Madonna

by Lucy O'Brien

  With these intimate guitar riffs, Mirwais and Madonna created the soft inner heart of the album. That romantic sentiment is best expressed on “Don’t Tell Me” (another fan favorite), where Madonna seems to forget herself. Her voice has a sinuous quality, and she sings like a dancer, easy on the beat, with just the right amount of tension and release. It’s a declarative song that conjures up the Midwest of her childhood and teenage years, where the fluid rock of Carole King and Lynyrd Skynyrd would have been the soundtrack of her high school peers. What’s startling about this record is Mirwais’s mix of the organic and analogue with space-age effects. The two work in tandem, but only because they are an expression of Madonna’s own musical history. She is the force that pulls it all together. Just as when she sings with that dragging, electronic vocodervoice on “Nobody’s Perfect,” or projects vulnerability and uncertainty on the Japanese haiku–like track “Paradise,” she is translating her experience into music.

  “The main thing that struck me was her presence in these songs,” says Guy Sigsworth, who produced one of the standout tracks on the album, “What It Feels Like for a Girl.” “She said to me, ‘Guy, I’m really good at simple. I do simple really well.’ She was playing me roughs of other tracks on the record, Mirwais and William’s songs. I’m a great admirer of their work and the way they play with technology, but as soon as she entered, it was like she took a big flag and stuck it in the middle of the territory. It made the album cohere really well. I can see how she was producing them as much as they were producing her. She was giving a directness of purpose to what they were doing. That’s quite a challenge.”

  Sigsworth was another member of the Björk team that Madonna admired. A Cambridge music graduate with a love of Stockhausen and Kate Bush, Sigsworth had worked on several of Björk’s albums, including Post (1995) and Homogenic (1998). A producer who’s worked with everyone from Seal to Britney Spears to more alternative artists like Gem and Kate Havnevik, he has a particular way with the female voice. “I’ve always felt that ladies in music are more vocally adventurous. A lot of male singers are from the Liam Gallagher school, more limited in their range because they’ve got guitars behind them. Women often experiment with the melody and take it to different places,” he maintains.

  Sigsworth also has a love of technology, but unlike Mirwais, he revels in understatement. “People talk about music on computers and say, what’s the mystery in the bits and zeroes and ones? I say there is mystery there—what I like doing with computers is finding the mystery in the digital glitches of modern sound.” Madonna had been keeping an eye on Sigsworth—she was one of the few thousand people who bought a record he produced, by U.K. trip-hop act Mandalay—and when she wanted to add a more ambient electronic feel to the Music album, she got in touch with him.

  He sent her a CD with a backup track and a sample of Charlotte Gainsbourg in The Cement Garden, a cult 90s film about teenage brother and sister who have an incestuous affair. The daughter of French musician Serge Gainsbourg (who, with his wife, Jane Birkin, created “Je T’aime,” the most notorious love song of the 70s), Charlotte had a deadpan but sensitive delivery. “It’s OK to be a boy, but not OK for a boy to look like a girl, because being a girl is degrading,” she says in the film. Madonna took this idea and ran with it.

  “She wrote this lyric, taking a phrase from what Gainsbourg said, and made a beautiful melody out of it,” recalls Sigsworth. Feeling unsettled and hormonal, because she had just found out she was pregnant with Guy’s child, Madonna expressed her exasperation with a world that compels women to be less of who they are. “Men are quite intimidated by women who accomplish a lot,” she said. “There have been so many instances where I’ve said to myself, ‘Oh I wish somebody would have said to me, Be great, but don’t be too great because you’re going to limit your options. It is a game that all strong women have to play…the song is…a realization about the politics of the sexes. It’s a complaint.”

  Sigsworth recorded the track with Madonna at SARM studios rather than his own place, “because I was terrified of fucking up, basically. I knew she’d worked in that bed-sit environment with William, but I wanted to make sure I had backup. I remember the first day in the studio, pretending to be cool, but inwardly punching the air and yelling, ‘I’m working with Madonna!’”

  Soon after they started, though, Sigsworth realized they had a problem. “The way she’d written her verses, they were out of sync with my music. I said, ‘That’s OK, we’ll stick an extra bar in here and your melody and my music will catch up.’ She said, ‘No.’ The genius of what happened was finding interesting ways to cut up what I’d already written, put it in the computer, and reposition it around her voice in more unusual ways,” he recalls. “The end result made the song more fluid and magical. That was her challenge: not to take the cop-out solution. It made me raise my game. I’m very proud of what we came up with.”

  He also found Madonna’s impatience with knob-twiddling a challenge. “She understood the studio process. Rather than let me work on something for two hours, she’d say, ‘Just give me a rough idea, an approximation of the sound. Then, if I don’t like it, we don’t waste time.’ I’d protest, wanting it to be perfect, but she’d say, ‘No, that’s OK.’ She’s worked with so many people before, she just wants to get it done.”

  With its restrained production, “What It Feels Like for a Girl” has a barbed and beautifully executed sense of anger. Along with “Express Yourself,” it has become one of her best-known “femme-pop” songs. It’s not exactly a call to arms, but it develops the idea she expressed in her Vanity Fair “Evita diary” several years earlier: “If I had known that I would be so universally misunderstood, maybe I couldn’t have been so rebellious and outspoken…. Could an idiot have come this far in life? I wonder if I could ever have been the kind of sweet, submissive, feminine girl that the entire world idealizes.”

  Guy Ritchie directed the video for the song. With his background in pop promos, he was eager to make a video for Madonna, and went about it with his customary “guerrilla filmmaking” attitude. She rises to the occasion, playing a trigger-happy revenge queen, merrily crashing cars and eradicating any men who get in her way. Condemned for its violent imagery, the video was banned by VH1 and MTV, which squashed its chances of being a big hit. Although tongue-in-cheek, the video was also fueled by a barely disguised anger. One of the issues that irks Madonna the most is not being taken seriously as an artist.

  Like many producers who’ve worked with her, Sigsworth feels that Madonna has been underestimated as a musician. “She had an omnivorous appetite for music. She would bring a box of CDs into the studio for me to check out. She’s fascinated and truly in love with music.” To him, she was a remarkably resourceful singer. “She knows her limits and what she can do vocally, but within that she’s very creative. I like the fact that she’s not showy with her singing. It’s about the song. She’d be the last one to try and out-roulade Mariah Carey. She has a very direct way of telling the tale.” He noticed that she didn’t need to grandstand in the studio. “Most singers want themselves as loud as possible till it’s almost painful in the mix. Madonna’s not like that. She likes to hear herself in the music, not on top of it. That shows a kind of self-knowledge. She’s very aware of the musical context. I love flamboyant singers, but I get tired of that American school of the Olympic five-thousand-yards vocal. It’s the vocal version of guitar solos.”

  To Madonna, the most important thing is communication. “She goes direct to the listener’s ear,” says Sigsworth. “She tests out her music by going out on the town with her nanny, her personal assistant, and girlfriends—what she calls the Pussy Posse—and playing it to them on her car stereo. She trusts their reaction much more than the record company.” Madonna’s female audience is uppermost in her mind; she knows the importance of good melody lines, because that will make a hit song. DJ/producer Norman Cook once told Sigsworth: “When I play a record in a club, I know it’s going to
work if the girls go for it. I know the guys will go for it if it’s got the right rhythm, groove, and attitude. But if the girls go for the melody lines, then I know it’ll be a big hit.”

  The album was completed by the spring of 2000. The only goof track on it was her version of the Don McLean classic “American Pie.” It was an odd choice for her, a folk-based protest song that was far out of her disco background, but it was featured on the soundtrack of her critically panned movie The Next Best Thing. She regretted its inclusion on the album, claiming she was “talked into it by some record company executive.” Apart from the “American Pie” track, though, Madonna could barely contain her excitement about Music. She primed her fans by telling the official fan club that “the single is going to drop very soon. I worked on it with a French guy named Mirwais, and he is the shit.”

  Life was going smoothly. Guy had long finished his relationship with Tania Strecker, and he and Madonna were now “legit.” As the expectant father, he even gave up alcohol while Madonna was pregnant, so she wouldn’t be tempted. The only bum note was hit when Madonna told an L.A. radio interviewer that she wouldn’t have her baby in a British hospital because they were too “old and Victorian.” This didn’t endear her to the British public, so she had to do some damage control, saying how much she loved London and Europe’s creative attitude toward the arts. In reality, she was nervous about her pregnancy. She had been diagnosed with placenta previa, a condition that can cause the mother to hemorrhage and cut off the baby’s blood supply, and had to take extra care. On August 10, 2000, a month before her due date, Madonna began bleeding and was rushed to the L.A. Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Guy had been at a private screening of his film Snatch, and when he arrived at the hospital, she was hemorrhaging badly and going into shock. Although she had a Cesarean scheduled closer to the due date, Madonna had to have an emergency procedure. Her son, Rocco (named after one of her uncles), was born on August 11. Jaundiced and premature, he was kept in intensive care for five days before Madonna and Guy were allowed to take him home.

  It was her forty-second birthday, and she was ecstatic. Little Rocco had made a good recovery, and was a calm baby. “I feel complete,” she said. Guy, meanwhile, was bursting with pride. “He was small and came out early, but not alarmingly small. He was sweet small,” he said. When he was talking about his son, Guy’s defensive bravado melted away. “Fatherhood does change you…It’s like a huge wave of love, but much stronger.” There was something that softened in Madonna, too. In early pictures, she looks at Rocco with an amused devotion that only a mother can give her son. Having a daughter makes a woman think about the female in herself, and be fiercely protective of her. Having a son ignites a different kind of love. It is no less intense, but the bond is almost romantic. Madonna’s joy at having a family of her own was compounded when the day after Rocco got home, Guy gave her a diamond ring. “I never liked big rocks on my finger—well, I do now,” Madonna gushed. To her friend Rosie O’Donnell, the truth was simple. “Madonna first fell in love with her daughter, and that taught her how to fall in love for real,” she said.

  A MONTH after Rocco’s birth, the album Music was released. There was an authority about this record. It stood out at a time when pop (particularly in the United Kingdom) was dominated by the karaoke of young stage-school-trained acts like Steps and S Club 7 massacring 70s disco hits. There was also the legacy of The Spice Girls, where girl groups were manufactured with alarming speed, all formulaic hooks and moves, and scant attention paid to the music. Madonna criticized people for panning The Spice Girls, saying, “I was a Spice Girl once,” but she was putting herself down. Madonna had a vision and musicianship that was beyond most of her young female imitators.

  To her annoyance, some tracks had already leaked onto the Internet. She sued the music-download site Napster, but that didn’t hurt the impact of the record once it was released. The “Music” single went to number one in numerous countries, including the United States, and was her biggest hit since “Take a Bow” (1994). The album won a Grammy, and in 2003 reached the dizzying heights of number 452 on Rolling Stone’s list of greatest albums of all time. For Music, Madonna created her cartoon cowgirl persona, relishing Americana while at the same time sending it up. The CD artwork was pure camp, with pink and blue Stetsons, bales of hay, 1950s cars, guitars, and embroidered jeans. Gone was the gothic goddess of Ray of Light; now her hair was back to sun-kissed blond. After moving to London, Madonna found herself looking at America with new eyes, with a sense of fond irony. Although now a mother of two, she had no plans to stay quietly at home. Music signaled her willingness to get out into the world again and engage directly with her audience. It was during the launch party for the album (a high-bling affair in L.A., with pole dancers and champagne) that she hatched plans for a tour. For the first time in eight years, she would be back on the road.

  14

  HARDWORKING AND HARD-LAUGHING

  “I HAVE TO STAY CURRENT. GOD HELP ME, BUT I GUESS I have to share radio air time with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera,” Madonna told friends early in 2000. She was privately fretting about being overtaken by the younger competition. She knew that she could reassert her position as queen of pop with a world tour, but with two small children, it would take some planning. She dipped her toe in the water with a low-key set at Manhattan’s Roseland Ballroom, showcasing tracks from Music. “This is a chance to get my feet wet again,” she said. “It’s been a while.” Wearing a black rhinestone cowgirl outfit and a Britney Spears T-shirt, she performed for a select audience that included celebrity friends Gwyneth Paltrow, Donatella Versace, and Rosie O’Donnell.

  After the show, she sat in a downtown bar talking to the Rolling Stone writer Kurt Loder. With some expansion, couldn’t the Roseland gig become a full-scale roadshow, he asked. “I’m thinking about it,” was Madonna’s reply. On November 29, soon after she had won Best Dance Record and Best Female Artist for Music at the MTV Europe Awards, Madonna did a short set at London’s Brixton Academy. What had been billed as a party for an invited audience of 3,500 became a media feeding frenzy. With a Microsoft deal to broadcast her first live online event, the buzz reached fever pitch, and tickets were going for a reputed $3,500. The police presence outside the venue was considerable, while inside, the auditorium had been transformed into a giant TV-studio-cum-hayloft. Wedged at the front were a gaggle of fans in cowboy hats, while upstairs was crammed with assorted industry people, including Kylie Minogue.

  At ten p.m. sharp, Madonna bounded onstage wearing black jeans and a T-shirt with her son’s name emblazoned on it in glittering letters. She opened with the song “Impressive Instant,” backed by a band led by Mirwais on guitar. Her voice was strong, if a little breathless. Being at home with baby Rocco and not having toured for several years had obviously taken its toll. By contrast, she was more comfortable with the mid-tempo “Don’t Tell Me.” She then shouted gleefully: “I’d like to dedicate the next song to all those pop bitches out there!” before launching into “What It Feels Like for a Girl.” The old Madonna was back—girlish, teasing, and appealing directly to her female fans. She segued into “Holiday,” with dancing girls in Union Jack T-shirts, slightly awkwardly strutting her stuff atop a pickup truck. The mood was celebratory and camp, with a video montage of Madonna’s stylistic history flickering behind her, from “Material Girl” to “Vogue” and beyond. It was as if she was throwing down the gauntlet to the new generation of young Britneys and saying: “Top this!” Nine million fans logged on to her live Webcast, shattering Paul McCartney’s world record for the three million who tuned in to his performance at Liverpool’s Cavern Club the previous year. Her publicist Liz Rosenberg said: “Madonna is thrilled to pieces.” Plans for a tour were now a “distinct possibility.”

  By the end of the year, the publicity circus surrounding her became surreal, with Madonna and Guy supplanting David and Victoria Beckham at the lead of the media aristocracy. Despite the absence of official photographs, th
eir wedding on December 22, 2000, at Skibo Castle in Scotland became a world event. Mindful of the Malibu helicopters that had turned her wedding to Sean Penn into such a farce, Madonna wanted to keep the ceremony secret, and she and Guy went to great lengths to keep the paparazzi out. “Fuck ’em all,” she said, “I’ve given enough.” It was rumored that there had been negotiations with celebrity magazines Hello! and OK, but the £2 million Madonna asked for was too much, even for them. She had probably priced herself out of the market to get a little peace.

  For this event, Madonna was to star in her own fairy tale. She originally wanted to get married at Althorp House, the place where Princess Diana is buried, but Earl Spencer was worried about security and turned her down. Guy then persuaded her to go to Skibo Castle in the Scottish Highlands, a place that appealed to him because of his Highland family roots.

  And—just as important—the 7,500 acre estate was near a prime partridge shooting area. Dubbed “heaven on earth” by Andrew Carnegie, the Scots-born steel tycoon who restored the castle in 1898, the Edwardian pink-turreted building is set in breathtaking countryside. The word “Skibo” is derived from the Celtic for “fairyland,” and Madonna has said since that she felt the place was enchanted and magical.

  This oak-paneled, mock-baronial folly was once a retreat for esteemed guests like Edward Elgar and Rudyard Kipling. It was then used as a summerhouse for the Carnegie family, until financier Peter De Savary bought the place in 1990 and turned it into an exclusive country club, wooing Hollywood players like Sean Connery, Michael Douglas, and Jack Nicholson. For the last week of December, Madonna and Guy turned Skibo into a luxury fortress, hiring a crack security team and getting hotel staff to sign four-page confidentiality agreements. All guests had to turn off mobile phones, and there was virtually no contact with the outside world. Except that the world was busy looking in. Paparazzi were chased from the bushes and TV crews were stationed in the local town, desperately trying to sniff out information for their news bulletins.