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Something To Remember / Evita

Don't have much to say about either Madonna project from this era - her ballads collection Something To Remember  or Evita  - other than it was clear Madge was doubling down on the slow, classy, pretty ballads in the wake of the monster success of "Take A Bow".  Commercially I suppose this made sense, up to a point.   But Madonna was never just about ballads, and the disturbing run of them began to make it sound like she'd been taken over by a pod person.  From the planet B'oring. It was nice to get single hits like "This Used To Be My Playground" and "I'll Remember" collected in one place, since they hadn’t appeared on a proper Madonna album before.  When coupled with tasteful , ballady album hits like "Rain", the collection helped to demonstrate that Madonna could, in fact, do justice to ballads (and write 'em, too).   Hello, Mr. Evita Producers! Here's my audition tape! It's sure breezy where love d

Bedtime Stories

Coming off the artistic - if not the commercial - high of Erotica , Bedtime Stories is a real mixed bag.  It's straight up '90s R&B for the most part, all hip-hop, Dallas Austin inflected product .  There's art here, but it's screaming to get out from underneath the oppressive packaging.   Speaking of packaging, they curiously opted for the upside-down image of Madonna...but didn't adjust the font color for the titles, making them impossible to read.  Nice teal CD tray, tho... Now, if you like '90s R&B then you're probably going to enjoy the product, because this is a really good example of it in my opinion.  Madonna it must be said delivers some of her best vocals yet on tracks like "Secret" and the title cut, and some of the melodies here are really good (again "Secret" and especially "Take A Bow" - a surprise monster hit that essentially reestablished her superstardom).  The singles are an interesting

Rorschach Test

I'm finding the online - mostly Facebook - reaction to billionaire child rapist Jeffrey Epstein's "suicide" particularly informative. As a global sex trafficker with ties to some of the wealthiest, most powerful business, academic, entertainment and political figures around the globe, Epstein mysteriously died in his jail cell the same night  his case files were unsealed. The timing couldn't be more obvious.  He was apparently taken off suicide watch a few days before (why?), the guards didn't make their usual rounds the night he died (curious), there's a report that Barr himself visited the jail recently (WTF?), and now we've learned the surveillance cameras weren't working (hmmm).  If this wasn't a hit, it's the most amazing string of coincidences in world history. Frankly, I find the whole notion that a raging narcissist like Epstein - a guy who wanted to seed the human race with his DNA  (you can't make this shit up) - would