Thoughts On Madonna's Career

I love Madonna. I have since I was 9 years old (which makes me a fan for 15 years now). She used to be my all-time favorite artist until I met Lady GaGa last month when she was just so sweet to me. Another reason why Madonna's now my number 2 favorite artist is because I feel that she is just not trying anymore and because she is just recreating trends in music instead of setting them like she used to. Her career is not the same as it used to be--part of that is because of her age, but a lot of it is her own fault...(more after the jump)



Before I discuss what's wrong with Madonna's career at the moment, we must first look back over her entire career. She blew up with her debut and "Like A Virgin" albums in the mid-80's, and had teenage girls all over the country copying her unique style. After marrying Sean Penn, she made a bold statement with her next album, "True Blue," by changing her hair style to a platinum pixie cut and doing away with all the bracelets and necklaces.

By the late 80's, she proved her creative worth as an artist with her "Like A Prayer" album. She had broken up with Penn by now after a tumultuous relationship and had a lot of material to write about. The songs still featured her signature catchy pop sound but this time had depth, exploring issues such as divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, religion, and losing a parent. The following year also saw the release of one of the biggest songs of her career, "Vogue."

It is no surprise that the tour she embarked on that followed was arguably one of the creative peaks of her career. The 1990 Blond Ambition Tour, the third tour of her career, single-handedly invented the modern day pop concert. She put on more of a stage show than a regular concert, with talented dancers, ornate sets, elaborate costumes and new arrangements of her classic songs. She has said many time that she set out to challenge the audience and make them think, not just put on a simple concert. The Blond Ambition Tour set the standard that all pop stars have since followed.

Her first greatest hits album, "The Immaculate Collection" was released at the end of her tour, and remains today one of the best selling greatest hits album of all time. The video for the lead single off the compilation, "Justify My Love," pushed the sexual boundaries of the time and was banned from MTV as a result. Madonna responded by releasing the video as a VHS single. She also made a documentary chronicling her time on tour, "Truth or Dare," which was released the following year and has since been regarded as one of the best music documentaries ever made. In 1992 Madonna's career took a major hit when she tried to break down sexual taboos even further with her coffee table book "Sex" and its companion album, "Erotica."

Many did not understand the message she was trying to get across, and she received much criticism. After a tour that unsurprisingly skipped over most of the U.S., Madonna's follow up album, "Bedtime Stories," was a lot softer. While the album included 2 top 10 singles, "Secret" and one of the biggest of Madonna's career, "Take A Bow," the album was hardly groundbreaking. After falling out of favor with so many critics and even some fans, she no doubt wanted to get back in their good graces.

Despite the single "Human Nature," in which she boldly declared that she wasn't sorry for anything, the album simply blended into the popular R&B sound of the mid-90s. With artists such as Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey at the top of the charts, Madonna turned to the top producers of the time, such as Babyface and Dallas Austin, to mimic the sound that was being played so much on the radio. Aside from the Bjork-written single, "Bedtime Story," which would prove to be a taste of what was to come from Madonna, the album is largely forgettable due to the mistake Madonna once again made with her recent work: she followed the trend instead of setting it.

Madonna's next big project was the starring role in the film adaption of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Evita," for which she earned a Golden Globe award. While filming the movie, Madonna became pregnant with her first daughter. The two events greatly changed both her and her music. She also began the study of Kaballah (Jewish mysticism) at the time, which gave her a whole new outlook on life. Her next album, "Ray of Light," was therefore one of the most brilliant of her career.

Madonna chose a fairly unknown British producer, William Orbit, to create a new sound that blended pop, trance and electronic music. The album was a huge hit, earned her multiple Grammy Awards and set a trend that saw numerous pop stars following suit, creating their own electronic pop hits. She married British director Guy Ritchie at this time and gave birth to her son.

Her follow up album, 2000's "Music" found Madonna working with another underground producer, Mirwais Ahmadzaï. The album picked up where "Ray of Light" left off, but still went in a new direction. The electronic/trance pop sound was still present, but so was a more acoustic, folk sound as well. The album was Madonna's first #1 album in 11 years.

The video for the album's third single, "What It Feels Like For a Girl," was directed by Ritchie and made a statement on the bombardment of violence in our culture. It ended up being banned by MTV and VH-1 after just one showing. Once again, however, Madonna was making a statement on a relevant topic. She had said what she needed to say about sexual taboos, and now she was commenting on another issue. It felt like Madonna got her mojo back.

The tour that followed, 2001's Drowned World Tour, focused on Madonna's recent work but incorporated stunning costumes and visuals, which included Madonna flying around the stage performing martial arts ala the film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." She released her second greatest hits compilation shortly after the tour wrapped and her next single, the theme for the James Bond film "Die Another Day," proved to be another hit.

It is at this point in Madonna's career when she started to once again decline. She starred in the film "Swept Away," directed by Guy Ritchie, that got panned by critics and fans all over the world. She had attempted to star in movies her whole career and had never achieved success aside from her first film, "Desperately Seeking Susan," in which she essentially played herself, "Dick Tracy," which was already a franchise with built in fans (and she played a character similar to herself), "A League of Their Own," which was an ensemble cast that she wasn't the star of (and once again her character was very similar to herself), and "Evita," which was a musical.

Her next album found her once again collaborating with Ahmadzaï to create the same sound that did for her "Music" album, albeit with a little more emphasis on the acoustic folky side. Her lead single, "American Life," sparked much controversy, as it criticized America at a time of extreme nationalism, when the country was about to go to war with Iraq. The video was especially anti-war, and Madonna chose to not release it at the last minute, as the U.S. was on the brink of war (and no doubt the bashing of other artists who spoke out, such as the Dixie Chicks, also played a role in her decision).

Although the video was never released, the concept and controversy still made headlines and, for the first time, Madonna's album was largely ignored by U.S. radio. Despite debuting at #1, sales for "American Life" were also low in comparison to her previous albums. No doubt her increasing age played a role in a culture obsessed with youth, but that combined with her controversial anti-war stance (which she didn't even have the balls to stick with, unlike artists such as the Dixie Chicks), her electro folk pop sound that was both old news since "Music" and too different from the hip-hop sound popular at the time, and the fact that she had been the butt of numerous jokes for "Swept Away" all together made "American Life" one of her least successful albums ever and began her career decline.

Today, looking back on it, many fans consider the album to be one of her best, but in any case, Madonna was at least still making an effort at this time. She had a primetime interview with Matt Lauer, made in an instore appearance in which she performed and signed her CD, appeared on an episode of "Will & Grace," and was seen on many talk shows at the time. She was actually promoting her work as an artist is supposed to.

Madonna made headlines by kissing Britney Spears at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, and then for writing a series of children's books. It had seemed that Madonna's ability to be in the news was still as powerful as it used to be, but her artistic expressions were a bit less guided. Since giving birth to her daughter, she constantly walked a double line between wholesome mother and boundary pushing pop star.

She went on tour again in 2004 on her Re-Invention Tour, the first tour she had been on since her 1985 Virgin Tour without backup singer Niki Harris. Many fans loved the tour for its inclusion of many older hits (especially after her Drowned World Tour failed to do so). But the show itself seemed very simple compared to some of her other tours, and really pushed Kaballah teachings down the audience's throats.

She released another tour documentary, "I'm Going to Tell You A Secret" the following year, chronicling this tour. While it included many good (Kaballah) messages, and showed how much Madonna had grown since she created a family, the film seemed to try too hard to mimic the formula and success of "Truth or Dare." Instead, it merely showcased how Madonna was not the same person she used to be. Sure, she was older and wiser, but she also seemed a bit more boring and bland.

Her 2005 album "Confessions On A Dance Floor" was by no means ground breaking, but featured nostalgic disco sounds mixed with fresh euro-pop, thanks in large part to producer/DJ Stuart Price. Madonna had been reluctant to join the ever-growing digital music movement until the release of this album. In fact, it was thanks to downloads alone that Madonna was able to score another top 10 hit in the U.S. with the album's first single, "Hung Up." While the single (and album) were massive hits around the world (especially Europe), it was again largely ignored by U.S. radio.

Perhaps Madonna's sound was still too different from the still hip-hop dominated U.S. airwaves, and perhaps her ever increasing age once again was an issue. This was the era in which Madonna also began to not try as hard. She had one memorable TV appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman to promote the "Hung Up" single when it was released (she and Dave both rode horses down the streets of New York since she had fallen off one and broke a bunch of bones a few months earlier).

Madonna made a few international appearances when "Confessions On a Dance Floor" was released, such as the MTV European Music Awards and Wetten Dass in Germany. None were in the U.S. besides Letterman until she opened the Grammy's with the Gorillaz 3 months after the album's release. She also made some small club appearances in England, but not in the U.S. It seemed like she just didn't care as much as she used to, especially about America.

At the same time, Americans were no doubt still, as a whole, still viewing Madonna in an unfavorable light. The fact that she began living in England full time with her family, and picked up an affected English accent didn't help either. People longed for the Michigan-born girl with the New York attitude who pushed boundaries and made statements for a reason. Instead, they saw a woman who didn't even want to live in America anymore who was obsessed with Kaballah. Her lack of promotion did not help change anyone's minds.

In 2006 Madonna embarked on her Confessions Tour, which was also one of the best tours of her career. Although she didn't have much radio success in the U.S., she went all out for this tour, and people flocked to see her. She sparked a little controversy by appearing on a cross, but actually had a reason behind doing that.

Despite her lack of promotion and its luke warm reception in the U.S., "Confessions On a Dance Floor" and the Confessions Tour were a rare creative highlight in Madonna's otherwise declining career. Madonna's creativity seemed to continue for her 2007 Live Earth performance of "La Isla Bonita," which took the version she sang on the Confessions Tour and gave it a Romanov gypsy feel, thanks to a live collaboration with gypsy-punk group Gogol Bordello.

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This brings us to the point of this entry. The following year, Madonna's creativity waned. I'm currently reading Daryl Easlea & Eddi Fiegel's coffee table book, "Madonna" (pictured right). In the book, Madonna is quoted on her "Ray of Light" & "Music" albums: "I'm always searching for something new and edgy and undiscovered. I love to work with the weirdoes that no one knows about--the people who have raw talent and who are making music unlike anyone else out there." She did the exact opposite of this on her latest album, 2008's "Hard Candy."

Madonna no doubt wanted to get back on U.S. radios after being absent for the most part since her 2002 single "Die Another Day." (Her 2004 collaboration with Britney Spears, "Me Against the Music," which was a single off of Britney's album, got radio play, and "American Life" as well as "Hung Up" got a little play, but nothing like she used to get). So Madonna once again did what she did last time she was out of favor with the general public, for 1994's "Bedtime Stories": instead of setting trends like she did with "Ray of Light" and "Music," she turned to the biggest producers in the business, Timbaland and Pharrell in this case, to follow the same sounds they created with other pop stars such as Nelly Furtado and Gwen Stefani.

But while their collaborations with those artists were original and therefore successful, the results for Madonna was an album that was not very successful, commercially or artistically. Her first single, "4 Minutes," featured both Timbaland AND Justin Timberlake. It all just wreaked of desperation. She had already teamed up with Britney Spears for "Me Against the Music"--was she just going down a list of every successful 20-something pop star who actually was getting played on the radio, just so her voice could be heard on the airwaves again as well?

Her strategy was only mildly successful--"4 Minutes" was played on the radio a bit, probably her most played single on the radio since "Die Another Day." However, it was unable to provide any further momentum for future singles off the album that did not feature Justin Timberlake. The next single, "Give It 2 Me," despite featuring Pharrell, was a club hit but only reached number 57 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart! Again, she followed the trends in pop music rather than set them.

Not only did her new music sound like everything else on the radio, but she once again put very little effort into promoting it. When the album was released, she performed promo shows at smaller venues in three different cities, only one of which was in the U.S. (New York). This was not even televised. She did a few radio interviews over the phone but did not do any other talk shows or performances. Perhaps the follow up singles could have had more success with a bit more promotion. When "Music" was released, Madonna performed the song on countless talk and award shows. When "Don't Tell Me" came out as the second single off that album, she did the same! Not for "Give It 2 Me" though.

Even the music videos for this era were lazy and uninspired. A music video can potentially be huge promotion for a single if it's good enough to get attention and is talked about. The video for "4 Minutes" was not terrible, but "Give It 2 Me" was merely footage of her Elle Magazine photo shoot. The video featured her with a white background dancing and grinding, and a few shots of Pharrell. She's allowed to have simple videos, but this just looked cheap and thrown together:


The concert tour she went on to promote the album, the Sticky & Sweet Tour, was not terrible, but was also a bit lazy. The performance of "Ray of Light" was the exact same as the song's performance on the previous concert tour, the Confessions Tour. Additionally, the performance of "La Isla Bonita" was the Gogol Bordello arrangement the whole world had already seen on Live Earth...and that itself was based off of the version of the song she performed on the Confessions Tour! Plus, her rock version of "Hung Up" was one of the most awful live arrangements she has ever done for one of her older songs on tour.

This was also the first tour since 1985's Virgin Tour that did not include back-up singers Niki Harris OR Donna De Lory, and the first tour since 1993's Girlie Show Tour that did not have Stuart Price as its musical director. The absence of such important Madonna collaborators was definitely felt, and made the Sticky and Sweet Tour a little more sticky and a little less sweet than some of her recent tours, such as Confessions or Drowned World.

In 2009, on the heels of Madonna's divorce from Guy Ritchie, she released her first career-spanning compilation, "Celebration," as well as a DVD set of music videos. The album itself was riddled with mistakes and illogical decisions. For example, the beginning of "Dress You Up" was cut off (the song is supposed to start off with its now famous 4 drum beats, but on this album it only has the last one). The 3-minute radio edit of "4 Minutes", which Madonna herself had rejected in interviews for the very reason that the song was made 4 minutes long for a reason, was chosen to include on the compilation. Finally, "Miles Away," Madonna's third and very unsuccessful single from "Hard Candy" was included, when other bigger hits like "This Used to Be My Playground," "The Power of Goodbye," and "American Life" could have gone on the album in its place.

The DVD collection was a complete mess. It includes 47 music videos over 2 DVDs. The picture quality is not very good. There is pixellation, smearing, graininess, blotchy color, blurring, and interlacing. Also, 5.1 surround sound it claims to have is not surround sound at all. Finally, the press release advertised "unedited and never before seen footage of Justify My Love." Not only does this video on the DVD have no such footage, but it is CENSORED! The video that Madonna got banned in 1990 and then released as a VHS single then is not censored 19 years later!

As a whole, the "Celebration" releases seemed half-assed. Once again, Madonna gave off the impression that she simply no longer cared about the quality of what she was releasing. The album did feature 3 new songs and the first single to be released was the title track. Again, there was no promotion (save for one talk show appearance) and the single flopped. And once more the video to the song was cheap and unexciting: Madonna (wearing an awful wig) and her dancers in a room dancing to the Benny Benassi Remix of the song, with a cameo from her much younger boyfriend at the time:


As the charts began to shift from being dominated by hip-hop in the mid-2000's to being dominated by female pop starts such as Lady GaGa, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Ke$ha and Beyonce, Madonna was no where to be seen. In 2010, instead of trying to go back in the studio and make some new music that could potentially set a new trend for all these younger female artists, Madonna turned to directing a movie: "W.E.," about the story of Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII, as well as a modern day woman in an unhappy marriage.

Instead of staying in the music world, which is always been her forte, she is once again trying to gain the credibility she's always wanted in the film industry. She'll never be respected in that world, whether she's behind the camera or in front of it. She's hopefully comes to terms with the fact that she'll never win an Oscar for acting, so now she's trying to go for one for directing? Instead she needs to rejuvenate her music career once again, especially in America, by making a new sound that every other pop star will follow, like she did with the electronic trance pop sounds of "Ray of Light" and the electronic folk sounds of "Music."

When Glee devoted a whole episode to Madonna in the spring of 2010, a new generation was exposed to her music. The soundtrack for the episode performed extremely well on the charts. Did Madonna capitalize on this unexpected burst of interest in her career? Of course not. If she had some new music ready to release simultaneously, she could have possibly had a huge hit on her hands (assuming it was a decent song that didn't just sound like every other popular song out right now). The old Madonna would not have missed such an opportunity.

She also needs to get with the times. It took her longer than a lot of other artists to put her catalog up for sale in digital retail stores, such as iTunes, but once she did her song "Hung Up" was able to crack the top 10 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart (it's interesting to note that even in making this post, I had some difficulty finding the "Celebration" video to post because she has made it so you can't embed most of her videos from her official YouTube...they're streaming, what's wrong with people embedding them on their sites? It's only more promotion for her...).

Because of artists like Lady GaGa and Katy Perry, pop stars are really establishing intimate relationships with their fans and caring for them in genuine ways. Part of demonstrating those genuine feelings is by constantly being able to communicate with their fans directly, through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Madonna has neither of these right now. If legends like Cher and even Barbra Streisand can have them, there's no reason why Madonna can't. She needs to show her fans when she releases her next record that she truly cares about them, and isn't just joining Twitter and writing nice things to them because she happens to have a new album coming out in a month.

Another instance of her not seeming to care about her fans like younger, newer pop divas do is her silence with regards to the new wave of homophobia. Madonna has always had a loyal gay fan base, and made many strides for them in the 80s and 90s with AIDS awareness, as well as spotlighting aspects of gay culture (such as bringing vogueing mainstream, showing a pride parade in "Truth or Dare" and featuring homosexual photos in her "Sex" book).

In the past few years, gay kids are committing suicide, there are battles in Congress to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Prop 8 was passed. Yet, Madonna has kept silent, while artists such as Lady GaGa have spoken at rallies and even written songs about it. Madonna finally went on The Ellen Show to make a statement about all the gay suicides, but it almost seemed obligatory and too little, too late. She could have not only spoken out sooner and louder, but she didn't even donate any money to any LGBT charities that help troubled gay youth, such as The Trevor Project. You can see the video of her appearance on an older entry of mine by clicking HERE.

IF and when she does finally make new music, she still has to try and she can't make music that just sounds like all the other pop stars who are popular at the moment. She needs to stop just going through the motions and promote her work, make awesome music videos again, not regurgitate her old work, and create a new and original sound. Artists like Lady GaGa have thankfully set the bar very high for their artistry--a bar that USED to be set by her. It's true that Lady GaGa is much younger than Madonna, and Madonna certainly was just as trail blazing as GaGa in her hey day. Yet, in 25 years, I still can't imagine GaGa becoming as lazy and uninspired as Madonna has become.

If Madonna wants to retire, I would be sad, but at this point, that would almost be more respectable than putting out sub-par material when she has proven to be capable of so much better. Ultimately, if Madonna wants another huge success in the US, she not only needs to work with innovative producers and co-writers but also needs to care enough about her work to put more effort into it. Frankly, this is a huge reason why I am so much more attracted to Lady GaGa these days: she puts everything into her work and really cares at a time when Madonna just doesn't.