Madonna

by Lucy O'Brien

  One of Madonna’s most spectacularly successful songs, it grew out of a brainstorming session in Price’s tiny apartment in Maida Vale, west London. When it was finished, she realized they had something explosive on their hands. In much the same way she demoted Pat Leonard on the Ray of Light album after she met Orbit, Madonna bumped Mirwais (originally scheduled to produce the record) to the sidelines to work with Price. She would come to the latter’s apartment every day at three p.m., climb the stepladder to his loft, and make music, almost as an escape. They worked under impossibly cramped conditions—“My apartment consists of a couch, a mixing desk, an Apple computer, as many vintage keyboards as I could fit into one room, and a kettle,” said Price—but that was reassuring to Madonna, reminding her of early creative days in New York. And having worked on initial demos in this way with Orbit for Ray of Light, she wasn’t fazed by the primitive surroundings.

  “I couldn’t have made this record anywhere else…. Where you record is very important,” she told the Observer’s Simon Garfield. “It can’t be too nice, it can’t be too expensive, it can’t have a view to an ocean or a field. I’d rather be in a prison cell with Pro Tools…. I want it to be exactly as it was when I wrote my first song. In a small space with hardly any frills.” Ever one to watch the pennies, she didn’t relish recording in a large, swanky studio, feeling she had to create twelve number-one hits to justify the money.

  To Price, it was simple: “What we’re doing now is what she was doing at the start of her career. She said, ‘I used to hang around the DJs long enough to force them to make records for me,’ so nothing’s changed there…. On ‘Into the Groove,’ if you solo the vocals, you can hear the cars going by outside in Manhattan. These records weren’t manufactured pop records. She was literally going around a DJ’s house and saying, ‘What’s the best music you’ve got?’ and singing over it.”

  The album was an homage to records they had both grown up with—ABBA and Giorgio Moroder being the obvious influences. “If there are references to earlier records it’s probably done unknowingly, part of our molecular structure,” Madonna said cheerfully. It is ironic that a guitar riff from one of her earliest demos, “High Society” on the Gotham tapes, ended up on the album track “I Love New York,” while a keyboard sample from Price’s favorite the Pet Shop Boys graced the song “Jump.”

  From the opening bars, it is clear that this bold, ambitious, noisy record was a reaction to all those nights she spent twiddling her thumbs in Wiltshire. From the first screaming ABBA sample above the grinding disco rhythm, to the section where everything drops out and all we can hear is a muffled backbeat, the song “Hung Up” is a triumph. In Madonna’s voice—vulnerable, tentative, yet deadpan—we hear her history. In a sense, this album has thirty-year-old influences, but with new technology. “‘Hung Up’ is about grabbing a chance when you can or ‘You’ll wake up one day and it’ll be too late,’” she later explained. The song echoes Robert Browning’s poem “Two in the Campagna,” which is about the need to seize “the good minute.” If you don’t take an opportunity in love, the minute is gone. “I believe in the good minute,” she once declared.

  A compelling slice of euphoria, it was the perfect antidote to the more downbeat American Life, and therefore crucial to Madonna that she could release the track as her first single. There was just the tricky question of copyright. She had to approach the notoriously difficult Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson in order to get permission. “I had to send my emissary to Stockholm with a letter…begging them and imploring them and telling them how much I worship their music, telling them it was an homage to them, which is all true,” she said. “And they had to think about it. They never let anyone sample their music. They could have said no. Thank God they didn’t.”

  Another key sample is the dramatic synth sound of the Jacksons’ 1981 hit “Can You Feel It.” The Jacksons’ rhythm builds with an unrelenting pace, like a monstrous undertow on the track “Sorry,” her multilingual rant that was written, one presumes, after a row with Guy. Later released as the second single from the album, it went top ten throughout Europe and reached number one in the Billboard dance charts. The video, the first made by her tour director Jamie King, continued where “Hung Up” left off, with Madonna and her crew leaving a club and picking up men to dance in their disco-style van. There was a roller-rink sequence for which all the dancers, including Madonna, had to learn how to roller-skate from scratch.

  The homage to 70s disco continues with a sample of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” That song’s unmistakable rush laces the sound of “Future Lovers,” the sole track produced by Mirwais. Like the others, the rhythm pounds like a runaway train, its generous bass lines punctuated by ebullient synth loops. When she was writing this track, Madonna was mindful of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” the song that she danced to all those years ago at Menjo’s club in Detroit, and considered “Sorry” a kind of follow-up. In fact, the whole album is Madonna’s tribute to all those soulful disco divas who inspired her.

  There’s also the ghost of Iggy Pop (and the ghost of her Gotham past) on the irreverent “I Love New York.” Many took offense at the way this song mocked cities like Paris and London. “I love London and Paris [but]…I have a history with New York that I don’t have anywhere else in the world,” she told Attitude magazine. “Even though I grew up in Michigan, I really grew up in New York. Aside from when my mother died, the toughest time in my life was living in New York; being broke, having no friends, and struggling, trying to find my place in the world…. New Yorkers have this thing with people, that they know you have survived New York too.” She admitted that the city was “kind of brutal,” but she loved its “insanity and noise…it’s like putting your finger in a socket.”

  In all these tracks, Madonna’s voice is just another texture. She had come far enough in her career to let her voice just signal a mood. This album was less about foregrounding her as the “star,” more about surrendering her to the dance floor. In songs like “Get Together” (which recalls the freestyle beat of her Danceteria days), the spacey, futuristic seduction of “Forbidden Love,” and “Like It or Not,” produced by Bloodshy and Avant, there is a sense of psychological intimacy. Lyrics rise up through the mix like private thoughts, capturing the meditative aspect of standing on a dance floor lost in your own world. And Madonna has plenty to think about. Her fame, once again deconstructed and set aside; and her spiritual passion, which soars through the astonishingly lush track “Isaac.” But over and above it is the gravitational pull of her driving energy, pulsating through the standout track “Jump,” an inspirational song reiterating one of her earliest messages: face the fear and don’t look back. Charging through life like a bullet train, taking all her influences with her, Madonna ended up full circle, returning to her dance roots with Confessions on a Dance Floor.

  No wonder people responded so favorably to the album. When it was released in November 2005, it was a bestseller from the start, and has since become one of her most successful albums, holding the record for topping the most charts in the world. The lead single, “Hung Up” was number one in forty-one countries. To many, it felt like the old Madonna: upbeat and reassuring. Buyers also responded to a very powerful marketing campaign. Disappointed by the sales of American Life, Madonna decided to do a little market research for her new album. Before the record was finished, she had Price slip a few mixes (with her vocals turned down) into his live DJ sets. He filmed the crowd reaction with his mobile phone, to give her an indication of which tracks went down best on the dance floor. In this way Madonna used club audiences as a focus group.

  “It suggests she feels a need for endorsement,” commented Claire Beale, the editor of U.K. advertiser’s bible, Campaign magazine. “Like a lot of people who work in advertising, she is far older than her target audience. She may feel this is a useful way of reconnecting with a younger generation.” Determined to reach every age group in a quest for sales, Madonna did indeed a
ppeal to teenagers as well as the over-forties. Even my four-year-old son began chanting the opening lines of “Hung Up.”

  She matched this marketing drive with a brand-new image: long, strawberry-blond hair curled back Farrah Fawcett–style, and a shiny purple 70s disco leotard. All complete with a mirror ball. And she made sure she wore this outfit everywhere, even to her belated birthday party hosted by interior designer David Collins a month after the album’s release. “When I came to the door, I couldn’t believe it,” said one guest. “Madonna looked like she’d just stepped out of her latest video.” The message was loud and clear. “I want to dance,” she declared to the world. “I wanted to lift myself and others up with this record.” Madonna made strategic appearances at various clubs, taking the Semtex girls from her “Semtex” management team to the Roxy in New York and G.A.Y. and the Koko Club in London. The latter was originally the Camden Palace, one of the first London venues she played back in the early 80s. She engaged in the ultimate publicity stunt—riding down the center of Manhattan on a horse for the Late Show with David Letterman (and she chose the biggest horse). Part of “Hung Up” was featured on a global ad for Motorola’s new mobile phone, and became a master ringtone. Filtered through every possible medium, Confessions was touted as Madonna’s big “comeback” record.

  “With her last album, many naysayers were questioning her relevancy. This new album puts all that to rest,” said Warner Bros. CEO Tom Whalley, with an almost audible sign of relief. Virgin Megastore merchandise manager Jerry Suarez summed up the prevailing mood by saying: “It’s all about Madonna right now…The last record suffered because she got so political. Less guns. Less tanks. More disco balls. More ABBA. We’re good.”

  This was a woman fiercely engaging with her public, making the most of branding opportunities with MTV as well as Motorola and iTunes. “I’m a businesswoman,” she said. “The music industry has changed. There’s a lot of competition and the market is glutted with new releases—and new ‘thises and thats.’ You must join forces with other brands and corporations. You’re an idiot if you don’t.” She reassured the “naysayers” by announcing: “I don’t need to be going on about the war in Iraq. I made a lot of political statements…. I don’t want to repeat myself, so I moved to another area and that’s ‘God, I really feel like dancing right now.’”

  THE DANCE-FOCUSED “Hung Up” video was shot by Swedish director Johan Renck, who had fashioned the Japanese kabuki theater style of Madonna’s 1999 video “Nothing Really Matters.” This time Renck kept the concept simple, but still with his snappy images and elegant lighting style. An homage to John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever, the video was filmed in catacombs, on the London Underground, and in a Tokyo slot-machine arcade. “Madonna wanted to do a video where her music confronts all types of subcultures in the world of dance,” said Renck. One of the most arresting moments is where the music drops down to sub-bass, and the camera travels from a giant boom box to Madonna writhing in the disco lights. It is as if she is inside the music. “It’s a surreal, dreamlike piece of music, with Madonna looking like she’s within a disco ball,” Renck enthused. This image, with the purple leotard and the revolving, spacey lights, became her iconic Confessions look. She then set it off with the shot of her Travolta-style strut down the street in an original 70s hooded leather bomber jacket. Bought for a few dollars by a stylist in a church thrift store in Utah, the jacket echoed the tone of the video—sweaty, subcultural, and real. As ever, Madonna’s dancers were street rather than stagey, their lithe, inspired movements spurring her on, bringing out the dance diva that lay dormant inside. In the video, she has a muscular, sexy beauty, strolling along, looking taller, more substantial somehow, than her actual five feet four inches.

  Although the video was one of the first things she did after her riding accident, Madonna’s fiery energy is palpable. “When I shot the video, none of the bones had gone together,” she said. “Pharmaceuticals and my will got me through the shoot. So, to come out of that, I felt so much inspiration and so much joy to have my body back and to feel strong again.”

  Madonna’s body was her temple, and a much-discussed one at that. In the weeks after her album release, much was made of how young this “forty-seven-year-old mother of two” looked. In maintaining that perfect body, though, Madonna was leaving nothing to chance. Every day she did an hour of Olympic-level ashtanga yoga, an hour of Pilates, and an hour of aerobic exercise. She took business calls on her Stairmaster, and ate a finely tuned macrobiotic diet, allowing herself one glass of wine with Sunday lunch. A large proportion of her working day was spent, effectively, working out. According to fashion historian Sarah Cheang, there was rigorous method to this madness.

  “The 1980s aerobics, 1990s workout, and twenty-first-century yoga trends have all encouraged women to create an internal corset of muscles that flatten the stomach through hard work and self-discipline,” she says. “These are active bodies that subscribe to norms of beauty and must be continuously on show to the approving gaze of others.” Back in the 1980s, the late Dusty Springfield complained to me that being a female pop star required “a lot of upkeep. All those hair extensions and the exercise. It’s too much for me.” Within fifteen years, that upkeep would be de rigueur for any girl conforming to twenty-first-century standards of beauty.

  “In the simpler world of the 80s and 90s, girls needed the right dress, hair, and flowers for the prom,” says psychologist Margo Maine. “These days, preparation for a special event takes weeks, starting with tanning; waxing their eyebrows, bikini line, and legs; manicure and pedicure; coloring their hair; having their makeup done by an expert; maybe even having a cosmetic plastic surgery procedure. The dress and the date have become almost incidental. The body is the project, and the process is endless.”

  In the global Barbie culture, more and more young women have fallen prey to disordered eating and excessive exercise to achieve the skinny look of runway models and celebrities. And an estimated 8 percent of young American women have serious eating disorders, such as anorexia or bulimia. This, despite the fact that posed celebrity photos are regularly retouched, so that what we see is a distortion of their body appearance—in other words, what “ordinary” women aspire to isn’t real anyway. There was also the problem of the “lollipop ladies”—celebrities like Nicole Ritchie, Brittany Murphy, and Victoria Beckham, who were so thin that their heads appeared too large for their bodies. Although she seemed pleasingly fleshy in her “Hung Up” video, Madonna has often come perilously close to the “lollipop” look. One TV makeup artist at this time said that she looked “a bit gaunt.” Although some delicate cosmetic surgery might be tempting, the improbable bodies of older stars like Cher and Joan Collins would not be something that Madonna aspires to.

  “A body sculpted by the knife of the surgeon would not signal Madonna’s power and discipline in the same way as a body sculpted by hard work and strength,” comments Sarah Cheang. “To support the Madonna myth, her body must display the signs of strength above the signs of beauty.” This was a goal that would present more and more of a challenge for Madonna. She felt the pressure to look young and vital in a market where her competitors were twenty years younger, but at the same time she wanted to stay cool, not seem aging and desperate. Already the critics were closing in: “Even with Muscles Like These, Madonna Can’t Beat the Hands of Time” screamed a Daily Mail headline. The article gleefully pointed out the “virtual roadmap of veins” in Madonna’s hands, “something the toughest exercise regime just can’t solve.”

  Madonna continued her battle with time, regardless. There was an underlying tension to her strenuous efforts to stay young and beautiful. Rumors were beginning to surface about problems in her marriage. She has made no secret of the fact that it has been a struggle. “When I first met Guy, I couldn’t believe I had met someone as strong-willed as I was,” she said. “Guy has a very forceful personality with very specific likes and dislikes. He doesn’t back down one iota if it�
�s something we disagree on, but I respect that.” Although Madonna appreciated a man with mettle, she didn’t feel totally secure with him. “She complains that he never compliments her on the way she looks and that makes her paranoid about the ten-year age gap between them and him not finding her attractive anymore. That is so hard for a woman like her,” said a friend. Madonna’s response was to accentuate her beauty in every manner available to her, and stick religiously to her exercise regime.

  As long as she could get away with it, she would—and for the promotion around her Confessions album, she flaunted her toned body in a way she hadn’t done for years, as if she was having one last final fling.

  AT THE other end of the spectrum, another forty-seven-year-old female star released a high-profile album. British artist Kate Bush couldn’t be more different from Madonna in terms of personality and approach. Aerial, her eighth album, was released on the same day as Confessions on the Dance Floor, but she gave only a handful of interviews and eschewed the limelight, preferring the music to speak for itself. Blending folk, reggae, classical, and Renaissance styles, Aerial was a graceful, surreal record, including a song about a washing machine and “King of the Mountain,” a comment on Elvis Presley and the excesses of fame. Portrayed as an eccentric recluse by the U.K. press, Bush retired from the spotlight for twelve years to give her son, Bertie, a normal childhood. In contrast to the worldwide headlines about Madonna’s babies, Bush didn’t release news of her son’s birth in 1998, and it wasn’t until two years later that the story broke. But though they were at opposite ends of the pop spectrum, both Bush and Madonna related to music in a way that was intensely personal. While Bush depicted in painstaking detail on Aerial the imaginative power of a woman’s domestic world, Madonna recorded on Confessions the private meditation of someone joyfully lost in the hedonistic, external world of club culture.