Madonna

I somehow got sucked into a thread regarding Madonna’s albums back in 2017 on a web forum, which proved to be a lot more interesting than I expected it to be.  Also strangely timely in the wake of the Christmas 2016 passing of George Michael, as this passage I came across when researching facts about her eponymous debut album demonstrates.  Tell me this isn’t the hand of fate intervening.

Michael Rosenblatt, A&R, Sire Records:

Mark Kamins told me there was this girl who had a demo and was trying to get him to play it over the dance floor. And he was going to have none of that – he didn't play any demos. But he said she looked amazing, so I was trying to keep an eye peeled for her. 

A friend of mine had just signed a group called Wham! They were about to put out their first single, but before they put it out, my friend wanted them to see the New York club scene. So I was taking them to clubs on a Saturday night – I'm at the Danceteria second-floor bar with George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, and I see this girl walk across the dance floor and up to the DJ booth to talk to Mark. I figured she had to be the girl with the demo. So I walked up and introduced myself as an A&R guy, and we started talking.

She came by on that Monday and played me that demo. It wasn't amazing. But this girl sitting in my office was just radiating star power. I asked her, "What are you looking for in this?" I always ask that, and the wrong answer is "I want to get my art out," because this is a business. And Madonna's answer was, "I want to rule the world." The next step was getting her signed. I had to play [her demo] for Seymour Stein.

Along with The Pretenders’ first album, I think Madonna is one of the best debut records of the era.  Musically this record is a little triumph - there truly isn't a bad cut on it.  I've grown to appreciate even the "filler" like "I Know It" and "Think Of Me", which presages the pulsing beat of later hits like "Into The Groove" and "Causing A Commotion".  Meanwhile the hits here are numerous, and as good as anything she’s ever produced. "Holiday" and "Borderline" are both two of the best pop hits of the decade and have held up incredibly well. "Burning Up" is still urgent and sexy (I prefer the CD version by a wide margin, which if memory serves was the video version as well), "Lucky Star" is iconic, "Physical Attraction" is as good as the singles and probably should have been spun off as one, and while "Everybody" didn't set the pop charts on fire I've got a couple of friends who think it's the best thing she's ever released and I don't think they're crazy for saying it.  Nobody’s gonna mistake this for Joni Mitchell, but when it comes to R&B-tinged dance pop, Madonna turns out to have been a landmark record in the rehabilitation of dance music on the pop charts.  Disco was dead no longer (even if it didn’t go by that name anymore).

Madge reportedly wasn’t particularly happy with the production on this record - she brought it to boyfriend Jellybean Benitez for a remix, and he ended up producing “Holiday”, arguably the most enduring cut from Madonna.  I think the production on this record is incredible, though. It's stripped back and techno-tinged but still manages to be funky and urban. Sonically it's great - wonderful bass, better balanced high-end than the next four albums (including You Can Dance), and because it's so spare you get a great sense of space.  I love the drum machine as well. Keeps it simpler and cleaner and contributes to the record's deliciously layered, precise sound. I think if they'd had a live rhythm section it would have ruined that aesthetic, and might have cut too close to the dead sound of '70s disco.

And the programming on this thing is incredible. That transition into the break of "Lucky Star" - the "shine your heavenly body tonight" bit - is funky and fierce. Listening to the album critically for this piece, it just leapt out at me as a defining moment.  That stripped back, more mechanical sound gives her somewhat raw, often pleading (or pouting) vocals something to play off of.  This might have been a debut, but it was clear from the start Madonna knew which details matter when crafting a great pop hit.

In fact, I’d say Madonna is a perfect example of how too much "musicianship" can screw up a really good song. If they'd used live players on this record it would have:

a) Sounded like everything else on the radio instead of having that squeaky clean, occasionally almost menacing sound that defined New Wave

b) Sounded less like New Wave and more like disco, which means a bunch of stations wouldn't have played it and

c) Not given her admittedly kinda weak vocals something to play off of

And the producers did throw in just enough human musicians to keep the thing from sounding like a demo. But just enough. They avoided overproduction, which is virtually always worse than underproduction. 

With its stripped-back, Oberheim drenched electronic production, raw white soul singing, relentless R&B grooves and do-it-yourself ethos Madonna is kind of the American version of Sweet Dreams from Eurythmics, also recorded about the same time and also using an Oberheim. Both albums have, I think, held up much better than most of their contemporaries - recognizably '80s but definitive examples that still sound innovative and not imitative.  Both acts pitted soulful vocals against the computers. 

Unlikely "sisters" in pop

It's interesting to me that these two iconic women, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, hit on very similar takes on pop music at pretty much exactly the same time, and also knew exactly what they needed to do image-wise to break themselves into the big leagues. The attitudes exhibited by their material were quite different - almost diametrically opposed even - but stylistically they were two expressions of pretty much the same idea executed in remarkably similar ways.

Odd how that worked out.

Sire was clever in promoting Madonna as well - on the lead single “Everybody” it isn’t even clear if Madonna is a solo act or possibly a group, let alone if the singer is black or white.  The record got quite a bit of R&B play as a result.

A couple of the tracks off Madonna were a guilty pleasure for me at the time, even if I was dubious about the woman's talent. "Burning Up" was undeniably hot and the video was actually really well done. I thought the video for "Borderline" was surprising and loved the song, which was co-written by producer Reggie Lucas, who also co-wrote the lovely Stephanie Mills hit “Never Knew Love Like This Before”, with which “Borderline” shares a similar light breeziness.  Still, I thought of Madonna as only so much label product. It wasn't 'till I spent a bit of time in the summer of '84 or so hanging out in Scottsdale with the rich kids that I realized she'd become a massive cultural phenomena - it seemed like every teenage girl there was dressed up as a Madonna clone (it didn't reach the poor side of Phoenix where I lived until about six months to a year later, and not as intensely).

I didn't begin to respect her though 'till I saw the "Material Girl" video. That's when it finally clicked that she had to be the one responsible for all of this, she wasn't just the creation of some label and she was really bright and clearly had some talent. That forced a reappraisal of this earlier material.  I still never ended up buying any Madonna on vinyl though, and didn't start collecting her until I got a CD player in '87 or thereabouts, scooping up all the records thru True Blue. The first Madonna album I bought when it was (fairly) new was You Can Dance.

Of course, Madonna wasn’t quite the New York street creature she pretended to be.  She’d actually been a hanger on with the whole Warhol crowd, and dated Jean-Michel Basquiat, finally breaking up with him because she couldn’t deal with his heroin problem anymore.  So, not quite the disco dolly we took her for.  There's a whole article about this online.

One thing that utterly pissed me off about Madonna was the obvious way she sort of slid into the void left by Debbie Harry's absence. I eventually got over it, but have always regretted Blondie getting derailed in the '80s by band politics, Debbie's heroin problem and Chris Stein's illness.  I like Madonna, but when they were firing on all cylinders Blondie were a heck of a lot more subversive, more eclectic and covered an amazing amount of territory.

I used to think Madonna was good but eclipsed by True Blue certainly, as well as probably Like A Virgin and Like A Prayer. In my old age though, I listen to Madonna all the way through far more often than any other Madonna record - Erotica and Ray Of Light are the only other two I can recall playing thru in years. The 2001 remaster is compressed but listenable - the mix is spare and the compression hits the bass more than the treble so it's not an ear-bleeder or shrill, just a bit more funky and rooted. I spin the original ‘83 CD too sometimes - it's thinner but feels a bit more true to the era. 

Even the record’s cover is fantastic, probably her best (that or True Blue, also iconic). Simple but effective - love the lettering, and the photograph is one of the lasting images of the '80s, the look that launched 20 million imitators worldwide.

The 12" version of "Burning Up" that appears on the 2001 remaster is extremely interesting - techno and even more clubby than the album version.  It’s very 1983.  It's interesting to think of Madonna as a more electronic, New Order styled act - you can kind of hear how that might have sounded in this mix: