They've called her everything from a creative cretin to a media whore (if not a literal one). So there must be scores of folks who consider it the greatest desecration to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yet that Monday its arbiters will usher into its heady ranks Miss "How-Dare-She" herself: Madonna.
On her first try yet.
Foes will insist that Madonna's fast-track entry has only to do with sales. Or with notoriety. Or with corporate conflicts of interest (especially since the hall has nearly as many as a New Jersey politician).
They'll say Madonna's anointment has to do with anything but the one element that actually most helped grease her way in: the music.
The fantastic range of distractions that surround that music - some ridiculous, some delightful - have obscured this all along.
But if you push aside the headlines, the pictures, the fashion, the scandals and the gossip, and give a fair listen to the 11 full studio albums Madonna has produced in the last 25 years, you may be surprised by what you hear.
The catalogue speaks eloquently of her achievements - from watershed innovations to savvy tweaks of genre to the basic pursuit of a great hook and an irresistible groove. Sometimes Madonna's greatest accomplishments have even come down to the thing she has been most loudly ridiculed for: her singing.
No, she's not Aretha Franklin. She's not even close to Cyndi Lauper, the singer who, it was predicted, would leave Madonna in the dust by the next album when they both began in 1983. But Madonna has a quality that makes her vocals a key part of her songs' overall swirl of delight.
She has had this from the start, even when her voice was a mere yap of a thing. In her earliest single, the club-magnet "Everybody," she had an insistence in her delivery - a kind of zeal - as well as an exuberance in her tone, that made up for any lack of cri de coeur.
The next single, "Burnin' Up," went further. Its tight riff was fired by a punky fervor. Better, the song's blaring guitar work now serves as a swift rebuke to those who get too literal about the "rock" part of this Hall of Fame thing. But then, Madonna would hardly need to blare six-stringed instruments all day long - or renounce her dance music or theater roots - to prove she's got what we like to call "the rock 'n' roll spirit." She is, after all, from Detroit.
Her first two singles were just the proverbial peak of the iceberg. Her full debut ("Madonna") crammed in so many winning songs, of such rhythmic thrust, you could fill a whole night at a dance club and please its most finicky denizens by playing nothing but its remixes. "Holiday," also on that starry debut, remains one of this decade's most electrifying dance hits, while the singles "Lucky Star" and "Borderline" gave Madonna a hold on pure pop.
The star's followup the next year, "Like a Virgin," served up another selection of singles primed to make you both dance and sing. In "Material Girl," Madonna scored a true anthem, if one she has spent the rest of her career trying to live down. And the title track became a classic of ironic flirtiness. Another cut, "Into the Groove," commands one of the hottest ones of all time, while "Dress You Up" nearly bursts from its skin with itchy joy.
For 1986's "True Blue," Madonna whipped up one of her most lustrous songs in "Papa Don't Preach." Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding its supposed anti-abortion stance obscured the richness of the production. The disk also featured Madonna's best forage through Latin pop ("La Isla Bonita") plus a ballad, "Live to Tell," that proved she could deliver an earnest vocal with actual heart.
After putting out a soundtrack ("Who's That Girl," spiked by a kicky title track) and a roiling club mix CD ("You Can Dance"), Madonna came back with her most fully realized CD to date: 1989's "Like a Prayer." Its title track boasted a melody that just keeps escalating in intensity, fully earning its final gospel blowout. The cut "Express Yourself" gave Madonna another dance floor peak, as well as, in its title phrase, some words to live by.
By this point, Madonna had reached such a fever pitch of fame (the subsequent "Blonde Ambition" tour marks her Everest-like summit) that it became harder than ever for the media to distinguish the terrific sounds she was making from the ruckus she regularly whipped up around them.
It didn't help that her 1992 album, "Erotica," represented her most sonically radical piece to date. Drawing on the nocturnal demimonde of gay S&M clubs, "Erotica" re-created the shrouded mood, and dark allure, of an after-hours sex den. Coupled with her widely panned "Sex" book, the project's edge caused a benighted media to turn on her, writing her obituary decades too soon.
As always, she moved blithely on, rebounding commercially with an album, 1994's "Bedtime Stories," that reimagined the then-current trend in "new jill swing" for her own pan-pop audience. The same CD made good use of the burgeoning British trip-hop trend, offering her own corollary in the track "Bedtime Story" to trendoids like Portishead and Massive Attack.
It was Madonna's next move, however, that changed her vocal skills significantly, with a positive impact on all her work since. To prepare for her star turn in "Evita," the star took voice lessons and truly made the most of them. On the soundtrack, Madonna revealed a much fuller, deeper instrument than before, and wound up engaging with the material in a grippingly emotional way. Here, her voice wasn't just a candied part of a larger pop production puzzle, but the prime mover of the recording, its emotional core.
If "Evita" put Madonna in the realm of traditional theater diva (however fleetingly), her next album moved her swiftly back to the cutting edge. "Ray of Light" rode the electronica wave with the grace of an ace surfer at Maui. The 1998 CD streamlined that sound and, as Madonna had done with so many genres before, brought it from the arty edge to the level of irresistible, original pop. The title song boasted the fastest beat of Madonna's career (not counting remixes), and became electronica's greatest hit.
Her chaser of a CD, "Music," popped up that sound even more. The title single stood as her most simple and perfect hit since "Holiday."
Unfortunately, Madonna couldn't make it a hat trick. 2003's "American Life" stands as a clear creative low point, even to her greatest fans. A self-conscious and labored work, it's her only one to fall below platinum status, and deservedly so.
Happily, she turned things around in 2005 by falling back on her original forte: club music. "Confessions on a Dance Floor" may not have represented a return to the zest of her first CD, but it featured several ace singles, one of which made delicious use of an ABBA sample. If nothing else, "Confessions" upstaged the work of most other artists doomed to compete with a catalogue more than two decades deep.
Despite such a lengthy list of achievements, many observers will still try to pawn all the credit off on Madonna's many producers and co-writers. But it strains credibility to assume that any artist could drive so steadily to the top for so long without having her hands solidly on the wheel the whole time.
True, Madonna isn't the kind of artist who can stand alone at a microphone for two hours and hold an audience rapt. And she's never going to record an "Unplugged" CD (let us pray). But not every artist has to be her own island of talent to make a significant impact. In the end, you may not be able to take any one element of Madonna's career or music and have it stand entirely on its own. But the recordings she has helped create still thrive vibrantly outside her image. And for someone with so blinding an image, that's the ultimate testament to power.
source : new york daily news
