Careless Notions

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

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

Out of all of Madge's albums,  Erotica  is probably most deserving of an extensive writeup, especially given that it's now passed its 25th anniversary (seems hard to believe).  It’s deserving of attention not just because musically it was quite a departure for Madonna, but also because culturally this is probably when she was the most relevant, and when she became the most controversial.  In fact I can’t think of any celebrity operating at this level of prominence who deliberately chose to become this controversial.  Madonna was bold or crazy depending upon your point of view, but certainly not your typical paycheck cashing celeb. You do still hear hints of the old Madonna on this record, thanks to producer Stephen Bray's involvement most likely, but for the most part this record is Madonna using the success of The Immaculate Collection ’s "Justify My Love" as an escape hatch out of the '80s and into the '90s. Part of a multimedia assault on

I loved The Immaculate Collection . For years it was my go-to Madonna album - I didn't listen to the originals much if at all following the release of Immaculate until maybe a decade or so ago. I thought the mixes were great, and even if I didn't prefer a couple of them to the originals ("Like A Prayer" in particular), I was glad to have them and didn't feel any of them "ruined" the song. The mix of "Express Yourself" here is my favorite - it's quite similar to the version used for the second cut of the video. I was a little critical of the fidelity of this one awhile back, but I listened to it again since, both on the home stereo as well as with Subsonic on my iPhone over my $250 RHA earbuds, which sound . . . well, as good as I can imagine earbuds ever sounding (and better than most full-sized cans - certainly better than Beats junk). Anyhow, it sounded really good on both. The QSound does drive the Logic 7 processing on my Harma