Madonna - Madonna - 1983There is a programmed electronic hi-hat panned all the way to the correct on "Borderline" that feels like it's boring it's way into the basis of your brain.Tip-tip-tip-tip while the rest of the song plays out and Madonna hits all the notes without any real personality or style. And yet I can't stop tapping my foot. Why is that?When Madonna exploded my freshman year college I knew aught of her. Except that I couldn't wait for her to go away. I bet on the wrong horse, of course. Within months the Weinstein cafeteria was brimming with costume jewellery and underwear as outerwear. She was inescapable. I came from the "Disco sucks!" era of rock. I was trained to scorn this form of stuff. Little did I acknowledge that she was the next and the stone that I had fallen in bed with and was the soundtrack of my adolescence was near to be relegated to the underground.It was a new dawn. The electric guitars on "Burning Up" are as crucial as the same ones on Michael Jackson's Thriller. They say she's got rock cred, but she doesn't take them.Madonna, the album, with all those hits,is made for the dance floor. The additional 90 seconds each song eats up in repetition are there for a reason. Hypnosis. You're supposed to leave the call is still playing. Whether you're at Tunnel or Pyramid Club or somewhere in the midwest or elsewhere, you're gonna be dancing to Mary and her producers. But what almost the balance of the record. We all receive the singles. We've heard them so often it's inconceivable to really grade the show without any bias. "I Know It" is the low song that doesn't sound like I ask it to. It's a small girl group, a little Go-Gos, it has a bridge, it's not made for dance floor consumption. In other words, it's the track I would take probably loved if I was the same me but a daughter in 1983. By the end of would have been the back side, the songs lose any impact. In fact, they are boring. "Physical Attraction" is as tedious and monotonous a call as could be and "Consider of Me" wouldn't make even rated a position of Stacy Q's record.Grade B-A Side: Lucky Star, Borderline, Burning Up, HolidayBlindSide: I Know it.DownSide: Think of Me, Physical Attraction
Madonna - Like A Virgin - 1984Madonna could have been written off as a dance floor diva, failed dancer, terrible actress if she wasn't so damned determined.Her sophomore effort is a far superior record.The songs are stronger, she is more positive and there is a defiance to her sound. Ciccone is taking her position as feminist force in culture, not only music. Smart girl this one. She knows her audience, she isn't pandering and she's not winning any prisoners. Some of it falls flat. "Pretender" is stale, by the numbers dance music. But for the about part this is a substantial appeal of tracks. It's also fast. But that's mainly because there's no filler. There's still a strong ballad. On "Love Don't Survive Here Anymore" you get to see a Madonna that would try to sound sincere for the rest of her career. I don't know if she ever pulls it off, I'm sure I'll get out. But she succeeds here.And the fun of "Shoo-Bee-Doo" can't be ignored. Madonna is having a fire on this record. She's defining herself and we are only along for the ride.One of the better and quintessential records of the 80s.Grade: AA Side: Material Girl, Like a Virgin, Into the Groove, Dress You Up, BlindSide: Shoo-Bee-Doo, Love Don't Survive Here AnymoreDownside: Pretender.
Madonna - True Blue - 1986Um.okay, I'll take it. This is a very good record. Whoever picked these songs had a very good ear. Just kidding Madge. I love you wrote them. Or worked on them. Or hummed a line and someone crafted a song. Whatever. They're good songs. The title tag is dead center and perfect 50s girl group. Bananarama have nothing on this song. There's not much loss on here that is any different from the final record except building on her accent and that's a dandy thing. Madonna's tackling a pair of interesting subjects besides boy-love here. "Papa Don't Preach" is a pretty damn strong track considering the subject matter. In retrospect, I'm impressed with how cutting edge this song actually is. And to head off with it? Powerful statement, baby.There's not much for me to review here. I have ever loved "La Isla Bonita" and I have discovered "White Heat" which is kind of her "Smooth Criminal" in a way. And "Jimmy Jimmy" continues to adopt that New Wave-esque sound via girl pop that Madonna cornered on "Material Girl".This record's good. Solid. Not a bad track on it.Grade A A Side: Papa Don't Preach, Open Your Heart, Live to Tell, True Blue, La Isla BonitaBlindSide: White Heat, Where's the Party?, Jimmy Jimmy Madonna - Like a Prayer - 1989Is "Like a Prayer" the best song of the 80s? It could be. It's definitely in the running. I wanna dance and I'm in an aerodrome in Texas. They arrest guys like me for that stuff. But you can't help yourself. Like you can't help feeling it on this whole record. It's a monster. Most artists really get into their own about the 4th record, I've come to learn. Early success buoys experimentation, then reassessment, wing spreading and, finally, brilliance.Like a Petition is genius.I will take to already loving "Express Yourself". I dug it when it came out, loved the picture and I guess it's one of the best women's empowerment songs ever written. She is demanding equality. What the hell happened to the girls that fly in bed with Madonna? Paglia used to exalt the virtues of owning sexuality as the crown jewel of equality. Madonna was preaching that. But the substance got confused and Howard Stern won in the end.I remember only about ever girl needs to make this record (or this song at least) pumped into her veins from early on. It's an imperative.And while "Love Song" sounds exactly like what I wait a collaboration with Prince to go like, "Til Death Do Us Part", a song obviously about her failed marriage to Sean Penn, is so the reverse of what I would expect. Bouncy, delicious, anything but precious."Dear Jessie", a "Raspberry Beret" meets "Eleanor Rigby" pieceis perhaps the best non-hit one of hers. I like I had heard it years ago. Might have made me a convert. And the way it bleeds into the haunting "Oh, Father" is perfect. And that freakshow at the end, "Act of Contrition"? Brilliant.As is the record.Grade: A A Side: Like a Prayer, Express Yourself, Cherish, Oh FatherBlindSide: Til Death Do Us Part, Promise to Try, Dear Jessie, Act of ContritionDownSide: None, might be one of the best records of all time.Madonna - Erotica - 1992How do you come up one of the best dance/pop records of all time? A few days ago I was hanging out with my friend, Vinny, drinking Hynotiq, playing Grand Theft Auto and hearing to music. Vinny is a "guy's guy" but, also worked in dance clubs and loves dance music. As we got drunker and drunker he explained that to bed when to cue light effects in clubs, all dance music works in sets of 8 bars of 4 beats. On the next set, the song changes a bit and that's when you hit some spots or colors or something. "Words" is the worst culprit here.That's Erotica. It's a lot of theatre music, techno beats, rhythms and moods. And for the 1st half of the record, it's not half bad. But it never recovers from that. It never changes. And that's a shame. Because the title tag and still the other single, "Rain" isn't so bad, but it's mired in so much meandering asexual sexuality that the album loses itself in it's own importance. Ciccone has traded songs for beats and lost herself doing it.Madonna was a leader of the women's movement. She knew it. She decided to embrace, nay, own, her erotica and show that on this record. But she falls flat. Such a deep abyss to dip into.I was nearly ready to forgive the 5th grade sexual metaphors. I can't. There's nothing on the album to save that. Grade: DA Side: EroticaBlindSide: Fever, Bye Bye Baby, Secret GardenDownSide: Where Life Begins, Bad Girl, Waiting, Words
Madonna - Bedtime Stories - 1994And now we reach the place where most critics and I diverge. When I was reviewing albums for money, this one came in the post and I think actually liking it. I was amazed back then. But I never reviewed it. Hell, why pay more ink to Mary when there were people like Lisa Germano and Ani DiFranco to help?So, I believe I listened to it once, and only cursory then at best.Now, hearing it again for the start sentence in 16 years I actually really don't wish it.I too give no kinship with raves and trance music and the only rap I love is edgy and political like Public Enemy.Bedtime Stories is instinct with this stuff. It's a much much softer record than Erotica but it's just as dull. The hits are fine. "Take a Bow", "Human Nature" , the other a reversion to her early songwriting and the latter a response to her brazen sexuality. It's a response to how often people really hated her book, "Sex" more than anything else.The balance of the disc is.well.uninteresting. I guess I like "Secret" but, again, that's a song. Not only a ground to get on the dance floor, or drop "E" and screw.The best song of the entrance music is the title track, co-written by Bjork. It's the most experimental.Bedtime Stories is an album very voice of the era; the other to mid 90s. I never thinking that material would ever sound nostalgic. Shows what I know.Grade: C-A Side: Take a Bow, Secret, Human NatureBlindSide: Bedtime StoriesDownSide: I'd Sooner Be Your Lover, Don't Stop, Inside of MeMadonna - Ray of Light - 1995About 10 days ago I was brought to a party where a champion of my girl was "Spinning". Which actually just meant that he had some vinyl albums with beats and sounds and he chose which would be the soundtrack for an evening of Ecstasy dropping and lollipops. The introduction of that cause is all in this record. Of course, those years are gone, as are lots of the spines of those partyers. "E" never did much for me. I just wanted to sleep. I might have felt differently if I had Ray of Easy to direct me.Right off the bat I like Ray of Fall more than the former two Madonna albums combined. What Madonna had always been so good at, especially on those early records, was to call or lead musical trends. Being a club rat can alone help when crafting club music. I suppose she got ahead of herself and tried to take a little too heavily on Erotica, which just sounded compressed and uninspired, too knowing. She righted her ship on Bedtime Stories following on the trip-hop, trance fad, but I found the album too cute and I've never been a fan of that way anyway. To understand the reviews you'll notice that I am out of sync with almost of them, having heralded Bedtime Stories as a triumphant achievement. Which brings me to Ray of Light. Recognizing what was happening with electronic music and embrace it as she had with all the old styles, Madonna teamed up with electronic artists William Orbit. The event is a classic representation of an emerging style. Electronic music is here to stay, winding it's way through Indie Rock, blurring the lines of what constitutes a "band". In Orbit's case, it's one guy and Pro Tools. I would state that, somehow, Madonna sounds more in contact with her music than, perhaps, ever before.The album unfolds with water themes (which abound). "Drowned World/Substitute for Love" & "Swim" set the point for the show (Other water tinged songs include "Frozen" & "Mer Girl")and "Ray of Light" sets the ecstasy drenched concert in motion.The creepiness and despair of "Skin" makes you block the false sexuality of Erotica. The impulse and beats provide the sensuality, she draws you in with her voice, at once cold and sexual. The Blade Runner eroticism is the almost human she's sounded in ages.What separates Ray from a lot of dance/house music is that these are actually songs. They aren't just loops. It isn't just beats hung together to get people hot on a dance floor. And, as songs, there's actually content. Madonna's a father now. She's got a larger world view. It's macro ("Shanti/Ashtangi") and micro ("Little Star").And her part is stronger than ever, the outcome of education to talk for Evita.Is Ray of Tripping the progenitor of Kid A? In a way. (I know, blasphemy! I consider it takes a champion of Madonna's caliber to rush in the doorway of adoption that allows other musicians not only the permission to try this stuff but to comprehend it and see it as an extension of their musical pallete.The ballad, "Frozen", could well have sounded treacly had it been produced for True Blue or Care a Prayer. It would have worked, or fallen on the face of "This Used to be a Playground", but Orbit's production provides it with a bed so interesting and right that it elevates the song while at the same time, allowing it to shine. Madonna sounds great and the song is lovely, haunting, ominous, and a whole lot of other adjectives.It's doubtless that this book wouldn't go as well were it not for Orbit's production and music. But it probably wouldn't exist save for that, since Madonna and her team wrote words to the music Orbit created. Grade: AA Side: Ray of Light, Shanti/Ashtangi, FrozenBlindSide: Drowned World/Substitute for Love, Skin, Sky Fits HeavenDownSide: Little Star
Madonna - Music - 2000I'm not certain how I look around this. Music is definitely listenable. It's earnest in it's club appeal. But it also seems to get turned a 180 from the Girl Power of only 11 days before. When Madge sings "It's astonishing what a boy can do." I look like she's left the equanimity patrol behind and has decided to indulge to the burgeoning Britney crowd. Is this was a 40 year old Madonna wants? Maybe I'm being harsh here. Since that call is one of the few Orbit collaborations as Madonna has a new co-conspirator, French DJ/mixmaster Mirwais Ahmadzai whose use of vocoder and electro-beats tries to make the act on the past record and bore further into club culture. It's the Orbit songs that make the least on this album. They look like leftovers next to the new stuff. On the other hand, "What it feels like for a girl" tries at least to make a period of view. The call is crap, but she's trying. But that stuff just leaves me flat. And I think Madge is bored. I think she wants to arouse her kid, live her life, enjoy being herself and not pressured by being an icon 24/7.There are a few high points. The title track, for instance. And "Don't Separate Me" which is as cutting edge and interesting as anything Madonna has always sold.And it's well made. About half of the clock it isn't boring but the early half of the time, it's not doing anything new for me. Stick with Ray of Short and make a hand on this, save a few tracks.Grade C A Side: Music, Don't Tell MeBlindSide: Nobody's PerfectMadonna - American Life - 20033.5minutes into "American Life" I'm thinking, "I sort of dig this!" And so this happens:I'm drinking a Soy latte I get a double shot It goes right through my trunk And you know I'm satisfied,I get my mini cooper And I'm feeling super-dooper Yo they say I'm a cavalryman And you know I'm satisfied I do yoga and pilates And the board is good of hotties So I'm checking out the bodies And you know I'm satisfied I'm digging on the isotopes This metaphysic's shit is grass And if all this can make me trust You know I'm satisfied I got a lawyer and a director An agent and a chef Three nannies, an adjunct And a driver and a jet A trainer and a butler And a bodyguard or five A gardener and a stylist Do you mean I'm satisfied?I'd like to show my extreme level of view I'm not Christian and I'm not a Jew I'm just living out the American dream And I just realized that aught Is what it seems And you need to die.Then "Hollywood" starts and it's worse. Worse than that preceding rap. You understand that right. It's like Madonna moved out from Us and realised that her spirit was a sham. She seems to hate EVERYTHING. Fame, glamour, success. This feels more confessional and at the same sentence a venomous contempt filled screed. And that's just three songs in!By "Nobody Knows Me" it's clear that I am not interested, on this record, in Madonna. It's Mirwai that kicks ass. The music beds are great. But anyone could have provided vox and it would have sounded the same."Nothing Fails" tries to emulate the trip-folk of "Don't Separate Me" but, that trick's been done. It's such a salutary one that it doesn't give up a 2nd time.By the time songs that I really like, like "Intervention" & "X-Static Process" turn up, I've kind of tuned out. This is the mid-life crisis Madonna. Who knew that this was passing to happen? Regret? Disillusionment? Surprise, Madonna grew up. I'll make her a fall for that. I won't recommend the record. But I leave her props for running out her issues in public. Grade C-A Side: Nothing blows me awayBlindSide: X-Static Process, Intervention, Easy RideDownSide: American Life, HollywoodMadonna - Confessions on a Dance Floor - 200570s fonts. Dance leotards. Fuck me pumps. It's disco Madonna. There's no place in going song by song. They all serve one purpose. Get people grinding on the dance floor. I decline to say that this is a bad thing, however. What I wish from my Madonna is just what this book provides. And I'm not talk about beats n rhythms. From the start Madonna was the representative club rat. Disco diva. She didn't exactly love the haunts. She was the king of those haunts. As a resolution she was always only a nano second ahead of the movement so, whether she led the course or simply appropriated it she seemed like a pioneer. This is what worked with her other records and later, with Ray of Light. Even, to an extent, with Music although that is the start time I find her really slipping.Well, not entirely true. I believe on Erotica Maddie was stressful so difficult to leave the accusation that she messed up and lost it. Then she got mixed up in all that love of Dick Tracy and the broadway of Evita that she forgot who she was and what she was selling.There has been a blossoming 80s revival happening for a while. Rock bands like Ima Robot, The Killers, and others have been acting the retro card to great successes. But there hasn't been a true retro dance movement. Mainly because that material is so steeped in technology that the producers are constantly pushing forward. So, Madonna looks back. Samples, beats, rhythms but almost of all, glitter ball disco.And it works. I couldn't tell you one call from another if you put a gun to my head. But that's okay. Because you don't go to a club and say, "What song was that?" anymore. You just.go and experience.And that's what Confessions is. An experience. It starts off with promise, it gets darker and darker as the evening progresses. When it's over you should know who you're going home with and have already grinded up against her or him plenty to live what's in store.I dig it. (And any time someone samples "the Popcorn Song" as she does on "Forbidden Love" I am so very happy)Grade: B A Side: Hung Up, Get Together, SorryBlindSide: Future Love, Forbidden LoveDownSide: There are no real lows. As long as you see what you're in for.
Madonna - Hard Candy - 2008Well, this is the single ugliest cover I've always seen on a Madonna record. Considering how important packaging has ever been to her how did she let this mess happen?It looks like a rejected idea from Britney Spears circa Blackout. Only that had some =, I dunno, craft.The shorts Madge is wearing make her spirit like she's wearing old lady granny panties. And licking those straps.what're ya selling me here, Madge? No matter how heavily you try I yet know you're pushing 50 and deliver two kids. I can't divorce myself from that.And I don't require a candy-floss Madonna. Not when she's already taken those steps forward on Ray of Light just ten days earlier and shown us all what a real leader/Diva can be all about.Blech.For the 1st time ever I get the sense that Madonna isn't trying to direct but instead she's so interested that the dance pop movement has touched on without her that she's decided to be the charts and try to get some relevance. How else to excuse the Timbaland/Neptunes/Timberlake flava on this record? Kanye West??? Madge, other people are doing this already. And they are doing it better.When you sing "Come on into my store, cuz my bread is sweet" I wanna throw up. I wish my sexual come ons from young girls. You're making me think about your vag and it's a half century old and it's pushed TEENAGERS out of it. So many steps forward over the preceding 20 years undone by pandering shit like this.It's not slow to get yourself sound like a client on your own record but that's what she's done on the single, "4 Minutes". Pitchfork put it best:"But lead single "4 Minutes" doesn't sound like the best working with the best: It sounds complacent, like a pop supergroup high-fivin' each other".I'm not saying that I don't need my Madonna sexy. But what makes a Milf so appealing isn't that you can get easy sex with her. Well, not only that. It's that Milfs know what the love they are doing. They aren't begging. We don't want cougars begging us for sex. And Mary has always behaved as though she knew the bedroom better than you. She was in charge. This just feels like a hollow one night stand.Grade C-A Side: BlindSide: Miles Away, VoicesDownSide: Hard Candy,
No comments:
Post a Comment