MADONNA: PART 2 (with The Clive Davis Institute's Jason King)

Clive Davis Institute chair Jason King returns to Pop Pantheon for part two of our Madonna series. DJ Louie and Jason tackle the imperial period of the Queen of Pop, from Like a Prayer to “Vogue,” Erotica and Bedtime Stories.

Show Notes

For part two of our Madonna series, Clive Davis Institute chair Jason King returns to Pop Pantheon to discuss the imperial period of the Queen of Pop's career with DJ Louie. They discuss the capstone on Madonna's decade-defining run of records in the 1980s, 1989's Like a Prayer, her explosion into the 1990s with “Vogue,” 1992’s lightning rod Erotica and a singular record in Madonna’s discography, 1994's Bedtime Stories. Plus highlights from her cultural peak, like the genre-creating tour documentary Truth or Dare (1991), 1992's boundary-pushing coffee table book SEX and a complicated discussion about Madonna borrowing from other cultures. 

Join us next week for Part 3 which will cover Ray of Light, Music, American Life and Confessions on a Dance Floor.

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Creators & Guests

Host

DJ Louie XIV

Louie is a DJ, writer and pop music obsessive who has played in venues across the world and clients that include Vanity Fair Magazine, Zac Posen, The New Yorker, Fendi, Twitter, Louis Vuitton, and The Met.

What is Pop Pantheon?

The podcast where DJ Louie XIV and guests completely overanalyze all your favorite pop stars, then rank them in the official Pop Pantheon.

Welcome to pop pantheon on the podcast. Are we completely over analyze all of your favorite pop stars and then ranked them in the official pop Pantheon. This is your host DJ. Louis, the 14th. And we're here for the second installment of our Madonna series. I'm so, so excited for you guys hear this episode. I can't wait. Please don't forget to rate review And subscribe to pop Pantheon, wherever you listen to your podcast ratings and review, things really help us get in front of more people, especially on Apple podcast and for the foreseeable future. We're going to run a contest where we're going to read all the new reviews on Apple podcast for the month, pick, our favorite and our favorite will be read on are and you will receive the winner of that contest. A nice Legend dad hat. So get on there. Give us five stars. Nobody who doesn't give us much and thank you so much for the media at Pantheon pod and me a d. J. L, o u. I e x. I v e on Twitter and Instagram. Check out the Spotify playlist for this and every episode in the show notes of the episode. Throw something out there which I have mentioned on the show before, but my party. Gorgeous, gorgeous is coming up in Los Angeles. This weekend, it's tomorrow, Friday January 13th, at resident in downtown. Los Angeles, tickets are available in the show notes of the episode. I will post them on social media are available in my BIOS on social media. If you're a member of our patreon Pantheon, all access at the icon to your you get gas listed for the party. Please DM me on patreon if you want to be included in that, that's the way to get on the guest list. DM on patreon. You can get a plus-one for that as well. This is a queer pop party in case anybody didn't know in. L a, i d j, i throw with my friends, so I hope to see some of you. They're queers. I like people who love Pop, you're all. Welcome told me to see a bunch of you tomorrow night at gorgeous. Gorgeous. But I want to say, I am available to hire to DJ if you are having a wedding and event you work for a brand, whatever it is you're going to Club. I don't know who's listening to the podcast. Hire me, let's talk. I am vet. I'm a pop music Fanatic in there as I am on here and I would love to work with you. So get at me. You can email me at Louis at Louis XIV., w. I e a t l o u i e x a, or do you have me so whatever, let's talk. Just want to put that out there. All right, so this week's episode is the second part of our three-part Madonna series actually technically for parts cuz we are going to republish our earlier episode on her ladder work later in the month. But three new episodes on Madonna. Last week, we talked about the beginnings of her career. We talked about her first to record this week. We're getting into a really meaty time in Madonna's discography and Legacy and everything else. This is going to pick up with 1989, Seminole, Like a Prayer, we're going to talk about what we're going to talk about the blond ambition tour. Ever going to talk about Truth or Dare. We're going to talk about erotica in the sex book and bedtime story. So some of the biggest moments in her career, some of the most controversial moments in her car, Some of the mummies that really defines the trajectory of Pop, stardom for many other folks. Moving forward, really a trailblazing time. A really exciting moment and I can't get over how well this episode turned out. So, I am so excited for you guys to hear it. So, without further Ado, here is Madonna, part 2. Following the release of True Blue, which itself sold 25 million copies worldwide and spun off. 3 number one hits and five top. Five Madonna was on a truly explosive run in. Just a few short years she described herself as one of the preeminent, new pop stars of the 1980s knocking out a continuous stream of decade defining albums, and singles of notably expanding ambition depth and Scout placing herself at the Vanguard of the now, Coulter defining music, video format weaponizing controversy, to her Advantage like very few pop culture figures had before and beginning to establish herself as the queen of reinvention able to handle a more fit the times and set the tone for what was coming next in mainstream pop what she didn't quite have yet, though was cred button, classic Madonna for me, especially in this Imperial period of her career. When people underestimated the scope of her power as artistic or otherwise, she made sure to prove them wrong, album was 1989 Like a Prayer a record that sought to answer. Once and for all the question of whether Madonna was just a shiny pop Bobble or serious artist, able to turn her pop music into true Revelation, both aesthetically and thematically, without losing her commercial strength to achieve this. She turned once again to her true. Blue collaborator is Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray, but sought to make a record that told her story and built out her mythology. She took on her childhood specifically, her mother's death and her resentment towards her father's. Remarriage, I'm sweeping moving ballads promise to try and oh Father. She addressed directly the abuse emotional and perhaps visit called a volatile and recently dissolved marriage to actor. Sean Penn on till death, do us part and more into the friend. She was losing to the AIDS crisis on, pray for Spanish Eyes, sonically to she's wide Interscope. Considerably, collaborating with Prince on the simmering sweaty and spare Love Song and exploring Yellow Submarine, arrabito psychedelia, on dear Jessie. All of this amounted to one of the definitive part, or statements of the 1980s punctuated by a slew of the Century's greatest hits. Cherish and Pops definitive girl. Power Anthem Express Yourself, both of which hit number two as well as the album's and number one, pecan, title track and epic gospel inflected dance, pop rock of roof. Razor that in classic Madonna, fashion gloriously, walks the line between the sacred and the profane and stands today as perhaps her signature song and a career full of them. During this period of nearly endless, peace Madonna. Also never lost sight of how important it was to her personal brand to keep pissing. People off her extraordinarily divisive video, for a future burning crosses. The superstar having a romantic dalliance with a black Jesus figure and got her lucrative deal with Pepsi canceled her Juggernaut live spectacle. The blond ambition tour was under constant scrutiny for sexually explicit sequences by everyone from the news media Tavares police departments to the Vatican who tried to get the Rome tour stop canceled. The Seminole documentary was chronicled the store Truth or Dare presented as somehow both are actually narcissists and absolutely transcended. Utterly captivating Supernova era perhaps the single most successful three-year running pop history. Decided Thriller her Smash Hit Vogue. All the previous decade trapping in favor of the newly, bubbling house, music, scene and actively either elevated. Or cribbed depending on how you look at it underground, black and Latino queer, Ballroom culture to Sublime affect both supposed to record and the classic David fincher-directed video complete with the legendary choreography, notable dancers from New York's ballroom scene and Jean Paul Gaultier, outfit for Madonna's instincts, to balance the avant-garde in the mainstream, the centrists and the contentious had worked like a finely calibrated tool to this point her next move, the one-two punch of her fifth album 1982 lightning rod erotica and it's a company and coffee table. Book sex represented, perhaps her first true of miscalculation. If just in a commercial, says, the book picture pictures largely by famed photographer. Steven Meisel of Madonna and others are fully nude and engaging in boundary-pushing sexual scenarios, including BDSM and career sacks all against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic, and was instantly derided as vulgar as quote, going too far. By everyone from MTV to Tipper Gore in a way the controversy of the book subsumed erotica a much less commercially minded concept record about sex and romance Madonna and Vogue collaborator. Shep Pettibone along with Andre bats delving, further into house and Hip Hop styles that would define the early and mid 90s and featuring some of Madonna's most complex thorny and fascinating music. Today on the heels of sex erotica, the well-received by critics as a mere fraction of what Like a Prayer had three years earlier seen, as the first real symbol of her career, but did manage to spin off, a couple of top 10, including the number three, picking title track. And the number seven, peaking swirling, disco house, Banger, deeper and deeper. Erotica, and the impending Fallout from the sex book. Created a major tide shipped in Madonna's relationship to the public. Many of the traits that had been her commercial calling card to that point, or ability to push people's buttons, grab attention and headlines all in the guise of extraordinarily finely crafted accessible pop hits turn on her during this moment unfairly deemed out of touch with pop and falling back on sex, as a means of keeping herself relevant Madonna ever, The Savvy cultural Tea Leaf reader, spent the better part of the mid-nineties pivoting to a less combative stance while true to form never fully apologizing. Following erotica, she scored the number to hit with the Lucy all remember her most straightforward ballad in a years that could almost be classified as adult contemporary miles away from the explicit, sex and house, and Hip-Hop that to find the previous album called that up with her next to proper release 1990 Force bedtime stories, a singular record discography, which found her for the first time since Nile Rodgers on like a virgin, teaming up with established hitmakers like Austin, Dave Hall at nellee, Hooper to craft a softer and more mainstream conversant R&B record in the style of newly emergent, mostly black stars of the genre, like, brandy, TLC, Aaliyah and Mary J. Blige the record also begin to incorporate the flight with a star and a self-reflective mode reassessing past guises and attitudes and expressing. Hard-won wisdom about life, Fame. And success bedtime stories also put Madonna an interesting cuz they both righted the ship with a series of well-performing singles, like the slinky lead secret. But also seems to me the first time where she was operating as a mere working. Stiff, Popstar living head-to-head, working friends and start setting them and presenting questions about whether she would ever again. Be able to fully dominant culture in the Innovative way. She had done during the 80s, on me is no clear encapsulated. Then in the album's biggest, smash the baby face. Take a bow, a down, the middle Lush, and edgeless ballad that became our longest running and number one single ever. You've always known. YouTube. Of pivoting back towards the middle by starring famously in the adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's. Hit musical, Evita important pop stars who have ever operated in the space and frankly if she'd never released anything again, we'd still be thinking of her in that way but as it turns out she still had a few more thrilling tricks up her sleeve to come here with me to discuss the. Of Madonna's career. That Skelter, highest highs summer for lowest lows and contain the pound-for-pound quite a bit of her best music and most memorable. Pop cultural touchstones, is chair of the Clive Davis Institute of recorded music. Jason King. Okay. So I am here. Once again, with the chair of the Clive Davis Institute of recorded music. Jason Kang Jason, welcome back. Thank you. I'm so happy to be back or just go. Episode is a fan-favorite I literally cannot tell you how much incredible feedback I got on that episode. We're here today to talk about a person that arose From the Ashes of disco in some senses. Maybe that's the connection Madonna. And I've been obviously deep in a hole with her for the last few weeks, prepping for that. We're doing three episodes on her, because obviously, there's a lot of ground to cover and there's one. I think this is a really intriguing error for her because I was sort of laying out in the last episode that we see her. As the blueprint for modern pop stardom, right? Like so many ideas or conceptions that we have of what a popstar is, how their career supposed to progress. The choice, is there supposed to make how they're meant to evolve, the idea of reinvention, all traces back to her and of course, when something becomes that iconic we sort of lose What actually happened in the mix like in our Discord chat. For instance, when people talk about her, like, with the younger fans talk about her and I sort of know that she's the queen of pop and know that she's the blueprint. But I've had a lot of people say to me, like, I don't totally, like, see the Innovations or see what exactly she was doing because it feels so they record at this point. It's such a fact of life, it's hard to know. So that's part of what I'm hoping that we can do today and what we were discussing an episode 1 and I think this is a good area for us to dig into some of this a little bit further is for her. It all felt like it was just kind of a result of her really finely-tuned instincts about what she needed to do next, what people wanted from her next and perhaps how to advance the pop convert into the mainstream pop conversation, from a place of pure Instinct cuz she wasn't exactly following a blueprint. But I think this era and I'd be curious to hear your take on, that is a moment where that both reached its apex and also where per Apps. She For the First Time began to have a little bit of calibration issues in terms of how far to push it and how much the public was ready for what her instincts were telling her to do artistically. That's really well. Put, you know, I think of this whole era as her Imperial. And usually that's the phrase that people use right to refer to that moment. When she was like a popstar, can do no wrong and everything, they do not to the park. It's also a corporate pop moment for her in a different way. So the lineman with Brands like Pepsi Warner Brothers, she's doing the math, hit film like Dick Tracy, but it's also an era in which she clearly stands alone. I mean, when I was growing up and I was a massive Madonna fan, by the way, I can't even tell you how, how much of a fan I was, you know? But there was this debate when she started my run 9485, I was going to be bigger, Cyndi Lauper, or Madonna. Try. And I think this is the period where that's not even a question. More. I mean I think that's even the case as of like 87, right, but it's her, it's Michael Jackson is Whitney Houston. She's in this rarefied air this kind of a salon of pop superstardom and it's a really amazing moment and she feels ubiquitous she's everywhere and she is dominating culture. It's not just dominating the music industry or dominating the charts, but she's literally dominating culture. And I think maybe the only current equivalent of that would be somebody like, Beyonce today, that one Beyonce releases something it just feels like she taking over the culture. It's like, you have to weigh in. You have to have an opinion about it. You have to listen to it because it's everywhere, just feels omnipresent and that's what Madonna felt like in this era. To me, the parallel is very instructive. I think because one Beyonce shares Madonna's intuitive, sense of where to expand the scope of her Artistry and career next in a way that keeps people in Creed had a lot of that comes from a deepening of her Artistry which is something that I think Madonna's career as a move to move to move thing can be threaded in that way. It's like every project had to be something that expanded the idea of who she was, what she could do just far enough. So that people still felt, they were retaining, the essence of what they liked about her. But still felt like she continued to be interesting which is something that most pop stars really, really, really struggle with. Amy. We will have just put episodes out on Katy Perry, witness errors. That is a great example of someone that has attempted and been unable to really like calibrate that particularly right? But that I think is both Madonna and Beyonce's the source of their ability to stay interested. Stay relevant, is that instant, that intuition, that sense of how to do that, right? And the 360-degree version of Pop, stardom that Madonna really pie. Beyonce has sort of taken the Baton from her on. Is the idea that pop stardom is not just about having great songs or even being a great performer. It's about providing a vision for your stardom and for your work that is multifaceted. Multimedia visual all of those ideas and I think those are both ideas. That reach at least one Zenith of multiple for Madonna during this. And also where she makes some of her more interesting. And divisive, artistic Choice says that are fun to pick a part in that context as well. So I'm really, really, really excited about this and not to mention. I too am wondering what on a fan. And I have this weird thing with her, like, when I do these Deep dive, she kind of like intoxicates and takes over my whole life in this really weird way. Like when I watch Truth or Dare, for instance, like I can't explain it. She's so petulant she's so irritating. She Such a bitch throughout so much of it, but yet at the same time, she is like the most magnetic force. The most organized, crazy, appealing, X Factory thing. I've maybe ever seen a popstar be, you can just sense how much like everyone in her orbit. Both finds her, so kind of self-centered and Bitchie at all, the things that yet like cannot stay away from her like, wants to be in her or for, as long as possible. I experienced that too, with her in this particular era, most pertinently. I mean, I think you said it really well. And that's the thing that's hard for younger people to understand or know about Madonna. So, besides being 10 greatest, boxers of all time, incredible, songwriter and performer, and mixing low culture, and high culture in the oven and pop culture and everything else, she is someone who wrought this incredible energy into popular music in. So I think of her as being disfigured who embody the kind of transgressive energy? She was so Alpha and this is like all in and just like the kind of hood spa and confidence. Which in some ways stood in for our kind of raw natural Talent, everybody, Franklin write this was not a wreath of, this is not that nobody was expecting her to be either, right? But what she did coming up after Pat Benatar and Irene Cara of God, rest your soul and all of these other figure, even, even, Donna Summer. And all these other figures is she short of rock. Together this incredible energy. We had a lot to do also, with downtown New York. I'll do it. Early 1980s, the Andy, Warhol, and Basquiat some dance. Interior in the mud Club in all of that. Something was happening? Yes, she organized it all synthesize it all. And then I put that back out to us in this incredibly transgressive way. And she really defines the idea of the Popstar as someone who wield controversy write in order to up sales. And I think that's one of the things that also distinguishes her from a lot of other artists are certainly a lot of controversial ideas from Alice, Cooper, to whoever else, but no one did it like Madonna did, right? And she really defines the 1980s as a sort of New Era. Where pop culture itself is the Battleground for cultural debates right place in which you debate about feminism. You debate about race you debate about all of these things through the lens of popular culture. So we might not have had debates about feminism, her say in the 1980s, but we had them through Madonna. Write in digesting, Papa, Don't Preach in discussing Like a Prayer And discussing all of these songs, that's how we talked about the changing role of women and sexism and patriarchy. In the media, have us through Madonna and the example that she gave the sort of tough ambitious. Confident Alpha woman sexually voracious, unafraid to attack The Establishment to go after the Vatican. The pope like she was just like, not a victim in it anyway about Madonna and about this era in particular because it wasn't just that she dominated the charges that she was a dominating figure culturally. Like she was, you could feel the culture shift through your engagement with Madonna. Watching the videos and listen to the music and seen the way that you move through the world. She moved to the world with his authority. The confidence is open this and was incredibly powerful. It was instructive to a lot of people made pop music mean something more than it ever had before in a sense of she helped give it that meeting. She was one of a number of Artisans. That expanded what pop music could be in. Do, how did the other thing? I should put a pin in and we can come back to this. I know we both want to discuss it. You've gained a lot of black artists on which she was drawing quite a bit from. And that's another element of this error that I think will be interesting to parse apart, is the ideas of where the line between a elevating certain underground. Black art forms into a wider mainstream crossed over into some sort of exploitative saying, and I know that that's something that is a threat throughout her entire career, but is very, very present. And these three albums in particular, in many ways, so I'll be interested to return to that with you. My first question is probably speaking coming off of the 1980s Madonna, Like A Virgin. Shannon, and specifically, true blue, being kind of the record that I think, essentially, like launched her into the stratosphere, and put her kind of Above The Fray. What do you think coming into the, Like a Prayer are coming into 1989 that she still had to prove because I think one thing about Madonna is that she's constantly trying to prove doubters wrong about her. I think that's a huge source of inspiration and fuel for a lot of her choices in her career is constantly people say and your lesson she is going actually I'm not that I owe you can't do this. Do that to. What do you think at this particular moment? What do you think? She's still had to prove coming into this era? Look we're talking about the end of the 1980s 1988 1989. She's already considered one of the greatest entertainers ever cuz she's already, you know, one of the top selling artist of not only the decade but ever so she's already like in that Stratosphere. But I think the issue is that she's not seeing certainly by critics that I would say also would buy a lot of people our audience as more than really an Entertainer. She's not really considered an artist. Definitely not considered a notch or it's interesting that true blue that she has co-production credit but nobody thinks of her as a producer and nobody thinks of her as being solely kind of in control of her career in part because of the double standard of how women are treated in the music industry that even if a woman has co-produced. And even if she is in the studio and even if she is, directing the way that she wants her music to sound. Usually the man in the room is the one who gets the credit, and I think that was the case for Madonna as well. So she wasn't really taken seriously, despite the sales and despite how controversial and provocative a figure that she was. And I think part of the reason for that also is in popular music, We tend to equate a confessional singer-songwriter ISM with authenticity. And with substance and whizzed episode. Bob, Dylan is automatically for many seen as more authentic than let's say. Britney Spears. I hate to use those examples but, you know, that's the kind of where's the duet. It might have one but you know, what they called rock is, you know, basically this idea that Order to be taken seriously as an artist, you have to write your own material. You have to produce your own material and you have to demonstrate that right in a really kind of public way. So I think at this stage in Madonna's work, despite all the great songs, it's not that much this confessional or personal about her work or even introspective. You'll really learn about Madonna. The person per se from any of the previous albums and I think that was part of the other thing I would say about this era is that she besides, the incredible music, which is seem to keep hitting and it kept dominating the charts. Her film career was terrible. So, you know, it was like, what's happening Shanghai, surprise and 86, I mean, she won like the raspberry like the worst actress Award right? In like 86, Sean Penn. Madonna. Seafood. Jelly spine backstabbing bastard. Shanghai surprise on Broadway and speed the plough that got major headlines, but she was not considered necessarily good actress and her like, she's not horrible, but she's not really good either, and I know that must have caused her a lot of personal pain and drama, and let's not forget 1987, who's that girl? Which was just absolutely abominable. The only good film. She's made it her whole life really had been Desperately Seeking Susan, which, by the way, I asked my mother to take me to in 1984 from five whenever that was released. And my mother said that is way too mature for you. So that was the only gave ready credibility and you know, if I failed marriage to write so she had filed for divorce from Sean Penn in, like I think 87. So she was going through a lot personally but none of that really it showed up in the music at all. And so, I think that's part of the reason that she was not considered a serious artist or serious on tour in music. And I Think, Like, a Prayer changed all that. You feel like it would be a fair characterization to say. Ambition, for this record was a to do exactly what you're saying, which is to open up become more confessional, and also to help mythologize her story. I mean, that was one thing that I was thinking about listening to this record is like there's so much mythology surrounding Madonna in the story of her mother dying. The story of her thorny relationship with her father. Obviously, a lot of the playing around with ideas of Catholicism and they're almost like American Horror Story. If the goal was to go deeper for goal, was to be more self-revelatory. I feel like that was the approach that she was taking to this like, story of the breakup of the marriage, story of the relationship, with the parents and then helping to get chewy with the Catholicism that was the vision for this. As far as I could have said you. And that's a fair characterization. I think you should think of each of Madonna's. Successive albums, has Brand extra sizes and this was no different. And I think here was an opportunity to get people to understand really who she was beyond. Being a pop culture, fixture caricature, that she was actually somebody We thought about the world with dabs and introspection and that there was an actual figure there that people needed to learn about beyond the headlines of the divorce and the movies and all those kinds of things. Like to hear somebody actually has a story to tell and I think that's also important to think about what else was happening in the culture at the time. Like she herself and car space in the 1980s for a whole slate of more, ambitious women musicians to make musical statement. So Janet for that first album control comes and held, right? And not only after Michael Jackson's, huge success with Thriller. But also, after Madonna's success is making a personal statement with control in the context of state-of-the-art dance music, And so there's room suddenly for someone like Madonna to do the same, but you also think of the other spaces, she made for women like Jody Watley, Paula Abdul, and so on. And there's an opportunity there for her to distinguish yourself from the pack by going deeper. Essentially, instead of just making the music that now everybody else is making because she open the space for them to make it. Why not. Now, tell a different story about herself and I think that's what she wanted to do. Everything I say, but like a prayer, is it a lead single itself? Is this and stomach inspirational tune and you know that late 80s all about self-help. This was the era of self-help, the rise of the Oprah Winfrey Show still can't get any relief from the disease or switching, you have. But did you ever think you could leave should be right inside your own mind. Michael Jackson, doing man in the mirror. There's no man in the mirror type. Inspirational song on Thriller. Whitney Houston, really kick that off. I think with The Greatest Love of All. So, everybody's got to have their inspirational moments and so Madonna really doesn't have any on true blooper say that I would call Big Pop, personal inspirational anthems to those tracks. Then become her opportunity to observe the Zeitgeist this time and which everybody's moving in to self help and inspiration is happening on, talk shows on TV. What's happening in music as well and she's able to do it. I think, in a way you can also seriously connect to her ability to push the envelope and Court controversy, Like a Prayer is both controversial and inspirational. No one ever said NWA was like, inspiration to, all right, when they're courting controversy. But like me. He's finding a way to do both things at the same time. And of course, it's also the error of the parents music Resource Center or Warnings tip regard all that seven warnings on albums and all of that. So this is a really interesting time for her to go personal but also to make it at senec Universal and to make a controversial in is the Kinect back to her earlier work to there has to be a connection between like a virgin in Like a Prayer. Obviously that's her moment of controversy in 1984 and then he or she is building on that controversy returning to it and let it update its state-of-the-art way with Like a Prayer. I'm curious a to talk about like the aesthetic of it and like how she's advancing with Bray and Leonard on this record? The scope of her sound is one thing but also I think another thing that perhaps the Nexus to Like a Virgin and also connects it to what we were talking about earlier in terms of the way that she's able to court controversy and add layers to her music by not just having it be just about the music, but having it be about like with this song and music video, which is incredibly important here and all of the sort of subtext that she's able to add to these songs that aren't necessarily there on the service. Like we were saying in the last episode Like a Virgin is so fascinating. Because if you just pick a part the song, right, like the lyrics and whatever it's just a song about falling in love with somebody in them making you feel like it was the first time, you know what I mean? But there's so much more irony and shakiness and layers that are added to it in the way she performs, the song in the VMAs performance in the video, all of it. They're in the extra musical element of it. Do you feel like that operates here on some level like is Like a Prayer in and of itself, a song that is dealing with all of this layers of controversy and provocations? Or is that something that occurs because of the way that she's able to take what's happening in the song and flush it out and all of these other ways as well. First of all, it's clearly an attempt to create a song that has do a meeting. And I actually think a lot of that comes from her work, with no Rogers because I think Niall, you know, who produced the Like a Virgin album and that song and everything, he's someone who specialized in that in his work, with Chic in the Disco era, right? He could write these anthems, inspirational anthems, that could be read in different ways. They were what you consider polysemic, We are family. Could be a song about Sisterhood sung by Sister Sledge or could be about the lgbtq community. I'm Coming Out Diana Ross when she also worked on it could literally be about coming out at or could be about just like anybody having a good time even to this day. For two years later, those songs are still red differently by different audiences and people can take what they want out of them. That's a very masterful style of songwriting, right? To be able to write a song that can be read in different ways, just the way you were talking about, like a virgin. I mean, to me and 84, I only read like a virgin one way and I think my mother did as well as she was, she was quite clear about what that man to that. You know, we shouldn't be listening to it. But but like a prayer is the same kind of thing. I think it's inspirational dance, pop rock anthem because of the rock guitars and they are played by prince guitar. In the front is Prince But this song is really about a woman's relationship to God, right? And so, she's testifying about her closeness and intimacy with God. But clearly, you could also read it as her talking about a male lover, right? In her intimacy, with a male lover. So, what you says things, like, when you call my name, it's like a little prayer. I'm down on my knees. I want to take you there, I mean, that line, I'm down on my knees. I want to take you there, so she's praying rights is Jenny flattening to God, but she could also be doing fellatio. And people ready both ways. And when they were recording in the studio, Patrick Leonard who worked on the song with her was like, I don't really like that lyrics. I think it's really toeing the line in uncomfortable way, and she's I keep it and keep it in. So I think it was deliberate that this was the song that was going to be about spiritual connection with God, but it could also be about a carnal connection with your lover. And it was both things at the same time and that's part of the power of the track itself. That that's what literally empowers that I think. I'm so interested also, if we are going to read into the sexual subtext of this song Madonna at Prudential, sexuality often like a top, I don't know how else to say it. Like she presents herself as a cop. And this interesting in the context of this song to his presented as a form of surrender. I don't know whether he could see it as a form of the surrender to God or surrender to her. So I feel better I'm down on my knees and the desire to throw to be in a submissive role. I think that's kind of like what the god element or the start of mismatched, think of God, in a romantic lover. Gives this song is, it's presenting Madonna sexuality in a way that it doesn't. Can come across either before or after because she presents her sexuality in a very invulnerable way. A lot of times in her music like it really comes across as like she would never give her power up in that Dynamic and any situation that's often how it comes across except here, which is a rare moment where I'm not sure that seems genuine to me that this song is about surrendering to the mystery of God or the mystery of this sexual attraction. I don't really do but that's one of the things that always intrigues me about the song it makes it stand out from Powell she often presents herself on record in terms of her sexuality. It's a really good point. I mean, she definitely willing to serve and the openness of it. It's an open-ended text lyric and I think that's part of the power of it is unfinished and it's up to you to finish it and figure out the meaning of it. And, you know, this was also part and parcel of a lot of pop songs of that time to do. You know where that you could take a look like Steve Winwood higher love, like we talked about God, was he talking about it for a woman? He was in love with, like, it could go either way. And that's part of the power but there's something else that's going on in the song as well which is that just from a production standpoint it's a little bit different than some of the tracks on True Blue and they even anyting else that she'd had before, definitely a dance pop and rock tune with hard rock guitars. But the presence of the Gospel Choir which is the Andrae Crouch singers. He's different than anything she had done before. It actually part of an 80s tropas like Wheeling out the black gospel choir, you know, for the song that's inspirational, black female. You have to have that. I mean that's foreigner-i-want-to-know-what-love-is right? That became the dominant over Jennifer Holliday singing on the end of that song Madonna is doing that here but there's also something else which is that the song moves between these moments of like suspended light where Madonna Just Singing over. We're going to send them singing plaintively in this almost like a Hymnal away. Angels and then the beat comes in and it's like a dance song that everybody can rock with. It keeps moving back and forth between those two modes and I don't think she ever have a song exactly like that. So part of it is the change in production and she has largely worked with Stephen Bray before. Of course, she'd work with Patrick Leonard on The true-blue, but like a prayer doesn't sound like anything else in their catalog, but it's obviously been so inspirational for so many people and it still shows up as such an important song today. So controversial that it like lost her, her Pepsi deal and I don't even know how to exactly described it. I washed it multiple times. There's a lot going on here. So what would you describe is happening and you want me to describe? That's why I invited you here. So this video it was very slick. At the time, we had heard Like a Prayer first because it was on the Pepsi commercial cuz she had signed his endorsement deal with that sees as a first time we heard it. And so then Here Comes this music video and she is somebody who knows how to wield the Aesthetics of MTV like nobody else and they use controversy to open up his face. Come to dominate. I just remember that. I'm just feeling overwhelmed by the video because it was played all the time. It was constant. It was everywhere. You were forced to, listen to it, to hear about the debates and so on. But basically, the base camp for the fact that in the video, which is directed by Mary Lambert Madonna plays is who she is as young white woman who witnesses a woman being killed by a group of white man, but a black man was played by the actor Leon Robinson in the film, he's arrested for that murder erroneously. And so she has to become a witness, but she has to develop the strength to become a with this. And so the hive and there's a whole bunch of stuff that happened. She's kissing a black Jesus who comes out the gospel choirs rolled out. There's a whole lot of stuff that's going on and she's a horse dressed in a very skimpy way. And so on until all of this is happening with all this religious iconography and crosses and their Stigmata, others burning crosses, the Ku Klux Klan. So the commentary on rate it's like everything is going on at the same time. Vatican, condemned the vid. Never like, this is not going to work for us and then let's all these cultures and Pepsi walked out of their deal with her. Although she ended up apparently still keeping a millions of dollars. The video is almost more important than the song itself. In some ways, are these as important, right? Because you couldn't really have a prospective just on the song, unless you seen it with the video like Michael Jackson's Thriller or anything else ready? Cuz it's kind of like they complement each other, but this video is happening. It's just the thing a year after maybe in the same year as the film Mississippi Burning witches, Stars, Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman and deals with the Klu Klux Klan and racism in the South End social of the imagery seems cold from that. So it's not very topical and, you know, she's diving into an area that she has never really dealt with before in her music and so she's courting the controversy, but it's also Sun in light and happiness at the end because everything solved he solved, racism is what you're saying. She hasn't solved but certainly, you know, she walks off into the sunset with her partner. About interracial relationships. And so, in the context of American culture or even conservative, Reagan 80s and interracial relationships, Christianity religion. I mean, she's dealing with some very taboo subject and she's bringing them to the center of the American culture. By way of MTV. It's interesting because you want to celebrate that. But on the other hand, the video has an awkward field to me of her utilizing that for her own benefit. As we said, she is a master at weaponizing controversy for her benefit and in watching it in retrospect. I cannot help but see it in that way. Somehow like I just find it so awkward and I wrote In my own little bit resistance mommy. In terms of just the way that she is being like, look at me, I think racism is bad and I want to help be part of the solution to dismantle it. And yet, at the same time, it's all for her personal and Commercial benefit at the end of the day. And she comes across looking like the good person at the end of this whole thing. Absolutely white savior. The video is also fetishizes, is the black man in the video is skin. When it comes out as a Jesus, when they kiss each other, I mean, who is this serving necessarily, right? And yet at the same time that is what transgression look like and sounded like in 1989, you know? Now we can look back at that and it seems almost naive. And I was at the time I wasn't a huge fan of the like a video and it was not only so omnipresent and it felt kind of crushing because of your empty. He was playing it so regularly and you just couldn't escape it. But I just prefer the song More Than the video and I think in part because this is a very complicated time for race in America. I mean Spike Lee do the right thing. I mean, there are complex statements about race being made of that time. And this was not one of them, it was not It would be difficult for this white woman to have made that statement. I think it'll be better way than for sure. But you could have done something that would have liked raise the level of complexity. I mean, that's what makes it feel a little bit uncomfortable in retrospect more so than maybe even registered at the moment that it was sure. And the interesting thing is that self-serving and yet it's an Anthem, so, it's on behalf of a larger Community, right? To like, that's the nature of anthems themselves, and it's personal in some ways, right? Given that Madonna's brand is about her transgressing pastor religious upbringing and Catholicism and so on. So it almost made sense when it earned the ire of the Vatican. Because it's Madonna versus organized religion. And that's what the video is rehearse thing, and then that's literally what happened. And so it all felt like it was of a piece at that moment. But now looking back at it, it does feel quite strange but the song seems to have exceeded the video and Ways I would say, oh, I agree, obviously this song and she was everything that she aims were with it, as you mentioned Imperial, in the dictionary sense of the word, she is bigger than ever. This song, A sheep's, best expansion of the scope of what we think of as what she can do. Who she can be what she is. She of course, execute one of her classic reinventons in the music video as well. Buy diaper for the first time, very striking when you see that after watching the preceding eight years of how she appeared and how important being blond seem to all of that. When she releases the record Like a Prayer. Let's talk about the rest of the music on this album. This is a very diverse sounding album. I feel like overall, it's cohesive. See matically as we talked about, we're dealing with family. Were dealing with history, you were dealing with Reckoning with religious ideas, were dealing with the dissolution of the marriage, with Sean Penn but this record from versus many different musical styles. Can you talk about some of what this album is due? On both the musical and dramatic front. We can talk about Express Yourself. Obviously, maybe we should start there as the second single and another incredibly iconic Madonna song. I love it. And I think I loved it more than Like a Prayer. So this is a song that she and Stephen Bray worked on together. And it's interesting because Janet Jackson has Rhythm Nation, and there's a major sample of resignation of the title track, which is fine, the family Stone's, thank you for letting me be myself again. So there's this weird thing there were chatting is where he heads into the nineties and she in their producers jam and Lewis. I'm looking back to the late 1960s, early 1970s, Honda bridge in the errors but Madonna and see if they are doing the same thing as well with fly because I think both on express yourself and keep it together, their primary influence, like they went into the studio, trying to recreate a kind of Sly aesthetic, which to me means, you know, really powerful Rhythm n Groove but also kind of inspirational lyrics, Ematic lie about being your higher self, no more. So kind of like the 60s hippie influence ideology, And you were talking about this is like a self-help era in popular culture, totally, so it's bringing together a d self-help would like a late 60s. Early 70s, Express Yourself, The Staple Singers had respect yourself, you know, there's like all those kinds of songs of that era. So I think that's what they're going for anacor. Staying at the Madonna's own personal brand of female empowerment. And you know, the song is basically saying, you know women you got to go for yours, don't settle. Get the man of your dreams and help them. And I also helped a man, get to his ideal state to write. That is the underpinning Madonnas of the song. Elevates, it Beyond is kind of like a boilerplate salps on. It is so Madonna to not just be like, hey, ladies like let's love ourselves in like probably know it's like you literally to turn around to this fucking loser and like help him figure out how to express himself, emotionally make she's toying with gender roles. Essentially in this way where she's going like the issue here, ladies is that men do now Know how to express their emotions. So Express Yourself is both about a woman, conveying that to a man and expressing herself to a man, and then it's trying to teach a man to express himself. You got to make him Express, how you feel is like they were afraid. She's so smart, you know, this is the thing about her, she's so much smarter than your average Bob. Sorry, there's so much going on here and yet, without ever using a pop sensibility. In terms of the sly thing, what I find really interesting about this record in particular, is the original version has so many clear Illusions to that period of Music? The canonical version of this song is the Shep Pettibone remix of it, which is a really cute moment. So we didn't episode recently on Debbie Gibson. Tiffany Taylor, Dayne and Belinda Carlisle as a group, as a group of pop stars, who were really big from like 1986 to 1989 and then like I couldn't get out of the 80s. Like we're unable to get themselves out of it 80s in various ways and to me like a prayer is Madonna's last. Truly like 80s sounding album, like the aesthetic of this album are very much routine. In state-of-the-art 1980 sounds. And one of the ways that she moves her ass out of the 80s is by being willing to be on the Vanguard of like ditching, those ascetics entirely. And as we're going to get to when she does that is with Shep Pettibone En, Vogue the next year. That is when she is all of those canonical, 80 sounds and start adopting sounds of 90's, House music essentially to help modernize and bring her into a new decade, but it's actually the express yourself remix with Shep Pettibone. That is the first moment that she does. Cuz that remix is incorporating a lot of the same production. Aesthetics that Bogle eventually turn on one year later. 18 karat gold. Yeah, I'm so glad that you mention that because it was the album came out and bought the album by the way. The album at the smell out of a people were right. It was doubting like Patchouli so I can smell it. Like right now I would like a patchouli album is very strange when that song came out, the video was just stunning right directed by David Fincher, early in his career, in the music video for I'm by incorporating like it was incredible. I mean, that video aesthetically in terms of color, saturation in terms, like he was supposed to buy the most expensive videos. He's not the most expensive video ever made at that time. But he was like, referencing Metropolis by Fritz Lang. The classic German expressionist movie of the 1920s. The set design. I mean, all the things that are happening in the film, the dog collar in the mouth, like, it's just, it's sexual, it's a rhotic, it's sensual at Slinky. I mean, Absolutely incredible. So I think part of the success of that song, obviously had to do with a video, but, you know, she was really trying to marry a lot of different eras, right from the seventies and eighties, bring it into the 90s that song came out with a video. That is so much better with the record. We wanted to get that until I think you could only get it on like 7 inch because it was the shop had about next. I wasn't on the actual record, a corset, but we were hearing something powerful about that and I think what it is is going to Slinky Groove that Express Yourself has, and, you know, it part of it has to do with the sense that she was using, which are very much 89 as opposed to like 87 or 88. They have a really bass-heavy aspect. I remember this is also after Public Enemy has had this is after like hip hop, like 88 hip hop has become incredibly popular Rakim all of that stuff. And so the kind of low end of hip-hop had become more important than ever and so it's slowing of Hip Hop. It's house music. And she's starting to bring that into the music. And that was really the first time that we heard that. And I think that's to me. Why express yourself with Superior to Like a Prayer only because it just sounded way more state-of-the-art at the time, right? And we have to break it down, it's because of shafts influence on the video version. Write the 7-inch that became used in the video. Come on girls. Do you believe in love? I mean, come on. That is like one of the best moments in pop music history. Like that comes on. That is the sirens call. Absolutely. Cuz I got something to say about it and it goes something like this. Everyone are you liking this episode? Are you enjoying what you're hearing here? While I think you might need to join pot? Pantheon, all access that is our new patreon channel wear for just five bucks a month at the icons here. You'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month. We're we're talking about new music this week. We did a whole new episode talking about new stuff from Lana Del Rey from Meghan, Trainor Paramore, Kim Petras and so many more of your favorite artist. We recently published an in-depth review of scissors. SOS featuring pot Pantheon, fav Owen Myers. And other pop, happy, I guess the choice has shown up on album. Deep dive like Rolling Stones, Brittany Spanos on Taylor, Swift's reputation and done. Zoe's try bikini on Britney Spears Blackout and we have so many more of those episodes to come. And we're also providing access to our Discord Channel guest list for my party. Gorgeous, gorgeous. And so many other amazing perks. So, head over to patreon.com Pantheon, Or click the link in the show, narcos episode or in our bios on social media and become an icon to your subscriber today. So, what about the rest of this record, what's going on, what's freestyle, our way through the rest of these songs? Like, is there a particular songs? You want to pull out that feel like instructive here or that are for illustrating, either the aesthetic or thematic ideas that we've been laying the groundwork for here on this album. I mean, I cherish is the third single and that's me. It's one of my favorites. I mean, it's this right, happy. Sunshiney to be popped back. It's so much fun. Other stuff on there. I mean old father was one of the singles as well. So that's the ballad kind of in the spirit of some of her earlier that was like Live to Tell I suppose. But the difference is, it's actually about her father and her strained relationship with her father, after her mother died, and all of the stuff that she went through with him. I drove away from you. I was reading an interview with her about the making of This Record. It was like around when the album came out and she said something about towel with her first three. Albums came from her child Consciousness, and this was her first album that was a rising from like the adults Consciousness in her mind or father is like sung from the perspective of her child self in many ways? I think she went through, this really interesting Journey at that. Many people go through with parental figures of feeling like I meant anger and resentment towards him and his at least attempting to pause it on this song, I guess that she has come to some sort of healing with that which is also really interesting in the context of This Moment of Truth or Dare when she has its really loaded moment where her father comes to the blond ambition tour and kind of won't give it up to her chances of the Apex of her success and power that he kind of doesn't get it. And you can sense how much she wants his approval in that moment, and it's such an incredibly telling woman about her. It's one of the reasons that film is a credible revelatory piece is because you really get what drives are you like, what she's doing. It's like she can have the Adoration of the entire world. She can be the most powerful and fascinating Entertainer, and have everything she ever dreamed of. And yet, really what she wants for her dad to come to the show and be like, you did a great job. So this is a really interesting song in terms of misology building I think and that's one of the things I think is the theme in the record and she has another song on here that is about the mother which is promised to try and is kind of singing to her child. Sounds like a little girl, never forget her. I should just keep them alive inside, I promise to try but it's not the same. I even song is essentially about how she liked has. So little memory of this woman and clearly, her death had such a profound effect on her life and it was a driving force in many ways in her life. It's not the same. They're sort of like Sisters songs that are there to put a bike help, lay out the mythology of Madonna. As you know, essentially one of the most important American icons of all time, cures, the origin story. Essentially, those songs. Yeah, I think that's really well. And that definitely the reason that they're on there and it also helps make sense of those songs when they're used on tour, for instance and no father in the blond ambition tour. That is one of the songs that then becomes about religion. So the idea of the father is not just her parental figure but also about God. So she's able to kind of bridge, the worlds of like family and religion. Continuously on this album, I do like some of the other album tracks, till death do us part and the abuse she was suffering under him. Actually the deals with a lot of like domestic abuse kind of imagery in it. You know, the album to me it's definitely her strongest at that time today, but it also has those moments were like your Jesse and love song. They just didn't come together, but the strong tracks are so strong. That this I think will always be remembered as one of her greatest records and certainly one of the greatest records of that era and she was able to achieve what it needed to do for her narrative. So effectively that sorry about the individual songs per say, it's about the fact that it did what it had to do in terms of like advancing her career forward. So at this point Madonna is the biggest pop act on planet Earth. She then comes back, talk about it in Prudhoe phase. She bring the soundtrack together for Dick Tracy, the movie she's making with ven boyfriend, Warren Beatty, and she releases what I believe to be perhaps if I had to pick one of her signature song, I still think I might pick this one, the song Vogue so let's talk. Vogue for a second, and what's going on there, and why this record stands today, perhaps, as her signature record, and is such an important moment for her coming out of the 1980s and into that, I can start sonically on bow. What is it about? What does it sound like? So Vogue is a song that she go produced and co-wrote with Shep Pettibone and we talked about before legendary remix or a do their work with everyone from Arthur Baker onwards. And basically, I would describe both as a kind of house, music inspired, dance, pop Anthem and the point of the anthem is to pay tribute to underground Black and Latino gay dancers who are part of this phenomenon of the time that still exists today called bowl game. So the song you know, is it when I get one of the songs you can read in many different ways of the tribute to that style of dancing. Which is also documented in the film Paris is burning with. No, I think she discovered it because she's very curious person, and she was going to the downtown clubs in New York, which is where she got her start, and she was going to the sound Factory bar, which is where I used to go all the way a lot of fun. And you could always see people voting at the soundtrack to rebar. And I think she saw dancers there and she was like, I want to do something related to this. And I want to have to do this and make a song about it. At least that's the story that were given, right? But, you know, in her mind she saw an opportunity, not only to take something, some cultural and turn it into something mainstream, which is her Mo hundred percent. But she also saw an opportunity to use Excel affectation of voguing. The idea that you are, someone who was highly marginalized and disenfranchised, is a black or brown queer person. You are basically self-fashioning and you become a celebrity in your own narrative, I think she saw the idea of that sort of self-transformation and that I can write an inspirational. Here, we are with you is very inspirational Anthem that will not only capture the sound of house music that has become incredibly popular at the time. And I get house music comes out of the history of black and brown gay and trans communities, Chicago New York's of the major centres and it's the music that's comes out of hip-hop music but it is a kind of machine based Rhythm but funky and often do sort of inspirational lyrics over top of those rhythms that I kind of brought to you by way of disco, which house bill is on his well. She said, let me take that element and let me make a pop Anthem that has a house beat or house Rhythm to it. And there's no question that if you just look at the track itself is very much a sound of a piece of other house music anthems of that time. And of that era is an era in which the merger of house music and pop music was happening. And that was definitely the case with Vogue as well, but they scaffold on top of all of that. The housing. The scaffold is gorgeous. Melody, Ryan Ryan is so compelling on so many levels, not only because of that prismic, lyric that you can read in different ways and the celebration of the some cultural identity but also it really isn't at them. That people can just take the heart and everyone can feel like their best selves are living their best selves through this song. That's really what It ultimately I think is about it's about that and I think also about one of Madonna's enduring themes which is dance and the dance floor and The Nightlife as salvation and which is something she has returned to over and over again from Everybody danced and sang right there at the beginning Madonna has often returned to this idea that at the end of the day, the way you find yourself and the way that you save yourself is through dance s through finding the dance floor. And I think this song is perhaps the ultimate iteration of those things and I continue to be struck so much by coming that I think it's a bit of a sticky or narrative with this, which is that a lot of people say that this is the first mainstream, hit house on. I'm sure that you wouldn't characterize it necessarily that way. But I think people see this as a big bang moment for house music becoming chart-topping, Billboard Hot, 100, topping music. And that's such an intriguing thing to have occurred through this white female celebrity who is both in the music video and in the song celebrating the people that she's drawing from him. And she literally cast, a lot of people that she had seen doing these days as originally, that inspired the song has her dancers, brought them Who are there in the music video yet? It feels like somehow she is. The person that is like bringing this to the mainstream in a way that feels a little bit awkward. How do you view all of that? Well I mean I think it's true. I mean I think I have, as I mentioned she's gone to sound Factory bar and she had seen, you know Jose extravagonzo Louis Extravaganza from the house of Extravaganza from the ball Community. She'd seen them dancing. She's like come in my video of let's bring other people. They cast actual dancers from the community. So that's part of the authenticity of what you see in that Incredible video directed by David Fincher with a fucking video. It's ridiculous. It was so beautiful, The Outfits, the Gotye pranav. Cheer thing she's wearing at the beginning that sheer turtleneck. I mean, everything about it is just as the ones once said it was absolutely Flawless left unturned in it and it was incredible. Again, it's one of those things where you need to see the video as well as listen to the song as they go hand-in-hand in so many ways. So what was so powerful about it was? Yeah, she was singing lyrics like You can do it. Let your body move to the music. So this idea that you could find Freedom through the music itself, and this is what she was seeing these black and brown, queer dancers doing in the context of voguing, and she was trying to, I think universalize that message. But I think part of the issue with that song, there's no question of this was an issue, even then write for small and one hand. She's always had a proximity to lgbtq communities and two figures in the community and like, all great pop rocks, turn into, she helped. Bring know these Fringe communities, marginalized communities into the center of culture and gave them a certain kind of cultural capital. I mean, to get argue than Elvis did that, in the 1950s with black communities, in the way, in which back to music had, largely been marginalized as an independent R&B until I came to the center and then it was rebranded as rock and roll. She was doing something similar. I think. Also with communities then she was openly supporting lgbtq communities, even just buy hiring these dancers and putting them. So prompt Only in her video and letting them be themselves and be fabulous and fem and contort them feel like to doing all of this during an incredibly conservative time of Reagan and AIDS. And I mean, I think it's hard for young people to imagine think about the context and how vilified people were who were living with HIV. At the time, it was really a terrible polarizing time to live in America. So she's doing all this and it's powerful. On the other hand, she's presenting herself as a kind of mother figure to these black and brown. Dancer, she does that certainly the truth or dare documentary. But also even just into her placement in a relationship to the dancers, she's not in an ally. Who sitting in the back listening. She's right up front, never that but she's leading, you know, the mainstreaming of Vogue and she's in a prominent position to do so and the real narrative here is that she offered these dancers, an opportunity to work with her and to be part of the video, the tour and the publicity around all of that. But then when it was She did not continue to work with most of them. She was done with them. So you, she just started them like a candy wrapper and you can argue, and it has been argued. Even at the time, by a black feminist woman is right. Or like, Bell, hooks to write a piece called Madonna, plantation, mistress or soul sister. I mean, when a title, but that her relationship to Black Culture to queer culture, and so on, as a white woman is largely extractive, right? It's basically about taking from these communities while also amplifying, their voices. Elevating them kind of supposedly raising the bar on the music for the art that she's getting from them. But she's aligning yourself with those subcultures crapping. Their cash in many ways, although doing a very skillfully and in a way that makes sense for her, but then ultimately, just sort of discarding, the subculture. So she's really like a musical tourist Wright working through the subcultures with no real professed commitment to them. And that's the difference between you can say like a tourist and a Cosmopolitan person actually has a Purple kind of competence in the culture that they borrow from. He's just sort of like, walking through it. And if she's doing Logan today, you know, she's not going to be doing yoga in 3 years. If she's singing about lice La, Bonita and true-blue. We know that she's not really, you know, you know the problem is it just it reinforces our reaffirms its hole kind of colonialist mentality where what white people go in and do is they capture and maybe you can kill the capture and then exploit and then when they're done, they just sort of leave it behind. And what you have is a culture that's left in tatters are under development when you're done with it. And so in so many ways, she's mirroring this kind of culture of exploitation and appropriation and it's largely extractive in a way that you could argue would be different for some white artist. Let's say Tina Marie in the 1970s who work with Rick James on Motown and is considered one of the greatest singers in R&B music with an incredible voice but also amazing multi-instrumental. Skills and ability to songwriting produce and everything else. And people actually thought he was black because of her, I did a lot of people did. I don't think anyone thought Madonna was black, that's important. She's actually hyper white in certain kinds of ways, right? Blond ambition, I've ever had this poster of her on my wall blondish, which I love, but it's so blonde. It was so white. And like, she should have reveled in that and reveled in the ability to be hyper white even though she's ethnic out as well as course but to be hyper white and yet to extract from these communities as part of the energy and the substance of what she did and that's deeply deeply problematic, right. That idea of extraction because it's hard to argue that she necessarily gave back to R&B, let's say or to gospel but they like a prayer. Is she giving back to the gospel tradition and elevating it in anyway? No. And so that if it becomes the challenge, it's unfortunately reaffirming got kind of a symmetrical power relationship in which white people extra. From people of color or from other marginalized communities and straight, people do the same and then don't give back necessarily or support those communities. I think, now, we're at a time in which the conversation around, those things are so much more nuanced and weighs around, allyship, and accomplices and so on. And I think some people argue like that looks of the time that Madonna was just not a good Ally, frankly, that she was just extracting. And I think that's born out. Everything you said is just exactly what makes this record. Perhaps the greatest distillation of everything we could ever say about Madonna. Because on the one hand, you have just an absolutely glistening. Perfect pop record, right? Like, I mean, just one of the best thing she ever did. So fucking pissed. On a pure musical Pop Song level, there's very few songs in pop history that are as good as this one. It's just so fucking good. And as we were saying earlier, you have a great distillation of her intuitive Powers, right? Like, the way that she knew that she had to basically leave the Aesthetics of the 1980s behind Find a way to modernize herself in this particular way with show genius, and speaks to me so much to her ability to have this long career. How she's been able to do that? If so, how much are rooted in her ability to understand one that needs to happen? And how exactly to do that and the way she did that through, understanding the power that house music was about to have in popular culture in general? And also all the way down to the way that voguing modernized her choreography. I mean, she's leaving Behind These Twitchy. Paula Abdul, ask dance Aesthetics, and the way she moved and looked in that video with entirely different than she had been before, important risk and Incredibly important step in while she was able to unlock more years of success in her career, in a way that I Debbie Gibson or is Cyndi Lauper, any of them were able to do. So that's all there and yet at the same time I'm so struck hearing you talk about what I think is one of the most powerful moments in Truth or Dare the documentary that comes out in 1991. And we did an episode that touched on this recently where we talked about Poptox but essentially is following her through the mega successful blond ambition tour which is following up Vogue in like a prayer and is seen I think to this day as perhaps be Seminole Popstar tour of all time and the thing that always moves me so much about the film is this moment at the end where they're on the last date of the tour. And she has, as you said, established herself as this like Den mother to all of these largely black and queer dancers and singers that she's brought on the tour with her and they've all formed. What is kind of is heartwarming. Little familial units through the majority of the movie and at the end there performing the finale of the blond ambition tour. Keep it together which is an Ode to family and they cut back and forth to her base like in bed with as her saying goodbye to all of these dancers. And you get such a sense through the film of why they are so drawn to her of why she is such a force of Nature and everything about her just makes you want to be near to her in like that, you was going to be standing in the shadow of her massive light. That is like, Wearing at this particular moment but there's this really intense and powerful feeling that everyone around her would stay with her forever, but she will never see any of them again and she will just be on to the next thing. It exactly the way that you were just sort of laying out. I told me that is such a sad reflection on the nature of massive celebrity in many ways. I mean, the idea of like she can never really be close to anyone. No one can ever really be her friend and also the ruthlessness to which, which she pursued her musical career and Endeavors. I mean, everything was ultimately, in the service, a bike. How to continue to keep this project rolling forward in her success, to be the center of all of her decision-making at this point. So, so much about this moment and this video illustrates what makes them. Such a compelling figure. But also, what makes her so controversial tends to the Waterford controversy emerges from Wayne's that she's wielding that controversy. But this particular angle on it the way that she sort of pillages is not the kind of controversy that she is intending to put across, but some of the more interesting elements of controversy that lay beneath the surface here. But the other thing I would just say about it is that there's a classic moment in Vogue where there's a rap section right away when she's kind of just like rapping Think about the old Hollywood, and she's naming a laundry list of all movies, names, of like, Greta, Garbo, and Joe DiMaggio, and Marlon, Brando and Grace Kelly. And everybody can recite all of that now cuz it's so iconic in class. But it's really like, implicit lease or their white supremacist because here you are talking about the Glorious beauty of fashion and style. And you have all these black and brown dancers in your video and you can't mention a single person of color at all crazy. That was crazy at the time, it was criticized at the time because it really felt like an imposition in a lot of ways. And I was like, why, why would you not at least broaden your perspective to be able to accommodate other people into your vision of what beauty and Transcendence? It's revealing inadvertently in the fence. Absolutely. And the Break My Soul by Queens remix, which came out this year. We're Madonna is invited to come on, that track and then the remix incorporate some of the musical Aesthetics of Vogue. And then they just rewrite that rap completely and Madonna contributes as well. Ride and they're paying tribute to all of these classic by female artists from the Grace Jones to Solange to Jill Scott. time to go home and clean out the mon It's like a rewriting. A revision is rewriting of History, which is important, right? And you know, I think that's a moment in which fiance's coming to kind of reclaim the beauty of the blackness in the brown is that was already there and Vogues at just was suppressed because of Madonna's own need to be in the center we can make of Vogue, it really was a Peerless song of its time and it's something that people of all colors, all genders. I'll say, everybody loved it. Everybody saw themselves in it regardless of the limitations of the lyric, whatever and acting Beyonce's one of those people. And I think her inviting Madonna to be on that track is a celebration of what Madonna did to open up space for people like Beyonce ourselves. So I don't think it's really black or white. Ironically, even though the video is, it's actually more nuanced in some ways but none the less I think it's important to know that there was this critique and there still is this critique of that original song that's important to bring to the surface, just missed a call. It's like we're pop music transcends into something like bigger than the sum of its parts. It's just Absolutely stunning piece of pop music a little bit interesting. To because we've been talkin about Madonna as this Imperial creature of instinct. In the sense that from basically her emergence. In 1983 through Vogue, she is on perhaps one of the most Untouchable runs in Popstar history. Every single thing she does is increasingly successful and as we mentioned, increasingly interesting and intriguing in terms of its scope and multi-layered in terms of its Artistry, right? Like this is why people still look back at her and made a, particularly at this particular era, as the blueprint for like how a pop star career should go. Because it's essentially like every single thing works as a narrative contract at building building building, building building towards like in seemingly endless layers of Apex, right? But this is where in the early nineties and I'm curious how you think about how she can see Her next moves, things get a little bit tricky for her. For the first time, this is the moment where I don't want to say like her ego is so out of control, but maybe that is perhaps an interesting way to think about it because I'm not sure how you might feel. Every single decision you had ever made. To this point was rewarded the most grand scale possible. There's nothing I could do that. People wouldn't be in to write like there's nothing I could do here that would alienate people at the end of the day. And yet, Perhaps, this is a moment where that ego takes its first being. So Madonna comes off of Like a Prayer Vogue. The blond ambition tour, truth or dare as we said as the biggest pop star in the world are one of a very small handful of the biggest pop stars and biggest pop cultural figures of the world. Define the 80s. Only think about the 1980s. If you look it up in the dictionary her face is next to the definition of the 1980s and she sets about conceiving of Making her fifth album using sexuality and expressions of her sexuality to her benefit. Both as controversial as intrigued, whatever it is essentially just called erotica and is perhaps her grandest and most overt and callous and garish expiration of that today. How do you think she's thinking about erotica? Do you think the idea here is that this is going to be yet another commercial Peak for her? Or do you think that the idea here is more about an artistic expansion of who she can be as a popstar, what do you think her goals and Ambitions are with his fifth record coming off of such a huge error, which is the Immaculate Collection, which is her greatest hits album that's released in 1990. And the reason I bring that up is because she's out of inflection point where she's actually kind of also looking back. At the past decade. That's a contained. It's a contain. 1990 was a year of the were like oh thank God. We're done with the 80s. Were moving on to something else. Hopefully he's with them. So people are looking at it that way, they were like, she's looking back and thinking, okay, look at the influence that I've had in this decade and let me celebrate it. And, I mean, that in a cute collection, everybody had it. Even if we owned all the Madonna albums, which we did like, we have to buy that as well, been a better title, that's so good. The Immaculate Collection, it was amazing. And then, like, Shep Pettibone it like we worked some of the track. So, just sounded better than ever, right? I think Beyond just would have looking back and summarizing that decade because, you know, at that point, she was going to come. Every list is like the most important artists of the decade, the most important artists in pop culture. She's also thinking, how do I move the needle? How do I continue to move the needle given? How far I've already moved the needle and sew what in dressing is on a Mac in the collection. She has these Song. The two new songs, rescue me and then justify my love and justify my love represents a totally different sound for Madonna. It's her working with Lenny Kravitz and it's this really unusual song for Madonna, write in which were small. She's not even like singing for say, as much as he is just Whispering through a number of erotic lyrics. You know about a whole bunch of things are related to sex and sexual desire. so now, Vanilla. Watching. Kneading. Waiting. Be you justify my love but the track itself is a hip-hop sample at the hip hop beat basically and it's her doing the slinky sexual breathy meditation on sexual desire, but it's all about that video that really amazing video. It should, I think it's all about these Monday. No directed it. And it's like black and white and she's walking down this hallway. And all of these strange unusual elusive characters show up. And there's like people wearing BDSM outfits and leather, and she's rolling around in this bed and underwear and laced. It was a shocking video and MTV deemed it like 2 explicit to play. Now in the age of wapping, cardi b is all they wouldn't. They would not, it wouldn't be an issue if he wouldn't blink an eye, but then it was really shocking. And it raised all of these debates about censorship and I can be shown in what couldn't be shown. And I think that was a really important moment for her to figure out what she was going to do next cuz she either could have said I'm not going to do anything like that. I'm going to do something that's more universally accessible. Engages controversy, but it's way more like, like a prayer that opens the door for a radica then, right? Because I think what she's trying to do is ever said, push that needle forward. And I think she thinks the way that she's going to do that is to fold one, is to progress her music so that she's actually now creating these pop Melodies over deep house beat. So it's not even just sort of like, anyhow music here, but not even a call with the Retro house, but the house music that was incredibly popular. At the time to work with Shep Pettibone again, I think also Andre backs is one of their contributors to the album and then to make an album that is about sexuality itself. And obviously she's an emblem of sexuality and part of the thing that she's always done in her career is to open up this space around. What is considered permissible in sexuality and specifically for women and specifically for white woman, in the context of Pop Culture sexuality, she after Marilyn, Monroe, and after others has opened up that space But Here she's doing something even further. Which is why I say she's pushing the needle. She's interested in opening up a space. We can think about what perversity means. So now, it's not just like a black Jesus in the video as the source of the controversy, but it's a skink as Taboo. It's BDSM, it's fetish. It's like, let's really push the needle in terms of what constitutes perversity. And this is not just her, by the way, it's happening culturally. So you think about the National Endowment for the Arts and the trouble that ain't got into in the late 80s and early 90s funding work by cultural adventurous people like Karen Finley and others. That there was all these debates Senators, Like, Jesse Helms. They want to defund the National Endowment for the Arts because they felt that the American government shouldn't be supporting visual artists and other kinds of artists who are making explicitly sexual material, or queer, material, or anything else. And so this is all happening around the same time in the early 90s and Madonna is one of these pop culture figures, whose absorbing the landscape and then re synthesizing it back out to us. And so, she I think the side she's going to make Album. That's literally pushing the needle on what constitutes perversity in an age in which there's an incredible conservatism around issues of sexual desire. That's what that's what you get with erotica. What's so interesting about the way that she addresses that on this record and I think it kind of goes back, something I was saying earlier about the way that Madonna is able to charge narratives about the work that she's doing that or maybe only like semi present music. Obviously, this record works as some sort of concept album about sex, right? But really, when you dig into this music actually, a lot of it is about romance and that's one of the more interesting parts of this album to me is that it's pegs as this. Combative sexual thing that she had been known for in the Apex of maybe where she cortical went too far with that whatever you want to say about that. But at the end of the day, that's a lot about the narrative, the visuals. Obviously, there's some songs on here that feel like they're pushing the needle on sexuality, there is a song like where life begins about her getting whatever. Emma Cannon. Where am I? Grandma love their songs on her that you push those ideas and of course the visuals and the sex book really solidify the concept of that includes. She was trying to sell that as The Narrative of what album is about. But in reality Underneath It All, you actually have like a lot more of like a nuanced project. I feel that this was such a record about her being like yours. BDSM for 20 songs or whatever. Like this would be a way with compelling piece of art but in reality it contains some of her most genuinely like romantic songs and some of her most moving songs and I think there's more emotional complexity to what's going on on this record, then like the way that it was characterized by her at the time that it's one of those moments where I think perhaps the scaffolding that she put up around the record, actually didn't serve it. And a lot of times in her prior work, she was able to construct elaborate scaffolding around. Maybe some songs that were pretty simple at the end of the day, but she made them have a lot of deeper meaning because of everything that you put up around it, where is? I think some of the scaffolding that you put up around this time actually purse Send it over simplified version of what is perhaps our most liked cohesive artistic statement to date and one of her most dynamic vulnerable revelatory pieces of work to the state. I totally agree and I would agree to use one of her best records and there's so much subtlety on it so much nuan's just a mixture of different styles from, as I mentioned, deep house and New, Jack Swing R&B deeper deeper is one of my favorite tracks of all time with a deeper is so fucking good deeper and deeper goes in my potential. Top-five Madonna songs of all time. I think I agree with you and what a bizarre somehow like Philly house and disco and also camp and bizarre and like dissonant and weird. This is a song that does embody, the sort of invitation into the underworld, whenever I listen to the song. I'm like, oh, Lord by it and afraid of it. Like there's something almost scary about it. In a weird way to get to feels almost like you're spiraling into Alice in Wonderland or something like that. When you listen to this record, I totally agree. And to me, it feels like a little bit of a New York record is working with shape on it. They did demos when his apartment but I do think you're right. I think she got caught up in the pr around the album and the thing that she gave people journalists and critics and whoever else to talk about was the fact that she had stepped into this alter-ego of mistress D-Town, right. Cuz the whole album is written, from that perspective is based on some German silent film star of the past and it start with her saying, like my name is Dita, doing the demo mode. I need to be honest, it starts that way. So that's what people thought that the album really was. And then as you mentioned, where Life Begins the reference to oral sex, but that's how she presented it. That's what people took it as and it belies the fact that there are these amazing songs on it, even Something Like Rain Rain, her best valid ever. It's amazing. TV listings. You know, there's some really great stuff on it, but it got lost in this moment where she's pushing this permissiveness at a time in which, I don't think people were ready for that, or they certainly weren't ready for it from her and maybe all they wanted was just more feel. Good, sunny, California to stock fish walls and the sort of narrative around the album presented as I. Okay, B songs that are, like, the nautical, like Madonna sex songs of his error. And by the way, I do want to know what does she say after erotica romance? Like those are to do all things here and like I did the Romans element gets really subsumed, but there's a song called bad girl. Which I've always been really fascinated about, which is essentially about the way that one might use sex addiction to escape paint. There's ways that she addresses sexuality that are so much different than the sort of like broad-based combative way that she had presented in the past, like, I'm still have songs like that. There's a lot of songs about like, sexual power dynamics, but she also comes about and deals with sex in ways that are so much more nuanced. More Dynamic than that this record is a really important moment for her as an artist and perhaps maybe leave a commercial under-performance or backlash to it was needed because it away the artist that we get here is more nuanced than any of the sort of like broad character stroke that she had painted herself and even want to like a prayer, which is a very revelatory impersonal, album frames in such a broad pop terms that it can sometimes feel like she's just occupying roles are occupying ideas of what Revelation means and I'm not saying besides aren't personal, but there's things here that are more sticky and nuanced and person on Dead stick yet. Record from this point on feels like a true artistic statement in an aesthetic sense in a way that maybe none of the previous records before it is. So there's something that happens here in an artistic sense that feels pivotal to the future of Madonna's record. I don't think that we can escape this thinking about Madonna as the blueprint between 1992 and 1993. We have, perhaps most important blueprints that has been retread over and over and over and over and over again, in its wake of moving into this more overtly sexual guys as a means of displaying female maturity in particular and like as a way of sort of deepening, our expanding who you are as a woman pop star emerging from a more youthful presentation into something that's considered more mature. Adult course there's different degrees of success, but you can often see how people are in a Machiavellian. Attempting to recreate this, not from like a embodied. Artistic standpoint. Watch House pop stars that are less inspired, sort of turn to this as a move and it can feel that's not name any names your reputation to uphold. I'll just say, Chloe, Bailey come tonight. I loved her work. I just think it was a, it was a very fast change, right? Like it was in there. It's rooted in reality, a Janet in this. It was intuitive. They weren't following a specific blueprint for making that turn and I think that that's really interesting to think about the fact that again, and I think this is what we talked about now is what I'd like to ask. You is what happened? But how is this, all received? She puts This Record out. She's coming off of a non stop run of hit and all the sudden. It's like the entire narrative turns on her, in a weird sense, like how does the Received this record and I think we should stay in tandem with the book sex that she puts out, which is basically a coffee table book that explores some of the sexual taboos that she's pointing out on the record, you know. Erotica gets critical Raves, but it's generally seen as a lukewarm Madonna record, right? It doesn't have the kind of hits that her previous records has. So, this is seen as a stumble certainly, she maintained popularity it was definitely torpedoed by the sex book. Just came out in 1992 and the photography was mostly done by Stephen Mizell. You know, this is basically a book of her erotic photographs and it was all done again as the character mistress data and, you know, it included all of these figures and cameos in the book. Big Daddy, Kane and vanilla ice cream, Campbell actors. All kinds of folks and, you know, he's extremely naked for most of the book, she shows everything you could possibly I want to see the people she fights for cameos, in the book are also largely naked and there's a lot of texts that goes with it. Of course to that's, you know referring to all kinds of stuff about sexual desire and sexual Liberation anal sex and have a man having a nut like everything you could possibly but it was really a book that was about pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable for mainstream pop culture figure like her at the time. And I'm a backdrop of the AIDS crisis which I think it's an important element of it to absolutely which is always referencing. And it's also an erotica, right like their songs there that are memorials to her friends who've passed away from AIDS. But she's trying to do with Robert mapplethorpe's at done in the visual arts, right. She's trying to be like a while child to be the cat Noir of contemporary Pop Culture by releasing something that pushes the boundaries of Kink and Tabu so far in another direction that the I think she really thought this would be something that would cause controversy but people would gravitate to none the less. Call Nestor successfully in the past, but she thought that this would be another Imperial moment for her. Or do you think that she understood on some level that this was pushing the envelope even a step further than even she had in the past? I think she thought it was going to be a moment for her. That would be very much of its time and that would be a boundary Pusher in its time, but would be ultimately well-received even if it's stoked, controversy, but it's incredible because now I think people would look at that and say really in the age of cardi B in cupcake and everybody else. She opened up all of that space to do that but I still think to this day nobody has released a coffee table erotic book. Like that who the pop country music star like it. Never. Nobody ever went that far again, nor be like Instagram, which would be the way that one would do it in that particular. But she was doing things and showing things and showing her body in ways that I think were very indebted to this. You great success, which speaks to The doors that got knocked out of this era. I think one of the things of this Arab answers. A question of that I think is imperative and very interesting. Is that coup is Madonna if she is in a massive cultural success. If she isn't spinning off hit, after hit after hit after hit on the record. I think one of the things that's interesting about Iran, and this era and much respect as she remains fascinating and intriguing even without that going on, which is imperative. I think to her continued longevity and the more intriguing and nuanced work that he does later on her career, which is when I was putting a pain in earlier, looking back, many people see as one of her strongest albums in something that was really misunderstood and it's time but I'm like a lot of pop stars especially pop stars whose identity turns around being the center, right? Like, which Madonna's certainly does it's nice to see it speaks to what a fascinating or does she is outside of her Commercial Success that this album skill is interesting and compelling and relevant and something that we still want to engage with an a Witness never will be even when she was stumbling. Her Artistry on its own. Is something that's worthwhile immediately following erotica. I sometimes think of like everything that happened between then and ray of light as her essentially trying to both react in the way that you'd expect her to be like, fuck you. I'm going to keep doing me in defending everything that I've ever done and like whatever. And also, perhaps the first time I sense a capitulation on her part in terms of trying to right the ship. Yeah, I mean it is a capitulation in the sense that I think she goes on David Letterman show, where she, by the way, is all the profanity. It was like one of the highest rated things I've ever seen in my entire life. Incredibly Sammy, she has on her panties, like there's all kinds of stuff going on right now. In case I can get it over with. What words end in u r a c? Play, I get so much. You realize this is being broadcast, don't you? In that interview, she said, you know, like I was misunderstood and I left it alone because I think she realizes the public is not where she is and they're not going to be where she is anytime soon and I think she has a feeling for the culture, you know, that's what makes her such an instinctive pop culture, figure Captain to the vibrations of how a culture is moving at any given point. I think is a little bit of a miscalculation, although I still think it's a great record. And I love the second book in so many ways, but I think she just miscalculated and I think what she's doing is sort of modulating what she does or not. It's going to be less controversial, but she's going to modulate it so that it can be sort of more contained in a way that people are going to be able to read and find legible and that's important because I think people ultimately couldn't read the sex book in a way that makes sense with her earlier career and she's just done like the Tracy, a few years earlier in the, how are you doing, like date of masochism in the sex but, like, people just come Square, those things about her writing. So I think she realized that, and I think she knew she needed to go out and make an album that was all so artistically, powerful and mean, Fall, but could reach a larger public and wasn't going to get her canceled and we didn't use that language then, but that's essentially what was happening in that. Post Sex, book release moment. Let me see, was literally being cancelled, like you couldn't play or music. People were like charging a mile east of obscenity laws and things like that. So that's not where you want to be. Is a pop-culture. I just, you know, for the most part I think it's really 93 94 in two bedtime stories because it speaks to the fact that for all of her artistic process that I was just laying out. Very much, wants to be a Centrist Central organizing pop figure. And that is very much at the core of what she is. And I think her identity is very wrapped around her intuition with culture that she was throwing. I really got a sense that she didn't quite know who she was or what was going on without that going on in like with people not seeing her as the central organizing principle of popular music, I think that that was really difficult. And I really think that's for now. And it's only called remember, which comes out in between erotica and Bedtime Stories and is a very tame. Chase down the middle about a great song. I love our remember but a real sense of like, okay, like you can just see her like steering the ship in the other direction, like, taking a hard pivot, Eminem thinking about bedtime stories, which is her 1994 album that follows this up. It's a really interesting a temp. I mean, I do it this way. I don't know how you think about it, but I do it as this way of like not apologize, but to apologize at the same time, it says, really interesting combination of those two things. It's an interesting record, but not my personal favorite, it's her loss record Madonna is so defined by her confidence. You were talk about this at the beginning of this, like she knows what she's doing and what we're doing and what this project is about a bottle of us. And this is a moment, that is an interesting but also perhaps less of a powerful artistic see me, cuz I think she's kind of lost in this moment. I love bedtime stories. I mean, for me, the thing that I loves about is like, it was unquestionably like her black as to how do you like? I'm going to make a Black Album black. And one of the only times in her career, she had turned overtly to already established Basketball. Producers another sense of capitulation that I just want to put out there like Madonna is always turned on her, plucking people out of obscurity as collaborators. This is one of the only moment in her career and I think it speaks to see where she thought she was commercially and what she needed at that. She turned to a Cadre of a very already established. Popular producing this one to put that out there. I totally agree. And also, you know, the sound of change so much, right? Even like what's on MTV between Like a Prayer between the Dick Tracy record folk like that erotica, even that sounded completely changed. And Hip-Hop it, come in a major major way. It had taken over in many ways as a musical priority in the US are ugly. So she was like, I got to get that. And so she went after the people who would make that record for her, you'll have to remember she started her own record label at that time, so she's even more entrepreneurial. And she's ever been on her hustle to make a record, that's going to be commercially successful. So she goes and gets Dallas, Austin is done TLC, and Joe, and everybody else. Babyface. Dave Jam Hall is done, Mary J, Blige and all kinds of other artists. Annie Lee Cooper, do it. What I love about bedtime stories is that it brings together the American R&B scene of the early 1990s with their trip. Hop British electronic sound and seeing in a way that I don't think any other album does of that time. It's like a merger of the York and TLC. Record and I know it starts with secret that single and we didn't know what the secret is that she was holding. You know it's like It felt like the whole album had this kind of Mystique to it and this mysterious Naz, but I was digging it just because I thought some of the songs were just great like human nature, which is also about, I'm not sorry. It's like a qualified apology. I'm giving you this album because I'm sorry, but I'm also not sorry, I'm not your bitch. Don't hang your shit on me. Human nature is the PS2 resistance of this record, no question about it. It is to record where she directly respond to me. By far, the best record on this position is Madonna in a hip hop contacts that like doesn't feel awkward when I think about this record. I think of it as transitional because you talked about the connection between the sort of like trip-hop and European Wax ecstatic that are obviously about to become fully fleshed-out and borne out on ray of light and music and American life. So she hasn't quite figured that out yet. We have glimpses I think in terms of like the Persona that's presented on much of this record of the kind of birth mother self-reflective looking back, spirituality, kind of five. That's going to come through on a lot of her future work. Like I think about the opening song survival, she sort of essentially going, here's my story. She starts dispensing, the hard-won, spiritual wisdom thing that becomes definitional to the next three albums. Like on secret when she says until I learn to love myself, I would never ever loving anybody else. That's a very rare of latest kind of lyric. She starting to like access the part of herself that is self-reflective and wondering about how she's been in the past and how she might be changing. As she gets older rights, which is like something that she fully bloomed into liking this Technicolor in every way on ray of light. But it's kind of only like slightly in the mix here. Like not fully there yet and I love the grooves and production of its record. I think you're so right about that, but I think her borrowing of these producers and the sound, a one of the first times that I felt like in a mainstream said, she was behind the curve. There's records on here. That feel like they're in conversation with Janis record of your earlier that lot of TLC, lot of Mary. You feel like she is eating a style that has already been brought to the mainstream. This is one of the first time that I feel like that's really happening for her. And they're so awkward R&B and Hip Hop who sang that's going on here? That is weird feeling. You don't feel that way? Well, I mean a real career to me is extracted from Felt like I'm listening to this and like she's trying something that isn't quite working on an aesthetic level. I don't know if that's how I feel about this record more so than the past records. I mean I loved it at the time I think Take a Bow is one of her best ever to me. I think it's great and I working a baby face. And I just think bedtime stories itself that song with Bjork like that is really ahead of its time in from the creating a sort of Electro R&B soundscape that so many people are still trying to get to today. So I loved it. I thought it was a great record. I have course still having issues with her and her appropriation and all of those kinds of things, which is really turned up on this album, over the course of Madonna, Madonnas larger than capable of making at least was until let's say, 2012 largely incapable of making an album. That wasn't at least like worth digging into an interesting. In its own ways. I get a sense that she's not who she was on this record and she's not quite sure who she's about to become in this revelatory. Later part of her career with unmatched. Resurgens are largely unmapped Resurgence in. This late stage of her career in her forties of having this whole new level of artistry in relevance that like you're very few pop stars have been able to unlock in that particular moment in their careers. She's neither here nor there on this album to me, but it's showing just that I always thought she was very much in her element in this album and ray of light to me as much as I love that album. I also thought part of the reason that she gets the credit for coming back and being full, There is because she picks up a guitar and she's starting to play running music and it's very much, the kind of rock is thing of. Like, it can't be as good as she's doing the R&B. And hip-hop is I should such as such and that's how I always felt about it. It was like, oh, I was good with her doing all of this R&B hip-hop. And I wanted to actually go deeper into some of that stuff when she comes back to it, like hard candy. I like, you know, when she's working with Pharrell and Timbaland, think that following this record, what you said was like a bigger success than erotica, but not nearly on the level of like a like a prayer or true blue, for instance, what do you think culture was making of her? This particular me, I know you said that this record with some ways in correcting, the commercial trajectory that erotica had kind of interrupted, but do you feel like at that point? I mean she is 35 years old. As you said, music has changed so much. There's an entire new generation of pop figures that are dominating rear end of Swing of Mariah Carey and Whitney in actual black pop stars have come and taken Centre stage in many ways to think she feels. Open in Hurst continued success as a bit of a relic like you think people are perceiving that she might be on the wind down at this point? I don't think that was the case. I mean, I'm just thinking of how I thought of it at the time. I don't think that people felt that so much as she was the master of chameleon acree invention, right? After Bowie. Like she could keep Reinventing herself and so I think people were thinking how do you keep Reinventing yourself so many years into your career and specially as music is changing because music in the 90s change. So seismically from the you know, New Jack Swing of Teddy Riley and Jodeci too kind of laid-back tempo of the music of Brandy was putting out and others and then it shifted into that like pre Y2K Timbaland and Missy Elliott was like what are you going to be doing? How are you going to establish yourself as a cutting-edge figure, who pushes the needle in this moment of incredible timing change in popular music? And so I think that was the concern more than anything else and I think she managed to do it. Like that's the crazy thing I had was real and it's like in a way that sounds like nothing else. Anybody else is doing at the time and still feels of a piece with all of the Sonic Innovation that's happening in that pre, Y2K moment. Fair to say that she was not the centerpiece of pop music in the way that she had been amazed at this point. She was kind of another successful pop star. That was operating right now, right? She wasn't hitting the same commercial Heights. You didn't have the same level of Imperial status and pop music, but she definitely was not able to crank out. Those number one hits in the number one albums in the same exact way, right? So there was definitely a question of what the future held for her but by that time, the average shelf life of a musical Superstar belongs in the fucking Smithsonian Institute. And that's the thing that like is so enduring Lee fascinating about her. And that's why I just want to set up for people, I guess, as we move into this last installment of the series to all the controversy and do all of like the weird appropriate, all the things, whatever I have, just such immense admiration for her tenacity and her desire and drive to keep it moving forward and to keep giving you. Something to chew on, at least in her Peak phases. I just feel like the way that she allowed through popular music to create something that was always interesting and always expensive. And always pushing things forward and always preaching who you thought she was forward. It just passing looking at something like a bedtime story and like trying to square. How is this the same person as the everybody girl, I don't know if there's another pop star. I can't think of even Beyonce who has expanded the scope of her Artistry infinitely from no no no part. 1 through laminated obviously like you're dealing with y'all but much expanded scope but I still can square those two pieces together in an easier way that I can with Madonna like the person that she was in this. And then moving forward, there stands and stuff that we can draw on that, connect them all together. But it's almost like hard to understand how it's all the same person in some weird way aside from the ambition and the scope of what she was doing the levels. It went to is just so impressive to me. I guess this is what I'm trying to say. I would say, but we had the same quality. Good point that he kept changing over and over, and I think she drew a lot on that. Of course, you know, she came of age in the era of Andy Warhol. And, you know, she knew him of course, and Drew a lot from his kind of philosophy of being in the world. But you have to remember she was the emblem of post-modernism, way of being in the world in which the line between the real and the artificial was blurred that was one of the tenets of post-modernism. And she more than I think anybody else, she came to literally absorb the change in culture and the rise of his postmodernity that war has lasted into the culture in the 1960s and she took it further in the 1980s and the constant in her career, through all of those changes. He's that she's a chameleon that she will always change. You always evolve, always develop into anything in this contemporary romantic. The challenges for her. She's grown older. How do you continue to evolve and change? But your credit she keeps doing it. It's just that the rule books of change in the eighties, and nineties, and Beyond. And now the real bucket. Selfish changed around what's permissible on what's possible and so on. And right now, we're in an era where were asking people to be much more consequential about some of those changes, especially if it changes that you make having to do with yourself, have an impact on other communities, were marginalized communities. And so, she's a little bit out of step in this era right now, through the peak of her success. The music was always good. I mean, we can talk about all of the shit that people think about the controversy, the images, the videos, all of the ship that she was doing that actually added to the story and add it to the impact. By the end of the day, this shit turned on a discography that is nearly unmatched in pop music. The music was always good. I think it's like what's been missing in the last run of albums is like at some point. She lost the grip on that particular thing and went out that the other shit gets annoying. She was always in the way. She was always liked it at types of Horrors. He was always all these things that were like kind of annoyed at the end of the day you put on express yourself and like what are you going to say? Perfect fucking song Banger, Like a Prayer deeper and deeper Secret in human nature and no matter what she was doing no matter how she missed up whatever. It's like, the musical backbone, was there through all of it and without that, it would have been nothing. So I think that's the real missing piece of yes. She's out of stepping whatever, but she's also like made some not good music and when you don't have that, that's really weird things start to fall apart. I think. And that's a problem, I think for her at the current moment. Like, how did you do that? Just to give her credit. I also say that very few other artists maintain her level of high craftsmanship over. So many decades producing so much at such, a high level of tension to the craft of the songwriting. I don't think she gets enough credit for the songwriting, right? Like as a songwriter just outside of the production themselves, the songs themselves will live on and on and on because they're so well constructed and so far. Oh, and she was so precise in the studio, and he was outside the studio about making the songs, the best they could possibly be. And that's incredible Legacy. And if she never writes another great song, it's totally okay, great. Last question, for you, I know this is been a marathon. What is an underrated song? Something we haven't touched on yet. From these three albums are this. It could be a Lucy, whatever it is that we haven't touched on that. We could send the show out on. Well, I will say that Vogue. Is this track? That was included on. I'm breathless from the Dick Tracy, soundtrack and it didn't even belong on there. They were just like where we put it out. Let's just put it on the Dick Tracy soundtrack, but the Dick Tracy soundtrack itself. It's a collaboration with her and Stephen Sondheim, totally awkward totally strange. She was working hard to get a kind of serious recognition through that album. It's her concept album. However, sooner or later from that album wins the Oscar for best song. People forget, I think that that happened in her career and actually think that song deserves a little bit more attention in. Sense that it's just a weird one-off for her that got this Oscar recognition but it's part of the soundtrack that people don't see it as part of her career at all and I think she was giving it her all and she was stepping into a character fully and she wanted to fully inhabit that character and there was something tacky about it. Something ambitious about it, but something also cure and naive about it. And it defines to me Madonna in that. Like, her being part of this huge Warner, Brothers, Studio, massive Blockbuster attempt, to try to make a mega hit with Warren Beatty. So, I don't know. That's one of those songs that I think if you want to understand Madonna, this. Also understand that it's about her Ambitions about what you was going for into belt. Also, her capacity in which she was able to do in this particular moment of Imperial pop stardom Jason, I could really talk to you forever and ever, you are just incredible. Like I've bow at your feet, take a bow as they say, thank you so so much. I really appreciate it. They always get my. All right. So there you have it to Madonna. Part 2, we will be back next week to talk about ray of light music, American life and confessions on a dance floor. I want to say thank you so, so much to the brilliant. Jason King, my God, what an incredible. Thank you Jason, so much for being on the show. Again, I want to say thank you to the iconic, Russ, Martin for everything. He does to make this show happen every week and just have Kelly for his help editing is episode. Please, don't forget to rate review And subscribe to pop Pantheon, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you do it on Apple, you might be getting yourself a free, nice Legend. Dad hat comes, gorgeous, gorgeous this weekend, link to buy tickets in the show, notes of the episode, and on social media followers app, hack a iPod, me, a DJ Louie, XIV Joyner, patreon Pantheon, all access by going to patreon.com Discord. And so many more fun perks. Pop Pantheon pod.com, has merch. Nice Legend dad had a superstar t-shirts, available for purchase. And until next week, I hope you have a wonderful life by by everyone. I'm going to love you. Like nothing, you've known. I'm going to love you, baby.