Careless Notions

This was the first Madonna record I bought new right on release. I'd read her interview in Vanity Fair shortly before it came out, and that's where I realized she was definitely going to be transcending her earlier work with this album. A buddy of mine said she was going to be grabbing her crotch in one of her videos - Michael Jackson style - based on a shot he'd seen somewhere, but I thought he was nuts. Well... Statues coming to life, stigmata, burning crosses, making out with a black guy...yeah, the haters went totally apeshit. "Like A Prayer" of course was a controversy-driven monster the likes of which nobody had seen before on the pop charts. Introduced via a little morality play of a video , it functioned as a pretty good test of who was bright enough to understand what a metaphor is and who wasn't. More importantly for Madge though, the song itself was unlike anything she'd done before. Improbably gospel inspired, and with that bliste...