Last year I set myself the dispute of watching every Madonna video - all 68 of them. I generally enjoy Madge`s oeuvre, and she is indeed noteworthy not simply as a pop singer but likewise as a video artist. She helped build the rising art of the music video.
But yet I was reasonably certain I hadn`t seen every one of her music videos, particularly that point in the late `90s when I`d sort of gone off her for a bit.
Details of my Madonna-watching journey can be establish over on Tumblr, but here I give my key findings.
Madonna has a report as a constant reinventor of her look, but when it comes to fashion, she`s actually a bit more cautious than you`d think. Madonna knows that certain shapes flatter her more than others, and she largely sticks with those.
1990s screen saver styles in "Love Profusion"
1940s-style dresses and suits pop up a lot. One first appeared in "Go to Tell", and I can`t help get the belief that this was the commencement of Madonna`s campaign to be sick as Eva Peron in "Evita". In fact, the television to "Fill a Bow" was especially styled like that as an unsolicited audition. But yet after "Evita", Madonna stuck with the look, donning a 1940s floral frock in "Love Profusion", which seemed to draw a cloud of popstar-eating CGI fairies.
Toned arms and boofy hair in "Papa Don't Preach"
The girdle top is another fave. When it first appeared in "Papa Don`t Preach", Madonna had been running out and had ditched the baggier boytoy-era clothes. The girdle top was perfect for showing off her toned arms and leaner figure. Sometimes it`s role of a dress, like in "Like a Prayer", and it fit properly in with her pervy Madonna phase. And the biggest advantage - after having a brace of kids and getting older, a corset top is only good for holding everything in, like when she`s prancing about with Justin Timberlake in "4 Seconds".
A monocle, a mansuit and a crotch-grab in "Express Yourself"
Then there`s the mansuit. You know Madonna - she`s so confident with her sex as a woman that she can do like a man. Madonna dressed liked a boy in "Open Your Heart" and "Who`s That Girl", but it wasn`t until the king video of "Express Yourself" where she got in full mansuit mode. But it`s a mansuit that ever has a bra underneath it, as if to prove she`s still got the lady skills under that big old suit.
Madonna appears in sketch form in three music videos. In "Who`s That Girl", Human Madonna (dressed as a boy) sees a fortune teller who shows her Cartoon Madonna, a semblance of Madonna`s "Who`s That Girl" film character, Nikki Finn. Wait, what? It seems a elaborate way for Madonna-the-popstar to distance herself from Madonna-the-actress.
Gap-toothed cartoon Madge in "Music"
"Dear Jessie" was just released as a 1 in Europe and Australasia, so Madonna didn`t participate in the music video. Instead she`s animated as a twee fairy, flying about, being all delightful and shit.
And animated Madonna appears for the 3rd sentence in "Music". Human Madge is out on the township with her girls, when Cartoon Madge appears on a TV. A superhero, she flies around a city, kicking arse, knocking about neon signs of her old song titles, hits the dancefloor, before dropping to earth. Why is that part done as a cartoon? Did the video`s CGI budget not reach that far?
Madonna has done a lot of songs for film soundtracks. She had a minor part as a club singer in "Vision Quest", a romantic drama which also explores the good consequence of manorexia. She contributed two songs to the soundtrack - "Crazy For You" and "Gambler". Unfortunately "Gambler" is not a cross of the Kenny Rodgers classic.
Madonna makes a poor lifestyle choice in "Into The Groove"
Madonna`s feature debut is the ace feminist caper flick "Desperately Seeking Susan", for which she also contributed the perfect pop of "Into The Groove". The picture of this alone consists of footage from the film, but cleverly edited to thematically match the lyrics.
There`s also "Vogue", which was on the "Dick Tracy" soundtrack but didn`t actually have in the film. The music video only vaguely alludes to 1930s style. Nonetheless, it`s one of her strongest, most evocative songs and is keen to dancing to.
Madonna gives Madonna the belt in "Die Another Day"
What, you think achievement hound Madonna would give up the chance to whistle the theme tune for a James Bond film? With the legendary John Barry long retired from Bond composing duties, Madonna teamed up with a French progressive-electronica producer and made something that sounds like a struggle between a robot and `80s Madonna. The picture is bombastic, with Good Madonna battling Evil Madonna. "Sigmund Freud," she murmurs, "analyse this." Better than the actual Bond film? Study that, Lee Tamahori.
And you love what else has to be mentioned? Evita. The sole original music video is for "You Must Love Me", probably because the film performance was sung live with Eva on her deathbed. That video features Madonna singing the song behind a grand piano, trying to not look great with child. The former two videos - "Don`t Cry For Me Argentina" and "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" were montages from the film, most likely due to Madonna having just given birth to babby Lourdes.
Well forward of the furry trend in "Like a Virgin"
Rewatching all the old Madonna videos reminded me of the point when Mary was controversial. Moral groups and the Vatican seemed to perpetually condemn her for all the sensual writhing she did in videos, and the power combo of religious icons with lady bits. Not the name the alarming "Like a Virgin" video, in which Madonna is far forward of the arch with furry love.
I was at precisely the right (wrong) age when parents were concerned that Madonna smoking in "Desperately Seeking Susan" (and so the "Into the Groove" video) would influence young girls. But it didn`t take me wish to smoke. It made me wishing to be in a grungy Manhattan loft with a fellow who looked like Aidan Quinn. Neither of these futures happened.
I was surprised to see the very clear distinction made between Mary and the characters she plays in the videos. In "Material Girl", the Marilyn Monroe-esque Madonna is set up as a character played by the down-to-earth Actor Madonna. In "Like a Prayer", the video ends with the cast taking a bow as the curtain falls on their spectacular performance. Yeah, that time when Madonna kissed the black Jesus? That was only a role she was playing.
If you were to game the moral quality of Madonna`s videos on a graph, it would feel like a sine wave, a gentle flow between moral and immoral and back again.
Madonna is also ahead of the loldogs trend in "Human Nature"
This is how to seems to work - Madonna pushes the envelope as far as she can go, but as shortly as things begin to get too outrageous, she`ll bring out something fresh and lovely. When I say outrageous, it`s not just stuff like the Vatican condemning a specific song, but when album sales suffer from songs being a bit too pervy.
So you`ve got the race-and-religion shocker of "Like a Prayer" and the in-your-faceness of "Express Yourself" followed by the sweet, mermaidy "Cherish" and the maternal "Dear Jessie". And the sexual fantasies of "Justify My Dear" and whips-n-chains seriousness of "Erotica" are followed by the repentant "Bad Girl" ("I`m not happy when I act this way"). But pervy Madonna keeps surfacing. Even the real-life stage of being a decent English mum was soon enough followed by 51-year-old divorced Madonna grinding up against Jesus, her hot 23-year-old model boyfriend in the "Celebration" video, and look - Madonna`s doing some freaky yoga moves in the "Sorry" vid. You can`t hold the old girl down.
Madonna still has it in "Sorry"
My top 10 fave Madonna videos
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