Category Archives: Madonna

Yes, they do exist – in this case it’s Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’ album, which was released three decades ago this week. Hard to believe that such a long time has gone by since she first preened a la Marilyn in ‘Material Girl’ or acted anything-but-like-a-virgin in the titular track, but time waits for no woman, virgin or not. ‘Like A Virgin’ was the first Madonna album that entered our home, and for all the supposedly titillating fodder, it made for harmless background music as we went on family vacations. Clearly my brother and I didn’t know what ‘virgin’ even meant, but we knew a good hook and a catchy pop song, and that’s all that mattered to my ears at the time. Here’s a quick look back at those LAV songs that have made it onto the Madonna Timeline.

We’ll begin with lead-off track ‘Material Girl’ – since this is where it all started for me. I loved it. I could dance to it all night long (and often did). Fueling the greed-obsessed 80s, the materialistic song was turned on its head with Madonna’s video for the single. In the end, she chooses love over material possessions – something everyone seemed to miss.

‘Angel‘ was a fluffy bit of day-dreamy swooning, as Madonna literally sighs and laughs over someone who’d caught her fancy. Harmless, escapist pop at its best, it was sugar for the ears, and nothing sounded sweeter.

Title track ‘Like A Virgin‘ is arguably her best-known and most classic work. Whereas ‘Like A Prayer’ was spectacular in a different way, ‘Virgin’ was Madonna’s first entry into the pop stratosphere – and you never forget your first time. The numerous subsequent interpretations she’s given the song are a testament to its staying power and eternal themes.

It was on ‘Kids Incorporated’ when I first heard ‘Over and Over‘ – as rendered by a Madonna-wanna-be Martika. In spite of that, I still loved the song.

As far as my favorite ‘Virgin’ cut goes, I’d have to give the edge to ‘Dress You Up‘ – this is the song that had me jumping up and down on my brothers bed and squealing with absolute excitement at how good a song could sound at ear-throttling volume.

The album closed with a plea to ‘Stay‘ – a request I would not understand for a few more years, but something called out to me even back then – a longing, a wish, a prayer – and Madonna gave it all a voice.

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

With the last few Madonna Timeline entries – ‘Like a Virgin‘ and ‘Burning Up‘ and ‘Dress You Up‘  – we’ve delved deep into the early days of M’s musical career. We stay in the 80’s with the latest, ‘Lucky Star.’ Now brace yourself, because I have to say something rather blasphemous to die-hard fans, and many casual fans of that heady early era as well I suppose: I’m not a fan of ‘Lucky Star.’ And you know what? It’s ok to say that. If Matthew Rettenmund can have issues with ‘Take A Bow’ and ‘Crazy For You‘ then surely I can scoff at ‘Lucky Star!’

Come on, Shine your heavenly body tonight

Cause I know you’re gonna make everything all right

I also don’t have any fond or not-so-fond memories of when the song came out. My first Madonna memory was a short while later – when ‘Material Girl‘ marched onto the scene. Prior to that I was too young to listen to the radio.

That said, I understand that ‘Lucky Star’ is a highlight in her catalog, particularly to many who were bopping to the early MTV beat back then, so I will not discount its importance. For her video career, it was crucial in establishing her style (and it’s historic in the back-up dancing by her own brother, Christopher, who would prove to have a crucial presence in the first half of her career) and her soon-to-be dominance of MTV. Yet for some reason, and it’s a personal preference more than anything else, I never connected to the song or the video.

So you see, I don’t like absolutely everything Madonna does. I’m a sick fan, but I’m not a sycophant.

You may be my lucky star, but I’m the luckiest by far.

SONG #109 – ‘Lucky Star’ ~ 1985

Yesterday marked the day, way back in 1992, when Madonna released her ‘Erotica’ album. It was the fall of my senior year in high school, and I was in a very dismal place. The prospect of leaving home in less than a year was a frightening light at the end of a tunnel from which I wasn’t sure I could escape. The last days of October ripped the leaves from the trees. Summer had long since surrendered. In the moments that led up to the release of ‘Erotica’ I felt like those leaves. Torn. Shredded. Fallen. Falling…

It was a dark time, and ‘Erotica’ was one of Madonna’s darker albums, which makes it one of her best. There were scorching spots like ‘Fever’ and ‘Thief of Hearts.’ There were softer stretches like ‘Bad Girl’ and ‘Rain.’ There were even funny bits like ‘Bye Bye Baby‘ along with under-rated, overlooked gems like ‘Words.’ And there were classic tracks like ‘Deeper and Deeper’ and ‘Erotica‘ itself.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure I would ever hear the album. At that time, I wasn’t sure I’d need my math homework the next day. I felt on the verge of self-annihilation. In the backyard, I stood lonely sentry by piles of oak leaves, after raking the expanse of dying lawn behind the house. From my hands, cold and wet clumps of leaves and twigs dropped into black garbage bags. In the folds of plastic that was the shade of clear night sky, I looked at molten-like reflections of clouds and pine trees and the bare branches of deciduous nudity.

Sometimes I feel emotionally naked on this blog. This is one of those times. It’s always easier to take your clothes off than show your heart and share your secrets. Suddenly I want to clam up and stop the telling of this story – and since this is my blog, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. For now, at least. I don’t feel like talking about it. But it’s already been said, and written about, and if you delve deep enough here it’s not difficult to piece it together. Tricksters don’t like to be caught, but sometimes we do get trapped.

In a similar way, ‘Erotica’ was the trap that Madonna set for herself. We all do it at some point. We design situations to test, to try, to risk, and, yes, to die. Bound by the ropes we weave, tied up in chains of self-construction, she exorcised her demons publicly, brazenly baring her body in her ‘Sex’ book and aurally releasing herself in the ‘Erotica’ album. It was a piece of pop art that pissed people off, because it raised a mirror to the world. No matter how vain we secretly (or not-so-secretly) are, the world despises anyone who points that mirror at it uninvited. I did not understand that then. I don’t think Madonna did either.

Whenever someone questions me about my love and adoration for Madonna, I think back to the fall that ‘Erotica’ came out, and how she was partly responsible for saving my life. It would be foolish to attribute my survival solely to her, but she most certainly played an integral role in getting me through the rough times.

She still does.

Madonna would make it past the critical and commercial downturn that the ‘Erotica’ period became, and I would make it past that frightening fall. Sometimes, though, on rainy nights late in October, I remember when the leaves fell in 1992, and I marvel that we escaped.

Surrender to me, to love…

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

Not every Madonna song is a classic in the mold of ‘Like A Prayer’ or ‘Ray of Light‘ – and even though this Madonna Timeline selection is reportedly one of Guy Oseary’s favorites, I’ve never been all that fond of it (though the video and sound are classic early Madonna.) This is ‘Burning Up’ – a relic from the 80’s that probably should remain buried there. I differ from many Madonna fans on my antipathy for the song, but there’s enough room in the world for different tastes, so I’m standing by my dislike.

Don’t put me off ’cause I’m on fire
And I can’t quench my desire
Don’t you know that I’m burning up for your love
You’re not convinced that that is enough
I put myself in this position
And I deserve the imposition
But you don’t even know I’m alive
And this pounding in my heart just won’t die
I’m burning up

‘Burning Up’ treated us to one of the first hallmarks of many a Madonna song: an unabashed ode to sexuality and pleasure that could also be read as an ode to love. Underneath all the double entendres there is the simple excitement of feeling the heat from an object of affection, and the passionate will to do anything for said object.

You’re always closing your door
Well that only makes me want you more
And day and night I cry for your love
You’re not convinced that that is enough
To justify my wanting you
Now tell me what you want me to do
I’m not blind and I know
That you want to want me but you can’t let go
Come on, let go!

It also set Madonna apart from everyone else, particularly in the way she snarls, “Unlike the others I’ll do anything, I’m not the same, I have no shame, I’m on fire!” Little did the world knew how true she would prove that to be.

You know you got me burning up, baby (Burning up for your love)
You know you got me burning up, baby (Burning up for your love)

Song #108: ‘Burning Up’ – 1983

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

The woman stands alone in the spotlight. Thousands of screaming fans surround her, watching her every move, but she is undeniably alone, and, dare it be said, perhaps a little lonely. Her hair is disheveled, her body is both beautiful and a wreck – bound by a corset, restricted by lace, and held only half together by her trademark fishnet stockings. She looks a bit broken and fiercely forlorn. The familiar pop chirp and breezy bounce of the signature track is almost unrecognizable in this waltz – and the woman, almost three decades after she first sang the song, imbues the performance with a tragically ironic take on all that is shiny and new. This is Madonna and her latest incarnation of ‘Like A Virgin’ – the emotional high-point of the MDNA Tour. She sings to a plaintive slowed-down ballad version, with world-weary fatigue and heartrending abandon. Here, then, is our Queen, laid low by life. It is a mesmerizing moment from a woman who has made a career of transcending the boundaries of pop culture.

‘Like A Virgin’ is the album that catapulted her into the pop culture stratosphere, and it remains her best-selling album in the United States. As for the title song, it had a bass-line influenced by Michael Jackson, and the synth-heavy production so favored in the 80’s. It also had a universal message, particularly when you take out the mundane literal readings of the lyrics, and nothing that has lasted all this time could ever be seriously dismissed as a novelty song. Madonna herself has always claimed that ‘Virgin’ was less about losing one’s virginity and more about a freshness, a feeling of newness and wonder as befits the beginning of any relationship. There was a sexual aspect running through all of it, however, one that even she couldn’t deny, but to peg it solely as a sex song is largely missing the mark, and ignoring its lasting cultural influence.

I made it through the wilderness, somehow I made it through

Didn’t know how lost I was until I found you

I was beat, incomplete, I’d been had, I was sad and blue

But you made me feel, yeah you made me feel shiny and new… 

Going back a few years before the opening scene, she gave the song an electro-twist, riding around on a futuristic abstract horse on the Confessions Tour in 2006, while x-rays of her recently-broken ribs flashed across screens behind her. In that version she was the triumphant rider, returning to the scene of a crime in Madonna-fashion, defying that which struck her down a few months prior. By that time, ‘Like A Virgin’ was already a well-tread warhorse of its own, having undergone such drastic tinkering as 1993’s Girlie Show incarnation.

For that circus-like romp, Madonna donned a top hat and tails, channeling Marlene Dietrich in full androgynous glory. It came, right after the ‘Sex’ book and ‘Erotica’ album, with a comforting wink and nod (and only one phallic rising that was more comical than offensive). At the very moment that her career was saturated with sex, Madonna made ‘Virgin’ the unlikely heart of a rather family-friendly portion of an otherwise erotic-heavy show. That’s defiance. That’s the power of the shiny and new.

Like a virgin

Touched for the very first time

Like a virgin

When your heart beats

Next to mine.

It’s withstood the test of time due in large part to Madonna’s varied performances of the song, from a silly throwaway mash-up on the ‘Who’s That Girl‘ Tour to more magnificent executions such as in the epic Blonde Ambition Tour documented in ‘Truth or Dare’. To this day, the latter remains my favorite rendering of the song. Maybe it was the time period that ‘Truth or Dare‘ was released – the summer of 1991 – and its coinciding with my budding adolescence, or the infamous golden Gaultier cone-bra, or the simple brazen act of someone who had the nerve to rub one out for all the world to see, but for whatever reason, that’s the rendition of ‘Like A Virgin’ that means the most to me.

Gonna give you all my love boy

My fear is fading fast

Been saving it all for you

Cause only love can last.

“So, what’s considered masturbation?” the diminutive woman asked as she adjusted her head-set beneath the tangle of her blonde, Barbie-doll pony-tail.

“When you stick your hand in your crotch,” her brother sheepishly answered.

Such was the exchange that Madonna had with her brother Christopher before going on-stage in Toronto for that night’s show. It was, by many accounts, the pinnacle of her outrageous power, and her masturbatory performance of ‘Like A Virgin’ was the centerpiece of sexual provocation. Forget the cone-shaped bras strapped onto the male back-up dancers, the harem-like Middle-Eastern revision of the song, and the red velvet bed on which our tainted heroine draped her body – it was the simple act of self-satisfaction that had so many in an uproar, and this boy in rapt wonder and awe.

Watching her command the audience, and the world, with a brush of her nether-regions, illustrated the power of sex. It was titillation, it was promise, it was tease and release. It was a woman in control, with men as supporting players at best (and likely gay and uninterested to boot.) With a single touch, she brought a parochial world to its knees. With a simple grind, she felled centuries of male-domination. With one final flourish, she cried out to God and released the tormented torrent of the life of a woman.

You’re so fine,

And you’re mine

Make me strong, yeah you make me bold

Cause your love thawed out

Yeah your love thawed out

What was scared and cold.

As a gay boy, I didn’t quite get turned on by the proceedings, instead I took a different lesson: the power of self-love. Literally. Tied in with that was the power of sex and the power of seduction, along with the power that comes from being the object of desire, untouchable but for her own hands, isolated and alone yet watched by thousands. It was a daring show of raw sexuality and unabashed self-pleasure that left jaws-dropping wherever the Blonde Ambition tour landed. It is the image of ‘Like A Virgin’ that I retain to this day. It’s a far cry from its original version.

Like a virgin

Touched for the very first time

Like a virgin

When your heart beats

Next to mine.

Back in 1984, a lot of the world hadn’t quite heard of Madonna. I myself missed out on her debut album – including ‘Holiday’, ‘Lucky Star’, and ‘Borderline’ (I was, after all, only nine years old) but by 1985 ‘Material Girl’ brought her into my life, and my life into sudden-focus. Its infectious beat kept me glued to the rest of the ‘Like A Virgin’ album. Even so, the title song, and its accompanying Bride-in-Venice video didn’t do much for me. It was catchy enough, and I sensed in the title a certain degree of naughtiness, but at that time in my life I listened, shrugged, and fast-forwarded to ‘Dress You Up.’

You’re so fine, and you’re mine

I’ll be yours til the end of time

Cause you made me feel, yeah you made me feel

I’ve got nothing to hide.

Looking back, I wish I’d paid more attention to this moment and that first flush of Madonnamania. My wanna-be years were a bit further off, but something must have touched me. Now, it means a little more. ‘Like A Virgin’ tugged at my ears, at my pants, at my head, and at my heart. As it grew in resonance over the years, it came to mean different things at different times, but always the hope of starting over, the freshness of a new beginning, the bright bursting of a heart newly in love. If I listen closely enough, if I close my eyes and let my mind wander back, I can remember the innocence of childhood – and there it is again, all shiny and new… for the very first time.

Song #107: ‘Like A Virgin’ – 1984

It is a moment pregnant with possibility. She stands on the precipice of something great, and almost every time this has happened in the past (and there have been many such times), she’s jumped off and soared. That anticipation is in the air again, but still I find myself wanting something more. She is, after all, Madonna.

Despite playing on Instagram and teasing bits of what may musically come, she’s been largely quiet of late. A pristinely-photo-shopped romp with Katy Perry on the cover of a magazine gave fans a slight bone, but we’re salivating for more. Traditionally she averages about two years between albums, bridged with soundtracks and other projects, so we’re almost due for a new one – the first since 2012’s powerful if slightly-unappreciated ‘MDNA’. That colorful record was a driving, if at times dark, exercise in exorcism, dwelling on her divorce (‘Love Spent‘, ‘Gang Bang‘) and balanced by fluffier fare (‘Girl Gone Wild‘, ‘Gimme All Your Luvin‘, ‘Turn Up the Radio‘) but it wasn’t the miraculous pop moment she’s conjured in the past (‘Ray of Light‘, ‘Like A Prayer‘). The world awaits a proper return to form, but this world is drastically different from the world in which she rose to prominence three decades ago. Can she still cut it? Yes, but only if she goes back to her roots.

For the past several years, Madonna has, quite shockingly to some of us, kept largely to the same hairstyle. While this may seem trivial and off-focus, I bring it up because it’s a key feature to her career, and the point of this post. “Everyone always says, ‘Oh, she reinvented herself,’ but the thing is, I just get a new haircut every year, which everyone should do,” she once said. This was powerful, even if you think it’s frivolous. When was the last time you got a new haircut? Not any haircut – not the one you usually get, not the one your stylist lovingly knows so well – but a brand new color, a brand new length, a brand new look. I’m guessing most of us haven’t done that in years – if ever. Madonna used to do that with charming regularity, and drastically different results each time. It was a part of her success, and part of the unexpected thrill we got when each new image morphed into the Madonna canon.

Yet since 2005’s ‘Confessions on a Dancefloor’, she’s kept mostly to the reddish-blonde soft-frame of curls she still sports – it’s the look she wore for her H&M ads, the Reinvention/Confessions/Sticky and Sweet tours, and her impressive appearance at the Superbowl. It works for her, but to me it’s starting to feel, dare I say it, stagnant. That’s the one thing Madonna is not. Shape-shifting, jumping, and executing hairpin turns at a breakneck pace, she has never stood still or waited for very long. But her reliance on the tried and true, as well as her work with of-the-moment hit-makers, points to a recent tendency to play it safe.

What I want from Madonna is for her to go back to the beginning – to go back to being brave. I want her to age with dignity and defiance. I want the perennial ‘Fuck you’ attitude to re-surface and carry her into maturity in a way that once again redefines and challenges the ways in which society has slowly and predictably been trying to trap her. She falls prey to that with every round of face-filler, with every photo-shopped worry-line. Rather than skirting those issues or chasing the elusive quest for eternal youth (and there’s a good chance that some of us worry about that more than Madonna does), she would be the best one to champion a graceful yet empowering way of aging.

I’m not saying she needs to tone anything down – if anything, I’m suggesting the opposite. And in simply continuing to do what she does, she’s already, in a sense, defied a bunch of rules. Though the rebel in me secretly hopes for an earth-rattling ‘Sex‘ or ‘American Life‘ moment that pisses off more people than it pleases, she’s probably wise not to go for simple shock value. There have been delicious glimpses of it – her nipple-baring antics and butt-cheek peep-shows, which excited and thrilled even this staunchly gay character – and she still gets pages of press for something as small and silly as popping in a set of gold grillz. But I want her, more than anything, to be real. That was the real power of Madonna in my formative years. She glammed it up as her fame and money increased, but you always got the sense – and the photos to prove it – that she was willing to get down and sweaty on the dance floor with the gay boys. She didn’t isolate herself from humanity, she reveled in it, taking it in and transforming it into something else, something more.

In the writing of this, I’ve once again confirmed her power. She is more than pop star or show-off, she is a mistress of mirrors, reflecting back whatever ailments, shortcomings, failings, powers, magics, darkness, and light we each project. Madonna has, strangely, not always been about Madonna, but about what we think about Madonna, what Madonna makes us feel. It’s the key, and often-overlooked, component in why she remains such a fascinating creature, and why she will continue to remain so.

If her long and storied past is proof of anything, it’s that we should never count her out. In fact, such moments of doubt and wonder usually portend something miraculous in the offing. After thirty years, we know her better than she thinks we do. (And when she proves us wrong – again – it will be even better.)