@Maki’s constant mourning of it has got me obsessively playing Love Tried to Welcome Me. I gave it an 8 but it should’ve been a 10.
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 arms against the wall Who's next in line to fall The queen of the middle 8 strikes again. So powerful, so emotive, so evocative, so rich. * Surely the play on "suns/sons" is intentional, given the subject matter. Ugh, her mind.
The middle-8/post-chorus in "Spanish Eyes" is one of her greatest moments of that decade. And that instrumental... stunning.
I’ve never particularly liked it. Ever. It’s tepid, lacking in energy or purpose (beyond lyrics that are really only celebrated now because of the serendipitous BRITS incident), terrible vocal take, feels like a whimper trying to be a roar... it was a sign of life after MDNA, but barely. I can see why she chose to perform remixes of it almost immediately after release. Great costuming, beautiful costuming. (and I still gave it a generous 6.5)
Aside from maybe (maybe!!!!) Give It 2 Me, nothing on Hard Candy is better than Let It Will Be! The paper faces remix slaps so fucking hard that by the time she tells me to watch her burn, my ass is already incinerated.
Should be the next 10 to go. None of them are actively awful (Rebel Heart aside), but they've overstayed their welcome.
Glad to hear that! Hopefully it impacted other voters who underrated it. Let me mourn it some more now. "I Deserve It" is holding on incredibly well, considering its placement in the previous rate. That being said, I wouldn't be bothered if it left today.
Damn! Spanish Eyes dropping out is crushing. So gorgeous and tragic. Who's That Girl is a nice bop but it/the rest of the soundtrack feel like a "you had to be there" moment ddd. I don't believe it stands as tall as her other 80s smash hits, and she's written better songs many times since then.
I don't think I've seen a single defence of "Who's That Girl" that hasn't involved a "She was on top of the world!" scene setting sentence. Which is fine. Countless popstars had moments where they just clicked with everyone and that communal joy with people who normally don't care about something you love does enhance it, but away from the time period it was released, I guess it loses a bit of its life.
It was such a highlight when she brought Who’s That Girl back for the Rebel Heart Tour and one of my favourite moments of the show. Was there ever a reason why it didn’t appear on the digital release?
84 SCORE: 7.903 2015 PLACEMENT: UP 7 - 91 of 210 (7.348) HIGHEST SCORE: 10 x 22 (@dodoriazarbon @eatyourself @tylerc904 @OSHi @DJHazey @Andrew.L @godspeed @Daniel_O @Coochi @scottdisick94 @RetroPhysical @joeee @Xanax @BEST FICTION @KingBruno @eliminathan @Remorque @acl @ufint @Markus1981 @sexercise @Weslicious) LOWEST SCORE: 1 x 1 (@madgemad) MY SCORE: 8.5/10 You might think that with a score of 7.903, we would be closing in on songs above 8/10... but we actually don't touch that threshold until No.72, meaning there are another eleven songs just in this 0.1 of a point. A mess. We touched on this when "Inside Of Me" was eliminated, and when I spotlighted it during the voting, but I would class this track as Madonna's most visceral examination of how her mother's death effected not only her, but the way the dynamics in her family operated. I'm lucky enough to still have both of my parents, but I know people who aren't. I even know people who don't even remember parents who died when they were infants, and how it can effect them, so I find a track that balances so much really intriguing. Madonna reckoning with her childhood grief and resentment towards her father, while simultaneously acknowledging that the loss of her mother hollowed him out as a person and made him emotionally unavailable, and coming to terms with the effect that had on her, and how she needs to let it all go... all in a single song? That deftly? Whoosh. I get why this is leaving now over most of American Life; I think the bouncy, rubbery production does the spirit of the song a major disservice; it's one of the few experiments of Mirwais and Madonna that maybe didn't pan out as well as it should have, but acoustically, the song just absolutely shines. Her voice flying into the higher notes effortlessly in the beginning, her cadence on the spoken word breakdown that benefits greatly from a slower pace instead of the stream of consciousness spit of the studio version, the guitar letting the sorrow flow through instead of electronic production stifling it... it's brilliant. And I just want to highlight this again as one of Madonna's finest writing moments: My mother died when I was five And all I did was sit and cry I cried and cried and cried all day Until the neighbors went away They couldn't take my loneliness I couldn't take their phoniness My father had to go to work I used to think he was a jerk I didn't know his heart was broken And not another word was spoken He became a shadow of The father I was dreaming of I made a vow that I would never need Another person ever Turned my heart into a cage A victim of a kind of rage The way it starts from her perspective as a child in the first half before switching to her adult self in the second... Her mind. The song was performed as part of the Re-Invention Tour, and also wheeled out a few times when Madonna was on the promo circuit for American Life, presumably after they were trying to maybe soften the album's image a little bit for everyone. Enjoy!
I get why people are a bit turned off of Mother and Father - it's one of the more abrasive and blunt songs on American Life - but, much like I'm So Stupid, its brazen weirdness and brutal honesty has always drawn me to it rather than repelled me, even moreso as I've gotten older. The Re-Invention performance that incorporates Intervention is also one of her most underrated live moments.
Mother and Father is great particularly for the reasons outlined above but this is about where it needed to fall.
"Mother and Father" isn't an ideal elimination, but it is understandable and I'm not too bothered about it. The lyrics are indeed the highlight, but they juxtapose too much to the overly quirky instrumental and vocals. However, that chorus - easily among the best moments from "American Life". I mean... I've got to give it up Find someone to love me I've got to let it go Find someone that I can care for...
I gave it a 10, so obviously I love it, and the live version in the reinvention tour takes it to a whole other level and is absolutely flawless.
