CEREMONY | The Madonna L-Rate

[Cruelty 6,172]

Who's next in line to fall?
—'Spanish Eyes' (1989)

And now we have our top 10! Who are you supporting?

 

[Chlorine 47,976]

11 minutes ago, NeonSkeleton said:

Buckle up, we're about to lose somebody's 11...

12 LOVE SPENT — average 6.68

The highs: 11 x 2 [ @Reject False Icons @LDGA ]; 10 x 2 [ @GaGaLB @DrewPa ]
The lows: 1 x 2 [ @Charmz @CyberRaga ]

This is not a love song
—'Love Song' (1989)
—'Bye Bye Baby' (1992)

This is where the rate meets Guy Ritchie, the marginally less awful of Madonna’s two husbands. There’s a much rosier song about him later on in the results, but Love Spent was written about their 2008 divorce, and the alleged £60 million Ritchie got in the settlement. (Legal disclaimer: I should probably add that Madonna said that this report was ‘misleading and inaccurate’, but then she released this song about how Guy Ritchie’s hunger for money led to their divorce, so…)

Love Spent talks, incredibly honestly, about the consequences of greed. With an estimated net worth of up to $800 million, it’s inevitable that Madonna has met her fair share of hangers-on desperate for some of her money. But how utterly tragic that she seems to have realised that her husband was one of these parasites. The acerbic, and emotionally devastating, line ‘Would you have married me if I were poor?’ injects some trademark Madonna bite into the MDNA album, and tacitly answers the media’s speculation about the cause of her second divorce. The love that was the wholehearted focus of Love Profusion (more on that later) has become corrupted by greed, to the point where ‘you had all of me, you wanted more’. In Love Profusion, love is priceless; in Love Spent, it has become worthless. The metaphor (love of money=love is money) is pushed until it frays at the edges, but there’s a striking honesty about Love Spent that helps to sell it. Global megastar Madonna reduced to talking about something so mundane as a joint account!

The song clearly comes from the perspective of someone who has tried everything not to get to this point. Someone who can feel her marriage slipping out of her grasp, and is forced to debase herself to the point where all she wants is for him to ‘hold me / Like you hold your money, / Hold me in your arms’. The lyrics are some of Madonna’s best, and they far outclass the aged-like-milk production. Listen, I respect the ridiculousness of whoever turned up at the studio saying ‘let’s do Hung Up with banjos!’ But MDNA’s production often vanquishes any trace of emotion in the lyrics (not that there’s an abundance of it to begin with), and I think this is a casualty of that. It goes against my principles to score anything from MDNA *too* highly, but this is a solid song, all it needs is another pass on the vocals and a polished production.

And yes, Hung Up is sampled (technically, it’s Gimme Gimme Gimme by ABBA that’s sampled, but I think the universe has agreed that that sample is now Madonna’s). I honestly can’t be bothered researching this, but I’d guess that they accidentally wrote a song that sounds like Hung Up and then added the sample to pretend it was on purpose. But it’s tempting to interpret it as a deliberate inclusion. Hung Up is a song where Madonna urges her husband to spend just some of his precious time on her; when the sample resurfaces in Love Spent, muted and decayed, it’s clear that he couldn’t even do that.

This one was like a windsock in a storm during the voting process, starting off in the top 5 before plummeting to the bottom half of the board. We all seem to agree that it’s one of our favourites from MDNA, but that’s like having a favourite sexually transmitted disease. For two of you, though, this was your 11. To mark the solemn occasion of the first two raters losing their 11, here are their comments in full:

@LDGA First time I listen to this song and I am really captivated by it, I love this bop <3

@Reject False Icons MDNA has grown so much in me… I know I have a storm coming to me but I don’t want to go with the classics

Comments

  Hide contents

@nickkoko One of the better songs on MDNA.

@Blown Away One of the better songs on MDNA, but that’s not a good thing. The instrumental sounds basic and overproduced, the melody and vocal delivery sound uninspired and the vocals are overprocessed.

@danbekim poor attempt of a dance ?? techno ?? song ??

@Lucas One of the few great tracks from MDNA imo.

@whoresup I don’t think it’s as amazing as people make it out to be but it’s still a highlight for MDNA.

@Frank Potion One of her best “modern” songs…

@Madame Goo Goo Could have been better, but still a highlight of MDNA

@Duella DeVil The second verse’s melody is really weird “if we opened” is dropped an octave then it suddenly raises the octave. Unlike the first verse. Always been a peeve of mine.

@Crescent Bloom I like the guitar loop. There are a couple of decent melodic moments, but like a lot of MDNA, there are songs that have really nice sections and then somehow nose-dive into really awful territory.

@monstertoronto I forgot about this song but I like it. Great pre-chorus and chorus. I like the brief musical reference to the beginning of Hung Up.

@sillynate Idk if it was the Mary Jane Holland talking to me or what but is the ABBA synth from Hung Up in this one??

 

An absolute BOP

[Ronk 14,762]

8 minutes ago, NeonSkeleton said:

Who's next in line to fall?
—'Spanish Eyes' (1989)

And now we have our top 10! Who are you supporting?

 

I'm guessing Love Profusion is out next.

[Cruelty 6,172]

10 LOVE PROFUSION — average 7.06

The highs: 11 [@Madame Goo Goo]; 10 x 3 [@RAMROD @Reject False Icons @sillynate]
The lows: 1 [@Charmz]; 2 [@danbekim]

Love Profusion is the most annoyingly normal song on Madonna’s most innovative album. 2003’s American Life is a startlingly original work of post-9/11 folktronica, Mirwais Ahmadzai’s stuttering vocal treatment and sparse electroclash textures melding guitars and synths to produce an aggressively left-field pop album. The lyrical concepts are some of Madonna’s best, investigating the intersection of the personal, political and cultural in a world tarnished by the horrors of 9/11 and saturated with materialism. Interspersing critiques of a fame-hungry culture with love-letters to Guy Ritchie, American Life rejects the stereotypes that 1980s ‘Material Girl’ Madonna had actively cultivated, and aims to answer the question of what ‘the American Dream’ actually is these days. Love Profusion advocates cutting out all the noise, and instead focusing on the only thing that matters: love.

True, ‘there are too many questions’, ‘there is so much confusion’, ‘there is so much destruction’ — but there is also so much love. American Life is an album about emptiness and fullness, nothing and everything, and Love Profusion falls firmly on the ‘everything’ side; a profusion is a large quantity of something. There’s so much love out there — so go and find it! In this respect, the song is so much more hopeful than much of Madonna’s discography, begging us to refocus our lives around meaningful interpersonal relationships rather than material desire. The message is simple, but beautiful: love is the only solidity, the constant that will weather the storm.

Musically it’s one of the least interesting songs on the album, a fairly radio-ready mix of chugging guitars and stuttered vocals, accompanied by a ricochet of artificial hi-hats. The lyrics, too, are simple in exactly the same way that the lyrics of contemporary mega-hit Can’t Get You Out of My Head were: cut the intellectualism, love is the only thing on my mind. Where Kylie mindlessly repeats ‘la la la’, Madonna’s song descends into a loop of ‘I got you under my skin’.

What I love about this selection of tracks is that you can chart the entire progression of Madonna’s life and career through them. In Love Spent we saw the bitter ending to Madonna’s marriage to Guy Ritchie (making this song look tragically naive), but for now Love Profusion represents the blissful honeymoon period. I think the song might be more relevant than ever in 2022. A pandemic, European conflict and two years of lockdowns have left everything feeling a little unmoored, and we’re all left needing something stable to direct us. Love Profusion promises that love will keep us afloat.

Comments

Spoiler

@sillynate This whole album is weird af but it also makes sense

@Duella DeVil So cute, oddly placed in the album but such a good love song in spite of the album’s climate

@nickkoko Not bad, but the album version is lacking I think. There are some good remixes though.

@Blown Away This song is hella boring. The instrumental and the melody are both so lifeless and repetitive, the little alterations in the instrumental fail to breathe some life into the song. Madonna’s vocals save the song from being a total 0/10, but even those sound like she was didn’t really want to record the song.

@Crescent Bloom Not my favourite off of American Life (justice for Easy Ride and Nothing Fails), but I love this track. Mirwais’s background vocals woven throughout the track is a highlight for me. Also, I love the glitchy electro-pop synths juxtaposed with the strumming of the acoustic guitar.

@CyberRaga Definitely a standout in the American Life album. Very laid back, smooth track.

@whoresup A great one from AL album. Not sure it should’ve been a single as I prefer Nothing Fails but it’s a good song nevertheless.

@Reject False Icons Underrated bop love it

@danbekim ……

@Frank Potion Pretty much love anything from American Life

@Madame Goo Goo I need to hear her do this one live

@monstertoronto Meh

 

[Lucas 27,187]

10 minutes ago, NeonSkeleton said:

Who's next in line to fall?
—'Spanish Eyes' (1989)

And now we have our top 10! Who are you supporting?

 

Let It Will Be, Love Profusion, Little Star and Living For Love are next 4 I guess

[Cruelty 6,172]

9 LIVING FOR LOVE — average 7.09

The highs: 11 [@MonsterOfSpain]; 10 x 2 [@Reject False Icons @danbekim]
The lows: 1 x 2 [@Charmz @CyberRaga]

UP! UP! UP! UP!

This was about the time I became a Madonna fan. Honestly, asking my parents if I could use their Amazon account to buy Rebel Heart felt like coming out (they knew. Oh, they knew!) So maybe there’s some bias with my score of 9, but on the other hand: what a song! Sticky house bass, jangly 90s piano, euphoric choir: this combination cannot fail. After a couple of dodgy lead singles, Living for Love excels by simply being a serviceable bop: simplistic rather than simple, trend-chasing without being try-hard, impactful without relying on a feature. It doesn’t the break the mould, but it doesn’t need to. It’s Deeper and Deeper via Like a Prayer, 1990 via 2015, and it couldn’t be a more exuberant ride.

This song provides the ‘heart’ in ‘rebel heart’; it’s both a breakup song and an optimistic paean to the power of love. In itself, that combination is rebellious, as Madonna acknowledged: “lots of people write about being in love and being happy or they write about having a broken heart and being inconsolable. But nobody writes about having a broken heart and being hopeful and triumphant afterwards. So I thought, how can I do this? I didn’t want to share the sentiment of being a victim. This scenario devastated me, but it just made me stronger”. After two failed marriages (see ‘Till Death Do Us Part’ and ‘Love Spent’) and countless long-dead relationships, how much must it take to keep believing in love? But, of course, Madonna will. This is a song about how there’s ALWAYS a reason to fight to carry on. And speaking of carrying on… now we must mention the Radio 1 ageism row.

The Madonna ageism row is a spat so vicious it has its own Wikipedia page, provoked by BBC Radio 1’s refusal to playlist the single. Madonna alleged (correctly, tbh) that this was because of her age (56 at the time), and things snowballed from there. (I notice that she didn’t bother causing a fuss when Radio 1 snubbed Give Me All Your Luvin’; this is because she has correctly identified that that song is rancid). Rita Ora stuck her Covid-riddled oar in the water, Radio 1 had to thoroughly explain themselves, and ultimately M had to deign to visit our hellhole island (and get yanked down a staircase, no less!) in order to get the song in the charts. There are serious points to be made here about music industry ageism and Madonna’s evident keenness to keep up with her younger peers, but- hang on? Did I mention getting yanked down a staircase?!

Ah, the Brits. The Brits. The gay NIGHTMARE of the Brit Awards! The memories. The trauma. The story is simple enough—a bow was tied too tightly on M’s cape, meaning she couldn’t remove it before the dancers dragged it down the stairs, taking our Queen with it. But NOTHING compares to watching it happen on the night. The CRACK as Madonna’s titanium exoskeleton hit the floor. The collective gay gasp, depleting the atmosphere of oxygen as everyone thought for a second that she might have just died. The euphoria when she got right back up and finished the performance (proving, much like fellow cape-wearer Count Dracula, that she is one of the undead). Truly it was our Second Coming of Christ, but with sequins. I'm gonna carry on.

Comments

Spoiler

@Blown Away This one is a grower. It sounds deceptively simple at first, like a throwaway Madonna song, but the more you listen to it the more you groove with it. It’s quite the infectious song, one of her later gems.

@Frank Potion Yes… this song is reductive and it’s so good because it’s Madonna redoing her old sound with a modern twist. But my god was I obsessed with it…. it’s really kinda the perfect Madonna song.

@Crescent Bloom Feels like a 2010s take on Like A Prayer. It’s okay. Sonically, it’s very of its (2015) time, and for me, that brings down the ranking a bit.

@monstertoronto I felt this was underrated. It’s a fun song and the whole Rebel Heart album was unfairly slept on

@whoresup A really great song and I remember thinking at the time that it would’ve been a hit if it had been another artist. I put a slightly lower score for this one as it sounds slightly dated in parts.

@Reject False Icons Loved it from its release

@danbekim THIS SONG >>>>>> I love her modern albums

@Duella DeVil Talented brilliant incredible amazing

@CyberRaga Never liked this song.

@nickkoko Pretty fun track.

 

[CyberRaga 342]

She should've made Never Let You Go the lead of RH. 

[Cruelty 6,172]

8 LOVE TRIED TO WELCOME ME — average 7.44

The highs: 11 x 4 [@Duella DeVil @sillynate @rayofgod @CyberRaga]; 10 x 3 [@Reject False Icons @GaGaLB @Madame Goo Goo]
The lows: 1 [@Charmz]; 2 [@danbekim]

It’s a shame that Erotica contains no songs beginning with an L (although it’ll have a field day when the time comes for a W-rate). It’s a complex, challenging work of art, and it went down like a lead balloon with the public. Released alongside a coffee-table book of softcore p*rnography and an erotic thriller movie, the album garnered Madonna a reputation as a sexual renegade, or as a publicity-chasing deviant. Middle America was not here for the beautiful everywoman of True Blue and Like a Prayer saying goodbye to innocence in such a destructive, explicit, public way. Erotica isn’t represented in this rate, but its influence registers all throughout Madonna’s career for the next half-decade leading up to the release of Ray of Light. On 1994's R&B-flavoured Bedtime Stories, the Madonna setlist staple ‘Human Nature’ is the most obvious response to the backlash, but the gorgeous ballad ‘Love Tried to Welcome Me’ meditates on the controversy too.

The lyrics are like playing dress-up, Madonna role-playing as a prude who once dared to love, but now finds herself retreating from it. ‘These are my hands, but what can they give me?’ perfectly distils the rhetorical questions posed by the song: what is life without love, and what is love without touch? ‘These are my arms but they don’t know tenderness’—one of the messages that Erotica/SEX/Body of Evidence-era Madonna was expounding was that our bodies are there for us to use! If we want to love, we should be allowed to love without fear of consequence. If we want to express that love in sexually explicit terms, that’s our prerogative. And if we want to disregard love entirely and write songs about exploring sexual fantasies just for the sheer thrill of it, we should not be judged for it. The character Madonna plays in this song may remain blind to it, but the fact is that the deprivation of love deprives us of function and purpose: ‘these are my hands, but what can they give me? These are my eyes, but they cannot see’. Interpreted in the wider context of Madonna’s career, Love Tried to Welcome Me stands as a classy response to her detractors; the character in the song may be ‘guilty of lust and sin’, but the songwriter’s point is that there is no such guilt.

Bedtime Stories creates atmospheres better than any other Madonna record save for Ray of Light, and that power is fully in evidence here; I think the word ‘lush’ was invented to describe this song. I was a little worried for this song—it was hovering outside the top 10 for ages—but in the end it’s done itself proud. Four of you made it your 11, and in your comments you were all using encouraging words like ‘effortless’, ‘glide’, ‘warm’, ‘dreamy’, ‘comforting’ and ‘cozy’. @sillynatesaid ‘This was the “I can’t believe I’ve been sleeping on this” one’, both an endorsement of the track and an unintentional Bedtime Stories pun! And, in the best display of TASTE I’ve seen during this rate, @Madame Goo Goo says ‘the four track run on Bedtime Stories of Love Tried to Welcome Me to Sanctuary to Bedtime Story to Take A Bow is lowkey unmatched in her discography’—it’s highkey unmatched, say it with your chest!

Comments

Spoiler

@Blown Away This song sounds so comforting. The vocals sound very warm and inviting and, although not perfect, really make the song. They sound effortless and glide smoothly with the instrumental. She was on a roll with the Bedtime Stories album, one of the best things she’s ever done.

@Madame Goo Goo The four track run on Bedtime Stories of Love Tried To Welcome Me to Sanctuary to Bedtime Story to Take A Bow is lowkey unmatched in her discography

@nickkoko Perfect showcase of her beautiful low register here. One of many great deep cuts from Bedtime Stories.

@Duella DeVil Bedtime stories is her best 90s album

@Crescent Bloom This song is MAGICAL. It’s relaxing, but intriguing. The production is incredibly lush, dreamy, and cozy. The lyrics are beautifully poetic, but still manage to be easily decipherable + relatable (and some of my favorite in M’s discography). Madonna has such a comforting cadence in her voice on this track.

@ssslyboy I like the casual groove of this song.

@sillynate This one got me. This was the “I can’t believe I’ve been sleeping on this” one

@Reject False Icons I love the lyrics, I love the sound

@danbekim it’s ok

@Frank Potion Solid

@whoresup Not very memorable and a bit dull.

@CyberRaga I can’t name a more perfect ballad.

 

[CyberRaga 342]

Honestly I can't name a single bad song from Bedtime Stories. Definitely a hidden gem not only in her discography, but from the whole 90s RnB era. 

[Cruelty 6,172]

7 LITTLE STAR — average 7.68

The highs: 11 x 3 [@RAMROD @Charmz @Chesescake]; 10 x 3 [@Ronk @Frank Potion @CyberRaga]
The lows: 2 [@danbekim]

1998’s Ray of Light is commonly regarded as Madonna’s masterpiece; it’s certainly her most consistently produced album, thanks to William Orbit’s heady electronica and trip hop, and has aged remarkably well. In Gaga terms, it’s equivalent to Joanne; following years of turbulent critical reception and GP-pandering course-correction measures, the album was Madonna’s maturest yet. Notably, this is Madonna’s first album as a mother, but whilst Ray of Light is commonly described as a motherhood album, it’s more specifically about new perspectives on life, and how motherhood provides just one of these. Elsewhere, the album discusses meditation, mysticism, psychedelia, interpersonal connection, touch, openness, oneness, Kabbalah, Hinduism, spiritualism, liberation and loss, and how Madonna’s immersion in new practices and experiences has given her a more nuanced understanding of the world and the people around her. If you’ve somehow managed to get this far through our short lives without hearing Ray of Light in its entirety, YOU MUST! The title track, Drowned World and Skin are essential tracks, and there’s a strong argument that Frozen is her best. I’d even say that it’s impossible to be adequately pop-literate without knowing this album.

Little Star is probably Madonna’s purest love song, because it’s entirely unconditional, written for Madonna’s newborn daughter Lourdes. To be honest, I always thought I hated this, but turns out it’s really sweet! Clearly the 14-year-old me who first listened to Little Star was dead inside, but 21-year-old me is… broody? I don’t really have anything intellectual to say about this song — I think it’s beautiful, I love the bass, and the entire Ray of Light album makes me feel like I’m floating through the sky or swimming through the sea or struggling through a swamp or diving through fire. Although I will say that this is the inferior song about Madonna’s kids (Rocco gets Intervention written for him!) More than anything else in the rate, this song really struck a personal chord with you guys, so I’m turning the spotlight onto your lovely comments! @Reject False Icons calls this ‘a beautiful sentimental motherly song’ and @Frank Potion labels it ‘magical’, whilst @Crescent Bloom says ‘M wrote this for her daughter around the same time I was born, so it feels like (in a weird way) a lullaby for all the late 90s babies’, which I think is adorable. I was born in 2000, can I claim it too? And the sweetest comments ever come from @Duella DeVil, who says ‘I used to sing this to my niece so huge nostalgia thing for me’, and from @whoresup: ‘I hope it’s special to Lourdes’.

Comments

Spoiler

@Reject False Icons A beautiful sentimental motherly song

@Frank Potion Absolutely gorgeous song. It’s magical.

@sillynate I’ve hardly ever listened to this one and I thought it was really cute until she said “never forget where you come from.” She really told her daughter “b!tch, I’m Madonna”

@monstertoronto Always liked the vibe of this and it’s so sweet.

@whoresup This is an adorable song and another great track from my personal fave album of hers ROL. I hope it’s special to Lourdes.

@CyberRaga This is just flawless. The lullaby vocals, instrumental that keeps growing and adding little by little different elements, the overall motherhood vibe.

@Crescent Bloom I love this song :-( M wrote this for her daughter around the same time I was born, so it feels like (in a weird way) a lullaby for all the late 90s babies. Also, the production oddly reminds me of Rainbow Road (lol)

@Blown Away I love the personal lyrics and the overall sentiment of the song. And Madges vocals are beautiful here. Nothing beats her vocals from 93-99

@Duella DeVil I used to sing this to my niece so huge nostalgia thing for me

@nickkoko Such a lovely song with beautiful lyrics. Definitely one of the more overlooked songs on ROL but I really enjoy it.

@danbekim ummm

 

[Ronk 14,762]

1 minute ago, NeonSkeleton said:

7 LITTLE STAR — average 7.68

The highs: 11 x 3 [@RAMROD @Charmz @Chesescake]; 10 x 3 [@Ronk @Frank Potion @CyberRaga]
The lows: 2 [@danbekim]

1998’s Ray of Light is commonly regarded as Madonna’s masterpiece; it’s certainly her most consistently produced album, thanks to William Orbit’s heady electronica and trip hop, and has aged remarkably well. In Gaga terms, it’s equivalent to Joanne; following years of turbulent critical reception and GP-pandering course-correction measures, the album was Madonna’s maturest yet. Notably, this is Madonna’s first album as a mother, but whilst Ray of Light is commonly described as a motherhood album, it’s more specifically about new perspectives on life, and how motherhood provides just one of these. Elsewhere, the album discusses meditation, mysticism, psychedelia, interpersonal connection, touch, openness, oneness, Kabbalah, Hinduism, spiritualism, liberation and loss, and how Madonna’s immersion in new practices and experiences has given her a more nuanced understanding of the world and the people around her. If you’ve somehow managed to get this far through our short lives without hearing Ray of Light in its entirety, YOU MUST! The title track, Drowned World and Skin are essential tracks, and there’s a strong argument that Frozen is her best. I’d even say that it’s impossible to be adequately pop-literate without knowing this album.

Little Star is probably Madonna’s purest love song, because it’s entirely unconditional, written for Madonna’s newborn daughter Lourdes. To be honest, I always thought I hated this, but turns out it’s really sweet! Clearly the 14-year-old me who first listened to Little Star was dead inside, but 21-year-old me is… broody? I don’t really have anything intellectual to say about this song — I think it’s beautiful, I love the bass, and the entire Ray of Light album makes me feel like I’m floating through the sky or swimming through the sea or struggling through a swamp or diving through fire. Although I will say that this is the inferior song about Madonna’s kids (Rocco gets Intervention written for him!) More than anything else in the rate, this song really struck a personal chord with you guys, so I’m turning the spotlight onto your lovely comments! @Reject False Icons calls this ‘a beautiful sentimental motherly song’ and @Frank Potion labels it ‘magical’, whilst @Crescent Bloom says ‘M wrote this for her daughter around the same time I was born, so it feels like (in a weird way) a lullaby for all the late 90s babies’, which I think is adorable. I was born in 2000, can I claim it too? And the sweetest comments ever come from @Duella DeVil, who says ‘I used to sing this to my niece so huge nostalgia thing for me’, and from @whoresup: ‘I hope it’s special to Lourdes’.

Comments

  Reveal hidden contents

@Reject False Icons A beautiful sentimental motherly song

@Frank Potion Absolutely gorgeous song. It’s magical.

@sillynate I’ve hardly ever listened to this one and I thought it was really cute until she said “never forget where you come from.” She really told her daughter “b!tch, I’m Madonna”

@monstertoronto Always liked the vibe of this and it’s so sweet.

@whoresup This is an adorable song and another great track from my personal fave album of hers ROL. I hope it’s special to Lourdes.

@CyberRaga This is just flawless. The lullaby vocals, instrumental that keeps growing and adding little by little different elements, the overall motherhood vibe.

@Crescent Bloom I love this song :-( M wrote this for her daughter around the same time I was born, so it feels like (in a weird way) a lullaby for all the late 90s babies. Also, the production oddly reminds me of Rainbow Road (lol)

@Blown Away I love the personal lyrics and the overall sentiment of the song. And Madges vocals are beautiful here. Nothing beats her vocals from 93-99

@Duella DeVil I used to sing this to my niece so huge nostalgia thing for me

@nickkoko Such a lovely song with beautiful lyrics. Definitely one of the more overlooked songs on ROL but I really enjoy it.

@danbekim ummm

 

Deserved better

 

[CyberRaga 342]

Definitely top 3 in ROL. 

[Evil R 1,084]

I think Little Star is meh.

[CyberRaga 342]

3 minutes ago, NeonSkeleton said:

In Gaga terms, it’s equivalent to Joanne;

I kind of disagree with this statement. I'd count Joanne as more of her Bedtime Stories as it was the start of ''softening'' her image. 

[Cruelty 6,172]

 

6 LIKE A VIRGIN — average 7.74
The highs: 10 x 9 [@Lucas @androiduser @Ronk @Reject False Icons @GaGaLB @DrewPa @Cupid Boy @monstertoronto @ssslyboy]
The lows: 1 [@Charmz]; 5 [@sillynate @CyberRaga]

 

Like A Virgin was written by Billy Steinberg, who’s received more than enough attention on GGD recently since he wrote Nothing On But the Radio, which y’all will insist on bringing up every other day (is that in the site guidelines, did I miss something?) He’d recently left a toxic relationship for one that made him feel shiny and new, and wrote the song (initially as a ballad!!) about this sense of renewal. Madonna snatched it up like a moth to a flame, and 6 million sales later, Like A Virgin lands as your 6th favourite Madonna L-song.

Produced by disco legend Nile Rodgers, Like a Virgin is one of the better productions on its parent album, a barrage of tight drums and squeaking synths propelled along by a robust bassline blatantly stolen from Billie Jean. Wikipedia (yes, I use only the finest sources for my research) says ‘the song’s lyrics are ambiguous, consisting of hidden innuendos and open to various interpretations’. Um… they’re not hiding very well, are they? Maybe on paper ‘like a virgin, feels so good inside, when you hold me, and your heart beats, and you love me’ is ambiguous—maybe. And don’t get me wrong, the song says some really sweet things about love. The irresistibly naive ‘I’ll be yours ’til the end of time’ is everyone’s impulse when they enter their first relationship, and love is consistently valorised through the lyrics, much like in Living for Love 30 years later: love provides perspective (‘didn’t know how lost I was / Until I found you’), and revitalises (‘you made me feel / Shiny and new’). But at root, Like A Virgin is also about exactly what you think it’s about.

Flirtatious without becoming sordid, aspirational or nostalgic depending on your position, Like A Virgin has endured because it continues to mean different things to different people, and at different stages of life. There’s a completely valid interpretation that the song is just about the thrill of giving yourself wholeheartedly over to a love that eradicates everything that’s gone before, but there’s undoubtedly also a gentle dissection of the cultural value we place upon virginity. Her synthpop could mean anything. Previously, Holiday and Lucky Star had been cute club hits, but Like A Virgin was the song that sent Madonna into the stratosphere. It redefined conversations about assertive femininity and progressive feminism; it legitimised Madonna as a postmodernist cultural icon, and gave rise to the idea of the Madonna wannabe. The mythos, the power and vulnerability, the candy-sweet delivery of borderline filthy lyrics: it all begins here, in a perfect distillation of everything that makes Madonna the greatest pop star of all time. Like a Virgin was one of the least divisive songs in the rate; we all seem to agree that although it’s nobody’s 11, it’s a solid piece of iconic pop music. Other artists would kill to have released this, and to say that it’s almost B-tier Madonna is testament to the treasures elsewhere in her discography.

 

Here’s a must-see video of the song’s best live reinvention yet.

And, in a long line of troll moves, maybe Madonna’s biggest piece of what-the-f*ckery to date: Like a Würgin.

Comments

Spoiler

@CyberRaga It’s a cute song to play when getting ready to go out or something.

@Frank Potion This is overrated to me… it’s iconic but I wouldn’t really listen to this song for the hell of it

@Reject False Icons A classic

@whoresup This must have been so revolutionary when it was released! A simple yet fantastic song.

@Crescent Bloom A staple in M’s career. She’s cute, but M has other songs that simply demolish this track.

@danbekim it’s okay, I overplayed it probably

@Blown Away I’m not the biggest fan of this song. The instrumental is fine, it’s quite nice actually, but it’s the vocals that irritate me. This would’ve sounded more way pleasant to me if it were sung in a lower register.

@nickkoko Actually one of my least favourite singles of hers.

@Duella DeVil My least favorite single of hers

@monstertoronto Honestly i love this song so much.