Man that's both oversharing and undersharing on a heroic scale. So glad to see this thread — I've been feeling blue about the dearth of album-by-album threads.
And then it'd be re-released six months later with four more tracks and a couple of remixes. I guess if anyone can fault the CD era for anything, it's that artists felt compelled to release much longer albums, when the material didn't necessarily warrant it. I know some people think an 18-track album is a much better value than one with 10, but if half the songs are filler you always skip over, what's the point? Most of my favourite albums in any genre are ones that run 40-45 minutes, where the artist had to make every minute count. Madonna's debut is a great example of this. I agree completely; her vocals here have so much personality and exuberance. These songs would sound wrong to me somehow with a more technically proficient vocalist. That said, I do like Madonna's later, more developed voice as well, particularly on her ballads. I'm just glad Sire/Warners allowed enough time for the album to build some momentum and find an audience. The album debuted at No. 190 on the Billboard 200 chart for the week of September 3, 1983 and didn't hit its peak of No. 8 until 13 months later. Even back then, labels usually didn't have that kind of patience. I'm glad they recognized they had something special in Madonna. It definitely paid off for them, especially with the next couple of albums.
The "Madonna" album has a great feel to it. It's a proper little journey. If it had 16 songs...Some of which you'd be tempted to bypass, it would lose that. Everything about it was great. The artwork was so striking too. Guaranteed to stand out in record shops.
I love Madonna. As @Bobby Morrow said ^, it's a perfectly formed album, from the artwork to the songs. I like the production; it's the Reggie Lucas style (the tracks he did, that is), and you also have to factor in that in 1983 Madonna would had to have been viewed primarily as a club artist (not as a chart-ruling megastar)... so it wasn't like the label was after (or had budgeted for) a more contemporary pop aesthetic. Besides, I love the 'state of the art' synth programming (what synth lover doesn't love the Oberheim OB-X?) and Linn drums. So it what it is... an album aimed first and foremost at the dance clubs Madonna frequented (like, for example, Danceteria, with DJ Mark Kamins, or Funhouse, with Jellybean Benitez). I prefer it to the next two albums, with their more pop orientation, and high budgets (once Sire/Warners knew they had a potential superstar on their hands). Song for song, it's one of her very best (second to Erotica, for me), and I love the flow: it's just such a fun, easy to listen to album. Favourite tracks: "Borderline", "Holiday", "Physical Attraction", "Lucky Star"... all of them, really.
That's very true. Sire and Seymour Stein have to be commended for that. Like, the first radio hit was "Holiday", and that was in the Top 40 in December/January 1983/84 (~4 months after the album had debuted). So, yeah: it was a very patient approach/well planned strategy. Establish a solid foothold in late 1982/early '83 at dance clubs (a foothold she's kept for her whole career) with "Everybody" and "Burning Up", and then in late '83/1984 promote her to Top 40 radio with "Holiday", "Borderline" and "Lucky Star". The latter hit the Top 5 in October 1984, the month the album hit the Top 10 (a full 13 months later, as you mention), so it really was a sustained, unhurried push.
Like A Virgin was my first Madonna album, and I bought Madonna in 1985. I loved it then; I still do. I was 12 then, and 1985 was almost the peak of Madonna mania (with Like A Virgin, "Crazy For You", "Into The Groove" and Desperately Seeking Susan, not to mention that everyone was talking about her; she was either totally awful, talentless, 'slutty' and evil, or an empowered, feminist role model, shamelessly taking ownership of her sexuality), and it really felt like she was my pop star, even more so than Prince or MJ, who as hot as they were then also, hadn't just exploded onto the scene like Madonna had. She was very much a product of the youth culture or pop culture of 1984/85. I suppose it was how teens (or almost teens) felt about Elvis in 1957 or the Beatles in 1964. Parents freaking out, and us thinking, wow... she's cool. She was speaking to us on a different level.
Madonna Look-Alikes Unite In 1985 | News Video | MTV » Interesting video. She really was a force of nature, right out of the gate.
Ha, I love it. I remember that (not that exact clip, but stories just like it). Girls wanting to dress like Madonna, act like her, talk like her. She was a pop goddess, but she was more human and accessible than, say, Prince or MJ. They kind of seemed like they were from a different planet, whereas Madonna was like the really cool chick who liked pushing people's buttons. She was rebellious and fun. You could be just like her. No wonder parents were slightly freaked out. It's easy for people to hate on her, but she really was radical in 1984/85. There was no exact precedent for her in the pop universe (... the female pop superstars prior to her in 1982/83 were, like, Pat Benatar, Olivia Newton-John, Sheena Easton and Laura Branigan. Just totally different). She rewrote a lot of the rulebook for female artists (and kept rewriting it).
The first 5 videos of the singles from the first album are really classic. "Borderline" in particular is the centerpiece of the Madonna album. It's just so naive and wonderful in it's lyric and music, and the video is so cute, but you really begin to see that this "Madonna" is going places and is just realizing what she's doing to change the pop music scene. She just kept evolving and evolving.........
There's a video I can't find but it's a song called 'Go Away Madonna' a video shot during the height of Madonna mania in 1985. Edit, Here it is:
Here's the version of "Burning Up" that appeared on the first pressings of the LP: As much as I love the version that replaced it, this one fits more seamlessly with the sound of the rest of the album.
Mileage - I think the production on this record is incredible. It's stripped back and techno-tinged but still manages to be funky and urban. Sonically it's great - wonderful bass, better balanced high-end than the next four albums (including You Can Dance), and because it's so spare you get a great sense of space. True to a degree, but I think musically this record is a triumph. There isn't a bad cut on it - I've grown to appreciate even the "filler" like "I Know It" and "Think Of Me", which presages the pulsing beat of later hits like "Into The Groove" and "Causing A Commotion". And the hits here are numerous and as good as anything she ever produced. "Holiday" and "Borderline" are both two of the best hits of the decade and have held up incredibly well. "Burning Up" is still urgent and sexy (I prefer the CD version by a wide margin, which if memory serves was the video version as well), "Lucky Star" is iconic, "Physical Attraction" is as good as the hits and probably should have been spun off as a single, and while "Everybody" didn't set the pop charts on fire I've got a couple of friends who think it's the best thing she's ever released and I don't think they're crazy for saying it. With its stripped-back, Oberheim drenched electronic production, raw white soul singing, relentless R&B grooves and do-it-yourself ethos Madonna is kind of the American version of Sweet Dreams from Eurythmics, also recorded about the same time and also using an Oberheim. Both albums have, I think, held up much better than most of their contemporaries - recognizably '80s but definitive examples that still sound innovative and not imitative. It's interesting to me that these two iconic women, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, hit on very similar takes on pop music at pretty much exactly the same time, and also knew exactly what they needed to do image-wise to break themselves into the big leagues. The attitudes exhibited by their material were quite different - almost diametrically opposed even - but stylistically they were two expressions of pretty much the same idea executed in remarkably similar ways. Odd how that worked out.
I was in Tower Records around the holidays in '83 and and this gem of an album came on. I was intrigued and actually thought she was black. By the time Physical Attraction was halfway through I was at the counter asking who was singing and was surprised when I saw her cover picture. PA was my initial favorite but soon enough the infectious and exuberant Holiday settled in as my top choice. Borderline may have been the first video I saw but maybe it was just that it was played incessantly. I much preferred Lucky Star and Burning Up anyway. Great debut album and as a whole, her strongest until True Blue came along.
A couple of the tracks off Madonna were a guilty pleasure for me, even if I was dubious about the woman's talent. "Burning Up" was undeniably hot and the video was actually really well done. I thought the video for "Borderline" was surprising and loved the song, but again took Madonna to be so much product. It wasn't 'till I spent a bit of time in the summer of '84 or so hanging out in Scottsdale with the rich kids that I realized she'd become a massive cultural phenomena - it seemed like every teenage girl there was dressed up as a Madonna clone (it didn't reach the poor side of Phoenix where I lived until about six months to a year later, and not as intensely). I didn't begin to respect her though 'till I saw the "Material Girl" video. That's when it finally clicked that she had to be the one responsible for all of this, she wasn't just the creation of some label and she was really bright and clearly had some talent. Then I had to reappraise her earlier material. I still never ended up buying any Madonna on vinyl, though. I didn't start collecting her until I got a CD player in '87 or thereabouts, scooping up all the records thru True Blue. The first Madonna album I bought new was You Can Dance.
Surprisingly a slew of people had that reaction. I saw her either on MTV or our local, short-lived UHF music video station Channel 61 before I heard her on the radio, so that was never an option, but I can see how that might have been the case.
I agree. Major props to Reggie Lucas (on his first solo production job following his break with James Mtume), even if he and Madonna fell out over his production choices.
The more I dig deep into not only Madonna the artist and superstar, but Madonna the person I've come to regard her just as much a business woman as she is a musician. But looking back I think Madonna's strongest trait is her self-control. She is COMPLETELY in control of herself and in an industry where careers are flaky and the biggest fall from grace in the most unexpected fashion Madonna really is an anomaly. She's a great role model in that sense.
Ahhhemmm... This was in fact one of the things that utterly pissed me off about Madonna, the obvious way she sort of slid into the void left by Debbie Harry's absence. I eventually got over it, but have always regretted Blondie getting derailed in the '80s by band politics, Debbie's heroin problem and Chris Stein's illness. I like Madonna, but when they were firing on all cylinders Blondie were a heck of a lot more subversive, more eclectic and covered an amazing amount of territory.
Even the album art is iconic. Madonna was pressed on becoming the greatest. You can see the hunger in her eyes.
Debbie dropped the ball at the very worst time and wasn't able to salvage any part of her career that was left. Madonna swooped in like a vulture and dominated the scene and ruled our worlds in a way that no one (not even Debbie) could've ever dreamed of doing. The fall of one legend and the rise of another.
The double whammy of Debbie's 'Koo Koo' and Blondie's 'The Hunter' the following year saw her/them off really.
I used to think Madonna was good but eclipsed by True Blue certainly, as well as probably Like A Virgin and Like A Prayer. In my old age though, I listen to Madonna all the way through far more often than any other Madonna record - Erotica and Ray Of Light are the only other two I can recall playing thru in years. The 2001 remaster is compressed but listenable - the mix is spare and the compression hits the bass more than the treble so it's not an ear-bleeder or shrill, just a bit more funky and rooted. I spin the original too sometimes - it's thinner but feels a bit more true to the era. I love the 12" version of "Burning Up" that appears on the 2001 remaster - very techno, very '83, even more clubby than the album version. It's interesting to think of Madonna as a more techno, New Order styled act - you can kind of hear how that might have sounded in this mix:
I think the 2001 "Madonna" was by far the best of those remasters. I still like the early CD, though.
Well, yes. I think they were quite different, but then I concede I wasn't following pop when Debbie was in her prime, and I don't know enough about what she said or did or how she presented herself to be too opinionated about it. But it seems to me that Debbie was more hip; that she embodied or projected a sort of downtown, arty New York cool, which Madonna certainly aspired to, but Madonna kept more of a flirty, fun dimension (like, the type of woman you'd find her in clubs dancing, not at CBGB). (In short, Harry was untouchable, Madonna... wasn't). Also, less abstractly, Debbie didn't dance (a key to Madonna's presentation) or have such an iconic fashion style (?) and nor was she, to my knowledge, as outspoken/quotable. But absolutely, no question, if we were to list Madonna's precursors, Debbie Harry would be top of the list. I just think Madonna was different enough that she did seem to have no exact precedent.
