Madonna Singles Poll Winners Party - Final (Choose 5)

You're only here to win, get what they say…

  • Like A Prayer

  • Frozen

  • Vogue

  • Hung Up

  • Ray Of Light

  • Live To Tell

  • Borderline

  • Justify My Love

  • Open Your Heart

  • Express Yourself

  • You’ll See

  • The Power Of Goodbye

  • Deeper And Deeper

  • Drowned World (Substitute For Love)

  • Take A Bow

  • Lucky Star

Results are only viewable after voting.
BoysForSeles

BoysForSeles

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Why 16 choices you ask? Well I’d originally planned to do the final round as a tennis style knockout tournament but I like how the multiple choice polls bring more songs into play and provide an overall flavour of what are the most liked songs.

I’m reflecting Moopy’s picks first and foremost but also factoring in actual UK chart positions so it’s the top 4 from 1s & 2s from the previous polls, the top 3s from 3-5 and 6-10 and top 2 from 11-100.

I’m allowing up to a healthy favourite FIVE choices to let more songs play and also so that if more than one fave song comes from the same album you don’t have to feel bad about being album centric. What a catalogue.

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Frozen
Live To Tell
Borderline
Justify My Love
The Power Of Goodbye

Just missing out: EVERYTHING ELSE
 
Also I assume we’re picking faves not least faves as it wasn’t explicit so I defaulted to faves
 
Like A Prayer
Ray Of Light
Frozen
Drowned World
Justify My Love

Ray of Light heavy but I spoke my truth.
 
I'm very Ray Of Light heavy too

Ray Of Light
The Power Of Goodbye
Drowned World
Like A Prayer
Live To Tell
 
The woman who owned the 80s had just as strong a musical output in the 90s. More scandal, more opposition and more distractions, sure, but the album run from Erotica, Bedtime Stories to Ray Of Light is actually the best of her career IMO. And that’s before you even get to the many movie songs and STR.
 
It kind of feels wrong to split Like A Prayer away from those albums and into the 80s though in some way, as much as it obviously is an 80s album. But I'd say it shares more with her later creative peak than her commercial earlier peak up to True Blue.
 
Well, if we are just celebrating the 90s run here, then let’s face it, Like A Prayer and Music make the perfect bookends, and they definitely all fit together.
 
I agree with both my learned friends’ opinions. LAP is ENTIRELY 80s and it being pre- TIC, I totally have it in a different era, but I do think that 90s run is her best overall…
 
The Ray Of Light album almost feels more like an ‘00s album in my head but I can see how she got there from the previous 90s output.

Only ‘Like A Virgin’ from the 80s albums didn’t get a rep in this round.

Lucky Star is the sole song yet to score but it does feel a bit out of its depth in this round, fab as it is.
 
My memory is that TIC was not just very successful but also forced a certain type of critic to reckon with the fact that they has been entirely wrong about her disposability. Said critics of course duly reloaded and fired into the "Erotica" era with a certain glee. I was out of the loop but my perception of "Bedtime Stories" is that it was critically credible but lesser selling. After which she made a much better first of Evita than anyone had expected and then dropped THE comeback album of the decade. ROL thus cemented her status because not many artists drop a genuine masterpiece 15 years after their debut. Quite a decade.
 
I was living in Portugal when Bedtime Stories came out but yes I think there was a commercial drop off with Erotica and Bedtime Stories, certainly the latter garnered little attention where I was at the time. Both did well enough to suggest she’d be sticking around but that Ray Of Light renaissance as a tour de force was a majestic comeback. It feels like Evita was a very important reset point but I could easily be misremembering things.
 
octophone said:
My memory is that TIC was not just very successful but also forced a certain type of critic to reckon with the fact that they has been entirely wrong about her disposability. Said critics of course duly reloaded and fired into the "Erotica" era with a certain glee. I was out of the loop but my perception of "Bedtime Stories" is that it was critically credible but lesser selling. After which she made a much better first of Evita than anyone had expected and then dropped THE comeback album of the decade. ROL thus cemented her status because not many artists drop a genuine masterpiece 15 years after their debut. Quite a decade.
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TIC was just undeniable. Most GH still have filler- this had number ones LEFT OUT FFS, and then added two new songs which were at least the equal of what had come before.

I still think it should have been a double CD. There was enough for it

Erotica was an easy target cause of the furore around Sex and because a lot of post-GH albums can be seen as a dip down. The critics missed the point- there are really only a couple of “sex” songs on it- it’s an album about love and the AIDS crisis and much deeper (and deeper) than those critics ever allowed themselves to see. Bedtime Stories also got middling (to good) reviews at the time but it was a deliberate attempt to soften her image that worked, and which continued with Something to Remember and paved the way for Evita and, ultimately, Ray of Light. It’s no accident that Take a Bow was her biggest US hit ever to that point- the big ballad, and ideal on a cross radio format, was the “softest” thing she’d done in years, whilst the experimental Bedtime Story and confrontational Human Nature both bombed…
 
God, Like a Prayer and Live to Tell really are a cut above.

My only struggle was Hung Up. It's an absolute bloodbath, but she's not full throttle vocally like we get on Open Your Heart (another one I'd like to have voted for). The middle 8 harking back to Evita, whether deliberate or not, is both an outer body experience and a wake up call about what had happened to her voice. On the whole, as "still got it" moments go it's a stupendous 5 minute climax.

Glad Vogue has finally pulled its trousers up - was rather surprised how comparatively low it was doing here.
 
They are all undeniable, I'd say. I could find a reason to vote for all of them.
 
Absolutely undeniable, and yet, a list that doesn’t even include Holiday, Into The Groove, Like A Virgin, Material Girl, Crazy For You, Papa Don’t Preach, La Isla Bonita, Who’s That Girl, This Used To Be My Playground, Erotica, Rain… and that’s just the first decade.
 
See, I barely remember Take A Bow, I was just tapped out and elsewhere at the time.
 
octophone said:
See, I barely remember Take A Bow, I was just tapped out and elsewhere at the time.
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It also, weirdly, wasn't a big hit over here, which may be part of the reason. It was her first single to miss the top ten since 1984...
 
octophone said:
Ah, I see. That would explain it.
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It was a weird situation. They released it in the UK for the "It's christmas, it must be a ballad!" season and it got lost in the shuffle- not least due to a truly dreadful singles package of the same songs over both CDs, just one coming with "free postcards" of images readily available in the Bedtime Stories cd booklet, and those songs were the single edit, the album version and the instrumental.

The US had remixes and also the single came out a bit later, and, given the slower movement of the US chart, the Christmas shuffle had ended by the time it started its climb.

HOW DO I RETAIN ALL THIS ENTIRELY UNUSABLE SHITE? :D
 
(I also feel like the video came out later than you'd expect to build momentum for the song- it was all over MTV and VH1 etc, though, at the time- it at least got good airplay there)
 
The same songs on both CD singles? That's INEPT. I know things are different in the US - we're deep diving R.E.M. over on a discord server I'm part of and their b-sides are absolute shite. They were apparently rather bewildered by demands for b-sides by the UK label, hence all the live tracks and other tat.
 
octophone said:
The same songs on both CD singles? That's INEPT. I know things are different in the US - we're deep diving R.E.M. over on a discord server I'm part of and their b-sides are absolute shite. They were apparently rather bewildered by demands for b-sides by the UK label, hence all the live tracks and other tat.
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Surely that was because of the way the US chart system worked, though- airplay being such a factor meant physicals were important rather than essential parts of the package. Over here it was just the sales, hence the need for more attractive packages.

It's why they started that "first week discount" on the CD singles- £1.99 in the opening week would see a much higher debut. Pete Waterman always refused to do it for Steps (one of the few acts of the time) and apparently it cost them a LOT of much higher chart positions, but focused sales on the albums instead (which very much worked).

Madonna never gave a fuck about b-sides though. There's only been a few scattered amongst her career. Instrumentals or readily available album tracks/ previous singles for the win.
 
Take A Bow feels entirely catered for the US market to my ears. Generally her best and most successful UK ballads had a touch of edge or ice to them.

OT: I miss buying cd singles on a Monday in HMV for the bonus tracks and mixes.
 
BoysForSeles said:
Take A Bow feels entirely catered for the US market to my ears. Generally her best and most successful UK ballads had a touch of edge or ice to them.
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Nailed it

Take A Bow lacks both the wintery feel of a Live To Tell, Rain or Power Of Goodbye. It also lacks a dramatic build or climax like You'll See or I'll Remember. It's just a tad too slow and GLOOPY. And the UK only ever welcomed GLOOPY from boybands or novelty acts.
 
Take a Bow would totally have had a wintery feel if it had had a suitable video. The hot, Spanish summer feel was her embracing her Latin-side for Evita...
 
Sheena said:
(I also feel like the video came out later than you'd expect to build momentum for the song- it was all over MTV and VH1 etc, though, at the time- it at least got good airplay there)
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I can still remember the video being shown on The Big Breakfast one morning when Belinda Carlisle was a guest, and she showed some disgust towards it afterwards. Gaby Roslin said "oh, you mean the scene where she scraped her nails along the wall? Yes that was horrible!" and Belinda replied, "No, I meant the bullfighting..."
 
Sheena said:
TIC was just undeniable. Most GH still have filler- this had number ones LEFT OUT FFS, and then added two new songs which were at least the equal of what had come before.

I still think it should have been a double CD. There was enough for it
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This is why I GUFFAW when baby gays try to pull the “she’s not a legend” shit on Twitter. Being able to release a GH album less than a decade into your career and still having to leave off hits due to media capacity at the time is unheard of for 99% of musical artists.
 
Denying her legacy is one thing. But fucking ignorant baby gays doing it is entirely another. She was a fucking BEACON in the 80s and 90s.
 
Sheena said:
It was a weird situation. They released it in the UK for the "It's christmas, it must be a ballad!" season and it got lost in the shuffle- not least due to a truly dreadful singles package of the same songs over both CDs, just one coming with "free postcards" of images readily available in the Bedtime Stories cd booklet, and those songs were the single edit, the album version and the instrumental.

The US had remixes and also the single came out a bit later, and, given the slower movement of the US chart, the Christmas shuffle had ended by the time it started its climb.

HOW DO I RETAIN ALL THIS ENTIRELY UNUSABLE SHITE? :D
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Not so unusable.. that certainly filled my knowledge gap as to why it flopped here and was massive there… although it does kinda spoil my chat about it in my 90s thread - 1995 COMING SOON (still on 1993 soz)
 
I’m enjoying reading many of the titbits these threads have brought FORTH. I might get around to doing the same with Kylie once I see where totally organic and not engineered forthcoming Christmas hit ‘XMAS’ ends up.

The results so far on this thread are pretty much aligning with actual chart performance too which isn’t always the case with these things.
 
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