We interrupt the New York tales for this emergency Madonna post – because she looks so good. Shot by Tom Munro, these scintillating photos from the current issue of L’Uomo Vogue feature Madonna at her finest, reminiscent of her 1990/1991 apex. The peek of nipple in the final shot is the raciest this site has gotten in a while…
Madonna is reportedly in the studio with Avicii (of ‘Wake Me Up’ fame). I enjoy the latter’s sole claim to fame, and can see Madonna doing something in this folk/dance vein quite well. I’m not sure it’s a groundbreaking collaboration, but it could be perfectly fine – and if her track record is any indication it will likely surpass what we expect. She has a way of forming a musical alchemy with just about anyone – I never thought I’d enjoy her getting on the Timberlake-Timbaland band-wagon, but ‘Hard Candy’ was actually a pretty decent pop record – so while some have scoffed at her seeking out Avicii, I think she may have found someone with whom some organic and new sounds might originate.
That makes this the perfect time to revisit her last studio effort, 2012’s ‘MDNA.’ It’s a banging album – one of her strongest in years – and one that went largely ignored after the flush of its first-week of sales. ‘Girl Gone Wild’ is a fun, throbbing opener, the beats of which are sustained and given additional jolts in ‘I’m Addicted,’ while ‘Turn Up the Radio’ is just about a perfect standard of a modern-day pop song, challenged only by ‘Give Me All Your Luvin’ for pure pop perfection. Deeper cuts like ‘Masterpiece’ and ‘Falling Free’ showcase her prowess with a ballad, and ‘Love Spent’ is a lesson in how to craft musical and emotional drama with a few clichéd phrases. ‘I’m A Sinner’ is an instant Madonna-anthem, a hands-in-the-air celebration of not being anything other than yourself. Lesser fillers like ‘Superstar’ and ‘I Don’t Give A…’ almost rise to single-worthy status, while a throw-away cut like ‘Some Girls’ provides the requisite clunker that she usually reserves for the last song. All in all, ‘MDNA’ is a pretty fine album, even by Madonna standards (which are always higher than the average bear’s.) Of course, my eye is already on what is yet to come… so wake me up when the wait is over.
It happens much the same way – the transition from winter to spring, that certain smell in the night air, the warmth on the night wind, the heart-rending churning of emotional mayhem that the arrival of the season of birth invariably brings. To that end, no one embodies such dramatic angst better than Madonna. Underneath all the hype and hoopla, the sexiness and showbiz pizzazz, I always sensed the wounded hurt of a lonely heart. It takes one to know one. In the span of the few minutes of a song, she could zone in on the basic longing and yearning for love that most of us have come to know and want at some point.
It’s there in the watery brilliance of the ‘Ray of Light‘ album. From the first (and deepest) cut ‘Drowned World/Substitute for Love‘, to the brutal memory-tripping of ‘Little Star‘ and ‘To Have and Not To Hold‘ – and the farewell implicit in ‘The Power of Good-Bye‘ it rings of loss and hope.
It’s there on the cusp of adolescence, in the tender final days of boyhood innocence, in the desperate want of ‘Crazy For You.’
It’s there in the eclipse-crescents of shadows beneath the leafy boughs hanging over my first year at Brandeis University, and the gentle melancholy of ‘I’ll Remember.’
It’s there in the beautiful brutality and spiritual transcendence of ‘Like A Prayer.’
And it’s there in the mysterious dim beauty of the ‘X-Static Process‘ of love.
The ache of the coming spring. The death of another winter. The power of a pop song.
{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.}
It began, of all places, in the middle of ‘The Cosby Show.’ Then a part of America’s must-see Thursday night NBC line-up, it was the perfect time and location for maximum exposure. A preview ~ one of the only commercials for a commercial ~ had aired the week before. In the midst of a desolate arid landscape, tumbleweed rolling in the wind, a solitary tribal man stumbles into a hut that incongruently houses a television and a Pepsi dispenser.
“No matter where in the world you are on March 2, get to a TV and see Pepsi present Madonna with her latest release ‘Like A Prayer’ for the first time on the planet earth,” an ominous voice-over announced. The new Madonna single was to premiere in a Pepsi commercial. Soft drink preference aside (I had always been a Coke boy, when I had the luxury of drinking soda, which wasn’t often) I was excited. While nowhere near the levels of fanatical devotion I would attain in a couple of years, I enjoyed Madonna much more than the next guy. It was in the gay genes.
On March 2, 1989, I sat on the edge of the chair by the television in the cellar of my parents’ house. I can still picture its plaid upholstery, black and gray and brown, and straight out of the 70’s. Leaning forward, I watched with rapt attention as the laugh track faded and the commercial break began.
Madonna’s voice sounded the opening lines of ‘Like A Prayer.’
My very first impression? I didn’t like it. I was used to the simpler, disposable, instant ear candy of ‘Like A Virgin’™ and ‘True Blue.’ This was challenging, darker, more complex… and was that a Gospel choir? It marked the beginning of the way I would learn to love a Madonna song slowly at first (‘Frozen‘) but also more deeply. This would be a love that lasted through time and space, and such life-long loves don’t always begin with immediate gratification. It took some time, but once ‘Like A Prayer’ embedded itself in my head, once those grand cathedrals of mighty thought and musical rumination erected themselves in my mind, it was there for good.
As for the Pepsi commercial, it was sweet-enough, but it would only air twice. The official music video was released next, and it was then that all hell broke loose. A startlingly brunette Madonna (we’d only known the dirty and platinum blonde of the 80’s) sang her new song while dancing in a black slip, receiving stigmata, kissing a black saint come-to-life, and standing defiantly in a field of burning crosses, while a plain-as-day story of a black man wrongly accused of murder played out almost as an afterthought.
I remember being profoundly perplexed by all the controversy. The Catholic Church was pissed about the religious imagery, seemingly oblivious to its message of truth and justice. Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority found fault with just about everything Madonna did, and planned a boycott of Pepsi who, scared shitless, immediately dropped the commercial and their ties to Madonna (while kissing the millions of dollars they paid her good-bye.) Were people seeing the same video I was seeing? This was a tale of right and wrong, of innocence and guilt, of wrongdoing and murder and misplaced blame, of racism and violence, and ultimately of vindication and justice. The imagery was powerful, and effective, and the resulting firestorm of publicity only served to solidify Madonna’s status as cultural icon and zeitgeist master.
For anyone with the slightest ability to comprehend a video narrative, Madonna’s character stands for justice and truth, and the story is one of an innocent man wronged, and finally righted. The burning crosses were more for impact of imagery, conjuring the historical context of racism over a story in which racism plays an integral part. The religious moments, too, were more of a touching on key Catholic components that today seem both archaic and harmless. At the time, though, ‘Like A Prayer’ ignited an inferno of rage from all sides. For a thirteen-year-old gay boy, it sparked something else ~ the transcendent power of a pop song, and the way it could take one away from a miserable and mundane existence.
Every morning before going off to school I would watch the video on MTV’s Top-Ten countdown. It filled me with a thrill and a vague sense of danger, but the music moved me, every listen growing more powerful, touching something deeper. Despite the fact that I did well in school, had a few friends and a pretty good time there, it still required a bit of effort to gear myself up to face another day. There was always the possibility of being called out, of being called a faggot, of being targeted and taunted. I felt myself apart from all my classmates, something that distanced me from them no matter how close we got. Some of these kids I’d known since I was a baby, and yet I never felt part of the class.
After each period, the halls filled with the noisy rushing masses of burgeoning adolescence, each scrambling to find peace, acceptance, or their next class. After a tumultuous and sickly 7th grade, I found my footing in my final year at Wilbur H. Lynch Middle School, but still never managed to truly belong.
In the middle of the building, a marble staircase rose across from the auditorium, and if you peered over the windows looking out you had a view of the hills rolling down to the Mohawk River. I stopped there, feeling the rush of life move around and past me, like some bit of time-lapse photography where my body was the stationary point around which all else evolved and changed. Standing still, I looked out the window. I wanted to be free.
I was breaking free of parental and parochial restraints, unfurling wings I never knew I had, challenging dogma that I’d never thought to question, and not because of Madonna, but because of knowledge and information and the realization that there was more to life than I was being taught and told. When I got home from school, I searched the television for her again, catching another countdown and re-examining what everything in the video might mean. More than the images, though, it was the music that moved me.
She was there in the night, to see me through. On the radio she sang to me as I laid in bed. The lights were out, and in the darkness I prayed. It was a prayer and a wish for love all at once, where the hunger of desire matched the hunger for something spiritual, and the soul demanded something both carnal and emotional and only found it in the orgasmic swelling of a choir. This was a song for eternity. A God anthem. A glimpse of heaven, a taunt of hell. In me something moved. Something recognized that soon I would have greater struggles, and the life I had, the love I would feel, would be at direct odds with what the church would have me be, what my family would have wanted for their first-born son, and what society would not be ready to accept until many years later ~ until, perhaps, many years too late. Luckily, I did not see that then. It would have been too much for my thirteen-year-old mind to comprehend. Instead, I got lost in the majestic swelling of the music, the rousing spirit of the choir, the glorious licks of an electric guitar.
It lifted me up. It raised my spirit. It spoke to me like the voice of God ~ perhaps greater than the voice of God because up until that point I didn’t think God had ever spoken to me. It gave me strength to get through whatever obstacle came my way. It was a covenant between me and Madonna, that whatever might come she would be there.
After my initial hesitation, I grew to love the song, feeling that wonderful pull to listen to it over and over ~ the kind of addictive draw I only felt with Madonna songs. Late at night, when I should have been asleep, the song would come over the radio, and I’d sit up and listen, slowly turning the volume up just a bit, getting lost in the chords and the choir, feeling a stirring from deep within my soul ~ and I knew I wanted to be a part of that one day, to inspire that feeling, to make something that touched someone.
The ‘Like A Prayer’ album, however, was another story. Being raised as a strict Catholic, and being shamed and scared into behaving lest I burn in the fires of hell, I could stand the vague religious teasing in songs such as ‘Like A Prayer’ and ‘Spanish Eyes,’ but not the sacrilegious squealing of the last track ‘Act of Contrition,’ where she turned the traditional prayer of confession into a screeching, jarring, in-joke of borderline-blasphemy. I played only a few minutes of that before shutting it off and taking the cassette tape out of the stereo. Frightened, I fled outside under the falling light of day, quickly traversing the length of lawn, then into the woods beyond the pool. I paused at the top of a bank, where forest weeds parted in a bit of a clearing, and placed the cassette on the ground. I found a rock ~ a large one for my small self ~ and raised it over my head, planning to smash the cassette into a multitude of plastic shards.
Conflicted, I paused, the muscles in my arms slowly starting to burn beneath the weight of the stone. I wanted to prove something to God, to prove something to myself, to prove, perhaps, that I did have faith, I did believe, I did have love in my heart. It was a sign of repentance. A sign of solidarity and support for the Lord. A sign of respect for Jesus Christ.
Yet it was all for show, and God would know that. I stood there, hovering over the tape, Madonna’s navel gazing up at me, and I wondered at my faith, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at the ridiculous predicament in which I had just placed myself. I put the rock down, lowered myself onto my haunches, and balanced there, contemplating what I was supposed to do. Dusk was at hand. The light was fading. Soon the woods would be dark.
I decided then… not to decide then. Pocketing the tape, I trudged back inside, and once in my bedroom I shoved it far back into one of my desk drawers, closing it into darkness. Something in those whispered prayers scared me. I feared what might befall my family if I listened to that. I feared whatever wrath or dark magic might be conjured if those words were released in my home. I wasn’t so concerned with myself ~ in fact, quite the opposite ~ but the idea of my behavior causing pain or harm to loved ones was where all that Catholic guilt manifested its treacherous power. There was also the question of my own soul ~ what might happen to it if I were to embrace Madonna’s blasphemous album? The tape stayed hidden for a couple of years. From time to time I’d catch a glimpse of it when searching for something else, sniffing a hint of its patchouli packaging, then quickly shutting the drawer again. I put it so far from my mind that I almost forgot about it.
But then a strange thing happened. I wanted to die. To kill myself. And suddenly I wasn’t so scared by God and religion and what might happen to my soul. It wasn’t that I stopped believing, I simply stopped buying into the dogma and the fear. If God was love, why should there be such fear? Why would He be so vengeful? Why would He hate me for my love?
When you’re freed from such fear, a song like ‘Act of Contrition’ means nothing ~ while ‘Like A Prayer’ could mean everything. The only moments I felt alive back then were when I listened to that album. Raking leaves and feeling profoundly hurt by my parents, I’d put ‘Promise to Try‘ and ‘Oh Father‘ on my walkman. I’d listen to ‘Spanish Eyes’ and let my own tears burn the pillow, begging for Christ to redeem and rescue me before taking my soul and body away. I even found the betrayal and loss in ‘Til Death Do Us Part‘ a comfort for my downtrodden state.
In the months and years ahead, ‘Like A Prayer’ – the song and album – transformed into something life-changing. The music was good. It was inspiring. The driving force of ‘Express Yourself’ was all I needed for motivating the worst day, and the giddiness of ‘Cherish‘ and ‘Dear Jessie‘ lifted the heart when I was on top of the world. Madonna had crafted a cohesive tapestry of sound and experience, the very best kind of pop art an artist could muster. And I felt, in connections small and large, the power that certain songs had of making sense of the madness.
It was far more serious than her previous pop efforts, deeper and richer as well. Crafted during the tumultuous death-throes of her marriage to Sean Penn, it is heavy with both tension and release. An impending divorce is a heavy burden, the pain of loss magnified by Madonna’s familial ruminations at the same time.
For me, I was on the brink of such turmoil, about to be tossed into the raging river of adolescent angst, teenage rebellion, and the messy and difficult struggle of coming to terms with my sexuality. It was a maelstrom of emotions, a mass of moving moods which all of Madonna’s burgeoning messages would come to mollify. She was searching, I was searching, we were all searching for something – meaning, magic, love – and it came to fruition in a pop song ~ a magnificent, majestic, moving song that melded electric guitar and a Gospel choir and the voice of the woman who once sang ‘Like A Virgin.’
The fear that first accompanied the album, and that first supposedly-blasphemous performance of ‘Like A Prayer’ during the Blonde Ambition Tour had dissipated into something else, like the curling tendrils of incense that encircled the air, gripped the lungs, and then drifted off like they had never been of consequence.
Every year during Lent, the rituals of the Catholic church haunted me, in a good way. There was comfort in that dim smoke-laden atmosphere, in the hush and quietude of the cavernous church. All the mysteries of the crucifixion and the resurrection, in the alchemy of the Body and Blood of Christ, hung in the air like, well, Jesus himself. And bound like His bloodied head in a crown of thorns, shot through like the nails in His hands, the guilt that once bled from me was rendered into a similar collection of religious cyphers and signs ~ echoes of what once held such sway. ‘Like A Prayer’ was the musical embodiment of this time of the year, and I cannot think of it without thinking of the church.
As for its place in the Madonna canon, ‘Like A Prayer’ remains, almost across the board, her most beloved song. Critics, fans, and non-fans alike agree on that much. It marked the first bit of widespread critical acclaim that she’d enjoyed for her music. (I still remember a hard-core Metallica fan, one of my classmates in high school, begrudgingly giving props to the guitar chords of ‘Like A Prayer’.)
Live performances of ‘Like A Prayer’ have proved to be perennially powerful, beginning with the epic Blonde Ambition staging ~ the first time she performed it for an audience. That version (Catholic misgivings aside) was a stunning church-themed tour-de-force of choreography and vocals.
Oddly enough, she would not perform it live again for over a decade ~ at an MTV release special for ‘American Life‘ in 2003. Since then, though, it has been a staple, not only for tours, but for one-off live performances. On the Reinvention Tour ~ the closest she’s come to a greatest hits tour ~ ‘Like A Prayer’ was given a stripped-down but rousing treatment, a testament to the power and construction of the song, and Patrick Leonard’s vital impact on Madonna’s musical legacy.
My very favorite live performance of ‘Like A Prayer’, however, may just be the one she performed for Live Aid 8, mostly because of her genuine and touching interaction with the girl whose face had embodied the original Live Aid dream. It’s a rare moment of earnest and unguarded joy in a career where very little has ever been left to chance.
On a much smaller scale, she also performed at the Hope For Haiti benefit. That acoustic version was intimate and somber, yet filled with hope, and it flew largely under the radar, which was a shame, as it was quite a compelling argument for Madonna’s oft-questioned musical prowess. As for those who had pegged Madonna as a pop star capable only of disposable, frothy throwaway hits, ‘Like A Prayer’ displayed a deeper and darker side to her songbook. A techno-infused mash-up that soars to a hand-clapping climax, the apocalyptic performance from the Sticky and Sweet Tour reveals the darkness at the heart of ‘Like A Prayer’ ~ even if there is light and salvation at its resolution.
That salvation would be found in the finale to her Super Bowl appearance, when thousands of lights glowed in the stadium, and one woman stood alone in the center of it all, commanding the stage and finishing up one of the greatest Super Bowl half-time shows in history.
Most recently, Madonna performed ‘Like A Prayer’ on the MDNA Tour. There is usually one moment in every Madonna tour that brings me to the verge of tears: the opening salvo of the Drowned World Tour, the intimate ‘Crazy For You‘ on the Reinvention Tour, the powerful ‘Live to Tell‘ on the Confessions Tour, or the haunting ‘Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You’ on the Sticky and Sweet Tour ~ but for the MDNA Tour it was the climactic ‘Like A Prayer.’ It was here that the transcendent culmination of the evening found its footing in the united fans, all of us joined across the globe ~ a connection to each other, a connection to Madonna, a connection to whatever God or higher power in which we each believed.
Darkness. Anger. Fire. Danger. Life. Death. Heaven. God. From the depths of hell to the upper echelon of glory, the spiritual journey of ‘Like A Prayer’ is epic. It began at the beginning of some of my darkest times. Adolescence. Puberty. A time of questioning and wondering, doubting and despairing. But the trajectory of ‘Like A Prayer’ had to begin somewhere. It had to start from the lowest point and move steadily and slowly toward ascendance, ever-reaching upwards. It was a long journey. A spiritual journey. A journey I needed to make alone, and the only guidance was the voice of Madonna.
Life was a mystery, but she was there to help me along the way. Madonna was the Beatrice to my Dante, calling me up from the depths of the despair and guiding me through the hellish journey, bringing me higher, raising me up, lifting my heart and spirit and soul.
I didn’t know it then, but I was lost. And I would be lost for a very long time. It was Madonna who helped me to find myself. Unbeknownst to her, it was her voice that carried me through those dim days, and any dim day that followed.
‘Like A Prayer’ continues to evolve and transform in the way that the most lasting songs do. Gaining resonance, growing in significance, and becoming much more than it ever originally was, the song has withstood the tests of time and taste. Listening to it today I still get goose-bumps. I still go back to those early days of being so lost and so alone. But it’s okay. Like a prayer will always take me there.
For the longest time, I’d been looking forward to writing the Madonna Timeline for ‘Like A Prayer’ as one of my favorite Madonna songs, I knew it would be a totem for this series. Yet as the songs progressed, and we passed #100, I began to feel a certain dread and pressure to do it justice, to properly impress upon you the import of this song on my life ~ and it turned out that’s impossible to do. Like the very faith it embodies, my love for ‘Like A Prayer’ is ethereal, untouchable, and indefinable ~ defying all explanation, at once intrinsically and universally personal. There would be no way to convey the myriad ways this song has informed my existence, the way it’s been a part of my life for the past 25 years. There are certain songs that become a part of our existence, woven delicately yet inextricably into the fabric that makes up the tapestry of our time on earth. They bind us to this moment, to this world, taking a stand and making a mark in the timeline of the universe. That will always be what ‘Like A Prayer’ is for me.
The best way to understand… is to listen.
{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 year was 1985. In the wood-paneled family room of my childhood home, the remains of a Saturday morning of cartoons had faded away, and the early afternoon chill of the second half of the weekend had begun. Our parents were off somewhere else, leaving my brother and I deliciously alone for a couple of hours. On the television, Madonna’s ‘Virgin Tour’ began, and the opening salvo of ‘Dress You Up’ sounded.
I didn’t know her then. I also didn’t know how concerts worked, or whether she would sing more songs that I recognized. All I knew was that one hit after another came over the TV, and I alternately sat and danced along with this woman who would change my life from that moment forward.
If ‘Material Girl’ made me a Madonna fan, ‘Dress You Up‘ solidified that status. It was catchy, had a driving beat, and on the surface it was all about fashion. It spoke to me in ways overt and subliminal, and it may just be my favorite cut off the ‘Like A Virgin‘ opus – no small feat considering the lead-track (MG) and the title-track (LAV). ‘Dress You Up’ touched something deeper in my gay psyche: a love of glamour, a perfectly-crafted pop song, and a dream of something better. (It also marked my most egregious lyrical misunderstanding of all time – instead of “All your suits are custom made in London” I thought it was “All your suits are custom made and laundered.” Such was the thought process of a ten-year-old gay boy. Either way worked.)
In my brother’s boyhood bedroom, I played this song over and over on his stereo, rewinding it and jumping on the bed to the Nile Rodgers beat. In the same space where we re-created ‘You Can’t Do That on Television’ (recording our own ‘˜You Can’t Do That on Tape’ audio cassettes and staging earthquakes with falling debris in the place of green slime – hey, I may have loved Madonna but I was still just a boy), I listened to her sing about the stuff of fantasy and fascination. The underlying metaphors might have been lost on my virgin ears, but there were more powerful forces at work.
Far more than come-hither sexiness, Madonna showed me the art of seduction – not so much as a means of gaining access to the bedroom, but as a pathway to acceptance and love. With her strut, her cockiness, and her devil-may-care sense of fashion, she taught me confidence – and even if that confidence wasn’t real, even if it was just a front ‘ there was power in that. When Madonna looked out at the world as her own, she made it all right for me to look too, and if I could get there by dressing myself up, so much the better. Because that was something I could do.
For some reason, when Madonna was announced as performing for part of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ song ‘Same Love’, I wasn’t as excited as everyone thought I would be. It was a bit of a surprise to myself, even, but I figured it would be a few throw-away lines at the end, and not worthy of edge-of-the-seat build-up (like that miraculous Super Bowl show). However, like everything she does, Madonna was full of the unexpected. In this case, it was the chorus of ‘Open Your Heart‘, one of her strongest cuts. Slowed down to seamlessly segue in and out of ‘Same Love’, it came just as Queen Latifah presided over the shockingly-moving wedding ceremony of 33 gay and straight couples.
Madonna inspires a whole lot of feelings in me, but she rarely moves me to tears. (The last time I came close was at the Drowned World Tour, when I was seeing her for the very first time.) On this evening, as a backing choral group picked up and carried a few more bars of ‘Open Your Heart‘, and then Madonna joined Mary Lambert for a couple of tender exchanges of ‘She keeps me warm’ before they ended by not crying on Sunday. All in all, it was incredibly emotional, in the sweetest, most non-jaded way.
As for the outfits, Madonna arrived all in black, with a nicely-tailored tux by Ralph Lauren. I dug the hat, still despise the grillz. For the performance she traded in the black for white, with a couple of trademark dangling garters and a cowboy hat. She looked fine – and she looked closer to her age than she usually does (which is normally fifteen years younger). We should all be fortunate to age nearly as well. I saw a few nasty ageist comments online from people with dogs as their profile pics (or maybe they weren’t dogs after all). Anyway, Madonna still knows how to show the room a good time – for this evening it was poignant as well.
Tonight’s marks Madonna’s return to performing on the Grammys – I think she’s done it three times before. The first was when she was basking in the success of ‘Ray of Light‘, with her slightly-shaky-voiced ‘Nothing Really Matters‘ – in and elaborate Geisha-by-Gaultier get-up. Visually it was my favorite of her performances.
A couple of years later she previewed her ‘Drowned World Tour‘ by dancing on the hood of a stretch limo for ‘Music’. It was a fun, stimulating, if straightforward performance, the kind of old-school entertainment that consisted of singing and some dance moves – it’s what Madonna does best.
Her last live performance on the Grammys was, I believe, in 2006 with ‘Hung Up’. It was the choreography and routine we’d seen a thousand times by that point, but a nifty intro by the Gorillaz, and Madonna’s own holographic entrance (before actually appearing) injected some new life into the song.
I won’t give away who she’s rumored to be appearing with tonight, and I have no idea what she’ll be performing. That’s the best thing about Madonna – she’s still full of surprises.
{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.}
This rather uninspiring bonus track from the otherwise-brilliant ‘MDNA‘ album is barely worthy of a Timeline Entry, but not every Madonna song can be great, so let’s get this over with.
It mostly reminds me, fittingly, of my last birthday, when Andy and I drove out to The Mount – Edith Wharton’s upstate NY home. It was what I wanted to do – a quiet birthday celebration, low-key and under-the-radar, as most of my birthdays have been. In the car, I played this song a few times – a little Madonna gift to myself.
{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.}
It is The Moment. You see him across the room, your eyes instantly lock, and you feel like you’ve known him all your life – or maybe it’s that you want to know him for the rest of your life. Whatever the case, and whatever tricks the universe is playing, you feel the spark and the catch and the racing of your heart. It isn’t just his beauty you admire, or the way his body moves – it’s in the way he looks at you. His eyes seem to see into your soul, examining all the things you’ve tried to hide, but somehow you feel he won’t judge them, somehow you know even then that he would never use them against you. At least, it feels that way, in the first instant.
The throbbing bass of this song reminds me of my time in New Orleans many years ago, on the fateful evening when I lost my gay virginity. On the second tier of Oz, I leaned over and looked down upon the bar and dance floor. It was still early, and I was so young. In my lace-up International Male shirt (which a go-go dancer would later tell me he loved, as he squatted down with his crotch in my face), part of me thought I was such hot shit, and the other part of me thought I was just plain shit. Untouchable, because I never let them touch me, not in any real way, not in any way beyond the physical.
I turn around and find my way to the bathroom. A few doors are in a row, like some fairy-tale choose-your-own-adventure scene. I don’t want to choose the wrong one. Selecting the one in the middle, I open it without knocking and see two guys fucking.
They are joined at the hips and lips, in a frantic sort of desperate dance to some kind of death. Annoyed, one of them turns around and slams the door shut. In one hedonistic glimpse I saw the moment we’d all be chasing for the rest of our lives, whether we know it or not, whether we admit it or not. The moment of passion. The moment of ignition. The moment of connection.
The impressive instant.
In the way that gay clubs have of filling up in the span of a few minutes, Oz is suddenly brimming with people. Sitting at the bar in the midst of it all, I watch as the go-go dancer spins and squats before me, his combat boots deftly avoiding glasses and drinks, his smile an invitation and a warning all at once, his body the unattainable visage of distracting perfection that always leaves me befuddled.
“You’re not leaving already?” he asks with a grin, then a pout, when I stand up and back away from the bar. I thank him and wave good-bye. A few blocks down, I will meet a Greek sailor, and in an abandoned warehouse on the Mississippi River I will denounce the last remnants of what little innocence I ever possessed.
{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.}
Thus far, Madonna’s 1990 album ‘I’m Breathless’ has been represented by ‘He’s a Man‘, ‘Sooner or Later‘ and ‘Hanky Panky‘. Now, in timely fashion for gift-giving (and receiving) season, comes ‘More’. This is a Stephen Sondheim composition, and a pretty damn good one at that. The merging of Broadway and Madonna was a genius one, and one that made burgeoning gay boys like myself cream their pants with musical excitement. Madonna once hilariously commented that Sondheim songs were difficult to sing due to their chromatic wildness. Whatever the case, she manages to pull them off quite nicely here, and ‘More’ was a bouncier ditty than the other Sondheim contributions (‘Sooner or Later’ and ‘What Can You Lose?’) I’d tell you I composed a dance number to go along with it, but I’ve embarrassed myself enough here, thank you. Instead, let’s focus on the material aspect of things.
We’re all a little greedy, and most of us always want more than we have. I’m no holier-than-thou exception to that rule, but I know enough to realize that I have all I’ll ever need. Everything else is just gravy – fabulous, fashionable, Tom Ford-scented gravy. To that end, however, it means that I am considered one of the most difficult people to buy gifts for. It’s why I post a Christmas wish list every year (and set up a birthday registry once – don’t ask).
This year, almost everything was checked off the wish list – a collection of Crate & Barrel wine glasses to populate the new kitchen, a Tommy Hilfiger coat, several certificates for dining out (much-needed in these weeks without a kitchen), a Brooks Brother’s gift card, a new rice cooker and vegetable steamer, and Tom Ford’s ‘Bois Marocain’ Private Blend – a surprise from Andy that I didn’t even ask for. After all that, how could anyone still feel empty? Surely only a spoiled brat would complain…
There have been years when I didn’t make a list, but the gifts I received then proved that no one really understood me, no one ever got who I was and what I might want. That proved more upsetting and depressing than the guilt at getting everything I asked for, so since then I’ve made a list. At least that way I can pretend that people pay attention, that they listen throughout the year to what I say, that they care enough to figure out what appeals to me, along with what I already wear or have. I can hear the miserable ones on FaceBook and Twitter writing their ‘First world problems’ comments now… But really, what am I supposed to have, third world problems? I don’t live in that world.
Back in 1990, I was less concerned with fashion or Ford. I hadn’t quite come into myself yet (in some ways we never do), though I knew how to dress well, and understood the power of appearance. For all that, I never asked for clothing or cologne or other sartorial accessories when it came to birthdays or Christmas. Don’t give me too much credit – I wasn’t asking for world peace either, but my wish list consisted of whimsical things ~ a lava lamp, a saltwater fish tank, a traffic light, a wave machine – the fascinating nonsensical objects one would find at Spencer gifts. My bedroom was a gallery of cheesy 80’s artifacts held together by plastic and powered by black power cords. At night, the flashing lights and other-worldly glow provided futuristic solace, but scant warmth.
In the days after Christmas, when it seemed like we had it all, an inevitable disappointment crept into my room. The let-down of the post-holiday doldrums was wicked recompense for the build-up and excitement of all that anticipation. Getting what you want is always a tricky business. Emotional manipulation carries its own cost. What I was searching for was happiness, and it was something that couldn’t be bottled or sold or wrapped up under the tree. It is, I fear, something that no one else can give me ~ and, until I find it, I will always want more.
{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.}
It was holiday time in the year 2011. I walked the streets of New York, visiting Chris and Suzie, but for this moment between day and night I was alone. Twinkling Christmas lights glowed in shops and restaurants. People hurried by with gifts and shopping bags. The gorgeous panoply of a night in New York, and all its noise and quirks, its glimmer and shimmer, its heartache and gorgeousness. How could such beauty and sadness coexist so closely together?
Well in advance of her upcoming album, Madonna had leaked ‘Masterpiece’ in support of her new film ‘W.E.’ which she directed. It played over the end credits (not soon enough for Oscar consideration, but it did end up winning the Golden Globe for Best Song). Upon first listen, I was hooked, in the same way that some Madonna songs have of instantly capturing my attention and love, speaking to me as if I was the only one who could truly understand.
The impossibility of loving something so perfect, or of loving someone so beautiful that they exist only on a pedestal, is something most of us experience at one point or another, but mostly from afar, never as the recipient of such adoration. We all think we want that, and maybe some of us really do.
On the street is a different sort of beauty, an intangible one. New York during the holidays can be really stimulating, or really depressing. Hovering somewhere between the two, my evening began, and ended. It was a jewel of a moment – hard, gorgeous, impenetrable, striking – buffeted by friends and loved ones, but isolated in the middle, and maybe the end too.
A week or two later I found myself in Boston, walking through the Public Garden as dusk fell. It was just after the golden hour, when brave artists would have been packing up their easels in the spring, if people still tried to create, if they still tried to make something of beauty. The branches that once held leaves and spring blossoms were barren – the only adornment being a few light-catching segments of ice, and some stalwart crotches of snow. The last vestiges of the day faded quickly, and soon it was dark.
That weekend, to escape the cruelty of the cold, I went to find respite in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, its center garden courtyard filled with greenery, backed by the soft fall of water, cushioned by a blanket of moss. Potted tree ferns arch finely reticulated fronds over gravel walkways. It would be an ideal place to get married, if they allowed it. Instead, couples can merely hold hands, or steal quick kisses. No ceremonies or receptions are allowed. No matter – today there is no one to hold my hand.
Several works of art were stolen from this museum back in the early 90’s. It happened right before I started at Brandeis, and I remember it being in the Boston papers whenever a lead was followed. A couple of men dressed as police officers convinced the security team to let them in late one night, then proceeded to tie them up, and steal several priceless works, cutting them rudely and crudely out from their frames.
To date, the crime has never been solved, nor the stolen pieces found. The empty frames remain hanging, as Ms. Gardner’s orders were that nothing in the museum be touched or moved no matter what. I walk by those spooky frames, eerily empty of all the beauty they once held, and want to cry at the state of the world. It turns out that beauty can be robbed ~ cut out, rolled up, and stuffed into the night, never to be found again. Not yet, anyway.
Across the room from one of the missing works, I walk to the window looking down into the courtyard. Where were you, Ms. Gardner, when your painting went missing? What tears did you cry when they tore out your heart? A carpet of baby tears spilled onto stone far below, while delicate orchids drooped their weeping colorful cargo. Sometimes beauty made the heartache.
Christmas Eve at my family home in Amsterdam, NY, that same year ~ 2011. Candles flicker on the piano, stockings hang from the mantle, and Christmas music plays softly in the background. Decked out in holiday finery, and the scent of Tom Ford’s Santal Blush, I am unimpressive for any of those reasons, at least for those assembled here tonight. My niece and nephew bound down the hallway in their diapers. The family is together, intact. It will be the last time. I want to cry for how beautiful it is, how wonderful life can be. I want to cry because I know it cannot last.
Beauty swirls around me, glittering and sparkling from the Christmas tree, light bouncing among the crystals of a chandelier, and dazzling the eyes. I loosen the silk tie around my neck and slip off the suddenly-stifling pair of wing-tips from my feet. Years ago I would lie down in this very space, on this very carpet, and look up at the tree. I would squint my eyes until it went slightly out of focus, until the lights merged and danced and became abstract spots of color, orbs of illumination. I would feel overwhelmed by its beauty, and the first drops of moisture would splinter the images before my eyes, fracturing their pretty perfection.
I wanted company as much as I wanted to be alone.
{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.}
He is chasing me up the stairs. I struggle to run faster, my feet slipping out from beneath me yet somehow I do not fall. It feels like the harder I run, the slower I go, as if I’m suspended slightly above the ground, on some virtual treadmill, my legs running faster and faster but my body moving ever slower. He is gaining on me. I scramble up more stairs, around the landing, and grab the banister to dash into my brother’s room. It still feels like I’m flying in slow-motion, over the rust-colored shag carpeting, around the corner and through the bathroom into the room where my Gram used to stay when she was alive. There, it happens, there he catches up to me, there I fall.
I turn around and see the frightening visage of something that was once amusing – the vampiric form of… Grandpa Munster – ? – from the old Munsters television show. Only he is an evil version of that character ~ eyes gouged out, fangs dripping with death, the malevolence clear and concisely concentrated on me. It is a monster, and it has a hold of me.
I have landed near the door to the hallway that leads to my parents’ room. It is open, and I try my best to scream out, to shout, because there, twenty feet away, stands my mother. She is putting on jewelry, her back to me, and the louder I try to scream for her, the less sound comes out. She doesn’t hear me, and if she does – the most terrifying possibility of this nightmare I’m having – she doesn’t respond. I scream and scream and scream because I know I am about to die, and she simply fastens her necklace and moves out of sight.
The dream ends. I wake in a panicked sweat, my face sore from crying, my jaw weak from trying to yell. It is one of the few recurring nightmares I will have in my childhood, and by far the most frightening.
Another entry from the maligned ‘American Life‘ album illuminates what an under-rated record this was in Madonna’s career. ‘Mother and Father’ addresses the loss, betrayal, often-difficult and ever-complex relationship between parents and children. In this song (as in some of her most powerful – like ‘Promise to Try‘ and ‘Oh Father‘ – Madonna laments the loss of her mother, the resulting distance from her father, and all the messy overlapping emotions that informed her entire childhood and made her into the woman who conquered the world. The woman who wouldn’t need anyone else.
Anyone who’s ever had a parent can relate to something in this song. Anyone whose parents have ever treated them unfairly, or misplaced their blame, or simply felt hurt themselves, will be able to access the anger and rage, pain and heartache, so raw and tender that the scars have never gone away. It never can go away, either – those scars are with you for life. What you choose to do with them is what determines whether you can forgive. The alternative though, is the case of Madonna, who lost her mother very early in life.
And then the messy mix of emotions, the ravaging cuts of guilt, the way time works to heal some wounds while re-opening others, the never-ending push and pull between people whose love can work in ways both wonderful and hurtful. When the love you have in your childhood is tempered by those conditions, when you can tell that you might not be as well-liked as others, you wonder if all love will be like that. It’s debilitating in a way, and the harm that results is irreparable. You must choose then to move on or let it destroy you.
Yet even if you move on, even if you give up and let it go, even if you find someone you think you can love, who loves you in return, there will be doubt, there will be worry, there will be the nagging thought that you may never be worthy of love. Some of us can’t give it up. Some of us battle with the demons because they continue to battle with us. Some never change, repeating history, making the same misguided mistakes over and over. How do you give up on something so inextricably bound to the heart, even if it hurts?
{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.}
In the grand tradition of ‘Like A Prayer’, both with its majestic chorus and its love-song-sentiment doubling as a spiritual declaration, ‘Nothing Fails’ is the 100th Madonna Timeline entry. From 2003’s ‘American Life’ album, this is one Madonna moment that should have gotten more recognition – as well as a proper release (even if I can’t imagine it on the radio).
In a single powerful chorus, Madonna strips a career of religious references away, not to mention centuries of beliefs, to reveal the core of the matter: religion is a man-made belief-system. Spirituality is founded upon love ~ love for the earth, for the universe, for other human beings ~ and love is its own religion.
I was hoping that the 100th timeline might coincide with a more important milestone – instead, ‘Nothing Fails’ came at a relatively calm time: the start of spring 2003, when I was happily working in the Construction Management office at the Thruway Authority (an office of all gentlemen – God how I miss it), and the start of our second year in our current home, when things were finally settling down (and the remaining vestiges of 70’s carpet and wallpaper were at long last being excised). Those times of calm can often only be seen in retrospect, when one has the wisdom of distance. In my car, the ‘American Life’ album played on perpetual repeat, the latest incarnation of our Queen on hot and heavy rotation.
The song was a calming balm, a meditation on the infallibility and power of love. It was, like the best of Madonna’s work, an escape and a realization. Soaring on the growing chorus and rising strings, it carries the listener to a higher plane. The very best of music does that, taking you to a different space, a holier place, and somehow we are the better for it. Like most things having to do with Madonna, the journey was the reason. The way and the word.
For my part, I listened to it while driving to see friends, watching the budding trees rush by, or waiting for Andy to come to bed in the middle of the night. Shrouded in the mystery of love, the heart is also quelled by its power and force, the incontrovertible existence of emotion that has no discernible basis in scientific stats or concrete theories. Defying logic, forgetting reason, and flying in the face of fact, love fueled the human race. And when we didn’t know, when we couldn’t discern the workings of the heart, we created a system of beliefs to help us get our heads around it. Is that what religion originally was? Nothing more than a way of explaining science before we figured it all out on our own? I don’t know.
Sometimes I’m not even sure I know what love really is.
But sometimes… I am.
Continuing the look back at the Madonna Timeline, here are entries #51 through #99. The 100th post is in-the-works. It’s not a well-known or classic song, but it should have been. Coming up soon…
The 100th Madonna Timeline is about to be reached. That’s right, so far we’ve done 99 songs from the Material Girl (but a bitch ain’t one) and here are the first 50. Find your favorite and click on the link. (If we’re lucky, it will still work!)
#1 – Who’s That Girl
#2 – Bye Bye Baby
#3 – Push
#4 – Future Lovers
#5 – Stay
#6 – Keep it Together
#7 – Heartbeat
#8 – Cherish
#9 – Promise to Try
#10 – Sky Fits Heaven
#11 – Justify My Love
#12 – Over and Over
#13 – Forbidden Love
#14 – Frozen
#15 – Nobody Knows Me
#16 – Isaac
#17 – Don’t Cry For Me Argentina
#18 – Supernatural
#19 – Waltz for Eva & Che
#20 – To Have & Not to Hold
#21 – She’s Not Me
#22 – Thief of Hearts
#23 – ‘Til Death Do Us Part
#24 – Shanti/Ashtangi
#25 – Love Makes the World Go Round
#26 – Music
#27 – I’ll Remember
#28 – Give It 2 Me
#29 – He’s A Man
#30 – Incredible
#31 – Another Suitcase in Another Hall
#32 – Hollywood
#33 – Sooner or Later
#34 – Angel
#35 – Amazing
#36- Don’t Tell Me
#37 – Hanky Panky
#38 – La Isla Bonita
#39 – Erotica
#40 – You Must Love Me
#41 – Let It Will Be
#42 – Voices
#43 – Hung Up
#44 – Beat Goes On
#45 – Miles Away
#46 – This Used to Be My Playground
#47 – Spanish Lesson
#48 – You’ll See
#49 – 4 Minutes
#50 – Celebration
