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New This Week: Actress, Richard Thompson, Pissed Jeans & More
Actress, Silver Cloud EP Darren Cunningham’s first new material since last year’s acclaimed R.I.P. album starts with what feels like the sonic equivalent of a swinging pocket watch, a track built on a bad-connection crackle that builds over 12 hypnotically beautiful minutes. “Floating in Ecstasy”, meanwhile, is a masterpiece of pitched-down menace, conjuring heavy grey skies. Cunningham’s fourth album, Ghettoville, is promised in July.
Richard Thompson, Electric Thompson electrified English folk as a founding member of Fairport Convention, and his mastery of folk-noir manifests itself here on songs like “My Enemy”, a slow, seething survivor’s tale in which vengeance is far from sweet. The instrumentation may not always be electric but the playing, writing and singing certainly are.
Sun Ra, A Space Odyssey: From Birmingham To The Big Apple – The Quest Begins Compiled by journalist and long-time devotee Kris Needs, this expansive listen charts the early days of Sun Ra’s voyage into the outer limits of space-jazz, starting with his first composition in 1933. The three-album’s worth of tracks cover everything from the exploratory jazz of Sun Ra’s early albums, Jazz by Sun Ra and Visits Planet Earth, to intoxicating later singles like “Message to Earthman”.
Ulrich Schnauss, A Long Way To Fall Ulrich Schnauss’s previous two albums drew heavily on My Bloody Valentine’s glorious smeared mascara sound, but the Berlin-based electronic producer has moved on. A Long Way To Fall favours clarity: synth lines contrast with ambient washes and dulcet New Age tones mingle with crisp snares. Elegiac and elegant.
Grouper, The Man Who Died In His Boat The latest album from Liz Harris, aka Grouper, was recorded at the same time as her breakthrough Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill. Here she offers ethereal vocals blended with moody electronic effects and acoustic guitar. The grim title is inspired by a story as mysterious as her songs, in which an empty boat washed ashore in Oregon.
Pissed Jeans, Honeys Snarling and spitting, growling and kicking, this won’t surprise any who love Pissed Jeans, nor is it likely to attract those who deplore the band. You’d think four dudes who recently became fathers would have outgrown pummeling, antisocial punk, but thankfully they’ve hung onto the chutzpah that made them great from the start.
Greg Boring, Heavy Syrup Greg Boring have arrived as if from nowhere (in fact, Australia) to baffle and beguile in equal measure. This is a lo-fi affair that celebrates mechanised drum beats, plinking Casios, wheezy analogue electronics and the Moog. But behind its deliberate primitivism lurks a serious art-pop aesthetic, referencing Kraftwerk and The Residents.
Bruno Spoerri, Teddy Bar / Lilith The latest unearthed gem from Finders Keepers comprises two soundtracks from innovative Swiss electronic jazz pioneer Bruno Spoerri.
Youthful Fumblings: A Pre-Sexual Revolution Valentine’s Day
The late great British poet Philip Larkin once wrote: “Sexual intercourse began/ In 1963/ (which was rather late for me)/ Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ And the Beatles’ first LP.” In other words, before the ’60s really hit, sex between consenting, possibly madly in love young people, was furtive, fumbling and shameful — even if it was also hot. In this collection, listen up for cringeworthy boudoir scenes and the euphoria of new freedom. From premature ejaculation to creepy nicknames to diarrhea, happy Valentine’s Day.
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Before becoming the Grand Old Man of American literature, Philip Roth built his career on chronicling the sexual frustrations of the Jewish man (see Portnoy's Complaint — the protagonist infamously masturbates with a piece of liver!). Goodbye Columbus was his first book, including short stories as well as the title novella about Brenda Patimkin, the perfect Jewish princess and Neil Klugman, her swain from the wrong side of the (New Jersey) tracks.... Theirs is a doomed love, from the first mention of Brenda's nose job to silent lovemaking by the flickering shadows of her family's basement rec room TV to Neil's extravagantly loose bowels brought on by overconsumption of plums and cherries from the Patimkins' designated "fruit refrigerator." Romeo and Juliet they're not, but the tragedy is just as clear: Assimilation is stronger than passion. And too many unwashed nectarines can really catch up on a guy.
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Oh, Martin Amis, you are the only man in the world who can detail the sexual misadventures of British college kids in 1970 and make the reader feel dirty about Jane Austen. The Pregnant Widow's plot is classic love triangle: Lily loves Keith, who might love Lily but really wants to bed her busty best friend, Scheherazade. Then along comes Gloria Beautyman, whose proto-Kardashian "arse" is already legendary (her bikini bottoms were... "sucked off" in a Jacuzzi). The gang's summer in Tuscany is all very mad dogs and Englishmen, until Keith's obsessive lust becomes his undoing. As the now aging Keith recounts the '70s' downward spiral, Gloria — poor, misunderstood, spectacularly rear-ended — transforms from sexual consolation prize to…wife? Part comedy of manners, part dirty-birdy romp, The Pregnant Widow turns unexpectedly dark, much like the transforming decade it chronicles.
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If ever there was a book that argued the case for premarital sex, it is On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. In 1962, Florence and Edward are newlyweds, both virgins, and their wedding night is…British. Perhaps that's an unfairly pejorative adjective, considering the Anglophone romps of other books in this group, but this wedding night is definitely of the "Close your eyes and think of England" variety. McEwan's writing is meticulous yet... florid — the candied cherry garnish atop the bride and groom's appetizer cantaloupe becomes a succulent symbol of Edward's desire and Florence's fear. When she gives him the fruit to suck off the tip of her finger, he assumes it indicates her lust, while in fact she is nervously ill with fear. It is a tribute to the writer that the reader feels equally touched by both characters.
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Lynn Barber was 16 when she met Simon Goldman, an older man of mysterious means and origins. For two years — those crucial pre-sexual revolution years, from 1960-62 — Simon squired Lynn to restaurants and plays, and took her for "dirty weekends" in Paris. Her parents, upright middle-class Brits, seemed not to mind their daughter's slow seduction. Instead, they welcomed Simon into their home and family, until the day all of his... tall stories finally fell apart. Barber's prose is both biting and self-deprecating. When Simon refers to himself as "Bubl" and to his schoolgirl paramour as "Minn," Barber wrings the full sexual ickiness out of the nicknames; deflowering her, she writes, he asks if "Minn would do Bubl the honour of welcoming him into her home." Ewww.
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On the other side of the decade — from the late '60s through the even more free-lovin'
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'70s — is Miss O'Dell. Now 20 years sober, O'Dell recalls her days of working for the Beatles' Apple Records and "assisting" the Rolling Stones (finding girls for Mick to bed — herself included — and scoring drugs for Keith). Longtime best friends with Pattie Boyd, she was present when George Harrison lost Boyd to his... friend Eric Clapton. And O'Dell herself slept with Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and…Was she a groupie? Well, when it comes to the mores of Sexual Revolution (mis)behavior, is that even a relevant question? Unlike the fictional heroines of Amis, McEwan, and Roth, O'Dell is not overtly symbolic. Like Lynn Barber, she was just a girl —one who happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right people: post 1963, after the Beatles' first LP.
Richard Thompson, Electric
The great British guitarist-songwriter plugs in
Nearly everyone is found guilty in a Richard Thompson song. Take the horny geezer in “Walking on Stony Ground,” the opening track on Electric, the great British guitarist-songwriter’s mostly plugged-in “power-wimp” trio album with drummer Michael Jerome and bassist Taras Prodaniuk. Unable to contain his lust for “an Irish rose with thorns,” the codger is beaten senseless by her brothers. There’s also the hot, teasing and bible-believing Southern belles of “Sally B” and “Straight and Narrow”; the hungover wife abuser of the Kinks-ian “Salford Sunday”; and the suspicious husband and cheating spouse in the rollicking “Good Things Happen to Bad People.” Imperfections apparent, they are all regaled by Thompson’s gloriously spluttering, spiraling and harmonically inspired Celtic-tinged solos.
Thompson long ago electrified the English folk tradition’s too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral and hey-nonny-nonny tropes as a founding member of Fairport Convention. His later mastery of a kind of folk-noir manifests itself on Electric in songs like “The Snow Goose” — a duet with Alison Krauss in which he sings that “Nothern winds will cut you/ Nothern girls will gut you/ Leave you cold and empty like a fish on a slab” — and “My Enemy,” a slow, seething survivor’s tale in which vengeance is far from sweet. The instrumentation may not always be electric, but the playing, writing and singing sure as hell are.
Icon: Madonna
From the very start, Madonna has called the shots. She has most always co-written her own material, a quality that immediately distinguished her from most disco warblers. But unlike, say, Donna Summer, who did the same, she also clearly controls her image, and takes an active hand in her sound: She’s co-produced nearly all of her records since 1986. Although her instrumental skills remain limited, the singer ensures that her output bares an unmistakable authorial stamp. No matter who she works with, the results have always been — and will always be — unquestionably Madonna.
Although her movie career is typically (and often justifiably) derided, this auteurist quality of her records, videos and concerts makes Madonna akin to the world’s greatest film directors. She’s the only constant in a career that has stretched over 30 years, yet for the first 20, her discography was nearly infallible no many how many collaborators came and went; she boasts more chart-topping club hits than even the most prolific producers. With domestic mass appeal rooted in her upbeat material while continuing to command the mainstream abroad for her soul-searching work, Madonna is venerated around the world for both her crowd-pleasing ways as well as her deeply personal, sometimes deeply serious aesthetic. She may have initially courted comparisons to Marilyn Monroe, but she’s since matured into the Woody Allen of pop — the rare trickster who became a true artist. Here then are her sleepers, her interiors, her Manhattans, and her stardust memories.
In Chronological Order
Madonna
Madonna
1983 | Warner Bros.Released in the summer of 1983, Madonna's debut album was a snapshot of the dance music that had gone back underground in the early '80s through most of America, but was still omnipresent on the streets and radios of New York City. It's disco that is far leaner than its '70s incarnation, but not yet thoroughly electronic, and still rooted in R&B forms. Current yet classic, Madonna has aged the best of... the singer's early albums because it's her most focused and insistent. Six of its eight tracks rightly became pop hits, club anthems, or both.
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Reggie Lucas — a guitarist for Miles Davis who helped create sleek smashes for sophisticated soul divas Stephanie Mills and Phyllis Hyman — produced much of the album and co-writes key cuts "Borderline" and "Physical Attraction." DJ Mark Kamins also contributed production while Madonna's DJ boyfriend John "Jellybean" Benitez remixed tracks; Fred Zarr, whose synth sound defined countless NY '80s jams, contributes keys; Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens of disco group Pure Energy pens the transcendent "Holiday," and the rising lucky star writes the rest herself. No ballads interrupt the steady flow of Linn drum beats, synth basslines, staccato guitar licks, and churchy background vocals, and Madonna's growling, yearning presence is already fully formed. She's not polished, though, and that's exactly as it should be; she's alternately tough and yielding in a way that totally suits this material. You can feel her hunger in every utterly engaged moment.
Like A Virgin
Madonna
1984 | Warner Bros.Madonna's career was already on an upward trajectory. But with the late-1984 release of her second album, a record completed then delayed by the slow-building success of her first, things went bananas. Produced by Nile Rodgers on the heels of helming David Bowie's mega-smash Let's Dance, Like a Virgin offers a poppier variant on the Bowie/Rodgers rock-funk alliance, and is far more provocative and polished than her 1983 debut. Its indelible hits,... the title track and "Material Girl," still largely define the singer as a shrewd cultural commentator that many still willfully distort into a gold-digger, completely ignoring that her coy/theatrical/robotic/girlie delivery suggests irony and role-playing. Rodgers contributes his trademark guitar scratching throughout and fellow former Chic members Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson join in on bass and drums for the most R&B-leaning cuts. The rest tilts to New Wave lite with mixed results: The quality drop-off from inspired baubles like "Dress You Up" to filler on the level of "Stay" will rarely be this steep again. Paradoxically, her film career got off to a strong start right after this album with Desperately Seeking Susan before turning decidedly motley.
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Recorded digitally, with bottom end doubled on bass guitar and synths, Like a Virgin's blockbuster status re-emphasized after Michael Jackson's Thriller that '80s dance music would be even bigger than '70s disco, especially when delivered by a videogenic superstar capable of crossing gender and color lines. Madonna's vocals may be overdubbed here far more than on her debut, but she's also more mischievous, and the resulting ambiguity allowed scholars, feminists, moral custodians, and countless Madonna wannabes both professional and fan-sized to pick up from the singer radically different signals. Like Bowie, Madonna discovered that pop music became more fun the more it could be mutable. Here she starts twisting.
True Blue
Madonna
1986 | Warner Bros.Inspired by her passionate marriage to Sean Penn, Madonna's summer 1986 release True Blue advanced her control over her music and image. She co-produced and co-wrote every track, as she was considerably more famous and successful than her collaborators here; ex-bandmate Stephen Bray, and Patrick Leonard, former keyboardist for failed Toto clone band Trillion. Her sound was still dance-pop — brittle drums clatter loudly, a mid-'80s quality that time-stamps True stronger than... most of Madonna's output. But the R&B shades of her first two albums fade while retro girl-group giddiness, Latin rhythms, dramatic balladry and tougher rock aggression came to the fore on results far more varied than her previous LPs. Having toured behind Like a Virgin, Madonna's delivery improves considerably, and the melodies are more substantial: Even if the instrumental performances sometimes elsewhere tip the other way into lightweight kitsch, there's no denying that "Papa Don't Preach," "Open Your Heart," "Live to Tell" and "La Isla Bonita" are varied but durable classics that rightly boosted Madonna's profile considerably; without them, more typical dance numbers "White Heat" and "Where's the Party" would've served well as singles.
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Madonna now commanded attention like no other pop phenomenon since the Beatles: Michael Jackson may have sold more and Prince wasn't far behind, but serious scholars and feminists now analyzed Madonna's songs and videos with unprecedented zeal. What did it mean for her to go against her father's wishes and keep her unborn child in "Papa Don't Preach"? What was she saying by putting herself in a stylized peep-show booth for "Open Your Heart"? Were these complicated feminist statements, or the very opposite? The debate was so huge that all but the youngest and most casual fans had to take sides that informed the way the world hears these records even today.
Who's That Girl Soundtrack
Madonna
1987 | Sire/Warner Bros.Ostensibly a soundtrack for the summer 1987 flop caper comedy in which she starred, Who's That Girl is more like a Madonna EP fleshed out with unrelated dance dreck. (Scritti Politti's delirious "Best Thing Ever" provides the sole non-Madge highlight.) None of her four contributions are remembered among her upper echelon of songs, although this isn't entirely just: The Latin-inflected title track topped the pop chart, while the self-referential "Causing a Commotion"... reached No. 2 and was a deserved club anthem in remixed form. Together with the murky, moody ballad "The Look of Love" they suggest the turmoil of her now-abusive marriage, and so there's a weight here that's often overlooked amid the filler. The melancholy bridge of "Who's That Girl" in which this ordinarily steely superstar concludes, "No one can help me now" may be the first unguarded moment in Madonna's discography. More would be revealed in Like a Prayer.
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Like A Prayer
Madonna
1989 | Sire/Warner Bros.Completed the same month Madonna and Sean Penn filed for divorce, 1989's Like a Prayer finds the star analyzing her life — seeking strength and sometimes finding struggle in Catholicism, marriage, friends and family — while reinventing herself as a far more adult artist by reclaiming and updating the music of her youth. Co-produced and co-written by Madonna mostly with Patrick Leonard but with key contributions by longtime collaborator Stephen Bray, Madonna's... fourth album draws from classic gospel ("Like a Prayer"), Sly & the Family Stone ("Express Yourself"), Elton John ("Promise to Try"), Motown and the Association ("Cherish"), the Beatles ("Dear Jessie"), Simon & Garfunkel ("Oh Father"), go-go funk ("Keep It Together"), Latin folk ("Spanish Eyes"), and Jimi Hendrix ("Act of Contrition").
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When one considers that the album also features contemporary influences like Prince (who appears in "Love Song" as strikingly low-key duet partner) and even the Smiths (note the ringing guitars and domestic despair of "Till Death Do Us Part"), Like a Prayer comes across as a particularly remarkable achievement because her eclecticism is presented as an explicitly autobiographical statement. Up to this point Madonna was largely seen as a sexy provocateur with streetwise songs, savvy videos, and a scattershot filmography, but Prayer presented her as an introspective singer-songwriter. The racial, religious and feminist debates over this album's hugely popular and controversial videos for "Like a Prayer" and "Express Yourself" both expanded on and distracted from this relatively new image of Madonna as legitimate auteur. Yet everything came together during the following year in what would be her crowning and most influential achievement, the Blond Ambition Tour, which raised the bar for pop concert presentation on nearly every level.
I'm Breathless
Madonna
1990 | Sire/Warner Bros.Released to promote her actually quite good performance in Dick Tracy, this is essentially Madonna's 1990 fantasy of a vintage musical in which she sings every number. Only four songs — including three by Broadway maestro Stephen Sondheim — appear in the film; his "Sooner or Later" won an Academy Award the next year, and having sung repeatedly it in her Blond Ambition Tour, the star absolutely nailed it on the... Oscars. Here, like much of the rest, it's a tad belabored: Stripped of her usual multi-tracking and holding notes far longer than her usual punchy material demands, Madonna sounds like she's trying extra-hard to pull off vocal licks just outside her comfortable reach.
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As songwriters, though, she and Patrick Leonard acquit themselves; their swing-jazz ditty "Hanky Panky" (a largely forgotten Top 10 hit celebrating spanking) and the reflective ballad "Something to Remember" would make swell Glee numbers. The knockout here is, of course, "Vogue," the star's tribute to not just classic Philly disco, house music and the drag balls of Harlem, but also to many of the Hollywood vixens she celebrates throughout I'm Breathless and indeed her career. Both femme-centric cult-y and ultra-mainstream (it's her all-time biggest US single), "Vogue" is quintessential Madonna.
Erotica
Madonna
1992 | Sire/Warner Bros."Give it up, do as I say/ Give it up and let me have my way" Madonna says at the outset of this set to a willing S&M bottom and, by extension, her fans and the music industry. Having recently scored considerable coups with material that would've been considered uncommercial coming from any other act, the singer put her power to the test on her fifth and wildest album, the first for... her own label, Maverick. Like her art-photography-slash-softcore-porn book Sex, Erotica addressed female pleasure, self-hatred, the death of gay friends and mentors from AIDS, lovers who raced away from emotional intimacy, man-stealing so-called pals and other thorny subject matter. While "Deeper and Deeper" ranks amongst her most uplifting, melodious dance tracks, much of the rest is far darker, emphasizing rhythm, words, and bass over tunes Madonna talks and whispers throughout. When she does sing, it's usually in her sultry lower register.
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The models are deep house music and the hip-hop-informed spiritual R&B of Soul II Soul, here served up by collaborators Shep Pettibone, the co-author of "Vogue" who contributed his revered remixing services to You Can Dance and The Immaculate Collection, and newcomer André Betts. The sound is dirty, sometimes even distorted, as Madonna creates boudoir jazz by way of crackling samples and thwacking machine beats that push her diary-like poetry into provocative shapes. Sometimes she's trifling, updating Motown songwriting tropes via street slang and puns: Calling the trollop in "Thief of Hearts" who steals her beau "little Susie ho-maker" is particularly cute. And sometimes she's delicate in a way that she rarely gets credit for achieving: Check her gently bending chorus on the concluding "Secret Garden." Her experiment in how far the public and media would let her go generated mixed results: Sex sold well but was panned mercilessly. Erotica achieved significant sales by most any other artist's standards, but not hers. Suddenly, Madonna seemed overexposed, both literally and figuratively. A new approach was in order.
Bedtime Stories
Madonna
1994 | Sire/Warner Bros.Following Sex, the backlash against Madonna's transgressive image climaxed. At first, she struggled to tone herself down, but couldn't quite do it: A tender soundtrack ballad, "I'll Remember," was promoted with a profanity-intensive David Letterman appearance in which she gave her panties to the host and suggested he smell them. Bedtime Stories, her October 1994 album of comparatively subtle R&B, showed similar growing pains. "Secret," the first single, scored big, but listen... closely and you can hear that it's more than a little blue, as if Madonna deeply resented the widely shared belief that she should hold herself back in order to save her career, but didn't know what else to do.
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Co-written and produced by TLC overseer Dallas Austin, Mary J. Blige producer Dave "Jam" Hall, Soul II Soul's Nellee Hooper, and R&B crooner Babyface, most of these stately ballads and muted mid-tempo grooves share that sense of hurt — not just over sour relationships, but also her career itself. Her largest chart-topper since "Vogue," the Babyface collaboration "Take A Bow" ruminates on both simultaneously. Pain and a renewed fear of failure made her an alternately sharper and blunter lyricist: "I'm not your bitch, don't hang your shit on me" from "Human Nature" couldn't have attacked her critics more plainly, even if her cartoony delivery undercuts her assault. But there's nothing compromised about the Björk-penned title cut, an undulating ambient techno showstopper that points the way to her artistic peak.
Evita: The Complete Motion Picture Music Soundtrack
Evita Soundtrack
2005 | Warner Bros.Madonna's stylistic conservatism continued from 1994's Bedtime Stories to 1995's surprisingly masterful ballad collection Something to Remember to this staid soundtrack for the 1996 musical biopic of Eva Perón in which she starred. As a piece of music, Evita — aside from its biggest hit, "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" — isn't particularly accessible: Unlike composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's earlier Jesus Christ Superstar, this rock opera is much more opera than rock.... But its depiction of the famed Argentinian First Lady as a charismatic iconoclast dovetails with Madonna's own mythology, a parallel that works much stronger in the film than on this lengthy, story-heavy album. She's no Patti LuPone, but Madonna belts with impressive technical precision. Unfortunately, the singing lessons that enable her to pull off the sustained vowels that music theater demands subsequently messes with her pop singer diction. From here on, Madonna often sings "properly" — sometimes with a stilted, pseudo-English accent — even when a less precise, more natural delivery might better suit her material and message.
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Ray Of Light
Madonna
1998 | EP/SINGLEMadonna was by now a mother of a child fathered by her fitness trainer/lover Carlos Leon, practicing yoga regularly, studying both Eastern mysticism and Kabbalah, and a far more accomplished singer. All of these emotional, physical and spiritual changes shaped 1998's Ray of Light. It's where she discovers tender elements of both her voice and personality: Where she'd generously multi-track her voice while favoring wit and strength over vulnerability, here she contributes... a careful and more caring delivery that's matched by co-producer/co-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist William Orbit's largely synthetic and finely tweaked studio backing. With songwriting and production help from her favored ballad co-creator Patrick Leonard, pop craftsman Rick Nowels, and keyboardist Marius DeVries, Orbit and Madonna craft an inward-searching singer-songwriter album disguised as an otherworldly electronica departure.
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Synths abound, but there are plenty of strings and electric guitars as well: The steady-driving smash title track ranks as one of dance music's smoothest rock appropriations. Madonna had repeatedly proved herself a consummate singles act, but here her ability as an album artist peaks. There's not a whiff of filler: From the fame ruminations of album opener "Drowned World (Substitute For Love)" to her mourning failed relationships in "Frozen" and "The Power of Goodbye" to the closing mythological parable "Mer Girl," every cut feels lyrically and musically committed and coherent within a diverse but sustained and well-sequenced whole. Before the year's end, Madonna and Leon would separate, but Ray of Light would live on as her most accomplished and finessed album.
Music
Madonna
2000 | Warner Bros./MaverickAt the early height of her popularity, Madonna polarized listeners like few pop phenomena. But 1998's Ray of Light gave her broad respect, and its synth-driven introspection proved more popular internationally than any of her studio albums since 1986's True Blue. That approval empowered the singer to dive even deeper into electronics and self-exploration on 2000's Music. Through Maverick Records, she had received a demo by Mirwais, former guitarist of French New... Wave band Taxi Girl, who became her largely unknown primary collaborator here. His Daft Punk-y quirks blend seamlessly with her early-'80s disco-funk for Music's title track, one of her most joyous singles ever. Elsewhere she embraces acoustic guitars, both straightforward ("I Deserve It") and glitchy (the nearly country-ish hit "Don't Tell Me," written by her singer-songwriter brother-in-law Joe Henry). The risks she takes on wayward album cuts like "Paradise (Not For Me)" are balanced by concise, well-written ballads like "What It Feels Like For a Girl," one of her gentlest, yet most-barbed feminist statements. These different directions didn't collectively match Ray of Light's unity, but they add a worthy plateau to that album's peak. Nothing suggested that another backlash loomed right around the corner.
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American Life
Madonna
2003 | Warner Bros./MaverickLaunched by the second most expensive video ever, Madonna's appropriately tense 2002 Bond theme "Die Another Day" scored her another Top 10 victory. So it must've come as a shock to all involved that none of the subsequent singles on 2003's American Life got higher than No. 37 in the US. The album's criticisms of the title's subject matter couldn't have been more timely and ill-timed: The US invasion of Iraq had... begun, and the Dixie Chicks suffered an instant, massive boycott for an anti-Bush remark just as Madonna planned to unleash a crazy war/fashion video for "American Life." Although she substituted a tamer replacement right before the video's release, this album's artwork depicting her as a glam Che Guevara combined with the single's clunky rap interlude about her soy latte, Pilates, her many employees, and her dissatisfaction with those privileges rubbed most US media the wrong way during a key post-9/11 moment when the slightest criticism of Uncle Sam was considered anti-patriotic. Unlike its eclectic predecessor Music, American Life is mostly one thing — not particularly fun or catchy electronic folk. This second Mirwais/Madonna pairing isn't a total dud; no doubt inspired by her new husband Guy Ritchie, the strummy yet thumpy "Love Profusion" clicked abroad, but wasn't released as a single here after its predecessors flopped spectacularly. Moreover, the album's Re-Invention World Tour became the highest grossing concert attraction of 2004. Suddenly a split widened between what the US mainstream would accept from Madonna and what her longtime international fans expected.
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Confessions On A Dance Floor
Madonna
2005 | Warner Bros.Given that nearly all of her catalog has been squarely aimed at clubs or at least remixed for them, it was a bit wacky that Madonna's late 2005 album was widely hyped as a return to her disco roots. Confessions on a Dance Floor avoids the folk guitars of her last few albums, but otherwise it's not drastically different. Soul-searching themes still get set to computer beats — only this time they... pound harder with less syncopation and, apparently, greater commercial intent. She may have renounced her celebrity-centric ways with American Life, but the fact that she started this album with a prominent ABBA sample ("Hung Up"'s "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)") instantly recognizable to millions of Europeans, club-pop connoisseurs, and gay men surely suggests she was nevertheless eager to catch the attention of her fan base.
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Confessions embraces the Eurodisco tradition from Donna Summer to Pet Shop Boys to David Guetta via her new primary collaborator Stuart Price, combining eternally hip synthpop paradigms with hands-in-the-air trance anthem gaucheness. Although only "Hung Up" clicked on US Top 40, Confessions did so well overseas it was as if American Life never happened. Here, its success was more moderate, as it came a couple of years before Gaga brought the stadium-dance formula employed by most of it back to radio. The highlight, though, is "I Love New York," which suggests early Liz Phair jamming with LCD Soundsystem covering the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog." Yes, it's that good.
Hard Candy
Madonna
2008 | Warner Bros.If Confessions was Euro-centric and classic, 2008's Hard Candy is all-American and of its moment. Like its predecessor, Candy suggests that the clock was ticking on her marriage to Guy Ritchie and, indeed, the pair filed for divorce late that year. The giveaway is that Madonna's lyrics on the happy songs — particularly the smash Justin Timberlake duet "4 Minutes" and its less successful follow-up "Give It 2 Me" — are rote... and over-generalized, whereas the anxious cuts "Miles Away" and "She's Not Me" are honed and precise. Her collaborators Timbaland, Timberlake, the Neptunes and Danja created much of the greatest hip-hop, pop, and R&B of the past 20 years, yet what should've been monumental is often shockingly slight. Sometimes a brilliant bridge offsets a shoddy chorus ("Beat Goes On"), but too much here seems phoned in, as if no one dared to prod these masters — Madonna included — to reach their full potential. Unconsciously, the star acknowledges the coasting: Over the album's far-funkiest groove, "Dance 2night," she sings, "You just gotta give more, more, more than you ever have before." No one's doing that here.
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MDNA
Madonna
2012 | InterscopeIt's telling that after 2012's MDNA harsh Europop, Hard Candy's largely stale R&B tastes better in retrospect. There's so much here that should be beneath Madonna, and the desperation is palpable: "Gang Bang" crosses a line simply because its violence is so mindless, and although she's made a career out of pop-art provocation, she's never before stooped. She's written simply at times for decades, but there's a world of difference between "Into... the Groove" and "Girls Gone Wild." Despite the now-ness of big name DJs like Benny Benassi and Martin Solveig, much here recycles earlier themes and sounds: "I Don't Give A" retreads "Human Nature;" "I'm a Sinner," one of several tracks to reunite her with William Orbit, revisits the psychedelia of "Beautiful Stranger" while dumbing down everything smart, spiritual, and sexy about "Like a Prayer." MDNA rallies on its final three cuts, "Love Spent," "Masterpiece," and "Falling Free," which bring the substantial melodies elsewhere repressed, and the deluxe edition adds welcome lyrical depth regarding her latest connubial mishaps ("I Fucked Up," "Best Friend"), but even here she hits her nails too squarely on their heads. This is Madonna at her most blatant, and it's not flattering.
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Madonna, Music
Diving deeper into electronics and self-exploration
At the early height of her popularity, Madonna polarized listeners like few pop phenomena. But 1998′s Ray of Light gave her broad respect, and its synth-driven introspection proved more popular internationally than any of her studio albums since 1986′s True Blue. That approval empowered the singer to dive even deeper into electronics and self-exploration on 2000′s Music. Through Maverick Records, she had received a demo by Mirwais, former guitarist of French New Wave band Taxi Girl, who became her largely unknown primary collaborator here. His Daft Punk-y quirks blend seamlessly with her early-’80s disco-funk for Music‘s title track, one of her most joyous singles ever. Elsewhere she embraces acoustic guitars, both straightforward (“I Deserve It”) and glitchy (the nearly country-ish hit “Don’t Tell Me,” written by her singer-songwriter brother-in-law Joe Henry). The risks she takes on wayward album cuts like “Paradise (Not For Me)” are balanced by concise, well-written ballads like “What It Feels Like For a Girl,” one of her gentlest, yet most-barbed feminist statements. These different directions didn’t collectively match Ray of Light‘s unity, but they add a worthy plateau to that album’s peak. Nothing suggested that another backlash loomed right around the corner.
Madonna, Ray of Light
Her most accomplished and finessed achievement
Madonna was by now a mother of a child fathered by her fitness trainer/lover Carlos Leon, practicing yoga regularly, studying both Eastern mysticism and Kabbalah, and a far more accomplished singer. All of these emotional, physical and spiritual changes shaped 1998′s Ray of Light. It’s where she discovers tender elements of both her voice and personality: Where she’d generously multi-track her voice while favoring wit and strength over vulnerability, here she contributes a careful and more caring delivery that’s matched by co-producer/co-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist William Orbit’s largely synthetic and finely tweaked studio backing. With songwriting and production help from her favored ballad co-creator Patrick Leonard, pop craftsman Rick Nowels, and keyboardist Marius DeVries, Orbit and Madonna craft an inward-searching singer-songwriter album disguised as an otherworldly electronica departure.
Synths abound, but there are plenty of strings and electric guitars as well: The steady-driving smash title track ranks as one of dance music’s smoothest rock appropriations. Madonna had repeatedly proved herself a consummate singles act, but here her ability as an album artist peaks. There’s not a whiff of filler: From the fame ruminations of album opener “Drowned World (Substitute For Love)” to her mourning failed relationships in “Frozen” and “The Power of Goodbye” to the closing mythological parable “Mer Girl,” every cut feels lyrically and musically committed and coherent within a diverse but sustained and well-sequenced whole. Before the year’s end, Madonna and Leon would separate, but Ray of Light would live on as her most accomplished and finessed album.
Evita Soundtrack, Evita: The Complete Motion Picture Music Soundtrack
More opera than rock, it's stronger in the film than on this lengthy, story-heavy album
Madonna’s stylistic conservatism continued from 1994′s Bedtime Stories to 1995′s surprisingly masterful ballad collection Something to Remember to this staid soundtrack for the 1996 musical biopic of Eva Perón in which she starred. As a piece of music, Evita — aside from its biggest hit, “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” — isn’t particularly accessible: Unlike composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s earlier Jesus Christ Superstar, this rock opera is much more opera than rock. But its depiction of the famed Argentinian First Lady as a charismatic iconoclast dovetails with Madonna’s own mythology, a parallel that works much stronger in the film than on this lengthy, story-heavy album. She’s no Patti LuPone, but Madonna belts with impressive technical precision. Unfortunately, the singing lessons that enable her to pull off the sustained vowels that music theater demands subsequently messes with her pop singer diction. From here on, Madonna often sings “properly” — sometimes with a stilted, pseudo-English accent — even when a less precise, more natural delivery might better suit her material and message.
Madonna, Madonna
Current yet classic
Released in the summer of 1983, Madonna’s debut album was a snapshot of the dance music that had gone back underground in the early ’80s through most of America, but was still omnipresent on the streets and radios of New York City. It’s disco that is far leaner than its ’70s incarnation, but not yet thoroughly electronic, and still rooted in R&B forms. Current yet classic, Madonna has aged the best of the singer’s early albums because it’s her most focused and insistent. Six of its eight tracks rightly became pop hits, club anthems, or both.
Reggie Lucas — a guitarist for Miles Davis who helped create sleek smashes for sophisticated soul divas Stephanie Mills and Phyllis Hyman — produced much of the album and co-writes key cuts “Borderline” and “Physical Attraction.” DJ Mark Kamins also contributed production while Madonna’s DJ boyfriend John “Jellybean” Benitez remixed tracks; Fred Zarr, whose synth sound defined countless NY ’80s jams, contributes keys; Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens of disco group Pure Energy pens the transcendent “Holiday,” and the rising lucky star writes the rest herself. No ballads interrupt the steady flow of Linn drum beats, synth basslines, staccato guitar licks, and churchy background vocals, and Madonna’s growling, yearning presence is already fully formed. She’s not polished, though, and that’s exactly as it should be; she’s alternately tough and yielding in a way that totally suits this material. You can feel her hunger in every utterly engaged moment.
Madonna, Like a Prayer
Analyzing her life and reinventing herself
Completed the same month Madonna and Sean Penn filed for divorce, 1989′s Like a Prayer finds the star analyzing her life — seeking strength and sometimes finding struggle in Catholicism, marriage, friends and family — while reinventing herself as a far more adult artist by reclaiming and updating the music of her youth. Co-produced and co-written by Madonna mostly with Patrick Leonard but with key contributions by longtime collaborator Stephen Bray, Madonna’s fourth album draws from classic gospel (“Like a Prayer”), Sly & the Family Stone (“Express Yourself”), Elton John (“Promise to Try”), Motown and the Association (“Cherish”), the Beatles (“Dear Jessie”), Simon & Garfunkel (“Oh Father”), go-go funk (“Keep It Together”), Latin folk (“Spanish Eyes”), and Jimi Hendrix (“Act of Contrition”).
When one considers that the album also features contemporary influences like Prince (who appears in “Love Song” as strikingly low-key duet partner) and even the Smiths (note the ringing guitars and domestic despair of “Till Death Do Us Part”), Like a Prayer comes across as a particularly remarkable achievement because her eclecticism is presented as an explicitly autobiographical statement. Up to this point Madonna was largely seen as a sexy provocateur with streetwise songs, savvy videos, and a scattershot filmography, but Prayer presented her as an introspective singer-songwriter. The racial, religious and feminist debates over this album’s hugely popular and controversial videos for “Like a Prayer” and “Express Yourself” both expanded on and distracted from this relatively new image of Madonna as legitimate auteur. Yet everything came together during the following year in what would be her crowning and most influential achievement, the Blond Ambition Tour, which raised the bar for pop concert presentation on nearly every level.
Madonna, Confessions on a Dance Floor
A return to her disco roots
Given that nearly all of her catalog has been squarely aimed at clubs or at least remixed for them, it was a bit wacky that Madonna’s late 2005 album was widely hyped as a return to her disco roots. Confessions on a Dance Floor avoids the folk guitars of her last few albums, but otherwise it’s not drastically different. Soul-searching themes still get set to computer beats — only this time they pound harder with less syncopation and, apparently, greater commercial intent. She may have renounced her celebrity-centric ways with American Life, but the fact that she started this album with a prominent ABBA sample (“Hung Up”‘s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”) instantly recognizable to millions of Europeans, club-pop connoisseurs, and gay men surely suggests she was nevertheless eager to catch the attention of her fan base.
Confessions embraces the Eurodisco tradition from Donna Summer to Pet Shop Boys to David Guetta via her new primary collaborator Stuart Price, combining eternally hip synthpop paradigms with hands-in-the-air trance anthem gaucheness. Although only “Hung Up” clicked on US Top 40, Confessions did so well overseas it was as if American Life never happened. Here, its success was more moderate, as it came a couple of years before Gaga brought the stadium-dance formula employed by most of it back to radio. The highlight, though, is “I Love New York,” which suggests early Liz Phair jamming with LCD Soundsystem covering the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Yes, it’s that good.
Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison, Cheater’s Game
A masterful mix of originals and covers from alt-country's all-star couple
Married for 17 years, Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison have kept their recording careers separate, aside from a low-profile Christmas album. Hearing Cheater’s Game, it’s hard to fathom why, because their talents are so perfectly matched. Robison, writer of country chart-toppers for the likes of George Strait, the Dixie Chicks, and Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, would be hard pressed to find a more sympathetic duet partner for his lyrics than Willis, who earned acclaim in the ’90s as an exquisite singer with a keen appreciation for left-of-center material. They mix it up on the seven Robison originals included here: Sometimes Willis takes the lead with support from Robison (“Ordinary Fool” and “Waterfall”), sometimes vice-versa (“Lifeline” and “Leavin’”), and sometimes they harmonize in full-on duet throughout (“But I Do” and “Dreamin,’” the latter a gorgeous ballad co-written with Miles Zuniga of Fastball). It all works because Robison’s easygoing folksiness a perfect foil to Willis’ emotionally expressive style.
They’re perhaps even better on the album’s half-dozen brilliant cover selections, which include standouts by fellow Texans Robert Earl Keen (“No Kinda Dancer”) and Hayes Carll (“Long Way Home”) as well as old-school country gems (Don Williams’ “We’re All The Way”) and roots-rock classics (Dave Alvin’s “Border Radio”). Every single track connects, especially Razzy Bailey’s “9,999,999 Tears,” a top-five country hit for Dickey Lee in 1976; the song’s melodic immediacy threatens to overshadow its underlying heartbreak, but Willis and Robison inhabit the both the pop and the pathos naturally, as if they were born to sing together.
Madonna, Who’s That Girl Soundtrack
Like a Madonna EP fleshed out with unrelated dance dreck
Ostensibly a soundtrack for the summer 1987 flop caper comedy in which she starred, Who’s That Girl is more like a Madonna EP fleshed out with unrelated dance dreck. (Scritti Politti’s delirious “Best Thing Ever” provides the sole non-Madge highlight.) None of her four contributions are remembered among her upper echelon of songs, although this isn’t entirely just: The Latin-inflected title track topped the pop chart, while the self-referential “Causing a Commotion” reached No. 2 and was a deserved club anthem in remixed form. Together with the murky, moody ballad “The Look of Love” they suggest the turmoil of her now-abusive marriage, and so there’s a weight here that’s often overlooked amid the filler. The melancholy bridge of “Who’s That Girl” in which this ordinarily steely superstar concludes, “No one can help me now” may be the first unguarded moment in Madonna’s discography. More would be revealed in Like a Prayer.
Madonna, Bedtime Stories
Unable to tone herself down, Madonna suffers growing pains
Following Sex, the backlash against Madonna’s transgressive image climaxed. At first, she struggled to tone herself down, but couldn’t quite do it: A tender soundtrack ballad, “I’ll Remember,” was promoted with a profanity-intensive David Letterman appearance in which she gave her panties to the host and suggested he smell them. Bedtime Stories, her October 1994 album of comparatively subtle R&B, showed similar growing pains. “Secret,” the first single, scored big, but listen closely and you can hear that it’s more than a little blue, as if Madonna deeply resented the widely shared belief that she should hold herself back in order to save her career, but didn’t know what else to do.
Co-written and produced by TLC overseer Dallas Austin, Mary J. Blige producer Dave “Jam” Hall, Soul II Soul’s Nellee Hooper, and R&B crooner Babyface, most of these stately ballads and muted mid-tempo grooves share that sense of hurt — not just over sour relationships, but also her career itself. Her largest chart-topper since “Vogue,” the Babyface collaboration “Take A Bow” ruminates on both simultaneously. Pain and a renewed fear of failure made her an alternately sharper and blunter lyricist: “I’m not your bitch, don’t hang your shit on me” from “Human Nature” couldn’t have attacked her critics more plainly, even if her cartoony delivery undercuts her assault. But there’s nothing compromised about the Björk-penned title cut, an undulating ambient techno showstopper that points the way to her artistic peak.
Warren Ellis, Gun Machine
A gripping, fast-paced, determinedly hardboiled detective yarn
There’s no easing into Gun Machine — Warren Ellis’s ferocious and deliciously twisted crime novel aims for the solar plexus from the start. The moment weather-beaten New York City detective John Tallow peeks his head through the busted tenement wall, it’s clear that playtime is over. What’s in there? Guns. Lots of them — Berettas, revolvers, rifles, even a freaking flintlock — arranged in strange configurations all over the place. Curiouser: The forensics lab insists every single one of the firearms was used in an unsolved murder over the past two decades. And, oh yeah, one the guns belonged to the Son of Sam, stolen from an evidence locker for one last kill, apparently.
So who’s the killer? Some shadowy wraith called the Hunter, a guy meticulous enough to pull off hundreds of murders without dropping a clue but primal enough to treat Central Park like his personal Habitrail, and batshit crazy enough to imagine himself a reborn Lenape warrior looking to reclaim Manhattan for his supposed people.
Now it’s finders-weepers for Tallow — a loner made doubly lonesome by the death of his partner and his outcast status in the force — who’s tasked with cracking the behemoth case and bringing in the psycho perp. Dude never should’ve stuck his head into that apartment.
In Ellis’s gripping, fast-paced, determinedly hardboiled detective yarn, Manhattan is wonderfully grimy and gas-slicked again, the kind of place where one sad-sack good guy can make a difference or honorably die trying. The old-school noir charm is only heightened by narrator Reginald E. Cathey — veteran of another chunk of modern urban crime mythology, The Wire — whose Orson Welles-via-Jurassic Five baritone strikes just the right (bass) tones.
Madonna, Hard Candy
All-American and of its moment
If Confessions was Euro-centric and classic, 2008′s Hard Candy is all-American and of its moment. Like its predecessor, Candy suggests that the clock was ticking on her marriage to Guy Ritchie and, indeed, the pair filed for divorce late that year. The giveaway is that Madonna’s lyrics on the happy songs — particularly the smash Justin Timberlake duet “4 Minutes” and its less successful follow-up “Give It 2 Me” — are rote and over-generalized, whereas the anxious cuts “Miles Away” and “She’s Not Me” are honed and precise. Her collaborators Timbaland, Timberlake, the Neptunes and Danja created much of the greatest hip-hop, pop, and R&B of the past 20 years, yet what should’ve been monumental is often shockingly slight. Sometimes a brilliant bridge offsets a shoddy chorus (“Beat Goes On”), but too much here seems phoned in, as if no one dared to prod these masters — Madonna included — to reach their full potential. Unconsciously, the star acknowledges the coasting: Over the album’s far-funkiest groove, “Dance 2night,” she sings, “You just gotta give more, more, more than you ever have before.” No one’s doing that here.
Madonna, True Blue
Expanding on her dance-pop with Latin rhythms, balladry and rock aggression
Inspired by her passionate marriage to Sean Penn, Madonna’s summer 1986 release True Blue advanced her control over her music and image. She co-produced and co-wrote every track, as she was considerably more famous and successful than her collaborators here; ex-bandmate Stephen Bray, and Patrick Leonard, former keyboardist for failed Toto clone band Trillion. Her sound was still dance-pop — brittle drums clatter loudly, a mid-’80s quality that time-stamps True stronger than most of Madonna’s output. But the R&B shades of her first two albums fade while retro girl-group giddiness, Latin rhythms, dramatic balladry and tougher rock aggression came to the fore on results far more varied than her previous LPs. Having toured behind Like a Virgin, Madonna’s delivery improves considerably, and the melodies are more substantial: Even if the instrumental performances sometimes elsewhere tip the other way into lightweight kitsch, there’s no denying that “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Open Your Heart,” “Live to Tell” and “La Isla Bonita” are varied but durable classics that rightly boosted Madonna’s profile considerably; without them, more typical dance numbers “White Heat” and “Where’s the Party” would’ve served well as singles.
Madonna now commanded attention like no other pop phenomenon since the Beatles: Michael Jackson may have sold more and Prince wasn’t far behind, but serious scholars and feminists now analyzed Madonna’s songs and videos with unprecedented zeal. What did it mean for her to go against her father’s wishes and keep her unborn child in “Papa Don’t Preach”? What was she saying by putting herself in a stylized peep-show booth for “Open Your Heart”? Were these complicated feminist statements, or the very opposite? The debate was so huge that all but the youngest and most casual fans had to take sides that informed the way the world hears these records even today.
Icon: Madonna
From the very start, Madonna has called the shots. She has most always co-written her own material, a quality that immediately distinguished her from most disco warblers. But unlike, say, Donna Summer, who did the same, she also clearly controls her image, and takes an active hand in her sound: She’s co-produced nearly all of her records since 1986. Although her instrumental skills remain limited, the singer ensures that her output bares an unmistakable authorial stamp. No matter who she works with, the results have always been — and will always be — unquestionably Madonna.
Although her movie career is typically (and often justifiably) derided, this auteurist quality of her records, videos and concerts makes Madonna akin to the world’s greatest film directors. She’s the only constant in a career that has stretched over 30 years, yet for the first 20, her discography was nearly infallible no many how many collaborators came and went; she boasts more chart-topping club hits than even the most prolific producers. With domestic mass appeal rooted in her upbeat material while continuing to command the mainstream abroad for her soul-searching work, Madonna is venerated around the world for both her crowd-pleasing ways as well as her deeply personal, sometimes deeply serious aesthetic. She may have initially courted comparisons to Marilyn Monroe, but she’s since matured into the Woody Allen of pop — the rare trickster who became a true artist. Here then are her sleepers, her interiors, her Manhattans, and her stardust memories.
In Chronological Order
Madonna
Madonna
1983 | Warner Bros.Released in the summer of 1983, Madonna's debut album was a snapshot of the dance music that had gone back underground in the early '80s through most of America, but was still omnipresent on the streets and radios of New York City. It's disco that is far leaner than its '70s incarnation, but not yet thoroughly electronic, and still rooted in R&B forms. Current yet classic, Madonna has aged the best of... the singer's early albums because it's her most focused and insistent. Six of its eight tracks rightly became pop hits, club anthems, or both.
more »
Reggie Lucas — a guitarist for Miles Davis who helped create sleek smashes for sophisticated soul divas Stephanie Mills and Phyllis Hyman — produced much of the album and co-writes key cuts "Borderline" and "Physical Attraction." DJ Mark Kamins also contributed production while Madonna's DJ boyfriend John "Jellybean" Benitez remixed tracks; Fred Zarr, whose synth sound defined countless NY '80s jams, contributes keys; Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens of disco group Pure Energy pens the transcendent "Holiday," and the rising lucky star writes the rest herself. No ballads interrupt the steady flow of Linn drum beats, synth basslines, staccato guitar licks, and churchy background vocals, and Madonna's growling, yearning presence is already fully formed. She's not polished, though, and that's exactly as it should be; she's alternately tough and yielding in a way that totally suits this material. You can feel her hunger in every utterly engaged moment.Like A Virgin
Madonna
1984 | Warner Bros.Madonna's career was already on an upward trajectory. But with the late-1984 release of her second album, a record completed then delayed by the slow-building success of her first, things went bananas. Produced by Nile Rodgers on the heels of helming David Bowie's mega-smash Let's Dance, Like a Virgin offers a poppier variant on the Bowie/Rodgers rock-funk alliance, and is far more provocative and polished than her 1983 debut. Its indelible hits,... the title track and "Material Girl," still largely define the singer as a shrewd cultural commentator that many still willfully distort into a gold-digger, completely ignoring that her coy/theatrical/robotic/girlie delivery suggests irony and role-playing. Rodgers contributes his trademark guitar scratching throughout and fellow former Chic members Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson join in on bass and drums for the most R&B-leaning cuts. The rest tilts to New Wave lite with mixed results: The quality drop-off from inspired baubles like "Dress You Up" to filler on the level of "Stay" will rarely be this steep again. Paradoxically, her film career got off to a strong start right after this album with Desperately Seeking Susan before turning decidedly motley.
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Recorded digitally, with bottom end doubled on bass guitar and synths, Like a Virgin's blockbuster status re-emphasized after Michael Jackson's Thriller that '80s dance music would be even bigger than '70s disco, especially when delivered by a videogenic superstar capable of crossing gender and color lines. Madonna's vocals may be overdubbed here far more than on her debut, but she's also more mischievous, and the resulting ambiguity allowed scholars, feminists, moral custodians, and countless Madonna wannabes both professional and fan-sized to pick up from the singer radically different signals. Like Bowie, Madonna discovered that pop music became more fun the more it could be mutable. Here she starts twisting.True Blue
Madonna
1986 | Warner Bros.Inspired by her passionate marriage to Sean Penn, Madonna's summer 1986 release True Blue advanced her control over her music and image. She co-produced and co-wrote every track, as she was considerably more famous and successful than her collaborators here; ex-bandmate Stephen Bray, and Patrick Leonard, former keyboardist for failed Toto clone band Trillion. Her sound was still dance-pop — brittle drums clatter loudly, a mid-'80s quality that time-stamps True stronger than... most of Madonna's output. But the R&B shades of her first two albums fade while retro girl-group giddiness, Latin rhythms, dramatic balladry and tougher rock aggression came to the fore on results far more varied than her previous LPs. Having toured behind Like a Virgin, Madonna's delivery improves considerably, and the melodies are more substantial: Even if the instrumental performances sometimes elsewhere tip the other way into lightweight kitsch, there's no denying that "Papa Don't Preach," "Open Your Heart," "Live to Tell" and "La Isla Bonita" are varied but durable classics that rightly boosted Madonna's profile considerably; without them, more typical dance numbers "White Heat" and "Where's the Party" would've served well as singles.
more »
Madonna now commanded attention like no other pop phenomenon since the Beatles: Michael Jackson may have sold more and Prince wasn't far behind, but serious scholars and feminists now analyzed Madonna's songs and videos with unprecedented zeal. What did it mean for her to go against her father's wishes and keep her unborn child in "Papa Don't Preach"? What was she saying by putting herself in a stylized peep-show booth for "Open Your Heart"? Were these complicated feminist statements, or the very opposite? The debate was so huge that all but the youngest and most casual fans had to take sides that informed the way the world hears these records even today.Who's That Girl Soundtrack
Madonna
1987 | Sire/Warner Bros.Ostensibly a soundtrack for the summer 1987 flop caper comedy in which she starred, Who's That Girl is more like a Madonna EP fleshed out with unrelated dance dreck. (Scritti Politti's delirious "Best Thing Ever" provides the sole non-Madge highlight.) None of her four contributions are remembered among her upper echelon of songs, although this isn't entirely just: The Latin-inflected title track topped the pop chart, while the self-referential "Causing a Commotion"... reached No. 2 and was a deserved club anthem in remixed form. Together with the murky, moody ballad "The Look of Love" they suggest the turmoil of her now-abusive marriage, and so there's a weight here that's often overlooked amid the filler. The melancholy bridge of "Who's That Girl" in which this ordinarily steely superstar concludes, "No one can help me now" may be the first unguarded moment in Madonna's discography. More would be revealed in Like a Prayer.
more »Like A Prayer
Madonna
1989 | Sire/Warner Bros.Completed the same month Madonna and Sean Penn filed for divorce, 1989's Like a Prayer finds the star analyzing her life — seeking strength and sometimes finding struggle in Catholicism, marriage, friends and family — while reinventing herself as a far more adult artist by reclaiming and updating the music of her youth. Co-produced and co-written by Madonna mostly with Patrick Leonard but with key contributions by longtime collaborator Stephen Bray, Madonna's... fourth album draws from classic gospel ("Like a Prayer"), Sly & the Family Stone ("Express Yourself"), Elton John ("Promise to Try"), Motown and the Association ("Cherish"), the Beatles ("Dear Jessie"), Simon & Garfunkel ("Oh Father"), go-go funk ("Keep It Together"), Latin folk ("Spanish Eyes"), and Jimi Hendrix ("Act of Contrition").
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When one considers that the album also features contemporary influences like Prince (who appears in "Love Song" as strikingly low-key duet partner) and even the Smiths (note the ringing guitars and domestic despair of "Till Death Do Us Part"), Like a Prayer comes across as a particularly remarkable achievement because her eclecticism is presented as an explicitly autobiographical statement. Up to this point Madonna was largely seen as a sexy provocateur with streetwise songs, savvy videos, and a scattershot filmography, but Prayer presented her as an introspective singer-songwriter. The racial, religious and feminist debates over this album's hugely popular and controversial videos for "Like a Prayer" and "Express Yourself" both expanded on and distracted from this relatively new image of Madonna as legitimate auteur. Yet everything came together during the following year in what would be her crowning and most influential achievement, the Blond Ambition Tour, which raised the bar for pop concert presentation on nearly every level.I'm Breathless
Madonna
1990 | Sire/Warner Bros.Released to promote her actually quite good performance in Dick Tracy, this is essentially Madonna's 1990 fantasy of a vintage musical in which she sings every number. Only four songs — including three by Broadway maestro Stephen Sondheim — appear in the film; his "Sooner or Later" won an Academy Award the next year, and having sung repeatedly it in her Blond Ambition Tour, the star absolutely nailed it on the... Oscars. Here, like much of the rest, it's a tad belabored: Stripped of her usual multi-tracking and holding notes far longer than her usual punchy material demands, Madonna sounds like she's trying extra-hard to pull off vocal licks just outside her comfortable reach.
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As songwriters, though, she and Patrick Leonard acquit themselves; their swing-jazz ditty "Hanky Panky" (a largely forgotten Top 10 hit celebrating spanking) and the reflective ballad "Something to Remember" would make swell Glee numbers. The knockout here is, of course, "Vogue," the star's tribute to not just classic Philly disco, house music and the drag balls of Harlem, but also to many of the Hollywood vixens she celebrates throughout I'm Breathless and indeed her career. Both femme-centric cult-y and ultra-mainstream (it's her all-time biggest US single), "Vogue" is quintessential Madonna.Erotica
Madonna
1992 | Sire/Warner Bros."Give it up, do as I say/ Give it up and let me have my way" Madonna says at the outset of this set to a willing S&M bottom and, by extension, her fans and the music industry. Having recently scored considerable coups with material that would've been considered uncommercial coming from any other act, the singer put her power to the test on her fifth and wildest album, the first for... her own label, Maverick. Like her art-photography-slash-softcore-porn book Sex, Erotica addressed female pleasure, self-hatred, the death of gay friends and mentors from AIDS, lovers who raced away from emotional intimacy, man-stealing so-called pals and other thorny subject matter. While "Deeper and Deeper" ranks amongst her most uplifting, melodious dance tracks, much of the rest is far darker, emphasizing rhythm, words, and bass over tunes Madonna talks and whispers throughout. When she does sing, it's usually in her sultry lower register.
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The models are deep house music and the hip-hop-informed spiritual R&B of Soul II Soul, here served up by collaborators Shep Pettibone, the co-author of "Vogue" who contributed his revered remixing services to You Can Dance and The Immaculate Collection, and newcomer André Betts. The sound is dirty, sometimes even distorted, as Madonna creates boudoir jazz by way of crackling samples and thwacking machine beats that push her diary-like poetry into provocative shapes. Sometimes she's trifling, updating Motown songwriting tropes via street slang and puns: Calling the trollop in "Thief of Hearts" who steals her beau "little Susie ho-maker" is particularly cute. And sometimes she's delicate in a way that she rarely gets credit for achieving: Check her gently bending chorus on the concluding "Secret Garden." Her experiment in how far the public and media would let her go generated mixed results: Sex sold well but was panned mercilessly. Erotica achieved significant sales by most any other artist's standards, but not hers. Suddenly, Madonna seemed overexposed, both literally and figuratively. A new approach was in order.Bedtime Stories
Madonna
1994 | Sire/Warner Bros.Following Sex, the backlash against Madonna's transgressive image climaxed. At first, she struggled to tone herself down, but couldn't quite do it: A tender soundtrack ballad, "I'll Remember," was promoted with a profanity-intensive David Letterman appearance in which she gave her panties to the host and suggested he smell them. Bedtime Stories, her October 1994 album of comparatively subtle R&B, showed similar growing pains. "Secret," the first single, scored big, but listen... closely and you can hear that it's more than a little blue, as if Madonna deeply resented the widely shared belief that she should hold herself back in order to save her career, but didn't know what else to do.
more »
Co-written and produced by TLC overseer Dallas Austin, Mary J. Blige producer Dave "Jam" Hall, Soul II Soul's Nellee Hooper, and R&B crooner Babyface, most of these stately ballads and muted mid-tempo grooves share that sense of hurt — not just over sour relationships, but also her career itself. Her largest chart-topper since "Vogue," the Babyface collaboration "Take A Bow" ruminates on both simultaneously. Pain and a renewed fear of failure made her an alternately sharper and blunter lyricist: "I'm not your bitch, don't hang your shit on me" from "Human Nature" couldn't have attacked her critics more plainly, even if her cartoony delivery undercuts her assault. But there's nothing compromised about the Björk-penned title cut, an undulating ambient techno showstopper that points the way to her artistic peak.Evita: The Complete Motion Picture Music Soundtrack
Evita Soundtrack
2005 | Warner Bros.Madonna's stylistic conservatism continued from 1994's Bedtime Stories to 1995's surprisingly masterful ballad collection Something to Remember to this staid soundtrack for the 1996 musical biopic of Eva Perón in which she starred. As a piece of music, Evita — aside from its biggest hit, "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" — isn't particularly accessible: Unlike composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's earlier Jesus Christ Superstar, this rock opera is much more opera than rock.... But its depiction of the famed Argentinian First Lady as a charismatic iconoclast dovetails with Madonna's own mythology, a parallel that works much stronger in the film than on this lengthy, story-heavy album. She's no Patti LuPone, but Madonna belts with impressive technical precision. Unfortunately, the singing lessons that enable her to pull off the sustained vowels that music theater demands subsequently messes with her pop singer diction. From here on, Madonna often sings "properly" — sometimes with a stilted, pseudo-English accent — even when a less precise, more natural delivery might better suit her material and message.
more »Ray Of Light
Madonna
1998 | EP/SINGLEMadonna was by now a mother of a child fathered by her fitness trainer/lover Carlos Leon, practicing yoga regularly, studying both Eastern mysticism and Kabbalah, and a far more accomplished singer. All of these emotional, physical and spiritual changes shaped 1998's Ray of Light. It's where she discovers tender elements of both her voice and personality: Where she'd generously multi-track her voice while favoring wit and strength over vulnerability, here she contributes... a careful and more caring delivery that's matched by co-producer/co-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist William Orbit's largely synthetic and finely tweaked studio backing. With songwriting and production help from her favored ballad co-creator Patrick Leonard, pop craftsman Rick Nowels, and keyboardist Marius DeVries, Orbit and Madonna craft an inward-searching singer-songwriter album disguised as an otherworldly electronica departure.
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Synths abound, but there are plenty of strings and electric guitars as well: The steady-driving smash title track ranks as one of dance music's smoothest rock appropriations. Madonna had repeatedly proved herself a consummate singles act, but here her ability as an album artist peaks. There's not a whiff of filler: From the fame ruminations of album opener "Drowned World (Substitute For Love)" to her mourning failed relationships in "Frozen" and "The Power of Goodbye" to the closing mythological parable "Mer Girl," every cut feels lyrically and musically committed and coherent within a diverse but sustained and well-sequenced whole. Before the year's end, Madonna and Leon would separate, but Ray of Light would live on as her most accomplished and finessed achievement.Music
Madonna
2000 | Warner Bros./MaverickAt the early height of her popularity, Madonna polarized listeners like few pop phenomena. But 1998's Ray of Light gave her broad respect, and its synth-driven introspection proved more popular internationally than any of her studio albums since 1986's True Blue. That approval empowered the singer to dive even deeper into electronics and self-exploration on 2000's Music. Through Maverick Records, she had received a demo by Mirwais, former guitarist of French New... Wave band Taxi Girl, who became her largely unknown primary collaborator here. His Daft Punk-y quirks blend seamlessly with her early-'80s disco-funk for Music's title track, one of her most uplifting singles ever. Elsewhere she embraces acoustic guitars, both straightforward ("I Deserve It") and glitchy (the nearly country-ish hit "Don't Tell Me," written by her singer-songwriter brother-in-law Joe Henry). The risks she takes on wayward album cuts like "Paradise (Not For Me)" are balanced by concise, well-written ballads like "What It Feels Like For a Girl," one of her gentlest, yet most-barbed feminist statements. These different directions didn't collectively match Ray of Light's unity, but they add a worthy plateau to that album's peak. Nothing suggested that another backlash loomed right around the corner.
more »American Life
Madonna
2003 | Warner Bros./MaverickLaunched by the second most expensive video ever, Madonna's appropriately tense 2002 Bond theme "Die Another Day" scored her another Top 10 victory. So it must've come as a shock to all involved that none of the subsequent singles on 2003's American Life got higher than No. 37 in the US. The album's criticisms of the title's subject matter couldn't have been more timely and ill-timed: The US invasion of Iraq had... begun, and the Dixie Chicks suffered an instant, massive boycott for an anti-Bush remark just as Madonna planned to unleash a crazy war/fashion video for "American Life." Although she substituted a tamer replacement right before the video's release, this album's artwork depicting her as a glam Che Guevara combined with the single's clunky rap interlude about her soy latte, Pilates, her many employees, and her dissatisfaction with those privileges rubbed most US media the wrong way during a key post-9/11 moment when the slightest criticism of Uncle Sam was considered anti-patriotic. Unlike its eclectic predecessor Music, American Life is mostly one thing — not particularly fun or catchy electronic folk. This second Mirwais/Madonna pairing isn't a total dud; no doubt inspired by her new husband Guy Ritchie, the strummy yet thumpy "Love Profusion" clicked abroad, but wasn't released as a single here after its predecessors flopped spectacularly. Moreover, the album's Re-Invention World Tour became the highest grossing concert attraction of 2004. Suddenly a split widened between what the US mainstream would accept from Madonna and what her longtime international fans expected.
more »Confessions On A Dance Floor
Madonna
2005 | Warner Bros.Given that nearly all of her catalog has been squarely aimed at clubs or at least remixed for them, it was a bit wacky that Madonna's late 2005 album was widely hyped as a return to her disco roots. Confessions on a Dance Floor avoids the folk guitars of her last few albums, but otherwise it's not drastically different. Soul-searching themes still get set to computer beats — only this time they... pound harder with less syncopation and, apparently, greater commercial intent. She may have renounced her celebrity-centric ways with American Life, but the fact that she started this album with a prominent ABBA sample ("Hung Up"'s "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)") instantly recognizable to millions of Europeans, club-pop connoisseurs, and gay men surely suggests she was nevertheless eager to catch the attention of her fan base.
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Confessions embraces the Eurodisco tradition from Donna Summer to Pet Shop Boys to David Guetta via her new primary collaborator Stuart Price, combining eternally hip synthpop paradigms with hands-in-the-air trance anthem gaucheness. Although only "Hung Up" clicked on US Top 40, Confessions did so well overseas it was as if American Life never happened. Here, its success was more moderate, as it came a couple of years before Gaga brought the stadium-dance formula employed by most of it back to radio. The highlight, though, is "I Love New York," which suggests early Liz Phair jamming with LCD Soundsystem covering the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog." Yes, it's that good.Hard Candy
Madonna
2008 | Warner Bros.If Confessions was Euro-centric and classic, 2008's Hard Candy is all-American and of its moment. Like its predecessor, Candy suggests that the clock was ticking on her marriage to Guy Ritchie and, indeed, the pair filed for divorce late that year. The giveaway is that Madonna's lyrics on the happy songs — particularly the smash Justin Timberlake duet "4 Minutes" and its less successful follow-up "Give It 2 Me" — are rote... and over-generalized, whereas the anxious cuts "Miles Away" and "She's Not Me" are honed and precise. Her collaborators Timbaland, Timberlake, the Neptunes and Danja created much of the greatest hip-hop, pop, and R&B of the past 20 years, yet what should've been monumental is often shockingly slight. Sometimes a brilliant bridge offsets a shoddy chorus ("Beat Goes On"), but too much here seems phoned in, as if no one dared to prod these masters — Madonna included — to reach their full potential. Unconsciously, the star acknowledges the coasting: Over the album's far-funkiest groove, "Dance 2night," she sings, "You just gotta give more, more, more than you ever have before." No one's doing that here.
more »MDNA
Madonna
2012 | InterscopeIt's telling that after 2012's MDNA harsh Europop, Hard Candy's largely stale R&B tastes better in retrospect. There's so much here that should be beneath Madonna, and the desperation is palpable: "Gang Bang" crosses a line simply because its violence is so mindless, and although she's made a career out of pop-art provocation, she's never before stooped. She's written simply at times for decades, but there's a world of difference between "Into... the Groove" and "Girls Gone Wild." Despite the now-ness of big name DJs like Benny Benassi and Martin Solveig, much here recycles earlier themes and sounds: "I Don't Give A" retreads "Human Nature;" "I'm a Sinner," one of several tracks to reunite her with William Orbit, revisits the psychedelia of "Beautiful Stranger" while dumbing down everything smart, spiritual, and sexy about "Like a Prayer." MDNA rallies on its final three cuts, "Love Spent," "Masterpiece," and "Falling Free," which bring the substantial melodies elsewhere repressed, and the deluxe edition adds welcome lyrical depth regarding her latest connubial mishaps ("I Fucked Up," "Best Friend"), but even here she hits her nails too squarely on their heads. This is Madonna at her most blatant, and it's not flattering.
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Madonna, American Life
Full of criticisms that couldn't have been more timely and ill-timed
Launched by the second most expensive video ever, Madonna’s appropriately tense 2002 Bond theme “Die Another Day” scored her another Top 10 victory. So it must’ve come as a shock to all involved that none of the subsequent singles on 2003′s American Life got higher than No. 37 in the US. The album’s criticisms of the title’s subject matter couldn’t have been more timely and ill-timed: The US invasion of Iraq had begun, and the Dixie Chicks suffered an instant, massive boycott for an anti-Bush remark just as Madonna planned to unleash a crazy war/fashion video for “American Life.” Although she substituted a tamer replacement right before the video’s release, this album’s artwork depicting her as a glam Che Guevara combined with the single’s clunky rap interlude about her soy latte, Pilates, her many employees, and her dissatisfaction with those privileges rubbed most US media the wrong way during a key post-9/11 moment when the slightest criticism of Uncle Sam was considered anti-patriotic. Unlike its eclectic predecessor Music, American Life is mostly one thing — not particularly fun or catchy electronic folk. This second Mirwais/Madonna pairing isn’t a total dud; no doubt inspired by her new husband Guy Ritchie, the strummy yet thumpy “Love Profusion” clicked abroad, but wasn’t released as a single here after its predecessors flopped spectacularly. Moreover, the album’s Re-Invention World Tour became the highest grossing concert attraction of 2004. Suddenly a split widened between what the US mainstream would accept from Madonna and what her longtime international fans expected.
Six Degrees of Madonna’s Ray of Light
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five other albums we've deemed related in some way. In some cases these connections are obvious, in others they are tenuous. But, most important to you, all of the records are highly, highly recommended.
The Album
Ray Of Light
Madonna
1998 | EP/SINGLEWhen Madonna turned to the bold, buzzy sound of stadium-sized dance music for her 2012 album MDNA, some fans — those older than the teens at Miami's Ultra Music Festival, anyway, who cheered when the 54-year-old singer, businesswoman and mother made a not-very-subtle reference to the drug ecstasy — may have felt a sense of déjà vu upon déjà vu. A young Madonna Louise Ciccone got her start in New York's discos,... and her debut album featured contributions from club DJ John "Jellybean" Benitez, who lent a touch of freestyle to her world-conquering pop. That wasn't the last time she would lean on New York club scene, either: Her 1987 album You Can Dance collected dance-floor edits from the likes of Shep Pettibone and the Latin Rascals, and her 1990 hit "Vogue" nodded to gay ballroom culture. But her 1998 album Ray of Light offered an even more direct precedent for MDNA, incorporating as it did the whooshing synthesizers and rushing breakbeats of what was then being called "electronica."
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Just as MDNA found Madonna rushing to keep up with younger, hipper stars — most notably Lady Gaga, who ushered in the current era of dance pop — Ray of Light was also a rare instance where Madonna turned up slightly behind the curve. Rave had been bubbling up in pop-culture consciousness for several years, and by 1997 it had crossed over in a big way, thanks to acts like the Chemical Brothers, the Prodigy and Underworld. Regardless, it's safe to say that Madonna's LP, a kind of stylistic Trojan Horse, gave many listeners their very first taste of trance, trip-hop and deep house.
To fashion the album's sound, Madonna made a somewhat surprising choice of collaborator: William Orbit, an electronic-music producer whose Strange Cargo project had a solid niche following but no major breakout success. He brought to Ray of Light the humid, breeze-kissed sound of Ibiza's chillout bars, imbuing songs like "Swim," "Ray of Light" and "Drowned World/Substitute for Love" with shuffling breakbeats, lilting guitars and warm, glowing synth pads; for "Shanti/Ashtangi," a rendition of a Hindu prayer in Sanskrit, Orbit even turned in a passable imitation of breakbeat hardcore, borrowing (and tempering) Aphex Twin's industrial menace. Several of the album's songs were co-written by Patrick Leonard, a New York dance-music DJ who had worked with Madonna in the band Breakfast Club, prior to her solo career. "Sky Fits Heaven" and "Skin" both recall the thumping pulses and trance arpeggios of Underworld, while "Nothing Really Matters" rides a silky house groove that wouldn't have been out of place on Everything But The Girl's club-oriented crossover, Walking Wounded. "Little Star," meanwhile, dips a toe into the ambient drum and bass of LTJ Bukem.
Even by 1998's sprawling, double-album standards — Goldie's epic Saturn Returnz was released the same year, and Roni Size's Reprazent had come out in 1997 — Ray of Light is all over the place and overlong; as "pure" club music goes, it can be dilettantish. However, a decade and a half later, it's a fascinating snapshot of electronic dance music's first big crossover moment, with at least three major singles ("Ray of Light," "Nothing Really Matters" and "Frozen") that live up to the potential of subcultural sounds writ large.
The Producer
Best Of Strange Cargo
William Orbit
2003 | IRS CATALOGIf William Orbit didn't exist, the marketing executives behind the Café del Mar compilations would have had to invent him. The missing link between Bill Laswell and Deep Forest, no other artist better typifies the lackadaisical vibe of '90s chillout music — both for better and for worse. Between 1987-93, the British producer released three albums under his Strange Cargo alias, draping feathery Flamenco guitars over slo-mo breakbeats and pairing dub bass... with new age affect. It's a mixed bag: "Riding to Rio" sounds like Penguin Café Orchestra refashioned for a Lite-FM station, and the electric guitars of "Fire and Mercy" sound better suited for the end credits of a teen comedy from the '80s. But "Love My Way" is an engaging, Vangelis-inspired synthesizer excursion, and the digi-dub "Silent Signals" sounds surprisingly ahead of its time, right down to the proto-dubstep bass oscillations. A young Beth Orton turns up on "Water from a Vine Leaf," and Underworld turn in a moody remix of the same.
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The Arranger
As If To Nothing
Craig Armstrong
2003 | CAROLINE ASTRALWERKS - CATString arrangers rarely get their moment in the spotlight; in pop music, they play the most literal of supporting roles, laying down a bed of tone designed to cushion the music without ever drawing attention to itself. (They're sort of the Sealy Posturepedic of the music industry.) But the Scottish composer Craig Armstrong parlayed his work on Massive Attack's 1994 album, Protection, into a successful solo career, as well as work with... Madonna and U2 and film soundtracks for Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge. His debut album, The Space Between, built on his mood-setting work for Massive Attack (and featured the band on several tracks, along with Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser), and the follow-up, As If to Nothing, is an even more wide-screen affair, alternating between scene-setting vignettes like "Waltz," reminiscent of Ryuichi Sakamoto's score to The Sheltering Sky, and scene-stealing rave-ups like "Inhaler," which pairs dramatic string vamps with gnarled electric blues. Guests vocalists including Bono, Evan Dando and Wendy Stubbs give the album's most distinctive songs a sense of human scale, offsetting the bathetic swells with a quietly commanding presence.
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The Indie Antithesis
Trailer Park
Beth Orton
1997 | DeconstructionThere's no confusing Beth Orton with Madonna; the British singer's acoustic-tinged arrangements and husky delivery take their cues from Joni Mitchell, Sandy Denny and Portishead, rather than from Madonna's anodyne club-diva tradition. From the cover of Orton's 1996 debut, Trailer Park — featuring the singer clad in jeans and red Converse and sprawled out on pavement, her face hidden behind her hair as she basks in late-afternoon light — it's clear that... she's the antithesis of Madonna's high-gloss image. It is tempting to wonder, however, if the cover of Ray of Light, with a windswept Madonna looking far more covered up than usual, wasn't influenced at least in part by the radical anti-glam of Orton's sleeve, just as the album's chiming, downbeat electronica followed from the "folktronic" sound of Orton's album. (Just compare Madonna's "Swim" with Orton's "She Cries Your Name," and you'll agree that there's a connection there, as unlikely as it may seem.)
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William Orbit, who featured Orton on his own Strange Cargo 3, co-wrote "She Cries Your Name," and his influence is all over Trailer Park's low-key sonics, but he wasn't otherwise involved in the album, which was mixed and produced by Andrew Weatherall and Victor Van Vugt. "In the end I had to break away from William because it was too much," Orton recalled in a 2009 interview with The Quietus. "I'd written all these songs and William wasn't really into them."
The Shapeshifters
Walking Wounded
Everything But The Girl
2010 | Rhino AtlanticYou might not expect that a group that started out covering Cole Porter and the Jam — not to mention collaborating with Robert Wyatt and the Style Council — would become club-music icons. It's a testament to the strength of Everything but the Girl's vision (as well as mention their musical open-mindedness and knack for choosing talented producers) that they could transition so seamlessly from the British indie scene to New York's... discos. It was a 1994 Todd Terry remix of EBTG's "Missing" that first introduced dance-music fans to the British duo, and they built upon that success with their 1996 album Walking Wounded. Featuring production from dance producers like Spring Heel Jack, Howie B, Omni Trio and Todd Terry, the album takes its rhythmic inspiration variously from New York house, drum and bass, and breakbeat, but it never loses sight of the songwriting that distinguishes their music.
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The Rave Outliers
Leftism
Leftfield
2012 | Hard HandsElectronic music is famously niche-driven, but Madonna's Ray of Light takes a relatively agnostic approach to dance music subgenres. The album's tracks range from downtempo to deep house to hi-NRG, and the style of each depends largely upon her collaborators. But if you were going to name one record from the rave scene that exerted the most influence over Ray of Light, you couldn't go wrong with Leftfield's 1995 album, Leftism. Leftfield's... Paul Daley and Neil Barnes knew how to rock a dance floor: the pulsing "Afro Left," "Black Flute," "Space Shanty" and a John Lydon-fronted "Open Up" were calibrated for teeming crowds knee-deep in mud and MDMA, but the duo's roots in the Balearic and acid-jazz scenes made them equally inclined to experiment with more contemplative (if equally psychedelic modes). Dubbed-out breakbeats, hip-hop and dancehall references and spiraling synth work made many of their debut album's tracks prime choices for chillout rooms and comedown mixtapes, while "ethnic" flutes and drums paved the way for Madonna's own fourth-world fixations.
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Madonna, Music
Diving deeper into electronics and self-exploration
At the early height of her popularity, Madonna polarized listeners like few pop phenomena. But 1998′s Ray of Light gave her broad respect, and its synth-driven introspection proved more popular internationally than any of her studio albums since 1986′s True Blue. That approval empowered the singer to dive even deeper into electronics and self-exploration on 2000′s Music. Through Maverick Records, she had received a demo by Mirwais, former guitarist of French New Wave band Taxi Girl, who became her largely unknown primary collaborator here. His Daft Punk-y quirks blend seamlessly with her early-’80s disco-funk for Music‘s title track, one of her most uplifting singles ever. Elsewhere she embraces acoustic guitars, both straightforward (“I Deserve It”) and glitchy (the nearly country-ish hit “Don’t Tell Me,” written by her singer-songwriter brother-in-law Joe Henry). The risks she takes on wayward album cuts like “Paradise (Not For Me)” are balanced by concise, well-written ballads like “What It Feels Like For a Girl,” one of her gentlest, yet most-barbed feminist statements. These different directions didn’t collectively match Ray of Light‘s unity, but they add a worthy plateau to that album’s peak. Nothing suggested that another backlash loomed right around the corner.