CLASSIC POP PRESENTS

MADONNA
SPECIAL EDITION
MADONNA SPECIAL EDITION

132-PAGE
COLLECTORS
ISSUE

THE GIRL
WHO CHANGED
05
05

9 772399 751009
9 772399 751009

CLASSIC POP
PRESENTS
MADONNA
PRICE 6.99 THE FACE OF POP
MADONNA THROUGH THE DECADES... IN MUSIC, FILMS & FASHION
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 WELCOME
THE VERY FIRST 7 I EVER BOUGHT WAS
MADONNAS HOLIDAY. WELL, IN TRUTH MY
OLDER BROTHER AND I WENT HALVES ON
IT WITH OUR POCKET MONEY. NEEDLESS
TO SAY WE PLAYED IT TO DEATH, BUT I HAD
A LOVELY REALISATION THIS MORNING
05
WHILE TRYING TO FIND IT FOR THIS
PHOTO, AND IT WAS
I
THIS: UNLIKE THOSE t isnt just vinyl that has
managed to stay the course.
OTHER NOSTALGIC Sorting through that prized
ARTEFACTS OF MY stack of singles from my youth,
its obvious that the overwhelming
EARLY YOUTH BOXY majority of artists have long since
TV SETS, WALKMANS, dropped out of earshot. Madonna,
BOOMBOXES, on the other hand, is still very
much here well over 30 years after
VHS PLAYERS, MY my brother and I first timidly set
COMMODORE 64 foot in that record shop. Even the
VINYL HASNT DATED record shops gone
It isnt simply that Madonna
ONE IOTA. ITS GOING Ciccone has managed to last
FROM STRENGTH TO it out: its the fact that shes still
STRENGTH; THATS A thriving, still successfully re-
inventing herself time and time
TRULY MARVELLOUS again to remain within spitting
THOUGHT. SADLY distance of pops frontline. Not
only that, but shes also still
FOR ME, IT SEEMS MY shining a light on a cast of talent,
BROTHER NABBED THAT oftentimes plucked out of the
CHERISHED HOLIDAY 7 underground, to help her break
any pop boundaries left unbroken.
FOR HIMSELF, SO IVE Yet as is often the case with
HAD TO SETTLE FOR Madonna it doesnt end there.
BORDERLINE, BUT THATS In the Eighties, she was the
strong female voice leading the
NO BAD THING charge for personal expression
through sexuality, fashion and
independence. In the Nineties,
the potent erotica of her Sex
book unashamedly empowered
women still further, while she
T H E C O N T R I B U T O R S
Mark Lindores Ian Wade
grew up during is a freelance
the golden age writer, sub-editor
of pop mags, and PR who
devouring achieved a
Smash Hits and lifetime ambition
Number One. Writing about to write for Smash Hits in 1998
the artists he used to read about and has since worked for The
for Classic Pop, Total Film and Quietus, The Guardian, The
Mixmag, he is living the dream Sunday Times, BBC Music and
of his 15-year-old self. Time Out.
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took on female rights as well as
rallying to open minds and fight
censorship. In the Noughties, she
gained serious and well-deserved
credibility with one of the finest,
and coolest, albums of her career.
To this day, Madonna remains
intent on questioning the ethics
of a headline-hungry press that
never leave her be. Her new
quest? To take on ageism in its
many forms and convince all of
us but particularly women that
were not just invisible because of
a number. She was MTVs Artist
Of The Decade at the close of the
Eighties and last year became
Billboards Woman Of The Year.
In this special edition, we
celebrate the many factors that
have come together to create
such an incredible human
being, from her music, videos,
films and fashion through to her
entrepreneurial know-how and
unflinching humanitarian work.
Enjoy the issue
Rik Flynn Editor
Paul Lester John Earls
has been both edited Teletexts
Features Editor music pages
of Melody Planet Sound
Maker and throughout the
Deputy Editor Noughties, he
of Uncut. Since 2007 he has has also done pop for The
freelanced for The Guardian, Sunday People, News Of The
The Sunday Times, The World and, currently, NME
Independent, MOJO, Classic and the Daily Star. John also
Rock and Classic Pop. lectures in journalism.
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PRODUCTION EDITOR

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HEAD OF MARKETING
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PRINTING
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DISTRIBUTION
Marketforce (UK) Ltd
5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf,
London, E14 5HU
Tel +44 (0)20 37879001 D E C A D E S icon, not forgetting a newfound faith and a
EARLY 1980S: STARLIGHT, collaboration bound for the stratosphere
LICENSING ENQUIRIES 2000S: HEY, MR DJ 64
STAR BRIGHT 8
Regina Erak Wannabe dancer turned punk-rock drummer A new era for the Queen of Pop in which
Tel +44 (0)7753 811 622 immersed in the New York underground to she took her pop sensibilities into the clubs
regina.erak@globalworks.co.uk global pop supernova somehow Madonnas via two hip producers from both sides of
unflinching desire to succeed took her from the Channel, married a film producer with a
making ends meet in a low-rent bedsit to the penchant for gangsters, snogged her younger
world stage and Live Aid rivals, toured the world and made the
LATE 1980S: CALL MY NAME 26 biggest-selling single of her career
All content copyright of Anthem Publishing Ltd 2016, all
A new album through which to express her 2010S: BITCH IM MADONNA 84
rights reserved. While we make every effort to ensure A return to the directors chair for a big-
state of newlywed bliss, followed by a very
that the factual content of Classic Pop magazine is correct, budget biopic, a clothing line, a chain of
public breakdown, led to Madonnas pop
we cannot take any responsibility nor be held accountable gyms, two brand new albums, an all-singing,
masterstroke and universal acclaim
for any factual errors printed. No part of this publication all-dancing Super Bowl performance watched
1990S: STRIKE A POSE 44
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or resold by more people than anything else in history,
Its the decade that gave birth with the
without prior consent of Anthem Publishing Ltd. Classic Pop and a whole lot of lawsuits
help of Jean-Paul Gaultier to Madonna the
recognises all copyrights contained within the issue. Where
possible, we acknowledge the copyright holder.

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122
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26 64 CONTENTS
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102
COLLABORATIONS
PRINCE 24
A did-they-didnt-they romance, their lone
musical outing and more: we explore the
on-off relationship between two of the
biggest stars the world has seen
STEPHEN BRAY 42
From Detroit pal and NYC bandmate to
songwriting and production duties, Bray
played a major role in the story of Madonna
WILLIAM ORBIT 62
With Madonnas spiritual reinvention and
Orbits techno know-how, this partnership
created perhaps her finest moment
STUART PRICE 82
Up until meeting Madonna, Price had played
and produced his own material in Les
Rythmes Digitales and Zoot Woman, but
together in a London loft they created a
break records she set herself no wonder
she signed with concert giant Live Nation
club hit like no other MADONNA ON FILM 108
MIRWAIS 100 From Golden Globes to box office bombs,
When Ms Ciccone turned to Gallic electroclash Madonnas films always divide the critics
producer Mirwais, the dancefloor most MADONNA ON VIDEO 116
certainly beckoned with one of the stars Built to shock and magnetise in equal measure,
most creative No. 1 singles Madonna is a true master of the medium
DRESS YOU UP 122
F E AT U R E S We explore the mother of re-invention and
POP ART 6 examine her ever-changing image
The performers iconic album sleeve art, from IN HER OWN WORDS 128
her eponymous Eighties debut to her latest Outspoken and brutally honest we pick out
offering, 2015s Rebel Heart some of Madonnas finest quotes
MADONNA ON STAGE 102 CLASSIC POP MOMENTS 130
Artistic, fashion-savvy and expertly Billboards Woman Of The Year 2016 faces
choreographed, Madonnas tours consistently ageism head-on

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 6

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 The Queen of Pops iconic
album sleeve art, from
her Eighties clubland
debut Madonna through
to 2015s provocative
Rebel Heart

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 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S

Eric Watson

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 S T A R L I G H T ,

S T A R B R I G H T
MADONNA STARTED THE
EIGHTIES PLAYING DRUMS IN
AN OBSCURE NEW YORK ROCK
BAND. WITHIN FIVE YEARS SHE
WOULD BECOME ARGUABLY
THE MOST FAMOUS WOMAN
ON EARTH. HERE, WE CHART
HER IRRESISTIBLE ASCENT FROM
MUDD CLUB TO LIVE AID
P A U L L E S T E R

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 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S
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I N 2017,
most of the biggest stars
on the planet Adele,
Beyonc, Rihanna, Lady
Gaga, Taylor Swift, Katy
Perry are women. And all of them owe a debt of
gratitude to Madonna: for breaking down the door for
female artists and showing them that they could rival
the boys in the pop star superleague; for proving that
a female pop act could be as involved in every aspect
of the creative process as any of their counterparts
in the so-called serious rock arena; for creating an
aesthetic universe every bit as fully-realised as David
Bowies; and for being an inspiration when it comes
to musicians going
through multiple
musical and THE STORY OF THE GIRL WHO BECAME
artistic ch-ch-ch-
changes. THE BIGGEST-SELLING RECORDING
The story of the
girl who became
ARTIST OF ALL TIME BEGINS WITH HER
the biggest-selling BIRTH ON 16 AUGUST 1958
Mary Wilson, a former member of Motown girl-trio
POP_UP The song Holiday was initially offered to
female recording
artist of all time,
with an estimated $500 million fortune, 300 million
album sales worldwide and 273 awards, including
The Supremes, but she turned it down
Brits, Grammys and a Golden Globe, begins with her
birth on 16 August 1958 two weeks before Michael
Jackson, two months after Prince, her only serious
competitors in the Eighties and beyond.
Madonna Louise Ciccone was the eldest daughter
of six children born in Bay City, Michigan to
Chrysler engineer Tony Ciccone and his wife,
Madonna Fortin, respectively of Italian and French-
Canadian ancestry. Madonnas mother died of
breast cancer in December 1963, aged 30. Just five
years old, Madonna was devastated by her death.
Her strict disciplinarian father would later employ a
succession of housekeepers to look after his children,
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Madonna the
all-American
cheerleader, aged
14 in 1972
one of whom, Joan Gustafson, became his second
wife, causing Madonna to rebel. Although Gustafson
was reputed to be the very definition of the wicked
stepmother, her authoritarian approach is said to
have influenced the young Madonna, instilling in
her a penchant for order. (Indeed, reports in 2016
stated that Madonnas own children found the singer
too controlling, from her insistence on a hardcore
macrobiotic diet and outlawing of sweets to the
banning of TV at home).
Despite the domestic issues, Madonna managed
to do well, studies-wise, at Rochester Adams High
School, and her extracurricular activities didnt suffer:
she was a keen
member of the
cheerleading
squad, and
she showed a
willingness to
experiment in
different fields.
While still in
her early teens
she was invited by a fellow student, Wyn Cooper,
to appear in a film he was making as a class
assignment. It was titled The Egg Movie and recorded
on Super 8, and Madonna was apparently open to
anything, which perhaps explains why she can be
seen eating a raw egg while another is baked on her
stomach, which is then eaten by another student.
Although it was hardly an unstoppable, rapid
ascent and there were many bumps in the road
certainly her background suggests someone always
eager to achieve, and to receive the approbation
of her peers. After graduating, in 1976 she gained
a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan
School of Music, Theatre & Dance. There, she learned
about Martha Graham, the Picasso of modern
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At the age of 20 Madonna

modelled many times for
New York photographer
Michael McDonnell

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 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S

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A more relaxed pose

from the 1978 New
York photo sessions

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Another New York

pose, with lipstick
and darker hair

dance, and Alvin Ailey, a black choreographer from

Texas who combined ballet with African tribal dance.
Little wonder Madonnas hybrid dancing style evinced
the varied influences she had absorbed as a keen
student of all things terpsichorean.
A local ballet teacher, Christopher Flynn,
encouraged her to pursue a career in dance. He
also sparked her interest in the arts, taking her to
concerts, art galleries and gay clubs in Detroit such as
Menjos, where she would let loose on the dancefloor.

POP_UP Legendary dancer/choreographer Martha Graham was one of Madonnas

Onlookers described her as the centre of attention
while Madonna referred to herself as a gay man

true idols. Enrolling at her school, she would haunt the hallways in the hope of a
trapped in a womans body. Dance had become a

meeting. When their paths did cross, Madonna was too paralysed to speak
means of escape for the harried teenage Madonna
who now had seven noisy siblings at home (her father
and stepmother had two kids of their own), as well as
a respite from the feelings of loss still lingering from
the death of her real mother, and a way of gaining
recognition from people she admired.
But it wasnt enough. Having glimpsed a way out
of Detroits stifling suburbia via the gay club scene,
Madonna was now impatient to find her way to the
centre of everything. And so, in 1978, she dropped
out halfway through her University of Michigan course
and headed for New York. There, penniless, she
paid her rent by working variously as a waitress and
posing nude for art classes, staring at people staring
at me naked, as she put it. She also took classes
at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the
Martha Graham School, eventually performing with
the Pearl Lang Dance Theater. Before long, however,
she would flounce out of the latter, declaring to friends
that she was going to be a rock star.
New York wasnt all thrills and fulfillable dreams.
Yes, it was exciting (she had never before taken a
plane or caught a cab), but it was perilous, too: on
the way home from a dance rehearsal one night, she
was raped at knifepoint by a pair of thugs on a

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 E A R L Y
pop songs, just behind Yesterday, Satisfaction and Smells Like Teen Spirit
POP_UP Into The Groove was voted Song Of The 1980s by Billboard
readers while Like A Virgin was named No 4 on a list of the greatest
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1 9 8 0 S
Manhattan rooftop. She was only 19. Still, she was
determined not to quit and move back home. I was
defiant, she said.Hellbent on surviving. On making
it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare
myself every day to keep going.
Madonnas first proper musical venture came when
she joined a band called The Breakfast Club, with
whom she played guitar, drums and sang. Their track
Shit On The Ground boasted some of the urgency and
attack of British punk group X-Ray Spex, Madonnas
vocals having some of the yelping high-register quality
of the latters daring frontwoman Poly Styrene, while
Shine A Light was more reflective and new wave-ish,
Little Boy sounded like The Smiths four years ahead of
schedule and Love
Express recalled
MADONNA WAS A SORT OF
No Doubt before
the latter were
even a twinkle in SURROGATE NEW WAVE GIRL CUM
Gwen Stefanis
eye. The Breakfast
ROCK CHICK WITH A HINT OF POST-
Club later signed DISCO PULSE TO HER MUSIC
to Ze Records
hipper-than-thou
early label home of Kid Creole & The Coconuts, Was
(Not Was) and Material and had a US hit with
Right On Track, but by then Madonna had long since
established herself as a global icon.
In 1980, she left The Breakfast Club to focus on
songwriting, keen to make the move from behind the
drum-kit towards centre stage, just as Karen Carpenter
had done 10 years earlier. She travelled to Paris to
work as a backup dancer to French disco artist Patrick
Hernandez, of 1978 hit Born To Be Alive fame. She
appeared in an erotic independent arthouse movie
called A Certain Sacrifice, playing the part of Bruna,
a Lower East Side resident who lives with three love
slaves (one male, one female, one transgender). She
formed her own band, Emmy (Madonnas nickname),
G O I N G
O V E R G R O U N D
MADONNAS BREAKTHROUGH UK PERFORMANCE
In the Seventies, pop TV gold was provided by David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust
performing Starman on Top Of The Pops. Then, in the Eighties on the same
show, Associates doing Party Fears Two and Frankie Goes To Hollywood
assailing us with Relax and Two Tribes, gave us startling, memorable TV pop
performances. But even compared to moments like these, Madonnas own
UK telly debut was as legendary as they come.
It was Friday teatime on January 27, 1984, when La Ciccone appeared
on anarchic weekly show The Tube, via the Haienda club in Manchester.
This was Britains first glimpse of Madonna, and it was fantastic something
halfway between what Bananarama once termed (describing their own
efforts) gimpy dancing and cool New York disco moves as she and her
two dancers grooved to Burning Up and Holiday and Madonna mimed
to the music. Meanwhile, we could marvel at the star in her classic early
incarnation: black cropped vest, black sawn-off leggings, black ra-ra skirt,
wavy streaked hair, big crucifix earrings, and naked midriff.
It was an odd bill that she was on at the bottom of, in fact but
perhaps not that weird considering the Haienda was owned by Manchester
label Factory Records. Top slot was occupied by the Factory All Stars,
featuring members of Durutti Column, Quando Quango and pioneering funk-
noir outfit A Certain Ratio. Below them were Broken Glass, who included in
their ranks the rapper Kermit, later to join Black Grape. Elsewhere on the bill
with Stephen Bray (later a producer on True Blue and
Like A Prayer) from The Breakfast Club on drums. One
of their songs, Laugh To Keep Myself From Crying,
was a dead ringer for The Pretenders Madonna was
in thrall to pouty punk-era pioneers Chrissie Hynde
and Blondies Debbie Harry. Much of the material
that Madonna wrote around this time was made
available, in 1997, on the album Pre-Madonna, a
collection of demos produced circa 1980 by Bray.
Casting around for an identity to call her own,
Madonna was a sort of surrogate new wave girl cum
rock chick with a hint of a post-disco pulse to her
music think Pat Benatar if shed been allowed into
Danceteria or the Mudd Club: not quite hip enough
to pass muster as
a cool Ze-style
artist, but certainly
in tune with New
Yorks hothouse
miscellany of
musics. According
to an article in
the Independent
newspaper written
by Madonna author Lucy OBrien, To many of the in-
crowd Madonna was outr and she didnt mean it
in a good way, but rather in the sense of a girl from
out-of-state who wasnt totally in the know yet. She
was more gauche than groovy, trying hard to get it
right but somehow missing the mark. Too hard: The
arbiters of cool in this demimonde usually found her a
little too pushy, too transparently keen to get ahead,
to embrace her fully, as Matthew Lindsay wrote in an
article on Madonnas formative stage for The Quietus.
Luckily, local entrepreneur Camille Barbone, of
Gotham Management the only recording studio in
the Music Building where Madonna rehearsed took
her under her wing, encouraging her to write songs
such as Get Up, High Society and the ska-
there was Marcel King, a Manchester soul singer with a beautiful voice who
had been No. 1 in the Seventies as part of Sweet Sensation, and who was
seeking a second wave of acclaim via his new single, Reach For Love. Among
the interviewees on the programme was Morrissey, who, like Madonna, was
poised on the cusp of mega-stardom.
Martin Moscrop, guitarist and trumpeter with A Certain Ratio, was there at
the Haienda to observe the goings-on. You could sense she was going to be
big she was just bossing everyone around, he later recalled. Greg Wilson,
resident DJ in the early days of the Haienda, witnessed some befuddlement
in the crowd. People didnt know who Madonna was, he said. She was
working hard, but the Haienda crowd wasnt a dance audience at the time
so what she was doing, with two male dancers, wouldnt have been what
they were into.
The 21-year-old Norman Cook, aeons before he became Fatboy Slim,
even before becoming the bass player in The Housemartins, was also in
the audience that evening. He recalled seeing this tiny little American girl,
looking pretty foxy and Kermit and company chatting to her: Who are
you? Im Madonna. Said Cook: She was really friendly, very affable.
You have to be affable when youre on the bottom rung. He believed it was
a crucial gig for her. That one performance, he said, might have been the
thing that broke her in England.
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The future Vogue

magazine cover star,
New York City, 1982

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 inflected Love On The Run. Madonna signed a deal
with Gotham, which secured for her $100 a week, an
apartment and unlimited access to a recording studio.
But the relationship between Madonna and Barbone,
though key in her development, was short-lived, and
soon their partnership was dissolved. Now without a
manager, Madonna continued to write and record in
tandem with Bray, although the idea was to market
herself as a solo act. They recorded a demo using a
Boss drum machine and some synthesisers, full of the
sounds she was hearing in the clubs.
It was 1981, a great year for music, when
electronica was in its infancy and NYC clubland
was alive to the sound of mutant disco, hip hop, no
wave, punk-funk and synthpop. Madonna was at the
epicentre of this alternative scene (she briefly dated
one artist Basquiat and befriended another, Keith
Haring) and she successfully captured some of the
atmosphere and energy of the period on a series of
new exuberant dance-pop compositions, including
Everybody and Burning Up.
One night, she approached music producer and DJ,
Mark Kamins, in his booth at the club Danceteria and
persuaded him to play a tape of Everybody, all bright
amateurish vocals far from the acrobatic melismas
of todays X Factor wannabes over a functional
machine beat, synth bass and keyboard twinkles.
I threw it on the cassette, said Kamins, and it
worked. Kamins became Madonnas boyfriend, and

IN 1981 ELECTRONICA WAS IN ITS

INFANCY AND NYC CLUBLAND WAS
ALIVE TO MUTANT DISCO, HIP-HOP, NO
WAVE, PUNK-FUNK AND SYNTHPOP

the pair moved into a small apartment on New Yorks

Upper East Side. (When he sadly died in 2013,
Madonna said of him: He believed in me before
anybody else did). Kamins sent a copy of the single
to Sire Records president Seymour Stein. The label
were sufficiently impressed that they signed Madonna
to a one-off deal to record Everybody as a dance
single. By November 82, it was top of the dance
tough-guy roughing someone up while it plays on the radio

charts and Sire had offered her an album deal.

POP_UP Madonnas ex-husband Guy Ritchie used Lucky

Madonnas debut album, self-titled, came out in July

Star in his 2001 movie, Snatch, in a scene featuring a

1983, just in time to perk up a music scene that was

in danger of palling since the new pop explosion of
1981-82. But it was actually the singles issued from
the album that helped sell it, notably Holiday and
Lucky Star. The album was preceded by the release,
in March 83, of her second single, Burning Up, a
rock-funk blast featuring electric guitars and state-of-
the-art synths. Though melodically weak, it had energy
to burn, not to mention a video directed by Steve
Barron (Michael Jacksons Billie Jean, A-Has Take On
Me) in which Madonna can be seen writhing around
in the middle of a road and cavorting in black leather
and chains. The single failed to chart but Madonna
The newly emerging
did promote it by performing at different clubs around
princess of pop, New York, London and Manchester, thereby helping
her early image to spread the word about this rising star.
complete, in a 1984 It was her third single, Holiday, that catapulted her
photo session
onto the next level of celebrity. The next logical

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 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S

step after disco a slightly electronicised version
of the form it had a melody written by unknowns
Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens, with Nile Rodgers-
style scratchy rhythm guitar, an infectious recurrent
keyboard motif, electronic handclaps, cowbell, a
synth-string arrangement and production courtesy
of Madonnas latest squeeze, DJ and remixer
John Jellybean Benitez. Holiday was, basically,
irresistible. Not surprisingly, it became Madonnas
first mainstream hit in the US, reaching the Top 20
of the Billboard Hot 100. It also became her first Top
10 entry in Australia, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, the
Netherlands and the UK.
By this point, Madonnas thrift-store chic was
catching on as
fast as her music.
With a little help MADONNAS DEBUT ALBUM
from stylist and
DEMONSTRATED THAT THIS WAS A LEGIT
POP_UP Before remixing for Madonna, Jellybean had worked
Fruit, and as Warner Brothers in-house producer he
made perfect sense as the man at the controls for
Madonnas tentative first foray. However, she was
not happy, finding fault with Lucas approach to
production, so she decided to seek help from Benitez,
who embellished and enhanced Lucky Star, Burning
Up, Holiday and Physical Attraction.
The album was a showcase for the new technology,
including the Linn drum machine, Moog bass and
OB-X synthesiser, but there was also conventional
instrumentation (guitar, bass, percussion, tenor
sax). Whatever, it worked. From the ebullient synth-
shimmery opener Lucky Star to the nagging insistence
of Think Of Me and Physical Attraction, the album
hardly faltered I
Know It was a
slight misfire (or
a dry run for True

jewellery designer Blue, if you were

Walking On Sunshine and Afrika Bambaataas Planet Rock

Maripol, her
ARTIST WITH AMBITIONS TO SUSTAIN A being generous),
on Jimmy Spicers The Bubble Bunch, Rockers Revenges

look comprised but that aside

bleach-streaked CAREER OVER THE LONGTERM
hair tied with lace,
fingerless gloves,
bra tops, skirts over Capri pants, fishnet stockings,
bracelets, and a liberal deployment of the crucifix.
Like her spirit twin Prince, Madonna loved to blur the
line between the sacred and the profane.
The British public got its first glimpse of the new star
in January 1984, when she appeared on anarchic
pop TV show The Tube. It helped that she had a
strong debut album in the shops to back her up she
was clearly more than a Eighties-stylish mannequin,
or a glorified dancer. That album had a somewhat
protracted birth, though. It was primarily produced
by Reggie Lucas, the writer of album track, and fifth
single, the sublimely sad-sweet Borderline. Lucas was
also the producer of one of 1983s most luscious
examples of modern electronic soul, Mtumes Juicy
this was a
bright, bubbling
concoction,
quite sparse and dubby in places, but terminally
effervescent, a new dance-pop fizz for the mid-
Eighties with immediate widespread appeal. Even
Madonnas shrill, limited vocals had a colloquial
charm, although they were an acquired taste: Minnie
Mouse on helium became one common trope, while
some critics dismissed her as a dance-pop novelty.
Jim Farber from Entertainment Weekly was at the
other extreme. Sensing the quality of the venture,
he awarded the album an A, declaring, Madonna
might have wound up just another post-disco dolly if
the songs on the album didnt announce her ability to
fuse club beats with peerless pop. What her debut
did was demonstrate emphatically that, far from a
one-hit-wonder, Madonna was a legit artist with

I N T O
T H E
G R O O V E
MADONNAS BEST SINGLES
OF THE EARLY EIGHTIES HOLIDAY
This song was most people in Britains first
experience of Madonna and they really liked it.
In fact, theyve liked it consistently over the years,
which explains why it has charted no less than three
times in the UK. First, it reached No. 6 on its first
release here in January 1984 (with its original
artwork of an old black-and-white image of a couple
and a train), then became a No. 2 on its re-release
in August 85 (when it was kept off the top slot by
her own Into The Groove) and finally a No. 5 in
1991 to promote The Immaculate Collection.
LIKE A VIRGIN
Forget Lady Gaga and her meat dress Madonna
was causing controversies when La Germanotta was
just a twinkle in her parents eyes. Still, although
the lyric to her first chart-topper like a virgin,
touched for the very first time raised eyebrows
at the time, the writers of the song actually had in
mind something rather more chaste from Motowns
classic Sixties era for the falsetto melody line: the
demo was said to have been based on Smokey
Robinsons style of singing, or a song such as I Cant
Help Myself by The Four Tops.

18

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 Getty Images

The Material Girl with

accessories to the max
in Chicago on the Virgin
Tour, May 18 1985

19

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 Getty Images

Madonna in her
infamous wedding dress
with Boy Toy belt
buckle at the first MTV
Video Music Awards in
New York, 1984

20

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 E A R L Y 1 9 8 0 S

ambitions to sustain a career over the longterm. That it
sold in vast quantities 10 million copies worldwide
eventually, peaking inside the Top 10 of most
territories tells its own story: that by summer 1984,
Madonna was making a considerable impact on the
pop landscape.
By late 84, via her next series of releases, she
began to seriously shape that landscape. The
producer she chose to work on her second album,
November 84s Like A Virgin, was Nile Rodgers,
which made sense because Madonna was in many
ways the naturally corollary of Chic disco with a
new wave sensibility and Eighties vision. Fresh from
producing David Bowies Lets Dance album, Rodgers
was on a roll.
Like A Virgin was
FRESH FROM PRODUCING DAVID
work with her and Like A Virgin seemed like a perfect
opportunity. Physical Attraction might almost have
been written about Rodgers and Madonna. The thing
between us, man, it was sexual, it was passionate, it
was creativity it was pop, he exclaimed. He later
commented: She may be the most magical person
Ive ever come into contact with. We were as close as
two people could be without being lovers.
The first single to be issued from Like A Virgin
was the title track in October 84. Madonna
had effectively launched the song in a notorious
performance at the first MTV Video Music Awards
(VMAs) two months prior to the singles release.
During it, she appeared onstage atop a giant
wedding cake in
a wedding dress,

POP_UP The writers of Like A Virgin also wrote The Bangles Eternal
virtually a Chic adorned with a
reunion (although Boy Toy belt

Flame, Whitneys So Emotional, Cyndi Laupers True Colors, and

BOWIES LETS DANCE ALBUM, NILE

they had only
just released,
the year before,
RODGERS WAS ON A ROLL AND LIKE A
their final album, VIRGIN WAS A VIRTUAL CHIC REUNION
the underrated
Believer), with a
mixture of musicians and machines. Rodgers drafted
in his old Chic partner, bassist Bernard Edwards,
Chic regular Robert Sabino on keyboards and their
drumming powerhouse Tony Thompson for sessions
at the Power Station studio in New York. But this was
Chic updated Like A Virgin was largely recorded
using digital technology.
Madonna was ecstatic at the prospect of working
with Rodgers. I idolised Nile because of the whole
Chic thing, she said. I couldnt believe that the
record company gave me the money so that I
could work with him. As for Rodgers, he had seen
Madonna perform at a small club in New York in
1983. I kept thinking to myself, Damn, is she a
star, but she wasnt at that time. I always wanted to
Hearts Alone. All were No. 1 hits in the US for female vocalists
buckle, and veil.
The performance
climaxed
literally with her
masturbating and
rolling around
on the stage. Cue outrage from Americas guardians
of morality. Madonna, however, was quick to point
out the ambiguity of the message. I was surprised
by how people reacted to Like A Virgin because,
to me, I was singing about how something made
me feel a certain way brand-new and fresh and
everyone interpreted it as, I dont want to be a virgin
anymore. Thats not what I sang at all.
Intensely hooky, instantly catchy, Like A Virgin
became an immediate worldwide smash, reaching
the higher echelons of the charts in most countries on
earth, including No. 1 in America and Canada. The
parent album saw Madonna go supernova. The cover
image captured the artist balanced between virgin
and whore while the music found the perfect

MATERIAL GIRL CRAZY FOR YOU INTO THE GROOVE

Like A Virgin may have been Madonnas first
massive hit, but this follow-up from January 85
became her calling card to the extent that the
phrase Material Girl soon became a synonym
for the artist. The song was widely misinterpreted
as a thumbs-up for capricious gold-digging, yet its
satirical quality was just made for the acquisitive
Thatcher/Reagan era. The playful bassline, the
shrill vocal and the robotic male chorus insinuated
their way into the global consciousness, further
establishing Madonna as the female icon of the age.
Madonnas first ballad to be released as a single
(in February 85, the follow-up to Material Girl)
became her second No. 1 hit in the US, and her first
to receive a Grammy nomination. It was co-written
by Jon Lind and John Bettis, the latter the writer of
several songs for The Carpenters including Top Of
The World, Goodbye To Love and Yesterday Once
More. Although Crazy For You was a radical change
of direction for Madonna, it was a commercial smash
as well as a critical hit, with journalists calling it the
ultimate ballad.
The song with the most propulsive bassline of the
Eighties (give or take Frankie Goes To Hollywoods
Two Tribes), and Madonnas first UK No. 1, was
never released as a single in the US (it was issued as
the B-side of Angel, perhaps why the latter reached
No. 5). When the record company reissued Holiday
on the back of Into The Grooves barnstorming
success, it made Madonna just the fourth artist to
hold the top two spots on the chart simultaneously.
The only others to do it were The Beatles, John
Lennon and Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

21

CPP05.Early 80s.For Print.indd 21 18/01/2017 15:52

 E A R L Y
Getty Images
POP_UP Like A Virgin sold 21 million copies world-
wide. Its one of the blockbusters of the era, rivalled
only by Thriller, Purple Rain and Born In The USA
22
CPP05.Early 80s.For Print.indd 22
1 9 8 0 S
compromise between R&B, dance and mainstream
pop. On Like A Virgin Madonna collaborated with
her former boyfriend Stephen Bray, who co-wrote
many of the albums songs, including the scintillating
Angel, Stay, Pretender and Over And Over. The
second single, issued in January 85, was Material
Girl, which managed to become an iconic piece of
pop music almost as swiftly as its predecessor, helped
not a little by an equally iconic video, recasting
Madonna as a latterday Marilyn Monroe singing
Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend circa Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes. It also had, like Virgin, an ambivalent
lyric, some seeing
it as a celebration
of Eighties
conspicuous
MATERIAL GIRL MANAGED TO BECOME
consumption on AN ICONIC PIECE OF POP MUSIC AS
a par with Wall
SWIFTLY AS ITS PREDECESSOR, HELPED
Streets greed
is good ethos,
others regarding BY AN EQUALLY ICONIC VIDEO
it as a critique of
materialism. Lust object or feminist totem? Madonna
suddenly found herself the focus of water-cooler
debates and academic critiques. Elsewhere on the
album there were nods to her R&B roots via the self-
penned girl group/Motown homage Shoo-Be-Doo
and the cover of Rose Royces classic quiet storm
ballad Love Dont Live Here Anymore.
Madonna spent the rest of 1985 taking steps
in her ascension towards total global ubiquity.
Everything she did that year was peak Eighties.
She started dating Sean Penn, marrying him on
her birthday in August. Theirs was a passionate yet
violent relationship that culminated with the actor
As Susan Thomas in a scene
from Desperately Seeking
Susan, named one of the
best films of 1985 by the
New York Times
being charged with felony domestic assault, although
Madonna later withdrew the charge and filed for
divorce. She made further forays into cinema by
playing a club singer in romantic drama Vision
Quest; the soundtrack contained two new singles,
her US No. 1 ballad Crazy For You, and Gambler.
She also assumed the title role of the 1985 comedy
Desperately Seeking Susan, starring alongside
Rosanna Arquette. The film decreed one of the 10
best films of 1985 by The New York Times unveiled
the brilliant Into The Groove, her first UK No. 1 single.
In April 85, Madonna embarked on her first
concert tour of
North America,
the Virgin Tour,
with rap bad lads
The Beastie Boys
as her opening
act, filling out
sporting arenas
barely any time
after playing hip
but tiny venues such as CBGB and the Mudd Club.
And then, in July, she reached an early peak,
appearing before an audience of hundreds of millions
at Live Aid in Philadelphia, where through renditions
of Holiday, Into The Groove and Love Makes The
World Go Round she delivered one of the most
exhilarating performances of her career. Bette Midler
prefaced Madonnas arrival by announcing, We
are thrilled to be able to introduce to you today a
womanwhose name has been on everyones lips for
the last six months. Few that afternoon would have
doubted that her name would still be on everyones
lips six months hell, even 32 years later.
19/01/2017 13:13
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CP.PM.Ad A4.indd 86 18/01/2017 12:19


MADONNA WITH...
PRINCE IF MADONNA WAS THE QUEEN OF EIGHTIES POP, ONE OF
THE TWO KINGS WAS PRINCE. THIS IS THE STORY OF HER
RELATIONSHIP, AND COLLABORATION, WITH THE PURPLE ONE
P A U L L E S T E R
I
n the Eighties, no pop colossi were bigger than
Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince. Of these
three megastars, Jacksons relationship with Prince
could best be described as frictional, Jacksons
with Madonna was cautious but flirtatious, while
Madonnas with Prince was well, in contemporary
parlance, lets just say it was complicated.
The Queen of Pop and Prince first met and briefly
dated in 1985, just before she met and married
actor Sean Penn (apparently, she left Prince for Penn),
although some accounts contradict this. In May 85,
People magazine wrote that they werent, arent
[and] never considered having an affair, before
noting that Madonna went to greet Prince with the
announcement, Time to go meet the midget. In the
same interview, she was particularly vituperative
about her pop rival: He usually wants to be treated
the exact opposite of the way he is dressed. His outfits
say touch me, lick me, love me, lust me, but then he
pretends hes wearing a monks outfit. He needs to
step back, look at his clothing and laugh at it.
Perhaps Madonna was feeling slighted. According
to J Randy Taraborelli, in his book Madonna: An
Intimate Biography, the pair first encountered each
other backstage at the American Music Awards
in January 1985, and it is believed their first date
24
CPP05.Collab Prince.For Print.indd 24
Madonna delivers her
tribute to Prince at
the Billboard awards,
Las Vegas, May 2016
Getty Images
around this time was a Prince concert at the LA
Forum. Taraborelli alleges that the diminutive pop-funk
genius had to fight Madonna off while they drove
to the show so he could conserve his energy for his
performance. I heard she was pretty aggressive,
Princes friend TL Ross told the biographer, conjuring
a vision of a fey pop flower being manhandled by a
crushing Amazonian. She was strong. He told me
that she had the strength of 10 women.
The couple dated for the next two months, before
Prince allegedly asked her to go steady, at which
points things deteriorated rapidly after Madonna,
known for her flightiness, declined to get further
involved. Ross drew the distinction between the two
stars respective needs vis a vis love and sex. Prince
is way too cosmic for Madonna, he said. For him,
making love is a spiritual experience. For her at
least at that time making love was just a physical
expression. While he wanted to savour every second
of the experience, she was into multiple orgasms.
After two months, he cut her loose.
Madonna wasnt used to being dumped, and she
is said to have pestered Prince with phone calls for
weeks. He later claimed that she screamed at him,
How dare you dump me. Dont you know who
I am? In the aftermath of the affair, Madonna is
18/01/2017 09:09

alleged to have referred to Prince as a little troll.
She also joked in 1994 that he wouldnt eat during a
dinner date. He was just sipping tea, very daintily,
Madonna said. I have this theory about people who
dont eat. They annoy me.
Still, for all the fallout of their short-lived romance,
they are believed to have kept things convivial in
the aftermath. In fact, Prince is said to have come to
Madonnas assistance in a moment of domestic crisis.
Melinda Cooper, assistant to Madonnas manager
Freddy DeMann, recalled that when Sean Penn was
with her, in a rage he punched a hole in her wall after
discovering that shed dated Prince. Madonna then
called Prince and told him to come and fix the hole,
because youre responsible for it, after all, at which
point Prince apparently showed up, plaster in hand,
and proceeded to repair the Penn-inflicted damage.
Whatever the truth of their extracurricular liaisons,
theres no disputing the fact that Prince and Madonna
worked together on her 1989 album Like A Prayer.
He played guitar, uncredited, on three tracks Like A
Prayer, Keep It Together and Act Of Contrition and
they collaborated on Love Song at Princes Paisley
Park studio. Though more of an idiosyncratic groove
in search of a chorus than a contender for single
release, its a rare example of two bona fide music
superstars joining forces; arguably only David Bowie
and Mick Jagger teaming up for Dancing In The Street
matches it for Eighties starpower.
Madonna revealed that she and Prince had
originally planned to collaborate on a musical,
but that didnt really pan out. She added that he
seemed to fight the idea of just writing songs for
a record together, because hes done that with so
many people. However, they did start jamming
on a few rough demos, and Love Song was one of
them. It was mainly pieced together long-distance,
because, as Madonna explained, I had to be in LA
and he couldnt leave Minneapolis, and quite frankly
I couldnt stand Minneapolis. When I went there, it
was like 20 degrees below zero, and it was really
desolate. I was miserable and I couldnt write or work
under those circumstances.
She described Love Song as a hate-love song that
seemed to relate to all the other songs [on the album]
because its about a relationship, then proceeded to
elaborate on the writing process: We sent the tapes
back and forth to each other and we started building
it. He would write a sentence and I would add onto
it and send it back to him and he would continue the
story. It was fun.
She was equally enthused about Prince the
man. I think that Prince lives a very isolated
life, and I dont, she said in 1989. That is the
big difference between us. I always try to be a
positive influence on him. Ive always been a fan.
I think hes incredible. I admire him hes quite
courageous. He causes lots of controversy, too,
which is great. I think he is a brilliant musician.
But there was further tension when Madonna
decided she wanted to film a video to accompany
Love Song, and Prince refused. Even when
Madonna insisted that it would help her get over
her divorce from Sean Penn, he wouldnt budge.
Eighteen years later, Prince was still smarting
about her. During a 2007 concert in London, he
sniped of her brood of children, I got so many
hits yall cant handle me. I got more hits than
Madonnas got kids.
CPP05.Collab Prince.For Print.indd 25
C O L L A B O R A T I O N S
However, just before Princes death in 2016, there
was talk of a joint tour. Unfortunately, he turned her
down. Madonnas manager Guy Oseary pitched the
idea to his artist and her eyes lit up. He recalled, She
said, I like it, we can call it the Royalty Tour... The
Queen and The Prince. Prince, though, felt that the
world isnt ready for this, its too big.
By 2016, the hatchet appeared to have finally been
buried. Madonna was among the celebrities cheering
on Princes sold-out show at NYCs Madison Square
Garden; Prince also performed for Madonna, and 30
fans specially summoned for the occasion, at Paisley
Park following her gig in Saint Paul, Minneapolis,
while on her Rebel Heart tour. Prince played an
amazing funk set while Madonna sat at the edge of
the stage and gazed up adoringly at the purple deity.
Following the shocking news of Princes death at the
age of 57 in April 2016, Madonna posted a photo
of the two of them on her Instagram page, featuring
them both clad in yellow. She wrote: He Changed
The World!! A True Visionary. What a loss. Im
Devastated. This is Not A Love Song.
It made sense, then, that a clearly moved Madonna
should be invited to honour her former adversary
and possible lover at the 2016 Billboard awards.
The reaction to her performance, which saw her
dressed in the colour purple singing a version
of Nothing Compares 2 U, before launching into a
rendition of Purple Rain with Stevie Wonder, was
mixed. Madonna, of course, proved resistant to
critics of the production, and was defiant on social
media. Anyone who wants to do a tribute to Prince
is welcome to, she declared. Whatever your
age Gender or skin Color. If you loved him and he
inspired you then show it!!!! I love Prince 4 ever.
LITTLE WONDER
PURPLE REIGN
There were several megastars in the Eighties whose ubiquity and enormity was
unparalleled since the days of The Beatles. But who was the biggest? Well, if youre going
to use the American singles charts as your measure and why wouldnt you? and add
up how many weeks each song by each artist spent on the Billboard Hot 100 between
5 January 1980 and 30 December 1989, the Top 5 list is as follows. At No. 5, Michael
Jackson, with 20 hits and 326 weeks charted. At No. 4, it was Madonna, the only woman
in the Top 5, with 19 hits and 332 weeks charted. Surprisingly at No. 3 was Billy Joel,
who had three No. 1 singles, 22 hits and 336 weeks charted with tracks such as Its Still
RockNRoll To Me, Tell Her About It, We Didnt Start The Fire and Uptown Girl. Runners-up
were Daryl Hall & John Oates, with five No. 1 singles, 13 Top 10 hits, 21 hits in total and
351 weeks on the chart. And at No. 1? Its Prince, with 26 hits and 378 weeks charted.
Prince wins the
Eighties in terms
of singles alone
Getty Images
25
18/01/2017 09:09
 Getty Images
Eric Watson

Madonna in New
York on the Whos
That Girl Tour, 1987

26

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 WHILE THE UNABASHED
ROMANTICISM OF
TRUE BLUE REFLECTED
MADONNAS STATE OF
NEWLYWED BLISS AND
GAVE HER THE BIGGEST
HIT OF HER CAREER, THE
PRESSURE OF MEDIA
SCRUTINY TOOK ITS
TOLL ON HOLLYWOODS
MOST TALKED-ABOUT
COUPLE. POWERLESS TO
SAVE HER MARRIAGE,
MADONNA CREATED
LIGHT FROM THE DARK
AND PRODUCED HER
MASTERPIECE

C My
M A R K L I N D O R E S

27

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 Getty Images
MADONNA
may have purposely decided to remove
herself from the spotlight following her
appearance at Live Aid in July 1985 so
that she could enjoy her first few months
of married life in domestic bliss with Sean Penn in
their Malibu beach house, but that didnt stop her
ascendance into superstardom continuing at a rapid
Tour, she made her modelling debut at an Aids benefit charity fashion show
pace. Although she spent the latter half of that year
environmental benefits. As well as appearing on the Amnesty International
laying the groundwork for her third album and mulling
over movie roles in which she and Sean could star
POP_UP Following Live Aid, Madonna began appearing at more
together, her omnipresence in the charts (thanks to
the unstoppable pop juggernaut that was the Like A
Virgin album) and in the tabloids (where her every
movement was documented, much to the chagrin of
her new, publicity-shy husband) made it feel like she
had never been away at all.
By the time 1986 was underway, Madonna was
firmly back in work mode. Having struggled to settle
in Hollywood, she alleviated her homesickness for
her adopted hometown of New York by inviting her
friends from the Big Apple to stay with her. One of
the most frequent visitors was Stephen Bray, a former
boyfriend from Detroit who had followed her to New
York and become one of her first, and most successful
songwriting partners. Inspired by Madonnas state
of post-marital bliss, the pair began writing songs
for her next album. Whatever she is going through,
thats what inspires her, Bray later told Billboard. At
that time, she was in love so thats what the record
became about.
Madonna had also developed a strong rapport
with Pat Leonard, the Musical Director of her Virgin
28
CPP05.Late 80s.For Print.indd 28
At Live Aid Madonna
sang Holiday, Into The
Groove and Love Makes
The World Go Round
with Thompson Twins
and Nile Rodgers
Tour, and had worked on songs with him while on
the road. With the direction of the album determined,
Madonna decided she would co-produce the album
with Stephen and Pat - garnering protests from her
record label, who would have preferred a big-name
producer to helm the project.
Finding herself in a position she had been in
before, Madonna refused to back down. Musical
differences with Reggie Lucas had marred her debut
album and, unimpressed by how much Nile Rodgers
earned for producing Like A Virgin, the already
business-minded Madonna was insistent on her choice
of collaborators. She really fought for that and Im
very thankful that she did, because thats what really
put me on the map as a producer/songwriter, Pat
Leonard says.
Bringing the production in-house certainly made
financial sense, but Madonna also felt that she
had something to prove. Despite selling millions of
albums, she felt that she still wasnt getting the credit
she deserved from her peers and from critics, who
didnt take her seriously and accused her solely of
capitalising on her provocative image. There are still
those people who, no matter what I do, will always
think of me as a little disco tart, she said.
Although she had been adamant that the triumvirate
of herself, Pat and Steve would be responsible for the
entire album, Madonna was forced to relent when
presented with two songs from outside writers. Her
manager Freddy DeMann had been sent a rock song
called Follow Your Heart and Michael Ostin, an A&R
executive at Warners, had heard a song called
13/01/2017 17:34
 L A T E 1 9 8 0 S

Madonna hangs out in New

Getty Images

York City in 1985, the year

she went from playing
small clubs to headlining
sports arenas across the US

29

CPP05.Late 80s.For Print.indd 29 13/01/2017 17:34

 L A T E 1 9 8 0 S

Getty Images

Madonna on set for

the video of Papa
Dont Preach, 1986

30

CPP05.Late 80s.For Print.indd 30 13/01/2017 17:34

 Getty Images
Papa Dont Preach which was to launch a new artist
called Christina Dent. Ostin persuaded the songs
writer, Brian Elliot, to let Madonna sing it instead.
It just fit right in with my own personal zeitgeist
of standing up to male authorities, whether its the
pope, or the Catholic Church or my father and his
conservative, patriarchal ways, Madonna said.
Although she only
made very minor
alterations to the PAPA DONT PREACH, A SONG
lyrics to earn her a
credit on the song, ABOUT TEENAGE PREGNANCY,
Madonna and Pat
Leonard radically SAW MADONNA FACE HER BIGGEST
rearranged Follow
Your Heart to
CONTROVERSY TO DATE
become Open
Your Heart, earning them co-writer status.
Confident that she had the makings of a great
record, Madonna took a break from the project to
fly to Shanghai with Sean to shoot their ill-fated film,
Shanghai Surprise, in which Madonna played Gloria
Tatlock, a missionary in the Thirties. The filming was
dogged by technical and logistic problems, and the
persistent presence of the paparazzi led to countless
confrontations between photographers and Sean,
many of them physical. The problems with the film
also spilled over into the newlyweds relationship,
causing them to fight and argue.
Upon her return to LA, Madonna resumed work on
her album, shooting a video for Live To Tell. Although
she was advised not to lead the album with a moody
CPP05.Late 80s.For Print.indd 31
Sean Penn and
Madonna on the
set of the ill-fated
Shanghai Surprise
ballad for fear of alienating her fans, the risk paid
off when it became a huge hit and silenced even
Madonnas most voracious critics, if only temporarily.
Papa Dont Preach, a song about teenage
pregnancy, saw Madonna face her biggest
controversy to date, sparking debate and protests
from various factions, with some accusing Madonna
of encouraging POP_UP La Isla Bonita was originally written by Pat Leonard and offered
down. Madonna added the lyrics and melody to make the song her own
teenagers to get
pregnant while
as an instrumental for Michael Jacksons Bad album, but he turned it
anti-abortion
groups opposed
its apparent
pro-life message.
However, the
scandal did not
stop Papa Dont
Preach going No. 1 on both sides of the Atlantic.
To complement her more mature sound, Madonna
also unveiled a sophisticated new look. With her lithe,
gym-honed figure, minimal make-up and gamine-
cropped hair, the blonde with ambition that gazed
out from a Rolling Stone cover story proclaiming The
New Madonna was worlds apart from the streetwise
urchin whose style had inspired a generation of
wannabes. Her new image was bad news for her
former stylist Maripol, who saw demand for her
Madonna-inspired rubber bracelets and crucifixes
plummet following the singers image overhaul. Her
business went bankrupt within months.
Madonnas desire to evoke old-school Hollywood
glamour was predominant in the publicity images
31
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 Getty Images
Madonna accepts a
Vanguard prize at
the third MTV Video
Music Awards, 1986
ReAM
The notion of controversy equaling currency may be a prevalent marketing
strategy in celebrity culture today but it was still a great risk in 1989,
particularly when it came to religion. America was still reeling from the
release of The Last Temptation Of Christ and Mississippi Burning, and
anything purported to be even mildly blasphemous was taboo not that
that would have any bearing on Madonna once her mind was made up.
She was absolutely fearless, recalls director Mary Lambert. She called
me up and said she wanted me to work on the video and wanted to play
me the song. I deduced that the song compared religious ecstasy to sexual
ecstasy, and Madonna agreed. She had all these ideas of what she wanted,
and the first thing she said was that she wanted to make out with a black
guy on the altar.
Before we began shooting the video we had a meeting with various
record company executives and they said point blank that they would like us
to come up with something else. Madonnas response was F*** you. She
said she was going to do whatever she wanted and that the music stations
Just Like A
would play it. After that they pretty much left us alone because Madonna
had staked out her territory and said what she was going to do.
After I recorded the song, I kept playing it to get a visual sense of the
sort of story it would evoke in me, Madonna told Interview magazine. I
kept imagining this story of a girl in love with a black man in the South,
a forbidden interracial love affair, and it turned into a story about bigotry
and racism. Kind of, this is reality and reality sucks. Then Mary Lambert got
involved as director and she came up with a story that incorporated more
of the religious symbolism that I had written into the song. There was still
sadness but she gave it a hopeful ending. I had these insane ideas about me
running away with the black man and us getting shot in the back by the Ku
Klux Klan, and she just made the thing much more palatable.
I was ecstatic with the final cut, says Mary. The message worked,
the video was beautiful and it was sexy. It was amazing to get the level of
reaction that it got. It really was overwhelming.
I think it was necessary, Madonna said. Art should be controversial
and make people think about what they believe in and what they dont.
Everything is just opium for the masses it puts people in a trance. I think
its good to hit people over the head and make them question their beliefs.
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CPP05.Late 80s.For Print.indd 32
released to promote the album. With her platinum
blonde hair, faded blue jeans and biker jacket,
Madonnas new look saw her emulate the immortal
icons of the silver screen such as Marlon Brando,
James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, with the Herb Ritts
cover shot of the album referencing Warhols Marilyn.
True Blue was released on June 30th 1986, with
Madonna dedicating it to my husband, the coolest
guy in the universe. Reaching No. 1 in 28 countries,
the worlds biggest selling album of 1986 and the
biggest selling album of the Eighties by a female
artist with sales in excess of 26 million copies, True
Blue was and remains Madonnas most successful
studio album. Even her harshest critics were forced to
admit that she had proved herself a worthy peer to
pop giants Prince and Michael Jackson.
While her music career continued to go from
strength to strength, her film career was dealt a major
blow with the release of Shanghai Surprise in August
1986. The film was savaged by critics and proved to
be a major box office flop. Undeterred, Madonna put
plans on hold for her first world tour, so that she could
shoot another film, Slammer.
The tour may have been on hold, but for other
aspects of Madonnas music career, it was a case
of full steam ahead. Each Time You Break My Heart,
a song she wrote with Stephen Bray during the True
Blue sessions, became a Top 10 hit for Levis model
Nick Kamen (with Madonna on backing vocals), and
True Blues title track also hit No. 1.
In September, Madonna was the recipient of
MTVs Video Vanguard Award for her impressive
videography. Feeling the pressure to maintain the high
standard for the albums final two promos, Madonna
released her raunchiest video to date, donning a
bustier with nipple tassels to play a stripper in the
Open Your Heart video, while she was the perfect
Spanish seorita in La Isla Bonita.
Her ability to transform chameleon-like from video
to video inspired the title of Whos That Girl a song
she had written for the soundtrack to Slammer, which
was renamed after the song and also became the
name of her tour. Every time I do a video or a song,
people go, Oh, thats what shes like and Im not
like any of them, Madonna said. Im all of them,
and Im none of them and thats why I called my
tour Whos That Girl.
Kicking off in Japan in June 1987, the Whos That
Girl Tour marked Madonnas first live shows outside
the US. She was keen to deliver a spectacle and
not compromise any aspects of her live act, despite
playing huge sports stadiums. The show encompassed
theatre, art, dance and fashion, and critics praised
Madonna for bringing full production values to the
often soulless medium of stadium rock.
As well as a mammoth stage with a grand
staircase, moving platform and giant video screens,
the show featured dancers and a string of costume
changes based on the various guises Madonna
portrayed in her videos. Having adopted a gruelling
fitness regime and strict diet in order to meet the
physical demands of the energetic show, Madonna
commanded the vast stage, her electrifying stage
presence belying her diminutive stature. Supported
by Level 42, the tour was a resounding success which
saw Madonna playing sell-out shows each night,
while scenes of Madonnamania continued offstage
with thousands of fans greeting her at airports and
besieging her hotels.
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Getty Images

Performing La Isla
Bonita in a red
flamenco dress on the
Whos That Girl Tour

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Getty Images

Madonna during the

filming of 1987 film
Who's That Girl

34

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 Getty Images
Madonna may have been gratified to be playing to
crowds of 70,000-130,000 people, but the flipside of
her career threw up an uncomfortable contrast when
the Whos That Girl movie tanked at the box office.
The screwball comedy in which Madonna played
the part of Nikki Finn, an ex-con out to clear her
name was unfairly mauled by critics, and this hostile
reception led to
fans staying away
from cinemas THE SCREWBALL COMEDY WHOS THAT
in their droves.
However, the GIRL WAS UNFAIRLY MAULED BY THE
films failure did
nothing to diminish
CRITICS, YET THE SOUNDTRACK ALBUM
Madonnas SOLD OVER SIX MILLION COPIES
position in the
music scene, as
proved by the success of its soundtrack. Despite only
featuring four Madonna songs, the Whos That Girl
album sold over six million copies. The voracious
appetite of Madonnas fans for new material was
proven further at the years end when You Can
Dance, an album of dance remixes of singles and
popular album cuts and one new song, Spotlight, was
released, going on to sell five million copies.
While things couldnt be better for her career-
wise, Madonnas personal life was a different story.
The tour had acted as a welcome distraction to the
troubles within her marriage to Sean. He served 30
days in jail for assaulting a photographer while she
was on the road, and the media who dubbed them
the Poison Penns persistently featured reports
CPP05.Late 80s.For Print.indd 35
Madonna with Jennifer
Grey at Sardis, New
York, after appearing at
the 1988 Tony Awards
about the volatile nature of their troubled marriage.
Reports surfaced that Madonna had split from
Sean at the end of 1987 and began a three-month
relationship with John F Kennedy Jr.
With the notion of failure anathema to Madonna,
in 1988 she resolved to fix the two areas in which
she was unsuccessful her marriage, and her acting
career. First, POP_UP Having played the part of Madonna's father in the Papa Don't
she reconciled Preach video, Danny Aiello went on to record a much maligned answer
with Sean, and song from the father's perspective entitled Papa Only Wants The Best
second, she shot
cameos in Woody
Allens Shadows
And Fog and
Bloodhounds Of
Broadway before
accepting a role
in a Broadway play, David Mamets Speed The Plow.
Alas, her acting ability was once again savaged
by critics, and her reunion with Sean was also
temporary. Madonna, who was relishing her return
to New York, was subject to speculation about her
sexuality after she was spotted frequenting notorious
New York gay clubs such as The Cubby Hole with
comedienne Sandra Bernhard and Dirty Dancings
Jennifer Grey. The group dubbed themselves The
Snatch Batch a direct riposte to Young Hollywoods
Brat Pack of actors.
Sean was furious that Madonna was playing up
to the speculation, feeling that she was making a
fool of him, and an appearance on The Late Show
With David Letterman, in which Madonna and
35
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 Madonna in the Dame
Edna-inspired outfit
used on the Whos
That Girl World Tour
Getty Images
Bernhard appeared dressed identically and joked
about the nature of their relationship, only enraged
him further. Though their marriage had been turbulent
throughout, an alleged altercation between Madonna
and Sean took place on December 29th 1988 when
Sean allegedly held Madonna captive and beat her
in their Malibu mansion, leading to a police report
being filed.
The specifics of what happened have been widely
speculated over the years but never confirmed. In
synonymous with the following year from behind a backlit screen
Madonna debuted voguing the dance craze she would become
POP_UP Introducing Express Yourself at the 1989 MTV Awards,
2015, Madonna gave evidence in a defamation
lawsuit brought by Sean against director Lee Daniels
denying that he ever beat her with a baseball bat.
While we certainly had more than one heated
argument during our marriage, Sean has never struck
me, tied me up, or physically assaulted me, and
any report to the contrary is completely outrageous,
malicious, reckless, and false, she testified.
Devastated that her marriage had failed, Madonna
sought solace in her work, entering the studio to work
on her fourth album. Having just turned 30 she was
feeling increasingly introspective, and forced herself
to confront her feelings about life-altering events that
she had brushed aside for years, delving into her
psyche and channelling her feelings on her marriage,
the death of her mother and her Catholic upbringing
into what was to become her magnum opus.
We called it the divorce album, says Pat Leonard,
who co-wrote and co-produced the Like A Prayer
album with Madonna. Everything took four or five
times longer to do as she kept breaking down in the
studio. It was a hard time for her.
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CPP05.Late 80s.For Print.indd 36
They worked meticulously on the album throughout
1988, Leonard working on musical ideas while
Madonna drew from years of her diaries and journals
to form the lyrics. They were the kind of songs I
was writing at the time, Madonna told Songtalk
magazine. I was in a very, very dark place and they
were just pouring out of me. I just wrote what I was
feeling and didnt candycoat anything to make it more
palatable for mass consumption.
As well as the searingly honest lyrics, a huge part
of the songs authenticity came from the conviction
in Madonnas vocal delivery. The much-maligned
Minnie Mouse on helium girlish voice of her earlier
work was replaced by defiant, battle-scarred tones,
often thick with emotion. A lot of the vocals we kept
were the first takes, Madonna said. They were a
lot more spontaneous and emotional and integral to
the music. We had every intention of going back and
fixing them but when we listened to them we said
Why should we? Theyre fine. I think its because I
didnt have the pressure of knowing it was the final
vocal. Strange sounds and imperfections we kept
them all in because theyre emotions too.
Although it had been cathartic for Madonna to
pour her heart out in Like A Prayers darker, dramatic
moments, lighter moments such as Cherish, Dear
Jessie and the funk-driven Express Yourself were
included to ensure the album was not too much of
a culture shock to Madonnas fanbase. Love Song,
a long-awaited duet with Prince (a remnant from
an aborted musical they had been working on)
completed the album.
18/01/2017 13:21
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Getty Images

At True Blue cover

photographer Herb
Ritts birthday party,
August 1989

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Getty Images

Madonna dons a new

outfit to perform True
Blue at Soldier Field,
Chicago in 1987

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The world first heard about Like A Prayer in January
1989 when Pepsi announced that they had signed an
unprecedented $5 million deal with Madonna to be
their new face and would be debuting her single in
an ad in a simultaneous broadcast around the world
as well as sponsoring her next world tour. Described
by Madonna as the ultimate meeting of art and
commerce, the deal was a mutually beneficial
alliance: Pepsi had pop royalty in their ranks, and
Madonna had one of the biggest platforms in the
world to launch her new single.
However, Madonnas main concern on entering
into such a deal was that she didnt feel used,
and she inked the deal subject to a set of her own
stringent ground rules. She refused to be seen holding
a can of Pepsi and didnt want to dance in the ad
(she eventually relented after meeting choreographer
Vincent Paterson). Also, as other artists had done, she
categorically refused to allow her song be amended
in any way to incorporate Pepsi into the lyrics, feeling
it would cheapen her song.
Madonnas Pepsi commercial, entitled Make A
Wish, was screened around the world on March
2nd 1989 to an estimated audience of 500 million
people. The two-minute advert screened in the
US during The Cosby Show, at that time Americas
biggest TV programme, and during an episode
of popular police soap The Bill in the UK was a
sentimental depiction of Madonna watching home
movies of her eighth birthday party, comfortable
in the knowledge that all her birthday wishes were
about to come true. Thrilled with the response and
delighted with their new signing, Pepsi swiftly put an
edited version of the ad into heavy rotation across
the world. Although Madonna and Pepsis hook-up
was commended as perfectly executed by business
analysts, the success was to be short-lived for the
following day Madonna released her video for Like A
Prayer, with cataclysmic results.
While Like A Prayer is generally regarded today
as one of the greatest pop videos of its age, the
furore that greeted its release was unprecedented.
Directed by longtime Madonna collaborator Mary
Lambert, Like A Prayer was a latter-day passion play
with a strong anti-racist message in which Madonna
witnesses a black man wrongly accused of murder,
experiences stigmata, kisses a black saint (often
misconceived as being a black Jesus), makes love
on an altar, and dances in a field of burning crosses.
The response was even more extreme than anyone
had imagined. Religious groups were up in arms,
burning effigies of Madonna and threatening a
boycott of her and anyone associated with her.
Madonna was typically defiant in her response,
claiming the videos positive message had been
overlooked. Frustrated that their plight was falling
on deaf ears, the protestors turned their attentions to
Pepsi, threatening to boycott Pepsi and all of their
associated companies. Pepsi buckled under the
pressure and ended the deal, allowing Madonna to
keep her $5 million fee but pulling out of sponsoring
her forthcoming tour.
Madonna saw the outcome as a complete triumph.
She viewed the fact that her video had remained on
air while the ad had been pulled as a huge victory
for free speech; she had garnered herself acres of
free publicity, and, despite the controversy her video
had generated, she had proved herself a superb
marketeer. She was the most talked-about star in
CPP05.Late 80s.For Print.indd 39
e
Recordings
01 LIVE TO TELL
From TRUE BLUE (1986)
Live To Tell introduced a new emotional depth
into Madonnas music. A brooding ballad
about finding inner strength, the song has a
particular resonance with Madonnas LBGT
fans. Sometimes when Im writing, Im just
channelling, Madonna said. I could say Live
To Tell was about my childhood, my relationship
with my father and my stepmother. Or it could
be a story that I heard once. Its true, but its
not necessarily autobiographical.
02 PAPA DONT PREACH
From TRUE BLUE (1986)
Papa Dont Preach, like Michael Jacksons Billie
Jean, dealt with the complications a pregnancy
would impose on someones life. Madonna
described the track as a message song that
everyone is going to take the wrong way.
The song marked a shift in style for the singer,
using her platform to generate discussions and
spark debate about social issues that mattered
to her. Controversy aside, the irresistible track
reached No. 1 around the world.
03 OPEN YOUR HEART
From TRUE BLUE (1986)
Open Your Heart began life as a rock song
called Follow Your Heart written by Gardner
Cole and Peter Rafelson and was intended for
Cyndi Lauper until Madonnas manager heard
it. Madonna agreed after adapting the lyric
and style, earning herself a co-writer credit.
Its also notable for being one of Madonnas
greatest 12 remixes. Over 10 minutes long,
the extended remix was the perfect intro to
open her Whos That Girl World Tour.
04 LIKE A PRAYER
From LIKE A PRAYER (1989)
Divine intervention in the vocal booth of the
studio helped Madonna create an uplifting
anthem which ranks among her greatest
ever. I really wanted to do something really
gospel-oriented and acapella, with virtually no
instrumentation, just my voice and an organ,
she said. So we started fooling around, and
wed take away all the instrumentation so that
my voice was naked. Then we came up with the
bridge, and we had a choir. Then we had it.
05 EXPRESS YOURSELF
From LIKE A PRAYER (1989)
Written with Steve Bray, Express Yourself
inspired by Sly & the Family Stones Stand is
Madonnas anthem to female empowerment.
While the original version had a pounding
wall-of-sound beat and plenty of soulful
horns, the Shep Pettibone remix incorporated
a more electronic, house-y vibe. Madonna
was so impressed with the remix that his
version was promoted over the original. Two
interpretations, one incredible song.
39
13/01/2017 17:34
 Getty Images
Madonna taking
over the 1989 MTV
Video Awards with a
compelling rendition
of Express Yourself
the world, and Like A Prayer shot straight to No. 1
around the world, proving the old adage that there is
no such thing as bad publicity.
Controversy aside, when the album was released,
on March 21st 1989, Madonna was surprised to
find herself the subject of unanimous critical acclaim
something which had alluded her up until that point
of her career. NME gave the album 10/10, while
co-starred as the young boy that Madonna eventually dances away with
Rolling Stone described it as being as close to art
POP_UP The opinion-dividing peepshow video for Open Your Heart
premiered on The Tube TV show as its presenter, model Felix Howard,
as pop music gets. People didnt realise I was a
songwriter as well as a slut, she lambasted. I guess
the image gets in the way. What am I supposed to
do? The information is on the label. If they dont read
it, thats not my problem. Im not gonna put a sticker
on the front of the record saying Listen, I wrote these
songs! People will pay attention to what they want to
pay attention to.
The albums cover image reflected her newfound
musical maturity. Featuring a close up of her
trademark midriff bedecked with rosaries and
crucifixes, the image reflected Like A Prayers fusion
of religion and sexuality.
Once the Like A Prayer brouhaha had died
down, Madonna seemed to be keeping a low
profile. Having established herself as pops premier
provocateur, the very last place youd have expected
to find her was ensconced in the Disney studios, yet
thats exactly where she was, having landed the role
of femme fatale Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy.
Filming the movie and recording the soundtrack
throughout 1989 meant that she would be absent
from the promo trail and would have to delay her
40
CPP05.Late 80s.For Print.indd 40
planned world tour, so she took a break to shoot
videos for Like A Prayers subsequent singles.
By now all too aware of the power of the medium
of the music video, Madonna shot a series of videos
that would provoke controversy, challenge stereotypes
and remain among the highlights of her videography.
From David Finchers sexually-charged, futuristic
fantasy world inspired by Fritz Langs Metropolis for
Express Yourself to Oh Fathers harrowing depiction
of Madonna as a child mourning her mother and
battling for the love of her father, from Herb Ritts
Cherish capturing a playful Madonna frolicking in
the Californian surf with a group of mermen to the
sweet animation of Dear Jessie, the Like A Prayer-era
videos remain some of her most iconic moments
The care and effort Madonna put into presenting
her work visually was rewarded at the 1989
MTV Video Music Awards where, after a classic
performance of Express Yourself, she was crowned
the First Lady of MTV, picking up the Viewers Choice
Award for Like A Prayer, ironically sponsored by
Pepsi, whom Madonna thanked in her acceptance
speech for causing so much controversy.
It was to cap a year of extraordinary career
highlights for Madonna, which shaped the kind
of artist she would become, using her spotlight
and fame to highlight issues and causes she was
passionate about while producing a body of work
which was the blueprint for every pop diva that
came after her. With Like A Prayer, Madonna not
only created the perfect pop album she also wrote
pops New Testament.
13/01/2017 17:34
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MADONNA WITH...
STEPHEN BRAY BONDING OVER A LOVE OF CLASSIC MOTOWN, SOUL AND
FUNK, MADONNA AND STEPHEN BRAY CREATED A GROOVE
THAT ESTABLISHED THE SINGER AS THE ULTIMATE DANCE DIVA
M A R K L I N D O R E S
S
tephen Bray has a vivid recollection of the
first time he met Madonna. Oh, it was just
like thatHuman Leaguesong, only I was the
waiter in a cocktail bar, he laughs. I was
working at a bar and she came in to dance
with some friends. I bought her a gin and tonic as I
felt shed earned it, having cleared the dance floor
with her attention-getting moves. Madonna may
have emptied the floor on that occasion, but over the
next 10 years, as the couple became firm friends,
occasional lovers and musical soulmates, they created
some of the Eighties greatest floor-fillers.
Aside from being a waiter in the Blue Frogge club
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Bray was a drummer in a
band and a budding songwriter. Madonna became
a regular fixture at his gigs around the area. She
wasnt really a musician back then; she was just
dancing, Bray says. She stood out, quite a lot.
There were hardly any people at our shows but she
was always up the front dancing up a storm. In fact,
Im sure people started coming because they knew
shed be there, and theyd come to watch her dance.
Having emerged as a local celebrity with a larger-
than-life personality, Madonna felt stifled by her
smalltown surroundings and headed to New York
to further her career in 1978. Two years later, Bray
42
CPP05.Collab Stephen Bray.For Print.indd 42
Madonnas early
collaborator Stephen
Bray, pictured here
at The Lilly Awards
Broadway Cabaret
Getty Images
received a call saying Madonna was now pursuing a
career in music and needed a drummer for her band.
Upon his arrival in New York Bray was impressed
by how much headway Madonna had made. She
already had 12 or 14 songs written when I showed
up, and I just had to learn them, he says. Her time
with The Breakfast Club [Madonnas first band] had
helped develop her early songwriting skills as well
as performing. After The Breakfast Club had come
another band, Emmy; Madonna left when she felt
that her ideas were being ignored. Nonetheless, it
had been her band (even its name was her childhood
nickname) and she had a clear view of its direction.
She was playing raucous rocknroll, influenced by
ThePretendersand ThePolice, says Bray.
Madonna and Bray began a very close working
relationship, consumed by their music, even living in
their rehearsal studio on New Yorks 8th Street. The
Music Building was near Macys in Herald Square,
Bray recalls. There were a lot of singers and bands
working in rehearsal halls and studios there. It
was like living in a commune a good place, very
artistic, you could just taste the creativity there. It was
a fantastically romantic,bohemian artist lifestyle
playing gigs at Maxs Kansas City,Danceteria,
CBGBs and the clubs of the time was pure heaven.
16/01/2017 15:23

Madonna and Brays voracious appetites for New
York nightlife exposed them to many musical styles.
Madonna scored a solo management deal with
Camille Barbone, and the pair began working on
songs. Swayed by the hip-hop and Latin music they
danced to at the Funhouse and Paradise Garage, they
began to move away from the new wave of Emmy to
more dance-oriented material. Those early days with
Madonna were some of the happiest musical times of
my life we finished each others musical sentences,
Bray said. I dont think Ive ever gotten along as well
with any othercollaborator in terms of writing.
Everywhere she went, Madonna carried a four-track
cassette containing Aint No Big Deal, Everybody,
Dont You Know and Stay in the hope of scoring a
club hit. Her breakthrough came when Danceteria
DJ Mark Kamins played Everybody. Getting a great
response from the crowd, Kamins took it to Seymour
Stein of Sire Records, where he was working as an
A&R man. Stein signed Madonna on the spot.
As she began working on her debut album with
producer Reggie Lewis, Madonna was dismayed by
how little say she had creatively. Madonna and Bray
had a major falling out when he discovered he was
to play no part in her album, a decision he was very
hurt by. Dejected, Bray sold the publishing rights of
Aint No Big Deal to July Fourth Music. After disco
act Barracuda scored a hit with it before Madonna, it
was dropped from the LP in favour of Everybody.
Following her rise to superstardom and with more
creative control, Madonna was keen to make amends
with Bray and the pair began working together again.
Stay was re-worked for Madonnas Like A Virgin
album, which also featured Bray co-writes Pretender,
Angel and Over And Over.
As Madonnamania gripped the world and
Madonna scored her first lead acting role in
Desperately Seeking Susan, she called upon her old
friend to work with her on a song for the soundtrack.
They had begun a song which shared the films title
but submitted Into The Groove instead, feeling it
would be better suited to the films nightclub scene.
Though it was the first Madonna song that they had
written and produced together, it would go on to be
one of her defining hits, topping the charts worldwide
and Bray became one of Madonnas most frequent
producers throughout the Eighties. I would call her up
and say I have another track for you, then we would
get together, Bray recalls. Im used to collaborating
with others, so we would work on a few songs, and
she would use some of them later.
After Madonna moved to LA following her
marriage to Sean Penn, it was Bray she called to
help her work on True Blue. He produced Papa
Dont Preach and co-wrote and produced True
Blue, Wheres The Party and Jimmy Jimmy as well
as Causing A Commotion and Cant Stop for the
Whos That Girl soundtrack, Spotlight for the You
Can Dance album, and Each Time You Break My
Heart, which became a hit for Nick Kamen.
The ultra-poppy sound of the True Blue era was
directly influenced by where Madonna found
herself in her personal life newly-married and
optimistic of a happy-ever-after. However, by the
time they got together for 1989s Like A Prayer, it
was a different story; Madonnas marriage had
collapsed and she was in a much darker place.
She tends to write according to her mood,
Bray says. If shes in love shell write love songs,
CPP05.Collab Stephen Bray.For Print.indd 43
C O L L A B O R A T I O N S
if shes not in love she definitely wont be writing love
songs. Thats why the love songs for Like A Prayer
First Is A Kiss and Love Attack werent on the record.
She didnt feel they were real enough at that time.
Stephen did co-write two of Like A Prayers strongest
songs, Express Yourself and Keep It Together, both
funk-driven dance tracks inspired by the pairs love
of Sly & the Family Stone. The latter was an ode
to family life and remembering your roots, while
Express Yourself was a feminist rallying call to arms,
celebrating independence and encouraging being
assertive. It became one of her signature songs.
They were to be the final Madonna/Bray songs
released by Madonna. In 1991, Get Over, a song
they had written and recorded as a potential new
track on The Immaculate Collection, was released
by former model Nick Scotti, while in 1996 Bray
released Pre-Madonna, an album containing the early
demos they had worked on in New York a move
said to have enraged Madonna, and which put an
end to their working relationship.
While many of her former collaborators have
gone on to criticise Madonna for using them on
her rise to the big time, Bray harbours no grudge
and would welcome the opportunity of seeing if their
old chemistry still exists. Ive gone down a different
path into music theatre of late but I can still find my
way around a sequencer, he says. When people
say Madonna exploited them, thats resentment of
someone whos got the drive. It seems like youre
leaving people behind or youre stepping on them,
and the fact is that youre moving and theyre not. I
had never met anyone so ambitious, dedicated and
driven she was really inspirational to be around,
and that still holds true to this day.
LITTLE WONDER
INTO THEIR GROOVE
As the co-creator of some of Madonnas signature songs, Stephen Bray is one of her key
collaborators. Inspired by a shared loved of Motown and Sly & the Family Stone, the classic
Madonna/Bray song structure is chorus/verse/chorus/verse/chorus before almost
without fail a killer bridge elevates the song to another level. These trademark bridges
rival the choruses for impact. Listen to Into The Groove (Live out your fantasy),
Express Yourself (And when youre gone), Causing A Commotion (I hope you find
what youre looking for), Spotlight (Dont be afraid to fall), Cant Stop (Dont
be afraid to try), Wheres The Party (Dont want to grow old too fast), Keep It
Together (When I look back on all the misery) and Each Time You Break My Heart (I
see the look in your eyes). In most cases Madonna utilises the lower register of her
voice for the bridge, creating an even bigger contrast to the rest of the song.
Major influence: Sly
& the Family Stone
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Eric

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 A POSE THE TRANSFORMATIVE
NINETIES WOULD TAKE
MADONNA FROM HIGH TO
LOW FASHION, FROM SEX
TO MOTHERHOOD, FROM
NEW YORK TO AN ENGLISH
COUNTRY GARDEN
I A N W A D E

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HAVING
begun the
Eighties as
an aspiring
singer and
dancer,
Madonna entered the Nineties as one of the most
famous people on the planet. This next decade would
become her most rewarding yet, both professionally
as a businesswoman and personally as a mother.
As Madonna began the new decade in the UK
Top Five with the
sweet baroque
MADONNAS VOGUE PROJECT
photographs of stars such as Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, Veronica
pop confection of
POP_UP The Vogue video recreated a number of classic vintage
Dear Jessie, she
was busy planning WAS INSPIRED BY DANCERS AND
Lake, Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn and Greta Garbo
a tour in support
of the previous
CHOREOGRAPHERS FROM THE HARLEM
years Like A HOUSE BALL COMMUNITY
Prayer album, and
simultaneously
putting the final touches to Im Breathless, an
upcoming soundtrack to the Dick Tracy film in which
she also starred. It was quite literally all go.
As the year started to thaw, Keep It Together was
released as the sixth and final single from Like A
Prayer well, over in America at least. The UK were
to be kept waiting another few months, when Vogue
arrived in March 1990.
The Vogue project was inspired by dancers and
choreographers such as Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza
and Luis Camacho Xtravaganza from the Harlem
House Ball community. These two took Madonna
along to the Sound Factory club in New York and
introduced her to their underground world. Voguing
was a dance style based around transitioning
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CPP05.90s.For Print.indd 46
Madonna and designer
Jean-Paul Gaultier
visit her brother
Christophers art
exhibition, Paris, 1990
between fashion model-type poses, rather as if the
performer was being snapped for a magazine cover
by a very slow photographer. It wasnt the first time
voguing had had a brush with the charts Malcolm
McLaren had flirted with voguing on his Waltz
Darling album the year before but it had not quite
such the impact it had when Madonna got interested.
Ostensibly part of the Im Breathless soundtrack,
Vogue flew up to the top of the charts everywhere
and has since gone on to attain classic status. One
of her biggest-
selling singles
ever, it went on
to eclipse the rest
of the soundtrack
and render it
almost forgettable
bar the
material Stephen
Sondheim had
composed. His Sooner Or Later went on to win an
Academy Award for Best Original Song.
The follow-up single from the soundtrack was the
more in keeping with the theme of the movie Hanky
Panky. Considered one of her lower points, time has
been slightly kinder towards it as a saucy piece of
Bette Midler showgirlness, offering a cheeky take on
light sadomasochism. It still managed to reach UK
No. 2 that summer.
Madonna embarked on her Blond Ambition
tour that April, with an emphasis on touring Like A
Prayer. Indeed, the tour was almost named after
the album, and was separated into five thematic
sections: Metropolis, Religious, Dick Tracy, Art Deco
and Encore. Jean-Paul Gaultier, who designed
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Performing Vogue
at the 1990 MTV
Video Music Awards
wearing Michelle
Pfeiffers dress from
Dangerous Liaisons
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many of the costumes for the tour, worked on his
and Madonnas concept of mixing femininity with a
little masculinity a very sexy mix, a very Madonna
mix. This led to the creation of one of pops most
iconic pieces of underwear, and a legend in its own
right the conical brassiere. Having been spoofed
ever since, its become fancy dress shorthand
for Madonna, as recognisable as David Bowies
Aladdin Sane flash, Adam Ants white stripe, or Geri
Halliwells Union Jack dress.
Madonna
spoke to Vanity
Fair around the I LIKE TO DO THINGS THAT RUB
time of the tour,
PEOPLE UP THE WRONG WAY. NO,
which was beset
with outrage,
wound up both the
THATS WRONG I JUST LIKE BEING
Catholic Church CONTROVERSIAL, I GUESS
and the Church of
England, and had
threats of arrest and bans should she dare perform
in that area; even the Pope chipped in. Im sort of
naturally a pain in the ass, she allowed. I naturally
like to do things that rub people the wrong way. No,
thats wrong. Let me rephrase that. I just like being
controversial, I guess. Even that doesnt sound right.
But somehow it happens that way. Its more like Hey,
well, you know how they always say things are this
way? Well, theyre not! Or they dont have to be. via the Dick Tracy premiere, with getting threatened
The tour went on to gross over $60 million from 57
shows. It was also filmed, and with over 250 hours
of footage available the idea was to commemorate
the tour with a documentary movie that followed
Madonna onstage and off, and work began on
editing it into shape for future release.
CPP05.90s.For Print.indd 49
Above: Madonna
performs closing Blond
Ambition tour number
Keep It Together.
Opposite Page: the
infamous Gaultier-
designed cone bustier
Meanwhile, November saw the release of
Madonnas first greatest hits collection, The
Immaculate Collection. Covering selections from
Holiday to Vogue, it encapsulates Madonnas first
decade magnificently. As is the way with a greatest
hits compilation featuring all the highs of a career,
two new tracks Justify My Love and Rescue Me
were added just in case any further encouragement
was needed to purchase a peerless compilation of
some of the best pop ever created. The album spent
nine weeks at No.
1 upon its release
and went on to
POP_UP Blond Ambition redefined the live experience. The BBC
sell 3.7 million
said it invented the modern multi-media pop spectacle while
copies in the UK
Rolling Stone dubbed it the greatest concert of the Nineties
alone, becoming
the biggest-selling
solo female hits
compilation of,
yes, all time.
By this time the documentary about the Blond
Ambition tour, following it from beginning to end, had
been edited by the filmmaker Alek Keshishian. Hed
been originally hired by Madonna to shoot some
backstage segments for the singers HBO special,
but then these developed into Truth Or Dare aka
In Bed With Madonna, for those outside America.
From starting her tour in Japan during rainy season
with arrest if she pretends to masturbate onstage
again, its all there. With a cast including her tour
dancers, an increasingly grumpy Warren Beatty
(Turn the camera off? She doesnt want to live off
camera, much less talk, he muttered darkly at one
point), Al Pacino, Sandra Bernhard and in an
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 Getty Images
infamous scene Kevin Costner, it went on to become
the highest grossing documentary film at that point,
making over $29 million.
Speaking of the almost on-screen dissolving of her
relationship with Beatty, Madonna told the LA Times,
I dont think that if you let cameras follow you around
for six months that youre giving up your soul. The
world knows about everything in my life. They know
when I have an abortion. They know when I go out
on a date. So why is a doctor examining my throat
suddenly off limits?
For some reason,
Warren thought THE WORLD KNOWS EVERYTHING
apologised from the stage to Kevin Costner for the scene where she
mimed throwing up after he jokingly described her show as neat
filming a visit to
the doctor was ABOUT MY LIFE. THEY KNOW WHEN
verboten this
I HAVE AN ABORTION. THEY KNOW
POP_UP Some 15 years after Truth Or Dare, Madonna
incredibly intimate
thing. Meanwhile, WHEN I GO OUT ON A DATE
the National
Enquirer illegally
purchases my medical records. Whats to hide?
Madonna also was one of the founders alongside
Frederick DeMann and Veronica Ronnie Dashev
of the entertainment company Maverick, the name
being composed of Ma for Madonna, Ver
for Veronica and rick from Frederick. Basically,
this was her own label and production company,
which like Princes Paisley Park imprint would
still be owned and operated through Warners. It
included a recording company (Maverick Records),
a film production company (Maverick Films), book
publishing, music publishing, a Latin record division
(Maverick Musica) and a television production
company. Madonnas Erotica album, along with the
infamous Sex book, would be the first releases.
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At Wembley on the
Girlie Show Tour,
September 1993
Outside of Madonna, Maverick had a decent
amount of success with its roster: for instance, the first
signing of grunge types Candleboxs 1993 self-titled
debut went quadruple platinum. However it was the
signing of Alanis Morissette in 1994 whose third
album Jagged Little Pill became Mavericks biggest hit
of the decade, selling 33 million copies worldwide
that helped keep it afloat past being a Madonna
vanity vehicle. Maverick also released albums by the
Prodigy, Deftones, Meshell Ndegeocello and UK sister
trio Cleopatra
who seemingly
existed for
approximately a
fortnight, yet still
managed to clock
up a handful
of Top 5 hits in
1998-99.
The Penny
Marshall-directed film A League Of Their Own
followed in July 1992, featuring Geena Davis, Tom
Hanks, and Madonna herself playing the taxi-
dancer-turned baseball player Mae Mordabito in a
fictionalised account of the real-life All-American Girls
Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) during World
War II. Madonna also provided the song This Used To
Be My Playground for the film, which gave her a No.
3 hit in the UK and topped the Billboard list.
The Sex book has its many detractors, but foresaw
the art book trend of pop celebrity ephemera, where
it became the norm for musicians to collaborate
with photographers. For Sex, Madonna worked
with Vogue photographer and chum Steven Meisel,
accompanying his snaps with writing in
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Madonna and her

beau Warren Beatty
are snapped by
veteran paparazzo
Ron Galella in 1990

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OF THE NINETIES
KEY SINGLES
01 VOGUE
From IM BREATHLESS (1990)
In a now iconic video directed by David Fincher,
Madonna took inspiration from old-school glamour,
homaging movie legends from the Twenties and
Thirties who are all now, frustratingly, dead.
Equally as iconic would be her performance of the
tune at that years MTV Music Video Awards, where
she wore Michelle Pfeiffers actual dress from the
1988 film Dangerous Liaisons, in a eighteenth
century-themed routine. It has gone on to be
regarded as Madonnas ultimate banger.
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02 JUSTIFY MY LOVE
THE IMMACULATE COLLECTION (1990)
Basically Madonna muttering fruitily over a Public
Enemy breakbeat, it was originally based on a poem
by Prince protg Ingrid Chavez, and was co-written
with Lenny Kravitz. It became her ninth No. 1 in the
US, helped by the Jean-Baptiste Mondino directed
video, which saw Madonna wandering down a
hotel hallway in a nod to the 1963 film La Baie des
Anges, having a fling with her then-boyfriend Tony
Ward, and donning the garb that Charlotte Rampling
wore in steamy thriller The Night Porter.
Madonna arrives for the
launch of the Sex book
with Steven Meisel,
October 1992
03 EROTICA
From EROTICA (1992)
The single itself, accompanied with a frisky video of
Madonna mincing about menacingly with a whip mid
sado-romp, was the first time one of her lead-off
singles had not gone straight to the top, as this time
she had to settle behind Boyz II Men and Tamsin
Archer. The rest of the singles off the album were
all Top Tenners, but she wouldnt be hitting the Top
Three for another few years hardly a disaster.
Perhaps Erotica was simply overshadowed by the
rumpo-fest of the Sex book.
18/01/2017 12:30
 character as Mistress Dita, inspired by Thirties
film actress Dita Parlo. However this wasnt just a
catalogue of staged cover shoots this was more
akin to the muckier end of the photo book spectrum,
focusing on influences such as the provocative
glimpses of Guy Bourdin and the hyperstylised
pervery of Helmut Newton. The project was described
as groundbreaking, despite the presence of some
genuinely beautiful people Isabella Rossellini,
Big Daddy Kane, Naomi Campbell, Joey Stefano,
Udo Kier, Tatiana von Frstenberg and nightclub
owner Ingrid Casares getting up to various forms
of unsavouriness (Madonna being licked by Vanilla
Ice was one image no one whatsover was desperate
to see again).
Certainly a classy
object unopened, I DONT THINK THAT BEING IN TOUCH
Sex came in a
special silver WITH YOUR SEXUALITY IS BAD. I THINK
polythene bag
THE PROBLEM IS THAT EVERYBODYS SO
about it freely, we would have more people practicing
safe sex, we wouldnt have people sexually abusing
each other. By the end of the decade, it seemed like
Madonna had the last, dark laugh; I see a lot of
things I did in my Sex book now in advertising and I
think, well, I was happy to get the shit kicked out of
me so that you guys could have this freedom, she
said to FHM in 1999.
If Sex had any negative effect at the time, it was
that the hubbub surrounding Madonnas apparent
move into pornography overshadowed the release
of the Erotica album, coming out in tandem the same
week. For the self-styled concept album about sex
and romance, Madonna along with producer Shep
Pettibone and
Andre Betts put
together a strong
array of tunes.
The singles such
as Bad Girl,

sheet. It sold an astonishing 1.5 million copies in just three days

POP_UP Retailing at $50, each copy of Sex was wrapped in
an idea Madonna Deeper And

Mylar and bound with approximately a pound of aluminium

had based on
PiLs Metal Box
UPTIGHT ABOUT IT
packaging and
has gone on to be a collectors piece.
Viewed 25 years on, academics reckon it
represents a defining moment in Madonnas career.
Certainly it had a deep impact on culture, and is
considered a bold, post-feminist work of art. Indeed,
for all the artiness, Sex dealt with its subject matter
honestly and frankly in a way that had only been
skirted around in pop up until then. Ultimately, despite
all the images of Madonna looking to be anything but
in control, it seems she very much was.
She was suitably forthright when she tackled the
backlash around the book. I dont think sex is bad.
I dont think nudity is bad, she pointed out. I dont
think that being in touch with your sexuality and being
able to talk about it is bad. I think the problem is that
everybodys so uptight about it and have turned it
into something bad when it isnt. If people could talk
Deeper, Rain
and Fever were
highlights, but
with the running time of 76 minutes, it was felt to be a
little on the long side. It may have been less successful
saleswise than her previous work, but went down
reasonably well with the critics.
Despite declaring shed never tour again after her
Blond Ambition globetrot, Madonna hit the road
again in 1993 with The Girlie Show. Admittedly,
at 39 dates it was significantly shorter than Blond
Ambition, focusing on the places where Erotica had
sold better. It was framed around a sex circus
wherein Madonna and company would perform in
specially designed costumes from Dolce & Gabbana.
The four segments of the show Dominatrix, Studio
54, Weimar Cabaret, and Encore summed up the
mindset and spirit Madonna was channelling.
1993 saw Madonna make another foray into
film with the quite hopeless erotic thriller Body

04 SECRET
From BEDTIME STORIES (1994)
With the lead-off single from 1994s Bedtime
Stories, Madonna returned with a sound that
nodded to contemporary R&B as well as throwing
in an acoustic guitar for authenticity, managing
to sound the most relaxed and unforced shed
been in years. She doesnt reveal what her babys
secret is, infuriatingly, but there you go. Starring
as a nightclub singer in the video, shes wearing
considerably more than she had done for the
previous few years.
05 TAKE A BOW
From BEDTIME STORIES (1994)
Take A Bow featured Madonna accompanied by an
orchestra the first time Babyface had worked
with one and featuring Japanese touches such
as the recurring pentatonic strings. As a single it
only managed a lowly No. 16 in the UK, breaking
her run of 35 consecutive Top Tenners, but spent
seven weeks on top of the Billboard charts. As is
tradition with Madonna videos, Take A Bow caused
controversy, this time with animal rights activists,
who did not take well to the bullfighting theme.
06 RAY OF LIGHT
From RAY OF LIGHT (1998)
Lyrically Ray Of Light is based on an early Seventies
track called Sepheryn by English folk music duo
Curtiss Maldoon (William Orbit had worked with
Maldoons niece). Madonna reworked it into one of
her more colossal electronic toe-tappers aided by
a frantic hyper coloured Koyaanisqatsi-influenced
video, directed by Jonas kerlund, which was
basically a day in the life of the earth to show that
we are rushing forward to the end of the century at
full speed. Its impossible to stay still to.

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 The singer in a
still from Body Of
Evidence, 1993
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Of Evidence, in which she co-starred with William
Dafoe and Julianne Moore. It was universally panned
and vanished instantly from the box office. Im
disappointed in it, admitted Madonna later that year,
but Im not sorry I did it. I think I did a good job. But
I got the blame for everything. It was like I wrote it,
produced it, directed it, and I was the only one acting
in it, you know?
Body Of Evidence was followed by the Abel
Ferrera-directed Dangerous Game, a Maverick
production co-
starring Harvey
Kietel and James ON BEDTIME STORIES MADONNA
Russo. This time
the critics were COLLABORATED ON A SELECTION OF
slightly kinder
TUNES DESIGNED TO MOVE TOWARDS
POP_UP Truth Or Dare and With Honors director Alek
to Madonnas
Keshishian went on to direct 2006s Love And Other
portrayal of A MORE MAINSTREAM SOUND
Disasters and co-wrote 2011s W.E. with Madonna
Sarah Jennings,
an actor in a
marital drama. In Japan it was released as Body II,
even though it had nothing in common with Body Of
Evidence bar the presence of Madonna.
Madonna helped Alek Keshishian again when
he released his first feature film With Honors in
1994. A slight comedy drama starring Joe Pesci,
Brendan Fraser and Patrick Dempsey, it bombed at
the box office but gave Madonna a hit single with Ill
Remember. This time, wisely, she steered clear from
being in front of the camera.
During the same period, Madonna appeared on
The Late Show With David Letterman. Having set the
tone with his opening monologue of Our first guest
tonight is one of the biggest stars in the world, and
in the past 10 years she has sold over 80 million
54
CPP05.90s.For Print.indd 54
albums, starred in countless films and slept with some
of the biggest names in the entertainment industry,
Madonna walked on with a pair of knickers in her
hand, which she asked him to sniff. Then she lit up a
cigar and started swearing like a navvy. The episode
became the most censored show in US talk-show
history, yet also handily the surrounding controversy
gave the show one of its highest ratings ever.
Madonnas sixth album, Bedtime Stories, followed
in October, having been heralded by the single
Secret a month
before. This
time Madonna
collaborated with
Dallas Austin,
Babyface, Dave
Jam Hall, and
Nellee Hooper
on a selection of
tunes designed
to move the artist back towards a more mainstream
sound. The first two single releases off the album
Secret and Take A Bow were a step away from the
shenanigans of the Erotica era, and sounded unforced
and agenda-free. Human Nature, meanwhile, saw
Madonna taking on her critics, echoing her earlier
rallying cry of Express yourself but adding dont
repress yourself, as if a nod to the reception and
fuss her recent work had provoked. Over a sampled
beat of Main Sources What You Need, Madonna is
unapologetic about talking about sex. Its basically
her Je Ne Regrette Rien albeit delivered in a video
medium while wearing a PVC catsuit.
When discussing the album with The Face, and
asked whether shed gone as far as she could
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Madonna attends
the premiere of With
Honors, Los Angeles,
April 26 1994

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Performing Bedtime
Story at the Brit
Awards at the
Alexandra Palace in
London, 1995
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 Madonna as Eva
Pern on the set of
Evita with director
Alan Parker, 1996
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with the whole sex thing, Madonna replied I feel
Ive been misunderstood. I tried to make a statement
about feeling good about yourself and exploring your
sexuality, but people took it to mean that everyone
should go out on a f***-fest and have sex with
everyone, and that I was going to be the leader of
that. So I decided to leave it alone because thats
what everyone ended up concentrating on. Sex is
such a taboo subject and its such a distraction that Id
rather not even offer it up.
The almost-title-
track Bedtime
Story was a co- SOMETHING TO REMEMBER HELPED
write with Bjrk,
Nellee Hooper REPOSITION MADONNA AS A POP
and Marius De
FORCE DURING THE ERA OF ONE-HIT
Vries, and was
a nod to the WONDERS, GUITARS AND BRITPOP
dance sounds
coming from the
UK around that period; Madonna performed it when
she appeared at the 1995 Brit Awards. One of her
lowest-charting singles in the US, it was a first hint of
the sound shed fully explore with Ray Of Light a few
years later.
Something To Remember helped heal any sales rift
between any fans who were feeling increasingly adrift
while Madonna was being a sexual warrior looking
set for the dumper. It was ostensibly a compilation of
her finest mellower moments, with selections such as
Crazy For You, Oh Father and Live To Tell spanning
her career, alongside one-offs This Used To Be My
Playground, Ill Remember recorded for movies.
Madonna also recorded a handful of new numbers,
working with Canadian producer/songwriter
CPP05.90s.For Print.indd 57
David Foster, known more for his work with Barbra
Streisand, Earth Wind & Fire, Chicago and on the
soundtracks to Top Gun and St Elmos Fire. This
yielded One More Chance (a UK No. 11) and Youll
See (a UK No. 5). She also worked with Massive
Attack and Nellee Hooper on a cover of Marvin
Gayes I Want You. Their downtempo collaboration
bookended the album, and was also a canny tip-
of-the-hat to the sounds emerging from Bristol, such
as Massive Attack cohort Tricky, and Portishead.
Something To
Remember helped
remind people
there was more
to Madonna than
POP_UP Others who took part in Evita hailed by some as
the best musical of the Nineties included Procol Harums
her detractors
Gary Brooker, The Corrs Andrea Corr, and Jimmy Nail
had previously
believed. It
helped reposition
her back as a pop
force, during an era of dance one-hit wonders and the
resurgence of guitars and Britpop.
Madonna kept it quite gentle on the next few
singles too, as the soundtrack to her starring role as
Eva Pern in the cinematic version of Evita required
her to belt out some of Andrew Lloyd Webbers and
indeed musical theatres best-known numbers. She
made a good fist of Dont Cry For Me Argentina,
and was rewarded with the Christmas No. 3 for
her efforts, following the new song You Must Love
Me especially written by Lloyd Webber along with
Tim Rice for the film adaptation, and which would
go on to win an Academy Award for Best Original
Song. The film itself, directed by Oliver Stone, and
co-starring Antonio Banderas as Ch (allowing
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us to marvel at his take on Oh What A Circus,
having known the definitive David Essex version) and
Jonathan Pryce as Juan Pern. Released on Christmas
Day in the States, Evita also did excellent business at
the box office, grossing $141 million worldwide, and
winning Madonna the Best Actress Motion Picture
Musical or Comedy award at the 97 Golden Globes.
With the birth of Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon
in October 1996, Madonna spent much of 1997
retreating from the limelight to focus on being a mum,
and have a well-
earned few months
off. It was also RAY OF LIGHT WAS RELEASED IN
POP_UP Ray Of Light swept up the prizes, winning four Grammys
Awards, two ASCAP awards and numerous international trophies
around this time
FEBRUARY 1998, AND MANY CRITICS
(including Madonnas first non-video Grammy), six MTV Video
when she took
a keen interest
in Kabbalah a
HAILED IT AS MADONNAS MOST
religion with its ADVENTUROUS ALBUM TO DATE
roots in Judaism,
which on-off chum
Sandra Bernhard had introduced her to, and she
investigated facets of various other Eastern religions.
She also parted ways with Lourdes father Carlos Leon
that May, after a three-year relationship.
Also this year, Madonna was deeply affected
by the sudden deaths of both Gianni Versace and
Princess Diana. Paying tribute to the designer and
close friend with a poem at his memorial and piece
in Time magazine, she signed off with Im going to
miss you, Gianni. Were all going to miss you. But
Ive got a pocketful of memories in my Versace jeans,
and theyre not going anywhere.
She remembered Princess Diana in a speech she
gave while presenting an award at the 1997 VMAs,
and also in an interview with The Times immediately
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CPP05.90s.For Print.indd 58
Picking up a Golden
Globe for the song
Masterpiece from the
film W.E., 2011
after the accident: People say that if she had been
travelling with her sons, it would have been all right,
but thats bullshit. They dont draw the line like that
when I came to Europe to promote Evita, I was in
Rome and the paparazzi didnt even give me time to
strap my baby into the car. We were driving at about
90 miles per hour, and we were being followed, and
flanked and surrounded. Princess Diana was, as
Madonna said herself to the New Musical Express,
the only person who had it worse than me.
The first
musical sign of
post-motherhood
Madonna
emerged with
the release of the
single Frozen in
early 1998. The
lead tune from her
next album Ray
Of Light, the Chris Cunningham video saw Madonna
being all ethereal and spookily cloaked in McQueen,
before turning into a flock of birds and a dog at
various points. It was her sixth UK No. 1 and the first
time shed returned to the top since 1990 with Vogue.
The album, Ray Of Light, was released in February
1998 to extremely positive reviews. Many critics
hailed it as Madonnas most adventurous album to
date, applauding its maturity and claiming it to be her
most personal work yet. Working with William Orbit
(Madonna had been a huge fan of his Strange Cargo
albums) had allowed Madonna to stretch out vocally,
her voice far more impressive now in range and
warmth after the training she underwent for the filming
of Evita; across trancier, techno, doofier textures, it
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Madonna in a still
from the video for
Ray Of Light, 1998

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Performing at the 41st

Grammys in 1990, where
she won four awards

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 was her most electronic album yet, giving nods to
all the other elements such as drumnbass and trip
hop. Previous subjects that had populated Madonnas
oeuvre that decade were brushed aside, with songs
named after JG Ballard novels, motherhood and
Madonnas increasing interest in spirituality, with
Shanti/Ashtangi even featuring her singing in Hindu
Sanskrit. As befits an album that had the working title
of Mantra, she handled it wonderfully. Im trying
to affect people in a quieter way, she said of Ray
Of Light to Vanity Fair. I set out to be honest about
where I am now. I was only trying to deal with my
truth right now.
The singles were also among the finest shes pulled
from an album.
The Ballard-titled
Drowned World/ IM TRYING TO AFFECT PEOPLE IN A
Substitute For Love
followed the title QUIETER WAY. I SET OUT TO BE HONEST.
track as a single
in Europe, and I WAS ONLY TRYING TO DEAL WITH THE
Ive never known because I grew up without a mother.
I mean, I did have my father but I think that the love
that you got from a mother is quite different. Its had a
huge impact on me, as I suppose it has on everyone
who has children.
The album went to the top of the charts worldwide,
far eclipsing the sales of her last few albums, and won
a Grammy for Best Pop Album the following year,
with the title track winning Best Dance Recording
and Best Short Form Music Video categories too. The
album was also seen as something of a breakthrough
for electronic music in America, with it becoming one
of the key inspirations in what would become the next
decades musical preoccupation, EDM.
Quiet by
her standards
but not fully
taking time out in
1999, Madonna
popped up to
release Beautiful

Meryl Streep who had originally been in line to play Evita

was accompanied TRUTH RIGHT NOW Stranger, which

POP_UP Madonna abandoned her final movie project of

by a nightmarish
video of Madonna
emerging from Londons Claridges Hotel and chased
around by paparazzi, encountering distorted faces
and sneaky maids, with definite parallels with the
sort of harassment Princess Diana had faced. The
elegant swelling orchestra-assisted Power Of Good-
Bye followed, and is one of her finest ballads. Also,
a welcome respite for the Madonna fans who feared
shed gone completely rave.
Nothing Really Matters, by contrast, is the most
straightforward four-to-the-floor dance number,
and became a single over a year after the album
had first come out. The song was essentially about
Lourdes, and when asked about it in an interview
with Miranda Sawyer in Q, Madonna talked about
the unconditional love she felt for her daughter.She
doesnt know about me being famous. She hasnt got
a clue. And its completely unconditional love, which
the Nineties, Music Of The Heart, leaving the main role to
was the William
Orbit-produced
theme tune to the Mike Myers film Austin Powers: The
Spy Who Shagged Me, and filmed a video with the
buck-toothed fancy dress trope. She was also in front
of the camera again, beginning work on The Next
Best Thing with Rupert Everett.
Madonna wouldnt tour Ray Of Light for another
couple of years, as she was focused on bringing up
Lourdes and her new relationship with British film
director Guy Ritchie; shed even upped sticks and
moved to London in order to do so. After a frantic
Nineties, life was at last settling down a little, and she
even managed a holiday (her first in a decade) and
enjoyed a Guinness at her local. Never in a million
years could I have imagined myself sitting in a pub,
drinking, she said in 2000 showing that you can
never really second-guess what Madonna, the mother
of invention, will do next.

KEEP IT TOGETHER
Prince! Britney! Gorillaz! Pet Shop Boys! Drake! All the stars of
the ages have worked or been involved in an onstage snog-up
with Madonna at some point over her career. Here are a few
of the more interesting collaborations and dalliances she had
in the Nineties.
VANILLA ICE
Mr Ice was literally still quite hot back in 1992, both famewise
and lookswise. Although he may not have turned up on
any of her tunes, you can see him mid-clothes falling off in
Madonna's Sex book, and he also pops up in the Erotica video.
LENNY KRAVITZ
Len was still quite a new name back in 1990, after his
1989 debut Let Love Rule had propelled his hippy ways
and throwback-rock to moderate success. He co-wrote and
produced Madonna's Justify My Love, as well as wordlessly
ad-libbing along in the background.
WARREN BEATTY
Madonna and Warren were "a thing" back in the pre-celeb
couple portmenteau era - would they have been MadWar
or Madotty? Hmmm - and as well as starring in Dick Tracy
together, he pops up to croon along with her on Now I'm
Following You.
WAS (NOT WAS)
Well... Not strictly the case, however a pre-fame Madonna
recorded vocals for the Was brother's tune Shake Your Head,
but when they originally released it, they'd shorn her off the
track. Then in 1993, the brothers approached Madonna about
releasing their version with her, and she refused. So then they
asked Kim Basinger, and it became a global hit. Fancy that!
EVERLAST
Everlast was at the height of his faux-Irish bro-rap rock fame
as part of House of Pain, whose Jump Around had been
genuinely everywhere in 1992-3. He turns up on a remix of
Waiting and "drops" a verse
TUPAC
Believe it! Madonna made a demo of Bedtime Stories track
I'd Rather Be Your Lover with Shakur, the deceased-yet-
still-popular rapper. She settled on the version with Meshell
Ndegeocello instead, but their version is up online now.
MASSIVE ATTACK
The Bristol then-three-piece provided the grittily luxurious
trip hop backing for Madonna's cover of Marvin Gaye's I
Want You, which tops-and-tails her Something To Remember
collection, released in 1995.
ORBITAL
Okay, not an actual collaboration, more of a remix. I mean,
light-up spook-spec techno brother duo Orbital only remixed
Bedtime Story into a tremendous banger. We could have
singled out Junior Vasquez, Masters At Work, Stereo MCs,
Sasha, Luke Slater, Kruder & Dorfmeister, even producer
William Orbit, who remixed a fair few.
JIMMY NAIL
Well to be fair, it was the soundtrack to Evita, and it was not
just the Ain't No Doubt hitmaker, but also Jonathan Pryce,
Antonio Banderas and Andrea Corr who featured on tracks
with Madonna. It's not like they made a whole album together
or anything. Imagine.
DEEPAK CHOPRA
In 1998, Deepak Chopra asked some chums to read the
mystical love poems of thirteenth century Persian writer Rumi
for the snappily titled album Gift of Love: Deepak & Friends
Present Music Inspired By the Love Poems of Rumi. Madonna
pops up on the tune Bittersweet, and there's also people such
as Jared Harris and Demi Moore involved across 36 tracks
operating very much in the arena of New Age, but it's nothing
particularly whistle-able.

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 Caption
MADONNA WITH...
WILLIAM ORBIT GUIDING MADONNA THROUGH WHAT MANY FEEL IS HER
FINEST ALBUM, PRODUCER WILLIAM ORBIT HELPED THE QUEEN
OF POP SWAP SEXUALITY FOR SPIRITUALITY
M A R C A N D R E W S
T
he sheer breadth of work that Madonna
has created with the assistance of producer
and songwriter William Orbit is remarkable.
Their partnership may have been the longest
collaboration of her entire career, and yet the
strangest thing about this hugely influential musical
hookup is that it ran successfully for a number of years
without the two ever actually meeting.
It all began in 1990, when Orbit then a visual
artist, studio owner and member of the band Torch
Song was selected to remix Madonnas seductive
sonnet Justify My Love. Two years later he was
chosen to attach his edgy post-rave sound to the
Erotica single, yet events still intervened to stop
the two meeting, let alone booking studio time
together. But as she moved into her second decade
as a global superstar it was becoming evident that
one of Madonnas greatest talents was being a
zeitgeist catalyst, knowing when to work with the
right people and she was about to accelerate her
relationship with Orbit at exactly the right time.
There had been reports Madonna was planning
an album of lullabies after the birth of her first child,
Lourdes, in 1996, or that it would be influenced
by her interest in Kabbalah, an esoteric offshoot of
Judaism which had taken Hollywood by storm. Yet the
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CPP05.Collab William Orbit.For Print.indd 62
Getty Images
collaboration between Madonna and Orbit who
finally met in the summer of 1997 miraculously
combined all of that and brought out the best in both
of them. Together they fashioned a timeless, classic
work of spiritual pop art that embodied the hopes,
aspirations and newly mature investigations of a new
mother. Released in February 1998, the album was
called Ray Of Light.
The albums singles encapsulated its mastery, range
and cosmic connections. The spooky yet sumptuous
Frozen picked up where Bedtime Story had left off;
the kinetic killer title track won MTVs Best Video of
the Year Award. Then there was the stirring, wistful
electro-ballad The Power Of Good-bye, the new age
house banger Nothing Really Matters, and the era-
defining opener Drowned World (Substitute For Love).
NME gave the album 8/10, Entertainment Weekly
rated it A-, and Rolling Stone awarded it four stars.
But anyone assuming that the producer was the one in
charge would be dead wrong: The one with all the
equipment is assumed to be pressing all the buttons,
but she presses all the buttons, Orbit told GQ. She
hasnt shouted about her musical abilities but she is
the consummate songwriter.
Sales-wise, Ray Of Light returned Madonna back
to stratospheric numbers. Collecting an armful of
16/01/2017 15:18

Grammys for the album the following year, and
opening the show in full geisha garb, Madonna was
at last embraced by the music industry. Following the
approval that met Ray Of Light, whenever there was
anything Madonna required musically, Orbit was now
her go-to guy.
While in 1999 Madonna had yet to become
involved with James Bond, she got her hands on the
next best thing Austin Powers. Pilfering the Swinging
Sixties vibe from his own Ray Of Light remixes,
Orbit pulled off some nifty recycling for Beautiful
Stranger. Kept at No. 2 in the UK by S Club 7s Bring
It All Back, in the US her record company bizarrely
decided to issue it only as a 12 dance single,
adding to her record-beating tally of No. 1 Billboard
Dance Club Songs. Madonna also called on Orbits
trademark sound for a contribution to Ricky Martins
debut English language album with Be Careful, which
forged a whole new genre in Latina electronica.
When Madonna decided to plunge back into
movies that same year, it was Orbit again who came
to the rescue. For the soundtrack to her film The Next
Best Thing they tackled Don McLeans American Pie.
While purists screamed musical murder, the cover
version hit the top of the charts in 13 countries.
McLean eloquently called it a gift from a goddess.
A second track, the pensive Time Stood Still, lay
almost forgotten on the movies soundtrack.
Yet by the time of the next album, Madonna had
a wild impulse to go rogue again with a new music
man, Mirwais Ahmadza, and Orbit only contributed
two tracks to the five-time Grammy nominated Music
album. Amazing, planned as a fourth single but
ditched due to her touring commitments, was even
in Madonnas opinion too similar to Beautiful
Stranger. The other Orbit offering, Runaway Lover,
found him playing catch-up to Mirwais hipster hooks.
Orbits sweeping, bleepy soundscapes had become
ubiquitous and slavishly copied the world charts over
and Madonna, better than anyone, knew that.
Yet this wasnt to be the end of the Madonna/Orbit
story though it would be another decade before
they would finally team up again. After her trend-
catching return to R&B on 2008s Hard Candy failed
to connect either commercially or critically, despite
4 Minutes with Justin Timberlake and Timbaland
attaining a No. 3 place, Madonna took stock again.
Leaving Warner Brothers after 25 years, she gathered
together an array of hip hitmakers for her 12th studio
album, with Orbit rightfully back on board.
2012s MDNA, her first album on Interscope
Records, was Madonnas attempt to own a part
of the EDM movement, as electronic dance music
had finally come into its own in the US thanks in
part to her own earlier footwork. With six writing
and producer credits on MDNA, Orbit was clearly
Madonnas main music man again. Unfathomably,
none of his efforts were put forward as singles,
though tracks such as the gorgeous Falling Free
and the post-Guy Ritchie divorce kiss-off Love Spent
might have sat comfortably on a natural successor
to Ray Of Light. As fans and critics alike weighed
in on the choices of singles while the album quickly
slipped off the charts, Orbit weighed into the
fracas. On his Facebook page he launched into
an uncharacteristic rant about how the producers
on the MDNA project were pushed for time
due to Madonnas business schedule. He claimed
the albums failure was due to various pressing
CPP05.Collab William Orbit.For Print.indd 63
C O L L A B O R A T I O N S
commitments that took up the artists limited time, such
as perfume ranges and teen fashion contests and
other such endeavours which are beyond my own
limited understanding of pop star agendas. A month
later Orbit formally and remorsefully apologised
for his outburst, tweeting: The MDNA comments. I
should not have said them publicly. I see that and I
regret that I said online. Not fair to M.
This was to be the last time the two would work
together. As it transpired, post-MDNA fallout, both
Madonna and Orbit turned out to be winners of sorts.
Album extra Masterpiece, written for her full-length
movie directorial debut W.E. and produced by
Orbit, won her a Golden Globe for Best Song. Orbit,
meanwhile, threw Chris Brown one of the MDNA
offcuts Madonna had passed on: Dont Wake Me Up
wound up a platinum-selling single globally and one
of the first bona fide crossover EDM hits in the US.
Since then Orbit has gone on to work with two
other former Madonna BFFs, namely Britney Spears
and, posthumously, Michael Jackson (teaming up for
2014s Queen collaboration There Must Be More To
Life Than This). While many still hold out hope for
further collaborations, it appears the pairs working
life together, stretched across three decades, came
to a close in an organic fashion. Whether or not that
remains the case, their trippy, hippychick electronica
opus Ray Of Light still shines as one of the greatest
albums of all time. Rolling Stone puts it at #367 in
their rankings, while Q more kindly opts for #17.
With William, weve worked on stuff for so many
years that we kind of finish each others sentences,
Madonna said of her special relationship with Orbit.
He knows my taste and what I like. Magic happens
when we get into a recording studio together.
LITTLE WONDER
IN ORBIT WITH WILLIAM
Two years Madonnas senior, Orbit real name William Mark Wainwright found his
calling when he got a job at a London recording studio. After being spotted by a model
scout he met fellow poser Hamish Bowles (now an editor for Vogue) and the duo started
a band, Torch Song. Orbit set up his own recording outfit, Guerilla Studios, and throughout
the Eighties he orchestrated arty projects with a musical bent, including, funnily enough,
Malcolm McLarens Deep In Vogue. At the end of the decade he formed Bassomatic who
scored a Top 10 UK hit with Fascinating Rhythm. After that, he cranked out remixes for
Madonna, Prince and Lenny Kravitz while indulging in avant-garde pop with Strange Cargo
and his electro take on the classics, Pieces In a Modern Style. After his groundbreaking
work on Ray Of Light he lent his talents to artists such as Blur, P!nk, All Saints and U2. He
is currently writing a book and painting with oils on canvas a true man of colours.
Getty Images
Orbit formed Bassomatic
with MC Inna Onestep
and singer Sharon
Musgrave (pictured)
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Eric Watson

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 Petty Images
HEY, MR DJ
IF YOU ASSUMED MADONNA PEAKED
IN THE EIGHTIES AND NINETIES, THINK
AGAIN. IN MANY WAYS, HER THIRD
DECADE AS A SUPERSTAR WAS HER
MOST PRODUCTIVE TO DATE
P A U L L E S T E R

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 Unlike
her Eighties superstar peers
Michael Jackson who only
released one album in the first
10 years of the 21st century
and Prince, whose LP sales were severely diminished
by the end of the Nineties, Madonna spent the new
decade in as good commercial shape as ever.
In 2000, she hit the ground running. In March she
starred in The Next Big Thing, and although the film
was panned and the response to her performance in
this movie about a gay man (Robert Whittaker, played
by Rupert Everett) and a straight woman (Madonna
as Abbie Reynolds) who have a baby together was
mixed, to say the least she won a Golden Raspberry
for Worst Actress it did respectable business at the
box office. She had two songs on the films soundtrack
the ballad Time Stood Still and her cover of Don
McLeans 1971 classic American Pie and the latter
went to No. 1 in eight countries, including the UK, on
its release as a single. Reviews were mixed. The NME
dismissed it as sub-karaoke fluff while the songs
writer saw it rather differently, joking: It means that if
I dont want to, I dont have to work again.
That August, in Los Angeles, Madonna gave birth
to Rocco John Ritchie, her son with film director Guy
Ritchie, who would soon become
her second husband. The
same month, we
also got to hear
the first fruits
of Madonnas
collaboration HEADILY AFFIRMATIVE, MUSIC WAS
with French DJ
and producer COMPARED TO PREVIOUS SINGLES
Mirwais
Ahmadza.
OF THE DANCE VARIETY SUCH AS
Having worked EVERYBODY AND INTO THE GROOVE
with William
Orbit on 1998s
Ray Of Light,
she felt the need,
as ever, to change,
move direction, pursue a
different sound. As soon as she heard a demo of
Mirwais music via her partner, Guy Oseary, at
her label Maverick, he response was immediate:
Oh my God, she said, this is what I want.
This was a sharp, crisp electronic pop sound,
somewhat influenced by the then none-more-hip
show with a rendition of Music during which she emerged
POP_UP Madonna opened the 2001 Grammy Awards
from a limo driven by underage rapper Lil Bow Wow
filter disco sound of French dance acts such as
Daft Punk, Cassius and Stardust. The single opened
with Madonna, pitch-shifted to sound neither male
nor female, imploring androgynously, Hey Mr DJ,
put a record on, I wanna dance with my baby.
Headily affirmative, Music was compared to previous
Madonna singles that exulted in the power of music,
especially the dance variety, such as Everybody and
Into The Groove. Music makes the people come
together/ Music makes the bourgeoisie and the
rebel, sang Madonna, who got the idea for the lyric,
quite unexpectedly, after attending a Sting concert
and watching as he switched from lukewarm solo
material to cherished renditions of ancient Police hits.
Everyone was practically holding hands... I mean, it
really moved me, she told Rolling Stone magazine.
Madonnas own assessment of the song, featuring
as it did a mix of guitars, vocoders and analogue
synths, was that it was funky, folky, electronic and
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CPP05.2000s.For Print.indd 66
melodic. Vibe magazine applauded the fact that
Madonna now a 42-year-old mother could still
produce a banger. Entertainment Weekly said Music
recaptured the perfection of Holiday while Slant
magazine declared it Madonnas finest club anthem
since Vogue, even Into The Groove. The general good
feeling was that, with Music, Madonna, now in her
third decade as an artist, had managed to produce
a record every bit as vital as the new generation of
stars, notably the ex-Disney teenage powerhouse
vocalist likes of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
No wonder Music accompanied by a video
directed by Jonas kerlund and featuring Madonna
giving a party in a limousine driven by comedian
Sacha Baron Cohen in the guise of Ali G earned
two Grammy nominations the following year, for
Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal
Performance. It also peaked at pole position in 25
countries, including Australia, Canada, Italy, New
Zealand, the UK and US. It became Madonnas 12th
Stateside No. 1 as well as the second most successful
dance single of the decade in the States, behind
Madonnas own song Hung Up (2005).
Within a month, Music, Madonnas eighth studio
album, was in the shops. It wasnt a radical departure
from predecessor Ray Of Light this
was, after all, still largely
dance music but it
was a different type
of electronica.
Much of that
had to do
with relatively
unknown
producer
Mirwais, who
brought his
own panoply
of gadgetry
and dazzling
effects to bear on
Madonnas material.
She loved the end results.
I love to work with the weirdos that no one knows
about, the people who have raw talent and who
are making music unlike anyone else out there, she
enthused. Music is the future of sound.
Assembling the album proved to be a fairly
involved process. It was recorded in New York, LA
and, mostly, London, and necessitated Madonna
hopping back and forth from America for sessions at
Sarm East and Sarm West in Ladbroke Grove. The
results were worth the fuss. After the opening title
track came Impressive Instant, another blast of French
house, all vocoder, laser bloops and synths that found
an electronically-tweaked Madonna proclaiming, Im
in a trance. It was the first song that Madonna and
Ahmadza worked on and recorded and was issued
as a promotional single a year later, maintaining the
musics momentum in the clubs in fact, it was about
catching sight of someone at a club and realising
theyre the one. If Runaway Lover had more of a
Ray Of Light flavour, thats because it was one of
two tracks on the album the other being Amazing
produced by William Orbit. I Deserve It was an
acoustic ballad with a hip hop beat and extraneous
synth whirrs hick hop, to coin a phrase, or space-
country (the albums front cover image was of
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Madonna and singers

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Niki Haris and Donna

DeLory performing
Music at the 2001
Grammy Awards

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Madonna on the
Drowned World Tour
in Los Angeles, 2001

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 Getty Images

Madonna and Guy

Ritchie at baby
Roccos christening in
Scotland, 2000

Madonna as a cowgirl). The lyric Its amazing
what a boy can say/ I cannot stop myself/ Seems
I love you more than yesterday/ I love you and no
one else seemed to reflect Madonnas feelings
for her new film director boyfriend. Nobodys
Perfect was a showcase for Madonnas ethereal
vocoderised meditations on the
human condition. The beaty
acoustica of Dont Tell
away her dreams, her life. Turn to stone, lose my
faith, went the sorrowful closing refrain, and Ill be
gone before it happens. What could she possibly
have meant?
This record, more than any other records, covers
all the areas of my life, she offered. I left off
partying on Ray Of Light. But Id
just had a baby, so my
mood was complete,

POP_UP The hook to Hung Up was based, with permission, on Abbas Gimme!
Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight). It was only the second time Bjorn and
Me was followed like wonderment
by What It Feels of life, and I
Benny had granted such a request to use a sample: Fugees was the other
Like For A Girl, was incredibly
which went from THIS RECORD, MORE THAN ANY thoughtful and
dreamy to techno- retrospective
dancey. The latter OTHER, COVERS ALL THE AREAS OF and intrigued
was produced
by Guy Sigsworth
MY LIFE THE FRIVOLOUS SIDE AND by the mystical
aspects of life.
(Bjrk, Seal) and THE NON-FRIVOLOUS SIDE In contrast, Music
came prefaced found her living
by reflections a pretty low-
on the sexual key domestic
divide from singer existence, missing
Charlotte Gainsbourg. the energy and
Madonna admitted it was engrossing aspects of
addressed to her then-four-year-old daughter Lourdes, performing, dancing being on the road. So, she
as well as to herself. Its about me discovering that explained, part of the record is about that. And then
being an overachiever is not always to your benefit the other part is about love. So theres the frivolous
when it comes to relationships and dealing with men, side of my life and then theres the hopefully
because men are quite intimidated by women who non-frivolous side of my life. I usually make a record
accomplish a lot, she told The Face. Finally, there thats one or the other, and I feel I did both on this
was the downtempo orchestral trip hop of Paradise one. She concluded that Music was designed for
(Not For Me), and the typically adroit combination of crepuscular enjoyment, even if there were still paeans
acoustics and electronics that was Gone, shrouding to the belief that only when youre dancing can you
the album in an atmosphere of doubt and fatalistic feel this free. This is night listening, she said of the
despondency, Madonna singing about dreaming album. I think its too moody to listen to during

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 the day. You could put the first two tracks on before
you go out. And the third track is a William Orbit
track and is also a really uptempo, dancey, clubby
song as well. And then, after you meet the man of
your dreams you come back and listen to I Deserve It
and Amazing.
In November 2000, Dont Tell Me was the
second single lifted off the album; it reached No.
4 on both sides of the Atlantic. On December 21,
2000, Madonna and Guy Ritchies son Rocco
was christened at Dornoch Cathedral in Dornoch,
Scotland; the following day the pair got married at
nearby Skibo Castle. In April 2001, What It Feels
Like For A Girl became the third single from Music.
It was accompanied by a Ritchie-directed video a
POP_UP Pet Shop Boys and Madonna have long been mutual fans. Messrs
starred in the film Swept Away, directed by her new
husband. Released direct-to-video in the UK, it was a
commercial and critical failure.
On a happier filmic note, in October 2002
Madonna issued Die Another Day, the theme tune to
the 12th James Bond movie. But although it fared well
on the worlds charts, it was not regarded by critics
as one of the great Bond themes, some dismissing
the stuttering, electronic Mirwais production as
inappropriate while the song itself was deemed to be
melodically uninteresting and harmonically repetitious,
even if the line Sigmund Freud/Analyse this was
universally praised. Her brief cameo in the film was
decried as incredibly wooden in the Guardian.
There was little public activity from Madonna until

controversial one, not for sexual imagery this time, April 2003, when she issued the first single from her
they wrote the 1988 song Heart for her although they never delivered it
Tennant and Lowe were invited to remix her single Sorry, but before that

but rather for its violence. In the video, Madonna
rides around in a yellow car (with license plates
reading Pussy and Cat), running over men and
setting things on fire. Hardly surprisingly, the video
was played just a few times before it was banned. It
harmed the singles progress somewhat it peaked at
No. 7 and No. 23 respectively in the UK and US.
That June, Madonnas fifth concert tour the
Drowned World Tour started, going on to become
the highest-grossing concert tour of the year by a solo
artist, earning $75 million from 47 sold-out shows.
If most musicians put a tenth of the creative energy
into their shows as Madonna has into this one, we
would all be a lot better off, wrote Alex Needham
in the NME, while Slant opined: Though her cowgirl
image is easily her least significant incarnation to
date, Drowned World proves that Madonna is still
unmatched in her ability to lift cultural iconography
into the mainstream.
In November 2001, Madonna released her second
greatest hits collection, GHV2, a compilation of 15
singles from the singers second recording decade
(I only wanted tracks that I could listen to five times
in a row, she explained). The following year she
ninth studio album, American Life. The result, once
more, of a collaboration with producer Mirwais, who
used electronics and organic instrumentation as he
did on Music, the single was part-club anthem, part-
therapeutic confessional.
Its a reflection of my state of mind and a view of
the world right now, said Madonna at the time.
It seemed to reflect a new disillusion on her part,
a new post-9/11 world-weariness as she questioned
the shallowness of modern life and the hollow nature
of the American dream. Towards the end of the song,
all bleeps and beats, Madonna raps or rather
lists some of the accoutrements of (her) wealth.
Critics, usually ardent supporters, responded harshly.
Blender magazine named American Life the ninth
worst song of all time. Slant magazine called it a
trite, self-aggrandising and often awkward song
about privilege, while Stylus found the plaint about
commercialism and the emptiness of celebrity culture,
from one of the worlds richest women, hypocritical
rather than insightful.
The first video for the song, directed once again
by Jonas kerlund, featured Madonna, surrounded
by female soldiers, lobbing a hand grenade at

IM FEELING
SUPER-DUPER KEY RECORDINGS: SINGLES

MUSIC (2000) AMERICAN LIFE (2003)

Madonnas second single of the 2000s following
her cover of American Pie opened with an
androgynous voice demanding, Hey, Mr DJ, put
a record on. Over the lyric, an electronically
tweaked Madonna can be heard wondering, Do
you like to boogie woogie? The latest in a long
line of illustrious invocations to dance from the
artist reaching as far back as Everybody Music
was ecstatically received by fans and critics alike.
The New York Daily News proclaimed it her most
instantly embraceable single since Holiday.
Her first single from her 2003 album was a Marmite
affair. Or rather, a soy latte affair, of which,
according to the lyric, Madonna was requesting a
double shottie. American Life was her demolition of
the American dream, celebrity culture, materialism,
capitalism the works. In it, the supremely
successful singer admitted to feeling disillusioned,
notwithstanding her new Mini Cooper, her chef, three
nannies, driver, jet, trainer, butler and stylist. Do
you think Im satisfied? she asked, incurring some
of the most hostile reviews of her career.

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2004, and Madonna

performs the Circus/
Cabaret segment of the
Re-Invention Tour
Getty Images

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 2 0 0 0 S

Getty Images

The Military/Army
section of the
Re-Invention Tour,
with costumes by
Arianne Phillips

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 George W Bush at this sensitive juncture, around
the time of the Iraq War, it was deemed inappropriate
and the video was cancelled. It was replaced by
a more anodyne version, with Madonna cavorting
harmlessly against a backdrop of flags from around
the world. The single performed weakly in the US
(No. 37) and well in the UK (No. 2).
The rest of American Life, the album released two
weeks after the single was equally full of beats and
lush orchestrations. We set out to put the two worlds
of acoustic and electronic music together, explained
Madonna of her and Mirwais approach this time
around. It is another step on. I dont ever want to
repeat myself or make the same
record twice. Yuck!
The albums front
fortune, and I feel that I have a right to an opinion on
what it is and what it isnt. All everyone is obsessed
about at the moment is being a celebrity. Im saying
thats bullshit and who knows better than me?
Before it happens you have all kinds of notions about
how wonderful celebrity is and how much joy its
going to bring you. Then you arrive
Its the allure of the beautiful life, she continued.
Look like this, youre gonna be happy. Drive this
car, youre gonna be popular. Wear these clothes
and people are gonna wanna f*** you. Its a very
powerful illusion and people are caught up in it,
including myself. Or I was.
The second single, Hollywood
(No. 2, UK, July 2003),
featured an almost

POP_UP In 2002 Madonna took on the role of Loren in a London West

cover image was grunge-lite guitar

trying to boost the bidding for a rare Jackson Pollock up to 20 million

of Madonna intro, although

End production of the play Up For Grabs, the story of an art dealer
perhaps trying the beat had
to reclaim the ALL EVERYONE IS OBSESSED ABOUT more in common
idea of herself with techno.
as somehow IS BEING A CELEBRITY. IM SAYING Lyrically, it
revolutionary,
and not the
THATS BULLSHIT AND WHO seemed to
address the
tweedy American KNOWS BETTER THAN ME? fake allure of
wife of an Tinseltown,
Englishman living another case,
in the Home perhaps, of
Counties. She was Madonna having
portrayed on the her cake and
sleeve as a freedom fighter, guzzling the whole lot
all Che Guevara beret and military chic; she had down. Im So Stupid (I used to live in a fuzzy
been pictured a few months earlier, almost preparing dream, and I used to believe in the pretty pictures
the world for her latest look, on the cover of Vanity that were all around me) shifted her critical gaze
Fair magazine, posing in dark green and black towards herself. Third single Nothing Fails (UK
clothes and combat boots. No. 11, October 03) had an acoustic intro, and
This was a Madonna in belligerent mood, and keen featured lyrics from Welsh singer-songwriter Jem; it
to reveal all about her rejection of celebrity and its was followed by Love Profusion (also a UK No. 11,
attendant luxuries. I know it sounds clichd, she December 03), which came complete with a Luc
told Q magazine, but Ive had 20 years of fame and Besson video and found Madonna confused and

HUNG UP (2005) SORRY (2006) 4 MINUTES (2008)

This became Madonnas best-selling single ever,
selling more than 8.7 million copies worldwide in
only seven months. It went to No. 1 in 41 countries,
including Australia, Canada, France, Germany and
Japan. It was also voted by the Digital Spy website
the biggest pop banger of the 21st century, ahead
of Britney Spears Toxic, Lady Gagas Bad Romance
and Kylie Minogues Cant Get You Out Of My
Head. And it was the first track on Madonnas 2009
compilation Celebration. Explaining why to Rolling
Stone, she said, Because its a badass song.
The second single from Confessions On A Dance
Floor topped the charts in Italy, Spain, Romania and
the UK, where it became Madonnas 12th No. 1,
making her the female artist with the most No. 1
hits in Britain. One of the remixes of the song came
courtesy of Pet Shop Boys, featuring added lyrics
written by the duo. Many critics deemed Sorry the
strongest track on the album, the reviewer from the
BBC even discerning from the lyric there are more
important things than hearing you speak a subtle
critique of her critics. part of the solution?
This was Madonnas 13th UK No. 1, 23 years since
her first, Into The Groove a record for a female
artist. It was also only her second-ever duet, after
her Britney team-up, Me Against The Music. It
found her and Messrs Timberlake and Timbaland
conspiring to save the planet. If youre paying
attention to whats going on in the world the
Middle East, the [US] election, the environment
theres so much chaos and turmoil everywhere, she
said. Are you going to be part of the problem or

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 After that kiss: Im

Getty Images
kissing Britney and passing
on my energy, explained
Madonna. Its like a
mythological fairytale

uncertain, seeking answers to (American) lifes great
existential imponderables, deciding, And the world
can look so sad. On Nobody Knows Me, via a
vocoder, she declared, Ive had so many lives/ Since
I was a child/ And I realise/ How many times Ive
died, and ended with her feeling misunderstood.
Intervention (Ive got to save
my baby/ Because he
makes me cry) was
another downbeat
electro-acoustic
although the radio version actually lasts three minutes and nine seconds,
POP_UP The reason 4 Minutes is so titled was due to the songs length,
electronically treated guitar. Despite getting mixed
reviews, American Life fared well commercially,
topping the charts in several countries (including
Britain and America).
In November 2003, Maverick released Remixed
& Revisited, a remix album containing four songs,
in remixed form, from American
Life, as well as a previously
unreleased song,
Your Honesty,
originally written

affair. No less for her 1994

lugubrious ON AUGUST 28 2003, MADONNA, album Bedtime
was a co-write Stories and
with young STILL THE QUEEN OF PROVOCATION, you could tell,
British musician SNOGGED NOT ONE BUT TWO because it was
while the album version is four minutes and four seconds

and producer essentially a

Stuart Price: PRETENDERS TO HER THRONE
titled X-Static
Process, it
neatly noirishly
expressed
Madonnas
disorientation (Dont know
who Im supposed to be) and confusion. On Mother
And Father, she recalled her troubled childhood,
particularly the death of her mother, but the dolorous
mood was broken by another banal rap with a series
of simplistic rhymes (My father had to go to work/
I used to think he was a jerk). Penultimate track Die
Another Day was followed by Easy Ride, which itself
sounded like a movie theme, heavy as it was on the
symphonic strings. With its intimations of mortality,
it closed the album in mournful style, even as the
sweeping strings gave way to techno bleeps and
rewrite of Inside
Of Me from
that album. The
other tracks on
the album were
live renditions of Like
A Virgin and Hollywood
from the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards the
controversial one that ended with Madonna snogging
co-performers Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera
and a remix of Into The Groove.
Ah, yes: the Kiss That Shook The World. It was
on August 28, 2003, that Madonna, proving she
was still the queen of provocation, snogged not one
but two teen pretenders to her throne: Britney and
Xtina (see panel). In October 03, Madonna and
Britney sealed their burgeoning relationship when
they recorded a single together, Me Against

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The perfect American

Getty Images

gentlewoman:
Madonna does some
promo for her book
The English Roses

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Madonna with
Getty Images
former Ethiopian
famine victim Birhan
Woldu at Live 8 in
London, 2005

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 The Music. Produced by some of R&B, hip hop and
pops finest, including Terius Nash aka The-Dream
and Christopher Tricky Stewart, and evincing the
influence of The Neptunes collaborations with Justin
Timberlake, Me Against The Music was praised for
Spears input but lambasted for Madonnas. Stylus
Magazine remarked harshly of the stars propensity
for enlivening her output by hooking up perennially
with young talent that Madonna vamps it up (literally
her appearance here is not Sapphic but vampiric,
the wizened old crone bleeding another period of
forced longevity into her career like a cruenating
corpse leaking plasma backwards). The single
nevertheless was a hit around the world, peaking at
No. 2 in Britain and No. 11 in America.
Having mastered music and enjoyed a varied
career in the movies, it was inevitable that Madonna
would try her hand at book writing. In September
2003, she published her first childrens book, The
English Roses the story of four jealous English
schoolgirls. It became the fastest-selling childrens
picture book of all time. A few months later, she
embarked on her sixth global concert foray, the
Re-Invention World Tour; it became one of the highest-
grossing tours of 2004 matched only by Prince,
Celine Dion and Metallica earning around $120
million. It also became the subject of her 2005 Jonas
kerlund-directed documentary Im Going To Tell You
A Secret, a less artful insight into her world than her
last tour movie Truth Or Dare more than a decade
ago, according to the Observer magazine. Critics
were almost unanimous in their praise of the tour,
however, comparing it favourably to her previous
Drowned World Tour.
In November 2004, she was one of five founding
members inducted into the inaugural UK Music Hall
of Fame, along with The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Bob
Marley and U2, ultimate proof of her standing among
the all-time greats. In January 2005, she performed
a cover version of John Lennons Imagine at Tsunami
Aid, a benefit held for the tsunami victims of the 2004
Indian Ocean earthquake. She also performed at the
Live 8 benefit concert in London in July 2005. There,
organiser Bob Geldof brought her together with
Birhan Woldu, the starving child who achieved global
repute from the original 1984 CBC News report that
led to the formation of Band Aid and Live Aid she
and Madonna held hands while the singer performed
the first verses of Like A Prayer. Later, Madonna went
from saintly to coarse when she started swearing
repeatedly during her final song, Music.
That October saw the release of Hung Up, the
first single from Madonnas 10th studio album,
Confessions On A Dance Floor, the result of her
artistic liaison with British producer and musician
Stuart Price (see page 42). The album regarded as
one of Madonnas very best contained four singles:
Hung Up, Sorry (a UK No. 1 in February 2006), Get
Together (No. 7 in the UK in June 06) and Jump (UK
No. 9, October 06). It was a successful, happy time
for the star, a restatement of first (hedonistic) principles
after her collaborations with Gallic brainiac Mirwais.
Have you ever met Mirwais? she asked the
journalist from the Observer magazine. Jean-Paul
Sartre comes to mind. Hes very intellectual, very
analytical, very cerebral, very existential, very
philosophical. You have to be in the mood for it. I
CPP05.2000s.For Print.indd 77
didnt want to over-think things too much [this time].
I dont want to be complicated now. We both got
sucked into the French existentialist vortex. We
both decided we were against the war, and we
both smoked Gauloises and wore berets, and we
were against everything. No, its about the universe
conspiring. With the last album I was in a very
thoughtful mood, a very angry mood, a mood to be
political, very upset with George Bush. I dont need
to be going on about the war in Iraq. I made a lot of
political statements in my show and in my film [Im
Going To Tell You A Secret]. I dont want to repeat
myself, so I moved to another area and thats, God, I
really feel like dancing right now. It was too intense.
while lead singer Eugene Htz played the main character
Its not just a reaction to what I was doing work-wise,
POP_UP The band in Madonnas film Filth And Wisdom
but also a reaction to what was going on in the
was portrayed by gypsy punk outfit Gogol Bordello,
world. I just wanted some relief.
With Confessions, she was once more the disco
evangelist, but she was also now a humanitarian. In
2007, she released Hey You, a charity song shed
written and had co-produced with Pharrell Williams.
The song was released as part of the Live Earth
campaign and was free to download from websites
like MSN. That year, she announced her departure
from Warner Bros. Records after 25 years, and the
signing of a new $120 million, 10-year deal with
Live Nation. She produced and wrote a documentary
on the problems faced by Malawians called I Am
Because We Are (she had adopted David Banda
from Malawi in 2006), and directed her first film
Filth And Wisdom, about three friends and their
aspirations. It earned encouraging reviews. In March
2008, she was inducted into Americas Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame alongside Leonard Cohen, John
Mellencamp and The Ventures. At the induction
KISS ME, KISS ME,
KISS ME
MADONNA, BRITNEY AND XTINA
GET PERSONAL
The date was August 28, 2003, the place was New Yorks Radio City Music
Hall, the event was the annual MTV Video Music Awards and a culturally
dramatic pop event was about to take place. First came Britney Spears, the
newly crowned Princess of Pop, dressed in white, singing Madonnas Like A
Virgin. Then a second figure lifted her veil to reveal Britneys only serious
young rival for pop primacy: Christina Xtina Aguilera. But there was more
excitement to come: Madonna emerged to the strains of Hollywood, then
removed her jacket to reveal her honed musculature, stuffed her microphone
down her top, and kissed Britney and Xtina flush on the mouth much to
the horror of Spears ex, Justin Timberlake, who the cameras immediately
panned to, to best immortalise his displeasure. According to Larry Rudolph,
Spears longtime manager, that kiss happened and the world exploded.
He added: Madonna had been very, very, very rigid about the rehearsals.
She would never address me by name, she would just say, You make sure
Britneys here at 10 oclock. Madonna was ecstatic with the results of the
gruelling rehearsals. In fact, there was more kissing when, following the
performance, Rudolph found himself in an elevator with Madge. He recalls
her wrapping her arms around his waist and giving him a big smacker on the
lips. Her words to the manager: You see, Larry? It was all worth it.
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19/01/2017 12:40
 Getty Images
Justin Timberlake
inducts Madonna into
the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame, 2008

ceremony fellow inductees and Michigan natives,
legendary proto-punks The Stooges, performed her
songs Burning Up and Ray Of Light. She also thanked
Christopher Flynn, her dance teacher from 35 years
earlier, for encouraging her to follow her dreams.
March 08 also saw the release of 4 Minutes, the
lead single from her imminent,
brand new studio album,
Hard Candy. Jointly
produced by
the stellar Tim
POP_UP Justin Timberlake was impressed by Madonnas stash of ideas
relatively silent partner Chad Hugo. Timbaland and
Williams had a hand in every one of the dozen
tracks on Hard Candy, and Madonna spoke highly
of her collaborators. I think Pharrell is a natural
musician, she said, just after production on the
album was completed and the record had just hit the
shops. I like his inventiveness he
would grab my acoustic
guitar, which he
couldnt play, but
start playing

Timbaland percussion on it.

for Hard Candy. All these thoughts, riddles, poems, feelings, written in

Mosley, Justin HARD CANDY WAS A SHOWCASE He would find

Timberlake and bottles and start
FOR THE HIPPEST NAMES: KANYE
huge notebooks... she kept handing them over. It was amazing

Floyd Nate playing them with

Hills aka Danja
(producer of
WEST, DANJA, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, spoons. He is
very inventive in
hits for Britney, TIMBALAND AND THE NEPTUNES the studio, hes
Mariah Carey, not precious
Usher, Whitney and I like his
Houston and lo-fi approach to
more), it had a making music.
characteristically He is also, she
idiosyncratic Timbaland added, a little kid and
beat. Quirkily appealing, this song about saving the silly he would come to work, take these Mickey
planet sold three million copies and reached No. 3 Mouse slippers out of his giant Hermes bag and
in the US, making it her 37th Top 10 hit, beating the put them on I dont feel like he took himself too
record previously held by Elvis Presley. seriously.
Her 11th album, Hard Candy, came out in April, Of former pop idol turned serious adult artiste
and was a showcase for the writing and production Timberlake, she said, I can totally relate to Justin as
talents of some of the worlds hippest, and biggest, a songwriter. We would sit down together and say,
names: Kanye West, Danja, Justin Timberlake, and Okay, lets come up with a concept. What story do
inarguably the two biggest R&B producers of the we want to tell? We would riff off of each other and
decade, Timbaland and The Neptunes, the latter play with words. He likes to play with words and the
the production moniker of Pharrell Williams and his rhythm of words and so do I.

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Its August 23 2008,

and the lucky city of
Cardiff is the first to
witness the Sticky &
Sweet Tour
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 2 0 0 0 S
Getty Images
One of the greatest
talents the world has
ever known. Madonna
pays tribute to Michael
Jackson, 2009
Finally, she spoke about the Timbaland Effect. He
would seem like he was disappearing from the room,
then he would take his headphones off and suddenly
blast something on the speakers and give the thumbs
up. He was sort of a silent godfather to the project.
Riffing on the individual tracks, Madonna described
LP opener Candy Shop as cheeky and fun it sort
of represents the sassy side of me. More generally
of this album of R&B club bangers and rhythmically
audacious pop, she said, I felt more introspective
because I was writing with Pharrell and Justin. On
Confessions, which I wrote all the lyrics to, I wanted
POP_UP The original title for Hard Candy was Black Madonna, and
a photoshoot was done, but Madonna changed her mind: I thought,
to stay away from anything serious, even though
confession implies seriousness. I just wanted to make
twenty five percent of the world might get this. Its not worth it
a frivolous dance record, and with this one I had to
dig deeper and go to a different place For me, its
a true collaboration, intellectually and artistically.
If any criticism could be levelled at Hard Candy,
it was that it was an exemplary Timbaland/
Neptunes album, but a less good Madonna one
her personality was somewhat subsumed beneath
their trademark beats and studio tricks. Kerri Mason
from Billboard liked the new sound and the musical
direction taken by Madonna but was worried that
she had become a producers puppet while Stephen
Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic complained, Theres
a palpable sense of disinterest [in Hard Candy],
as if she just handed the reins over to Pharrell and
Timba/Lake, trusting them to polish up this piece of
stale candy. Commercially, it was hardly a dud: it
debuted at pole position in 37 countries and was
the 11th best-selling album worldwide in 2008,
shifting more than four million copies. It bequeathed
three singles 4 Minutes, Give It 2 Me and Miles
Away, the latter pair reaching No. 7 and No. 39
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CPP05.2000s.For Print.indd 80
respectively in the UK and the accompanying tour
confirmed Madonnas supremacy in her third decade:
on the Sticky & Sweet Tour, Madonna performed
to over 3.5 million fans in 32 countries, grossing a
total of US$408 million, making it the second-highest
grossing tour of all time (behind The Rolling Stones)
and the highest-grossing tour by a solo artist (she was
later superseded by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd).
Madonnas escapades and achievements in the
Noughties were a statisticians dream. She concluded
her contract with Warner Bros with her third greatest-
hits collection, Celebration, in September 2009. It
contained ravey new song Celebration (UK No. 3)
and the team-up with rapper Lil Wayne, Revolver
(which fared less well, failing to chart high anywhere
except Italy), along with 34 hits spanning her career
with the label. Celebration reached No. 1 in Canada,
Germany, Italy and the UK. She paid tribute to
Michael Jackson who died that June at the 2009
MTV Awards in September, and she ended the 2000s
as the best-selling single artist of the decade in the US
and the most-played artist of the decade in the UK.
She also was the third top-touring artist of the decade,
behind only The Rolling Stones and U2.
Dazed & Confused asked her whether she saw any
advantage in getting older, and her reply suggested
there was plenty of life in her yet. Its an advantage
in terms that youve got a lot more experience and
you tend to not make the same mistakes. And you feel
a bit wiser and less impulsive, she said. Its great to
feel experienced. But I also work with people who are
half my age, so I feel I have to work even harder to
keep up with everybody but the fact of the matter is
I can kick all of their asses! I guess Im okay for now.
It does keep the flame under my foot, though.
19/01/2017 12:46
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 Getty Images
MADONNA WITH...
STUART PRICE MADONNAS COLLABORATION WITH STUART PRICE 2005S
CONFESSIONS ON A DANCE FLOOR GAVE HER ARGUABLY
THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ALBUM OF HER RECENT CAREER
P A U L L E S T E R
R
eleased in 2005, Madonnas 10th studio
album, Confessions On A Dance Floor, saw
her team up with a little-known British DJ and
producer called Stuart Price. Up until then
the boy from Reading was a cultish attraction
thanks to his pseudonymous work as Jacques Lu Cont
and Les Rythmes Digitales, as well as his retro-pop
project Zoot Woman, his joint production (with former
Madonna producer Nellee Hooper) of P Diddys
2003 single Lets Get Ill ft. Kelis, and the occasional
remix, notably of New Orders Guilt Is A Useless
Emotion. But his involvement with Madonna propelled
his reputation skywards, while also confirming her
ability to divine the potential in a collaborator,
even one without a name. Indeed, the follow-up
album, 2008s Hard Candy, fared far less well than
Confessions, despite the presence behind the studio
console of Timbaland, The Neptunes, Danja et al.
Actually, Confessions wasnt the first time Price
had been on Madonnas payroll. He had been
employed as the musical director for her 2001
Drowned World Tour after remixing some of the
tracks on 2000s Music; he reprised the role for her
2004 Re-Invention World Tour (as he would for her
2006 Confessions Tour). This time around, Price was
contacted by Madonna and given the task of creating
82
CPP05.Collab Stuart Price.For Print.indd 82
Stuart Price,
Madonna and Sean
Puff Daddy Combs
tracks sounding like disco on acid for a musical she
was developing called Hello, Suckers! That musical
never happened, but Madonna was intrigued by
Prices modus operandi, and it was decided that they
would join forces for a new album.
Madonna later compared her and the young DJ/
producers relationship to that of siblings. It certainly
wasnt a case of untouchable icon meeting fawning
admirer. I wasnt really a fan [of hers] when I was
growing up, said Price, who was more into British
electronic artists such as Pet Shop Boys and Erasure,
to Mixmag. Those, he said, were the people who
made me go and get my first keyboard. If anything,
his parents both classically-trained pianists had
more impact on the him than the queen of disco-pop.
It was mainly Bach, Liszt, or Chopin, he told studio
software company Universal Audio. Pop music
wasnt really around in our house. After hearing The
Human Leagues seminal 1981 synthpop opus Dare
at the age of 19, he discovered Orbital and their
techno ilk, followed by idiosyncratic electronicists such
as Thomas Fehlmann and Polygon Window. It was
only around the time of Justify My Love when it
became obvious she was using these good producers
and coming up with unique music that he began to
appreciate Madonnas contributions.
18/01/2017 12:09

Confessions was largely recorded in Prices
tiny home studio a converted loft space in West
Kilburn, London. It wasnt anyones idea, he said
of the choice of location. We wanted to experiment
with ideas, and seeing as I do all my other music here
it made sense for her to come over. When you work
out of your flat youre less concerned about the money
you have to spend on a studio, and more relaxed
because you dont feel silly messing around with
ideas in front of people you dont know.
Madonna concurred: I couldnt have made this
record anywhere else but up here, she said of Prices
modest studio. The nature of the space didnt just
appeal to her; she saw it as crucial to the process, as
well as a reminder of her roots. Where you record
is very important, she mused to Simon Garfield in
The Guardian. It cant be too nice, it cant be too
expensive, it cant have a view to an ocean or a field.
Id rather be in a prison cell with Pro Tools. I dont
want to know whats going on in the rest of the world.
I want it to be exactly as it was when I wrote my first
song, in a small space with hardly any frills. I want
it always to be straightforward. I cant deal with the
pressure of how much things cost. Otherwise I think,
Oh God, Ive got to turn out 12 No. 1 hits to justify
how much the space costs.
The sessions went well: Price described them as
very relaxed, explaining that Madonna would
arrive at around 3pm every afternoon, ready to
work, having been up all morning in meetings with
her publishers, publicists and accountant. By the
time she gets to mine its like the end of her day, he
added. She hasnt got time to waste so you get used
to working fast. You dont f*** around.
If the process was breathless, so was the end
product. There is an urgency to Confessions
missing from predecessor American Life (2003); that
sense of pace, of a headlong rush, was enhanced
by the way the tracks were sequenced together to
run as one continuous piece of music, or mix the
album played like an hour-long nightclub DJ set. The
album artwork, featuring Madonna, in a purple-pink
leotard, apparently poised to do a workout at the
dance studio in Saturday Night Fever, was steeped in
Seventies retro-kitsch, and indeed on Confessions,
Madonna who sang on Into The Groove, Only
when Im dancing do I feel this free reasserted
the primacy of the dancefloor. After the somewhat
politicised American Life, her intention was simply to
make people dance, and smile. I just want people
to hear it and go, Oh my God, she told the
Getty Images
Observer Music Monthly. I want it to lift people up
and get them dancing round their house, driving
round in their car until the records finished. I just
want to make people happy.
The album opened with the ecstatic Hung Up,
which turned a sample from Abbas Mamma Mia
into one of the hookiest Madonna anthems in
aeons. Not for nothing did it top the charts in 41
countries when it was issued as a single (according
to Billboard, it was the most successful dance song
of the decade). Further singles included Sorry, a
Pet Shop Boys-ish affair that became Madonnas
12th No. 1 in the UK (and received a PSBs remix),
and Get Together, which bore the influence of
French house classic Music Sounds Better With
You by Stardust. Confessions was riddled
with references to past triumphs, Madonnas or
otherwise. We listened to a lot of other peoples
CPP05.Collab Stuart Price.For Print.indd 83
C O L L A B O R A T I O N S
records when we were making this album obviously
Abba and Giorgio Moroder so to me its more of
an homage to other peoples records than mine,
Madonna explained.
Future Lovers paid such explicit homage to Donna
Summer and Moroders I Feel Love that Madonna
chose to mash it into her performance of the song
during 2006s Confessions Tour. This was Madonna
the Danceteria club kid, reclaiming her electro-disco
roots there was even a track entitled I Love New
York that reeked of Studio 54 with the faintest trace of
CBGB. Let It Will Be was a rumination on fame with
a propulsive groove and pizzicato string motif. How
High explored her own notoriety, but the music was
strong enough, poppy enough, to avoid accusations
of self-indulgence. Forbidden Love no relation to
the song from Bedtime Stories evinced the influence
of EDM and Daft Punk. Jump bore elements of Ibiza
techno and Pet Shop Boys techno-pop. Push carried
lyrical and melodic hints of The Polices Every Breath
You Take. Isaac featuring vocalist Yitzhak Sinwani,
who sang portions of the Yemenite Hebrew poem Im
Ninalu in the track was an exotic digression, while
Like It Or Not closed the album in affirmative style.
Madonna alluded to her tabloid-baiting incarnation
(You can call me a sinner/ Or you can call me
a saint) and added a commitment to uphold the
boundary-pushing obduracy of her younger self.
This is who I am, she declared, unbowed, You can
like it or not. You can love me or leave me, cause
Im never gonna stop. Thanks in no small part to
Stuart Price who managed to tap into and tease
out Madonnas essential Madonna-ness with the 12
million-selling Confessions Madonna had one of the
most successful albums of her later career.
LITTLE WONDER
TRANSATLANTIC MADONNA
Stuart Price has described Madonna as the greatest hands-off producer ever, despite
the fact that she avoided most of the gadgetry on the studio console. Most people think
producers should be pressing the buttons but she doesnt pretend to do any of that, he
revealed to Mixmag. She just sits on the couch and tells you when youre not being very
good. Madonnas sense of humour, according to Price, is very English indeed. They spent
most evenings on the Re-Invention Tour quoting every line from The Office. Indeed,
when the pair glimpsed Ricky Gervais at 2005s Live 8 show, she and Price darted over,
Madonna shouting, Ricky, Ricky, Ricky, we know all your lines, weve seen all your shows
and we think youre really funny! Apparently, a poker-faced Gervais turned around and
said, Sorry, whats your name?
Gervais at Live 8
in Hyde Park, 2005
83
18/01/2017 12:10
 2 0 1 0 S

BITCH IM
BIG BUDGET MOVIES,
nNa
EMBARRASSING MISHAPS AND
A CELEB-HEAVY COMEBACK
HAVE FORGED YET ANOTHER
UNEXPECTED ERA FOR THE
QUEEN OF POP, BUT CAN
MS. CICCONE SUSTAIN HER
CREDIBILITY AND MAKE IT
THROUGH THE CURRENT
DECADE UNSCATHED?
R I K F L Y N N
Getty Images

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 Getty Images
Youre
gonna love this/
You cant touch this/
Cause Im a bad
bitch The opening
lines of Bitch, Im
Madonna, the third single from Madonnas most
recent studio album Rebel Heart, set out her stall
without reserve, regardless of the much-publicised
hiccups that the present decade has brought the
veteran entertainer thus far. Its electro-pop with the
club as its intended domain nothing unusual there
but with that title and those lyrics, its hard to shake
the feeling it was
purely built to
antagonise and THE MESSAGE IS CLEAR. SHES
theres a growing
STILL HERE. SHES STILL THE
POP_UP The video for Bitch I'm Madonna was painstakingly
mob of online
rehearsed and then shot in one night. In the rooftop scene,
haters more than
willing to take
SAME INDISCREET, SASSY,
up that particular STRONG-WILLED WOMAN
mantle. Aside
theyre not losing light its the sun coming up
from those that
air their enmity on social media in their thousands,
mostly in gutless anonymity, there are plenty of tabloid
journalists who see fit to knock Madonna down a peg
or two in plain sight. At times its constructive, but for
the most part its just plain spiteful, ageist bullying.
So how did Madonna get from the rallying cry of her
1982 debut US dance hit Everybody to this defiant
throwing down of the (fingerless) gauntlet?
Furthermore, the accompanying Jonas kerlund-
directed video filmed on the swanky top floors of the
Standard Hotel in NYC is equally confrontational
as Madge, sporting a girly pink studded leather
jacket, struts through corridors snogging topless
models, towel-whipping behinds as she goes. There
are nubile beauties fake-frenching naked in the bath
86
CPP05.2010s.For Print.indd 86
Still hardwired to the
zeitgeist: Diplo opens
for Madonna on the
Rebel Heart Tour
(with obligatory black tape nipple crosses), neon sock
puppets (why not?), a crew of achingly hip dancers
(with whom Madonna holds her own admirably) and
plenty of bohemian micro-happenings that conjoin
to storm our eyes in an immoderate assault of colour
and plenty of front and thats without mention of
the literal flash-flood of celebrity cameos a ploy that
seems almost obligatory these days. Collaborator
Nicki Minaj offers up her urban interruptions via a
widescreen TV, Miley Cyrus flips us the bird as only
she can (with both hands), the songs co-writer Diplo
is standing on the bar, Beyonc respectfully vogues
to the beat, and
Katy Perry, Kanye
West, Chris Rock,
Rita Ora and
Alexander Wang
all make their
show of support.
Deep into it
and she mimics
her many trolls,
haters and lounge-commentators via screams of Who
do you think you are! Its another new Madonna for
another new album as always but its a well-worn
tactic. The message is clear. Shes still here. Shes still
the same indiscreet, sassy and exceptionally strong-
willed woman, and everyone whos anyone right now
is happy to publicly stand aside to return her to where
she belongs back on top. Its nothing if not suitably
provocative. The song itself is neither here nor there
with clunky lyrics about pumping basslines, and
getting freaky but its rendered entirely secondary
to the statement. Once again Madonna is begging
the world to disapprove. Its either complete genius
or as some would have it just a tad embarrassing.
Either way, it went viral.
18/01/2017 13:12
 2 0 1 0 S

Flashback to the Eighties:

Getty Images

Madonna delivering 1983s

Burning Up with guitar in
hand in Miami, Florida,
January 2016

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 2 0 1 0 S

Getty Images

On set in New York's

Central Park, during the
filming of W.E.

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 Getty Images
Rewind to the beginning of the decade, and
Madonna was nowhere to be seen. Her closing
statement in a 25-year relationship with Warner
Bros, 2008s Hard Candy, had debuted at No. 1
in 37 countries, sold over four million, given her her
37th Top 10, won her two Grammys and spawned
the highest grossing tour ever by a female solo artist
(knocking her own Confessions Tour off the top spot).
While it was clearly business as usual on the musical
front, Madonna still had had to weather the seemingly
endless media storm surrounding the adoption of her
second Malawian child, Mercy James, something
that hasnt let up
to this day. On
top of that, she W.E. WAS HER SECOND MOVIE
was preparing to
IN THE DIRECTORIAL CHAIR,
face ex-husband
Guy Ritchie over
custody of their
BUT THE TABLOIDS WERE MORE
other son Rocco. INTERESTED IN HER LOVE LIFE
Whatever the
reality of her
personal life, it would be enough to break most
people. She had earned a break which in Madonna
terms, really only meant a break from music.
Fashion, fitness and philanthropy were the focus
as the decade got underway. With January came
an appearance at the Hope for Haiti Now benefit
in New York that featured a beautifully reworked
acoustic version of her 1989 hit Like A Virgin,
elegantly lifted by a water-tight choir and filmed
for MTV. A few weeks earlier shed appeared at
ex-husband Sean Penns Help Haiti Home fundraiser
in Beverly Hills, a (likely innocent) dalliance that
was bound to get tabloid tongues wagging. For
her intimate performance that night she strummed a
ukelele and sung La Vie En Rose solo (and in French).
CPP05.2010s.For Print.indd 89
Madonna performs
with dancer Brahim
Zaibat at Hyde Park,
London, July 2012
Her entrepreneurial activities continued in earnest.
Aside from the unveiling of her Eighties-inspired
Material Girl fashion line, launched with daughter
Lourdes, she released a range of MDG sunglasses
with Dolce & Gabbana and appeared in several ad
campaigns. On top of that, she cut the ribbon for her
global fitness brand Hard Candy Fitness, with the first
centre opening in Mexico City in November. Whats
more, she found time to make trips to both Malawi
and Brazil to follow up her humanitarian projects.
Madonnas main focus throughout 2010, however,
was her second movie production in the directorial
chair. W.E. was
a big budget
feature that told
the story of the
POP_UP Though Madonna was buried in work for W.E., 2010
finally saw a live CD/DVD/BluRay compilation from the record-
infamous fairytale
breaking Sticky & Sweet Tour, taped in Buenos Aires in 2008
romance between
American socialite
Wallis Simpson
and King Edward
VIII, the monarch
who put love before leadership and abdicated. Its
fair to say that the criticism that followed its release
was often needlessly harsh and sadly for Madonna
W.E. bombed at the box office with takings that
barely scratched the surface of its super-scale budget.
The tabloids were more interested in her love life, that
saw one companion traded for another when she split
with model Jesus Luz for one of her troupe of fleet-
bodied dancers, Brahim Zaibat.
The only real mention of music came at the years
close in December, with a Facebook tease: Its
official! I need to move. I need to sweat. I need to
make new music! Music I can dance to. Im on the
lookout for the maddest, sickest, most badass people
to collaborate with.
89
18/01/2017 13:12
 Madonna opening
the Super Bowl
XLVI half-time show
with a spectacular
performance of Vogue
As movie director she may have disappointed, but
a redeeming factor came with the singular Madonna
track on the W.E. soundtrack. Masterpiece, a William
Orbit composition and further proof of the duos
ongoing compatibility, would go on to win a Golden
Globe in 2011 for Best Original Song (and would
later feature on next album MDNA).
The awards ceremony itself would not pass without
incident, particularly with Ricky Gervais continuing
his ratings-boosting tenure as compere-cum-hired-
mickey-taker. No-one was safe from a roasting, but as
Gervais quickly discovered, one takes on Madonna
at ones peril. His
seven minutes, lasted for 12, and was taken down in eight. The industry
comment about
reported a 17-fold increase in demand for Madonna's back catalogue
her being just THE UNOFFICIAL LAUNCH
POP_UP The Super Bowl show used 500 costumes, was set up in
like a virgin, was
met with a sharp OF MDNA CAME IN FEBRUARY
riposte: If Im still
just like a virgin,
2012 WITH HER SUPER BOWL
Ricky, then why HALFTIME SHOW
dont you come
over here and do
something about it? she parried. I havent kissed a
girl in a few years on TV. Touch, albeit missing
the joke somewhat.
Masterpiece was a minor victory, but Madonna
was clearly finding it hard to keep up with her
insane schedule. Everything kind of converged in a
bottleneck, she told the Wall Street Journal. I ended
up finishing my film much later than I had expected
so, because I had already scheduled time with all
the producers and writers for my record, I had to
multitask and work on my record at the same time I
was finishing my film. And then somehow it worked
out that the record was being finished right around
the time the movie was coming out. Then I got talked
into doing the Super Bowl
90
CPP05.2010s.For Print.indd 90
Getty Images
In December 2011, almost exactly a year after her
initial Facebook teaser, Madonna announced that
her new album would arrive in spring 2012. The
unofficial yet seriously heavyweight launch of MDNA
came with the Super Bowl in February, where she
performed at the halftime show, viewed by over 100
million (higher figures than the actual game). It was
the most-watched item in US TV history.
I have 12 minutes and 40 seconds to do something
extravagant and exciting in the middle of something
thats quite sacred to all of America, she had told
the Los Angeles Times prior to the performance.
It seemed the
enormity and
the frightening
logistics of
playing such
a huge event
was enough to
weaken even
Madonnas steely
reserve: Im
more nervous about this than most things Ive done,
simply because its not how Im used to working,
she admitted. Im a perfectionist. I like everything to
be done just so, and I like to run things and run things
until people can do it with their eyes closed.
When it finally arrived, it was a gargantuan
production put together with regular choreographer
Jamie King as music director and aided by a creative
think tank that included multimedia gurus Moment
Factory and theatrical tour de force Cirque Du Soleil.
There were four songs in total: an epic, Greco Roman-
themed production of Vogue that cast Madonna
as goddess-ruler in gold robe and headdress
surrounded by legionnaires; her multi-national No.
1 Music that upped the urban with track-suited
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Getty Images

Launching into Give

Me All Your Luvin at
the Super Bowl show

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 2 0 1 0 S
Madonna and CeeLo
Green closing the
Super Bowl show
with Like A Prayer
breakdancers and segued into a mash-up with pop
pranksters LMFAO; MDNAs lead single, Give Me
All Your Luvin, dropped at the height of the show,
complete with collaborators Nicki Minaj and M.I.A.
and cheerleaders (to remind the audience they were
at an American Football game and not a Madonna
show); and finally a marching band led by CeeLo,
who duetted an abridged Open Your Heart/Express
Yourself medley with Madonna, before joining her in
a stirring rendition of Like A Prayer, again sung with
a gospel choir. The performance was solid albeit
obviously-choreographed but didnt pass without
controversy. This
time M.I.A. was
the troublemaker, MADONNA HAD LOST NONE OF HER
at the Super Bowl led to her being fined a reported $16 million by
POP_UP M.I.As raised middle finger during a deleted rude lyric
as she flicked the
chicken wing- ALLURE: IN A BILLBOARD POLL,
the NFL. It was settled in 2014 in an undisclosed agreement
eating masses of
America the bird
READERS VOTED MDNA THE MOST
I was looking to ANTICIPATED ALBUM OF 2012
collaborate with
women who I think
have a strong sense of themselves, Madonna said
afterwards. She could say that again
Aside from NFL bigwigs (and most of conservative
America) being none too pleased with that ill-
advised middle digit, the response was good and the
critics, for the most part, waxed lyrical: Madonna
is Madonna for a reason. And we saw it firsthand
Sunday, wrote the Los Angeles Times; Its Madonna
Louise Ciccones world, were just living in it, added
Billboard. It was a fitting platform for the launch and
pre-orders shot up after the show.
But Super Bowl or no Super Bowl, Madonna had
lost none of her allure: in Billboard's 2011 year-end
poll, readers had voted MDNA their most anticipated
album of 2012 with a whopping 42% of the vote.
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The albums title, a triple entendre and seditious
for its blatant ecstasy reference, is somewhat of a
red herring. Yes, there are plenty of reach-for-the-
lasers moments and EDM is its central thread, but
lyrically MDNA concerns itself in the most part with
her divorce from Guy Ritchie. Wake up ex-wife/
This is your life, begins I Dont Give A, before she
opines, Lawyers suck it up/ Didnt have a pre-nup.
I tried to be your wife/ Diminished myself. Its one of
several candid references to the split, none of which
are open to interpretation.
The album also marked the beginning of
Madonnas
reported $120
million, 10-year
deal with concert
promotion giant
Live Nation (and
label Interscope)
a fresh start
and likely to line
the pockets of all
concerned, at least in the live arena. Finances aside,
she seemed relieved to be back in the studio after
the tiring filmmaking process. Im using a different
part of my brain when I work on music versus when
Im directing a film, she told The Sun. There are a
billion more people on a film and I dont have that
visceral outlet of being able to sing, scream jump
around its very different. I love doing both but it
was nice to have the simplicity of songwriting after
three years of writing a script and directing and
editing and talking about my film, to sit down and
play my guitar and sing a song. I almost cried.
MDNA featured several first-time collaborations.
The first was with Parisian house DJ and producer
Martin Solveig, who took the reins for four tracks,
18/01/2017 13:12

Turn Up The Radio, Give Me All Your Luvin, I Dont
Give A and the M.I.A.-assisted B-Day Song (later
removed from the main tracklisting). Together they
concocted a mixture of Ray Of Light-era atmospherics,
uncomplicated electro-pop and punked-up beats.
Further raising the heat were Italian producers Benassi
Bros, who added euphoric four-to-the-floor sensibilities
into the mix with the uncomplicated dance-pop of
Girl Gone Wild and the neat Giorgio Moroder-
influenced Italo-disco of Im Addicted. Meanwhile two
more Gallic talents, Hardy Indiigo Muanza and
Michael Malih, worked on the mainstream stylings of
Superstar, notable for the fact that daughter Lourdes
sings backing vocals. Its risqu video treatment that
involved Madonna as a Terror Bride a mix of
traditional Iraqi bridal veil and US soldiers uniform
was deemed a stretch too far even for Madonna and
was abandoned.
She clearly felt happy in the company of European
producers again. I think maybe I just have more of
a European sensibility, she mused. People say that
about my songs as well. I like working with people
who are well-read and know whats going on in
the world with Martin Solveig we always end up
getting in to discussions about foreign films. When Im
working with people I cant just write music, I have to
be able to talk about life and the world, and art.
The Demolition Crew, Klas hlund and a few others
had a seat at the table too, but the general consensus
came back that the pick of the tracks were those
produced by seasoned Madge confidante William
Orbit. The minimal, haunting electronica of Gang
Bang is a league above with its stark build and the
bileful lyrics (almost certainly aimed at Ritchie) that
portray a jilted bride. Co-writer Mika took to Twitter
saying the track was weird as f***, underground
and lyrically cool; its amazing and bizarre. I love it,
she sounds so good singing words so harsh. Orbit
agreed. We were all dancing around the control
room It was a total atmosphere of spontaneity.
Dirty synths dominate Some Girls, with a nod
to Eighties clubland, while the classy Love Spent
another divorce song and vocally reminiscent of her
younger self deliver a punch last heard on Hung
Up. Theres even a banjo. Then Masterpiece gives
way to what is perhaps the pairs finest moment here,
Falling Free, a wonderful synth oddity that positions
Madonnas voice front and centre. Closing the album,
it provides a jarring simplicity and in many ways
stands alone in her catalogue. It certainly provides
respite to the fuller productions elsewhere. I like to
have something that is just slammed with noise and
sound and bass and drum, sensory overload, she
told The Sun. And then create something like Falling
Free, which is stripped back and all you can really
hear is my voice and the lyrics.
British critics and bloggers got a first taste of MDNA
at Londons Abbey Road studios. NME called it a riot
of uncontrolled emotions, and they were right on the
money. So how did it fare? While the record followed
its predecessor to the top spot in its first week (her
eighth album to do so), it plummeted soon after and
earned the rather dour title largest second-week
percentage sales drop for a No. 1-debuting album.
Orbit, as mentioned in our Collaborators feature
on page 63, perhaps imprudently aired his feelings
about the artists other pressing commitments in
public. He later apologised.
CPP05.2010s.For Print.indd 93
KEY REC r
01 MASTERPIECE
From W.E./MDNA (2012)
A high point on the W.E. soundtrack and later
included on MDNA, Masterpiece was somewhat of
a saving grace for both. Once again highlighting
Madonnas compatibility with William Orbit, the
track also illustrated that she could hold her own
without the need for vast productions. Her voice is
delicately seated atop Orbits plaintive beat, backed
by beautifully layered string-like soft synths. The
lyrics are a simple declaration of love. No wonder it
won Best Original Song at the 69th Golden Globes.
02 FALLING FREE
From MDNA (2012)
Following Masterpiece on MDNA was this sublime
synth curioso. On an LP that candidly addressed her
divorce with Guy Ritchie, as the albums curtains
close, this final track seems to lay those demons
to rest: Deep and pure our hearts align/ Then
Im free, Im free of mind/ I let loose, dont need
to know/ Were both free, were free to go. A
candidate for her track of the decade thus far
and more proof that Madonna is at her best when
offering uncomplicated expressions of the heart.
03 BITCH, IM MADONNA
From REBEL HEART (2015)
Madonna offers up her grand statement of the
2010s with this zeitgeist-chasing dancefloor single.
Trap pioneer Diplo is on production duties, Nicky
Minaj crashes in halfway through and the all-star
video is so far up in your grill its impossible to take
your eyes off it. Her 46th single to reach No. 1 on
the Billboard dance chart, Bitch, Im Madonna is
the perfect item to soundtrack her crusade against
ageism and sexism in the music industry and it
leaves the Spice Girls coughing in its dust.
04 GHOSTTOWN
From REBEL HEART (2015)
From its sensuous intro through to its crashing final
chorus, the second single from Rebel Heart evokes
a disarming post-apocalyptic mis-en-scene, mirrored
in its stunning Jonas kerlund video. When I
write with people, we always try to come up with
a theme, Madonna explained. This one is about
the city after Armageddon. The burnt out city, the
crumbling buildings, smoke still lingering after the
fire. A favourite of critics and fans alike, Ghosttown
stands up as a Madonna ballad of the finest order.
The critics were hardly awed by what they were
hearing. Large chunks of MDNA are shockingly
banal drably competent tunes better suited to D-list
Madonna wannabes, wrote Pitchfork. The Guardian
called it neither triumph nor disaster, while Rolling
Stone offered a deeper analysis: Theres something
remarkable about Madonnas decision to share her
suffering the way she once shared her pleasure.
Her music has always been about liberation from
oppression, but for the first time the oppression is
internal: loss and sadness. Hot and cold reviews
aside, MDNA made No. 1 in 40 countries and
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18/01/2017 13:12

Madonna and Miley
performing their hoedown
mash-up of Dont Tell Me
and We Cant Stop
earned Madonna three Billboard awards. Give Me
All Your Luvin became her 38th Billboard Top 10,
lengthening her lead as the artist with the most Top
10 singles in the charts history. The tour that followed
was the 10th highest-grossing tour of all time. MDNA
may have fallen well short of her A-game, but it was
none too shabby a result nonetheless.
A major milestone arrived as the year came to an
end. October 2012 marked the 30th anniversary
of the release of her debut single Everybody. She
celebrated onstage in San Jose while on tour, by
dropping to her knees in thanks to her fans, before
making a rousing
speech that
introduced a rare MADONNA PUT IN A SUPERB
performance of the
SHOWING AT THE 2013 GRAMMYS
including Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Queen Latifah as 33
track. I remember
couples exchanged their vows to promote marriage equality
the feeling to this
AND JOINED MILEY CYRUS FOR
POP_UP At the 2014 Grammys Madonna joined stars
day that I had
when I heard the HER MTV UNPLUGGED SHOW
song on the radio
for the first time,
she beamed. I was so low wondering when and if
anything good was ever going to happen for me.
Well be careful what you wish for is all I can say
With the madness of promoting MDNA behind
her, 2013 was a quiet year. She ventured out for the
GLAAD Awards, a ceremony set up to honour media
outlets for their representations of the lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender community. There she made
a speech that criticised the Boy Scouts of America
for banning gay members; she was, of course,
dressed in a scout uniform. Other philanthropic
endeavours included her Raising Malawi organisation
building 10 schools in Malawi and the launch of
#secretprojectrevolution, an off-beat short film that
addressed artistic freedom and human rights.
94
CPP05.2010s.For Print.indd 94
Getty Images
September saw the release of the MDNA live
album. The tour had grossed $305 million thanks
to 88 sold-out shows. Despite relatively poor album
sales, Madonnas share of live revenue still helped
elevate her to the top of Forbes List Of The Top-
Earning Musicians for 2013.
By January the tabloids were baying for blood, this
time declaring Madge try-hard as they taunted her
outings with new boyfriend Timor Steffens, 29 years
her junior. Unfazed, Madge put in a superb showing
at the Grammys, where she sang a rejigged Open
Your Heart, and soon after, joined Miley Cyrus for her
MTV Unplugged
show. Their
country-tinged
rendition of Dont
Tell Me merged
seamlessly with
Mileys own
We Cant Stop.
Needless to say,
Madonna couldnt
resist mirroring Mileys signature tongue pose.
One month later and news arrived of new album
plans. Im right now in the process of talking to
various co-writers and producers, Madonna told the
Globe And Mail. Further teases as to the identity of
those collaborators were divulged via Instagram (by
now her choice of online communication) where she
revealed Swedish dance guru Avicii was involved.
Then, in May, she made revealing mention of
working with US DJ Diplo: Diplo is a slave driver!
she joked. Got me working all hours of the night
in the studio. Diplo confirmed the rumours when
he told Idolator that shed requested him to deliver
the craziest record [he] had. We really pushed
the envelope she was up for anything, he
18/01/2017 13:12
 2 0 1 0 S

At the 24th annual

GLAAD Media
Awards in New York,
March 2013
Getty Images

95

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 Getty Images

In a Givenchy
matador outfit
at the Grammy
Awards, 2015

96

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continued. I love when an artist gives a producer
the confidence he needs to work with them, and
Madonna was very open-minded to my ideas.
All seemed well with this latest project, until the
years close when calamity struck and a wave of new
album demos including Bitch, Im Madonna, Rebel
Heart and Unapologetic Bitch were leaked. Madonna
swiftly took to Instagram to underline that the
purloined tracks were unfinished demos stolen long
ago, but when she later likened the leak to artistic
rape and terrorism, she was pounced upon by
detractors who felt her comments to be inappropriate
in the wake of the Peshawar school attack and the
Sydney hostage crisis.
Regardless, the timeline for the meticulously-planned
release was upended and there was little else the
fuming star could do but rush-release a six-track
collection onto iTunes, calling it an early Christmas
gift. In January 2015 The Hollywood Reporter
announced that Israeli police had arrested a 39-year
old man in connection with the leak, but the fiasco
was far from over. The following month all 25 tracks
of the Rebel Heart deluxe edition were out there, five
weeks before the official release.
Further controversy arrived in the run up to the
March release when Madonna was criticised for
re-posting fan-made memes of Martin Luther King,
Bob Marley and Nelson Mandela, their faces bound
by black rope to mirror the albums artwork. Her
apology came via Facebook: Im sorry. Im not
comparing myself to anyone. Im admiring and
acknowledging there [sic] Rebel Hearts. This is neither
a crime or an insult or racist!
She took yet more flack with what she described
as an inspired wardrobe malfunction, when she
revealed her posterior to the paparazzi on the red
carpet at the 57th Grammy Awards, a cheeky stunt
intended to highlight the ongoing problem of ageism.
She emphasised her feelings about the issue in Rolling
Stone: Its still the one area where you can totally
discriminate against somebody and talk shit. Because
of their age. Only females, though. Not males. So
in that respect we still live in a very sexist society
Women, generally, when they reach a certain age,
have accepted that theyre not allowed to behave a
certain way. But I dont follow the rules. I never did,
and Im not going to start.
Flashing aside, she looked stunning on the Grammy
stage clad in a Givenchy-made red matador outfit,
flanked by dancers in bull headdresses. It was the
most watched performance of the night. In the UK, she
took the song to the BRITS, a performance that made
headlines for entirely different reasons when her cape
failed to release and she took a nasty tumble it
hardly covered her in glory. More bad press followed
in April when her impromptu snog with Drake at
Coachella made the Twittersphere audibly wretch.
Later, when she literally got her leg over the Tidal
table to sign up to Jay-Zs streaming service, for many
it was more clumsy cougar than scrummy mummy.
To add to her woes, Rebel Heart had crawled out
the gates at a snails pace with two non-charting
misfires: the ho-hum electro-disco of Living For Love
(featuring Alicia Keys on piano) and the marginally
superior Ghosttown. It was her first album where big
hits were notably absent. That headline-grabbing
Bitch Im Madonna vid looked like it would turn her
fortunes around when the track made No. 1 in the
CPP05.2010s.For Print.indd 97
2 0 1 0 S
SEX, GUNS
n U
Madonnas MDNA Tour was one of her most controversial thus far. As a result, she faces two lawsuits; one
from an allied group of Russian activists who are claiming moral damage in reaction to her outspoken
opposition to St. Petersburgs ban on gay pride, her vocalised support for subversive female punk band
Pussy Riot and for her promotion of homosexual propaganda; the second comes from the French
National Front, who took offense when she superimposed a swastika onto the forehead of their party
leader Marine Le Pen during the Paris leg of the tour. Reports also surfaced that the star was booed and
heckled at the Paris LOlympia show when she finished her set after only 45 minutes.
More trouble arrived in Warsaw at reports that Madonna was planning to project footage of
the Warsaw Uprising in the Polish capital to highlight the anniversary of the 1944 event. To add to
that, religious groups also took offence at her use of religious iconography and her promotion of
homosexuality and nudity. Roman Catholic group Krucjata Mlodych (Youth Brigade) petitioned online
to have the MDNA show boycotted via their Dont Go To See Madonna campaign and promotional
billboards were defaced throughout the Polish capital with the sign of the Polish Home Army (the
underground WWII resistance movement).
She ruffled feathers back at home, too. At her Washington DC show she urged the audience to vote for
Barack Obama, referring to him over the microphone as a black Muslim in the White House. She later
clarified her joke: I was being ironic on stage, read a statement. I know Obama is not a Muslim
though I know that plenty of people in this country think he is. And what if he were? The point I was
making is that a good man is a good man, no matter who he prays to. I dont care what religion Obama
is and nor should anyone else in America.
And it didnt end there. Madonna had to defend herself from attacks from the anti-gun lobby for her
use of fake handguns in her stage show, and ignored requests to remove the guns from her Edinburgh
show in light of the Aurora movie theatre shootings. Its true there is a lot of violence in the beginning
of the show and sometimes the use of fake guns but they are used as metaphors. I do not condone
violence or the use of guns, she wrote in a letter to Billboard.
Lastly, to add insult to injury Elton John laid into the star, calling the tour a disaster, likening her to
a fairground stripper and saying her career was over. They have since made up.
dance chart her record-breaking 46th single to do
so but it still only limped into the Hot 100, peaking
at No. 84. Regardless of its lack of hits, Rebel Heart
debuted at No. 2 in both the US and UK.
The reason I wanted to call the record Rebel
Heart was because I felt like it explored two very
distinct sides of my personality, she told Billboard.
The rebellious, renegade side of me, and the
romantic side of me. Musically it does just that,
with yet another sizeable cast of producers and a
schizophrenic array of genres including pop, house,
Italo, trap and reggae. Guests included Nicki Minaj,
Nas, Chance the Rapper and Mike Tyson. Rebel
Heart was a mixed bag in more ways than one: better
than MDNA, but worlds away from her prime.
In May, Madonna attended the Met Gala dressed
in a black Givenchy get-up that left little to the
promised oral sex to anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton
POP_UP In October 2016, guesting at comedienne Amy
imagination. In her words a political statement
Schumers Madison Square Garden show, Madonna
in her continuing fight against ageism, to others a
desperate attempt to shock. Joan Collins called it
ludicrous on morning telly; Put. It. Away, tweeted
Piers Morgan but Madonna cared none. Im not
afraid to pave the way for all girls, she wrote. We
cannot effect change unless we are willing to take
risks. By being fearless and by taking the road less
travelled by. Thats how we change history.
In August 2016, the Material Girl celebrated her
58th birthday dancing the night away in Cuba. When
voted Billboards Woman Of The Year for 2016,
her speech silenced the crowd. Age is a sin in the
world of music, she declared. People say that Im so
controversial, but I think the most controversial thing
that Ive done is to stick around.
A challenging new era is upon us and Madonna
has yet again put herself on the frontline and that is
why she still wears the crown.
97
18/01/2017 13:13
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CPP05.Subs.For Print.indd 99 18/01/2017 08:56

 Getty Images
MADONNA WITH...
MIRWAIS POST-RAY OF LIGHT MADONNA REFUSED TO PLAY IT SAFE.
INSTEAD UNEARTHING A FRISKY, AND LATER RISIBLY RISKY,
FRENCH MILLENNIAL ALLY FOR HER MUSIC
M A R C A N D R E W S
I
love to work with the weirdos no one knows
about, the people who have raw talent
and are making music unlike anyone else
out there, Madonna informed Billboard in
August 2000 on the eve of the release of
her new album, simply titled Music. After the blissful
reception that met Ray Of Light, expectations were
high yet we were about to discover yet another
facet to Madonna. Leading up to Ray Of Light I was
in a quiet space, going through lots of changes, she
reflected. Then, almost without warning, I felt like I
needed to explode. I felt like dancing.
Madonnas Maverick Records employee and future
manager Guy Oseary had pitched his boss a demo
by French disco scientist Mirwais Ahmadza. With
William Orbit busy with Blur, All Saints and Mel C,
Madonna substituted Paris for London. After Ray Of
Light everyone was working with [Orbit], Madonna
complained. I had to move on. I dont want my
records to sound like everyone elses. Thats boring.
Half-Italian, half-Afghan and pushing 40, Mirwais
had been a member of Eighties new wave band
Taxi Girl. His electro techno prototype Disco Science
appeared on the Snatch soundtrack from her soon-to-
be-husband Guy Ritchie, with Madonna declaring her
new musical mentor the future of sound.
100
CPP05.Collab Mirwais.For Print.indd 100
Mirwais and Madonna
launching American
Life at the MTV studios,
New York, 2003
The initial Madonna/Mirwais alliance hit a
roadblock: Mirwais barely spoke any English. His
manager had to turn translator before Impressive
Instant, M&Ms first joint work, slid into view. Yet
working with the biggest English-speaking pop star
in the world didnt faze Mirwais. I was relaxed, he
told Keyboard magazine. I knew she was asking me
to do what I do, she was interested in me for my own
work, and not for my ability as a performer, or for
what Id done for someone elses songs. We were in
tune, on the same wavelength.
The collaborators second attempt infused his acid
rock with her epiphany about the healing power of
music, after attending a concert by her yoga buddy
Sting. Released in August 2000, a month before the
album of the same name, the Music single reached
No. 1 in 25 countries and still stands as Madonnas
last US No. 1. Entertainment Weekly noted the
Grammy-nominated single recaptures the simple
perfection of Holiday and brings her career full
circle. According to GQ, Music has turned her
into a critical darling for perhaps the first time in her
career. When they added, was the last time you
heard the word bourgeoisie on a No. 1 record?
Mirwais, rebranded one cool ass French dude by
Madonna, called Musics chart-topping success in the
16/01/2017 15:14

US a small victory for underground music proof
that you can make profit with creativity. With the
iconic video (directed by Jonas kerlund, who had
done Ray Of Light) introducing America to comedian
Sacha Baron Cohen via his Ali G character, Music
danced its way to becoming the second biggest
club hit of the decade. Only Madonnas own Abba
valentine, Hung Up, released half a decade later,
would be able to top it.
The Music album, dubbed fresh by Spin,
radical by Q and a lick of pop genius by Mojo,
was released a month later. While three Orbit tracks
made the cut, the bulk of Music was Mirwaiswork.
Electro-folk second single Dont Tell Me, co-written
with Madonnas brother-in-law Joe Henry, proved to
be one of her most endearing hits.
With the success of 2001s Drowned World Tour,
her first in eight years, it was as if Madonna could
do no wrong, thanks in no small part to Mirwais
input. Prior to the arrival of her ninth album, the pair
formulated a bristling techno title song for Die Another
Day. Hitting the Top 10 in late 2002, the Bond
theme would earn a Golden Globe nomination, two
Grammy nominations and usher her into the record
books as the artist with the most top 40 singles in the
US (44), beating Aretha Franklin.
The following April, Madonna released her new
single and album, both called American Life her
riskiest album sonically, lyrically and visually. It is also
only the second album of her career to be entirely
produced by one person, after Nile Rodgers on Like A
Virgin two decades earlier. It is something she would
ominously never repeat again.
American Life spluttered further into avant-garde,
lo-fi Euro-techno complete with vocodered vocals.
Nouveau British Madonna preached, and even
rapped, about life, love and lattes, while on the
cover she struck a curious pose as Che Guevara with
a gun. Although filmed long before the Iraqi war
broke out, the apocalyptic video again by Jonas
kerlund was released in the middle of the combat
operation, and Madonna was caught in an immediate
media storm. The singles success was undermined,
if not sabotaged by Madonna herself, who sensed a
shifting political climate and censored her own video.
Matthew Rettenmund in his Encyclopedia Madonnica
tome pointed out not only was it a total loss on a
major creative statement, it was a rare example of
Madonna flinching under a barrage of criticism.
Compounding the issue was that, despite hitting
No. 1 in 13 countries, the American Life album
Getty Images
proved to be no critics darling, with reviewers
mocking it as misguided, redundant and, at worst,
folkie psychobabble. Too much electronic
music has been used for fashion and is overly
popularised, Mirwais decreed to Electronics on
the albums release. Virtually foretelling his own
future, he added: It is time for the music to go
back underground. American Life, single and
album alike, sank swiftly, taking down with them
the menacing Hollywood and feelgood Love
Profusion as subsequent singles. Shifting just five
million copies, American Life tallies as her worst-
selling studio album to date.
The following years Re-Invention World Tour
cunningly repaired the damage by showcasing the
hits instead of her latest release and, somewhat
surprisingly, Mirwais was still initially inked to
produce her tenth album. I intended to do the bulk
CPP05.Collab Mirwais.For Print.indd 101
C O L L A B O R A T I O N S
of the record with Mirwais, she told The Observer,
and then it turned out to go in the other direction,
because the first song resonated so monstrously.
Produced by another cult dance name, Stuart Price
(then of Les Rythmes Digitales), that song, Hung Up,
would top the charts in 41 countries. Her new, less
angry, more fun album Confessions On A Dance
Floor was a virtual reboot, with only two Mirwais
contributions, Future Lovers and Let It Will Be, sneaked
on. Two others were siphoned off as bonus tracks.
The final death-knell to the Madonna/Mirwais
collaboration came when Its So Cool, a leftover from
American Life, was ungraciously dumped as an iTunes
bonus track for 2009s Celebration compilation. The
future had already shapeshifted. Yet when Rolling
Stone reassessed Madonnas 50 Greatest Songs in
2015, they ranked Music at No. 9 and Dont Tell Me
at No. 27. Miraculously, three American Life tracks
appeared too I Deserve It at No. 32, Hollywood at
No. 44 and Die Another Day at No. 50.
Whereas William Orbit had inspired Madonnas
spiritual side, Mirwais fostered her political resolve
although its questionable whether this was more
Guy Ritchies influence. Whats beyond debate is
that besides adding Music and Dont Tell Me to her
arsenal of hits, Mirwais irreversibly made Madonna
seem a little like a weirdo too, often wonderfully so.
I think provocation is a really important element of
pop music because without it, music isnt exciting,
Mirwais said of the futuristic, if sometimes flawed,
collaboration. Everybody wants to be underground,
to be the next Bjrk and for me thats the mainstream
now. Its more interesting to invert the process. It raises
the level of music and thats the future. Madonnas
interesting because she understands that.
LITTLE WONDER
BACK TO THE SOUND OF THE UNDERGROUND
After working with Madonna, Mirwais lent his production talents to NYCs electroclash
gods Fischerspooner for their 2005 sophomore album Odyssey, remixed Franz Ferdinand
and Mika, then zipped back to his roots in 2009 to produce/co-write the first all-Arabic
electropop album. Arabology was released in France by Lebanese singer/composer Yasmine
Hamdan as Y.A.S (despite including a rare sample from Kraftwerk, the album stiffed). He
also contributed to Uffies underrated debut album Sex Dreams And Denim Jeans. Lead
single ADD SUV featured Pharrell Williams. Not only was the track sonically an open
homage to Music, but the videos car-meets-cartoon similarities were hard to ignore.
While his second solo album, Production, was released pre-Madonna in 2000, Mirwais
has long been dealing with difficult third album syndrome. On his Facebook page in mid-
2016 he promised a new release some day soon
Mirwais accompanies
Madonna at Tower
Records, NYC, 2003
101
16/01/2017 15:14
 Getty Images

102

CPP05.on stage.For Print.indd 102 19/01/2017 15:55

 TAKE A BOW RECENTLY NAMED THE MOST
SUCCESSFUL SOLO TOURING ARTIST
IN HISTORY, MADONNAS LIVE
SHOWS ARE RENOWNED NOT
ONLY FOR BEING EXTRAVAGANZAS
MERGING MUSIC, ART AND
FASHION, BUT ALSO FOR BEING THE
ONLY PLACE TO SEE POPS PREMIER
PROVOCATEUR EXPRESS HERSELF,
UNFILTERED AND UNCENSORED
M A R K L I N D O R E S

CPP05.on stage.For Print.indd 103 19/01/2017 16:00

 Burning up the stage:
Madonna on the
Virgin Tour, 1985
Getty Images
WITH A JOURNEY
that has taken
her from the
dancefloors of New
Yorks nightclubs
to the stages of the
worlds biggest stadiums, Madonnas reputation as a
live performer is unrivalled. Her 10 spectacular world
tours have broken boundaries, pioneered the way live
music is presented and entertained millions, leading
to her being named the most successful touring solo
artist of all time by Billboard for the $1.31 billion she
has grossed from touring since records began.
Kicking off on April 10th 1985, Madonnas first
foray into the live arena, The Virgin Tour, was frothy,
fun and flirty, perfectly encapsulating her Boy Toy
persona of the time. In a show which appeared to be
tailor-made for her legions of wannabes, Madonna
thrilled her fans by bringing to life the sassy star of
her videos, performing all her hits in a series of outfits
bearing all her trademarks bare midriff, cut-off
tights, lace underwear, crucifixes and rosaries, all of
which were enthusiastically copied by her audiences.
As these live shows were the first time that
Madonna was actually seeing the scale of her
fanbase first-hand, the hysteria was overwhelming.
That whole tour was crazy, she told Rolling Stone. I an element of theatricality proved to be the impetus
played a small theatre in Seattle and the girls were all
wearing flap skirts and tights cut off below their knees
and lace gloves and rosaries and bows in their hair
and big hoop earrings. I was like, This is insane!
After Seattle, all the shows moved to sports arenas.
104
CPP05.on stage.For Print.indd 104
Despite the huge success of The Virgin Tour, plans to
extend it beyond the US were axed when newlywed
Madonna vetoed the idea in favour of making a new
album and film, enabling her to spend time in her new
Malibu mansion with Sean Penn. By the time she was
to head out on the road again, stadium rock was at
its zenith and she had to come up with something that
would enable her to operate in a field dominated by
acts such as Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Queen.
The Whos That Girl Tour saw Madonna introduce
elements of Broadway shows and Hollywood musicals
into her live act something which she would later
utilise on a much grander scale. By now a streamlined
sex siren, Madonna presented herself as a much
more polished performer, showing off her gym-honed
figure in costumes inspired by the characters she
portrayed in her videos. Madonna was praised for
her vocals and slick choreography, and the Whos
That Girl Tours production values were seen as a
genuine breath of fresh air. The stage incorporated a
grand staircase, a moving walkway and giant video
projections, injecting the element of spectacle to a
genre not known for its stimulating visuals.
The way in which Madonna had flirted with the
idea of playing different characters and introducing
for her next tour a show which would transform the
way music was presented in a live setting. The Like
A Prayer album had presented a more personal and
confessional side to her music and Madonna wanted
to carry that over into her concerts, incorporating
19/01/2017 15:55

BLOND AMBITION WAS
THE BLUEPRINT FOR
EVERY POP SHOW
THAT SUCCEEDED IT
music, fashion, theatre, dance and art to create
a show in which the setlist would tell a story and
possess more emotional intensity.
The result, 1990s Blond Ambition Tour, was and
still remains the blueprint, in many ways, for every
pop show that has succeeded it, the first to split the
show into acts, each with different sets and costumes.
With her headset mic, ponytail and Jean-Paul Gaultier-
designed conical bra Madonna played the erotically-
charged automaton, the hermaphrodite-flanked harem
girl, the Twenties chanteuse, the good-time gal and
the S&M siren in a show which combined her greatest
hits with visual cues from sources as widespread
as Cabaret, A Clockwork Orange and Fritz Langs
Metropolis. Given the cinematic nature of the show,
Madonna decided to immortalise it by having it filmed
and released as a concert film. However, that idea
metamorphosed into Truth Or Dare (aka In Bed With
Madonna), a revealing music documentary depicting
life on the road with her touring family.
Having found Blond Ambition physically and
emotionally exhausting, Madonna had vowed
never to tour again a decision she reneged on
when the controversy over her Sex book in 1992
overshadowed her Erotica album. Intensely proud of
the record, Madonna felt that heading back out on
tour was her best option of showcasing it properly.
Influenced by the circus and burlesque, 1993s The
Girlie Show was a gloriously theatrical homage to
Hollywood icons such as Marlene Dietrich, Audrey
Hepburn and Gene Kelly, the decadence of disco,
the heady hedonism of the Hair musical, inter-war
Getty Images
CPP05.on stage.For Print.indd 105
O N S T A G E
Weimar cabaret, the seedy S&M underworld of the
Sex book and the joyful exuberance of a carnival, all
presided over by a tragic Pierrot character revealed
at the end of the show to be the singer herself. Lasting
just three months and with costumes by Dolce &
Gabbana, it was the last time Madonnas fans would
witness her live for eight years.
By the time she returned to the stage in 2001
with the Drowned World Tour, Madonna was a
married mother of two and the new show revealed a
rebranded performer. The sexual overtones had been
ditched: instead, the Drowned World Tours shock
factor came courtesy of artfully orchestrated scenes of
ultra-violence, as images of Madonnas bloodied and
bruised face and a Manga cartoon rape scene were
flashed across the video screens, while onstage the
show was split into cyberpunk, geisha, cowgirl and
flamenco-themed segments.
Although visually impressive, Madonnas decision
to focus almost exclusively on the Ray Of Light and
Music albums for material proved to be something
of a self-indulgent mistake, as the more introspective
album cuts fell rather flat in the vast auditoriums
in which the tour was playing. Critically, the show
lacked the fun factor that had come to be expected
from the Madonna live experience, and it left many
fans left feeling short-changed particularly as this
was the first tour on which Madonna had enforced
her elevated ticket prices.
While the Drowned World Tour had been an artistic
statement, for her next global jaunt Madonna decided
to begin to make peace with her past and get back
into her groove. Following the underperformance of
her American Life album she almost certainly knew
that it would be wise to reintroduce some of the
classic hits back into the show, and this she agreed
to on the condition that she could perform the older
material with brand-new arrangements. It was an
idea which not only shaped the show, but also gave
it its name The Re-Invention Tour. Although this
time round it was billed as such, performing her
older material in remixed or rearranged form was
something Madonna had always done to try to make
the live show a more unique experience for her fans,
as well as keep them fresh for her while on long
AND THE WINNER IS
From her now infamous performance of Like A Virgin at the first MTV Video Music
Awards in 1984 to her homage to that performance to commemorate its 20th
anniversary in which she locked lips with Britney Spears, Madonnas appearance at
an award show is guaranteed to make it headline news.
Aside from the MTV Awards, at which she has delivered four more incredible
performances Express Yourself, Bye Bye Baby, Ray Of Light and her iconic 1990
rendition of Vogue dressed in full Marie-Antoinette regalia Madonna has graced
the stages to deliver show-stopping performances at the Academy Awards (Sooner
Or Later in 1991 and You Must Love Me in 1997), the MTV European Music
Awards (The Power Of Goodbye, Music and Hung Up), the Grammys (Nothing
Really Matters, Music, Hung Up with Gorillaz, Same Love/Open Your Heart with
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, and Living For Love), the American Music Awards (Take
A Bow with Babyface in 1995), the Brits (Bedtime Story in 1995 and Living For
Love, with that infamous fall, in 2015). Her most recent performance was at the
2016 Billboard Music Awards where she performed Nothing Compares 2 U and
Purple Rain with Stevie Wonder as a tribute to Prince.
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 O N S T A G E
jaunts. Im really not interested in just performing the
songs as they are on record, because you could just
buy the record if you wanted to hear them, she told
MTV. Also, even after a couple of months I get sick
of them, so I have to reinvent them. Id be too bored
if I just went out and sang them. Most of the joy of the
shows is the magic of creating them the theatre. Im
a perfectionist, I like hard work.
The tour marked a return to form for Madonna,
who delivered the spectacle her fans expected from
her. While on Drowned World she had been distant
and cold, Re-Invention brought her closer to her
audience, performing on a walkway that extended
out into the crowd; there were even dugouts in the
stage for a limited number of fans. The tour struck
a perfect balance between old and new material,
with Madonna showcasing American Life alongside
rearranged versions of hits such as Vogue, Like A
Prayer, Into The Groove and Papa Dont Preach.
So impressed was Madonna by the job musical
director Stuart Price had done on this tour that she
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RAYS OF LIGHT
It was being exposed to her fanbase for the first time during her Virgin Tour and
being shocked by the level of influence she had over them as they turned up
dressed as clones of herself that inspired Madonna to use her voice and influence
to highlight important issues. Writing with the tours musical director Pat Leonard on
the road, she penned her first social consciousness song, Love Makes The World
Go Round, and debuted the song at Live Aid in July 1985 her first appearance
at a benefit concert. Since then, she has used her musical muscle to lend support at
countless benefits including Rock For The Rainforest in 1998, Tsunami Aid and Live
8 in 2005, Live Earth in 2007, and Hope For Haiti Now in 2010.
In December 2016 she held an auction and performed her acclaimed Tears Of A
Clown show in Miami an evening of music, art and mischief, as she described it
in support of her Raising Malawi Foundation in order to raise funds ($7.5 million,
no less) to equip and staff a hospital in the country. Having first performed the show
in Melbourne in March 2016, the show a mixture of stand-up and rarely-played
album tracks was so well received that Madonna now has plans to perform it in
various cities to raise more funds for her charity.
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REBEL HEART FOUND
MADONNA NOW AT
EASE WITH HER
PAST AND PRESENT
hired him to co-write and produce Confessions On A
Dancefloor, spawning The Confessions Tour, a lavish,
state-of-the-art spectacle. From the moment Madonna
arrived onstage from an exploding disco ball, the
show was one showstopping performance after
another: whether riding a carousel horse around the
stage for Like A Virgin, hanging from a mirrored cross
for Live To Tell, dancing up a storm in a Travolta-esque
white suit for Music Inferno or gyrating on a boombox
for Hung Up, the high-octane attack on the senses was
Madonna at her very best and it made it the highest-
grossing tour by a solo artist of all time.
With Madonna now racking up record-breaking
tour after record-breaking tour she signed a deal
with Live Nation in 2007 worth $120 million, which
placed touring at the forefront of her future projects.
Financially the move paid off as 2008/2009s Sticky
& Sweet Tour became the highest-grossing tour by a
solo artist of all time, raking in $408 million, beating
her own record and yet creatively, she appeared to
have come unstuck. The show failed to match her own
high standards, with everything from the stage set to
the costumes and the setlist proving a disappointment
when compared to former tours. While Madonna had
always been a pioneer in the art of live performance,
Sticky & Sweet failed to live up to not only her past
live outings but also those of fellow pop divas who
had followed her lead and were now producing giant
productions of their own.
Whether it was the frequency of which she was
now expected to tour that lead to a decline in quality
or a lapse of imagination remained to be seen.
2012s MDNA Tour, which was launched with a
spectacular performance at the Super Bowl Halftime
Show, was visually a vast improvement on Sticky &
Sweet, but some felt that the show suffered thanks to
Madonnas insistence on showcasing her latest album
in this case, not her strongest effort. As well as the
lacklustre new material, reinterpretations of older hits
such as Like A Virgin and Hung Up also fell flat.
Supporting an album she was genuinely invested
in has always brought out the best in Madonna as a
live performer, and 2015s Rebel Heart Tour was a
major return to form. This time, she allowed herself to
reveal a warm, funny and more vulnerable side, and
now seemed completely at ease with her past and
present. Revisiting rarely-played hits such as True Blue,
Whos That Girl and Deeper And Deeper, as well as
tracks from her best album in years, the Rebel Heart
Tour proved that when it comes to putting on a show,
Madonnas immaculate connection to her audience
was stronger than ever.
19/01/2017 15:56
 Coming full circle:
Madonna rocks out
Eighties-style on the
Rebel Heart Tour
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At the Super Bowl Half The mirrored cross

Time Show with Nicky from the Confessions
Minaj, February 2012 Tour, July 2006
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 Getty Images

Madonna and
Warren Beatty in
the action comedy
Dick Tracy, 1990

108

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 F I L M S

WHOS THAT GIRL SHES OCCUPIED BOTH

ENDS OF THE CINEMATIC
SCALE AND BEEN ON BOTH
SIDES OF THE CAMERA
LENS. FROM GOLDEN
GLOBE-WINNING TRIUMPHS
AND REGAL BIOPICS TO
DISASTROUS REMAKES AND
ROM-COM BOMBS, WE
SURVEY THE HIGHS AND
LOWS OF MADONNAS
ON-SCREEN ACTIVITY
R I K F L Y N N

109

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 F I L M S
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ASIDE FROM
her 13 studio albums and
mammoth touring schedule,
humanitarian work and general
extra-curricular activities, Madonna
has somehow found time to add
just short of 30 full-length feature films to her on-screen
CV. In fact, there have been very few years in her
career thus far in which she hasn't been involved in a
movie in some way or other. And while she invariably
divides both critical and audience opinion, it goes
without saying that even the finest stock Hollywood
has to offer has felt the sharp end of the critics
pen at some point or other and by no means all
said A-listers have been vindicated with a Golden
Globe. Still,
notwithstanding
her successes on NOTWITHSTANDING HER SUCCESSES
screen, Madonna
ON SCREEN, MADONNA SEEMS
POP_UP On the soundtrack album that accompanied Vision
Journey, Foreigner, Sammy Hagar and The Style Council
seems perpetually
Quest, Madonnas Crazy For You shared space with Dio,
imprisoned by
and denigrated for
PERPETUALLY IMPRISONED BY AND
her failures. In DENIGRATED FOR HER FAILURES
many cases, shes
forced to carry
the can for an entire productions failure, regardless
of her role within it. In reality, when appointed to the
right role, shes an actor who can shine. And in one
particular case she had some pretty big shoes to fill
Its telling that Madonnas aspirations towards
film stardom were buy no means a late addition to
her portfolio. In fact, her first starring role was very
early on in her career and ran in tandem with her
music. Released in 1985 (but filmed far earlier in
1979), A Certain Sacrifice was a gritty low-budget
independent shot on Super 8, and one from which
Madge took home a mere $100 to cover her rent.
She would come to regret her participation in that
particular roughshod indie, likely in part down to the
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As New York City
grifter Susan in
Desperately Seeking
Susan, 1985
treatment of the films sexual content (and the brutal
rape scene). When the film was eventually released
no doubt a deliberate move to capitalise on her
fame in the wake of second album Like A Virgin she
attempted to buy out the director, Stephen Jon Lewicki.
When he declined, she tried (without success) to get
the film banned. She aired her indignation in no
uncertain terms as she exited a pre-release screening.
Even so, her resolute ambition to someday walk the
red carpet was plain to see. Turn back the clock to the
end of the Seventies and the young New Yorker was
desperate to land a role. She had written a three-
page letter to Lewicki in response to his newspaper ad
scouring the city for a female lead: I was born and
raised in Detroit,
Michigan where I
began my career
in petulance and
precociousness,
it began, offering
a chucklesome
glimpse into the
character wed
all come to know
inside-out. By the time I was in the fifth grade, I knew
I either wanted to be a nun or a movie star. Nine
months in a convent cured me of the first disease. Its
a revealing read.
A brief cameo as a club singer in rite-of-passage
movie Vision Quest (Crazy For You in the UK)
followed, but her first taste of real success came later
in the year when she landed her first major role in the
Eighties classic Desperately Seeking Susan. Co-star
Rosanna Arquette was cast as a bored housewife
who becomes obsessed with a grifter named Susan,
a felicitous role for Madonna. Not only did the film
introduce her acting potential to the world, but it also
brought pop masterstroke Into The Groove to its ears.
18/01/2017 12:54
 Getty Images
Dick Tracy
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Shanghai
Surprise
Desperately Seeking Susan took almost $30 million at
the box office and made it into The New York Times
Top 10 films of 1985. Not bad for a rookie.
The following year came the George Harrison-
produced flop Shanghai Surprise, notable only for
the fact that Madonna stars opposite newly-wed
sweetheart Sean Penn. Billboard described her
performance as unbearable; the less said, the
better. Moving swiftly on to an item of far greater
interest to movie fans, the screwball comedy Whos
That Girl, despite failure at the box office, was a vast
improvement. With Madonna cast as a streetwise
delinquent, it proved once again that the singer had a
flair for comedy timing albeit without the captivating
naivety seen in Desperately Seeking Susan.
Madonna was singled out by The New York Times
as one of the films saving graces, even though the
majority of critics turned their noses up: The question
posed by the films title was Whos that girl? said was in fact that of Madonna.
Rolling Stone. The answer provided by the box-office
receipts was, alas, The same one who appeared in
Shanghai Surprise and bored us to death. Madonna
took a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actress yet the
soundtrack flew off the shelves, selling over six million
copies. In 1989 her upward trajectory was slighted
by yet another dud. She received another Razzie
nomination for Worst Supporting Actress in the period
comedy Bloodhounds On Broadway a film that
cost $4 million but only scraped in $44,000 in ticket
sales. Many began to advocate she stick to music and
give the movie business a wide berth.
Madonnas film career is inconsistent, to say the
least, and the Nineties were no different. Dick Tracy
was a hit to get the decade off to a flying start.
Warren Beattys adaptation of the Thirties comic
strip featured Hollywood heavyweights Al Pacino
and Dustin Hoffman, and Madonna herself put in
a confident turn as Club Ritz songstress Breathless
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Armed and dangerous
as ex-con Nikki Finn in
1987's Whos That Girl?
Mahoney an embodiment of the quintessential sassy
blonde, with a fine stock of suggestive comebacks.
The film premiered at the Walt Disney World Resort
in Florida and went on to enjoy the third-highest
opening weekend figures of the year with well over
$160 million taken worldwide. Dick Tracy was
nominated for seven Academy Awards, three of which
it won. While none went to Madonna per se, her
performance was generally well received.
The plaudits continued with the 1991 Blonde
Ambition Tour documentary In Bed With Madonna
(Truth Or Dare in the States), a cinematic triumph
thats both eye-opening and funny. This pop-umentary
offered a candid glimpse at behind the scenes
operations on the road with one of the worlds most Of Congress, who praised the movie as a fascinating, under-reported
POP_UP A League of Their Own has been preserved by the Library
celebrated pop stars. It became, at that point, the
aspect of American sports history and both funny and feminist
highest-grossing documentary of all time, and further
prompted some to suggest that Madonnas best role
Woody Allens Shadows And Fog did nothing to
change their minds. Brooding, claustrophobic and
shot in black and white, this Kafkaesque neo-film
noir depicted the search for a murderer over a single
night. Filmed on the largest set ever built in New York,
it boasted an equally sizeable cast that included such
names as John Cusack, Jodie Foster, Mia Farrow, Lily
Tomlin, John Malkovich and Allen himself. Alas, size
isnt everything and unlike much of Allens output, the
film proved to be a little too arduous for most.
Something more light-hearted was required, and
1992s baseball comedy A League Of Their Own
was just the ticket. It also revealed Madonna could
stand up to any one of her big name co-stars Tom
Hanks, Geena Davis and Lori Petty. From home run to
universal ridicule, the erotic misfire Body Of Evidence
that followed, complete with cringeworthy candle wax
sex scene, was nominated for no less than six Golden
Raspberries (Madonna won Worst Actress).
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 F I L M S

The Next
Best Thing
Experimental film-within-a-film Dangerous Game
a co-billing with Harvey Keitel and James Rosso
was cued up next to try and recover what was
left of Madonnas reputation. Perhaps it was fear of
further ridicule that got the better of her, but having
seen the final cut she didnt attend the premiere,
and bad-mouthed the film pre-release. Director Abel
Ferrara blamed her for its failure; Madonna killed
it, he commented. Yet another lemon for the list,

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and perhaps the reason why two non-committal roles
followed: a singing telegram girl in comedy Blue In
The Face and a bit part in Spike Lees Girl 6.
Despite this run of box office mediocrity, Madonnas
dream role was just around the corner. When word
reached her camp that a cinematic recreation of Tim
Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webbers epic musical Evita
was in the offing, she was quick to act. She put pen
to paper yet again in an eight-page letter that assured
POP_UP Over Evitas complicated 20-year gestation the role
of Eva Pern had been linked with Barbra Streisand, Elaine

her suitability to director Alan Parker. Madonna

promised me from the very beginning she would give
Paige, Liza Minelli, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Meryl Streep

her all, said Parker. And she has kept her promise.
It was a role she was born to play, perhaps because,
as two powerful women, they both possessed a strong
sense of aesthetics and an irresistible charm.
It seems Parker had been right to have faith where
others would not. Despite protests in Argentina that
Evita would tarnish Perns almost saint-like image,
it was Madonna who made the breakthrough. After
several failed attempts to gain permission to film on
the iconic balcony in Buenos Aires Plaza De Mayo,
it was she who managed to persuade the Argentinian
president. I think up until that point, all he had to go
on was hearsay, she told Roger Ebert. The stage
version of the musical portrays a very one-dimensional
version of her. It doesnt show her in a very humane
way; it doesnt show any vulnerability, it doesnt
explain her past. Alan Parker had the chance to do
that in a movie, and I explained that to the president.
A League Of
Their Own
With relentless negative press and constant protests
overshadowing the film, Madonna made sure her
groundwork was thorough. An Argentinian journalist
whom I met in London has agreed to meet me in
[Buenos Aires] and arrange interviews with people
who knew or worked with Eva, as well as some anti-
Pernists, she wrote in Vanity Fair. Most are very
old and Im sure a good number will be suspicious
of me. I can hardly blame them if the me they know
is the one theyve read about in newspapers. I am
prepared to disarm all and get them to share their
deepest, darkest secrets about Eva.

EVITA-DREAM OR NIGHTMARE?
Aside from interviews, meeting historians and
immersing herself in Evas life, Madonna even went
as far as trying Evas favourite meal and visiting her
grave. She took two years away from music to focus
Evita was fated to be quite literally a bumpy ride. Firstly, huge crowds of screaming fans on the role, and it showed. Im in a state of shock,
shadowed Madonnas every move I have bone-crushing entrances and exits whenever I go out, she wrote when filming was over. I think it will take
she declared in a revealing diary commissioned by Vanity Fair. As a result, she referred to her hotel me months to recover and a very long time before Im
room as my prison cell and chose to sleep in a smaller room on the floor above to avoid the able to digest all that has happened to me these past
constant noise outside her suite. five months My life will never be the same.
To add to that, just as filming commenced, she fell pregnant. While some keen-eyed cinema-goers Eva Pern was without doubt a defining role for
noticed the odd change from scene to scene, she got away with it. Regardless, pregnancy was the
Madonna and it would go a long way to restoring
least of her worries: the protesters were everywhere. On the way to her hotel shed spied vicious
graffiti: Evita lives, get out, Madonna. The worlds press was relentlessly negative throughout, the publics opinion of her abilities. Its a relief to say
and the local papers supported the Pernist protesters. Ive got to stop reading the papers, she that Alan Parkers film is pretty damn fine, well cast
stated. I am portrayed either as a stupid c*** who doesnt deserve to play Santa Evita or a spoiled and handsomely visualised. Madonna once again
American movie star who has no interest in the truth I sometimes think my phones are tapped, confounds our expectations, wrote Time magazine.
and wonder if every employee in this hotel is on the take, she went on. There are camera lenses Love or hate Madonna-Eva, she is a magnet for
trained on me at every window. She even mentions that certain factions of the Argentinian press the eyes. Evita grossed $141 million worldwide,
tried to frame her for murder in a staged car accident. far exceeding its budget, and Madonna bagged a
When many would throw in the towel, Madonna was unshakable. None of this discourages me, Golden Globe for Best Actress.
she declared defiantly. In reality, Madonnas laborious research and all-round dedication to learning From the sublime to 2000s comedy-drama The
everything there was to know about Eva Pern meant that, by the time filming began, she probably
Next Best Thing, a major financial and critical disaster
knew more about her quarry than the majority of her detractors.
On March 20th 1996 Madonna finally stepped out onto the infamous balcony of the Casa Rosada thats best forgotten as was an ill-fated project
in front of thousands of people and sang Dont Cry For Me Argentina. I raised my arms and looked made with husband/director Guy Ritchie, 2002s
into the hungry eyes of humanity, and at that moment I felt [Eva] enter my body like a heat missile, horror-show remake Swept Away, a rom-com that has
starting with my feet, travelling up my spine, and flying out my fingertips, into the air, out to the tarnished the stars credentials ever since. Striking a
people, and back up to heaven. Bravo. pose is not the same as embodying a person, and a

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 Madonnas crowning
role as Eva Pern in
1996s Evita
role like this one requires the surrender of emotional
control, something Madonna seems constitutionally
unable to achieve, came the death toll from The New
York Times. Five Golden Raspberries followed.
The Noughties continued with more misfires, a
cameo in a Bond film, another documentary, two
films (and relative success) as Executive Director and
her directorial debut but for music fans, 2005s Im about her. When women are perceived as powerful
Going To Tell You A Secret was the one. This second
documentary followed the Re-Invention World Tour,
with her spirituality (Kabbalah) very much in focus.
From auditioning dancers through to shows in Israel
disrupted by protests, its a compelling production.
Next came two projects that occupied polar
opposite ends of
the spectrum. For
2006 animation WHEN AT HER FINEST, MS. CICCONE
Arthur And
The Invisibles, HAS PUT IN ONE PROFOUNDLY
Madonna took
on the voice of
MOVING PERFORMANCE AND SOME
Princess Selenia, ROCK SOLID SUPPORTING ROLES
before raising
awareness about
HIV in Malawi via 2008s I Am Because We Are, a
documentary that depicted the lives of orphans in the
country. Madonna the documentary-maker came,
saw and conquered the worlds biggest film festival
yesterday with a powerful polemic on the effects
of disease and poverty on Malawi, praised The
Guardian. Later that year she was in the directors
chair for the first big film production to come out
of her Semtex Films company. Despite a cast that
included Richard E Grant and several British soap
stars, Filth And Wisdom a comedy romance that
portrayed three flatmates trying to make ends meet in
London was slammed. Madonna would do well to
hang on to her day job, sneered The Telegraph.
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To her final film thus far and her second as director.
2011s W.E. is a biopic that told the story of the
relationship between American socialite Wallis
Simpson and King Edward VIII. Wallis was another
woman to whom Madonna could clearly relate; She
was a powerful woman, she told Harpers Bazaar.
So it makes sense that people would make things up
and doing something they arent supposed to be
doing, they are often portrayed as sexual predators.
The comparisons were obvious.
Several promotional outings for W.E. preceded
the Venice Film Festival premiere and a full-scale
US release followed a few months later. But despite POP_UP Madonna has a further directorial (co-)credit: a 17-minute short
dedicating all film from 2013, secretprojectrevolution, aiming to tackle human rights
issues via a social media project, Art For Freedom. See it on YouTube
of her energies
to the film and
burning up
$18 million in
the process,
W.E. received
a lukewarm
response. At
one end of the
spectrum, The Daily Telegraphs David Grittens
non-committal review called it a bold and confident
story about an American womans obsession with the
Windsors, while at the other, The Guardians Xan
Brooks skewered it as a primped and simpering folly,
preening and fatally mishandled. Ouch.
Its hard to fathom why Madonna gets such a hard
time for her flirtations with film when almost every
actor shes starred alongside has made a turkey or
two in their time. Not only has Ms. Ciccone put in
one profoundly moving performance and some rock
solid supporting roles when at her finest, but shes not
afraid to take on challenging projects and for that
we applaud her. Lets just hope the next shoe fits
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 Beautiful
Scars
2015
This item is only to be
found on the super
CPP05.Top Ten.For Print.indd 114
deluxe edition of
Madonnas most recent
Rebel Heart album
because a mere deluxe edition simply cant
cut the chart mustard these days, right? A
Capri disco-like setting provides the musical
landscape for a clutch of Ms Ciccones
most profound lyrics, serenely detailing her
stupid flaws. That unapologetic language
might actually be thanks to songwriter Rick
Nowels, previously her co-composer on
some of the more moving tracks on the
Ray Of Light album. This hidden gem does
suffer a tad from languid production when
sleek and Chic-esque might have worked
wonders. Nevertheless, Beautiful Scars is
tender, heartfelt and features a plaintive
vocodered male voice over the soft synth
strings that close out the track. It didnt make
the cut of the Rebel Heart album proper,
which for many was truly a criminal offence.
Time Stood Still
2000
For the film The Next Best Thing Madonna
opted to cover Don McLeans hippie opus
American Pie in swirly, chiming Orbital
fashion. Although her (much shorter) version
made UK No. 1, she endured plenty of
criticism for taking on such a sacred anthem
or perhaps it was all that shameless flirting
with co-star Rupert Everett in the video.
Tucked away on the same soundtrack was
a William Orbit/Ciccone contribution,
Time Stood Still. Again demonstrating
Madonnas strength
as a proud purveyor
of melancholy, it was
elegant and poignant,
with lyrics that literally
recited the films plot
so no need to endure
her Golden Raspberry-
winning role again.
18/01/2017 12:02
Like An
Angel
Passing
Through My
Room
2008
Never officially
released, this soaring lullaby to the finality
of life, love and light leaked oddly enough
on Madonnas 50th birthday, leading
some to suggest it was fondly intended as a
birthday present from the Queen of Pop to
her fans. Not to be confused with her other
two big like hits, this one is an ethereal
cover of the song that holds the dubious
honour of being Abbas last-ever album
track. William Orbit littered his usual library
of beeps, bleeps and strings all over this
eerie ballad, steering it confidently between
contemplative and futuristic. Madonna is
in fine vocal form with those Evita lessons
paying dividends years after her first, and to
date solitary, acting Golden Globe. We can
MADONNA SONGS YOUVE but pray one day Madonna issues what still
stands tall as her other Abba track.
(PROBABLY) NEVER HEARD
GET PAST THE CHART MAINSTAYS, THE NEAR Has To Be
MISSES AND THE DARKER BROODING ALBUM 1998
This empyrean bonus track, initially found
TRACKS ABOUT HER MOTHER, HER FAME, OR on the Japanese edition of her Ray Of Light
BOTH AND THERE STILL REMAINS AN ARRAY opus, might well have been Madonna
OF UNCONVENTIONAL MADONNA TRACKS reimagining herself as Bjrks older, more
knowing sister. Master Orbits knob-
THAT ONLY TRUE BLUE DEVOTEES MIGHT BE twiddling does its best to steer the track into
AWARE OF AT LEAST, UNTIL NOW the leftfield, yet his efforts are fortuitously
defeated by a resplendently dreamy,
M A R C A N D R E W S
sweetly-sung pop chorus. Restrained and
impressively refined, Has To Bes subtle
charms were later noticed by the powers
Beautiful Scars that be and the song
was selected as a
2015
1 BONUS ON REBEL HEART SUPER DELUXE EDITION very appropriate
B-side for Ray Of
Like An Angel Passing Lights eponymous
Through My Room second single
2 2008 UNRELEASED so that not only
Japanese fans could
Has To Be wallow in its gloom.
1998
3 BONUS ON JAPANESE RAY OF LIGHT ALBUM
 3
Time Stood Still
2000
Be Careful 4 THE NEXT BEST THING SOUNDTRACK Santa Baby
1999 1987
Not yet done with Be Careful The A Very Special
William Orbit as her 1999 Christmas charity
in-house producer, 5 RICKY MARTIN album featured

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Madonna was some unlikely festive
desperate to eek out Santa Baby cheer such as Bryan
the mileage from Ray 1987 Adams stomping
Of Lights success. Somehow she found a 6 A VERY SPECIAL CHRISTMAS ALBUM Run Run Rudolph, Stevie Nicks getting
few spare hours in her busy schedule to her gospel on for Silent Night and Bruce
write and record a duet with the biggest star Aint No Big Deal Springsteens cloying Merry Christmas Baby.
in the world at the time, Puerto Rican heart- 1984 Madonna opted to record Eartha Kitts
throb Ricky Martin. With Rickys popularity 7 B-SIDE TO PAPA DONT PREACH & TRUE BLUE naughty girl Christmas anthem Santa Baby,
surging across the globe courtesy of Livin and with a hint of Marilyn Monroe in her
La Vida Loca, Madonna pushed Orbit to Guilty By Association helium-nuanced delivery its joyfully dippy
venture into Latin-tinged territory for this sexy 1995 and unlike anything shes recorded before or
SWEET RELIEF II: GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION
Spanglish collaboration that will almost have 8 since; perhaps the closest is Supernatural, a
you believing the two stars were making spooky item from the Like A Prayer sessions
out while they recorded it. Mooted as a
Each Time You Break My Heart that ended up as B-side to 1989s Cherish
single, it was blindsided by record company 1986 single. The Queen of Pops version of Santa
UNRELEASED DEMO
politics and in its place Rickys dated duet 9 Baby was recorded virtually note-for-note
with Swedish singer Meja, Private Emotion, two decades later by none other than the
barely managed to scrape into the top 40. Superpop Princess of Pop, Kylie Minogue.
Be careful what you wish for, indeed 2005
10 FAN CLUB DOWNLOAD ONLY

Aint No Big Deal
1984
Surprisingly, there are only a handful of
unreleased tracks by Madonna that have
publicly seen the light of day over the last
four decades, such has been the creative
control the Material Girl exerts on her own
material. An early example is the post-disco
swirl of Aint No Big Deal, recorded in her
early days, remixed in 1984 and finally
released in 1986 as a fan curiosity on the
B-sides of both Papa Dont Preach and its
successor single, True Blue, as if it deserved
revisiting twice. Another lesser find is Your
Honesty, a demo-like track from the 1994
Bedtime Stories
session that her then-
manager remembered
fondly, and she
encouraged her star
client to include it on
2003s somewhat
slapdash Remixed &
Revisited EP.
Each Time
You Break
My Heart
1986
Its 1986 and
Madonna is at the
peak of her million-
selling powers.
What does she do in her spare time? She
uncovers a hot British male model called
Nick Kamen and with writing buddy/
drummer ex Stephen Bray, hands him a hit
single. Listen to Madonnas almost identical
version from the True Blue sessions and also
to Kamens 1988 single Tell Me, with vocals
from the boy toys gal pal and production by
Patrick Like A Prayer Leonard.
Superpop
2005
Music and American
Life producer Mirwais
Ahmadza snuck one
track onto Confessions
On A Dance Floor
Future Lovers, used as
the opener for her 2006 Confessions tour,
thrillingly intertwined with Donna Summers I
Feel Love. Two of his creations were deemed
unsuitable: one was Fighting Spirit (a bonus
track on the limited edition), but the one to
cherish is Superpop, probing the perils of
pop culture years before Gaga tried and
failed with Artpop while nodding musically
to Daft Punk and lyrically to Frida Kahlo.
Guilty By Association
1995
Madonnas brother-in-law, alt-country
singer/songwriter Joe Henry, is the bright
spark who penned the backbones for two of
her more enduring, if less glitzy hits: 2000s
Dont Tell Me and 2006s Jump (which also
sneaked its way onto the The Devil Wears
Prada soundtrack). One of her rare duet
partners alongside Prince, Britney Spears,
Ricky Martin and Stevie Wonder (for 2017s
Prince TV tribute), Joe cajoled his in-law into
joining him on a Vic Chestnutt song for the
lo-fi charity album Sweet Relief II: Gravity Of
The Situation, aiding musicians in need of
health care. Arguably the closest Madonna
has yet come to
country music, the
aptly named Guilty
By Association
attests to the fact she
can genre-hop with
the best of them
because she is the
best of them.

18/01/2017 12:02
 CAUSING A COMMOTION
THE QUEEN OF MTV WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO
CREATE A VISUAL IDENTITY AS SIGNIFICANT TO
HER LEGACY AS HER MUSIC. WITH OVER 70 MUSIC
VIDEOS TO HER NAME, MADONNA HAS USED
HER VIDEOGRAPHY AS A PLATFORM TO EXPRESS
HERSELF LIKE NO OTHER
M A R K L I N D O R E S

1983.2016

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 V I D E O S
A classic still from
Papa Dont Preach
ITS HARD TO
imagine, given the sheer magnitude
of Madonnas iconic videography,
that when she started out she was
regarded as a faceless dance act with
no videos and no photographs on
her record sleeves. Her early anonymity could have
understandably led anyone listening to ask to quote
one of her most famous hits whos that girl? Soon,
though, that question would be rendered null and
void, as within a matter of months that girl was MTVs
First Lady, a natural star who was seemingly born to
be in front of the camera.
A simple clip, shot in grainy black and white, of
Madonna lowering her sunglasses at the beginning
of the Lucky Star video heralded the arrival of the
woman who would come to define the video age.
As Burning Up and Lucky Star swiftly became MTV
POP_UP The wider publics first glimpse of Madonna sliding
mainstays, Madonnas in-your-face attitude and
her sunglass down her nose in Lucky Star was a nod to Sue
Lyon in Lolita and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffanys
streetstyle already saw her rivalling Prince and
Michael Jackson for airtime. By Borderline, she
was a walking billboard for her graffiti artist friend
Keith Harings fashions, the achingly hip downtown
diva who embodied the essence of New York cool.
Directed by Mary Lambert, Borderlines heavy rotation
on MTV fuelled the songs success, delaying the
release of Madonnas second album.
During the interim, Madonna and Lambert
collaborated on a pair of videos that would cement
her ascension into superstardom the girl-on-a-
gondola romp of Like A Virgin, which debuted her
infamous wanton bride persona, and the wry
pastiche of Marilyn Monroes Diamonds Are A Girls
Best Friend in Material Girl.
By the time Madonna returned in 1986 with a
sleeker new look, she had made the transition into
films with Desperately Seeking Susan, an experience
which altered her view on video making. As her
music was becoming more issue-led, she began using
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her videos as narratives to elevate the messages
contained within her music. In Papa Dont Preach, the
first of her mini-movies, she was compelling as the
vulnerable pregnant teenager. It was a similar story
with True Blues other videos, the sexually-charged
peepshow performer of Open Your Heart and the
Latin love story of La Isla Bonita.
Following a further detour into film with Whos
That Girl, the media began questioning why a star so
dynamic in her videos was unable to replicate that
onscreen presence to her film roles. 1989s Like A
Prayer, once again directed by Mary Lambert, was
by far her most controversial to date, with a racially
motivated murder, stigmata, Madonna kissing a black
saint on an altar and dancing in front of a field of
burning crosses among the scenes the media picked
up on. Badonna, as they called her, had gone too
far. The video was banned around the world and cost
Madonna a huge sponsorship deal with Pepsi.
The video may have hit Madonna financially, but
it was very lucrative in what it taught her about the
music business and the media. The acreage of free
publicity she received from the Like A Prayer debacle
instilled in her the controversy-equals-currency ideal
something she implements with great success to
this day. Whether intentional or not, Like A Prayer
signalled the most interesting, subversive period of
Madonnas career.
For the next five years, her videos marked her
out as a true maverick, constantly delivering bold,
fearless videos designed to provoke reactions, good
or bad, and incite discussion on matters important to
her. As the medium of the music video had evolved
into a major promotional opportunity, a whole new
generation of talent was emerging as a host of
talented creatives battled to make their marks as
videomakers. As the biggest, most daring star in the
world, Madonna had her pick of the bunch.
18/01/2017 11:55
 Lucky Star

Getty Images
Like A Prayer

Take a Bow

Express Yourself,, David Finchers futuristic fantasy,

examined the place of women in society and cast
Madonna in a variety of roles, from the power-crazed
businesswoman to the enslaved sex object chained
to a bed. Costing a cool $5 million, it was the most
expensive video ever made at the time. She worked
again with Fincher for Oh Father, a haunting video in
which Madonna relives her childhood and the death
of her mother with devastating poignancy, while
her close friend, photographer Herb Ritts, provided
some light relief with his natural video of a playful
Madonna frolicking in the surf of Malibu beach
with a bunch of mermen for Cherish. Shot in black
and white, Ritts fashion-photo-come-to-life directly
influenced the aesthetic David Fincher used for the
Vogue video. Just as the song celebrated Hollywoods
golden age and icons of the past, the video did
the same, directly referencing vintage films and the
photographs of Horst P Horst.
While Vogue had landed Madonna a partial
MTV ban and was only played after 9pm due to her

SPOTLIGHT: JUSTIFY MY LOVE

wearing a completely sheer shirt without a bra, it
was nothing compared to the controversy generated
by her next video, Justify My Love, containing S&M,
group sex and a lesbian kiss. It all added up to
Madonnas biggest controversy since Like A Prayer.
Citing hypocrisy, sexism and homophobia,
Madonna continued to explore those themes in her
Erotica video, a 35mm-shot kinky kaleidoscope of
footage filmed by Fabien Baron as she shot her
notorious Sex book. In the midst of a severe media
backlash due to the book, the Erotica era saw
Madonna at her most fearless.
She explored the dark decadence of disco in the
Warholian sexuality of Deeper And Deeper, Fever
saw her cast by Stphane Sednaoui as a provocative
Saint immortalised in silver body paint, the slick Far
Eastern futurism of Mark Romaneks Rain remains
Having already encountered a great deal of controversy when she teamed up with French director
Jean-Baptiste Mondino for her Open Your Heart video in 1986, Madonna once again enlisted his
services to helm the sexually-charged Justify My Love in 1990. I didnt have any concept, except
the idea that she was arriving in the hotel tired, broken; and when she was going to leave, she was
full of life, she was full of energy, full of everything, Mondino told Rolling Stone.
Shot in a slightly soft-focus black and white, the video featured a Parisian hotel, playing host to
an array of sexual play, referencing S&M and group sex with Madonna making love to her then-
boyfriend Tony Ward and kissing model Amanda Cazalet the scene that instigated the global ban.
Why are people willing to go and watch a movie about someone getting blown to bits for no
reason at all, and nobody wants to see two girls kissing and two men snuggling? Madonna fumed
during the US news programme Nightline. She went on to have the last laugh, though, releasing it as
a video single, whereupon it became one of the biggest-selling music videos of the year.

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 Getty Images
Ray of Light
one of her most beautiful videos, while Bad Girl
Girl,
David Finchers cinematic masterpiece, is her most
underrated video. Starring Madonna as an alcoholic
businesswoman with an appetite for casual sex, her
antics are watched over by a guardian angel (played
by Christopher Walken) who delivers a kiss of death
before she is finally strangled by a one-night stand.
1994s Bedtime Stories found a performer that was
mellower but just as captivating, delivering a set of
equally boundary-pushing clips. Melodie McDaniels
black and white video for Secret cast Madonna as
a Harlem nightclub singer; the lush romanticism of
Michael Haussmans Take A Bow pictured a Forties-set
love story between the singer and a matador; Mark
Romanek took a surrealistic, painterly approach to
Bedtime Story, a tech-assisted masterpiece which
transported Madonna into various surreal scenarios
and numerous websites all lay the prize at the feet of Vogue
with astonishing results; and Human Nature, her first
Madonnas greatest-ever video: Billboard, Rolling Stone
POP_UP Most people, it seems, are agreed on what is
collaboration with Jean-Baptiste Mondino since Justify
My Love, was an S&M-inspired kiss-off to Madonnas
detractors. She spends the clip in a latex catsuit being
forced into a box before emerging free at the end to
deliver a defiant Absolutely no regrets straight to
camera as if speaking directly to her critics.
Following a period in which she achieved success
with Evita and became a mother, a rebranded
Madonna emerged in 1998 with Ray Of Light, the
confrontational provocateur having been replaced by
a serene, spiritually-sound Madonna. Her stunning
comeback video Frozen saw her team up with Chris
Cunningham for a stark, gothic piece in which, almost
unrecognisable and dressed entirely in black, she
mutates into a rabid dog and a pack of ravens.
In complete contrast, Jonas kerlunds visionary
genius was in peak form for Ray Of Light which
featured a golden-hued Madonna dressed in a simple
indigo denim jacket performing the song as the
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Beautiful Stranger
Hung Up
transcendental rat race raged around her, while
Walter Sterns Drowned World perfectly captured
the paranoia and loneliness of celebrity. It also
caused controversy due to scenes of Madonna in a
car being chased by paparazzi being eerily similar to
those surrounding Princess Dianas death. The Power
Of Goodbye and Nothing Really Matters, a Memoirs
Of A Geisha-inspired clip completed Ray Of Lights
run of faultless visuals.
After the emotional intensity of Ray Of Light,
Madonna released two comedic videos. Brett Ratners
Beautiful Stranger was a hilarious face-off between
Madonna and Mike Myers Austin Powers character,
while Music, a send-up of hip-hops ghetto fabulous
culture, saw her bedecked in a fur coat, sipping
champagne and visiting strip clubs in a limo driven by
Sacha Baron Cohens character Ali G.
After the simple Americana of the beautiful
Dont Tell Me video, Madonna released a spate of
videos which seemed predominantly violence-led.
Guy Ritchies What It Feels Like For A Girl featured
Madonna staging robberies, joyriding, blowing
up a petrol station, mowing down pedestrians and
deliberately crashing her car into a lamppost. This
streak continued with Die Another Day, directed by
Swedish outfit Traktor. Costing $6 million, the video
saw Madonna under interrogation in a prison, with
depictions of violent beatings and fight scenes which
referenced the 2002 James Bond film from which the
song came.
With the war in Iraq playing heavily on her mind,
Madonna chose to release an anti-war video to
launch her American Life album in 2003. However,
the graphic depictions of the horrors of war and an
easily-misunderstood message forced her to withdraw
the video prior to release. The move derailed her
entire album campaign; instead of being led by one
of her greatest artistic statements, it was led by one of
her worst a hastily put-together video of Madonna
18/01/2017 11:55
 V I D E O S

Getty Images
Turn Up The Radio

singing in front of a backdrop of changing flags. Her

second video from the album, Hollywood, a satire
of the beauty industry, fared much better, featuring
the singer in a variety of glamorous set-ups inspired
by fashion photographer Guy Bourdain. So accurate
were Madonnas reinterpretations, in fact, that she
was sued by his estate for copyright infringement.
Having learnt her lesson, Madonna donned her
leotard and kept the inspiration on the right side of
homage for Hung Up, which presented a modern take
on disco, fusing nods to the Saturday Night Fever and
Perfect movies and Olivia Newton-Johns Physical with
breakdancing and parkour. The Johan Renck video
stood up among Madonnas best and helped put her
back at the top of the charts around the world.
As the music industry has changed in recent years
and videos have become less prominent, the glory
days of four or five videos per album have long gone,
with the now-accepted norm being a great lead video
followed by two or three will-this-do? efforts, as seen
with Confessions On A Dancefloor. 2008s Hard
Candy fared even worse. While the Justin Timberlake

SPOTLIGHT: AMERICAN LIFE

collaboration 4 Minutes received the big budget
treatment, it bore none of the brilliance of the past,
while the albums other offerings arent worthy of
being mentioned in the same breath as her classics.
In recent years great Madonna videos have
been slim pickings with her best videos featured as
installations in her live shows. MDNAs Give Me All
Your Luvin was a fun celebration of her Super Bowl
performance, while Girl Gone Wild (the first music
video by fashion photographers Mert and Marcus)
was a stylised homage to her early Nineties Erotica
era. The apocalyptic, poignant Ghosttown was an
overlooked gem while Bitch Im Madonna was an
unexpected delight and by far Madonnas best video
since Hung Up. Vibrant, unapologetically fun and
packed with attitude, it captured the very essence of
Madonna that we fell in love with 35 years ago.
Having filmed a video with a strong anti-war sentiment in February 2003 for the title track to her
American Life album, Madonna for the first time in her career cancelled a release, feeling that it
was too graphic, taking into account the political climate of the time.
The video was directed by Jonas kerlund, who also worked with Madonna on Ray Of Light and
Music, and was set at a fashion show with models dressed in military fatigues while screens behind
them depicted the horrors of war. Madonna bursts into the fashion show in a Mini Cooper and douses
the audience with water hoses, while at the end of the video a lookalike of George W Bush is seen
with a hand grenade which he uses to light his cigar.
I am not anti-Bush. I am not pro-Iraq. I am pro-peace, Madonna said. I have written a song
and created a video which expresses my feelings about our culture and values and the illusions of
what many people believe is the American dream the perfect life. As an artist, I hope that this
provokes thought and dialogue. I don't expect everyone to agree with my point of view."

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 DRESS YOU UP
FROM SAVVY STREET URCHIN
TO DESIGNERS DREAM,
MADONNAS SHAPESHIFTING
SENSE OF STYLE HAS SET
TRENDS, BROKEN BOUNDARIES
AND PROVOKED DEBATE.
BOLD, FEARLESS AND ALWAYS
IMMACULATELY TURNED
OUT, MADONNAS FASHION
EVOLUTION IS AS INTEGRAL TO
HER LEGACY AS HER MUSIC
M A R K L I N D O R E S
Eric Watson

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 F A S H I O N
By the time she scored
a smash
hit with
the song by which she would
most often be referred to, the
Material Girl had already inspired Lacy layers and
necklaces. She just puts a lot of junk on your wrists until youre
a generation of wannabes to exposed midriff: the
decorated like a Christmas tree, praised Madonna in 1985
Virgin tour, 1985
POP_UP Designer Maripol was the queen of bangles and
emulate her functional-rather-than-
fashionable style. Borne of poverty,
Madonnas early style consisted of crop-tops, rubber
bracelets, cut-off tights, baggy sweatshirts, a rag in
her hair and any other thrown-together garments that
she wore to dance class and she was therefore
rendered shell-shocked when her legions of fans
began copying her look.
It totally tripped me out to see people dressing like
me, Madonna told MTV. Id been dressing that way
for years and then, suddenly, it became this fashion
statement. Those things always happen by mistake
you cant premeditate something like that.
While her second album, Like A Virgin, was a
giant leap musically, Madonnas image also evolved
considerably thanks to the input of her friend Maripol,
a jewellery designer and stylist who conceived
Madonnas wanton bride look, dressing her in lace,
lingerie, crucifixes, pearls and her infamous Boy Toy
belt. I told her that with a song called Like A Virgin
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the most shocking thing she could do was to be as
unlike a virgin as possible! Maripol recalls.
Madonnas fashion struck a major chord with her
fans, who saw her as the perfect foil for their own
burgeoning teen rebelliousness and emulated her
flirtatious and playful style. Such was the demand for
Madonna-inspired trends that Macys dedicated an
entire floor to her called Madonnaland, selling sexy
lingerie (sales of which increased 70% after Madonna
began sporting it as outerwear) and Maripols
own range of jewellery. While teenage girls had
traditionally gravitated towards male acts in the past,
Madonna was the first female phenomenon and her
status as a trendsetter matched her music.
Always one step ahead fashion-wise, and an
inherent individual, Madonna had undergone a major
transformation by the time she released her True Blue
album in 1986. By now married and living in LA,
where she immersed herself in
Hollywoods glamorous heritage,
Madonna had moulded herself into
a Monroe-esque platinum blonde
in ultra-feminine, Fifties-style prom
dresses though she had given the
look a twist by incorporating items
such as the leather biker jacket
and faded Levis jeans which
had been associated with tough
male screen idols such as Marlon
Brando and James Dean.
I got sick of wearing tons of
jewellery I wanted to clean
myself off, Madonna explained
to the New York Times. I see
my new look as very innocent
and feminine and unadorned. It
makes me feel good. Growing
up, I admired the kind of beautiful
glamorous women from Brigitte
Bardot to Grace Kelly who dont
seem to be around much anymore.
I think its time for that kind of
glamour to come back.
With Madonnas makeover
garnering almost as much attention
A punky Madonna
with Sean Penn just as her musical output, it was
after the release of the beginning of a career-long
True Blue, 1986
fascination with her evolving style,
16/01/2017 15:36
 F A S H I O N

Everyone accuses me

Getty Images
of reinventing myself, but
the truth is that I just get a
new haircut every year,
which is something I think
everyone should do
which has often been described as a premeditated
effort of reinventing herself. Everyone always
accuses me of reinventing myself, but the truth is that
I just get a new haircut every year, which is something
I think everyone should do, Madonna later told MTV.
Its really good to change. Its really good for the
head, not to get stuck into one way of thinking, like
this is how I look, this is my image. It sort of wakes
you up and makes you dress another way, think
another way and carry yourself another way.
On the subject of hair, by 1989 Madonna had
gone back to her roots figuratively and literally with
the release of her stirring, confessional opus Like A
Prayer. Sporting cascading natural brunette curls
and minimal make-up in the video, her stripped-back,
natural look was the perfect visual for her deeply
personal new album.
Her style was soon switched again though as
Madonna landed the role of Breathless Mahoney in
Dick Tracy, requiring her to reach for the bleach to
play the vampy torch singer. Although she begged Crucifixes and a
director and co-star Warren Beatty to change the wedding dress on
character to a brunette, he insisted she went back to the Virgin tour,
May 21, 1985
blonde. Being blonde definitely is a different state of
mind, Madonna said. I cant quite put my finger on
it but the artifice of being blonde definitely has some
sort of sexual connotation.
Madonnas theory went some way to explaining
Maripol
why her style became much more bold and sexual As a struggling artist in New York, Madonna relied on her
at the dawning of the Nineties. Newly blonde, close friends to help her create the image which would
newly divorced and newly liberated, Madonna capture the imagination of the world. With performances
booked at New York citys hippest nightspots, the way
released Vogue, a dancefloor classic with a suitably
Madonna looked was as important as her sound. Luckily,
stylish black and white video and hit the road for close friends such as Keith Haring and Maripol were on
her groundbreaking Blond Ambition Tour, sporting hand to customise Madonnas outfits for photo shoots and
costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier. Madonnas corset and performances. Famed pop artist Haring would paint on
conical bra instantly became one of her most iconic Madonnas clothes, while Maripol would accessorise her to
looks, exemplifying the burgeoning synergy between the max, with rubber bracelets, crucifixes and that infamous
Boy Toy belt buckle.
music and fashion. The costumes made Gaultier a
My source of inspiration was always the street, which
household name, even with people who otherwise was why I did the industrial jewellery, says Maripol. We
didnt know one iota about fashion, such was their were in the middle of punk at that time, and the crosses
far-reaching influence. looked great with the chains and the safety pins. Then,
As the decade progressed and Madonna explored around the release of Like A Virgin, I was hired as her stylist.
more sexual avenues in her work with the Justify The pair worked together for the next two years, with
My Love video, the Erotica album, risqu magazine Maripol designing Madonnas jewellery and stage costumes
for The Virgin Tour, the 1984 MTV Awards performance and
spreads and the Sex book, people began to
advised on Madonnas wardrobe on Desperately Seeking
comment more on what she wasnt wearing. Feeling Susan and even launching her own Madonna-inspired
misunderstood, Madonna explained that she was jewellery range which was sold at Madonnaland in Macys
inspired by a European art-house sensibility where department store in New York.

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 F A S H I O N
The Gaultier red kimono
from the Nothing Really
Matters video and the
41st Grammys
Getty Images
Jean-Paul
Gaultier
The first time I saw Madonna was onTop of the Pops,
recalls Jean-Paul Gaultier. She was singing Holiday, and she
had a fabulous look I actually thought that she was English
because she was so stylish. She was into the same things that
I was doing at the time, like crosses, oversized jewellery, and
fishnets. She couldnt care less what others thought of her,
and I also saw how powerful she was. I was a real fan.
Madonna wore one of Gaultiers dresses at the American
Music Awards in 1985, and after seeing the Whos That
Girl Tour in Paris in 1987, he told her he could have done a
better job with her outfits and gave her some sketches. Two
years later, Madonna called him to ask him to dress her for
Blond Ambition. The union changed the relationship between
music and fashion completely and Madonnas infamous
corset and conical bra became one of her defining looks.
The Blond Ambition Tour was a real collaboration,
friendship, and complicity, he says. She was frightened
of nothing, and our vision was in complete harmony and
symbiosis. It is the greatest collaboration of my career.
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The fact that people
believe a woman is not
allowed to express her
sexuality past a certain
age is proof we still live in
an ageist, sexist society
sex and nudity wasnt a taboo. In demand as the
body that all designers wanted to dress, she was a
regular at Milan and Paris fashion weeks, supporting
designers such as Dolce & Gabbana, Gianni Versace
and Gaultier, for whom she walked the catwalk bare-
breasted in one of his most outrageous creations.
Offstage and off the catwalk, Madonnas style
was now becoming more reserved and took on an
androgynous feel, favouring trouser suits, berets
and her latest accessory, a gold tooth. Her visits to
the fashion capitals turned out to be partly business
as well as pleasure as she announced that Dolce &
Gabbana would be designing the tour wardrobe for
her Girlie Show Tour in 1993, putting the Italian duo
firmly on the map.
By the mid Nineties, Madonna adopted a more
luxurious, elegant style, a concerted effort to
soften her image in a bid to land the coveted role
in the film version of Evita. Appearing in ads for
Versace (complete with Donatella-style platinum hair
extensions), championing the newly-appointed Tom
Fords debut collection for Gucci at the 1995 MTV
Awards and dressing in classic Chanel for her Take
A Bow video, she sent a copy of the video to Andrew
Lloyd Webber with a letter explaining why she should
get the part. The plan worked, and in 1996 she
landed on the cover of US Vogue in character as Eva
Peron in her sumptuous Christian Dior finery.
Movie success and motherhood behind her, a very
different Madonna re-emerged into the public eye
in 1998 with her Ray Of Light album. The material
girl-turned-ethereal girl was singing about spiritual
enlightenment and had a brand new wardrobe to
match, courtesy of avant-garde designers such as
Olivier Theyskens, Miuccia Prada as well as old
friend Jean-Paul Gaultier. In a departure from her
previous attention-grabbing looks, Madonna switched
from a simple indigo denim jacket and tank top in
the award-winning video for Ray Of Lights title track,
to the extravagant gothic glamour of Frozen to the
Geisha garb she sported at the Grammys.
Millennial Madonna saw her embracing the cowgirl
aesthetic for her Music album, thanks to Dolce &
Gabbana, who dressed her in rhinestone-embellished
chaps, shirts and her infamous slogan t-shirts, on
which she emblazoned the names of her fellow pop
princesses Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue, as well
as her newborn son Rocco. Expanding on the cowboy
18/01/2017 12:00
 F A S H I O N

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event in scene-stealing, often very

revealing red-carpet outfits from
Marc Jacobs, Jeremy Scott and
Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy.
Challenging stereotypes and
The respectable pushing what is considered
author in tasteful acceptable for a woman in her

POP_UP The 2016 Met Gala dress, by Riccardo Tisci

Prada, 2003

for Givenchy, was partly inspired by the kinesiology

tape Madonna wears to help muscle fatigue on tour
fifties, Madonna is today using
her clothing as a means of
theme for her Dont Tell Me video, Madonna enlisted provoking discussion and making a statement on
Dean and Dan Caten of DSQUARED2 to make her a ageism, having been continually criticised in recent
leather cowboy shirt and mud-spattered effect jeans. years for not dressing in a manner considered to
Following Madonnas move to the UK and be age-appropriate. In 2016, her appearance was
her marriage to Guy, her style took on an lambasted after she wore a dress which revealed her
uncharacteristically conservative tone. For American breasts and her ass.
Life, she dyed her hair dark and sported Jeremy Scott When it comes to womens rights we are still in
military fatigues, while floral Prada tea dresses were the dark ages, Madonna wrote on Instagram in her
the order of the day for promoting her first childrens defence. My dress at the Met Ball was a political
book, The English Roses. Off duty, she was constantly statement as well as a fashion statement. The fact
photographed in Adidas tracksuits and tweed flat- that people actually believe a woman is not allowed
caps, the nadir of Madonna fashion as seen in her to express her sexuality and be adventurous past a
cringe-inducing GAP ads. certain age is proof that we still live in an ageist and
By 2005, Madonna was back in her groove, sexist society. I have never thought in a limited way
premiering Hung Up at the MTV Europe Awards and Im not going to start.This is what a 57-year-old
in Portugal. Emerging from a giant disco ball in ass looks like. Deal with it!
a purple leotard and leather jacket, with Farrah
Fawcett-inspired hair, it was a glorious return to The ever-fearless
form. Throughout the Confessions On A Dancefloor Madonna at the Met
Gala, New York, 2016
era and tour, Madonnas dazzling style was the
perfect accompaniment to the album. In Diane von
Furstenberg wrap dresses, D&G cropped bomber
jackets and mink eyelashes, she could have stepped
straight off the dancefloor of Studio 54.
The ultimate glamour girl, Madonna also returned
to Versace and starred in their Spring/Summer 2005
ad campaign. Madonna had once again been bitten
by the fashion bug and in 2006, after two decades as
a fashion icon, she made her first foray into designing
when she created a clothing line for Swedish high
street store H&M.
In recent years, Madonna has continued her
passion for fashion, continuing to star in ads for such
names as Versace, Dolce & Gabbana and Louis
Vuitton. She has also launched a clothing line for
teenage girls with her daughter Lourdes, Material
Girl, as well as her MDNA skin care range and her
Truth Or Dare perfume. More recently, her wardrobe
choices have occasionally hit the headlines for the
wrong reasons. The 2015 Brit Awards saw Madonna
suffer a humiliating wardrobe malfunction when a
tie on her Giorgio Armani cape failed to open and
instead of revealing Madonnas matador-inspired
outfit, her dancers pulled her off the stage.
Meanwhile, Madonna is always the most eagerly
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anticipated arrival, and the most talked-about star,

at the annual MET Ball in New York-fashions biggest
night of the year. Recently she has attended the

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 PROVOCATIVE, TENACIOUS AND BRUTALLY HONEST,
MADONNA HAS SPOKEN OUT ABOUT EVERYTHING
FROM MISOGYNY TO SEXUALITY AND RELIGION
R I K F L Y N N

I know Im not the I dont think sex is bad. I dont think

When Im hungry, I eat. When Im thirsty, I drink.
When I feel like saying something, I say it. On
being outspoken, to Los Angeles Times, 1994

greatest singer or dancer, nudity is bad. I dont think that being in

but that doesnt interest touch with your sexuality and being able
me. Im interested to talk about it is bad. I think the problem
in being provocative
is that everybodys so uptight about it and
and pushing peoples
buttons. On motivation have turned it into something bad when
it isnt. If people could talk about it freely,
I always felt like I was a freak we would have more people practicing
when I was growing up and safe sex, we wouldnt have people
that there was something wrong sexually abusing each other. On the
with me, because I couldnt fit in backlash surrounding her Sex book, 1992
anywhere. On childhood
Everyone
probably I think my THERE IS I couldnt get
my mind off
thinks that biggest flaw
is insecurity.
NOTHING the fact that
Im a raving a man gave
nymphomaniac, Im terribly REBELLIOUS up the throne
insecure. Im for a woman.
that I have
an insatiable plagued with
ABOUT TODAYS From my
sexual appetite,
when the truth
insecurities SOUNDS, AND perspective,
men since the
24/7.
is Id rather On her MUSIC NEEDS TO beginning
read a book. of time have
On her sex life
weaknesses BE REBELLIOUS. fought to get
on the throne.
TO HITS DAILY Men are
IF I CANT BE DARING IN MY
WORK OR THE WAY I LIVE MY DOUBLE, 2000 power-seeking
animals, so
LIFE, THEN I DONT REALLY SEE I think that everyone should get married why would this
THE POINT OF BEING ON THIS at least once, so you can see what a silly, man run away
PLANET. ON TAKING RISKS outdated institution it is. On marriage from power?
On Edward,
I dont see how a guy looking at a naked girl in a magazine is Duke of
Windsor after
degrading to women. Everyone has their sexuality. Its how you the release of
treat people in everyday life that counts, not what turns you on in her directorial
your fantasy. On pornography debut, W.E.

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 I want to make a lot of love. I dont think about money. It just gets
there. Up until a year ago I was still broke and living on the street. But
I still feel the same way. Money will never be a problem for me. If you
worry about it, its a problem. On money, to Island magazine, 1983
THE BIGGEST
REASON I WAS ABLE
TO EXPRESS MYSELF
AND NOT BE
INTIMIDATED WAS
BY NOT HAVING A
MOTHER MOTHERS
TEACH YOU
MANNERS. AND I
ABSOLUTELY DID
NOT LEARN ANY OF
THOSE RULES AND
REGULATIONS.
ON HER LACK OF
INHIBITION
I SOMETIMES THINK I Be strong, believe in freedom and in
WAS BORN TO LIVE UP TO God, love yourself, understand your
MY NAME. HOW COULD sexuality, have a sense of humour,
I BE ANYTHING ELSE BUT masturbate, dont judge people by their
WHAT I AM HAVING BEEN religion, colour or sexual habits, love life
and your family. On her mantra
NAMED MADONNA?
I WOULD EITHER HAVE I want to be

ENDED UP A NUN OR
like Gandhi and I AM MY OWN
THIS. ON HER NAME,
Martin Luther
King and John EXPERIMENT. I AM
VANITY FAIR, 1991 Lennon but
I want to stay MY OWN WORK OF
Being blonde is definitely a different
state of mind. I cant really put my
alive! On
greatness, Sirius ART. ON HOW SHE
finger on it, but the artifice of being
blonde has some incredible sort
of sexual connotation. Men really
Satellite Radio
interview, 2007
SEES HERSELF
respond to it. I love blonde hair but
it really does something different Poor is the When I IM A SHOWGIRL.
to you. I feel more grounded when man whose was growing AFTER 20 YEARS IN
pleasures
I have dark hair, and I feel more up, I was
ethereal when I have light hair. Its
depend
on the religious, in SHOW BUSINESS,
unexplainable. I also feel more Italian
when my hair is dark. On the power
permission of a passionate, IVE LEARNED TO
another adolescent
of image, Rolling Stone, 1989 ROLL WITH THE
way. Jesus
Christ was PUNCHES. ON
I WONT BE HAPPY like a movie EXPERIENCE
UNTIL IM AS FAMOUS star, my Better to live one year
favourite idol
AS GOD. ON WORLD of all. On
as a tiger, then a hundred
as sheep. On her life
DOMINATION religion philosophy, Spin, 1996

129

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 CLASSIC

MOMENTS

M A D O N N A
F A C E S T H E
F I N A L T A B O O
D E C 9 , 2 0 1 6
There have been so many seismic moments in the life of Madonna,
its sometimes hard to keep track. From her initial unschooled
transmission to the UK via the grubby Haienda dancefloor through
to her record-breaking, super-polished Super Bowl show last year, the
list, as they say, goes on. Any one of those myriad moments would do
the job here, but to close out this special celebration of the Queen of
Pop weve chosen a moment that in many ways outstrips them
all. When Madonna was awarded Billboards Woman Of The Year, she
delivered a truly compelling speech that decried ageism in the music
industry perhaps the final cultural taboo left undisturbed. In a year
when the worlds press had relentlessly attacked the star for her choice
of clothes, her body and even her very existence, forever referencing
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the number of years shed been on the planet, she rose above with
words that silenced them all. Watch it, its inspirational.

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