P. Viktor

Madonna | The Ranking Challenge - Albums

In celebration of Madonna’s fiftieth birthday today, I finish the challenge to fellow Madonna fans to rank your top five albums, top ten singles, and top ten videos by her Madgesty. Rules are simple; pick your top 5 favourite ‘studio’ albums, your top 10 singles (whether released internationally or not, so Dear Jessie or Spotlight would be included), and your top 10 videos (released singles or promotional); rank them in reverse order; and be as controversial as you want. Leave your rankings in the comments section. So, I shall finish with the top 5 albums. Have fun, and let me know what you think of my ranking! Oh, and Happy Birthday Madonna (or Madoughnut as we call her in our house).

Madonna | Top Five Albums

5) Madonna (1983) This eponymous record is aptly titled, as it essentially introduced Madonna to the world. At this point Madonna was at the beginning of her career; young, raw, energetic and hungry for fame, and the music on this album possesses the same immediacy that she would try to recreate on recent attempts Confessions and Hard candy to much less effect. Produced almost entirely by Reggie Lucas, with help from then boyfriends John “Jellybean” Benitez and Mark Kamins (who was instrumental in getting her the record deal in the first place), the album is a mix of funk, pop, r’n’b, and dance in the post-disco haze of the early eighties. Despite the small successes of first singles Everybody and Burning Up, chart success came in the form of ebullient Holiday, the nursery-rhyme like Lucky Star and the Motownish Borderline, three of her biggest and most remembered hits. However album cuts like the insistent Think of Me, the sleaze of Physical Attraction, and the full-on-pop of I Know It still stand up well today. Admittedly I couldn’t listen to this album for many years, but with the vogue for all things eighties in the past five years I have had a chance to reassess it, and it certainly stands out as one of her best. Album Track | Think Of Me

4) Music (2000) Building on the groundwork of Ray Of Light which preceded it by two years, the album Music suggested that this new shift that began in the late nineties was a musical revolution rather than just a temporary blip, so the album’s title seems especially significant. It has since become the second album in what is now deemed to be Madonna’s later electronica-phase of her career. Co-produced by Mirwais, with some tracks reigning in the talents of William Orbit and Guys Sigsworth, the whole album is an innovative blend of European electronic music with an American rock/alt-country sound, especially on songs like Gone, I Deserve It, and Don’t Tell Me, a musical formula Mirwais would use again on American Life to less dazzling effect. Taking references from the late nineties French House boom, which is perhaps why she enlisted French man Mirwais Ahmadzaï to helm the project, the majority of the songs have a dark, Daft-Punkish vibe to them (their Discovery album was huge at the time) especially title track Music, almost-fourth single Impressive Instant, and Runaway Lover. Other highlights include the mesmerising Paradise (Not For Me) – a slow techno track full of abstract lyrics (possibly about her mother’s death) and a sweeping orchestra, the gorgeous What It Feels Like For A Girl, which quotes Charlotte Gainsbourg from The Cement Garden of all things, and the jubilant, sixties sounding Amazing which should have been the fourth and final single. Music is an album chock-full of invention and solid song writing, and deserves its place in this top five. Album Track | Amazing

Madonna | The Ranking Challenge - Singles

In celebration of Madonna’s fiftieth birthday on the 16 August, I set down a challenge to fellow Madonna fans to rank your top five albums, top ten singles, and top ten videos by her Madgesty. Rules are simple; pick your top 5 favourite ‘studio’ albums, your top 10 singles (whether released internationally or not, so Dear Jessie or Spotlight would be included), and your top 10 videos (released singles or promotional); rank them in reverse order; and be as controversial as you want. Leave your rankings in the comments section. Next are the singles. Have fun, and let me know what you think of my ranking!

Madonna | Top Ten Singles

10) Bad Girl (1993) Madonna’s ballads are often overlooked in retrospectives of her work. It is usually the more dance-oriented tracks that take centre stage, but I think that is something of a disservice. Bad Girl had it doubly bad because it was unfairly swamped in the Body Of Evidence controversy, which had been released about a month before, exacerbated by the fact that the accompanying video to the song featured a character who looked not unlike the film’s protagonist. Bad Girl is a quintessential ‘lady’s got the blues’ moment – she loves her man, but knows they cannot be together. Instead, she gets drunk, sleeps with strangers, and lives an empty life that brings her no solace. What kind of reflection this is on her private life I could not say for sure, but I think Madonna has intimated that during that era, during the backlash and the intensifying pressures of her fame, she was deeply unhappy. Featuring an excellent and heartfelt vocal performance (who said she couldn’t sing pre-Evita?), crisp production from Shep Pettibone (a bluesy-jazz feel that would mark most of the Erotica album) and a memorable melody, this marks a well-crafted moment in Madonna’s song writing canon.  Bad Girl | Edit| 4:39

9) Get Together (2006) Of the four singles I could have picked from Confessions on a Dance Floor, Get Together may seem like an odd choice considering the huge success of Hung Up and Sorry. But to me, the whole point of that album was the marriage of pop and European dance music, and it is in Get Together that I believe that marriage to be most successful. Perhaps the least melodically memorable than the two aforementioned songs, Get Together relies on its repetitive hooks and employs Madonna’s trademark; a strong musical bridge leading into the chorus. The poppy vocal and song structure is married to a shimmering, pulsating euro-dance treatment from Stuart Price (Les Rythmes Digitales), who slowly builds the song up with layers of synths and throbbing bass/beats until the song’s breakdown, when it suddenly explodes to a climax that leads into the last chorus. Referencing the French House explosion of the late nineties (Daft Punk, Cassius, Bob Sinclair, Modjo) the success of this song is in the pop-dance hybrid that has been a formula Madonna has adopted again and again. Get Together | Radio Edit | 3:56 

8) Angel (1985) Some singles get forgotten because of the company they keep. Let’s face it, being released amongst Like A Virgin, Material Girl, Crazy For You, Into the Groove and Dress You Up, it is not surprising that Angel was almost forgotten, but I definitely think this single deserves a second look. Coming from the album Like A Virgin and one of many Madonna-Steve Bray song writing collaborations, Angel is the perfect pop song. It features one of Madonna/Bray’s simplest but well crafted melody-chord structures, with an almost mournful vocal performance from a young Madonna, with spiky and sparse production from Nile Rogers, full of arpeggio guitars, spectral synths, and bubbling bass-line. Lyrically, the song is just a simple paean to perfect love, but closes with the almost poetic appeal ‘clouds just disappear’. This song perhaps ranks as one of my favourite early Madonna songs. Angel | 7" Version | 3:45 

7) Nothing Really Matters (1999) On first hearing this song when I got my copy of Ray Of Light, I was mesmerised. The most immediate song on what was a subtle, complex (in terms of production) album, Nothing Really Matters stuck out. From the ghostly beeps and echoes of the intro, to the sudden kick-in of the clunky house beat, William Orbit’s sonic palette gave Madonna a post-modern working-over that she never really recovered from. The production is so complex that - like most songs on the album - repeated listens give you a completely new experience. A quintessential Madonna melody (slightly nursery rhyme-ish with a hypnotic and anthemic chorus), one of her best vocal performances, lyrical content about the trappings of fame and the realisation that love is important above all else, make this one of Madonna’s most well-crafted songs. Highlights also include the instrumental break with a xylophone going crazy and then an atonal piano riff, with an outro that turns the chorus melody on its head. Nothing Really Matters | Album Version | 4:26

6) Give It 2 Me (2008) Sadly the second and last song in this top ten from the ‘new millennium’ stage of her career, and by far the most recent (her latest single), Give It 2 Me will prove to be one of her most-loved hits alongside Music, Vogue, Ray Of Light, and Hung Up. Without doubt the best cut from Hard Candy, what is striking about this Pharrell Williams’ produced track is how raw and energetic it is. I described Give It 2 Me in a review of the album back in April, which I stand by; “I love the drum rolls, the jam jar high-hats, the trance strobe-like squelches of the chorus, the old school Madonna vocals/melody lines, the slightly Casio keyboard/clavichord samples and orchestra hits, the relentless stuttering rhythmic pull, the Music--like vocoders… This is Madonna at her glorious best”. An modern anthem to rival Music, this is Madonna in defiant mode doing what she does best; creating contemporary dance music that is unlike anything anyone else is doing. Give It 2 Me | Radio Edit | 4:02

A Modern Fairytale

Sex and the City is a highly successful television series, and eager to cash in on the programme’s success and give fans everything they could want in a full-blown conclusion to the much loved character's lives, a new film version has just been released to cinemas across the world. I have been a fan of the show for a long time. It is insane to think that when the first series started ten years ago I was still at university doing my degree in English. How far we have all come since then, both in our own lives and the fictional lives of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda. The show's success is probably due to the fact that the character's lives have developed in a truthful and organic way, and they haven't all remained aging singletons who are still desperately searching for Mr Right (or Mr Big in this case). The characters have grown up, got married, and had children, and that at least gives some semblance of real life to what is a rather artificial show.

The movie does deliver, despite various male critics who write for broadsheets poo-pooing the whole enterprise. If you have never watched the series or if you come to the film expecting a life-altering experience then you are going to be sorely disappointed. If you come to the film expecting an extended two and a half hour special (think of it as five episodes in one) then you are going to enjoy this film. It works mainly because it keeps all the traits and conventions of the television series - Carrie's voice over, the relationship drama, the typed questions, the sharp witty dialogue, the city and the clothes as characters of their own - it's all there, and I think that is probably the film's saving grace. But I do think that the film only works in the context of the television show - as a stand alone it would probably fall flat for new audiences. This is a film for long standing fans, not new ones.

Disentangling Alanis

Flavours of Entanglement (3/5)

Alanis Morissette releases her new album for four years, Flavours (I will be spelling it the correct way, just to warn you) of Entanglement at the beginning of June, and I have to say it is probably her best work in a long time. Since dropping her co-writer/producer Glenn Ballard after her first two (and best) albums, Jagged Little Pill (1995) and Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998), Morissette has drifted in a kind of sonic limbo, releasing two below par albums that have contributed to her gradual disappearance in the public eye. Producing both Under Rug Swept (2002) and most of So-Called Chaos (2004) on her own, she was left to her own devices and ultimately produced two self-indulgent records that left people hankering for the virago at the centre of her most famous song, You Oughta Know.

After a four year hiatus, and with a sudden love for music again, Morissette has teamed up with Guy Sigsworth, who is perhaps best known for his work with Bjork, Madonna, and Imogen Heap (with whom he formed the short-lived Frou Frou). It is Imogen Heap, however, who is the obvious influence on this new record; her sonic landscape, skittering beats, eletro-harmonic effects, and vocal style are all here. Morissette has in the past said how much she loved the Frou Frou song Let’s Go, and that really seems to be the jumping off point for this new record. A new direction has been a long time coming for Morissette – she has needed to update her sound for a long time, and that is what Guy Sigsworth brings to the pot. He has kept the integrity of Morissette’s pop-rock song writing, but has provided a new way of listening to her songs and understanding them. It was this outsider’s perspective that she was lacking on her two previous albums, and let’s face it, Morissette works at her best when collaborating with men in the studio.

To the Brink and Back

Bring Ya To The Brink (3/5)

Cyndi Lauper has one of those voices that immediately transports me back to the eighties, back to a time when I was a kid and wanted to be a Goonie. A voice often maligned, I happen to think it is one of the best voices to come out of that era – quirky, soulful, vulnerable, sometimes shrill, mournful and squeaky. When you hear a Cyndi Lauper record, before she has even breathed, you know it is her. In the current climate of homogeneity that is something to celebrate. But she’s definitely up there with those other Marmite female voices that people either love or loathe – Kate Bush, Imogen Heap, Tori Amos, Bjork, Joanna Newsom. I have always been drawn to them, mainly because of their quirkiness and the fact that I feel like I’m going to fall asleep when the Beyonces, Mariah Careys, and Celine Dions of this world come onto the radio (figuratively speaking of course, I mean, who listens to the radio anymore?) with their vocal gymnastics and long, piercing high notes. Give me my Kooky Queens any day.

So I was quite surprised to hear that Lauper is releasing a new album this year, the snappily titled Bring Ya To The Brink. Produced by some of the hottest dance music producers out there – Kleerup, Basement Jaxx, Dragonette, Scumfrog, and Richard Morel – this album is Cyndi’s Confessions On A Dancefloor. That comparison is not intended to cheapen the record. Lauper has spent a long time in Madonna’s shadow after being such a huge star in her own right in the eighties, but as her own success dwindled she fell ever more into the dark halo around the spotlight. This has often seemed unfair, as Lauper’s own musical output has been equal if not superior to some of Madonna’s. I do not think this new album will rectify that damage completely, though I believe that given the right amount of publicity this album could go some way to re-establishing her in the music industry.

Electro Sparro

Sam Sparro (3.5/5)

At the end of 2007, an unprecedented year for women in pop and rock, I opined the lack of male pop stars emerging in contemporary music. Not that women dominating pop music is a bad thing – I love worshipping my goddesses – but for every Venus there must be a Dionysus; platonic worship of women is one thing, but honouring the dripping sexuality of the rock male is another. The landscape of rock music has been bereft of such men – Jim Morrison, Elvis, Kurt Cobain, Jeff Buckley – men of beauty and soul, sensitive men with poetry and sex appeal in equal abundance. The world needs these men, but they seem to have become an extinct species, and that does not look like it is about to change any time soon.

Conversely, pop has its own breed of male – the gay, flamboyant, attention-seeking torch singer who is somewhat asexual, unthreatening, neither oozing sex appeal or tortured poetry. There is a long tradition of such men – Freddy Mercury (Queen), Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes To Hollywood), Neal Tennant (Pet Shop Boys), Jimmy Somerville, Boy George, Marc Almond, Morrisey, George Michael, and more recently Rufus Wainwright, Will Young and Mika. Continuing the tradition is Sam Sparro, whose eponymous album has been released this month.