127 SCORE: 7.188 2015 PLACEMENT: DOWN 7 - 120 of 210 (6.932) HIGHEST SCORE: 10 x 11 (@AshtrayHeart @Vasilios @Andy French @torontodj @scottdisick94 @unnameable @Crisp X @Mister_G @Pop Life @Remorque @Weslicious) LOWEST SCORE: 2 x 1 (@godspeed) MY SCORE: 6/10 A question for our times more than ever: where is the party? True Blue has been unbothered for a very long time (nearly eighty places!) but as we approach the Top 100, not even one of the best selling albums of all time is safe, and it loses one of its few album tracks. Sorry stans, but it's mostly a meh from me, especially at this stage of the rate. You have so many superior 80s Madonna bops to choose from that feel far more urgent and fun and free. I don't find there to be anything particularly wrong with this but considering she was essentially the pedigree for a whole genre back then, I think standards are allowed to be a little higher. It's a fun bop, but there are funner, boppier fun bops to be had despite the Stephan Bray/Pat Leonard 80s dream tag team at the helm with the lady herself. Still though, Madonna singing about how fucking great dancing is never really gets old, and that looped laugh at the end will haunt me to my grave, so who's the real winner here? Despite being an album track, "Where's The Party" actually has a pretty decent live history. It had an outing on the Who's That Girl But Really True Blue Tour, along with receiving a spot on the iconic Blond Ambition as well. It would also get dusted off again over twenty years later when Stuart Price would interpolate it in a mash up between "Music" and "Disco Inferno" for, of course, the Confessions Tour. Enjoy!
Tomorrow: I finally shake off the ennui from a rough weekend and do write ups that don't have the phrase, "It's a fun bop, but there are funner, boppier fun bops to be had" in them. See you then! 127. Where's The Party - 7.188 128. Falling Free - 7.179 129. Crazy - 7.173 130. Nobody's Perfect - 7.139 131. I'm So Stupid - 7.127 132. Push - 7.112 132. I'm Addicted - 7.112 134. Masterpiece - 7.091 135. American Pie - 7.085 136. Body Shop - 7.061 137. Unapologetic Bitch - 7.058 137. Extreme Occident - 7.058 139. Looking For Mercy - 7.042 140. You Must Love Me - 7.024 141. Goodbye To Innocence - 7.009 142. Gang Bang - 6.939 143. Holy Water - 6.915 144. Gambler - 6.912 145. Think Of Me - 6.906 146. Beat Goes On (Feat. Kanye West) - 6.894 147. Beautiful Killer - 6.884 148. Hold Tight - 6.873 149. The Look Of Love - 6.824 150. Future (Feat. Quavo) - 6.8 151. Batuka - 6.791 152. Voices - 6.785 153. Best Night - 6.755 154. Veni Vidi Vici (Feat. Nas) - 6.752 154. Broken (I'm Sorry) - 6.752 156. Shanti / Ashtangi - 6.73 157. Addicted - 6.712 158. Iconic (Feat. Chance The Rapper & Mike Tyson) - 6.702 158. Ciao Bella - 6.702 160. Spotlight - 6.694 161. I Love New York - 6.652 162. Messiah - 6.639 163. Love Song - 6.621 163. I'd Rather Be Your Lover - 6.621 165. Supernatural - 6.615 166. Candy Shop - 6.588 167. Wash All Over Me - 6.561 168. HeartBreakCity - 6.558 169. Bitch I'm Loca (Feat. Maluma) - 6.548 170. Your Honesty - 6.524 171. Beautiful Scars - 6.461 172. Something To Remember - 6.458 173. Love Don't Live Here Anymore - 6.448 174. Over And Over - 6.433 175. Another Suitcase In Another Hall - 6.409 176. Stay - 6.367 177. Don't Stop - 6.339 178. Girl Gone Wild - 6.324 179. I Know It - 6.267 180. Act Of Contrition - 6.245 181. Fighting Spirit - 6.227 182. I Don't Give A (Feat. Nicki Minaj) - 6.203 183. It's So Cool - 6.191 184. Illuminati - 6.167 185. Funana - 6.161 186. Dance 2Night - 6.152 187. Borrowed Time - 6.118 187. History - 6.118 189. Sooner Or Later - 6.109 189. One More Chance - 6.109 191. Back That Up To The Beat - 6.076 192. Let Down Your Guard - 6.036 193. Killers Who Are Partying - 6.015 194. I'm A Sinner - 6.012 195. I Fucked Up - 5.964 196 - Some Girls - 5.933 197. He's A Man - 5.924 198. Give Me All Your Luvin' (Feat. Nicki Minaj & M.I.A.) - 5.921 199. Buenos Aires - 5.894 200. Super Pop - 5.848 201. Revolver (Feat. Lil Wayne) - 5.827 202. Can't Stop - 5.776 203. Ain't No Big Deal - 5.736 204. Turn Up The Radio - 5.727 205. Best Friend - 5.721 206. Graffiti Heart - 5.697 207. Hanky Panky - 5.691 208. Love Makes The World Go Round - 5.679 209. Back In Business - 5.67 210. Pretender - 5.661 211. Lament - 5.615 212. Cyber-Raga - 5.603 213. Incredible - 5.545 214. Jimmy Jimmy - 5.521 215. Now I'm Following You - 5.497 216. Ring My Bell - 5.424 217. S.E.X. - 5.373 218. Spanish Lesson - 4.997 219. Shoo-Bee-Doo - 4.948 220. More - 4.852 221. What Can You Lose - 4.436 222. Superstar - 4.391 223. Auto-Tune Baby - 4.121 224. Cry Baby - 3.367 225. I'm Going Bananas - 3.327 226. B-Day Song (Feat. M.I.A.) - 3.000 227. Hey You - 2.976
Losing three 7's (well, "Falling Free" got a 7.5 from me) in a row, followed by a 6 is quite a difference compared to most of the elimination days for me. There's almost always at least one painful elimination, so I'm glad to see that didn't happen today. There are definitely worse songs than three of these, but I'm not mad about them leaving. I think I slightly underscored "Nobody's Perfect" and "Crazy", while overscored "Falling Free" a bit. "White Heat" is the best out of the four album tracks from "True Blue", but I won't be bothered if it left at this point. "Love Spent" is a quite random last "MDNA" song standing, and *does copy - paste* I won't be bothered if it left at this point.
Crazy was one of the biggest growers from Madame X for me. Her vocal delivery is just unlike anything we've heard from her in years. Falling Free was one of my favourites from MDNA at the time, I've cooled on it slightly in recent years. The way her vocal sounds artificially slowed or something in the ending has always irked me, but the melody and general vibe is pretty. It definitely feels like the last track on the album, vs the "regular deluxe" versions of following albums where the shortened tracklistings feel incomplete. Not to derail cos it was ages ago but... I'm Addicted is a bop and genuinely don't hear all the aforementioned mastering/production problems in it that I can hear in some of the other songs from 2012-2015. The mostly-robotic-slightly-absent vocal just works for me there. My first 10 out at this stage isn't too bad though. American Pie (the single) was the first Madonna release I owned - one of the first CDs I had. My whole family loved it and I remember it had a CD-ROM music video and I guess that brief shot of the gay couple was the first time I saw two men kissing, sorry Christina, so yeah, special place, even though it just feels like an afterthought song now.
Oh my, I remember coming across this video a while ago... ...but never noticed the description, which has me dead:
Where’s The Party averaging around a 7??? Did you actually flip over the fucking record??? One of the best side B opening tracks ever.
My introvert self would be satisfied with this. I consider "Where's the Party" average at best, and can easily lump it with "Jimmy Jimmy" and (superior) "Love Makes the World Go Round" as quite fun, but greatly unremarkable filler-ish tracks. It outstayed its welcome.
Where's the party out white heat in??? TASTE Personal taste apart, it's fantastic to see how well engineered True Blue is. 5 Killer singles with 2 extra songs that could have been singles (White Heat, Where's The Party) and 2 fillers that just hurt it at aallll, and fit all along. Where's The Party is a behemoth of an 80's song, maybe that's part of why I dislike it, as it gets a bit... "pastiche" (?). Nobody's Perfect used to be one of my favorites when I first started with Madonna, but it didn't age that well with me. I still find it interesting as an experiment. The whole fucked up autotune discussing humanity... yeah. I wish I understood what she's saying in Crazy while singing Portuguese. Genius says it's "Você não vai me por tão louca" but I swear it's some type of double-entendre to sound like "Você não vai uma puta louca". The original line doesn't make much sense anyway nn. But she served some vocals right? and I love "Eu te amo, mas não vou deixar me destruir". Falling Free is gorgeous, especially coming from where it does. And It keeps getting better with time, too. Hearing how she mentioned it in 2015 when most of us probably think she forgot what "MDNA" was at the moment she got into her plane out of Argentina in 2012... and that she "like" the song, while mentioning later in 2019 that she felt some type of pressure to record her last 2 albuns, sounds even more special.
Falling Free is atrocious; the vocal production is awful, the synth 'instruments' are terrible and cheapen the entire thing, and the only thing that stops it from being less than the 4.5 I gave it is the decent lyricism. Both Falling Free and Masterpiece suffer from exactly the same issues, so I'm happy they weren't the last songs standing from MDNA. Nobody's Perfect on the other hand is a fantastic song and one of the above-average songs on an album that otherwise mostly hovers around the 6 - 7.5 range. Gone and I Deserve It should've gone before, at a minimum.
