Lopez Blogs: Flashback: Madonna Retrospecticus Part One

Monday, August 25, 2008

Flashback: Madonna Retrospecticus Part One

Posted by ai at 11:47 AM

I admit it. While Madonna has always been part of my musical education, I've never been particularly precious about her output or fanatical the way I am about Deborah Gibson or Maroon 5. I think I was particularly drawn to her when Like A Virgin was banned by my local Mormon church, so she instantly had an added appeal. With her deal with Warner Bros coming to an end, and hopefully a comprehensive greatest hits collection (audio and visual one presumes) planned, I thought I'd revisit her albums and list what I think should be a 5 disc greatest hits box set...

The debut:

Having whored her way into a record deal, Madonna took the punk influences of the late 70s, added an element of disco to the proceedings to produce what is still a charming and addictive debut cd to this day. The three "big" singles all have something rather special about them to this day. Lucky Star is perky and upbeat, swathed in funky bass and synth lines that could easily have been in a Chic song. That'd be Niles Rodgers influence then. Borderline is a little more mellow and Madonna's vocals are absolutely perfect on this track - not perfect as in flawless, but matching the needs of the track perfectly. Same thing can be said for the 2nd best song titled Burning Up ever (Kylie rules) and the song that broke her in the clubs Everybody. Burning Up has some great fuzzy guitar work, while Everybody has this delicious refrain that makes you want to just obey the lyrics "get up and do you thing!". Nothing, absolutely nothing however, tops the evergreen Madonna classic, Holiday. The lovely ten note refrain that runs through the song, the carefree lyrics, the bouncy bass that still makes it a glorious party track over 25 years later. It's a highlight of a great party album and only a brief glimpse of what is to come in the future...

Like A Virgin:

And thus Madonna uses some classic imagery (lets hope she didn't sit down with an interviewer and say something completely twatty and moronic like "Growing up I always wanted to an icon. Part of that is being iconic." Purlease!) of Marilyn Monroe, and that lace wedding dress to become the biggest star in the world. You could barely turn around in 1985 without a Madonna song from this album, a rerelease from her debut or something from Vision Quest OST nipping into the top five. Material Girl may well be the lush pop song that defined that excessive greed of the 80s with a softer version of the Express yourself video - diamonds and pearls predating concial bras. It still defines Madonna to this day and she is constantly referred to as the Material Girl. Like A Virgin has a great pop beat and cheeky lyrics that shocked and titillated the audience at a time when Madonna knew exactly how to manipulate the media (though to be fair the media was easier to manipulate then - no myspace, no youtube, no TMZ, etc). Into The Groove was taken from the first of many varied quality Madonna movies, Desperately Seeking Susan and continued her delightful pure pop phase. It's another bouncy romp of a track that sounds great on the dancefloor and remains best in it's original mix not the travesty of an Immaculate Collection mix. The more mellow side of Madonna comes through on tracks like Dress you Up and Angel, the former of which is vastly underrated while the latter is not one of Madonna's better vocal performances. If you want proper ballads done right, her version of Love Don't Live Here Anymore is decent but not a patch on the swoony Crazy For You - a song so romantic it makes you want to say "my boyfriend is everso dreamy"... A classic collection of tunes that quite rightly established Lady Madonna with the pop children at her feet. Shame on Warner Bros though for not including that ballad and the rocktastic dance tune Gambler on the remastered edition of the album. They are depriving fans of two of her strongest songs of the era...

True Blue:

Bloody hell, Madonna. If you had kept on building on the quality of your albums like this, Hard Candy would have been out of this world. True Blue is a divine collection of pop tunes that builds nicely on the styles of Like A Virgin and expanded that with some jitter pop, 60s girls band, pretty melodies, spanish flamenco and wistful ballads. Live To Tell is so enchanting and lovely that it is indeed a place where beauty lives. Tackling teenage pregnancies and catholic guilt, Papa Don't Preach was as controversial and addictive as Like A Virgin, with some brilliant violin work and hints of classical music. Madonna was stretching it abit to be a teenage mom in the video though... Critics were finally recognising that Madonna could perform AND write heartfelt pop songs. True Blue and Open your Heart were balls to the wall quality pop that quite rightly stormed the charts (as should the song Where's The Party have done) while the lovely spanish tinged La Isla Bonita kept me charmed for years though I did think she sang "young girls with eyes like po-tatoes". Only Jimmy Jimmy is a let down with it's silly lyrics. As an opener to a long running career, Madonna was certainly on a roll as far as understanding marrying pop and image (if not the right men)...

The brief respite:

Madonna's quality output was briefly coitus interruptus thanks to the 4 song soundtrack Who's That Girl and a remix album Spotlight (that I never actually heard until about 2004!) Who's That Girl is actually a great track, all poppy and catchy but not really anything different to what she had recorded before. Causing A Commotion has big beats, a great chorus, and melodic verses that by now Madonna had worked out suited her vocal style perfectly. Can't Stop was largely similar to Where's The Party and Love Makes The World Go Around, with rather daft lyrics surrounding the perky pop. It's not the best collection of Madonna tracks ever, but fairly decent and boosted by the inclusion of the lazy languid Look of Love which is a nice change of pace from the increasingly relentless but fun pop tunes surrounding it. None of them have dated particularly well and sound a little tinny today. Spotlight from the remix album was the final throwback to the 80s Madonna sound before she decided to produce my favourite album of hers ever...

Like A Prayer:

Want to move your career forward? Throw in some religious controversy to add to your already sexual prowess, bring in a black Jesus, get your ad campaign with Pepsi withdrawn and throw in your best song ever and your status is solidified. The album was Madonna's way of showing she could grow and develop as a writer AND still experiment with different genres and styles. Launching with the title track, Madonna showed her midriff and newly brunette hair alongside her religious imagery filled video. What was important here was the gospel infused track worked perfectly well as a love song and great pop track without the visual images. Express Yourself updates Madonna's Material Girls dreams and shows that actually, fuck you fellas, sisters are doing it for themselves. It's another great pop track with amazing images that work perfectly together or apart. Perhaps realising that she needed to show her softer side, Cherish saw her rolling around in the sand, on a beach that probably took her ages to wash out of her hair and is up there with True Blue as an homage to 60s girl group pop. UK went with the strange but lovely nursery rhyme Dear Jessie as the christmas track and is lilting and ethereal. Crap video though. This was probably the first Madonna album that I played over and over again with no regard for what my family thought, and loved the album tracks almost as much as the singles. Til Death Do Us Part was the Sean Penn story and had a great frenetic pounding bassline for such a personal intimate song. Keep It Together was quite rightly an american single, and works slightly better in the remix version than the album track. I have to confess i nearly shat my pants the first time I heard Madonna yell "What do you mean it's not in the computer!" at the end of Act of Contrition and had to listen to the whole thing again. Along with Electric Youth it was my joint favourite album of 1989. The Cherish b-side Supernatural is so kooky and out there, that one can't help but love it. Geri Halliwell should've covered it years ago...

Breathless Mahony and the Immaculate Conception:

Madonna's Dick Tracey inspired album was bound to seem like a bit of a let down after the Like A Prayer masterpiece and the stunning Vogue single. It's well documented how Madonna took the Vogue dancecraze from the underground clubs onto the main pop stage with a flawless black and white video (and an amazing French "les liasons dangereuse" inspired MTV appearance). It's not representative of the soundtrack but certainly is a phenomenal and addictive single, with it's spoken middle eight and plinky house beats. Hanky Panky wasn't a great choice as a single, perhaps chosen because of it's shock value title rather than musical merit. Something To Remember and Sooner or Later are great, bluesy jazz inspired tracks that match the needs of the film and make great use of instruments. No wonder Stephen Sondheim won an Oscar for it. More is a tremendously fun song, as is Now I'm Following You (part two), while Back In Business is just marvelous. The rest isn't really fantastic but it's a very fun album. And then came the Immaculate Collection, an incomplete remixed version of Madonna's greatest hits. It was the album that made me realise that greatest hits aren't always what I want them to be. Justify My Love is a sparse almost acoustic dance groove that saw Madonna move to complete slut stage (and had scary remixes with Madonna shouting Fuck Me at the end of them!) and a house filled groove in anthem-in-waiting-but-not quite Rescue Me. It was end of stage one, and time for Madonna to get her baps out...

Greatest Hits Disc One: