MADONNA SPECIAL
Madonna (Discography/Videograpy/Bibliography). Genre:
Dance/Pop/Rock/Club/Adult Contemporary/Disco/R&B/Funk/Soul/Jazz/Electronica
- (1983) Madonna: It’s ok. Sounds the same. She dedicated this album to her pops.
- (1984) Like A Virgin: Improves a little. Little more variations. Includes hits Material Girl, Live A Virgin, Love Dont Live Here Anymore, Into The Groove. Albums dedicated to ‘all the virgins of the world’.
- (1986) True Blue: Improves way more. More instruments, more variations. Most are hit quality. Personal favs… Papa Don’t Preach, Open Your Heart, Live To Tell, La Isla Bonita. She wrote and co-wrote everysong and also co-produced them. Album dedicated to her then husband Sean Penn the coolest guy in the universe. Hmmm.
- (1987) Who’s That Girl (Soundtrack): Actually a various artist album for the movie Who’s That Girl. Movie didn’t do all that well but the album did especially the track called… guess… you got it… Who’s That Girl. LOL. Note: Watched this with big bro dont know how many times.
- (1987) You Can Dance: No song is less than 6 minutes and its started sounding the same again. Not good. Has quite a few remix songs… Which inspired Bobby Brown, Milli Vanilli and Paula Abdul to release remix albums too. Meant to be the best selling remix album of all time with 7 million copies sold worldwide.
- (1989) Like A Prayer: This album was considered her most accomplishted artistic statement at that time. So song Like A Prayer itself caused enough controversy… she witnesses a murder, dances in a field with burning crosses, displayed stigmata after cutting her palms on a knife, kisses a black saint. It was so bad that Pepsi cancelled their ad campaign where the song would be part of their commercial and Madonna would be spokesperson. Coke rules anyway. The first time she talks about her mothers death in Promise To Try. Addresses end of marriage with Sean Penn in Till Death Do Us Part. Yo check this out, LPs, CDs and cassettes were scented with patchouli oil (her fav scent) and the first pop artist to include an AIDS factsheet in her album. Right on sista! Prince co-wrote, sang or played guitar in a few tracks. Background music in Act of Contrition has Like A Pray back masked. I just like Like A Prayer, Promise To Try and Oh Father.
- (1990) I’m Breathless (Music from & inspired by the film Dick Tracy): Coz the Vogue single was released before the album it boosted album sales. Then as it was doing good on charts it was overtaken by Immaculate Collection. Very Jazzy… Katie Melua sounds so much like this. Hanky Panky sounds great. I’m Going Banana’s sounds more like Mexican Rumba.
- (1990) The Immaculate Collection. Greatest Hits vol. 1: Whoa… Declared by Guiness Book to be the biggest selling ‘greatest hits’ album by female artist. It was put in several ‘albums of the mellinnium’ lists. Ranked 278 on Rolling Stone mags list of 500 greatest albums of all time. British Phonographic Industry confirmed in July 2006 that it was the biggest selling album by a femal artist in British histor. The 5th biggest selling album of all time in UK by any artist AND to be the biggest selling compilation album by any artist in Britain. And they say some fans were not pleased coz lots of other hits were not included. At least they reduced the running time of the songs. Warning: Some tracks sound different to the original.
- (1992) Erotica: It’s got a more Jazz/Hip Hop feel to it. Its a concept album about sexuality. Now check this out back in the day every rap album was given the Parental Advisory label. Now just coz there’s one rap song in the album, it became her first album to get a Parental Advisory label. Worst bit is its not even that vulgar and the level of horniness aint all that extreme. This is the time she’s been most explicit coz then her book Sex was published where she poses half naked with lots of BDSM going on, then her movie Body of Evidence came out where she’s totally nude (the movies ok, she’s hot but Julian Moores in the movie too and I’ve always liked her more). The movie didnt make it all that well. While a lot of people thought she’d crossed the line, the album later was appreciated for what he was trying to say. Still it was the first time none of the songs went to be No. 1 hits. Album and book banned in Malaysia. Book includes a remix of Erotica called Erotic (its alright) where she reads lines from the book (got a bad quality book so cant read the text but the pics are… SIZZLING HOT, provocative content, daring content. I’m surprised the media have not made the most of her story about being with a young boy.) My fav album… I love Deeper and Deeper, the arrangement, lyrics, video, guitar break, etc. Oh man this album takes me back to… home times. Note: Personally I feel this is where she found her voice, she matured… you know… reached God-mode.
- (1994) Bedtime Stories: Madonna thought she’d show her softer side especially after the previous album funked her public image. Human Nature sounds like a scathing at the media for her treatment during the whole Erotica album and Sex book drama.
- (1995) Something to Remember: Compilation of her ballad hits. Lets just call it best of Soundtracks/B-Sides/Singles. Note: Dont wanna review her anymore :o( The video for You’ll See is meant to be the sequel to Take A Bow.
- (1997) Evita (Soundtrack): Music from the motion picture. Movies not bad, just sometimes the dub aint too convincing and I’d have liked to know what happened to Argentina after her death.
- (1998) Frozen: Mostly old songs and Frozen.
- (1998) Ray Of Light: After the vocal lessons from Evita her voice found more stength, depth and clarity. She gets a lot of props for this album coz of her turn towards motherhood and spirituallity and shlack. Little Star is dedicated to her daughter. She did a lot of tracks with Babyface but thought they sounded too Take A Bow-ish so scrapped those and decided to join forces with electronica dude William Orbit. The songs got that ambient trance feel. Thing is lyrics are wicked and most songs are really good but either she sounds the same on most tracks or Orbits arrangments sound the same. Orbit prefers using samples, synth sounds and Pro Tools instead of live musicians but there was problems. One time his fingers started bleeding playing the guitar for so long. On the other hand Madonna’s bit was over in one take… well most of them.
- (2000) The Next Best Thing (Soundtrack): She was the Executive Producer for the album. Chose all the songs, sang two in the album. Got a bit of World music in it. Thats about it. As for the movie, apart from the clever Title and lovely ‘American Dream-ish’ scenes… it was big hairy wrinkly saggy BOLLOCKS!
- (2000) Music: Her step towards Eurodance. Teams up with French Electronica dude Mirwais. Lol they had difficulty coz dude didnt speak english and she didnt know much french. But one of the songs she does in french! Anyway its really good. Love the beats in Impressive Instant… disco/groove-ish bass. Uses the vocoder… quite a bit! Bonus track Cyberraga is produced by Madonna and Talvin Singh (amazing tabla player… did a gig with AOL). Anyway so the song was only available in Japanese and Aussie versions but later released as a B-Side and includes a vedic mantra from Mahabharata. Note: Really got a problem with folks not pronouncing words right!
- (2001) GHV2 (Greatest Hits 2): Only bit you need to know is American Pie was not put in there because she didnt want to put it in the Music album coz it didnt belong but a certain record company executive twisted her arm and so its being ‘punished’.
- (2003) American Life: Oh man, Madonna never does this but this time she had to… SHE GAVE IN because the media made it seem like her album was Anti-American coz of the American Life video with war scenes and shlack (ending dude looks like Bush). So the album had the lowest sales of all her albums but at the same time was the only album in history to provide 7 top-ten hits on the Hot Dance Music/Club Party chart. Sales were better in countries that did not support the was in Iraq. Recording the album was put on hold a few times coz of fliming Swept Away, appearance in the Up For Grabs play and cameo in Die Another Day. The album cover looks very much like the images you see of Che Guevara with a mix of the news photo of kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. To create difficulty for downloaders people associated with her distributed false copies. One of them had Madonna saying ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ followed by minutes of slience. I really like most tracks.
- (2003) Remixed & Revisited: Word was a set was gonna be released to commemorate her 20th anniversary in the biz. Instead this 7 track thing was released. Madonna admits she wanted her American Life tracks to get more attention and even though they’ve included the tracks I loved from the album, they have remixed it… trust me the originals are way better. Includes a live Like A Virgin/Hollywood medley featuring Christina, Britney and Missy. Oh and a track done during Bedtime Stories.
- (2005) Confessions On A Dancefloor: In Madonna’s words… “I wanted a record with no ballads. I wanted there to be no breaks, with one song segueing into the next – just like in a disco…. Whenever I make records, I often like the remixes better than the original versions. So I thought, screw that. I’m going to start from that perspective. I want to hear all these songs in a club. I approached the album from more of a DJ’s point of view, but Stuart [Price] is a DJ. That really influenced the vibe – the dance aspect – of the record. We listened to a lot of other people’s records when we were making this – obviously ABBA and Giorgio Moroder – so to me it’s more of an homage to other people’s records than mine. If there are references to earlier records it’s probably done unknowingly, part of our molecular structure, it comes out again and again, hopefully not too boringly and repetitive”. So it was released in multiple formats… one specially for iTunes, etc. Even though it sounds like other artist, it still takes me to a happy place coz its dance music. Madonna set up a hotline which had people confessing sh1t and was podcast on iTunes before album release. Get Together, Forbidden Love, Isaac (wicked track… has Mosque-ish chants), Push and Like It Or Not are my fav. Note: When’s this review gonna end???!!!
- (2005) Confessions Remixed: Some album songs remixed.
- (2006) I’m Going To Tell You A Secret: Her first ever live album. The DVD has the usual behind the scenes footage. An into with her starting with some deep conversation. She says the political punches in her performances are not to piss peeps off its to raise them up. The American Life vid performance is extra controversial. Lookalikes – Sadam smoking a cigar next to Bush, Bush rests his head on Sadams shoulder lol. Thanx Michael Moore (Farenheit 911 dude). Was hoping to find out who the beatboxer was but heck. Reshma (one of her performers) does a lil Indian prayer thing before they hit the stage. Love the Hollywood performance best coz of the Indian Classical dance, Tap dance, mime, skateboard and b-boy spin. Ok 3rd time the Kabbalah is mentioned and then one song with some writings. Whats going on? Whoa, one of the places she performed it rained, folks still stayed for the whole 6 hours plus. Apparently a full moon ‘sailed’ right abover her stage when she came on. Moving. Ahha, so the writing meants Zohar which is considered the most important work of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. This is how she explains it… as a kind of decoding of the Torah or the Old Testament. If you wanna read things literally then you read the Old Testament, and if you wanna understand the hidden meanings of the Torah you read the Zohar. Great more research for me!!! I love the song where it starts with bagpipes and then slowly the song comes in. She reads a poem she wrote for her assistant Angie. After saying goodbyes with dancers and all… she suddenly decides to go to Israel. She’s given a thank you letter from the big peeps for her visiting during the Jewish holidays… she’s exclaims ‘thats not why I’m here’. But she has gone there for some kinda… inspiration. During her speech she emphasises she’s not there to particular religion but she does explain her support of the Kabbalah. Talks about the future of the children. One question ‘What are you waiting for?’. Footage of babies sufferring, kids with weapons… usual war footage. The End… which gets cancelled out and the beginning is written… then she says ‘now do you understand my secret’. Instead of credits rolling up, they roll down. KHALAS!
The Juice: After all this I dont care much about the juice. You all know is she’s been upto a lot in life. I’d just like to dedicate this to my bro coz he loves her. And a big up for exposing me to quality music.
