My First, My Last, My Everything

Sometimes I have to go back to the source of inspiration.

As a baby artiste, I remember watching the Truth or Dare documentary six times.  I kept going back and watching it over and over again.  I had to absorb everything.  This was a cultural moment.  I knew it from when I was a kid.  Here was a pop artist at the apex of her powers and popularity.  I would argue that Madonna has done things that have been way more artistic since.  And way more popular before in terms of how commercial and thoughtless her work was.  Some people still prefer "old Madonna."  I take that to mean everything before Like a Prayer. 

It kind of reminds me of this project I'm working on that revolves around the work of Robert Altman.  Actually, that's my take on it.  The theatre's take is that it concerns Nashville.  But to me, that would be like taking Like A Prayer as a source of inspiration.  But to get to Like a Prayer, you should look at Madonna with "Burning Up," "Lucky Star", and "Borderline."  Then you get to the next wave of popularity and one of the best sophomore albums ever with Like a Virgin.  You've got the title track, "Material Girl", "Angel", "Dress You Up."  And Nile Rodgers.  Then you have True Blue where she took another step forward with "Papa Don't Preach", "Open Your Heart", "La Isla Bonita."  She cut all of her hair off.  Then she got married, got divorced and came back darker.  And decided for the first time to confront her iconography.  She was never a "prayer" or a "virgin."  But she was an assimilation of one.  She wanted to take the concept of "virgin" with the sexual images and then look at the religious  iconography and came up with what is my all time favorite album of hers.  It's because it's a reawakening.  It's a breakthrough.  Like a Prayer.  Every track was stunning.  I think a review said at the time that it was as close to art as pop music gets.  And that's taking into consideration the Beatles and Bowie and Patti Smith.  It's taking into consideration a lot of things.

But she knew who she was and she showed it off.  From that high point, she released her best dance track of all time "Vogue", a song that seemed timeless, referential and like the future all at once.  To a very impressionable budding gay person and artist, this just seemed like where I wanted to be.  I invested deeply in pop culture.   The seed for my art was born there.  I loved art.  I loved reading. I loved looking at the past.  I loved being ahead of the curve.  I felt like Madonna embodied that for me.

I guess most people had playwrights like Mamet, Kushner, Albee and Ibsen as their inspiration.  My inspiration was Madonna.  I felt like it was pop art in written form.  That's what I was creating.  I cared about social issues.  But I also was an entertainer.  I loved experimenting and playing with form.  I loved dance.  I loved music.

I just watched the MDNA tour DVD.  And all of that came up for me again.  It's inspiring that someone who is in her 50s can continue to evolve and create.  But that's what the example of Madonna has always been.  She broke through barriers and expectations.  The expectation of a global pop star.  The expectation of women.  And now the expectation that we're done when we get older.  She was drenched in the fountain of youth up on stage in the best way.

Then she had Erotica, which was a step towards a darker kind of sexuality.  She kind of suggested things before, but this felt like she was just challenging people to challenge her on her use of sex.  Then we had the Sex book, which was a part of this whole era.  The music was all right.  It didn't feel as artistic, but it felt like it was trying to make a deliberate statement.  Madonna was now working full-time as an artist and sometimes she took steps that were purely about being defiant.  But even though there were dark gems like "Erotica", "Thief of Hearts", and "Deeper and Deeper", there were also moments of pure beauty like "Rain."  This was followed up by Bedtime Stories, which was kind of a gentler Madonna who was trying to make sense of 90s R&B.  A better album musically, but still her identity had shifted and it felt like Madonna the game changer was gone.  Although "Bedtime Story" spoke of something to come.  And it came like a Ray of Light.  This album was the game changer and a move towards a more spiritual Madonna.  It felt like the provocateur of that early era finished with her growing pains from the previous two albums.  And here was another brilliant artistic statement wrapped in an electronica blanket.  So many tracks on this album were brilliant and it was our introduction to serious, spiritual Madonna who now found another important taboo subject to take on: spirituality and enlightenment.  Music brought us back to the dance floor in a more lighthearted way.  Then American Life came in like gangbusters and broke down the door.  Madonna was getting political.  I loved this album personally, but I felt like the remix album was a bit of a cop out.  No apologies.  "Hollywood", "Nobody Knows Me" and "Mother and Father" were a couple of highlights.  After the serious backlash she got for that album, she got frivolous and stayed there for the next two albums which were heavily influenced by dance music of the 70s and 80s.  Confessions on a Dance Floor was just all right to me and I'm in the minority.  I liked Hard Candy more because it was fun.  It was a better decade for her to take on hip hop because the sound was a lot more fun.  She went back to black on this one with Pharell, Kanye and Timbaland.  It also sounded a lot like the old stuff, which interestingly enough wasn't enough to interest a bunch of folks.  And now we have MDNA, which I sincerely love.  I think people are getting a little fatigued by a woman who keeps going and keeps reinventing and keeps turning out successful, fun, listenable music.

NOTE: I did a lecture on the spirituality of Madonna and reinvention when I was in college.  This is an interesting parallel for me when I look at the work of Robert Altman because they are both artists who do not apologize.  And their most special and well-received work just came from them working at it.  I think Like a Prayer is Madonna's Nashville in that it was a turning point for her and influenced everything after it, while not trying to recreate its magic.

That's the funny thing about influences.  They don't have to look anything like each other.  As human beings we can like things that don't seem to go together.  And that's the wonderful cross-pollination that becomes art.