I’ve not seen many films that Madonna’s has been in. I think just Who’s That Girl and Evita – the latter is excellent.
This album includes 4 Madonna originals including the self-titles theme song from the movie. It’s just fun and takes me back to the summer before grade 8.
Who’s that girl, I never understood the Spanish until I started learning Spanish a few years ago. Again it’s such a fun song.
Quién es esa niña (who’s that girl?)
The chord structure of Causing a Commotion should drive me nuts but I actually like it. Don’t ask me what is it should drive me nuts, I don’t know what it is. This song grew on me, and given my associations to it from the Blond Ambition Tour, it makes me smile. I like the reference to Into The Groove.
I have always loved the bass line of The look of love. For me, personally I associate this in the same category as Live to Tell.
I’ve had a map laid out from the day I was born
But the roads are blocked, and the paper is worn
And all the books I’ve read, and the things I know
Never taught me to laugh, never taught to let go
Can’t Stop is another feel good Madonna song that makes me want to dance with late 80s nostalgia. Again, just a fun pop track!
Prince – who realized that Prince was all over this album? I need to pay more attention to liner notes, but I think the patchouli smelling cover had some music enhancing drug properties. LOL – Just kidding. Still!
To go from Who’s That Girl
That guitar riff is iconic and the way Like a Prayer starts, such a great track. I wrote a paper in Grade 9 religion on this song. It was a complete fluff piece regurgitating what the church’s stance was, what Madonna’s stance was and my own stance. The Pepsi advertisement, the burning crosses of the video – iconic and once again, because people are blind, they get the messaging wrong.
Like A Prayer is such an important song, not necessarily for the lyrical content, but for the controversy that I rolled my eyes at – mostly towards the Roman Catholic Church of the day and the religious right.
Oh, the racism that followed too? Yeah.
The hypocrisy…
The choir? Have I mentioned I actually gave a thing for gospel choirs? Oh yes!
If you want a GREAT version of this song? Check out the version on The Immaculate Collection. It’s my favourite version.
Express Yourself, another amazing song about female empowerment, although as a gay man I also took note. When she opened with this at the Blond Ambition Tour, I felt shivers up my spine. Such a great song. Do check out the version on The Immaculate Collection. It too is my favourite version.
I recently heard that Love Song that’s a duet with Prince was a real clash in the studio. Prince wanted a big production, Madonna said to strip it back. We get the stripped back version on this album, through I do wish I could hear Prince’s version. Prince is an artist I reflect, and I like a number of his tracks, but he doesn’t really resonate with me.
This song is not really my favourite on the album, and it feels a bit weird. Almost typically strange Prince production, but it really shows where Madonna can go with different styles. I’m not sure I appreciated at the time, how big this collaboration was, and rare Prince sharing lead vocals with someone.
Till Death Do Us Part is another song that I put in the same category as Live to Tell and The Look of Love. The song explores a toxic, codependent cycle of fighting, verbal abuse, and reconciliation. I was 15 at the time and this was what I was observing in my home life at the time.
Promise to Try is Madonna’s song around dealing with the grief of losing her mother to breast cancer. I have always loved this ballad, it’s beautiful. The piano is stunning. For me, my own interpretation is thinking about being alone, abandoned and struggling with my home life.
I fought to be so strong, I guess you knew
I was afraid you’d go away, tooLittle girl you’ve got to forget the past
And learn to forgive me
I promise to try, but it feels like a lie
Which that we come to the end of side A. I also had Like a Prayer on vinyl.
Cherish I appreciated more as an adult, and it grew on me. It’s a bop and a fun track. As a gay man, I think of me singing it to Scott. It works.
Dear Jessie is another beautiful track. Many gay men, especially with the Confessions II era refer to Madonna as “mother” and with that album, I actually understand it now and in many respects feel that way, especially given her impact on me as an HIV/AIDS Activist and Safe Sex advocate. This song sounds like a mother singing a lullaby. Gorgeous.
Oh Father is a tough track for me. Where Madonna sings about the relationship of having a strict father, I related to it with my strict grandmother. The themes she sings about was exactly how I felt.
It’s funny that way
You can get used to the tears and the pain
What a child will believe
You never loved meYou can’t hurt me now
I got away from you
I never thought I would
You can’t make me cry
You once had the power
I never felt so good about myselfMaybe someday
When I look back, I’ll be able to say
You didn’t mean to be cruel
Somebody hurt you too
If Oh Father helped me process the pain of family. Keep it together helped me to think about my extended family of my aunt, uncle and cousins who have been more family to me than my own family:
When I get lonely
And I need to be
Loved for who I am
Not what they want to seeBrothers and sisters
They’ve always been there for me
We have a connection
Home is where the heart should be
It’s a great celebratory song of what family should be, striking out on your own, and support.
Spanish Eyes is a song about AIDS and losing a close friend. 8 years and still so much misinformation and people dying senselessly due to government inaction and hate. This is a beautiful tribute.
He had to fight like all the rest
In the barrio all the streets are paved with fear
I don’t understand
At least he was a man
… How many lives will they have to take
How much heartache
How many suns will they have to burn
Spanish eyes
When will they ever learn
…You were not the Maravilla in our minds
We were proud to fight but we cannot win this blind
Stand your guns against the wall
Who’s next in line to fall
We then end with comedic Madonna and the Act of Contrition featuring Prince. I LOVE this track – gospel choir, Prince guitar, Madonna rapping a prayer and then waking up trying to make a reservation at a restaurant? It’s completely unhinged!
Over all the controversy really caused by others, I think people missed the importance of this album. It’s Madonna at her most vulnerable to date, well before Ray of Light which would come 9 years later.
Madonna the activist, singing about taboo topics such as AIDS, mental health, family relationships. This was the perfect album at the prefect time for me. It helped me to express emotions through someone else’s music, it helped me process the pain I was living with at the time, and it was healing or at lease eased the pain.
Probably the most important album, to me, in Madonna’s catalogue.
If there was an album every gay boy in high school in 1990 was listening to, it had to be I’m Breathless. You thought Pet Shop Boys producing Liza Minnelli singing Sondheim was gay? How about Madonna and Sondheim collaborating?
I don’t think I’ve seen Dick Tracy, despite the fact I fell in love with this album and listened to it A LOT. I even was given a Dick Tracy t-shirt by my aunt, uncle and cousins after they got back from a trip to California.
I was finish grade 10 and going into grade 11 when this album came out, so was 16.
This album is full of some great double entendres, perfect for the character of Breathless Mahoney. Peak artistically inspired Madonna playing a character.
Beyond Master and Servant from Depeche Mode, Hanky Panky certainly was an education. Reflecting recently about those times, there certainly was a lot of sex in music between safe sex messaging, artists like Madonna trying to normalize the discussion that sex is not something to be ashamed of, and talking about it alleviates more than it causes issue – hello closeted Republicans crashing Growlr circa 2020s?
Treat me like I’m a bad girl, even when I’m being good to you,
I don’t want you to thank me, you can just spank me.
I need to to let the album speak for itself. I’m not one for lounge music and that old-time sound from the 20s and 30s, but this album just works for me. Do listen to it. It’s incredible and it gives me a lot of happy memories. That said, here are some songs that really stand out for me:
Something to Remember is the most poignant track on the album. The stings on this track are amazing.
Guess I’m waiting for my place in your sun
Wish I had the chance to know you and it wasn’t stormy weather
What a shame, who’s to blame?
Back in the Business and More are completely camp romps! I’m totally getting Madonna channelling Liza Minnelli in Chicago with More, not surprising given it’s a Sondheim produced-track.
Just ’cause you got a halo don’t mean that you can fly.
What Can You Lose is a beautiful duet with Mandy Patinkin and another Sondheim produced-track.
Now I’m Following You with Warren Beatty reminds me of – Part II is probably the first time we hear Madonna get really expressively erotic on an album, and really, Madonna history is never the same. Those sampled “Dicks” always make me chuckle.
Unlikely as it is to me
On the floor with two left feet
Let’s boogie woogie till our
To cap off this completely amazing album we head to the Ballroom with Vogue. No honey, I’m not talking about the basic Ballroom, I’m talking about the Ballroom Scene honey, Pose-style.
This was a HUGE cultural moment. Madonna opened up the beauty of the New York Ballroom scene –
The ballroom scene is an underground LGBTQ+ subculture founded in Harlem, New York during the late 1960s by Black and Latino communities. It provided a safe haven and chosen family structures (known as “Houses”) for marginalized queer individuals facing severe racism and homophobia.
Voguing is a highly stylized, competitive dance form born directly on the floors of these ballroom events. It is composed of five core elements: hand performance, catwalk, duckwalk, floor performance, and spins and dips
The concept of “Houses” directly translates into family of choice – the latter of which Scott and I belong to and have built – very much handed down and inspired.
Part 3 we look at Madonna’s next reinvention… was it really a reinvention? Honestly, I think that’s just a silly bucket that people have put artists into.