She’s the Queen of Pop. She’s (like) a virgin. She’s a dance diva. She’s an Earth mother. She’s Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone Penn Ritchie, and she’s been a musical icon for the past twenty-five years.
Much has been said about Madge’s body of work, not all of it complimentary. Truthfully, although I’m certainly a fan, I’d have to say she peaked early. In my eyes, her first album is still her best. However, each of her albums has at least a couple of strong songs, and, while her latest, Hard Candy, hasn’t exactly been critically or commercially praised, it’s not an altogether bad piece of work (dear Madonna: Justin Timberlake yes, Pharrell Williams no).
If I had 80 minutes to describe the essence of Madonna in a nutshell to a stranger (although, let’s face it, who doesn’t know Madonna?) These are the songs I would go with:
1) Get Together (from “Confessions on a Dance Floor”, 2005)
The only way I can describe this song is: this is the way it feels inside a club when you’ve completely lost touch with your life and all the everyday crap you go through and just submit yourself to the music. I’m certainly not the clubgoer I was back in the mid-Nineties (actually, I hate clubs nowadays), but this song reminds me of those transcendent moments. It was really the only thing worth keeping on “Confessions on a Dance Floor”.