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Tag: Madonna

  • Infatueighties #74: Madonna’s “Crazy for You”

    You’re at the first school dance of your life. Mingling with your friends, acting like an idiot and busting out your silliest dance moves, the mood instantly changes when it’s time for the slow dance. Although you’re shy, your buddies goad you into dancing with this fat girl named Heather. As you move back and forth, she redirects your hands so they’re not around her upper back region, but almost on her butt. Somewhat horrified and an equal measure proud of yourself, you manage to complete the dance. Heather looks at you longingly, while you wish that her hot friend April had asked you to dance with her.

    I’d imagine a lot of these types of scenarios occurred throughout the country in the spring of ’85 when Crazy for You was a hit. It’s almost tailor made for those romantic clinches and slow dances. Madonna’s voice is tentative, unsure as the song pulses gently. “Two by two, their bodies become one/I see you in the smoky air/Can’t you feel the weight of my stare”. It’s practically cinematic, which I guess makes sense considering it came from a movie-the largely forgotten Vision Quest.

    This song marched up the charts in competition with one of Madge’s best known (and ultimately forgettable) hits, Material Girl. Crazy for You won the battle, peaking at #1 to Material Girl‘s#3. It remains one of Madonna’s best vocal performances to this day-the song got her nominated for her first-ever Grammy (she lost to Whitney Houston). More importantly, it was one of the first songs that got the general public thinking that maybe this chick might not be just another run of the mill flash in the pan disco singer.

  • MisenPOPic: The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Is A Fuckin’ Joke!

    Every year around this time, the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame nominating committee submits their list of finalists of which five artists will be selected for future induction.  I always get excited each time but then always forget that the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame is a fuckin’ joke.  Instead of inducting bands that have truly made an impact on popular music, what seems to happen is that Jann Wenner and his cronies go with the bands on their personal favorites list.  If they don’t like the artist,  accomplishments like album sales and influences on other artists still won’t matter.  Jann Wenner is such an egotistical bastard that he even inducted himself into the Hall Of Fame.  I won’t discredit his contributions as founder and editor of Rolling Stone, but shouldn’t he be inducted when he’s bit older, or maybe when he’s dead?  I understand that listening to music is very subjective, and we all love to argue about who’s deserving to be in the hall of fame as much as we do about best songs of a decade, or greatest guitarist, etc.  But of any shrine to an art form or sport, the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame has totally missed the boat.  I respect the following artists, but of any bands in the Hall Of Fame, they are the best examples of musicians whose overall impact is questionable: Traffic, Frank Zappa, Buffalo Springfield, Sex Pistols, and The Talking Heads.   Traffic introduced the world to Steve Winwood, but have they really ever produced a meaningful song?  Frank Zappa might have been innovative, but for a guy whose best known song is Valley Girl, does he really deserve to be in the hall?  Buffalo Springfield only had one album with Stephen Stills and Neil Young and have only one relevant song (For What It’s Worth)!  The Sex Pistols are also known for one album, and it’s a fact that Sid Vicious wasn’t even good enough to play bass, so he performed without his guitar even plugged in.  I personally like the Talking Heads, but they are more known for their unique videos on MTV than their actual music. Only the creme de la creme should be in the Hall Of Fame: those that no sane person could argue such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Michael Jackson.

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  • The Queen of Pop Hits the Half-Century Mark: Madonna at 50

    The bottom line is that controversy and shock value alone don’t sustain a 25-year career (although it’s gotten Britney Spears ten, which is stunning to me), so even Madonna’s detractors have to admit that she has talent. 26 years after the transplanted New Yorker (who claims the Detroit suburb of Bay City as her actual birthplace) sashayed onto dance floors nationwide with hits like “Everybody” and “Burning Up”, she’s still a major figure on the pop music scene. It’s very easy to see why: she’s got impeccable taste in producers, she writes a mean hook, she’s a musical chameleon, she understands the power of video in a way unlike very few other female artists, and while it’s fair to say she also understands her way around a publicity stunt, the amount of those has dropped considerably over the past decade-with only the Britney Kiss and the A-Rod Affair registering on the public radar since Madge dropped the cone bras and became Mama Madonna.

    Madonna circa 1985. Photo by Ninokol.
    Madonna circa 1985. Photo by Ninokol.

    I admire the woman as much for her savvy and pluck as I do for her ability to make a great pop single. Hey, she’s continued to make films for over two decades although she’s yet to release one that didn’t suck (to be fair, I’ve never seen “Evita”, but I did sit through “Body of Evidence”. She turned out to be quite the businesswoman, with her boutique label Maverick spinning off hits by the grunge band Candlebox and singer/songwriters Michelle Branch and Alanis Morissette, while also managing to retain Me’shell Ndegeocello for five albums that didn’t sell worth a damn, but established the bassist as perhaps the most talented soul musician in her age range-she certainly makes more intriguing albums that any other “R&B” performer.

    But then there are those irrestible singles. While her albums have been maddeningly inconsistent-especially since “Ray of Light”, the woman has a knack for indelible melodies and hooks-from “Holiday” to “Papa Don’t Preach” (still the strongest vocal moment of her career) to “Vogue” to “I’ll Remember” to “Music” to “4 Minutes”. Not many 50 year olds (except the triumverate of Prince, MJ and Madge…how strange that the three biggest pop icons of the past thirty years were born in a three-month span? Something was in the water in spring/summer 1958) can hang on a record with Justin Timberlake without sounding like they’re forcing the issue.

    The last thing you’ve gotta give Madonna props for is the fact that she’s broken down some pretty major walls. Spending her late teens and early twenties as a New York club kid was in all likelihood, the biggest factor when it came to the assimilation and appreciation of other cultures that makes Madonna who she is. Her unapologetic embrace of black, Latin and gay cultures (and we’re not just talking about the dudes she allegedly boned) is worth a round of applause, even though at times she seems like a culture vulture.

    I’ll post the ultimate Madonna mix at some point in the next week or so. As for right now, we here at MHW offer our 50th birthday congratulations to the most iconic female pop star of our-of ALL-time.