FEATURE:
The Great American Songbook
Madonna
__________
THIS year is going to be…
a big one for Madonna. There are a couple of anniversaries. True Blue turns forty. I think the most exciting thing is that Confessions on a Dance Floor Part 2 will be released. The first Confessions on a Dance Floor was released in 2005. I am not sure how close to that album the second one will be. Before getting to a mixtape feature twenty essential Madonna songs, I want to bring in some biography. This year is going to be one where the Queen of Pop is very much at the forefront:
“Determined to stick it out, Madonna touted herself around the club scene as a singer. In 1982, she signed to Sire Records and released her first single, Everybody, followed by Burning Up. Her third track, Holiday, became a worldwide hit. ‘She exerted a level of control back in 1982 that no female performer had ever done,’ said Sullivan. ‘She wanted to produce her first album, but [Sire] wouldn’t let her, because she didn’t know what she was doing. But she refused to be told no, learned quickly and took over production from Like a Virgin onwards.’
Fans didn’t just love her music; they copied her look – bleach-streaked hair tied with lace, fingerless gloves and bra tops. According to Christopher, his sister was once prudish about being overtly sexual, partly due to their Catholic upbringing. Although she had posed naked as an artist’s model to make ends meet, she employed Christopher as her dresser on her first tour because she didn’t want anyone else to see her naked.
The turning point came in July 1985, when nude pictures taken during her art modelling days appeared in Playboy. ‘Any innocence she may have had is now gone. She has nothing to hide any more,’ Christopher said at the time. ‘From now on, she will forever invade [her privacy] herself.’ Controversy soon became a byword for Madonna, from kissing a black Jesus in her 1989 video for Like a Prayer to appearing naked with Naomi Campbell in 1992 in her Sex book and championing sadomasochism in her Erotica phase that same year.
As her fame grew, she developed a reputation for being high-handed and hard. An awkward scene in her In Bed with Madonna saw the star give her friend Moira the brush-off when she asked Madonna to be godmother to her child. Madonna also claimed they were sexually intimate as teenagers, which Moira denied. ‘When it came out I called her and said, “What the hell is in that movie?”’ said Moira, who then flew to New York to see her. ‘She didn’t say sorry, because Madonna doesn’t apologise.’ But when Moira’s son suffered a brain injury in a car accident aged 13, Madonna offered financial support. ‘She’s always been there when I needed her,’ said Moira.
Madonna’s fall outs with her Hollywood cohorts make compelling headlines – like her clash with Gwyneth Paltrow over their mutual friendship with personal trainer Tracy Anderson. She also feuded with Demi Moore after Madonna appeared to side with Ashton Kutcher when the couple split. Though her softer side is rarely reported, Carlton Wilborn, who danced on her Blond Ambition and Girlie Show tours and appears in the Vogue video, revealed a rare vulnerability to Madonna that he saw when lodging with her in New York. ‘She told me her insecurities, what she wanted to do with her career and what she was frustrated about,’ he added. Far from being egotistical, Wilborn insists Madonna treated her dancers as equals. ‘She ensured we felt as special as she felt,’ he said. ‘We travelled on private jets, had suites in hotels and were managed by her as though we, too, were rock stars.’
In 1985, aged 26, Madonna married actor Sean Penn, then 24, after they were introduced as he passed by the set of her Material Girl video. She later confided in Christopher that he reminded her of a younger version of their dad. It was a passionate yet violent union, and they split after four years following an incident in which Penn allegedly tied her to a chair for nine hours and attacked her. He was charged with felony domestic assault, but Madonna later withdrew the charge and filed for divorce. ‘It was a miserable marriage,’ Penn said years later. ‘I describe that marriage as loud. I don’t recall having a single conversation in four years of marriage.’
The break-up took its toll. Whatever else Penn did, he was the love of Madonna’s life – and still is, actress Debi Mazar, a friend from her New York club days, insisted in a 2013 TV interview. Madonna rebounded into an 11-month fling with actor Warren Beatty, then channelled her feelings into 1992’s Erotica. ‘[I was] cynical about love for a long time,’ she later said. ‘I was running the gamut of emotions and I think that, creatively, I was all over the place.’
After the release of her coffee-table book Sex in 1992, Madonna was accused of betraying her feminist roots by promoting images of rape as entertainment – something she vehemently rejected. ‘I’m in charge of my fantasies,’ she said. ‘I put myself in these situations with men. Isn’t that what feminism is about – equality for men and women? Aren’t I in charge of my life?’ But the backlash stung and it was two years before another album. A collection of ballads called Bedtime Stories, it reflected her urge to find someone to fill her ‘daddy chair’, as she and Christopher jokingly called it.
In September 1994, Madonna, then 37, met unassuming personal trainer Carlos Leon, 28, while running in Central Park. In October the following year, their daughter, Lourdes – Lola to Madonna – was born, but they split six months later. On the flip side, Madonna’s career soared when she landed the lead in Evita. For years she’d sought to be taken seriously as an actor – for every Desperately Seeking Susan there was a turkey like The Next Best Thing – but at last she had a cinematic hit”.
On 24th May, it will be thirty-five years since Madonna: Truth or Dare/In Bed with Madonna was released. On 30th June, True Blue turns forty. I think there is going to be a load of expectation and excitement around Confessions on a Dance Floor Part 2. An album that will demonstrate why Madonna is the undisputed Queen of Pop, I wanted to feature her here and do an impossible thing: distil her incredible and peerless career to twenty songs. Golden cuts from an artist who is…
ONE of the greatest ever.