/AFSHeeN/Josh Cumbee/Salem Al Fakir/Symbolyc One/Magnus Lidehäl/lVincent Pontare/Astma & Rocwell/Carl Falk
Standout Tracks: Living for Love/Ghosttown/Joan of Arc
Review:
“Rebel Heart was introduced to the world with an indiscipline uncharacteristic of Madonna. Blame it on hackers who rushed out a clutch of unfinished tracks at the end of 2014, a few months before the record's scheduled spring release. Madonna countered by putting six full tracks up on a digital service, a move that likely inflated the final Deluxe Edition of Rebel Heart up to a whopping 19 tracks weighing in at 75 minutes, but even that unveiling wasn't performed without a hitch: during an ornate performance of "Living for Love," she stumbled on-stage at the BRIT Awards. Such cracks in Madge's armor happily play into the humanity coursing through Rebel Heart (maybe the hiccups were intentional after all?), a record that ultimately benefits from its daunting mess. All the extra space allows ample room for detours, letting Madonna indulge in both Erotica-era taboo-busting sleaze ("Holy Water") and feather-light pop ("Body Shop"). Although she takes a lingering look back at the past on "Veni Vidi Vici" -- her cataloging of past hits walks right on the edge of camp, kept away from the danger zone by a cameo from Nas -- Rebel Heart, like any Madonna album, looks forward. Opener "Living for Love" announces as much, as its classic disco is soon exploded into a decibel-shattering EDM pulse coming courtesy of co-producer Diplo. Madonna brings him back a few more times -- the pairing of the reggae-bouncing "Unapologetic Bitch" and Nicki Minaj showcase "Bitch I'm Madonna," their titles suggesting vulgarity, their execution flinty and knowing -- but she cleverly balances these clubby bangers with "Devil Pray," an expert evocation of her folktronica Y2K co-produced by Avicii, and "Illuminati," a sleek, spooky collaboration with Kanye West. These are the anchors of the album, grounding the record when Madonna wanders into slow-churning meditation, unabashed revivals of her '90s adult contemporary mode, casual confession ("I spent sometime as a narcissist"), and defiant celebrations of questionable taste. Undoubtedly, some of this flair would've been excised if the record was a manageable length, but the blessing of the unwieldiness is that it does indeed represent a loosening of Madonna's legendary need for control. Certainly, the ambition remains, along with the hunger to remain on the bleeding edge, but she's allowing her past to mingle with her present, allowing her to seem human yet somewhat grander at the same time” – AllMusic
Key Cut: Bitch I’m Madonna