CEREMONY | The Madonna L-Rate

[Ronk 14,762]

1 minute ago, NeonSkeleton said:

 

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

  Reveal hidden contents

@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.

 

Should have been top 3

[CyberRaga 342]

However for me the tour version is 11.

 

[Cruelty 6,172]

And now we have our top 5! Who do you think we're saying goodbye to next?

 

[Ronk 14,762]

2 minutes ago, NeonSkeleton said:

And now we have our top 5! Who do you think we're saying goodbye to next?

 

Let It Will Be next.. The others are all iconic classics.

[Cruelty 6,172]

5 LUCKY STAR — average 7.76

The highs: 11 x 2 [@Thoth @DrewPa]; 10 x 9 [@androiduser @RAMROD @Ronk @Reject False Icons @GaGaLB @Duella DeVil @Cupid Boy @monstertoronto @ssslyboy]
The lows: 1 x 2 [@Charmz @Blown Away]

I don’t have much to say about Lucky Star. I respect its significance as Madonna’s first US Top 5 single, but it just doesn’t engage me much as a song. It’s a decent post-disco bop, but would quickly become redundant in the wake of bigger, bolder and better singles such as Like a Virgin, Crazy for You and Into the Groove. Even on the album, it pales in comparison to the frantic fervour of Burning Up or the euphoria of Holiday. But it does have the advantage of being Track 1 on the album, meaning that for many people who’d casually picked up an interesting-looking record at the store, this was the first thing they’d ever heard from Madonna. Imagine being able to hear Madonna for the first time again.

The (possibly slightly apocryphal) Madonna origin story has been trotted out too many times to mean much anymore, but it’s worth recounting. Madonna moved from Detroit to New York with 35 dollars and a dream, pestered DJs in nightclubs with her demo tapes and eventually wangled a meeting with Seymour Stein, president of Sire Records, who signed her for 3 singles. A debut album was commissioned off the back of the club hits Everybody and Burning Up, and the rest is history. What the story hammers home is that the one constant through Madonna’s life has been her ambition, and Lucky Star is overflowing with it. The sparkling synths are truly magical, and although the one-note lyrics comparing men to stars are… there, the production does pop off (especially when you’re drunk, as I found out writing this post). Oh, and the Confessions Tour performance is glorious; four incredible minutes of edging as all the locals in attendance realise there are ten minutes left before they’ll have to pay another hour for the parking and they still haven’t heard Hung Up.

Comments

Spoiler

@No Way Home Iconic but probably her least consequential iconic song.

@Reject False Icons Classic Madonna

@danbekim not the best

@Frank Potion Iconic and also a personal favourite… it’s me and one of my best friend’s favourite songs so it will always make me happy

@Blown Away The instrumental is just not good… And then there’s poor 80’s vocals on it. One of Madonna’s worst songs ever, it’s very unpleasant to listen to. How this even became a top 40 hit, let alone top 5, baffles me to this day.

@nickkoko Such a fun nostalgic song with a great summer vibe. The Confessions Tour version is also amazing.

@Duella DeVil Literally just came on at work and had me DANCING the mix with Hung up is EVERYTHING

@Crescent Bloom A staple. Probably overplayed, but rightfully so. The production on this song is just so right. There’s probably room for more lyrical content, but Madonna’s energy is SO explosive on this thing that I don’t care. The Confessions Tour Version of this track is a must listen for any M fan.

@monstertoronto Stone cold classic forever and ever.

@whoresup A classic!

@CyberRaga Cute 80s moment.

 

[Cruelty 6,172]

4 LET IT WILL BE — average 7.79

The highs: 11 x 2 [@lasagna @Thoth]; 10 x 6 [@RAMROD @Reject False Icons @Duella DeVil @Chesescake @Cupid Boy @sillynate]
The lows: 1 [@Charmz]; 5 [@Madame Goo Goo @ssslyboy @CyberRaga]

Following the muted reception to 2003’s American Life (artistically one of M’s greatest achievements, but I can see why the public didn’t buy into it), Confessions on a Dance Floor makes a clear statement: Madonna is the queen of the dance floor, and she’s here to stay. As we discussed when eliminating Like It or Not, the album is as much about reflection as confession, and pieces like Let It Will Be consider how a legend is created. It’s perhaps Madonna’s best brag, a more mystic take on the message she would more bluntly present on B*tch I’m Madonna. Using the disco genre which her own brand of synthpop helped to wipe out, two decades in the business, millions of sales later, ‘now I can tell you about success, about fame’. The Madonna of Let It Will Be is confident, and sage, and she wants you to compare ‘the rise and the fall of all the stars’ to her own star, burning forever. Intriguingly, the two Confessions offerings in this selection are the two in which Madonna is more assured than ever of her own immortality.

Ultimately, the song cancels itself out—Madonna’s repetition of the first verse (‘Now I can tell you about success, about fame’) is drowned out by the repeated mantra ‘Just let it be, won’t you let it be?’ Because talking about fame is pointless unless you’re continuing to innovate at the same time. Resting on your laurels helps nobody, so if you want Madonna to sit there telling you mere mortals the secrets of success, you’re gonna be waiting forever. If you want an example of how to do it, ‘just watch me burn’. And, musically, that’s exactly what the song does; Let It Will Be is a disco supernova—a cataclysm of strings chirping over a barrage of squelching synths. Poppers o’clock, but make it baroque. It was written by Mirwais and produced by Stuart Price, which goes much of the way to explaining why it slaps SO HARD.

This song continues to mesmerise me, and I still can’t entirely figure it out. For a start, what does the grammatically nonsensical ‘let it will be’ even MEAN? There are whole Internet threads of non-English speakers who don’t know wtf she’s on about, AND RIGHTLY SO. The obvious answer is that the song title ‘Let It Be’ was already taken—and by a pretty famous song at that—but the more obvious answer is: b*tch she’s Madonna. Don’t question her. Just let it (will) be.

Anyway, I’ll leave you to disentangle the mysteries of Let It Will Be—until then, here’s the song’s sole live outing, in which Madonna performs the role of ‘me trying to get home from the club whilst still quite drunk’:

Comments

Spoiler

@whoresup A great track from COADF - this reminds me what a great album it was!

@Crescent Bloom The production is dynamic + I enjoy the “everything will fall into place” POV.

@Duella DeVil I-CON-IC

@nickkoko One of my favourite non-singles from Confessions. The Confessions Tour version takes this song to a whole new level and that’s why it’s one of my most played M songs.

@Reject False Icons The instrumentals of the violins are so memorable, one of the best reflections of the record

@No Way Home One of the lesser tracks on Confessions (bearing in mind it’s worst song is still a 7), it’s inferior to its tour remix, but for what it is here it’s a damn good time.

@danbekim slayage

@Frank Potion Decent… nothing special to me, but interesting production and goes well with the rest of COADF

@Blown Away This one is good, but far from the best. It works when I’m in a certain mood and atmosphere and otherwise I don’t feel it. Something about the vocal layered with the (amazing) instrumental irks me. I can’t put my finger on it, but it doesn’t work very well.

@monstertoronto It’s good, just not super memorable for me.

@CyberRaga The bass alone is the reason I gave it a 5. Aside from that, the song has always been one of the “meh” moments in COADF.

 

[monstertoronto 10,232]

I had to do a family thing so I’m super late! Just catching up now!

[Ronk 14,762]

The remaining three are my 10s.  Can't remember if I gave one an 11 because they are all 11s.

[Cruelty 6,172]

3 LA ISLA BONITA — average 8.82

The highs: 11 x 2 [@Cupid Boy @memomemome]; 10 x 15 [@NeonSkeleton @Lucas @androiduser @No Way Home @lasagna @RAMROD @Ronk @Reject False Icons @GaGaLB @proxy @Blown Away @nickkoko @Anderson123 @BBhomemaker @CyberRaga]
The lows: 1 [@Charmz]; 5 [@danbekim]

As we’ve been journeying through this unique collection of Madonna gems, I’ve been trying to give you an idea of how these songs connect with bigger themes across Madonna’s life and career. And whilst it’s significant that 1986’s La Isla Bonita marks the beginning of Madonna’s long and fruitful relationship with Latin pop, the most important context that La Isla Bonita represents is just that Madonna makes ****ing BANGING pop music. The propulsive Get Together, the euphoric Express Yourself, the robust Deeper and Deeper and the invincible Open Your Heart: there’s nothing lyrically complex about these songs, but they’re all certified BANGERS. And as this song’s score proves, at Gagadaily we are suckers for a good bop. After all, we are all material girls, living in a material world, and Madonna’s providing the material.

La Isla Bonita is Madonna’s tribute to ‘the beauty and mystery of Latin American people’, a silky-smooth mix of airy vocals, wistful synth strings and tight chugging Cuban percussion. There’s nothing lyrically profound here, it’s just about taking a holiday, taking some time to celebrate. If I was trying to be analytical, I’d talk about the odd way that time works in this song—with its intersection of sunsets, lullabies, siestas and dreams—but lyrical analysis is really not what this song’s about. Is a bop, that’s all.

Interestingly, an early version of this song was offered to Michael Jackson! In an alternative reality, we just rated this in the Bad megarate (in this parallel universe, I like to imagine Confessions on a Dance Floor has been number 1 on the Billboard 200 every week since 2005). Anyway, no shade to Michael, but Madonna was the perfect singer for the job – as history has proved! Despite Madonna blindfolding every celebrity she could get her hands on and dragging them to the set of the B**** I’m Madonna music video, La Isla Bonita remains her most-viewed YouTube clip. M never passes up an opportunity to wheel it out on tour (to the mild disdain of long-term fans who’d rather she finally learnt the words to Rescue Me or something), and Gagadaily loves it too. Although it only picked up two 11s—I’m certain it would get more in a True Blue megarate—this is one of only 5 songs in the rate with a modal score of 10. A certified success, for a bulletproof pop classic.

Target-exclusive deluxe bonus fact: Just where is La Isla Bonita? Well there’s a place called San Pedro in Belize, which seems like a ready-made PR answer, but Madonna’s always been a bit more honest in her interviews: “I don’t know where San Pedro is… I may have been on the way to the studio and seen an exit ramp for San Pedro”. And indeed she did – it turns out La Isla Bonita is actually, accidentally, about a fishing port in Southern Los Angeles! This is where I long to be indeed…

Comments

Spoiler

@No Way Home The beginning of her obsession with Latin inspired sounds and perhaps the best she’s ever done it. This is one of her most enduring classics for a reason!

@Blown Away This one is a classic, there’s a reason why it’s among Madges top streamed songs. I love the carefree and effortless sound of the song, its simplicity works in its favor. The best part is the bridge for me.

@Crescent Bloom This is a classic!! I will point out, the extended remix surpasses the original. The synths and M’s background vocals soothingly open the track. It’s heaven.

@Reject False Icons Classic Madonna what else can I say, plus I think it was very popular in my country

@Duella DeVil Not a huge fan of her Spanish in this track but the synth horn stabs are everything, the live version from Girlie show is EVERYTHING

@danbekim classic, but lowkey aged

@CyberRaga Madonna + Latin influenced song(s) never go wrong. A classic.

@nickkoko A timeless classic

@monstertoronto A bona fide timeless classic.

@Frank Potion I feel like this is a bit more underrated among her “classic” songs… it transports me somewhere though <3

@Madame Goo Goo Overrated af, but still very good

@whoresup It’s a great song but it’s not something I come back to much.

@BBhomemaker The lalalala at the end ..ugh the sensuality of the song

 

[Cruelty 6,172]

Gagadaily, here are your top 2...

Who are you rooting for?

[Ronk 14,762]

I can't choose, but Like a Prayer will probably win.

[Lucas 27,187]

I think LAP will win but rooting for LTT ♥

[monstertoronto 10,232]

3 minutes ago, NeonSkeleton said:

3 LA ISLA BONITA — average 8.82

The highs: 11 x 2 [@Cupid Boy @memomemome]; 10 x 15 [@NeonSkeleton @Lucas @androiduser @No Way Home @lasagna @RAMROD @Ronk @Reject False Icons @GaGaLB @proxy @Blown Away @nickkoko @Anderson123 @BBhomemaker @CyberRaga]
The lows: 1 [@Charmz]; 5 [@danbekim]

As we’ve been journeying through this unique collection of Madonna gems, I’ve been trying to give you an idea of how these songs connect with bigger themes across Madonna’s life and career. And whilst it’s significant that 1986’s La Isla Bonita marks the beginning of Madonna’s long and fruitful relationship with Latin pop, the most important context that La Isla Bonita represents is just that Madonna makes ****ing BANGING pop music. The propulsive Get Together, the euphoric Express Yourself, the robust Deeper and Deeper and the invincible Open Your Heart: there’s nothing lyrically complex about these songs, but they’re all certified BANGERS. And as this song’s score proves, at Gagadaily we are suckers for a good bop. After all, we are all material girls, living in a material world, and Madonna’s providing the material.

La Isla Bonita is Madonna’s tribute to ‘the beauty and mystery of Latin American people’, a silky-smooth mix of airy vocals, wistful synth strings and tight chugging Cuban percussion. There’s nothing lyrically profound here, it’s just about taking a holiday, taking some time to celebrate. If I was trying to be analytical, I’d talk about the odd way that time works in this song—with its intersection of sunsets, lullabies, siestas and dreams—but lyrical analysis is really not what this song’s about. Is a bop, that’s all.

Interestingly, an early version of this song was offered to Michael Jackson! In an alternative reality, we just rated this in the Bad megarate (in this parallel universe, I like to imagine Confessions on a Dance Floor has been number 1 on the Billboard 200 every week since 2005). Anyway, no shade to Michael, but Madonna was the perfect singer for the job – as history has proved! Despite Madonna blindfolding every celebrity she could get her hands on and dragging them to the set of the B**** I’m Madonna music video, La Isla Bonita remains her most-viewed YouTube clip. M never passes up an opportunity to wheel it out on tour (to the mild disdain of long-term fans who’d rather she finally learnt the words to Rescue Me or something), and Gagadaily loves it too. Although it only picked up two 11s—I’m certain it would get more in a True Blue megarate—this is one of only 5 songs in the rate with a modal score of 10. A certified success, for a bulletproof pop classic.

Target-exclusive deluxe bonus fact: Just where is La Isla Bonita? Well there’s a place called San Pedro in Belize, which seems like a ready-made PR answer, but Madonna’s always been a bit more honest in her interviews: “I don’t know where San Pedro is… I may have been on the way to the studio and seen an exit ramp for San Pedro”. And indeed she did – it turns out La Isla Bonita is actually, accidentally, about a fishing port in Southern Los Angeles! This is where I long to be indeed…

Comments

  Reveal hidden contents

@No Way Home The beginning of her obsession with Latin inspired sounds and perhaps the best she’s ever done it. This is one of her most enduring classics for a reason!

@Blown Away This one is a classic, there’s a reason why it’s among Madges top streamed songs. I love the carefree and effortless sound of the song, its simplicity works in its favor. The best part is the bridge for me.

@Crescent Bloom This is a classic!! I will point out, the extended remix surpasses the original. The synths and M’s background vocals soothingly open the track. It’s heaven.

@Reject False Icons Classic Madonna what else can I say, plus I think it was very popular in my country

@Duella DeVil Not a huge fan of her Spanish in this track but the synth horn stabs are everything, the live version from Girlie show is EVERYTHING

@danbekim classic, but lowkey aged

@CyberRaga Madonna + Latin influenced song(s) never go wrong. A classic.

@nickkoko A timeless classic

@monstertoronto A bona fide timeless classic.

@Frank Potion I feel like this is a bit more underrated among her “classic” songs… it transports me somewhere though <3

@Madame Goo Goo Overrated af, but still very good

@whoresup It’s a great song but it’s not something I come back to much.

@BBhomemaker The lalalala at the end ..ugh the sensuality of the song

 

These are great writeups about the songs. Thanks! You add a lot of info! I’m just catching up on all of them now. 

[monstertoronto 10,232]

4 minutes ago, NeonSkeleton said:

Gagadaily, here are your top 2...

Who are you rooting for?

These were also my top two. 

[monstertoronto 10,232]

4 minutes ago, NeonSkeleton said:

Gagadaily, here are your top 2...

Who are you rooting for?

Like a Prayer should win