FEATURE:
You Must Love Me
The Ever-Underrated Madonna
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THIS is not connected to any album anniversary…
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: Helmut Werb
or any announcement but, as is it good to revisit Madonna now and then, I thought I would do this feature. I am not sure how far along her biopic is (that Madonna is directing and co-writing) but, with COVID-19, I suspect that a release won’t be happening until 2022. In terms of album anniversaries next year, it will be quieter than this one. 2020 marked twenty years since Music came out; it was ten years since Confessions on a Dance Floor, and five years since the underrated Rebel Heart. The biggest anniversary in 2021 will be True Blue turning thirty-five. That does not happen until 30th June but, as that album will be in many people’s minds in the summer, it got me thinking about Madonna’s work in general. I am not going to write a feature about Madonna as a woman and idol and maybe, in that respect, she is underrated – I think her Queen of Pop tag is well-earned and she has gained plenty of fame and plaudits through the years. Like so many artists, I think radio stations narrow in on particular singles and ignore a pretty comprehensive and broad body of work. There are playlists regarding her underrated tracks, and I was thinking about True Blue and other albums that have not gained the respect they deserve. Whilst I agree that there are a couple of the latter-period albums that are not that brilliant – Hard Candy (2008), and MDNA (2012) spring to mind -, I think she has only really slipped on a couple of albums.
It is not just albums in general where Madonna does not get due credit. I feel one can look through her entire back catalogue and there are so many songs that deserve to be played and get some airing but are not really featured. I will come to a couple of examples but, back in 1983, Madonna’s eponymous debut was a revelation. I am not going to give backstory and Madonna’s ‘journey’ of from arriving in New York with barely a dollar to her name to releasing her first record…but listen to Madonna today and it sounds so fresh and full of life! I think Madonna herself said that it was an ‘aerobics’ album but, as that was a big craze at the time, one can see why some of the songs have that sort of workout/high-energy vibe. That would be a discredit to the music itself. Whereas a lot of big artists begin by co-writing with a team and then become more independent, Madonna had a smaller squad on her debut. Five of Madonna’s eight tracks were written solely by her – including Lucky Star, and her debut single, Everybody (1982) -, and she created this forty-minute album that is packed with terrific songs and huge fun. Maybe it is not Madonna’s greatest set of vocal performances but, as she was twenty-four when the album came out, one can forgive her for not being at her strongest and most rounded.
I think some reviewers have confused a certain naivety and excitement with vapidity and a lack of quality. I still see so many mixed reviews for Madonna – many highlighting some weak vocals at times and songs that have little depth. Some have noted how that album launched Madonna as a Disco diva and, in a way, she popularised Dance-Pop and provided a thrilling alternative to the comparatively bland and predictable mainstream Pop of the day. Even though the singles and videos helped make Madonna a star and introduce her to households around the world, it seems strange that there should be any criticism of Madonna or her debut. In 2020, the album is endlessly relevant and strong. Listen to a lot of the Disco-themed albums of this year and one can hear shades of 1983-Madonna in many of them. Though only a couple or so of Madonna’s songs are played on radio and it is not an album necessarily associated with her peak, there are few debut albums of the 1980s as influential, legacy-giving and accessible. No matter what your musical tastes, one can appreciate the vivaciousness and rush that the album provides – in addition to some more emotional moments that provide their own nuances. If anyone needs a good boost and an album that can get the body moving that stays in the head, then Madonna is one for you!
Think about the very different sound of 1984’s Like a Virgin and, once more, here is an album that remains underrated. I was barely alive at that time, so I cannot recall what the media perception was but, as an album, Like a Virgin still has detractors - and it is much more than merely a few good singles. The singles themselves are phenomenal! Like a Virgin is an awesome and timeless title track; Material Girl is a track that I grew up on and it was one of the first music videos I ever saw; Angel is a massively underrated song; Dress You Up, again, is not played much and is underrated too. Into the Groove can also be considered a single from that period - it was recorded for the 1985 film, Desperately Seeking Susan and it featured on the re-issue of Like a Virgin. I have not even mentioned her songs for film soundtracks and, whilst some are patchy, there are some real gems to be found! Those who have criticised Like a Virgin point to its lack of real emotional resonance and how it is quite shallow (their words). I guess every album will have its naysayers, but I have read a lot of reviews that are mixed towards Like a Virgin – it is another classic in her arsenal! Like her debut, Like a Virgin has an important legacy. This Wikipedia article provides more illumination:
“Madonna proved she was not a one-hit wonder with the release of the album which sold 12 million copies worldwide at the time of its release. In 2016, Billboard ranked at number nine in the list of Certified Diamond Albums From Worst to Best. Like a Virgin was placed at fifth at Album of the Decade by Billboard—the highest peak by a female performer.
Taraborrelli felt that "Like a Virgin is really a portrait of Madonna's uncanny pop instincts empowered by her impatient zeal for creative growth and her innate knack for crafting a good record.” He added that the success of the album made it clear what was Madonna's real persona. "She was a street-smart dance queen with the sexy allure of Marilyn Monroe, the coy iciness of Marlene Dietrich and the cutting and protective glibness of a modern Mae West". Although the album received mixed reviews, Taraborrelli believed that the "mere fact that at the time of its release so many couldn't resist commenting on the record was a testament to the continuous, growing fascination with Madonna ... Every important artist has at least one album in his or her career whose critical and commercial success becomes the artist's magic moment; for Madonna, Like a Virgin was just such a defining moment”.
Chris Smith, author of 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, believed that it was with Like a Virgin that Madonna was able to steal the spotlight towards herself. She asserted her sexuality as only male rock stars had done before, moving well beyond the limited confines of being a pop artist, to becoming a focal point for nationwide discussions of power relationships in the areas of sex, race, gender, religion, and other divisive social topics. Her songs became a lightning rod for both criticism by conservatives and imitation by the younger female population. Consequence of Sound ranked the album at number two on "The 10 Greatest Sophomore Albums of All Time," calling it the album that "carved out the throne...that would be Madonna's forever: the Queen of Pop."
This sort of takes us to the album that will celebrate a big anniversary next year: the huge leap that is True Blue. I think, by 1985/1986, Madonna was addressing bigger themes and was coming on as a singer. I forgot to mention that, like her debut, Madonna was hugely involved in the writing of Like a Virgin – whereas many Pop artists of 1984 had teams writing for them, Madonna was very much calling shots and ensuring the albums were not being directed incorrectly (though, with Nile Rodgers producing Like a Virgin, she was in safe hands!). Some may shout that True Blue is not underrated but, once more, there are scores of people who have had some unkind things to say. By 1989’s Like a Prayer, there could be no doubt that Madonna was at a peak and was an undisputed Queen of Pop! Even by the time of True Blue, some felt that her career might not last long or that she had nothing extraordinary to offer. Only three years after her debut, she had come such a long way and accomplished so much! With Madonna co-producing True Blue alongside writing partners Stephen Bray and Patrick Leonard, she was assuming more control and, as a result, could have more say in terms of her sound. Many people limit True Blue’s appeal to its singles: Live to Tell (released: 26th March, 1986); Papa Don't Preach (Released: 11th June, 1986); True Blue (Released: 29th September, 1986); Open Your Heart (Released: 19th November, 1986); La Isla Bonita (Released: 25th February, 1987). Listen to the vocal on Live to Tell to hear how Madonna was bringing new emotion into her performances. Papa Don’t Preach’s story of pregnancy against the wishes of a judging father was a hugely bold move - and these types of subjects were not often discussed in ‘80s Pop.
With some claiming the album featured some ordinary vocals and songs that were too commercial, I think a lot of the criticism was unjustified and tin-eared. It was clear Madonna has progressed from her first two albums and was producing a more eclectic sound whilst also bringing new shades and layers to the fold. With Madonna co-writing and producing every track on True Blue, she was heading into the realms of superstardom and would solidify her regency and popularity by the time Like a Prayer hit shelves in 1989. Although True Blue has fewer negative reports than her first couple of albums, there are some who have dismissed it and gave it short shrift. To Wikipedia once more, where were learnTrue Blue has an undeniable legacy:
“Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted that "True Blue is the album where Madonna truly became 'Madonna the Superstar'—the endlessly ambitious, fearlessly provocative entertainer that knew how to outrage, spark debates, get good reviews—and make good music while she's at it." Mark Savage from BBC stated that True Blue is the album which cemented Madonna's reputation as the 'First Lady of Pop'. Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine said that with the album "Madonna made the transition from pop tart to consummate artist, joining the ranks of '80s icons like Michael Jackson and Prince.” Similarly, Robert C. Sickels, the author of 100 Entertainers Who Changed America: An Encyclopedia of Pop Culture Luminaries, wrote that the album "cemented Madonna's place as the most popular female musical star of the 1980s, shining alongside male pop icons like Prince and Michael Jackson." NME dubbed the three as a "holy trinity" of pop music of the decade.
Regarding Madonna's influence on the record industry and younger artists, Debbie Gibson's then manager Doug Breitbart commented: "Madonna has brought back a really strong, melodic component to pop music. She has a very youth-oriented, up, bubbly, fun sound.” Slant Magazine listed the album at number 60 on their list of "The 100 Best Albums of the 1980s" and stated that "True Blue was the album on which it became readily apparent that Madonna was more than just a flash-in-the-pan pop star." They added, "It's when she began manipulating her image—and her audience—with a real sense of clarity and purpose and made sure she had quality songs to back up her calculation and world-dominating ambition”.
There are a few more albums that I want to nod to that are underrated and have not really received as much love as they have earned. With True Blue turning thirty-five next year, I hope that there is more focus and respect thrown its way. For more details and story regarding Madonna and her albums, I can recommend Lucy O’Brien’s Madonna: Like an Icon and Caroline Sullivan’s Madonna: Album by Album. In terms of other specific albums that remain underrated, then I think we can skip over Like a Prayer, as that has received so much positivity and adoration.
Before I get to American Life, and Rebel Heart, I think we need to look at 1994’s Bedtime Stories. Maybe, once more, critics were short-sighted, or they were expecting something similar to Like a Prayer. Erotica of 1992 was Madonna’s most daring and, perhaps, provocative album to that point. Even though it got some mixed reaction, I think it received the acclaim it deserved and, when it comes to an album as a satisfying listening experience, I feel Bedtime Stories remains more under-appreciated. There are some great reviews for Bedtime Stories, but some feel (the album) has too many clichés and weaker moments; others have said it is quite bland and lifeless. I think, after Erotica, Madonna wanted to change and provide an album that was closer in sound to her earliest albums - and was a little warmer, maybe. I really like Erotica but, as there was a bit of a backlash and some saw her as being too controversial and risqué, there was a bit of an apologetic tone to Bedtime Stories. That said, Human Nature does poke fun at that – how we all think about sex and it shouldn’t be a crime -; Secret is a gorgeous and under-spun song; Inside of Me, and Love Tried to Welcome Me are terrific tracks one hardly hears, whereas the title track (co-written by Björk; the only album track Madonna did not write on) is phenomenal.
I think Bedtime Stories is an album whose deeper cuts are as appealing and listenable as the single. Not to keep returning to Wikipedia but, as Bedtime Stories has received some negative attention, one must remember its legacy:
"Ray of Light may daunt some fans," Stuart Maconie wrote in a Q review of that album, "but then Bedtime Stories should have alerted them to the fact that Madonna is as much her own woman in her choice of musical company as her choice of underwear.” Philadelphia's Patrick DeMarco described that "this was a record that cemented Madonna as the icon we know today".[96] Jamieson Cox from Time called the album "underrated", while The Plain Dealer's Troy Smith felt that it was "overlooked" because it was "sandwiched between her most controversial work (Erotica) and, arguably, her best (Ray of Light)". He praised songs like "Take a Bow" which he considered as "the best romantic ballad of her career".
Bianca Gracie of Idolator website wrote: "Bedtime Stories proved that Madonna never lost her edge; she just decided to soften it so that her image could regroup. When listening to the sultry undertones and R&B influences threaded throughout it, you come to realize how flawlessly the singer could change up her persona while still sounding genuine". Gracie believed that Bedtime Stories was an album with "timeless sound" and signified an evolution of Madonna as an artist, acting as the front-runner to her more experimental album like Ray of Light (1998). However she noted how the album never let go of the sexual provocation associated with Madonna and how the singer chose to turn against what people expected from her at that time—being apologetic”.
After the incredible success and varying sounds of 1998’s Ray of Light, and 2000’s Music, perhaps Madonna’s first real misfire – in terms of how critics received it – came with 2003’s American Life. This is an album where Madonna was a bit more political (I think many critics felt her observations and angers were a little ineffectual or unbecoming). I feel that this reinvention and shift was necessary and, though there are one or two weaker songs on the album, there are a lot of great cuts. Hollywood, Love Profusion, American Life, and Nobody Knows Me are all excellent songs…and I think that American Life as an album got some unfair slating. In a sample review, this is what AllMusic wrote
“American Life is an album performed by a vocalist who has abandoned the U.S. for the U.K. and co-produced by a French techno mastermind, recorded during a time of strife in America, and released just after the country completed a war. Given that context and given that the vocalist is arguably the biggest star in the world, the title can't help but carry some import, carry the weight of social commentary. And it follows through on that promise, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, but either way, American Life winds up as the first Madonna record with ambitions as serious as a textbook. It plays as somberly as either Like a Prayer or Ray of Light, just as it delves into an insular darkness as deep as Erotica while retaining the club savviness of the brilliant, multi-colored Music.
This is an odd mixture, particularly when it's infused with a searching, dissatisfied undercurrent and a musical sensibility that is at once desperate and adventurous, pitched halfway between singer/songwriterisms and skimming of current club culture. It's pulled tight between these two extremes, particularly because the intimate guitar-based songs (and there are a lot of them, almost all beginning with just her and a guitar) are all personal meditations, with the dance songs usually functioning as vehicles for social commentary. Even if the sparer ballads are introspective, they're treated as soundscapes by producer Mirwais, giving them an unsettling eerie quality that is mirrored by the general hollowness of the club songs. While there are some interesting sounds on these tracks, they sound bleak and hermetically sealed, separate from what's happening either in the mainstream or in the underground. Perhaps that's because she's aligned herself with such flash-in-the-pan trends as electroclash, a hipster movement that's more theoretical than musical, whose ill effects can be heard on the roundly panned James Bond theme "Die Another Day," featured toward the end of American Life. Then again, it could also be that this is the first time that Madonna has elected to rap -- frequently and frenetically -- on a record, something that logistically would fit with Mirwais' dense, house-heavy productions, but sound embarrassingly awkward coming out of her mouth. But that insular feel also comes from the smaller-scale, confessional songs, particularly because Mirwais doesn't give them depth and the songs themselves are imbalanced, never quite having a notable hook in the music or words.
Even so, there's a lot that's interesting about American Life -- the half-hearted stabs at politics fall aside, and there are things bubbling in the production that are quite infectious, while the stretch from "Nobody Knows Me" to "X-Static Process" in the middle of the record can be quite moving. But, overall, American Life is better for what it promises than what it delivers, and it's better in theory than practice”.
I do think that, when we consider times at which Madonna was underrated or people got her wrong, then the reaction to American Life is a prime example. Even though the album is not in her top-five best studio albums, it is a strong effort and I feel it deserves more kindness and another listen. Before moving on and finishing, I would steer people to soundtrack albums like Who's That Girl (1987), and I'm Breathless (1990), as they contain a lot of great tracks and people do not discuss them much. Similarly, compilation albums like Something to Remember (1995) have some songs that are not often played and, aside from her terrific studio albums, there are these gems that hardly get a look in!
Before concluding, I want to mention one latter-day Madonna album that does not get some proper plaudit: the exceptional Rebel Heart. Maybe it is not as strong as 2019’s Madame X, but her 2015-released thirteenth studio album is one that requires some fresh investigation. It is an album that has received some mixed reaction but, with tracks such as Living for Love, Illuminati, and Bitch I’m Madonna hitting hard, there are plenty of excellent moments! I think it is another album where the deeper cuts are as strong as the singles. Some have labelled Rebel Heart as being safe, clunky, and uneven in terms of quality, but I think it is a consistently strong album that didn’t get the good press from some that it deserved. In a positive review – compared to their more mixed one for American Life -, AllMusic provided some praise for Rebel Heart:
“Rebel Heart was introduced to the world with an indiscipline uncharacteristic of Madonna. Blame it on hackers who rushed out a clutch of unfinished tracks at the end of 2014, a few months before the record's scheduled spring release. Madonna countered by putting six full tracks up on a digital service, a move that likely inflated the final Deluxe Edition of Rebel Heart up to a whopping 19 tracks weighing in at 75 minutes, but even that unveiling wasn't performed without a hitch: during an ornate performance of "Living for Love," she stumbled on-stage at the BRIT Awards.
Such cracks in Madge's armor happily play into the humanity coursing through Rebel Heart (maybe the hiccups were intentional after all?), a record that ultimately benefits from its daunting mess. All the extra space allows ample room for detours, letting Madonna indulge in both Erotica-era taboo-busting sleaze ("Holy Water") and feather-light pop ("Body Shop"). Although she takes a lingering look back at the past on "Veni Vidi Vici" -- her cataloging of past hits walks right on the edge of camp, kept away from the danger zone by a cameo from Nas -- Rebel Heart, like any Madonna album, looks forward. Opener "Living for Love" announces as much, as its classic disco is soon exploded into a decibel-shattering EDM pulse coming courtesy of co-producer Diplo. Madonna brings him back a few more times -- the pairing of the reggae-bouncing "Unapologetic Bitch" and Nicki Minaj showcase "Bitch I'm Madonna," their titles suggesting vulgarity, their execution flinty and knowing -- but she cleverly balances these clubby bangers with "Devil Pray," an expert evocation of her folktronica Y2K co-produced by Avicii, and "Illuminati," a sleek, spooky collaboration with Kanye West. These are the anchors of the album, grounding the record when Madonna wanders into slow-churning meditation, unabashed revivals of her '90s adult contemporary mode, casual confession ("I spent sometime as a narcissist"), and defiant celebrations of questionable taste. Undoubtedly, some of this flair would've been excised if the record was a manageable length, but the blessing of the unwieldiness is that it does indeed represent a loosening of Madonna's legendary need for control. Certainly, the ambition remains, along with the hunger to remain on the bleeding edge, but she's allowing her past to mingle with her present, allowing her to seem human yet somewhat grander at the same time”.
As an artist, I think that there are Madonna albums that have either been overlooked, or some have given it some unfair criticism. One can look at Madonna’s entire career and success and say that she has done okay, but look at how some of her albums have been received, and I do feel that she is still underrated. Things get a bit tougher when it comes to Madonna as an actor: she has been in some great films, but her film career is a little less consistent than her music! I shall wrap things up there but, as there are not too many big Madonna anniversaries approaching, I wanted to take a more general stance and cover an area that I have not discussed before. Even if there have been one or two less-than-genius albums from her since 1983, I do feel that her back catalogue is far richer and more engaging than some critics have documented. From the huge singles through to album tracks that are so interesting and varied – so many of them have not been played on the radio or do not get much spotlight -, Madonna still remains undervalued! I am not sure whether she is providing us with anything next year in terms of live dates, a biopic, or a new album….but there is plenty to dissect and discuss in terms of her discography. If you have not taken a proper dive into Madonna’s albums, or you have put some of them aside because you were not a fan at one point, then have another listen and…
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1986
OPEN your heart.