While yesterday was all about my husband Andy, it also marked the anniversary of Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ album – as much an influence on my youth as anything else, and so it merits this post, which will mostly be a linky look back at that heady time in my life. Shaded with the drama that typically accompanies October, and the drama that goes with simply being a senior in high school, the ‘Erotica’ album was about so much more than sex – even if sex was also a big part of it.
Leading off with the title track, Madonna whispered huskily to us that Dita would be our mistress, and we fell in line to serve with gleeful and submissive abandon. There was so much more at work at the time, and this is one of those albums that likely means more to me than most because of how it accompanied a time period fraught with the danger of self-annihilation, depression, redemption, and growing into a version of myself no longer commandeered by parents or adults or peers.
Madonna ushered in the most controversial period of her artistic life and gave me the inspiration to do likewise, unafraid and undeterred by a society that felt increasingly against the very person I was struggling to become. No one else was doing that in my life, and in many ways she was the lifeline that got me through that wilderness. As for the ‘Erotica’ album, let’s revisit the track list – much of which has already been chronicled in the Madonna Timeline, and worth a look back at today:
- Erotica
- Fever
- Bye Bye Baby
- Deeper and Deeper
- Where Life Begins
- Bad Girl
- Waiting
- Thief of Hearts
- Words
- Rain
- Why’s It So Hard
- In This Life
- Did You Do It?
- Secret Garden
