Bedtime Stories and Future Directions

What's with this band anyway I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, band slain? Mm. S! Hello, and welcome to Bandsplane. I am your host, Yassi Salek. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is part two. About maybe the most iconic artist of all. Madonna. If you've never heard Madonna. A, I don't know why you're here, but B, life is absolutely a mystery, babe. Hey guys, my guest today. Repeat bands planner, here she comes, little s Susie Homemaker. Patrick Sandberg. Hello. Welcome to the program. Welcome back, shall I say? Thank you. Um I'm ready to go Patrick Bateman mode. Are you ready to express yourself and not repress yourself? Because that's all I ask. I think when Like a Prayer came out in eighty nine, uh Madonna really came into her own commercially and artistically. So you have your your full Ken Burns ask takes ready to go. I love it. This is like I'm getting the the nail gun ready to murder my secretary. All right, you guys. Before we dive in, I just want to once again thank all of the resources um that I use to research this episode. Um And this might not be a complete list because there's also a bunch of Instagram accounts that I'm not gonna remember, but today in Madonna History, Madonna Pedia, Madonna Underground, Madonna Tribe, the Inside the Groove podcast. Stop the Encyclopedia Madonna. Encyclopedia Madonna is legendary. So major. Actually we had it Weebo Girl on the table. Weebo Girl Instagram. Incredible. One of my favorites Madonna Brunett Instagram. Really great. Um, and obviously the twenty twenty three Mary Gabriel uh Madonna biography, which is like one piece of Madonna's life. That's it. Give a shout out. All right, before we dive in, Patrick, should we do a quick TLDR up until now? Yeah. Or actually Who's that girl? Who is that girl? Should we actually start with Your Entree. into being a Madonna fan. Oh my God, like in life? Yeah. Well On the day that I was born. Okay. The day that back to the beginning. Yeah. Let's start at the very beginning. The day that I was born, when I came into this world, the number one record on the billboard charts was like a version. Incredible. The Like a Virgin album was number one. So I like to think that I was just hearing Madonna like from the second that I appeared. She was playing in the hospitals, like on s you know, in the cafeteria showers or or what have you. I don't know if it was hospital friendly music at that time. You know. Maybe w like a cool nurse who smoked cigs was listening to it on her walkman. Yeah, I guess times have changed. Like today it would be playing at C V S, but maybe it's like on K Earth one oh one old East Station, but now It's different than them. Like my earliest. MTV memory as like a toddler. I do remember seeing Boy George. Okay. Um on TV and being like, who is that? You know, and then my uncle or someone being like, that's a dude, and it just blowing my mind as like a little child because I thought it was a beautiful woman. Was it Karma Chameleon? Would that have been the I think it was Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me? Because I remember being like, Why is she so sad? And my uncle was like, That's not a she and I was like, What? So I do remember that. I think Madonna was just always there. Yeah. You know, in the culture. So it was not it was similar to like Whitney Houston probably in the eighties. All over TV, all over the radio. And so she just was like a part of life. I never questioned it. Yeah. And then I think the turning point for me when I got into Madonna, which we'll cover in in these years that we're talking about, is when She the Blonde Ambition Tour did an HBO concert special. Yes. And my Not to be confused with Truth or Dare completely separate thing. Totally separate. Confusing in my like younger mind though when I saw Truth or Dare later when I was much older, but we were on vacation in Lake Tahoe. It was like my family, my parents' friends, their kids. It was like a bunch of kids, a bunch of adults. And we it was like a snowstorm. We were just channel flipping and the cabin we were staying at had HBO. We didn't ha I didn't grow up with HBO. Okay. I wasn't rich. HBO was kind of like a luxury. Yeah, it was like it was just a thing that like rich kids had HBO, like we couldn't afford it. But our the cabin we were staying at in Tahoe had HBO and we flipped past it and this concert special was on and my s older sister was really into Madonna. And it was like, yay, like, oh my God. And then it was like really runchy. And so my mom like turned it off and was like, You guys aren't allowed to watch that. Like you need to go to bed. And so we went upstairs, but my bedroom had a TV in it and we figured out that if we could watch it on that TV. So we like barricaded the door and we all watched the concert special. So cool. And you know, we talked about this when I came on talking about Hull. Yeah. When I was a kid, like anything my mom didn't want me doing. Right. I was just like You're about that life. Yes. It became like now nothing will ever stop me. Yeah. So when she turned off the Madonna special, I was like, Oh, Madonna's cool. I didn't realize. Now I get it. Now you're now I'm deeply in. I feel the appeal. Do you remember like the first Madonna album that you like purchased with your own money or like pr you know, procured for yourself because you were like, Oh, this is like my thing? I don't think I ever bought a Madonna album. Really? Because my sister bought. Right. So you already have to. So I would steal hers. Yeah. Like the one that was like in our house that was like the The like pass around party bottom of compact discs was the Immaculate Section. Yeah. Yeah. So that was sort of like Similar period, it was like there was the HBO concert film. Right. Immaculate collection came out. And It was to me, that was like my first Madonna album, even though it's not an album. Yeah. It like actually kind of took me through every all of Right. It was like a great primer. And if you didn't know about her previous albums or what came from where, because you're literally a child, Immaculate Collection, it was just like every song is a smash. You're like this is the greatest. No skibs. Pop star of all time. Yeah. Yeah, Immaculate Collection was very big in our house, too. Um, I said it on the other episode, but my mom was like a huge Madonna fan. So I don't I also don't remember a time there's like no pre Madonna in my brain. It was just always Madonna. And like my mom loved like dress you up and all these kind of like deeper cuts. And so we would tape the videos off VH1 and MTV with like a you know, VHS tape and watch them over and over. It was a big deal. Okay. Well the T L D R up till now That we covered in episode one. Uh, we did Madonna's upbringing, her move to New York, her post punk new wave band girl pass. Okay. Yeah. Careful with that. Well, I guess it's true. It's totally true. Babe. She was in a band. She was in a band with the two dudes from Swans. What's more post punk than that? And dated Michael Gira. All right, fine. Put some respect on my on my girl's name. Um, and then her breaking into the biz famously. Um, she's gone on two world tours, The Virgin Tour and the Who's That Girl tour, three film roles. Real film roles, Desperately Seeking Season, Shanghai's surprise, and who's that girl. And she has gotten to m married Tashaan Penn. And filed for divorce. And Riscinded the filing. And now we're at the end of nineteen eighty seven. That's where we're starting. Drama, adventure, what's not so love. Just let me let me backpedal on the post punk thing really quickly. Good. I think you should. 'Cause you're wrong. I am wrong. And I immediately knew it. And here's the thing about it. And real real goths know this. If you go Like in New York, I would go to the pyramid bar all the time. If you go to these like old eighties goth clubs where They play like a lot of millions or something. Yeah, but even like I don't know, like I would go dancing at the Pyramid Club in the basement and it would be like they would play insane like industrial like uh goth music, but they also it was like a lot of nine inch nails. It was a lot of like alien sex fiend. Sure, sure. Like Batcave bands, like things like that. Susie in the Banshees, like New Order, Joy Division, like all these clubs also play Madonna. And it's like they don't they don't They don't dip into motherfucking Debbie Gibson. Okay. It's like if don't anybody anymore dips in the game. I know, but you know what I'm saying? It's like Or Cindy Lamper. It's like or whoever. Like these aren't like 80s clubs. Right, right. But there is like a fine line and like Madonna makes it over the line. Yeah. I mean again, like if you listen to those music Emmy and the Emmy's songs, it's unmistakably like Some songs sound like the talking head, some sounds some songs sound like the pretenders. Like it's it's It's in that vein. Also the thing I forgot to mention on the first episode, but I'll just use it here, that Madonna opened for the Smiths. A dance chair. Johnny Moore told my friend Chloe that, who's like, and I was like, you know what? done at all. Honestly, where's maybe he has a feature on the new album. Who would open for who now. This is gonna come out later, and so if Morrissey does have a feature on the new album, just know that I predicted it with my Zec but I kinda don't think it does. I doubt. Okay. Before we fully dive in, 'cause I think this is you know, we we locked in on it with Meltenberg in the first episode, but her first major aesthetic transition Was in the Papa Don't Preach video. It's that was the first one of her like Visually? Visually, because she chopped her hair into that like bleached like Gene Seberg. You know, it was like the first like going from that sort of like boy toy belts and the more like highlight blonde hair and the curls and whatever to this like new look. That was like her first big like Here's a new here's a new look. And obviously, we're gonna go through several more here. She had this quote later in nineteen ninety eight in the LA Times and she said, I think that for many years now people have been consumed with me. Choices I've made personally versus my artistic contributions. It's like people act as if I'm the first one who tried to use image in rock and roll. When is it new for people to create a strong image? What about Mick Jagger, Prince? And you can go on and on. Besides, I feel that fifty percent of that image is what I put into it and the rest is what others put into it. Because people did get very preoccupied with her. changing her look. I'm rolling my eyes because she knew what she was saying, she knew what she was doing. And some people are preoccupied with her look because she's gorgeous. Well of course that's what it's she's like, why is everyone so obsessed with the way I look? But again, unfortunately my pink spicy Hawaii is descending from the ceiling onto my hat like a dunce cap. But I will say they don't speak about it the same way with David Bowie. They were like astonishing artistry, the change of look from the thin white, you know, when they talk about Madonna, they talk about it as if it's very superficial. You know, as it it's it's almost an indictment. And I think that is really interesting. Okay, anyways, we'll get into it. All right, nineteen eighty seven. It's November sixteenth and we're putting on our first remix album. It's called You Can Dance. Yes you can. I mean I obviously we talked about this on Tex the other day that I was like I would like for my birthday party to just be like a Dj plays only my favorite Madonna remixes and I drink champagne and eat Taco Bell. Um So I love that you know, we're already starting strong with the remix album. My only thing that I need to say is that the first song on here, which is a new song called Spotlight, is absolutely giving we have holiday at home. And I don't I don't know why we put that on here. Everybody is a star. Everybody is a star. I tend to agree. Yeah. Um it definitely feels like a B side that was left over from True Blue. And it's all obvious she does this with all of her like releases that are compilations. She makes sure to include at least one new One, if not two, new compositions. Um, but w do you have thoughts on the You Can Dance remix album? It's interesting because I think my obsession with like Madonna remixes in general Probably started in like two thousand ten or something. And it's like More of like a gay thing. It's more like you're going to the beach in the Fire Island Pines with the JBL speaker and you're putting on just Madonna remixes. Yeah. I didn't like get into the You Condensed remix album as an album. Right. pre-dated my like Madonna awareness. And then Later on with all the remixes they're like playlist and they're streaming and it's all that's so you don't hear it in the same way. remixes and their favorite ones. Yeah. Their non-favorite ones. And there's a ton that are not on streaming. Yeah. Like you have to go digging for them. There's like zip files you can download. There's SoundClouds. Yeah. Tons of unofficial ones. But listening to it as a full album in preparation for this, I'm obsessed with it. Of course. And a lot of my favorite remixes are on it. Totally. It's it's great. I mean I think the first pivotal and I don't want to miss because I know people like some DJ at home is gonna be like, you know, fuck you, bitch. Um to me the first like meaningful pivotal remix moment is gonna be when we get to express yourself, obviously. But um And not that there aren't good ones before, but like the one that is like Oh shit, like actually this remix has overtaken the original. And is now considered the official. You know. Well there's a lot of funny things that happen too where like some of the music videos are not the album track. They are actually a remix and things like that. And so like if you were If you were falling in love with Madonna or even if you didn't like Madonna, but if you were seeing Madonna on MTV, you might think that the remix track is the track. Album track totally. I wanted to talk about Shut Pettibone quickly. Sure, before we before we dive in. Yeah. Yeah. Which is that like he appears on this Remixed record a few times. He first worked with Madonna on a remix for True Blue on a single release. I just wanted to point him out because he will come back later as a main character. Totally. We We definitely talk about him a bit in the first episode because he was I mean he g becomes obviously very important in our episode, but He he worked with Africa Bombata and he was a DJ at the R and B station WBLS, which is the first station ever to play Madonna. So he's like an old long term in this orbit. He's seen as like a godfather of like New Jersey club music. And he also came up b doing mega mixes for Kiss FM in New York. And that was how he ended up doing all these remixes for Janet Jackson, George Michael, uh Madonna Kathy Dennis, Lisa Lisa. People don't remember Kathy Dennis, but I understand if the if you were who are these people. Big time Kathy Dennis. Still am a Kathy Dennis maybe once a day. Makes through. Yeah. Uh, but also tons of remixes later on for New Order of the Pet Shop Boys. Yeah. He sort of is like To me like he is the eighties. Like Wh if you could give someone a better compliment. I don't know what that would be. But then also he again, he plays a big part in our episode, which is largely the nineties. You know? I mean, obviously we're gonna talk we're we're starting with Like a prayer as a m the big really is but big chunk of this is the nineties and Shep Pettibone has a lot to do with this sound. I would he's on Gay Mount Rushmore. I feel they don't name people that anymore. You know, like well I don't does anyone have cool names like this anymore. Shep? I know that's a nickname but it's Shep Pettibone? Okay. That's a fucking amazing name. He also, um, he bought the Empress name, huh? The Empress Hotel in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where I like to go stay sometimes. It's giving like ironic elevated holiday hand vibes. It's like very like beachy, gay. Like he there's a nightclub in there called The Paradise that he owns. Plays the best music. If you ever g want to go to if you ever want a fun weekend, go to Asbury Park, New Jersey. And stay in Shep Peters. Stay at the Empress. Stay at Shep Pettibones Hotel. Anyway, we're on Shep Watch. We're on Shop Watch, Ben. Okay. It's nineteen eighty eight now, January. She starts filming another movie. It's called Bloodhounds of Broadway, um, with the director Howard Bruckner, who had also been a Paradise Garage regular and part of Andy Warhol circle. So another kind of old friend from the crowd. Um, he had made a documentary about William Burroughs that Madonna loved. So she was like very into his work and wanted to be in it. I I don't know the exact tam timeline, but I'm pretty sure he was sick with AIDS almost the entire making of the film. And actually I think passed away before the film Not before it was finished, but before it came out. So we got to see it to the finish line, but didn't get to see it come out. So after she wraps filming that. Which we can talk about a little the film. Did you watch it? I didn't watch it, but she looks amazing. She looks incredible. It's based on um a group of short stories and then They're like intertwined, it's in the twenties. I couldn't really make heads or tails of it, but Madonna loves the twenties. Yeah, and and it works. Louise Brooks. She's giving this sort of like Brunette Bob. She's good friends with Jennifer Gray through that, who becomes kind of part of her uh friend group. Um Yeah. I mean like if you have nothing else to do, watch it. Okay, then she starts rehearsing for her next project. appearing in your favorite place. Oh my God. I forgot to bring it. Forgot to bring your book of David Mammoth? David Mammoth's Speed the Plow. directed by Gregory Mosher. Mm-hmm. His first major stage work since Glen Gary Glenn Ross. Incredible. She originated the role of K. It was a critique of Hollywood. She gets she's accidentally finds her way into a bunch of critiques of Hollywood, which is interesting. I don't know this play. I'm sorry. I didn't have time in my in my month and a half of research to also read uh the David Mammoth play. Do you want to tell us a little bit what it's about? It it's a critique of Hollywood. She plays a secretary to a Hollywood producer. It's like a lot of fast talking. It's sort of It's fun. Okay. I love the thing male leads were my fucking guy, my dog Joe Montaigne. Whom she would later appear with. And body of that evidence. A movie that we love. Um also who is on Criminal Minds. Show I love. And Ron Silver, who I love. Love Ron Silver. Again, Ron Silver is one of those things where I'm like, We used to be a proper country where this was a lead actor. It's a testament to her talent. She could be in league with these actors in a play. You know, you can't hide too much. No, not at all. And she got good reviews. She got great reviews. But the thing about Madonna that I think is so funny is that like she And Listen. People have talked a lot of shit. Yeah. About let's just get that out of the way. People love to talk shit about Madonna's acting career. She's an incredible actress. Her acting talent is also God given. She did not study and toil, which is why people were annoyed. 'Cause it was sort of like she was just floating from stardom Into these positions. that other actors had worked a long time for. But she delivers. Like we just rewatched like most of her movies. And like it's every single one is surprising and different. She's versatile. Yeah. We'll get to it. We'll get to some of them. But I didn't I of course I was not of age to go see speed the plow on Broadway, so I can speak to that performance. Madonna had a really hard time during the making of this. I won't we won't get too into the weeds because as you pointed out, my document is really long and will be here forever. But Broadway is hard. It sucks. Yeah. This is a thread that I'm interested in in her acting career. She I think envisions the characters differently than they are envisioned perhaps by the director or the writer. Many such cases. Right. But and but and again, the pink pussy hat, babe, may I should just affix it to my head with some fucking bobby pens because it's often in a way that like has shades of misogyny where it's like, you know, she's like, I see this care I see this this character as a three dimensional woman. Her actual quote was I saw her as an angel and innocent, and they wanted her to be a cunt. And I think that she gr had a difficult time with that and it was like a mind fuck of a script in her words. She said, Mammoth is a stubborn man. He is not interested in collaborating. I think he's interested in fascism. Which is quite funny. Um to do that. I would love to be I would love to witness like the fights that would have happened during rehearsals. I don't know if The battle of wills. If anybody has seen Marty Supreme, David Mammoth makes a cameo in that movie as the director of Gwyneth Paltrrow's play and he's yelling at Gwyneth Paltrow, it feels like it was that was like fantasy fulfillment for me. I was like this is like when Madonna to speed the blast. So funny. So yeah, so she's having a rough go, but she makes a a brand new girlfriend during this time, Sandra Bernhard, who she had met actually, I think On an early date with Sean Penn. But she went to a party with Sean Penn early in their relationship, like third or s third date or something, and Warren Baby and San S uh Sandra Bernhardt were both at that party. Isn't that interesting? Um LA B. Yeah. LA Tinsel Town. Sandra was doing a one woman show called Without You I'm Nothing at the Orpheum Theater. She invites Madonna and they just fell into like a nice close, easy friendship. I find that Sandra Bernhardt has been a little bit maligned, a little bit misunderstood. Totally. There was a Mariah Carey quote that circulated during um Woke Mania. Uh that didn't go over so well, didn't age so well. And the internet I've sort of seized on it and whenever she's Back in the culture. It's always remember what she said about Mary. Is she on the new season of isn't she cast on the new season of White Lotus? I believe so. I think I read that. Um If you were there. Back then. Yeah. She was the coolest. Hundred percent. Gorgeous. Most glamorous. Yeah, totally. Like Most incredible celebrity. Like they don't make him like that anymore. Yeah, she was like w the Wario to Ellen Jones. Put it in a cool way. Wow. I mean also see watch her performance in the King of Comedy, incredible actress, like just like what a really cool face. Like she's also on Gay Mount Rushmore. Gay Mount Rushmore's getting crowded with Madonna's friends. So they hung out all the time. Um Madonna told Vanity Fair, I had a lot of evenings for you, so we just started hanging out, slagging everybody off together. She was just what I needed. We became really good friends. And then someone else said about their friendship, uh, anonymous source. I think that's why she likes Sandra so much. She can be totally obnoxious with her and not worry about being a star. I think she just sort of looks up to Sandra. To put it bluntly, sometimes when they're together, they can be a nightmare. I mean Those are the best kinds of friendships. I agree. When you're just like your friend kind of gives you permission to be the most devious of yourself. If you've ever been part of a two headed monster like the like I have, it's one of life's uh greatest pinnacles. Totally. Their friend group was called the Snatch Batch, just put that in here. That's so good. Pussy Posse Found Dead in a dead. Yeah, exactly. Um so Sean Penn is off m remember they're still married. So Sean Penn is off in Thailand filming Casualties of War, comes back in June, and Madonna's like full doing the play snatch batch mode. On July first, she Uh goes on in a legendary appearance on David Letterman. With the white T shirts and the blue jeans. The match so S Sandra was the actual guest, like she was booked to be on, and Madonna kinda crashed the party, or you know, she was invited to crash the party. But yeah, they're wearing she was being a groupie. Wearing the matching outfits. It's so nineteen eighty eight, like Little loafers and the It's really cute. And they kind of play up. the implication that they're dating. Let's talk about you two getting together! happening here and I'm not talking about the insaga. When she started hanging out with Sandra Bernhard, that was until the lesbian rumors started. Yeah. Which I think to a generation of lesbians was a huge deal. I'm sure. Culturally. And again, Madonna is nothing if not A fucking genius. So she was probably like Great. And also I think she later said really cool things about it. I I'm sure I have them in the doc, but it was the gist of being like, What if I am And what if I'm not, who cares? Yeah. Kind of like Lady Goggle did with that interviewer who was like, Do you have a penis? And she was like, So what if I did? You know? Like which is the best possible way to answer that. Yeah. It's also it's a little bit Courtney Love, like I don't think you should be impeached. Shades of We have our own opinions, you don't decide them. Shades of, yeah. Every bit of that was kind of genius, from the like stirring the pot to the how she handled it. Um, I don't know that um Jonathan Penn loved it that much, but I don't wanna put thoughts or words into his mouth. I think that what's like really interesting about this period of Madonna's career is that and we we'll get into the brunette of it all when we get into like a prayer, but If you look at it, she reached like the peak of fame. After True Blue. And so or so we thought. And like put out You Can Dance, which was essentially a greatest hits compilation. Yeah. Decided to go away. She did a a play. She's doing theater because she's like Interested in acting. This is when she's like She's married, she's like Totally doing laundry at home when she's not doing the play and like kind of loving the blissful married life when it's possible. Mm-hmm. But there was always like kind of a an eagerness with her and like then there was a little bit of like Her really soaking in the limelight, really enjoying all the attention she was getting and knowing that she could be provocative and that and you know she was like really kind of seizing all of that. And this feels like a turning point for her where she kind of was like, she had everything she wanted, she could do whatever she wanted, and she stopped. And like just didn't give a fuck. Like she didn't care if people thought she was lesbian. She like she was just having fun and enjoying herself. And there's something about that. Ease of this period that I think mean something in terms of her kind of personality and her approach. After this. Yeah, I got what you're saying. Yeah, I think it's gonna be really interesting to talk about. Also, I w I'm not an astrologer, so I can't cast her chart perfectly, but like She's thirty, so at some point around here, she's had her Saturn return. So so I think it's for some people it's after it's sometime between twenty eight and thirty, but like I'm interested in that that starts the second act of your life, you know? And this is obviously we're about to start the second act of her life. Four days after she turned thirty, Jean Paul Buscat. uh passed away from an overdose, her old flame and good friend. The end of August her birthday's in August. Uh she's done with the play. She goes back to LA to work uh on the next album. And that fall she meets with Warren Beatty to discuss the film Tracy. And she gets the part. Of course she did. Of course she did. Um If you see that movie, no one else could have played Breath of the said in the book who they were considering, but I can't remember who it was. Also just had the thought that it's like very funny that Each Madonna and Sean Penn had like their one best friend that the other one was like and Sean Penn's was Charles Bachowski. And Madonna's was Sandra Bernhard. It's like very funny. Imagine the four of them in a room together. Love. Um so Sean is in a play. Sandra and Charles going at it. King. Charles Bukowski is blacked out. Um he doesn't understand what a lesbian is. He's never seen such a thing. So Sean's doing Hurley Burley, the David Reid play, um at Westwood Playhouse in Los Angeles. And There was some accounts that on opening night Madonna came late with Sandra and at the after party that Sean was visibly upset and screamed at her, How could you do this to me? And they basically had a public screaming match. Um So She would come the whole run of the play, um, take him home after. There's also some speculation that sh he was upset that she took the part of Breathless Mahoney and Dick Tracy. A lot of what I was reading was like everyone in Hollywood was like. You know what Warren Beatty be doing. Well duh. Can you blame him? He knew what Warren was up to. In Mary Gabriel's book it says that he slept with thirteen thousand women. And he's still with us. Okay, Will Chamberlain. Like there's still time. That's so true. He's he's actually it's like one of those McDonald's clocks or like I I haven't checked in in a while. It's probably gone up since then. Sean Penn had also been hanging out a bunch with Hal Ashby at this point. Sick. Yeah. The director, if you guys don't know of Harold and Maud, um, and being there. And he died on December twenty-seventh, nineteen eighty-eight. You're like, Why are you telling me this? I'm this is why I'm telling you this, because shortly thereafter, like within a day or two, a sort of situation transpired um at their home in Malibu. Um and according to Sean Penn's biographer Richard T. Kelly, he and Madonna had an argument over breakfast and he asked her to leave. And allegedly Sean told Madonna he would cut her hair off if she came back. And she I don't know what listen, this is I'm simply reporting. The Speculation about it. The tabloids reports. Well I mean this is in his his bio, but um regardless of what actually happened. in that sense, what what we know to have happened is that the police were called. And the SWAT team came to the house. And Sean Penn told Playboy 1911. Yeah. Sean Penn was like, she felt the responsible thing to do was to inform them there were firearms in the house. Which is like so sick, honestly. You're like, Oh, you're gonna cut my hair bench? I told the cops of their guns. Again, I don't know. I'm fanficing. Um so she leaves and goes to Freddy DeMan, her manager's house, and Christopher Shikoni, her brother, flies out to be with her and get her a new place to live. That's basically it I bring that up to be like that was the last draw. I also bring it up I said this on the first episode, but I wanna say it again. I'm not Interested For the purposes of this podcast, I'm not really interested in gossip or personal life stuff. to the extent that it doesn't inform the music or the creativity. Yeah. You know what I mean? But I think this We weren't there. But this stuff does. Like it's important to say it because we're gonna it's it's gonna inform what's coming next musically and creatively. So she files for divorce at the top of nineteen eighty nine. In March, Rolling Stone asked her, So there wasn't one single breaking point and she said, It's been a slow breaking point all the way. I can't say anything specific happened. And this is while she's already kind of started working on like a pair, I this is the like Stew and juice. Mm-hmm. That she is creating this next album out of. And she would say later on several times, like that she always loved Sean, that she would she said he's the love of her life and truth or there. And so it feels also like one of those situations where obvious Love wasn't enough. Like the relationship was very combustible and Yeah. Dramatic and It sounds like not the right relationship. Again, to me, who who cares what I think, but it's like pretty clear, like You can love each other the most, but the things going on around you. the insane skyrocketing of Madonna's fame from when they met and started dating Throughout their marriage and then Sean Penn not being particularly in love with the limelight. You know, I think and they had just like kind of different things going on. Who could sustain that, you know? I mean a lot of celebrity relationships with other celebrities, I always find them a little strange because of my Miss Piggy Kermit the Frog theory of relationships. That there's always a Kermit and a Piggy. Okay. Can you expand on that? I just feel like in this relationship it was two Miss Piggies. Right. Two Miss Piggy's equals. Some karate. Yeah, some karate. I just yeah. Well Okay. Sorry to get all woo-woo in Hollywood over here. Um regardless, this is why Like a Prayer is essentially a divorce album. This is a divorce album, you know? A few weeks before the divorce is actually finalizing before Like a Prayer comes out. Minana enters into an unprecedented agreement with the Pepsi Corporation. Hello that she would release her new single, Like a Prayer, during a Pepsi commercial. For five milyen dollars. And additionally tour support. So we're gonna spend the next several hours talking about the Pepsi commercial. So this is It's an important commercial. This is the first time a single would premier in a commercial. It had never happened before. And it was the first time a commercial would have a global launch. This commercial was gonna go live in forty countries at the same time. had done his first Nike ad in nineteen eighty, and obviously that was like a watershed moment. Absolute vodka had been in the game for a while. They had been doing those artist collaborations since nineteen eighty five. They did the first one, I think, with Andy Warhol. And then Pepsi since eighty four had had Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, David Bowie, Lionel Richie, and you guys in the Miami sound machine. S lest you forget the eighties were a thing and there was the Miami sound machine. All pretty good. Pretty good. Time sound? Machine had bangers. They asked her in Rolling Stone, Why did you do it? You don't need the money. And she was like, No, but I do consider it a challenge to make a commercial that has some sort of artistic value. I like the challenge of emerging art and commerce. As far as I'm concerned, making a video is also a commercial, which sh not wrong. The Pepsi Spot is a great and different way to expose the record. Record companies just don't have the money to finance that kind of publicity. Bim, wait till you get back in the two thousands where they're like, Oh, you want to make a music video? Here's four grand. What I love about this statement is it started out sounding like bullshit and then she made a point. Yeah. So I'm like, she got me. The ad was directed by Joe Pitcut. Who did This is your brain on drugs egg ad. Mm-hmm. Major. So major. A lot of great commercials. Burned right into my brain, that one. And he had done the way you make me feel the Michael Jackson video. And Michael Jackson's Pepsi commercial. And Michael Jackson's Pepsi commercial. Is that the one they caught on fire? His hair did. His hair caught on fire, yeah. And these commercials are extremely aesthetically significant. Yeah. I would say. Also very importantly of for Joe Pitcut, he brings into the picture the choreographer Vincent Patterson, who's gonna form a really lasting creative bond with Madonna and and have a lot to do with what this episode's and a little bit further um work. So a There was a very brief period that she had this hair, but I realized that it was actually memorialized in cer in this commercial and in the interview magazine cover, which I forgot to bring. Um other The original E girl hair, babe. The the bleach blonde front and the dark rest of it looks so cool. Sorry. It was I use this expression a lot on Fap's plane. It was the canary in the coal mine of the Bruna and Blonde. She was first. Totally that would take place over the course. of the like a prayer. Record continue. And album cycle. Yeah. That is fabulous. I'm sorry, I'll say it. It's It's the Bomb. It's the Bom. The through line is there's a young girl It's Meant to be a Madonna as a Child, played by Heidi Marshall. Um, and there's Catholic school girls at a at a Catholic school there's a gospel choir and the church with Madonna singing. And it all kind of culminates with Madonna sitting in an armchair talking to the TV, where the little girl is pictured on the TV saying to her, Go ahead, make a wish while drinking a can of Pepsi and the little girl is drinking an old fashioned bottle of Pepsi. It's a rear projector. television. Okay, okay. Which were those were hot back then. They're back in style now, but they they were big back then. Make a wish. think it's a beauti. Guess what? You can watch it on YouTube, but actually, um they only aired it one time So they pre purchased ten million dollars of airtime for it. Ten million dollars of airtime. And they ran an ad for the ad. I've never even heard of such a thing. During the Grammys. They were like, no matter where you are in the world on March second, get to a TV and see Pepsi present Madonna. And March second, eighteen, they aired it one time and I'll tell you why. Because they had not yet seen the actual video for like a prayer. Whoopsie. Whoops. So I just want to say that The check cleared, though. The check cleared. And also four commercial that has only air one time. Probably the most iconic commercial Of my young life? You watched it in real time. I didn't watch it in real. But it was like clips of it would replay all the time on like MTV. It was like on MTV now. They would show clips from it when they were talking about how it was banned. And it was like a Pepsi commercial banned. Banning it was very strisand effect that blew it up into like a huge public But Pepsi themselves banned. They were like a Well because Okay, sorry, we got ahead. Because the actual Like a Prayer video, released March 3rd, the day after, with the single Is For the time, I think you can definitely say was um Pushing the envelope of a lot of causes that or you know, considerations that were not being talked about, especially not in a music video. So the story of the video is a woman witnesses a crime, that's Madonna, of a girl assaulted by a white man who runs off. And then a black man comes up to help the girl and he is arrested for the crime. The video basically follows uh Madonna's torment over what to do, what should should I come forward? There's burning cross, there's a gospel choir, there's a black saint who looks exactly like the man arrested because they're played by the same man, Leon Robinson. who Madonna kisses the feet of the black saint, and then there's Madonna in a chocolate brown slip from the 50s. actually belonged to Natalie Wood, and her name's still in it. As Grill Marcus, the god put it, you have blasphemy on about ten levels at once. Pepsi themselves gave a fuck, to be honest, but there was like immediate Out cry. Yeah. You know, the religious right. Totally. Yeah. I think the Vatican weigh in at some point, but we'll get to that. Um But guess what? It hit number one in thirty countries, including Italy. Beb. So I love this video. It was directed by Mary Lambert. Yes. Mary is a legendary director do A lot in part two her Madonna videos. Yeah. Um but she also did Nasty and Control for Janet Jackson and The Glamorous Life and Sheila E. Went to art school with the talking heads, and that's how she came to direct Madonna videos 'cause of s the Sire connection. It was also shot by Steven Poster, the cinematographer who would go on to shoot Donny Darkl Donny Darko and Southland Tales. Incredible. called taste. Madonna from this point because as they said with True Blue being such like an apex of her career. and making so much money that they were like, She can do whatever she wants. Yeah. And so she did whatever she wanted. There's a shot in the video where Madonna is falling through the sky. Yeah. Out of the sky. Um I close my eyes. Heaven. And the gospel singer catches her and then throws her back into the sky. That is one of the most unintentionally hilarious and ridiculous sequences in a music video I've ever seen. I love it. I love everything about it. It's actually the most insane video ever, if you break it down. Like, okay, like clear your heads, everybody. What I'm about to say is gonna you're you're gonna like freak out, but Bearing in mind that it is like one of the most iconic videos of all time. Like maybe top two. Yeah. I think about iconic pop videos. I think about m the burning crosses and like a prayer. And I think about like Michael Jackson, Billy Jean and the street is lighting up. Totally. You know what I mean? Thriller honestly. Yeah, yeah. So it's like I'm not taking any of that away from it, but because it's so iconic and it like is so embedded in all of us so deeply. To go and rewatch it now. like from a filmmaking perspective, from a storytelling perspective, it's a riot. Like I'm sorry, it's like this white savior narrative of this woman who witnesses who's like deciding whether or not to come forward as a witness to what is it, like a It's like a rape or sexual assault. Yeah. And In deciding whether or not to do the right thing, because she might not. It's a decision she's making. It's not she's not like I must help this person. She's like, Should I? And then her should I Creates a hallucination. Yes. Where she's like a messiah in a black church. Like she's like, I'm saving black people if I do this. It's crazy. Sure that was the exact storyboarding of the format. It's so headless. Like no one has been this headless or carried this much ever. I think the like and the performance of her with the gospel choir, and she's down on the ground Okay, I'm gonna read amazing I'm gonna read her own words of what this video said. She said a girl in the street witnesses an assault on a young woman, afraid to get involved because she might get hurt. She is frozen in fear. Black man walk down the street also sees the incident and decides to help the woman. But then the police arrive and arrest him. As they take him away, she looks up and sees one of the gang members, okay who this is the part we miss, who assaults the girl, who had assaulted the girl. He gives her a look that says she'll be dead if she tells. That's why she's struggling. And that is in the video. It is in the video. I don't know if it lands though. Well that was a little bit of a That didn't feel like a threat to me. No, I remember it. Don't you remember? And he was just like he's just looking at her, but it's like I don't really get that she feels threatened there. She feels like she's just like why else would she con Why else would she not come forward? Because she is Narcissist The girl runs, not knowing where to go until she sees a church. She goes in and sees a saint in a cage who looks very much like the man on the street and says a prayer to help her make the right decision. He seems to be crying, but she's not sure. She lies down on a pew and falls into a dream in when she begins to tumble in space. Okay, she fell asleep, babe. That was a dream. Dream sequence. Alice in Wonderland now. Yeah. And with no one to break or fall. Suddenly she is caught by a woman who represents earth and emotional strength and who tosses her back up and tells her to do the right thing. Still dreaming, she returns to the saint and her religious and erotic feelings begin to stir. The saint becomes a man. She picks up a knife and cuts her hands. That's the guilt in Catholicism that if you do something that feels good, you will be punished. As the choir sings, she reaches an orgasmic crescendo of sexual fulfillment intertwined with her love of God. She knows that nothing's gonna happen to her if she does what she believes is right. She wakes up, goes to the jail, tells the police the man is innocent, and he is freed. Then everyone takes a pow. And we the bow is also hysterical. It's very Shakespeare. It's all the world is staying. Anyway, anyway. I love it so much. I okay, here are the parts that I love about it. Given that it's impossible to watch it now without the brain rot and brain damage that has transpired in the year sense where nothing could possibly make any sort of emotional impact or like be like envelope pushing now because we live in a hellscape of memes where like the Iranian government is like here's Donald Trump doing a little dance while we're at war. Thinking about that, go back and imagine a world where like putting burning crosses on TV was insane. That people would watch that. It still is insane. Exactly. Like and then also to like I know you guys you already know how I feel about spirituality. But I love the I love the idea of someone bringing forth religious ecstasy. There was actually a scene, I think it was I think it was Oh my God. I can't remember her name. She was so awesome. She's always depicted with all the swords going through her. Do you remember talking about? Yeah. That old bitch. But her whole thing was also religious, like kind of like sexual ecstasy of the spirit. She was fierce. I'm a fucking I'm a major fan. I love like a prayer. I'm a huge fan. I just wanted to say. I'm not thinking about I'm just thinking about this video and this song. By the way, we should talk about the song really quick. That guitar in the beginning is Prince, uncredited. Okay, cool. No big deal. gospel influences really m is really like works. Like having work it works so well. And then also putting in well, I think people don't like this, but I'm down on my knees. I'll take you there. That's that's Madonna at her best. You know? Totally. This is like peak. This was like but you can you can see why there was such an uproar at the time. Of course. And like but that gets kind of we get numb to it as time goes on as well. Exactly. So for me it's less about like oh if you look at it through today's lens you can poke th holes in it and find even more things to be offended about. It's not even about that. It's like We actually like aren't offended by anything any more. Nothing makes an impact 'cause you're just like But you but you know There was a huge reaction to it, which is similar, which of course we talked about with the Pepsi ad, but it made the song bigger, I think. This was like the example of like her provocations really doing their job. Yeah, a hundred percent. So it's in into that space that a couple of weeks later. the full album comes out. I also just want to say quickly that I want to talk about her costume designer, Marlene Stewart. Yeah. She did this video, but she also did Material Girl, Dress You Up, The Virgin Tour, Papa Don't Preach, True Blue, Open Your Heart, Las La Bonita, Who's That Girl, Like Her Prayer, Express Yourself Designer on Dangerous Game. She also has done videos for Jana Jackson, Cher, Rod Stewart, Yurithmex. She went on to do the feature films. I just I'm going crazy on this because I'm obsessed with her. Yeah. She did the doors. J F K Terminator two. True lies. Two Wang Fu, thanks for everything July. Uh space jam. The Saint. The X Files movie. It was so good. I know. Coyote Ugly. Twenty one grams. The holiday that Cameron Diaz You don't have to explain who the holiday is to me. I'm skipping a lot. But she also did Tropic Thunder, Oblivion, Top Gun Maverick. Never nominated for an Oscar, which is insane. Totally underrated giant of costume design. Uh, Marlene Stewart, say her name. Yeah This is the sort of person that I feel like doesn't get the proper amount of praise. Like three major fashion players in Madonna's Life and it's Maripole. Marlene Stewart and then Arian Phillips, which we'll get to In another part. Okay. Like a prayer. March twenty, nineteen eighty nine, produced by Madonna, Patrick Leonard, Stephen Bray and Prince has a little bit more. Zhuz on it. He sprinkled a little prince that's just a I think I suppose his production extends to just the one song, but I really liked this uh bit from Patrick Leonard. He said, We used we argued a lot during the making of this album, but one day she held up the true blue album cover and said, Whose picture is this? The more feisty conversation stuff there. It's pretty amazing. She's like, Oh really? Who's Wow. This is me. Pulling rank. Yeah. The ever impossible to answer, but everyone has their own because it's just a personal thing. Favorum question. This I think is mine. Like I every which way from Sunday I try to like parse it out. Even though I think I recognize that like maybe Objectively speaking. through like a music critic lens, there are better albums. I just this is my guy. Did No talk about the napkin? No, we a you know what he didn't bring up the napkin. Wow. We've talked about it a bunch in our group chat though. Do you want to talk about the napkin? I'll start this off by saying I think I'm in four Madonna centric group chats. Okay. And there's a lot of overlap in them. It's all really confusing to me. It should probably just be one group chat, but we don't have the discipline. And sometimes you want to leave someone alone. You know what I mean? It's like, are we gonna pull Karen Gans into every Madonna group chat? So you know, we're trying to be respectful by like how stupid the Madonna conversation is getting warrants a different group chat. There's like it's like there's levels happening. But there was a one night when a bunch of us were together. I think we were at Julius Bar, I wanna say. um in New York and we all got into a conversation about what is the best Madonna album and it turned into a screaming fight that lasted for hours. Where we were ranking the albums on cocktail napkins. And then we finally came to a consensus of the Madonna album ranking, which Mel still has the cocktail now. Yeah, which by the way is like so incorrect. It's totally incorrect. When you look at it now and we're like, what were we thinking? Because screaming at each other's like. Bear is not even on the napkin. I was like immediate disqualification, you guys. Sorry, but like this napkin is null and void. Well I do think that American style is number four? American life. American life, sorry. American life is number four. Canceled. And no like a prayer on the napkin. American life has a really good record. I agree, but Like a prayer. Not not even mentioned. But I think Drew Blue is number one. I love it. I love T. I think that is my number one. I think it might be my favorite thing. I'm just picturing it's just like you get eight gay guys together and like try to get them to rank Madonna. It's like throwing like a raw meat into a like a coyote cage and just like tearing each other apart. Yeah, there's some friendships were ended. Um All right. Um huge album like a prayer. Huge album. I think sonically what I didn't understand that I was like reacting to or have been reacting to all these years. But once someone put it forth, I was like, oh, that makes sense. It has real drums almost all throughout. And synth base. And there's a very cool, there's also sometimes that's inverted with other artists, but there's a really cool thing that happens when like the drum is real and the bass is synth, or the drums are synth and the bass is real. It's just like a beautiful alchemy, I think, that makes these songs really pop. That's interesting. The dedication of this album is to my br mother who taught me how to pray. Um, they asked her in Rolling Stone, You dedicated the album to your mother taught you how to pray. When do you pray? And she said constantly. I pray when I'm in trouble or when I'm happy, when I feel any sort of extreme. I pray when I feel so great that I'll I'll think I need to check in with myself and recognize how good life is. I know that sounds silly. We should start doing that? I pray a lot. Do not pray. And but in that instance. When when you have to like check yourself and know how good life is. Yeah. Yeah. I think the the act of making gratitude list, not to be like absolute Venice hot lady, woo woo. Um, but that to me is like a prayer of gratitude is when you like really Whatever she's doing is working. So I'm just I'll do whatever you're doing, babe. Taking notes. Um another like I think thing that informs this album Is the year prior Tony Shacconi, Madonna's father had given all his children copies of the letters their mother had written to him when he was in the air force before they were married. So they had all of a sudden all this like materi or she had all this material. of her mother to like kind of That's so interesting. It's any have been up to this point. I feel like to me like a prayer is an album like about loss, right? Like it's about the loss of love. in a relationship. It's about the loss of your mother. It's about the loss of maybe your like idea of what could be. You know, like she thought Champag was that's it. I'm for true blue, baby, forever, you know? And also The loss of like agency, because a lot of this is about like pushing back against like, I'm sorry to say it, the patriarchy, fathers, husbands, people trying to control you and tell you what to do. And then I think just to like position it and so we we can talk about when we get to erotica, I think that is the slingshot effect into Erotica because erotica is an album about power. About taking power and being like, Oh, really? Like, no. You thought you thought you could take No, I I'm taking the power. You know? But just that the emotion in this album. There's there's songs where you can hear that she's like It feels like she's about to cry. Like her voice is like cracking. It's so emotional. Certain songs in here I can't even get through almost because like listening to it again recently and I'm like maybe I'm just so middle aged now Or like I've lost my mother so it's like things hit different. Promise to try. Promise to try I can't do it. Openly right now. And she sounds like she's crying on that song. Okay, well let's go through. But also like something else about this album is that It feels like her most rebellious album, which is so interesting because Really? Go on. Tell me more about that. U up until this point because even though she was being so like rambunctious and wild and free and doing Papa Don't Preach and kind of pushing these buttons here and there. And there's like intention versus what actually the result was and what happened because that the album cycle didn't necessarily go according to plan for what she was doing, but she came into this album cycle brunette. Like she was kind of getting rid of the image that she created. This like pop icon image. She's like it's like very sixties inspired. Yes. So there's as you can see from the cover. Which has like a little It has like a political undertone, but it has a little bit of like done being this artificial kind of bulletproof pop star and I'm like I'm different than you think I am or deeper than you think I am. Vulnerability this is like her like Also, we talked about it a little on the first episode, but like it's not till True Blue that she So much taking over the like lyrical content as much. And even then it's it's a little fluffy. Yeah it's great. It's it's it's true. Like she's in love and you know, Papa Don't Preach was already written, but like she embodied it. But here it's like her like she's in her Joni Mitchell bag. She's like I'm like mining my my pain and my life to like pour into these lyrics. And it's very it is like not your typical pop star moment. But then also to come out with Like a Prayer as the lead single and do that video. It's the most boundary pushing thing she had done up until that point. And so it's also but she's grounding it in this like introspective religious thing. And then she does end up kind of going back to blonde pop star. Right. In the middle of things because of Dick Tracy. Yeah. And like But thank God, imagine the Vogue video or the Express Yourself video without the bleach blonde hair. Listen. God works in mysterious ways. Things worked out how they had to. Life is a mystery. Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. So we t we started talking about the influences, right? It's the divorce album. Pat Leonard said that on some days she would wear sunglasses all day in the studio, like she was going the fuck through it. Um Sean Penn told Playboy in nineteen ninety-one, you have to understand when Madonna and I got together, she hadn't even gone on tour yet. My understanding of the direction that Madonna was choosing was a misunderstanding. And the degree to which she would be choosing and chosen for such an intense spotlight was a surprise. A big surprise. I started to get the idea very shortly after we were together, but by then there's that heart thing that gets involved. You don't walk away so easily because something's a little difficult. And then here's like an interview with her about the marriage. Do you think the odds were stacked against this marriage from the start? It seemed people defied it to succeed. She said, Oh yes, I felt that no one wanted us to be together. They celebrated our union and then they wanted us to be apart. There were rumors about us getting a divorce about a week after the wedding. We fought that. And yes, it was difficult. I don't know if anyone can do it under those circumstances. And then they asked her, Do you regret that you ever got married? And she said, No. Ultimately I have twinges of regret, but I feel more sadness than anything. Feeling regret is really destructive. I have learned a great deal from my marriage, so much about everything, mostly myself. Please don't ask me what, I just couldn't say. What I thought was really interesting was The way that she talked about how Sean was very protective over her was this big masculine figure in her life, which reminded her of her father and what and the way this record is trying to liberate herself from that. Yeah, a hundred percent. It's what like the patriarchy, the the father, the son, the holy ghost, whatever, the pope, the you know, everyone. She had said, Keep it together and express yourself are tributes to like the Sly Sly in the Family Stone style music. Um, and she said O father is her tribute to Simon and Garfunkel. Amazing. Wow. Love Simon and Grove Uncle. There's so many things like that with this record that you sort of take for granted or like it it lit it's like embedded in our subconscious mind. But you know, I was saying this about the album cover because I've just been looking at that album cover my whole life. It does not read as hippie or sixties to me, which Actually it's crazy 'cause when you look at it, it is so No, but I agree. It's like but to me like It was so nineties for some reason. Yeah, we're not jeans. We're not in the nineties yet, but isn't that like so the for foretelling of how the nineties vibe is like cool. faded blue jeans with like those kinds of beads and like head shop jewelry, you know? Her bread shot that. Sick. Yeah. He shot everything from this record? Pretty much. According to the biographer Lucy O'Brien, she said the cover was inspired by Madonna's mother who used to cover up her sacred heart statue with zip up jeans every time a woman came to visit. Wow. Yeah. Here's something new every day. I need to point out before Italian customs. Italian customs. French Canadian, her mom. This album was packaged with the scent of patchouli into it. Like church incense. So when you got it, it like burst a smell of patchouli because according to Warner Brothers at the time, she wanted to create a sensual feeling that you could hear and smell. And there was a box set that is very well known among the Madonna fandom collected. It came with a cassette. Yes. A compact disc. Um a copy of Rolling Stone. The the cover. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And there was a metal pen of that starburst logo. And slide projector slides because I guess everybody had those. Of course. We all had a slide projector at our home. Well, and don't forget the insert. The AIDS insert. The AIDS insert the It was the facts about AIDS and had a brief intro that denounced anti-gay bigotry and violence and then laid out very clearly the ways in which one could contract AIDS, including the line, you can get AIDS by having vaginal or anal sex with an infected partner. Um, not a lot of people mentioning anal sex in nineteen eighty nine, um, let alone in marketing material. So this is kind of a big deal. Or enough on podcasts like Banceplane. Anal sex. Say it. We probably mention anal sex more than any other Ringer podcast. That's definitely true. Yeah. I also just want to shout out Sarah Jane Hoare who I think was the s did the styling on all of the Herbert shoots or most of them. Oh, really? During this time. She's a legendary stylist who I've worked with. So you think Marlene Stewart didn't do this one? I couldn't tell you, but in From what my research has taught me. Got it. It would have been Sarah Jane, perhaps. That's cool. All right. We talked about like a prayer song. Let's get into number two. Second single, second track on the record. express yourself, Bebe. Oh boy. Here's the one where I think If you've heard this song in any context, it's not the album version. Correct. Yeah, because the remix by Shep Pettibone became The video. The video. Even though They had already filmed the video to the original version. And that is why. So one of the things Chap Pettibone did to the album version is he removed all the horns. But in the video, if you watch, there's still a part where there's men playing horns. But there's no horns. It looks good, which is all that matters. We'll get to the video in a second. Master of editing, David Fenturer. he can he can make those changes on the fly. I never noticed once until I listened to Inside the Groove podcast and they mentioned it and I was like, oh huh. Also this um this single, there was a limited edition seven inch that came out in the UK that was And The back of the single was the back side of the jeans and the titles were like embroidered on them and it was like a little play off of what was already. Yeah. Send it to me. All right. Oh, and you can actually unzip the jeans and take the record out. So fucking cool. Why do the British people get everything? It's so true, everything. They get everything. They're the coolest, that's why. Bring back clonials. It was a mistake. Take us back. Take us back, actually. So this Express Yourself takes a little inspiration, shall I say, from the song Respect Yourself by Staples Singers. You've heard the song. Mm. The live drums on here are by a guy named John J.R. Robinson, who also drummed on a song called Don't Stop Till You Get Enough by Michael Jackson. Also a song called Ain't Nobody by Shaka Khan. And I'm so excited by the Pointer Sisters. ledge, babe. Um the bridge is a Sinclavier, which is like the same thing they use on Superstitious by Stevie Wonder. And that you'll never call. That's Steven Bray doing a weird little and there is a I'm available for those two. So they wanted someone else to do it. Like I can't I should have written it down. It was like someone famous, but it was just complicated and I was like, you just do it. And there's actually, I heard on the Inside the Groove podcast, there is Her do it. Madonna doing it as well. It's not included, I don't think on the thing, but in this weird accent. It's very funny. Um Madonna said about the meaning of this song. The message of the song is that people should always say what it is they want. The reason relationships don't work is because they are afraid. That's been my problem in all my relationships. I'm sure people see me as an outspoken person and for the most part, if I want something, I ask for it. Sometimes you feel that if you ask for too much or ask for the wrong thing from someone you care about, then that person won't like you. And so you censor yourself. I've been guilty of that in every meaningful relationship I've ever had. The time I learn how to not edit myself will be the time I consider myself a complete adult. nineteen eighty nine. I wonder when it will happen. Well we have a couple of instances we can put it I have a theory on that. And it's it's like again, Venice Hally D. But I think it's Ray of Light. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Make sense. Stop by the video. I know. Directed by a twenty-six year old David Dave Fincher. Love of my life. Did anyone who calls him Dave? Yeah. Yeah. If only to fuck with him. Right. So just a quick Dave Adventure sidebar. Dave will you take this? Dave. Um He had been an apprentice at George Lucas's Industrial Lights and Magic visual effects company and a PA on the return of the Jedi movie. I'm sweating. And then By the time we're here I'm from there. This is my this is the he was playing in my backyard. Can you believe Skywalker Ranch Morin County, California. By the time this video gets directed, he had done a bunch of music videos, including Motherfucking she's like the wind, Patrick Swayze. I love how that's where you go. That's a great video. Well, okay, Gypsy King's Bumble Eo, also really important to Young Yossi's life. That was the first concert I ever attended with my parents, Gy Gypsy King. Paula Abdul straight up. Okay, you know what, I have to say there's a more important Paula Abdul collaboration than that that he did. He also did Paula Abdul's The Way That You Love Me, which there are two versions of. For some reason they released one video and then a year later did another one. And it's Like it's like the same video almost. It's just reshot. Different lighting. And I'm like, was this Fincher being like, I don't like that video, I would shoot it different now. Let's do it over. And you and you know what? If you're Paul Abdul, you could because I think it's impossible to overstate how massive she was in the eighties. Really massive. I think that both videos are extraordinarily aesthetically significant. to David Fincher and his style. Um He's done some good s videos. He also did the American Cancer Society commercial with the smoking fetus. He was in his Benjamin Button bag way back then. Um so Madonna Links up with David Fenture and not and it was will not be the last time, thank God. But she says she wants to do a video based on two things. A nineteen twenty one black and white photograph by Lewis Hine called Powhouse Mechanic. Mm. And Fritz Lang's nineteen twenty seven film. Metropolis. You would probably recognize that photo. It's like a muscle guy. Yeah. And he's like pushing a big lever. Okay. Yeah. She told Molly. Totally. She said, I definitely wanted to have that influence, that look. All the men, the workers sort of diligently, methodically working away. It's I mean it it's so perfect. It was like it looks like she's like the queen bee in a beehive. And all the men are just like hot and like working, toiling away. There's a lot of this kind of like German expressionist play going on in the eighties. I think that there was something happening with like maybe it was like the rise of the synthesizer in pop music. And like, you know, we talked about with depeche mode. Like we talked about this? Like if German sensibilities. Yeah, like what is the the De Pestwood album cover that's like very that vibe. Oh yes. It's a crazy album cover. You know, there was like The Apple commercial for the Mac that Ridley Scott directed. There was like Sony ads at that time kind of had this vibe. It felt very like in the air. Brazil, the Terry Gilliam film. Yep. You're you're nailing it. It was like the right around the era of like kind of like postmodernist Bauhaus having like a big resurgent. You're so right. This video really formative to young Yassi. I was like, when will I be? In a gorgeous pinstripe suit. Dancing in a factory with a lot of hot men. I'm gonna crawl on all fours. Yeah, like and drink the milk. That was Dave Adventure's idea for her to crawl like a cat and like from the bowl of milk and pour the milk over herself. Bet it was Dave. Bet it was Dave. The tracking shot of Madonna crawling underneath the dining room table. Is one of the most important shots. in the history of pop music videos. It is so influential. Yeah. So many people have copied it or done other versions of it. Oh my God. I have had like eighty flashes in my head of future music videos. Drag queens? On drag race. Crawling on all the crawling on all fours thing. This is the birth of it. Totally. Pay some motherfucking respect. Respect on her name. And and Dave didn't have a blueprint. This video cost five million dollars and at the time was the most expensive video ever made. Yeah. They don't do that anymore. Um And that's without inflation? Yeah, that's at the time. So it's was twenty million dollars. Got it. Um and we talked about this a little bit before, but the reason her hair is back to bleach blonde is because she had to change it for Breathless Mahoney and and Dick Tracy. Yes. And right now we are in May, I believe, which is the time that the movie wrapped. So she would have just finished it. Yeah. And What's happening is like this is when Madonna's acting work is really starting to come into her pop music work in kind of like a new way, I feel like. And prior to this, like Madonna was always seen as like She was definitely seen as a trendsetter. She had like her own look and then everybody would copy it. There were the like Madonna Bees were what they would be called. But this is the era that came to be called her chameleon era. And it's because her image, her shape shifting image during this album cycle And fun was to me wasn't planned. It was not intentional, it was circumstantial. Right. Because there's a couple singles from this album I mean somewhat intentional, but it was like you know, she could've worn a wig, but she was like, No, I'm doing blonde for Dick Tracy, that's gonna be the look now. I think God interferes though, 'cause like again, I think Madonna is all powerful and can do anything, but I don't know if the bleach blonde wasn't happening if it would have popped the way it did. She knew on some level. People are really drawn to a bleach blonde. And it was and it's started to give the like this is the first like Glamorous. Gene Harlow esque, you know vibes that really start to like be the Madonna thing. And we have to give props to Peter Savic. who was Madonna's hairstylist at this time. I don't know how he did it. Can he do my hair because I don't know if you go from blonde to he lives in Los Angeles. He's still working. Sir, I need I wanna go blonde so bad, but I've had so much black dye in my hair. I don't know if we're gonna be able to A legendary hairstylist, he did Helmet Lang's first runway show. Wow Um He created the hair in Single White Female, a movie that is about hair. He also did Winona Ryder's hair in Reality Bites. I know you love that hair. Say say no more, fam. So say no more. Sorry, I know this is band splain and not hair spin. But when you invite a homosexual on the podcast, we're gonna talk about hair. And I could go on and on about Peter Savek. He's it baby. He's a magician. Yeah. Because lifting lifting that lifting that dark back to blonde so immediately. And then Vincent Patterson should be shouting out for this video because he did the choreography, which is obviously iconic, but also he is responsible for the crotch grab, which Heard around the world, the crotch grab scene around the world. Um, she had been kidding with him during rehearsals about Michael Jackson who obviously was the big You know, crotch grabbing. pioneer. And she was like, What should I do right now with my hand? And he was like, Why don't you grab your balls? You've got bigger balls than anyone else here. And so she did. And it's a really great part of the video. Alright, the next song is It's hard for me to say, but this is in my this is in my top five. This is sometimes number one, but it's absolutely in my top five. And it's a love song featuring Prince. I cannot get tired of this song. This song sounds like it was made yesterday. This song is so timeless, fresh, and modern. It is like I'm obsessed with it. I don't think it's like fair actually to put it as a favorite Madonna song because it also is so Prince sounding as well. But it's just. I just come back to it over and over again. It's so simple, it's so sexy. Both sound so cool. I love it. To me, it's a song that kind of exists. on the album, but it could live outside the album. Totally. You could pop it out of the album and it just is its own thing or something. I agree. You know? I love that it's on the album. It definitely contributes to the kind of eclectic nature of the album. And like this kind of like Boho. Yeah. The Boho Yeah the funky Boho hippie vibe, if you will. Prince collaboration, but this is the only thing this is the only actual song that they yielded. I said that it's like kind of a soundtrack song to me. Like I could hear this in a movie if it wasn't probably so expensive to license due to the billion dollars that are on the track between the two of us. Such a good score moment. Oh, it's so cool. Like if it was like the Ryan Murphy love story and it was a scene where they're like vintage shopping being really goofy, like that would be like a perfect It's like too like sex. It's too like salt it's like It's so 90s in this crazy way. It's the most viscerally coffee house nineties. Do you really think it's Java, Mocha. I find it to be so like I feel like because it's so simple, it's almost like doesn't sound of any time. Her vocal harmonies on it are really amazing toward the end. It like builds. Yeah. Like the way that they'll build it and stop. Exactly. That's why I find it very to be a very sexual song for that reason. It's like big it's like so smart how it works on like a musical level to sound sexual. It's a really dynamic. Yeah. Song. A really unusual song for Madonna at this time, I feel like. Totally. It was really it's kind of a swerve. And I feel like it makes sense. It's like if you're gonna collaborate with Prince, like you should do something weird. You know? Yeah, she said she went to a studio in Minnesota and they worked on some stuff and then She was like, I hate Minnesota. Um, I'm coming home. There's actually also a podcast I listened to, and I can't place it, but one of Prince's like later girlfriends. Was like Madonna asked him to make a video and he said no. And I was like, Well, we don't you don't have any evidence of that, but Well considering that his other contributions are uncredited, it sounds like he is good at saying no. Yeah, he was like no thank you. They asked her in an interview Since Prince is the preeminent pop spiritualist, the two of you have any discussions about religion. She said, We never talk about religion or politics, but love song does have a spirituality about it, the kind that exists between two people. It's really about that push and pull of a relationship, the back and forth. I love you, I hate you, I want you, get away from me, you build me up and tear me down, that constant rubbing. Religion and sex. I liked how the Steve Bray said in an interview that they asked him to work on it and he was like, I can't be a prince. I can't do it. He was like such a big Prince fan that he was like too scared. He was like not emotionally ready. That happens sometimes. Yeah. The next song is Till Death Do Us part. Okay, I love this song, but it's in within the context of this album. It feels a little behind pace of where she had gotten to with her sounds. Like it sounds like it could have been on like the Who's That Girl soundtrack. I think what's interesting about this album, it it's it is a bridge album. There's there are like several moments on here that are like Like we kinda talked about this. This is like somehow both an eighties and nineties album at once. Because it has elements of like Till Death Dose Part, Dear Jesse. Together is an ace. It's kind of like tension and it's like reflected in the like the blonde versus brunette, like the previous like pop star Diva Madonna, the like hippie, like deep spiritual Madonna, and it's like almost like It doesn't know what it wants to be, but that tension is what makes it exciting. Totally. And it's like She's all of those things. That's why it's cool, you know? Yeah, I love the song. The fucking the drama of the glass break at the end? The melody is very seductive. I thought it was interesting that this song You know, you could leap to the conclusion that it was at least partially inspired by her marriage. Yeah. And that she told Night. That was the selling point, for sure. She knew she had to have some song on the album that would be like, look, a breakup song. Like Till Death Do Its Part. It's sort of I don't want to say cynical, but it she was definitely like she must have been writing from that place. You know? Um She put the song forward as that. Right. And she said that she Sean heard it before she put it out and she said yes and he loves it. Well, where's the fun in that? I know. She said Sean is very on being brutally frank in his work. Well, it's kind of crazy because this song is like the implication is there's domestic abuse. Right. So you're like, she takes the keys. Stay here. Okay, promise to try. Why don't you just take an ice cream scooper and just fucking stick it right in my chest and take my heart out and put it on the fucking table. When I listen to Promise to Try, I'm like, this is what makes us different. You and Madonna. This is the only thing. This is the one dividing This is I pretty much am her, except I'm like I really admire it that someone can be this Sincere and vulnerable. Yeah it's not really type of thing. Yeah. I was just like it makes me uncomfortable. Yeah. I understand. Not me. I'm like where's the punchline? I'd be crying on podcasts and stuff. Um I think it's really beautiful. Also it's like The idea that we talked about a bit in part one and that she's she's talked about many times that like this wound, this like lack of a mother wound you know, had a huge part in creating her entire personality and her entire what she wanted out of life because okay, if I don't have my mother's love, I'll have the world's love, you know? Mm-hmm. And then sort of trying to return to that well to like understand yourself. Keep your head. I obviously haven't experienced it, thank God my mother is still alive. Um, but to lose your mother at five years old, six years old, like the mythology that's insane the would build around how much of your life you've lived without that person, like they become an apparition, you know? Yeah. You barely have enough memories to like cobble together a person. And that's what the song's about. It's like I hope I don't forget you. Oof. I can. She is Lidial. It's so beautiful. It's so sad. It's also like a really incredible top line melody. Like one of her greatest strengths. For a ballad. It's so evocative. It's haunting. It's like it's hopeful. But it's so fragile. And like That to me, I'm like, don't take this shit for granted. Like some people spend their whole careers trying to write a song like that. This is a very rare type of song to make in cra people don't can't make this kind of song. My brain I was like, if she had just saved this one for a league of their own, she would have won the original song, Oscar. Honestly. Although it has literally nothing to do with um the premise of the S didn't get one for Live to Tell, so it's like get out of here. One of the best songs of all time, one of his m most enduring ballads Yeah, promise to try as God Tier. God Tier song. She it's just Pat Lennard playing the piano and her singing. And He said that the record the record button got pushed twice. It's like really just like Wow. She was very like that. Like I've read many of the one track. They were like we're a one track she's a one take diva. She just like that said the song is too sad for me. You skip it. I I will skip it. It's getting it's a little like on the level of the Sarah McLaughlin Humane Society commercial type of thing. I don't know. We have an entire I don't need to be that sad. Oh no, it's not in this episode, but you guys get excited. I have an entire triangulation story for you involving the Sarah McLaughlin In the arms of an angel, adopt these dogs or you fucking will go brought in hell. And a Madonna song. And I'm I'm gonna bring it all together, but it's not till it's not until real. We're on the same wavelength. Um Now we can get to your favorite song. what I will not fucking have you come on my show and say a a negative word about one of the greatest pieces of pop confection ever put to track Cherish. There is something that is so throwback about it that it risks being corny. Right. Like I compared it to like Cher's the Shoop Shoop song. Which is also a great song. Of course it is, but it's like that's like a category of pop song that's a little dooppy. And all a great chunk of true blue is that as well. I know it's true why not Cherish is not allowed. Why you come from my beloved Cherish? Maybe it's the horns? I don't know. There's some it's but But Stephen Bray and Patrick Leonard, they love the horns. But also that was me, like the way that I conceive of Cherish in my lizard brain, and then listening to it, you're just like It is a perfect pop song. Perfect pop song? There's no way she could have not recorded this and not put this on this album. It's like when you're hearing it, you're like, it's irresistible. Irresistible. It sounds like a billion. I have to put it on twelve times in a row before I'm satisfied. One time is never enough. And like For me, I really think that like it's deceptively complex. Yeah. Structurally. Thank you. Um And lyrically. And emotionally. It's really brilliant. Yes. And if you It's postmodern, it's referential. She's like. The lyrics are all referencing like classic old love songs and she's bringing them up and bringing them back. Thank you. Burning Love, Elvis Presley. Two hards is Bru Springsteen, but I'm gonna say Stacey Q on that one. But like you know, Cupid, Sam Cook, You're My Destiny. These are like old standards that she's like kind of tossing out and making these references to. And I really think the Melody on the verses. Is Fucking incredible. It's And how it kind of moves around. Also, it has a thing that a lot of my favorite songs have, which I think you have to have a fine tuned sense of emotion to really grasp it. But it is a deceptively positive song that actually holds within it a lot of pain. Because this song this song is about delusion. The song is like she wrote it. While doing Speed the Plow when her marriage was in fucking shambles. Okay. The shit is the train is falling off the tracks and she has this like last burst of Dululu to be like But we're so in love it could you know, like It's love. It's so. And you can hear it, you know? Like it y in your notes. You have a quote from her, she says, I wrote it in a super hyper positive state of mind that I knew was not going to last Then I wrote down this is hilarious and I wonder if she was on diet pills or something. No, she was she was high on Who Amongst Us has not been high on the manic delusion that a love will last when you know it's not going to be a little bit of love and I'm on Broadway. Which is like totally during it. And I someone gave me some Dexies. Sandra gave me some Dexies. Also, we've didn't even mention that obviously the Cherish part comes from the song, the association song Cherish that starts. Cherish is the word I use. One of the greatest ones. Um and at the same time, though As b true blue. Has that same thing. I will not take any cherish slander. Um let's start with the video though. Directed by one Herbert's his first video he ever did. Herbert Ritz was called up from the photography leagues to the moving picture. And I love this. Okay. I also I'm sorry, I don't want to play into like the savior narrative, but I just love the fact that she had learned that he was HIV positive. And then this is like kind of her reaction was like, I think mermaids. Well, I think you should make I think you should make a video. Like I think you should do this. other you know, like not that I don't think moving pictures and elevated art from photography is not what we're talking about, but like she's kinda like, Why don't you why don't you why don't I give you this cool opportunity, you know? Like let's let's like let you get into something fun, you know? And He obviously was like, I don't know how to do that. I'm a photographer. Um, but I thought it was very cool that he was like, Okay, yes, I'll do it. And he was on a job in Hawaii photographing Stephanie Seymour in a Mermaid. Costume made by Sharon Simonaire, who is the same woman that will make the mermaid tales for uh Cherish. And that's what kinda got in his head. He got really obsessed with the Mermaids and he was filming with a Super A camera and he was like, Okay, I can do this. So he didn't run those photos. He Yeah, what happened to them? I know he was doing the shooting. He was doing it was a shoot for the June nineteen eighty nine issue of uh I'm like, I have the info, don't worry. Poly Mellon styled the shoot. The mermaid tail pictures are not in the shoot. They piggybacked it onto the shoot, as which is a term that we use in the in the biz. But What does that mean? Like you're doing a shit that someone's paying for. Right, okay. And then you're like, I'm gonna do all these extra photos. I'm gonna try to. I can use her. I'll just okay. And so I think the mermaid tail pictures of her were like a test for the Cherish video. He was had that in mind when he was doing it. That's so cool. It's really cool. It's legendary. Wade like something insane, right? Like And the way the guys are swimming and they're popping up. He said because they had to be carried into the water, but once they were in the water, they could move really well. And they were mostly, besides Tony Ward, fucking one of the hottest men to ever exist. Water polar players from Pepperdine. So obviously they were extremely good swimmers. Wow. And a Merchild. There was a child. This is this is an informative moment to my young sexuality. It also makes sense why I would fall in love with gay men multiple times in my life. But M. Totally hot. Part of the lore of the Cherish video. Also is that Kim Kardashian was there. Excuse me. I don't know if you've heard this story. No, do go on. Um with Allison Azov. So how old is she at this point? I don't know. An adolescent. Yeah. No, nine. Beat. So I don't know. Kim Carnag is only one year older than me. I think it was Kim's family's beach house. Okay. Maybe it was the A. Robert Kardashians. Bruce? Bruce is this the Bruce era? I don't know. Sorry, Ken. I'm sorry, I'm not a Kardashianologist. I'm a Bandsman. Well anyway, they had a beach house at Paradise Cove in Malibu and it was next door to Madonna's manager's Friday to May. Friday to May. And that was where they filmed the video and Kim has told the story that she remembers sitting on with Allison on the stairs from their beach house just watching Madonna film the Cherish video, like freaking out as a kid. God, I see what you give to other people. I'm like, what did she do in a past life to have just the most blessed existence of anybody among us. It's crazy. Maybe I'll get maybe I'll get that the next round. Okay, I'm gonna go on to Dear Jesse and I'm gonna say something. I love this song, I don't care what anyone says. Is it like A top ten Madonna song? Obviously not. Okay. Is it a little cornballs? The answer is yes. It's insane. It's but it's insane. It's so crazy that you put this on here. And also going back to the overarching themes of This album and the connecting with the your inner child, the child who lost your mom. Uh-huh. You know, here's a beautiful little m song that Jesse, the the titular Jesse is um Pat Leonard's daughter, actually her name was Jesse. Um but she's talking to herself. You know, this is talking to your inner child. It's a little Dululu Heavenly Creatures Fantasy Land, um Jennifer Connolly in Labyrinth, I'm a Fairy Princess. Pink elephants and lemonade. Dear Jesse hear the laughter running through the love parade. Candy kisses on a sunny day. When you first hear it, it's a little bit shocking. Totally. Especially in the context of the album and where her career was and what she was doing. I'm gonna take you there just like twelve minutes ago. And now we're now in the land of the serious tea party. Yeah and When you read that it was being that the reference was like the Beatles Yellow Submarine. You're kind of like, Oh, got it. And then it hits a little different. And it is a really smart, interesting song. Also for the pacing of the album. I think it's pretty nice, like, you know, you go into Cherish into Dear Jesse and then like just smacks you in your fucking mouth with oh fine. I mean, that's the thing. It's essentially to me the song is an interlude. Yeah. Like This is the part of the show where she goes off and does a costume change. And then some kids come out and do this weird little play thing. And then it's like The way that it transitions into O Father makes the whole major because it goes straight in slows down the like the carnival music, right? And then it goes right into O Father, which My arm hair is turned up again. But also like I always loved O Father because of Truth or Dare. I love it. But I wouldn't listen to it on in the album context. And so you know that song so well and you know how it starts at that music at the beginning, be like And it's like that it comes off of Dear Jesse. You're sort of like holy fuck. This song? I'm like, can I get a minute? My God. Okay. The melodrama that I would sing. I just need you to picture me, I am eleven years old, whenever I had this ten, eleven years old, the melodrama that I'm bringing to my bedroom that I'm oppressed by my parents. You're a nun in my We're all joining the con Because they will not let me go to sleepovers. And I'm singing O Father, like with my full eleven year old lungs. You can hurt me now. I got away from you. Oh my gosh. What a banker, man. It it's different for girls. Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think so, but w uh but I love the drama of it, of course. It's like one of her most dramatic songs. It's another one where you kinda feel like she's in your tears singing it. It reminds me of this is like a personal reference, reminds me of my niece. Who's so dramatic. She said she wrote this during a dark headspace. Say no. You don't say as they say. Um and she was like it was about her father, but it was about Sean. Yeah, I think it's about like men. Hurt people, hurt people. Somebody hurt you too. Um She also said it was the second half of Live to Tell. Which I thought was interesting. It's like a one a a package. Um, dealing with male authority figures. Both sublime ballads. She said I have not resolved my Electra Complex, the end of the O Father video. You've seen the video. Yeah. It's bizarre. Mm-hmm. The the Okay, another David Fenture moment. I think David Fenture was. Yes, but okay, so David Fenture wanted this to be a single, I think. Is that correct? Is that your understanding? Because I remember later on she makes David Fenture do a last minute video for her. Because this video didn't this single didn't chart in the top ten and she blamed him. The last minute video was for a song called Vogue. Vogue, yes. Okay. Um I was trying to build up some anticipation, babe. Okay. I thought we were going to have Vogue. They would have to wait to hear the answer. Thanks for spoiling it. Mm. This video is psychotic. I think it's a gorgeous. I love it. But it It's one of my favorite Madonna songs, so to me I like how cinematic it is that it's telling a story. Mm-hmm. It's a little like the Pepsi commercial. Like when she loves to be like, It's me as a child. Right. A perfect blonde child and it's like honey. Yeah. Um It's it's really and she looks stunning. Something's going on with her roots in which they're like four inches long. And I think m I guess that was on purpose, or maybe it was another time where she was trying to go dark again. thing that I can't get out of my nightmares. the lips being stone shot? No. The we the cherub statue that is a statue, but the heads are real children singing. Yeah, two little boys. So creepy. It's so beautiful. I love it. I understand it. Fincher is like my guy. But I love the like I love the scene with her in the Her mother's closet and she she's like wearing the pearls and gets caught and the pearls go out there. Shaking her up. Yeah. Yeah. And then she's laying on is she laying on the grave? Is that where she's laying on? The adult Madonna? Yeah. I fuck with this long heavy, as I wrote in the doc. Totally. I've got brothers. Sisters too. Yeah. Stuck in the middle tell you what I'm gonna do. My association with that song largely comes from the Blind Ambition Tour, um, The Clockwork Orange, Jean Paul Gautier. Yeah, we'll get there. But it's also like so auto. It's like really like you wanna know about Madonna's like mechanizing principle. It's I grew up in a house with seventeen and I'm gonna get out of here. I'm stuck in the middle, I'm not getting enough attention. I need to get out of here. It's also the perfect vibe shift from O Father. Yeah. Into that song. Totally. And then I'm sorry, I love Pray for Spanish Eye. I will not apologize. I like it when Madonna indulges her. idea that she is spiritually Hispanic. Latina. She is a Latin. I buy it. She does say something about the Barrio in the song and just want them mention. I have no idea what this song is about. To this day I don't know what she's talking about. It's about Latin cock, honey. It's Latin. That's what you guys said, but again, I feel like you have a different lens on things. I just like to be a little filthy on dance herself. How many lives will they have to take? How much heartache? Who's taking is it this about war? I don't know. Yeah. In the genius comments, which lot of different kinds of people, right? On the Genius Commons. It says it's about AIDS. Okay. Which okay. Go off. And I fuck extremely heavily with active contrition. It's a perfect album closer. That is a prince guitar solo reverse. For the end of the album. She's reciting the Catholic prayer of forgiveness. But like over this like beat and then there's like an interpolation of the gospel choir from like a prayer, there's the guitar by Prince kind of reverse. And then the outro is so fucking funny. When she's like I reserve, I reserve, I reserve, I resolve, I have a reservation. I have a reservation. What do you mean it's not on the computer? That's the end of the album. Yeah. It's amazing. I have a reservation. That's like a perfect capsule of what this album did to Catholic school children, including myself, which was like we all knew that we hated Catholicism because we were in Catholic school. We hated all the rules. We loved sinning. We love sinning. We love sinning. We love Spanish eyes. Yeah. We love confession because we love bragging about sinning. Right. But like We love drama. We know that we like hate Jesus and and priests. Okay, well I don't know if Madonna hates Jesus. No Jesus is very sexual attractive. It's like Jesus. But then Madonna makes it all seem really like glamorous and Cool and like fun. And then you're like, do I love being Catholic? Like, wait, is being Catholic fierce? It is fierce. And like How many pop stars Since then. Have mind Catholic imagery, like me started on how I did this this this conversation with a person I will not name. And they were like a young person and they were talk we were talking about pop stars and they were talking about Rosillia and they were like The new tour and they're like. Have you I've never seen a a person incorporate this level of Catholic imagery into it. And I was like I was like You you vomit. I literally was like, can you imagine having the audacity? It's I don't know if it's audacity or it just they don't know. They don't know. All right. June first, nineteen eighty nine. Rolling Stone announces that Madonna and Warren Beatty are dating. 'Cause that was their place. Rolling Stone announces. Okay. Thanks for the announcement. Can you imagine the a world where Rolling Stone announced anything? It was so different. Um It had been going on for a few months, though. Um and she said of him in Vanity Fair The next year, nineteen ninety. Warren understands the bullshit. He's been an icon for years. He's had a lot more practice at it than I have. Obviously somebody who hasn't experienced it would be more threatened by my fame than he is. You can't understand being hugely famous until it happens. And then it's too late to decide if you want it or not. Warren's been a sex symbol for so long, he's just not surprised by anything. That's really interesting because it makes you feel like she relates to Warren. Like Warren and Madonna are very similar. personalities. You think so? A little bit. I don't know that much about Warren Beatty's personality. Well, they're both very charismatic. Yeah. You know? He sex symbols, absolutely. You know, he's been referred to as something of a womanizer. She's been referred to a little bit as a man eater, if you will. It's like they both are very controlling. Right. They're both directors. Yeah. And stars. Like I just you can see that she was seeing something of herself in him, I think. Right. Or looking at him with a certain Because he was older also, like admiration and kind of Yeah, he was he was quite a bit older. At this point he's like You're c you really clock the age difference in Dick Tracy between them. And it's like, oh I think it's smooth 20 years. Yeah. This is like my cynical view of it is that like I think coming out of something where for better or for worse she felt punished for her fame a little bit, or like that it was a detriment To Sean Penn, you know? This is the cynical part. I think Warren Beatty very much w wanted that part of her. And that because It's desirable, especially in terms of promoting a movie. Well, it's funny what happens later in Truth or Dare when you get this like window into their dynamic in relationship where you can see him not liking it so much, too. Well It's I don't want to get ahead, but I hate that part so much because I'm like it's so uh like or being like, oh when I do it, it's craft. But when you do it, like when you want to be on camera, it's like frivolous and silly. And it's like Well there's a difference. There's a difference between being an actor and being a musician. Because when you're an actor you're per you're portraying other people. When you're a musician pop star you're portraying yourself. You're performing yourself. So there is like a certain that is maybe frowned upon by actors because actor like to be able to be in character and could be conflated with their own personality. And also th Sean apparently later in nineteen ninety one called her dating him a cliche. Just briefly to touch on that. Issue of Vanity Fair. It came out in April nineteen ninety. Shot by Helmet Newton. Yeah, it's incredible. And interview by Kevin Sesams, who is like kind of a legend for doing celebrity profiles. And something I thought was really funny in that article is she lays out her business organization. Oh yeah. And she says Boy Toy is for my music. Siren is my film company. And Slutco is for my videos. Slutco. It's so good. Well she was like, if you that's what you're gonna call me, here I'm gonna here I am making money off of it. Right. And at this point the article states that she's made ninety million dollars. Yeah. So ninety in nineteen ninety. That's the when that one comes out. Yeah, and it's like so this is sort of the beginning of Madonna being seen as a mogul, which is somewhat new in terms of the kind of pop celebrity audience dialectic. It predates Maverick, but just by a little bit. She also has a great quote where she's talking about criticism that was leveled at her for repurposing the male gaze. Like I guess people were criticizing her at that time for like What do you mean repurposing the male gaze? That she was mimicking the way that men look at women, the way that she was looking at herself. Like that she would have the audacity to objectify herself the way that a man would. What did Kristen Stewart just say in that interview? It's so good. It was sh where there were like a women who Like wanna tell their stories are called selfish or whatever. Yeah. And she's like, Yeah, I'm selfish. Sorry. I wanted to have a self. Well she says in it It has nothing to do with whether I'm a man or a woman. I think I am a sexual threat. And I think, if anything, there is a prejudice against that. I think that it's easier for people to embrace people who don't frighten them and poke at their insides and make them think about their own sexuality. I don't do things because I may be afraid of what people might think. The thing about me is what you see is what you get. I'm not hiding anything. That may explain my longevity. Amen, Sister. Back to the Dick Tracy. The filming of it had been unpleasant for Madonna is what I read. Mandy gonna really try not to laugh. Go on. I know imagining it's if you guys watch Dick Tracy. Like she says she she'll talk about how like Al Pacino was mean to her. Well, g kind of like within the structure of the scene was kind of pushed to keep like laying into her in character, but like but it's like when you look at the scene and you see what Al Pacino looks like and his prosthetic makeup and it like the I it's so funny. Go on. It's like a caricature of what she's describing. It's if you Have not seen this film and you didn't see it as a youth? Even if you saw it like I did, it nothing will prepare you to watch it now in the co cold light of day of twenty twenty six. You're gonna feel like Tasmagoric, What more people smoking? And it's acid. It's obviously very angel dust. Hundred percent. It's but it's so clearly like they were like, Oh, we can do Batman too. You know, like 'cause Batman had just come out and been a huge smash success. Right. And what they didn't understand is like Batman is like a noir-ish cool like Gothy hair now. Dick Tracy. is a really good movie. Sure. You put this man in a banana costume and you're trying to hit the Batman levels, the Batman notes, it's not giving back. Dick Tracy walked so the mask could run. That's exactly right. That is exactly right. Mandy Petinkin, who's in the film. Another one of my guys, babe. So hot. Go on. Also in the first season of Criminal Minds, just so you guys know, Joe Montana and Mandy Petinkin. These are my main criminal minds guys. Um, he recalled a scene where Al Pacino's character Big Boy And Breathless Mahoney were in a fight over a song, and they'd done it over and over. And he said, Everyone was tired, and I couldn't tell why we were doing it over again. And finally Al started improvising. He really laces into Madonna and all of a sudden she just broke down. Warren said cut and gave them hugs. That wouldn't have happened unless he gave it time to He's like she like actually started crying from In the scene he's also screaming at her to keep rehearsing. And then he gets arrested and as he's being hauled off, he's like, This doesn't mean you got to stop. Like keep rehearsing. Come here. Next time I take his fingers and I turn them into presents. I just might do the same thing to your face. Like the idea of him being method with that big boy character to me is so like you're becoming Pope the Sailor Man. Warren Beatty was like, Oh, my character doesn't need prosthetics. But it's like all be beautiful, you can all look like freaks. Dustin Hoffman as Mumbles. One of his incredible comedic performers. He's incredible. It is a scream. Warren Beatty also This is m a quote from Madonna in the biography by Peter Biskin of Warren Beatty, that Warren wanted to pour me into my dresses. He insisted I get fatter. I gain 10 pounds. We were at Western costumes and he'd say tighter, tighter, cut it down lower. I felt like a mannequin, a slab of beef. He would walk around me like a vulture, making me feel like the ugliest thing in the world. I was treated that way on the set, the lust factor. This is gonna be now the theme. in my opinion, of almost every film appearance she does going forward. With a few exceptions. Is what? That she is Phenomenal, beautiful, talented. Yes, but that she has typecast. Yes. cast because of the the sexuality, you know, and pushed to really be in that role and place, you know? Mm, in some cases, yes. But then there is a a point at which she is taking control by producing and doing things like that. I'm just saying it's interesting that like it's very much the thing that we talk about on here. a lot which is that people don't want you to be more than one thing. So she had a r I, in my opinion, seemed to have a really hard time Ever playing against type, you know? But I also feel like times when she played against type. It read as Because I mean, we don't get into like the next best thing in movies like when she was trying to do more like romantic comedy type stuff. Next episode. But not sure that movie would have worked on any level for any reason, but But like a later film that I think she really leaned into this typecast thing was swept away, which we also don't cover in our episode, and which is to me such a phenomenal performance. It is she is so funny in that movie. She knew exactly what she was doing. So I think when she seizes onto it. She always ends up Deepening it. Oh she does a great job. And just anyways. She's always so savvy. She had agreed to get the part. She really wanted the part. So she had agreed to like scale pay, which is what, just like it's basically minimum wage for actors, right? Or for people. But she had negotiated a percentage of the proceeds of the film and the soundtrack. And that made her a lot of money. Um. She had to sing three songs composed by Stevenson. Which are incredible. It's incredible. It's crazy because this is like such a leap, I think, from like her traditional way of singing and making music. Right. But I would say that when she was doing breathless It felt very playful. Yeah. You know? It felt like she was playing at doing a kind of Broadway ragtime affectation. Unlike Evita, which changed her singing voice forever, which we also won't get to. I do think the skill set she had to develop to do these Sondheim songs Was kind of a little bit the secret sauce that like kicked it up to like the perfect level when we're gonna get into the next couple of albums. Mm-hmm. Okay. Cause I do like I love I didn't think about that. But you know what I mean? Like Because it's not she does have a vocal coach on this and she does like She ha she s has said that she basically like the songs were had such complicated rhythmic changes and melodic changes that she had to like have someone like kind of Sim is so quick and Yeah, and I'm agile, I assume she's like a sponge she's always learning and I feel like that really like helped inform the music we get next, which is why it makes sense to me that like What a leap erotica is from like a prayer. Totally. On like every level, musically, vocally, you know. And then so she did the other songs, the non-sand songs, inspired by the film. Um we'll talk them about them when we get to the soundtrack. Okay, this shit wraps, babe. Day Trace is over, she's hanging out in the snatch batch, and her boyfriend Warren, they're taking him to Jules catch one. Still exists. Warren was a showmance, I think it's safe to say. Yeah. I love the idea of though that them taking that him to Jules Catchwan, which is a club on Pico. I saw someone call it South Central. It's not South Central. It's close to South Central, but it's above the ten. Um it's one of the oldest black owned discos in the country. I think it was owned by lesbians actually, black lesbians. And at the time it was the largest dance club for gay black men in the world. And they brought Warren's ass right down there and he just sat on a couch and watched them dance. I've been in some situations like that with some actors, I'll tell you off mic. Yeah. But And then in December of nineteen eighty nine, this is very interesting to me. Madonna won MTV's Artist of the Decade Award. What is that? I don't know. That exists? I don't know if they did did they do it again in the nineties? I'm not really sure. Did she win it again in the nineties? She should've. Just point out to me like she's already like In the life cycle of a pop star, you it's like it you could have been like, Okay, it's she peaked, you know? When did she get her video Vanguard? Eighty six. Very early on. Yeah. I think. Yes. Cause you know they n they renamed the MTV video vanguard award the MTV Michael Jackson video vanguard award. Why? They decided to name it after him because he was the king of pop. Got it. They then took his name off of it. Okay, because of Scandal. Yeah. I think it should be renamed the Madonna Video Vanguard Award. Do the VMAs exist? And then you can give her another one, so she gets the Madonna Video Vanguard Award. And then from then on it's the Madonna. I just remembered we did watch them together actually this year, so they do exist. The VMAs? Yeah. Still going. Yeah. But also like one of the coolest awards you can win just from a trophy design standpoint. Who doesn't want a moon man? It's the only part of that award ceremony where I recognize anybody because it's the absolute hoomst awards to me every year. I'm like, I know that I'm like checked out a little bit, but I'm like, I don't know who any of these people are. It's important to note that she had overtaken the Beatles from most consecutive top five singles, sixteen in a row now. I liked what this guy, Mark Roland, wrote in Musician Magazine at this time. He said as the decade draws to a close, the votes are tabulated and the winner is Madonna. She, not Bruce Springsteen, is the biggest. She, not Michael Jackson is the baddest. She, not Prince, is the nastiest. She, not Pepsi Cola, is the shrewdest. can't argue with her triumph. It is complete. Even when her films blow dead air or her marriage I know. Or her marriage breaks up or her records bomb. That has never happened. She is the winner. She won. She won, but also we should point out the Pepsi Cola thing. Sh is why there was no tour in 89. Hmm. They were meant to underwrite it. Yeah. Um so I think that was kind of put on the back burner. Well guess what, babe? Something happened. Something happened. Something came up. And it's a little single, a little standalone single. Called Vogue. Vogue is something where I We need six more hours just to like I will never understand how it happened. Because she does songs on I'm Breathless. Right. That are not Son Time, but they're still in that style. Yeah. This is like a standalone what the fuck. Came out of nowhere. So So for I was trying to piece it together. It's quite difficult. I it's From what I understood The song came Sort of organically like Shep Pettibone was like Do you like this or whatever? And she was like, Yes. And But it was sometimes it'd be like that. And they made it as a I I might be wrong, but this is what I was like sort of able to like piece together. They were they gave they gave them like nothing, like five grand to make it, because it was meant to be a B side to one the last single And I think it is whatever. It was meant to be the bees out of the last single of like a prayer. And she like recorded it in like a filthy room closet in a basement in a slum of Hell's Kitchen. Well, because they had no money because they were like, Here's five K to make this single and Shepherd's like, Okay, I want to do this in my friend's house or whatever. But then I think the story that they told was like, oh, they need another song for Dick Tracy. But I don't think that's true. I think they made the song and realized it's so fucking good. that it can't be relegated to a B side. So then they were like, We have to put it somewhere. You didn't really do standalone singles then, right? Or did they? Not really, right? Like it was like it's not like now where you can just put out a song. They they kind of wanted to anchor it to something. So they're like, It'll be the third song. And usually with those songs you'll it'll go to a film soundtrack or something. Yeah. So I think They made it an A side single of Thorn Baby Dick Tracy soundtrack. But I think thematically she did kind of try to tie it into like old Hollywood glamour or whatever. Do you want to explain the history of Voging? Everyone's dream is for me to do that. Okay, fine. I'll do it. I'll admit I was on the Wikipedia page for the Cakewalk. It goes back. Yeah, which is nineteenth century Florida. It's not new. A dance in which enslaved people mimicked with subtle mockery the formal mannered dancing practiced by slaveholding whites. That's the cakewalk. Became associated with gay culture. So it was invented by slave holding whites. No, it was invented by slaves. I'm just kidding. Oh I see what you're saying. Got it. Okay. I was like, What? It became associated with gay culture in the twenties and thirties during the Harlem Renaissance. But the fullest public expression came about at early drag balls in the sixties. And the Harlem Renaissance was both black and Latino, so This also early drug balls, black and Latino. Here is a quote from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. As part of this ballroom culture, black and Latino vogueers would compete for trophies and the reputation of their houses, groups that were part competitive affiliation, part surrogate family. Named after the famous fashion magazine Vogue took from the poses in high school. Oh, sorry, the poses in high fashion and ancient Egyptian art, adding exaggerated hand gestures to tell a story and imitate various gender performances and categorized genres. There was a whole other side story that maybe you know more about that it that part of it came from Rikers. Where there was like an Maybe. Like a gay inmate who like I guess the inmates there couldn't have porn, but they would look at Vogue magazine to like get off. And one of like the image was like, Oh, you don't need that magazine. I can be that magazine. I can Vogue, you know? This is just like one of the invented gay sex in prison. I hope that that's true because it's a great story. And then in May of nineteen eighty nine, um, shop owner Suzanne Barch invited members of the various houses to perform at the first annual Love Ball, the Roseland Ballroom to raise money for AIDS research. Much like the VMAs, the love ball is still kicking. Is it? Oh yeah. Oh that's cool. After the love ball is when voguing became a thing. A thing. Like in terms of like nightlife culture, all of that. Because there's, you know, it's it there's something magical about voguing where Every generation thinks they started it. They started it. Right. When it's like 19th century slaves started it. And you just gotta let them think it because like being pompous like that is sort of baked into the overall. Yeah, yeah. I mean I think it's great. Malcolm McLaren. Famously the uh manager of the sex festivals who later made music. And the Bootzilla Orchestra. Released a song called Deep in Vogue. Yeah. And Keith Herring did a series of voguing posters that fall. And in nineteen ninety, Paris is burning. The documentary came out, um, directed by Jenny Livingston, but that was from the eighties. Yeah, landmark documentary, very influential, often quoted all the time. Yes. In ways that you may not even know. It's fully in the ways that like you're on TikTok and some girl is saying a thing and it actually comes from Paris' Martin. I always the one that I say like weirdly the most often, which is just me being a bitch probably, I'm always like, If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you. So c so good. Okay, so this song it's it's actually really funny. Speaking of hooray for you, The Shade of Shep Pettibone 'Cause she's like, Oh, you know Vogue, cool, you know? And he goes, She came to the seat and said, I hope you don't mind, but I'm gonna call Vogue. And voguing was almost kind of over at that point. At least the underhand dance scene. Not over, but it had been done. He was like, Okay, if you want to do that, it's kinda like over, but everyone started it and it's always over. But it's very funny because it's And it's it but it never ends. It was underground. Yeah. Without Vogue, the Madonna Pop single, maybe still a lot of people would not know what that is. You know? It definitely brought it to the mainstream in a in a very immediate quick way. But you know what happened is like it she she brought it to the mainstream awareness. Right. But nothing really happened. Yeah, that's true. It's not like suddenly it was everywhere. Yeah. You know what I mean? It was like she did it, everyone was like wow. And then everyone moved on. And it was like back to breakdancing. You know what I mean? It was sort of like c culture was not ready. Right. At all to take something that was that uh overtly queer and make it mainstream. It was like it the m it didn't take off in the mainstream at all. Until much later. When do you think that happened? Would it be like the ad like when Drag Race went on the air? I'm gonna say like twenty sixteen. So even late something? Like Drag Race had been on the air. Yeah. It was not even a big part of like Drag Race. It like sort of came back like with fashion and things like that. It came back in a lot of fashion advertising and media. Yeah. And then it started to be like You know, there were like Vogue competition reality series that would come out. It's sort of It became mainstreamed in like you would see people this is so horrible to say, but like you would see people in like deodorant commercials of okay and stuff like it felt like it hit mainstream so late. Yeah that like There's always been a lot of attitude about it of like who who started it, it being over, it being like it never getting it never got its moment. No matter what, the minute it's co opted by the mainstream, it's gonna be corny. That's just what happens. Yeah. But if you ever go to Like an actual ball. Mm-hmm. It's not corny anymore. It's like when you're actually there and you're in the like real shit with I can't imagine it being corny like in in actual practice. I mean there was a party w during my time in New York in my twenties, all throughout my twenties, there was a party that was uh Esquelita. I wanna say, in New York and it was called Vogue Nights. It was every Tuesday. And that was just like where you would go to like watch the Vogue's tear in New York. And it was just so regular. And then there would be like the Miyaki Muglaire. ball like white ball that they would do all like every year. And when you're in those environments, it suddenly stops being corny and it's major again. Because it's real. It makes exactly that's like Not it being co opted into some sort of thing where it doesn't belong, you know. It that's like its actual playground. And there's also an element of probably and I can't really speak to like the dance world and the dance community. But like if you're a dancer and I'm a dancer. And that's a huge community and it's a huge culture in and of itself. you get trained in different styles of dance. You know, if you're gonna be a professional dancer, a backup dancer, or whatever. So there are also dancers everywhere that can vogue, but they don't come from the ballroom world. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. And there's a lot of weird slippery is shit with that. Well, back to the song. While Shep was like, Okay, well if you want to do this thing that's over. He is also the one that suggested the rap part. He said she had the choruses together and the verses together and she sang those in place one by one. First take. For the middle part, I was like, How about if we do like a wrap in there here? Because we didn't have anything for that, really. And she's like, What do you mean? I'm like, Oh, how about you, you know, like bringing in movie stars and stuff. So we just wrote down a whole bunch of names of movie stars, and that's how the wra came up. Amazing. Yeah. I love how fast it came together. You know, it's like one of those lightning bolt um then the video ends up being the same way, which is crazy. The rap is really good. I mean, yeah. What are you gonna say? What what can you do? What can you say? What can you do? It's just Drake and Demagio, Martin Brando, Jim Dean on the cover of I just have a memory. This is like forever looping around my brain. Again, they got back, they played this song, and everyone was like, We're not putting that on a B side. This is a second stone cold hit. Went right on to number one. And with that. Madonna became the woman with the most number one hits in music history. At that point, the spot is at help memory I carry. That's how about the video. She called up Dave. Mm-hmm. She's a Div. You fuck me. This is not what she actually said. Forced me into O Father. She actually what she said is, Look, you wanted to make a video for this is what David Fenture said. She said look you wanted to make a video for O Father and no one liked the song and I went to bat for you and now I have to make a video by Tuesday. And I said, What's the song called? By Tuesday. What day of the week was this phone call? Does it make it doesn't say. And she said vogue and I said okay, we'll get a bunch of stuff together and we'll make a video on Tuesday. Little miscommunication there. They shot the video in sixteen hours. What can you say about the video? It's iconic. What blows my mind is that They pulled all of that together so quickly in less than a week. It kinda worked out perfect because I'm I'm like the timeline's getting a little mishmash. She's preparing for the tour. She was preparing for the tour and had already cast the dancers for the Blonde Ambition tour. So and the two boys who came from the like fame high school. were really like skilled in that type of dance already. Yeah. It's actually interesting. Jose and Luis Jose and Luis. Yeah. Were they in the house be were only like seventeen. Probably. Yeah. So anyway, so they start young. And that might have been how she even found out about fucking vogue to begin with, you know? But What's really funny about this video is that they had hired a tour choreographer, this woman named Carol Armitage, who was the punk ballerina. I had not heard of her. But Jose and Luis were absolutely beefing with her. They hated her. She's dead to me. Get her out of here. Well she quit. Five edge. And that's how that's how Vincent Patterson became the choreographer of this video. Ca he was like in Cuba working on a Sidney Pollock film and she was like, I need you. And he was like, Okay, I love this video. I love the gotier Yeah. Black dress. The white silky glamour, the hair. So the cone bra that she wears in the video is actually six years old at that point. It was from Jean Paul Gautier's fall nineteen eighty four. Patrick's Fashion Corner. Can we have a little jingle for this part? Patrick's Fashion Corner. Yeah. So that was sort of the introduction of the cone bra, which then he reinterpreted a lot for the Blonde Ambition tour. But you really I'm wearing my Gautier. in uh honor of JPG for this. But there's like that dance sequence that's with Madonna and Ollie in the middle of the video where it really kicks into gear. We're watching that and just knowing how fast they had to pull together the video. really blows my mind. Yeah. That dancers can do things like that. Yeah. And and that Madonna's a trained dancer. I never forget it, you know? Yeah. You would have to be. It's just how important this video is. Yeah. Like cannot be overstated. It's Like one of the most important pop visuals ever made. One of David Fincher's best works. And it's crazy knowing how David Fincher works and what a perfectionist he is that he was able to do this in such a short amount of time. It's almost like that instinct of the the way that they put it together. was such that they didn't have to maybe put so much thought into it, but it ended up being so profound. Well I think what it is, it's it's different than maybe some of the other Fincher videos, but there's not really a story, right? It's it's just like some really iconic Shots. It it's in the song and it's also in the video that it everything is about surfaces. Yeah. It's about the body. Totally. It's about sculpture. It's lighting. Texture. Contrast. Yeah. It's like It's sort of like A crash course and indulgence and irony? Arrogance, spectacle. Which is paying tribute to the ballroom community who are a often kind of embodying this like grandiosity and these like Hollywood legends. Right. It's it's it's working on both levels. It's like it's It's that ballroom it's like a gesture towards that ballroom audacity. And it's also going back towards the source material, which is the old Hollywood glamour, the Gene Harlow, all the people level of grandeur and it's the same aspiration that Madonna had for herself. Yeah. And it's happening at that precise moment that she's starring in these Hollywood movies and actually living it. So it's like you get this. this like manifesto of like I'm dreaming this and I've become it. And it's like all happening in this one video at this one time. And it's like this shock of glamour and melodrama. It's camp. It's fashion. It's gay. It's embracing artifice. It's celebrating image. It's myth. It's a fucking monument. This video. If you can imagine Being like A gay child. And seeing this on TV. The impact, I can't even talk about it. It's like I had never seen Man. behaving effeminately and gesturing like that. Totally. In my life. I didn't know that was possible. I didn't know that was like a it like opened a window. Right. Like you had your boy George moment when you were like, Oh, that's not a girl, but this was like something totally This was like Faggots exist. Like it was it's truly like the most magical important thing that happened to so many of us. So I just had to say that. No, it's thank you. I think I think it's It's impossible to overstate how powerful this video was and how like cut through the public consciousness at the time that it can't it was everywhere, you know, like And the way that it's so cinematic because Fincher's directing it. Yeah. And the way that the song itself builds and be has so much momentum and drama and it like crescendos in this insane way. It's just the most major thing. Anyone's ever done it. We would be remiss if we don't mention it's one of the first real celebratory moments of Madonna's perfect breasts. Because she has the most perfect breasts that have ever existed. The sheer top. The sheer top. The sheer lace top where you can just like because I know she's been a seximal for a while, but she's not really been Despite popular belief, she wasn't really showing a lot of skin before. It was a lot of like mid riff and stuff, you know? But It's This is this is the era that she starts to be a little more titillating with like how she's dressing. She's doing femme queen realness. And that hair. Body, body, body. As I said. I have that same haircut and on me, when it's curly, I look like George Washington. It's full founding fathers. And on her, she looks like a Hollywood style. I call Peter Savak. Peter Savak, I don't want to look like George Washington anymore. Can you help me? Yeah, it's uh what a what a jam. What a fucking Um a few days after they finished filming the video, Keith Herring died. So this is now Two, three of her best friends that have Died of AIDS? Martin Burgoyne has passed away. I think Christopher Flynn has maybe already died. I'm not sure. He's definitely sick. So when Pepsi was still involved financially, the tour was meant to be called the like a prayer world tour. Um and when they pulled their sponsorship, Madonna and Christopher, her brother decided to call it blonde ambition because there's so many articles that s referenced her blind ambition. They thought it was like a fun play on words. And it is a fun play on words. Totally. It's become like a a It's iconic. It's it's a phrase that we use now. She uh Elevated Christopher, she promoted him to art director. Although he still had to dress her. Can I just say there was I think a in the previous year she was on the cover of Vogue. And the Photos in it were like all about like Madonna's house. It was like Madonna at home and Christopher had designed her house. He he designed all her houses up until a certain point. It was gorgeous and it was major and her gym was insane. I love that cover with the black with the brown hair with the pool. Mm-hmm. So good. Anyway. Christopher exquisite taste. Yeah. I mean you can't brilliant. There's no way to look back on may he rest in peace. Look back on what he did. And be like, Oh This is not an unreck. This is like An obvious talent. The blonde ambition tour alone. You were the art director of the Blonde Ambition Tour. Yeah, Donna's very involved. We don't know. We weren't there, but We don't know what she would have been like, how cool she would have been. Without Christopher. Well, we don't know. Christopher's eye and then. Yeah. There are pivotal gaze along the along the way, starting with Christopher Flynn. Including Martin Burgoyne. Christopher Shiconey. There's plenty. So they decided on this tour to go like theater. Okay. It's not just one stage. It's five different worlds. Would you say this is first of its kind in that sense that sort of created the blueprint. For what every pop star kind of does now? Or do you think it had sort of some antecedents before it? I don't I'm not really like that. I don't know. And like maybe someone else did it to like less fanfare that we don't know about. But it feels like impact wise this change. It's very associated with her though. I think with the idea of Taking something that had been Stadium tour without the theater of it without the like insane like backdrops or like hydraulics or moving parts of the stage. And it it has become very associated with her, which now Every pop star kind of has to do that, right? 'Cause if you don't, you're it's boring. Yeah, I think that there were like certain things that people had done, but not on this level. Yeah. And not with this level of design. So one of the these worlds was Metropolis, like the Express Yourself world. One was a religio. Of course. One was Dick Tracy Art Deco vibes. Um then it was the camp section. Then we get really serious again and we go into our Clockwork Orange Cabaret set. Um, Patrick Leonard could not go on tour 'cause he had a family. So she got J Winding. to serve as the musical director. Nikki Harris and Donna Delore, who we talked about in the previous episode, who you obviously know who they are, Patrick, are back as the backup singers. Huge celebrities in Madonna World. Huge celebrities. Um Vincent Patterson has been again called back from Cuba and replacing the punk rock ballerina who was fired. Um, or a quit, I'm not sure. I also love the choreography of this tour. It's incredible. Vincent Patterson said, Madonna said I want you to break every rule you can think of. Then when those are done, make up some more and break those two. So that is how I went into the tour with complete artistic freedom to do whatever the fuck I wanted. There was some fauc in there, there was Voging in there, there was a lot going on. The like a virgin bed choreography? The bed thing, the impact of the bed. I know. And the bed being on a slant. Yeah. So you could like And then even little details like during Keep It Together with the clockwork orange like gotier like cage harnesses and the little derby hat. She loves the roller hat. And they're fucking with the chairs and picking up the chairs on the underside of the chair. It's mirrored. Yeah. So it would like became like lights. So She wanted dancers and she really wanted them to have personality. Above all. That's how she got nineteen year old Luis Camacho from the Lower East Side and his best friend from La Guardia High School of Music and Arts. Jose Gutierrez. Here's how she described their audition. I love this. She said Luis came and Luis will try anything. He was not so great at everything, but he was willing to try. And I loved him for that. Jose wouldn't do a goddamn those sat in the back with his hands on his hips. He was just like, The fuck I will. So of course I loved him for that. I thought now this guy has balls. Love. Then there was Salim Slam. Galuse. Who is twenty? My number one crush. Oh, slam. He's so hot. They're all really hot. Beautiful. Yeah. Twenty. It's like a Bruce Weber model. Yeah. Um, twenty-year-old Kevin Stay, a half Chinese student at USC, who actually wasn't initially hired to be a dancer, but cr they loved him so much in the auditions, they asked him to be an assistant choreographer. The punk rock ballerina, who obviously I'm No more. But then they eventually were like, Why don't you be the dance captain and assistant choreographer? Um, and the other dancers were Carlton Wilburn, twenty six years old, came from a professional company in Chicago, and actually already had a tour offer from Whitney Houston. Oliver Crumbs, a seventeen year old from Compton with bleached hair. Love Ollie. We were we were watching it the other night and my Bree was like, That man can be on the street in Bushwick right now. And I was like, one hundred percent. The the crazy part about this tour and also truth or there is that there is no time. It is yesterday. It is today. Nothing looks dated. Like it's crazy how the sensibility was just like set in amber that day and has not gone away. Like you the way these people dressed. You could any person can still looks good. Still looks good. Still like As opposed to and I was talking to Mama this the fucking Who's That Girl tour, which I love. So eighties. Gold leme blazer. You know, like it's like it looks so dated. Maybe it's also because certain things are coming back, you know? Like I was looking at Melissa, her assistant. And truth or there? Yeah. Who has her hair, she has this 90s haircut. Yeah. And it looks so good. And I'm like, that's because like girls want that hair again. Right. It's like back. Is it the She just had like a big bang. Oh yeah. And it was like volume. It was a kind of hairspray, but it was like messy. Yeah. And I was just like, fuck yeah. Amazing. Okay. Sorry, the last answer is Gabriel Trupin, a twenty year old who becomes her favorite child of the tour. Who was hiding a secret, babe. He was HIV positive. He was the little angel. Carlton and Selim were also HIV positive, and they were all secret. Not telling anyone. It was really sad. Carlton had this quote that he said he he moved to LA because I thought if I'm gonna die in a year, I need to make my life as amazing as I can right now. That's really where I was. You did it. Okay, we need to talk about the hands free, Mike. Okay. Well, because this was kind of the first That was the first one? No, the first one was actually Kate Bush, who like um rigged a cradle for her mic out of coat hangers because she wanted to do it. fucking legend. But that was like an oddity. Like it was like no one really it was like, Oh, I'll do that too. But when Madonna did it, it was like it became called the Madonna mic. And so many people started doing it afterwards. It's funny because that makes sense. They're both such vocalists. And you can see how they both insist on singing live. And move and moving the whole time as well, because Kate Bush was also such a like Yeah. Alright, and the costumes. This is Patrick's fashion corner is open. Oh god. Well, you know the costumes were designed by Jean Paul Gautier. What more do you need to say? I do think it's really crazy that they made three hundred and fifty eight costumes because sh they needed everything in triplicate. Oh yeah. Tour's no joke. Yeah. It's sort of like film. Film you need duplicates as well for the same reason. I thought it was funny that when Jean Paul went to New York to meet with her, she was in her hotel room with Cabaret playing in the background and she was reading a biography of Louise B. It's like so on the nose. So like it's like Betty Boop answers the door and was like, Oh hi, come in. Yeah, I don't know. The costumes for the Blend Ambition Tour are so Well regarded and so iconic that it's It's like a huge part of Jean Paul Gautier's legacy. A lot of them have been Uh recreated, reissued. Reeditions. Shout out Aaron McGee, who owns the uh Peach colored Dress. the cone bra. With the corset? Yeah that she comes with the um Ponytail. There's the the the incredible polka dot number. Yes, which I'll be honest. I think only a few people can pull off polka dots as much as these girls are trying to make it happen again. Addison Ray and my daughter. A little bit of a Latin flavor to that look as well. A little bit of spiritually Cuban. Spanish maybe before. Yeah. Um Oh, we didn't even say it. Remember I was gonna save it for this episode 'cause I forgot to say it on the first episode. La Isla Bonita And Dream of San Pedro was actually initially written for m Michael Jackson Patrick Leonard said and he turned it down. His lost so we got to have a white girl you mind if a white girl speak a little Espanol Um You know, a lot of these clothes really started underwear as outerwear. I mean you can we can fall down the rabbit hole. All day, all night. Suffice to say, the costumes are a huge deal. There's another part of this that I didn't write down, but I think Gautier had what was his partner's name that they started the company together? Do you remember? Okay. Anyways. That was like the love of his life and he also was sick and I believe with AIDS. And I think there was like a huge Like he was like very emotionally driven around creating that underwear as outerwear as some sort of like I might be m mis butchering this, but it was like he really wanted the ex the expression of like not hiding your sexuality or pleasure, you know, like putting it out there. Just very like sympathetic with Madonna. Totally. So many ways. So sorry, halfway through him starting to make these three hundred and fifty eight costumes, Madonna lost those ten pounds that Warren Beatty make made her gain and so he had to remake them all. While also prepping for his own runway collection. Right. And then after all that kills himself to get it all done. Yeah. Night one in Japan, he's there ready to see his beautiful costumes, and it's the fucking monsoon pouring rain and they just wear toward jackets and and like boots, remember from True There? Yeah, and True There at the beginning. It's like They meant to start filming it all then and they're just like, Well Guess we're wearing they look cool as hell 'cause they're wearing bomber jackets. Bomber jackets which have also been reissued and I have one technically. Being held for me in New York. Okay. What I really want is there's a crew jacket for desperately seeking Susan. And it's sick and I want it. You know what I also really need to get my hands on were the security T shirts from Blonde Ambition Tour, which you see in Truth or Dare. Few times. It's also important to note, like I said, her voice had become stronger and better because of that Sondheim Dick Tracy sort of training. So she was able to do some older songs. Here are the songs in order. Oh boy. In the Blonde Am Vision Tour. Express yourself. Open your heart. Causing a commotion. Yes. There's a part where either Nicki or Donna when they're in like the van and she's like Madonna toward 2025 and then she's like an old acts like an old lady and just copy it. She's talking about like, oh, we're gonna still be singing this song. Yeah, yeah. And so now Madonna won't do it. I think there's probably other reasons. It's not I'm gonna say that's the reason. Okay. In my mind that's the reason. That's the funnier. She still she still thinks Donna's laughing at her. Yeah. Um then Where's the party, which I fucking love. Where's the party? Um Like a Virgin. Featuring one full minute of simulated masturbation with um epileptic lights. And there's like a sitar playing or something. Yeah. Like a prayer. Live to tell, pop it on preach, set change, hanky panky. Now I'm following you. These are the the Dick Tracy songs. Set change. Material girl cherish I believe the one and only time it's ever been performed in concert. Into the groove, vogue, holiday, and then keep it together. The finale with Madonna singing the last lines alone for a full five minutes. And they'll drop down. She's saying goodbye to them. My arm out. It was important thing I'd wanna see the most. If I could like Just tour? Yeah. If I could go in a time machine. Mm-hmm. It's hard to say, but this is on the top of the list. I agree. She once again donated all of the New York slash East Rutherford New Jersey shows to Amphars, three hundred thousand dollars, and she dedicated that show to Keith Hering. Um the second Rome show was canceled because the Catholic Church came out against it and the unions threatened to strike if she performed, and the Pope John Paul II called Blonde Ambition, quote, one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity. Do you feel there is a model. I would kill for a quote from the Pope like that. Can't buy that. Liz Rosenberg was like, Yeah Shooting guns at We got the Pope. She also received death threats on this tour, not the first time. It's I think it's in Truth or Dare, right? The press conference she holds. Yeah. Yeah where she's like They cut into it. You have the full of the full quote is My blood boils when I'm misunderstood or unfairly judged for my beliefs. My show is not a conventional rock show, but a theatrical presentation of my music. And like theater, it asks questions provokes thought and takes you on an emotional journey, portraying good and bad, light and dark, joy and sorrow, redemption and salvation. I do not endorse a way of life, but describe one, and the audience is left to make its own decision and judgment. Perfect statement. Should we talk about the LA tour stop where Warren Beyda shows up and gives her a thirty thousand dollar ring, which she puts on her middle finger. Conveniently just in time for the Dick Tracy premiere. That is the show where she is pissed off and she's fighting with her team and saying everybody looks like a goddamn William Morris agent. So mad that the she hates when the front row is industry people because they have which is so true, actually. If you ever go to Remember when we went to depeche mode and the floor was the weirdest mix of people. It was like industry people and then like fifty eight year old goths who were like getting their best life. And you were like, This should these is this is what this is who should be here. Yeah. Um It's a very LA experience. Totally. Okay. So it was originally supposed to be, now that we're getting into the truth or dar moment, it was supposed to be an HBO documentary focused on the tour's performances, and she had asked David Fenture to direct it. But he had to drop out last minute because he was hired to direct his first feature film, Aliens Three. Which you say is a good movie. I've not seen it. I love it. Okay. It was panned though, wasn't it? Didn't Alien is a classic, of course. Directed by Ridley Scott. The sequel directed by James Cameron. Aliens. You will get people in the Aliens versus Alien camp of which one is the best. Alien 3 gets a bad rap. Partially because it was using new CGI that was like very cutting edge at the time. We hate does look bad. Right. But It actually has aged well. It's the kind of bad CGI that I think is charming now. Okay, you like it. It got worse before it got better. Right. Like it started kind of really cool, actually. Okay. I think Alien Three holds up. Personally. Okay. I also just love David Fenture and you can see so much of his style in it and the casting choice and and certain things that just right would come to define his work later that it's It also is very much Godworks in mysterious ways because If David Fincher had directed Truth or Dare, we'd ha we wouldn't have Truth or Dare. We'd have something else probably. Totally. And I I think it worked out how it was supposed to. Right, which is that she went with an unknown twenty five year old director named Alec Coschenian. Cishishan. Sorry, Kishishan. She had seen his senior thesis from Harvard, which was a pop opera version of Wuthering Heights. Um, and she loved it and she followed his career from then. I don't know if he had much of a career, but And then didn't she try or they were gonna maybe try and make it an actual feature of Wethering Heights. We'll get into it because there's actually a song. I think it I can't remember if it's this episode or next episode, but there is a Madonna song that was meant to be for that. It's it's rain. Can you imagine? Wow. So because he wanted to film, which I think is really genius to have all the BTS be black and white and all the performance be in color to just kind of have that differentiation. But because of the black and white element, New Line Cinema was like, Well, we're not putting. we're taking our money out. We don't want any black and white. And then Madonna was like, I don't care. I d believe in his vision. Um, I'll pay for it. Four million dollars. Best investment. Yeah. Oh my God, imagine the black and whiteness like is it makes it. We're looking at our Patrick's VHS copy. I have it on Blu-ray. Liz Rosenberg said, I was totally against it because I don't think the world needs to see what goes on backstage. In some ways, the best show you're gonna see is on stage, in front of the curtain. I'm an I'm I know I'm old fashioned and feeling protective and wanting everyone to say the best of Madonna. I worry that it might not have been in her best interest to show the underbelly of the tour. This was in twenty nineteen. So she was just like reminiscing. Right, right, right. And then there was also the HBO Yes Blonde Ambition World Tour Live. Special directed by David Mallet, which became the most watched non-sports event in the channel's 18 year history. I would love to revisit that. Yeah. Anyways, Truth of Dare is amazing and we could probably have an entire four hour conversation about it, but it comes back later in the in the DACA when it's released. Yes, yes, okay. So we can put a pen in it. Put a pen in True. So Truth of Air is being filmed. Yes. Unfortunately now we've not no unfortunately. I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that. Neutrally, we now have to talk about I'm breathless music from and inspired by the film Dick Tracy. Okay, I'm gonna be honest. I'll put my whole heart on the line. I don't go back here very often. This is not a town I visit. But you know what? Listening to it was a fucking joy. It was a joy. It's really good. Really well done for what it is. Crazy song. He's a man. So good. Sooner or later, obviously. It's just insane that all these like bum bum bum songs and then it's vogue. I know. It's like me and then vogue. It's like so funny. It's weird because Dick Tracy the film was a hit. Yes, it was. Commercial hit. And the soundtrack was a hit. Why was it never adapted for the Broadway stage? I saw a quote that said that an a film executive afterwards was like, I don't This made me not want to make big budget movies like this anymore. Because of the experience making it? I'm not sure. Or maybe maybe like it didn't Like while it performed well, it didn't like make a ton of money for how much it cost. She got some first dollar grosses on the movie, and she also got The soundtrack went double platinum. And the soundtrack success was because of Vogue. Yeah. Okay. Because at that point you have to remember vo that's besides probably the It's the only place you could buy it, yeah. And then in September, this is where Patrick's really about to shine. Um, it's the MTV VMAs and the first live performance of not the first, I guess you've done it. Okay. The performance of Vogue at the VMAs. Let it rip, babe. We talk about the VMAs. It's really hard because Yeah, it depends what age of person we're talking to right now. Like people our age. It's like we're dismissive of them. Everyone's like, Why don't they just end it? Why does it still happen? But like when they hit important It's su it's so part of like the pop vocabulary of like what is the VMA performance. Yeah I think not enough anymore. I think people don't really think about it in the same way, but there was a period of time where Because of Madonna, you could go back to the like aversion VMA performance, which is like the very first VMAs ever, and that kind of legitimized the awards show. Where you're like Okay, certain VMA performances are so iconic that it's like a huge part of a pop star's legacy. Totally. And the Vogue performance is definitely one of those performances. It's like, you know, they're dressed like in eighteenth century. Baroque. French. Garb. So amazing. She took the idea of like what we were talking about before, this like aspiring toward mythos and grandeur, and she just like injected steroids into it and was like, you know, Louis the Fourteenth. I mean, it was Perfection. I can't prove it. But Sophia Coppola would have been about eighteen or nineteen years old. Just think all this. Um, totally. You know what I mean? And it probably embedged. She gravitated toward Madonna, as we will see later. Exactly. Because she popped up. She pops up in a music video. In a little music video. Anyways, while this is an incredibly iconic performance, she does not win video of the year. She loses Uh that and best female video to Sineade O'Connor. And she also loses best dance video to MC Hammer. Rude. So rude. Homophobic. And Best Choreography to Janet Jackson. And art direction to be fifty twos. I mean it sounds like A situation where the B fifty two has had the most art direction. Yeah, probably a lot of art direction going on. Like kooky, colorful, blah blah blah. You know, Jenna Jackson's Choreography was just so would ninety have Been Rhythm Nation. I think so. Yeah. I mean that's like it's like it's has so much precision. It's such a good video. But I think that in terms of the legacy that Vogue's choreography means more. Yeah, yeah. That's just me. It did win Best Director for David Fincher. Some some taste in the directors branch. Whatever the director's branch was. The director's branch of the VMAs. The director's guild of the VMAs. Well even when the VMAs became like the public voted, like they weren't allowed to vote on director art direction choreography. They're like, You're not experts on that, we are. Okay, so Christopher Flynn, like I said before, I had sorry, I mistakenly said it he had already died, but he died here. About a month after He saw the Vogue performance and was like I can go next. She did it. So sad. Did she rest? No. She somehow whips together a new single within a month or two. Unbelievable. Justify my love. Oh yeah, a little song. It's so again, I'm just like it's so crazy to where did it come from? Crack like a prayer to vogue to justify my love, right? Yeah We're like shooting up In terms of like leaps and bounds. of like artistic development. It's like what everyone's saying that AI is doing now. Where it's like it hits a certain level and then it just spirals snowballs into something ungovernable. So we're at that point, the inflection point, the explosion. I am obsessed with Justify My Love. Me too. And the single cover? Alone. The leather hat. The SIG. Yeah. Cubbyhole. Cubby full cubbyhole. This was like those nights at the cubbyhole with Sandra. Right. Really inspired some justified shenanigans. She was maybe at the Eagle She went somewhere. Fascinatingly. So this is a lead single from The Immaculate collection, which we're gonna talk about. The story behind the song I'm obsessed. Starts with a woman named Ingrid Chavez, who was briefly the girlfriend of Prince. She was known as the spirit child. On his 1988 Love Sexy album. She does the outro on Alphabet Street, amongst other things. Prince was like, look, why don't you write some poems and we'll make a poetry album together. And they start, I guess, doing this in January of eighty eight, the poetry session at Paisley Park. And Prince is like improvising on keyboards and slam poetry, I guess. But they were like We need to sorry, we need to stop because we have to go film Graffiti Bridge, the sequel to Purple Rain. Um And somehow for the filming this movie, Ingrid Chavez meets Lenny Kravitz and they start dating. And he takes her She has a type. She has a type. He takes her to Andre Betts, the producer, to make a song. And so she's like, Well, I have this letter that I wrote Lenny, but I never sent him. Those will be the lyrics. And they lay down this song and Landing Kravitz is like, Okay, I'm gonna try to get you a deal with this demo. It doesn't work out. They break up. Then they're at the premiere of Graffiti Bridge. And Lenny Kravitz goes to Ingrid. Oh by the way, Madonna's gonna record that song. And that is justify my love. So is she credited on the song? Yes. Still hurts. Your boy your ex boyfriend takes your song, I gave it to Madonna. I gave it to Madonna. Behind her back. Also the lyrics are my w me writing to him. She's what Madonna is reciting in that is this woman's let unsent letter to Lenny Cravit. You know Madonna was not leaving Lenny alone either. Well, I didn't you know who knows what was going on there. She wasn't not playing with that. Let's just say that. Sorry, I know this woman. I mean, they're both gorgeous. I hope it happens. Same. But like I wanna kiss you in Paris. I wanna hold your hand in Rome. I wanna run naked in a rainstorm. Headless. Kiss you in Paris. Lenny's moaning on the track. That's Lenny moaning. And there's also a six minute track under like in one of the tracks. And it's just Madonna heavy breathing. part of the layers of the when she does that. Yeah. Um here's Yossi's um musicology corner. The repetitive drum loop that goes throughout the song is a sample from the public enemy song Security of the First World from nineteen eighty eight. Okay. Which itself was built from a sample of the song Ashley's Roach Clip. Nineteen seventy four by the Soul Searchers. Although some people say the breakbeat was copying James Brown's funky drummer, which has been used in a lot of breakbeats. Seventy other songs have sampled that public. I was gonna say it's the kind of drum loop that seems like a preset that comes with every rope. type of recording software. So iconic classic. Yeah. It's so good. The video Okay. We've we mentioned Tony Ward as one of the hot mermaids. He has become Madonna's boyfriend. I'm gonna say it. I'll go on record. To me he is Madonna's hottest boyfriend. Of course. By like a country mile. I love Tony Ward. Insane that someone looks like that. He looks like Spartacus, but like Yossified. He's like Yossified Spartacus, Tony Curtis. He has such a beautiful profile. Everything his jawline. Here we go. His tan. Everything. His complexion. He's also an actor. An actor. Yeah. Hustler White, Bruce LaBruce. Look it up. He was also roommates with Estevon Oriol in LA, which is one of my favorite tids of information. Um just great. Love. Okay. So to Toronto I brought that up because Tony Ward is in this video, as well as the models Wallace Franken and Amanda Cazale. Sort of uh Gender bending, if you will. Brazilian actress Luciana Silva, Debbie Mazar, who had just shot a little movie called Good Fellas. Debbie's on the way up. And Hoseanne Luis from the Dan the Dancers from Blah Mission. It's shot in black and white at the Hotel Royal Manso in Paris. It's gorgeous. It's giving night porter homage. It's uh You know, earlier we spoke about You know, we spoke about the express yourself video, the crawling under the table scene being so influential. In Vogue, there's a shot that's like a horse-pee horse recreation where Madonna's like this with the hair falling to one side and you see the reflection that a lot of people have mimicked. This started a trope in music videos that was just like Fun, sexy running through the hallways of a hotel. Yeah, totally. You get it in like there's a Pet Shop Boys Bruce Weber video for being boring that has like that same vibe. Yeah that was like Anyway, very important. I also feel like it has some like call back feeling to the open your heart video because of the idea of going and seeing what's going on in each room. Yeah. Well, like kind of like how you would see what's going on in each of the buildings. And when it's like when you shoot in a hotel like that, it has this vibe of like that there are probably people staying in that hotel when they were shooting and they're going to be rent out the entire floor, but what are these people up to? Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure she accidentally laughed. Do you know that part where like it's I think is it Jose and Luise? I can't remember. And they part and you can see her in the back just like she starts laughing. It's like so perfect. I'm so glad that he included in the video 'cause it's like this really moment of like Joy and like humor, you know? There's a moment where she laughs in truth or dare that we don't need to get into. It's so inappro like the most inappropriate moment to laugh that is also so funny. Yeah. When you catch real shit like that, that's the best. I like when she laughed here though because and this is a little pre saging of what we're gonna get into with the sex book and all of it. She's always approached sexuality with a winking humor that most people miss. And it's I think to her endless chagrin, you know? And I like that it's in here already. Like you it's always kind of been there, you know? This is also later in nineteen ninety one they talked to her about This video and the advocate. It's a very famous interview where she's pretty like open. Um, and she said, even though I dealt with some other than heterosexual themes and justify my love, unfortunately some people just saw it in a superficial way and didn't really want to deal with what it. And the guy says deal with what. And she said the sexual themes in it. It wasn't just about me, it's about life, about human nature. I think everybody has a bisexual nature. That's my theory. It could be wrong. early adopter of the everyone's gay philosophy. MTV said no. We will not be airingless. Thank you so much. And that's why I have a VHS of it. They sold it because it was banned from television. You would have to be able to burning crosses, yes. Me homosexuality? Yeah. Glancing homosexuality? Absolutely not. I do believe there's some nipple in it. Not hers, but um maybe. I'm gonna tell you how easily manipulated I am that I watched this video twice and then spent six hundred dollars at Aljant Provocateur. As if as if there's like any like as if I'm gonna l look like you know but now I have six hundred dollars of vodka projector. And there's nothing wrong with having beautiful laundry. No, you gotta be reminded sometimes. Exactly. What a bizarre single for the Immaculate Collection. Given the Immaculate Collection is just holiday lucky star borderline. It's all her kind of like fun times old songs, you know? Was there another single or was that it? That was the one new song? That was the one new song. Oh Rescue Me, which I think is criminally underrated. Love that song. It's good. Her vocals are crazy on it. Let's you We're the same year as D Light, power of love. Just saying. There was something in the water? Yeah. Yeah. The Immaculate Collection. Just an indelible artifact of my youth. Everything is contained within this CD. Yeah. That was it. I think I got like a prayer and this in the same year from my beloved BMG uh music club. I taped that penny right onto that postcard, checked a few boxes. Yeah. Mailed it off. Columbia House I think is where my sister got it from. Six CDs came in the mail and I was like, surely I will never have to pay the Piper for this. Oh yeah. We had twelve, I think. Probably Tony Braxton. This is how cheap CDs were back then that they could afford to just literally dole out Dozens of CDs. Oh yeah. Use your illusion. Hundred percent. But as a gateway drug to Madonna, the Immaculate Collection is pretty insane because it's just like So many smash heads. In a row. Including Cherish, I'll have you notice. Including Cherish, of course. It is on there. Crazy for you? Let's fucking go. Borderline. Phenomenal. So in nineteen ninety one This is just a fun tid for the heads. She told Jonathan Ross that Michael Jackson had called her about doing a song together for his album Dangerous. Also, I'll go ahead and say it, a fucking phenomenal album wall to wall bangers. A great time to revisit this album on the occasion of the acclaimed new film. Right. By this by the time this podcast comes out, we'll have come and gone. Okay, so Madonna said, So we got together and he played me the music. It was a very unfinished the track. And he said he wanted to call the song In the Closet. And I said, Really? You wanna call this song in the closet? And he said, Yeah. And I said, Do you know what that implies? And he sort of giggled a bit. And I said, Well, you know I like to deal with these kinds of ironic innuendo things. So if you want to go that way, and he said yes. So apparently she wrote some lyrics, but he didn't like that. She went that way and he said no. And he was like She she said ultimately he didn't want the content of the song to live up to the title. I need to hear what she what she wrote for the song. Release leak the leak the Madonna version of In the Clay. Oh my God. Okay, so in the meantime she's preparing for her first Oscar performance, singing Sooner or later, the Songtime song from Dick Tracy. about it. This is the like the look. She's in full Hollywood glamour mode. She's got Incredible the the gloves up to the elbow, dripping in twenty million dollars of diamonds, the fur. And she goes with Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson. And I had not remembered this, but when I went back to look into it, I was like, Oh, it's true. None of those photos are from the red carpet because they were banned from the red carpet because they were too famous and they were like no one will look at the actors. You guys cannot you're too nuclear level of famous, especially together. So all the photos we have are like paparazzi photos of them like coming from the limo and going in the back. door of the shine. Uh she's like she's like diamond covered, basically. Twenty million dollars, babe. He's in white he's uh of course dressed by Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins. He's wearing cowboy boots. Black cowboy boots. Snake skin pants. Yeah. You don't really see the lower half of his look very much unless you like look for it. Anyways, a real a real moment. They look so it's so like Acid trip celebrities. There you go. Crazy. If that was posted now, you'd be like, AI made that. That didn't happen. We don't have two people this iconic that could even go to an event like that together. I've I I s I can't think of who it would be. Taylor Swift and Kanye West. That's so not as fabulous as well. It's not, but it would really like it's glamour is gone. It would make as much waves. True. Maybe infamous is the word, not iconic. Right. Her performance of sooner or later. Yeah, please go on. At the nineteen ninety one Academy Awards. Yes. One of the best musical performances ever on the Oscar stage. Okay. If you have not seen it. Go on, don't walk, go watch it. It perfectly showcases like her sheer star power. Because she's alone on stage. Right. And she's hamming it up from stage entrance to stage exit. She doesn't quit. It's like It's a lit it's a little bit comedic. She's doing a sort of burlesque. Nod. Old Hollywood, it's Marilyn Monroe, it's ridiculous, but it's like so brilliantly conceived and choreographed. This time I'm not Getting up here, squeeze in hitting it Talk to me, Jell Swart! Because in the movie she performs the song in a little bit of a more like sultry serious way. This is like definitely theater for the stage where it's like bam bam. Like she's doing these like crazy gestures, hamming it up. It's This is like a cartoon. She's Jessica Rabbit. Another formative feminine icon for me. Um she won, but she didn't win, actually. It won because she did not have a right at the time won. But all right, in May Truth or Dare is released. You're right. We talk about it here. Premieres at Can. the incredible reveal at K two piece of the two piece the goet bike short like she was in a thong and fucking nipple piece. Midriff on the can red carpet for back then, it's like she may as well have just like lit a cherry bomb. Mm. It's like She nine elevened the can red carpet with that look. I swear to God, it's like Up until recently it women were not allowed to not wear heels on the can carpet. There's like very strict dress codes. Okay, but you've said it again, Fox. I was checking my memory. You said midriff, and it's like, yes, two in there's not her you don't even see her belly, but it's a high waisted garment. Like It is really wild thinking of like what she had to tear down given that like What you see like A celebrity word a coachella now, which you're like, I straight up saw your whole asshole. Your asshole is not just your ass, your asshole. I can see it. Rose McGowan said hold my beer and went to the VMAs with Marilyn Mansor. Yeah. Also honestly really iconic. Really important outfit. Um Madonna was back to Brunette at this premier. Right. There's also some very important paparazzi photos. Uh Madonna that week. Jogging along the quissette. In the morning. Surrounded by her personal trainers, her bodyguards, cars that are driving around her, and paparazzi. Baseball hat, sunglasses. And you guys won't even go to the gym. You know what I mean? What's your fucking excuse? Major. All right, let's talk about truth and art. Again. I love that the rough cut was three hours and Madonna wanted to keep it all and Alec said that I agree. He Alec said it's not gone with the wind, honey. I know. It is interesting. There's so many like big songs that she does in that tour that are not entry there, not even gestured to. I would love the director's cut. Well, I guess it would it would be Madonna's cut. The director didn't want it to be three hours long. The real director's cut. Yeah. But he had final cut, so There's also a part which I don't know if I included in this where she had to like Mog. Harvey Weinstein. She had to power mog Harvey Weinstein because it was Miramax was releasing it and he was trying to push them to cut it even more. And she was just like, No, fuck you. He met his match. Yeah. Well, he and he was always a little bit less powerful then. And this is why I'm so happy that Alec ended up doing it instead of David, as is even though we've established how I feel about David. It just feels So fly on the wall, so spontaneous. It was like a direct uh cinema. style documentary and like in In the style of like DA Pennebaker. Or the Mazels brothers. Yes, yes, yes. And it's like this observational voyeuristic But like also diaristic movie because it has her voiceover that's kind of like gluing the whole thing together throughout, and obviously she's very like She's engaging with the camera. She's very aware that it's there at all times, but also like She's be she's living in this moment where it's almost like she doesn't have the like time to think about what she's gonna say or do. Right. So it there's a little bit of like it's not that she's performing a version of herself in the movie because she's on tour and it's like you're seeing her in these moments. They obviously shot so much. But it's like when she gets going off stage between songs. There's like a montage in it where the tour's not going well. And he just included her being like pissed off about sound all. Screaming at Christopher like Screaming at Christopher, getting off stage, being like, Well, that was one of the worst ones ever. It's very real feeling. It has some reality TV elements in the sense of like There's some setup things. I not fake, but set up. Like the childhood friend that is like miraculously appears from thin air to visit with her, which she would like never have like And it was like, you know, asking her on the spot to be the godmother of her daughter. And Madonna's like oh um Or like Her dad. You know, that's was sta not staged, but you know, it was cleared or whatever. And then The visit to her mother's grave. Right. There were definitely like setups for the documentary which were brilliant and they really work for it. I saw it differently after I read Christopher's book because he his whole th he talks about how much he was angry about that because he didn't realize it was going to be filmed. And he Again, I don't know if that was true. Like I I don't know. This is what he said in his book. And so you see in it, he's like off to the side leaning against a tree. And then now with that conning so I'm like, oh no wonder because he was fucking pissed. Listen, she knew what she was doing. Also it's like And it's an incredible moment. And it's also a promise to try moment. Because it's it's not false, you know? So I found it really sweet. Yeah, me too. And she's like, I have to I wanna get in with her. I'll have to lay like that. It's like She does still Like her whole thing is to like live For the camera, or for the stage, or like live truthfully in front of everybody and He's obviously a different kind of person, you know? But I also think that probably in the making of the film it did become like a diary to her. And like that she was used to telling Alec things. And then it was sort of like That was her way of expressing That feeling that she needed to get out in some way. So I think it's Okay. Incredibly beautiful. It's a beautiful. I also just want to talk about like how It's shot in sixteen millimeter black and white. And then the concert sequences are shot in color and they look like maybe they're shot thirty five. I'm not sure if they are, but that kind of differentiation was so striking the dimensionality of like, okay, now you n you know what dimension you're in. You're in intimate dimension and then you're in like The show, you know, you're a spectator. And it centers the music and the show as the more important thing in a way because it's shot in this like way like this is the work. But then it's like you get the kind of like intimacy of all the you feel like you're part of the backstage, but you feel like you're watching as an audience. really cool. And it feels like uh don't look back and like those music documentaries that were also shot in black and white at 60 millimeter. We obviously watched the Depeche Mode 101 documentary, which has like a similar vibe. And what's interesting about the Depeche Mode one is like they made that one about their fans. Right. And they didn't include themselves in the like vulnerability part of it. And in this one, it's like all about the crew and the dancers, the tour. But also Madonna, you know, all as part of one. But I thought what was like so special about it, and obviously it became a matter of some contention later, but it like It made stars out of all the figures on the tour that are not The star. You know, she's the star, but then it's like to her, these people are the star. Right. And you really feel that like affection in the film. And it was like For a lot of people in my generation, I or gay guys in my generation, I feel it was the first time that we saw gay guys just like hanging out with each other. Yeah. Like just being gay guys. Yeah. Not being like performers or not being I don't know, it's like you just didn't see them gay guys very much at all. Right. I guess and Well that was something I read said about it that I did think was really interesting where it was like It w it It featured gayness without making it about like the gayest. You know, like it wasn't like trying to make some statement. It just it was like a naturally existing part of this world. And that's why it felt so cool to see it, you know? Well I didn't draw attention to it. Even more powerful than that to me is the way that we got to watch Gay guys bullying a straight guy? He was so bummed when he when he ran to Talmadonna. Yeah, and it's like Gay guys are always bullied like in the nineties and the way that it was spoken about in the media or whatever. You're seeing it's always like the gay guy getting gay bashed or whatever by the straight guys. Or like you're growing gay and you're surrounded by straight people and you feel that way or you feel like in danger of that so seeing the table's turns like that is so empowering and insane and intoxicating. And the fact that they were being like bitchy. Like I was just like I need to be friends with them. I'm going to be like that. Like it was like Oliver said he was like homophobic before he went on that tour. And the way he talks about it is so funny because it's so real. He's like oh I don't got a problem with fags or anything like that. He's like, this isn't about them being fags. Like then he was just calling them fags left and right. It was also like so It was like making fun what is it making fun of and he's like, Why does he always have to wear those little shorts in my face? Like we get it, you're gay. So it definitely like opened a pathway where I was like and it's crazy when you watch it now because I'm like the way that they are all talking and gossiping and being nasty together is like the way that me and my friends talk. Still. Like it's like that it's just such a real dynamic and seeing that captured was very um magical at the time. I think that I think that part is very cool. There's like a sort of a controversial. Well there's also there's obviously the truth or dare scene. And a lot of people I think remember Madonna simulating a blow job on like the Evian bottle. It was an Evian bottle. Um but the other part of that was there's a No it was the Vichy catalog. Vichy catalog. Sorry. Sorry, sorry for the delay you guys. Yeah. We have to be like Evian. Vishilam a superior water. There's a dared kiss between Selim and Gabriel, and they do it. But Gabriel wasn't out of the closet. And he asked them to please cut it. And they did not. And They didn't. That's just The kiss isn't what gave it away. Well, listen. Um Salim later said I must have received. Your Madonna's backup desk. Well, Oliver. I know, but the assumption is probably Oliver had to come out as straight. Right. No, like halfway through the movie I forgot that he was straight. I was like, oh, you're what? Um anyway, so Salim said is I must have received two thousand messages from people around the world telling me how their lives change by seeing a gay kiss on the big screen. So And then I sued. So Uh they did also. Yeah. Yeah. Madonna's now on the cover of Vanity Fair Shop by Steven Mizel. Well, this is one of her most important photo shoots and magazine covers, canonically speaking. Um The Hair was by Garin, the legend. Garin Garin is also the one that bleached your eyebrows, right? Early e girl. Madonna was an e-girl before any U hoes. Yeah, exactly. She had the blonde streaks in the front. She had no eyebrows. The makeup was by Francois Nars. Might have heard have you ever heard of him, babe? Ever watching to a Sephora? She was wearing a Bob Mackie gown. Yeah. And then Eve Saint Laurent stole on the cover. Shades of what she wore to the Oscar. Yeah. Um it's fucking unbelievable, basically. She looks fake. Yeah, it's just insane. It's like The most glamorous a human being has ever looked. After you peroxide your hair to fucking hellen back, how you still have hair on your h I have four hairs left and I didn't even really do that. It's the magic of pieces and wigs. She's genetically blessed. We'll believe that's her real hair. This was the interview that she did with Lynn Hirschberg where she said that she has a fear of mediocrity. Nothing has ever resonated so profoundly around my body and soul. Yeah. I definitely stole that line and I would say it to my parents when I was a twelve year old gay demon. Um because yes, I was already reading Vanity Fair religiously. Picturing you sitting at the Olive Garden with your family and you're like We didn't go to Olive Garden, we went to where did we go? Flame jumper? Carrows. Caro's love of Carrows. Yeah. You're like Mom, Dad. I have a great fear of mediocrity. And they were like I'd be like I'm not ordering the ha the turkey burger. I have a fear of mediocrity. Turkey burgers are really like prime mediocrity. Disgusting food. Get it out of my face. Very important cover and also very important moment because she had been trying to get Steven Mizelle to do a photo. She's like, you're amazing, do a photo book. And Separately eight months earlier, she had been approached by Simon and Schuster to write her own book book. And she had taken some meetings about it, but she was like, I'm not gonna do that. She was just like information gathering. And then Stephen Mizelle said to her, Why don't you just do a book with me? And she was like, You know what, babe? Yes. Of course she said yes. But first say no to my. I I don't get starstruck that often and when I do, it's the most weirdest people on earth, like the girl from the T. Steven, I saw him at Whole Foods. Um at a purple magazine dinner and I was like speechless. I was like The holy one. And he's still so cool and like the way he dr I was just like Draped in silk. But put a pin in that because first she has to go hang out with Jose Conseco and learn some baseball. Hang out, that's what they're calling it now. She was learning baseball. For Penny Marshall's league of their own. I don't know what else they did, but You can quote me on this and leave this one in. She definitely fucked Jose Canseco. She had sex with Jose Consex? There is no. I'm sorry. She and I have the same taste in men. Jose Canseco in ninety one. Get the fuck out of here. I personally do not find Jose Conseco. Oh my God, he was so hot back then. Maybe even still, I haven't seen him in a while, but Jose. There's something about Jose. Well, whatever they did or didn't do, they did learn some baseball. Totally baseball for Penny Marshall's Totally incredible little league of their own. Yeah. Dinner on stunts. I've hit those balls. I fucking love that movie. It's a classic. It's First of all We were watching and I hadn't watched in a long time and I was like, Oh my God, Gina Davis has the original Instagram face. But naturally. But it also like is the sort of face that looks old fashioned. Oh it's perfect too. It's just perfect. It's like Judy Garland or something. Except like those luscious it's like Who looks like that naturally? It's crazy. She's so stunning. She looks really good in that period with that hair. Totally. Um Rosie O'Donnell is in this movie. It's where Hilarious Madonna strike up a friendship. Lovable. Their chemistry, just insane. The two of them. She was not out of the closet at that time. Absolutely not. She hadn't yet thrown herself at Tom Cruise for ten years on her daytime talk show at that point. So I just Okay. Um But you know. Madonna, I believe around this time is dating Vanilla Ice. Correct. And it's while she's filming A League of Their Own that she gets a little visit from Shep Alert. Shep Watch. Shep Watch. Shep Pettibone, who drops off a tape of songs he's been working on. And so filming raps, and she's like, Okay, let's Maybe let's work with these. Or not. She goes to New York to work with them and she's like, I hate this. If I had wanted the album to sound like that, I'd have worked with Patrick Leonard in LA and is like start over. They write four songs. So shady, so unnecessary. Well it's actually there's amazing But I get it. There's so much shade thrown between the producers as well. She was experiencing growth. We evolve in life. We want new things. There is I think a Patrick Leonard quote where he's talking about Shut Pettibone. Where he's like One of the most overrated producers of all time. Ooh, the rivalry. And then the interviewer was like, Well, Madonna chose him. And he goes, Everybody makes mistakes. Sure. Vogue was a mistake. I'm a Patrick Leonard truther, and I will hold the flame. I think he is Love. Incredible. And and long term important in term uh he brings something incredibly important and emotional and beautiful to her music that cannot be You know, put some respect on the man's name. But also Shep Shep Watch is my They're all That's my sis. Um That's Auntie. Okay, the four songs they wrote together at this time are deeper and deeper, erotica, rain, and thief of hearts. Um but they change a lot in the next nine months. Cher gave an interview. Oh thank God. Okay. Uh with Steve Cometko on CBS. Sure. She was promoting her new album, Love Hurts. Um, and she spoke about Madonna in the interview. And it was because Cometco asked her, like, who are you listening to today, whose music that you like. And she was like, oh, you know, like I like Whitney Houston. I love Eric Clapton. She's giving these sorts of answers. And then he says, What about Madonna? And she goes, What about her? And he's like, you know, in some way she reminds me of you, she's known to speak her mind. Uh you know, she goes against the grain, things that you've done. And then Cher cuts him off. And She first says There are lots of things that I respect about her. I think that she knows how to work the business like nobody I've ever seen. And then she says, and this part I wanna try and do for memory, because I've known had it memorized for years. So you're not doing the voice? I'll do my I'll do a little bit of the delivery. I can't do Cher's voice. She goes and There's something I don't like about her. She's Mean. And I don't like that. Um and I remember having her over to my house a couple of times because Sean and I were friends. She was just so Rude to everybody. And it seems that she has so much. But she doesn't have to act the way that she acts. Like a spoiled brat all the time. It seems to me that if you've reached the level of a claim that she's reached You can do whatever you want to do. You should be a bit more Magnanimous. And a little bit less of a cunt. I love that some people have Invictus memorized and you have Cher's nineteen ninety one diatribe against Madonna memories. She ate her up. Sure, it was at their wedding. Well, they ended up you know, they made up years later and whatever. And then during the celebration tour, there's like um There was like a video montage of like all of Madonna's most controversial moments or whatever, and she put the share clip in it. One thing we've lost as a society and a culture is like this. age old tradition of the pop star Shitting on the next pop star publicly. Like the m the Mer Mariah Carrier, I don't know her moment. You know, like this is a time honored tradition. Totally. But like they don't do it anymore. They do it online and it's not as fun. Or they do like a song. It's like Cher sitting on a couch on CBS. Calling Madonna a cunt. Yeah. Also recently I just saw a random. And then he went, Don't mince words. There was a random like one of these Madonna fan Instagram pages posted something And did you see this? Boy George just randomly stroll along and comments, but why is she so mean? This is like last week. George. Don't get me sorry on George. But I was like, sorry. He's very online. Um He will reply to you. All right, so now that we've thank God we couldn't have missed that on the way that's now we've had a completely important moment. She so she goes down to Miami to start scouting locations for the sex book. she falls in love with the 1930s home down there and bought buys it for five million dollars. On New Year's Eve, she had met a Cuban American heiress. On Brickle. On Brickle, yeah. Ingrid Casaris has entered the building. She had been dating Sand uh Sandra Bernard. They met on New Year's Eve. Her and Sandra broke up, but Madonna and her became close. And also around this time, Johnny Risacci moved to Miami as well. Miami's happening. Um This is when she teams up also the next month with Warner Brothers to make her own label. Group of labels, Maverick. Um huge deal. Madonna Veronica Frederick. Maverick. Whoa Yeah, I didn't know that. Did you know that? No. Yes. So Veronica DeShe Ronnie was the COO. So Maverick is Madonna Veronica Frederick Maverick. Her brain. I know. So they make a record company, a film production company, a music publishing thing, television broadcasting, book publishing, merchandising. She gets sixty million dollars, twenty percent royalties from the music, one of the highest rates in the industry. Um only Michael Jackson, I think, had a higher royalty rate or equaled. And everything with the music label was a sixty forty venture with Warner Brothers. Also, a twenty year old guy is hired for the Maverick record label who had been friends with Freddy DeMan's daughter at Beverly Hills High School. His name was Guy Ori. His name still is Guy OC. Mm-hmm. twenty year old A and R. Right place, right time. Really good Anar. Yeah. This is what's so Madonna and so crazy. Like you get this like insane, like I'm a power player in the industry moment. And you're like, Cool, my first two releases are gonna be erotica and the sex book. Thank God. But first This used to be my playground comes out. Along with the film. I love the song. W I don't even know how old I was a child, of course, when all of this happened. I remember being in my friend's car and a limo drove by us and like her little sister was like, It's Madonna and then stuck her face in the window and started going, This used to be This song, while I love it, it's firmly in my category of Sunday songs. Songs that feel like Sunday. Mm-hmm. So I don't put it on that much because it makes me feel like it's Sunday Yeah. And I don't like that. And it's a soundtrack song, so it's like not conveniently on any of the albums or collections. Totally. And I cried at the end of League of The Own when they play that and all the old ladies come to play baseball or whatever. Mm-hmm. This used to be my playground Okay, let's just start with September twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two, which the first single comes out, which is Erotica. Jungle Boogie. Samples Cool in the Gings, Jungle Boogie, and El Yom Ulikah Allah. Kashaba by Lebanese singer Firuz. Ha ha. Obscure. What's your what's your vibe on erotica? I mean it's just ingrained in my DNA, so I don't I don't really feel anything about it. It's sort of like a pulse. Right. My name is Dita. I'll be your mistress tonight. The thing about erotica as an album is like Not that it doesn't have big singles because it does, but it's like This album is like a vibe record. Right. You know? Like this is like perennial in style. It's this is like gay guys hanging out music. It's just on in the background all the time. This is like I I don't want to say background music as like a It's not bad. Yeah, but I get what you're saying. I get exactly what you're saying. You know? It's not I'm not being dismissive of it. It's just so important that it's always there. So it's like I love it, but it's not like it doesn't hit you Erotica of the song doesn't hit you with like the emotional punch. No. Or bring you on the journey that like a like a prayer does. Totally. Or some of these other songs. I would argue Rain does. And we'll get there when we get to Rain. I'm a fucking Rain is like the crescendo of the album. I will lay down in traffic for Rain. Um yeah, erotica, it's a perfect first song. You know, it it I think in my mind it's part and parcel with Justify Your Love. You know, like It has a similar vibe-iness to it and like a like looping beat kind of thing. Part of it also might be that the music video is a little bit of a lesser music video in the videography of Madonna. Right, because it was not It's BTS It's BTS from the sex book shot by Fabian Barron, who is an important player. You know what I learned about the erotic? They saved their money on that video. You you'll have a lot to say about this if I'm interested. Photoshop has been invented. This is the first Madonna album after Photoshop is invented. Okay. And Fabian Barron, which I didn't know this, was a typographer as well. And so what that's why you finally get this like Erotica, Madonna, like they were able to do layers, like I thought that was really interesting 'cause like I don't know, it hadn't occurred to me why how that would change the visual look of albums. Right. Trippy. I think Erotica probably. Landed like a lead Balloon. The single Because it's not like um it doesn't have like a hook. I think it's a perfect offering to like foreshadow what the album is. But I also feel like it's not like it's not a pop hit, you know? It's not a pop hit, but it's like such an important song. Totally. And like If you go to a Madonna concert and you start you hear the beginning of Erotica, the crowd goes insane. You know what I mean? It's like a very good live song. Totally. It's a good like nightclubbing song. It debuted at number thirteen on the Hot One Hundred and it did peak at number three. So it's not like it did terrible, you know? No, that's good. You know what? It did better than I was thinking. So this album is produced by Shep Pettibone, Madonna and Andre Betts. Also brings in Doug Wimbish, who played bass On Grandmaster Flash's The Message. No big deal. House the house ban of Sher Hill Records. Um he's great because he gives a lot of interviews about this and he's so funny because he's obviously just like an older man that's like been around and is like My first day in the studio, she rolls up and she's got a box with these Playboy magazines from like the sixties. She comes in, Dre sees her, and she's chilling. Dre's like Yo, what's up, Mo? How you doing? They start having a conversation. Dre says, What do you got here in this box? Before she can say anything, Dre takes one of the magazines and opens to the center section and is like, damn, these old babes had some titties back then. This is his interview. Dre's real straight up and down with her. She'm Madonna. She's got that alpha female vibe. And no disrespect. I'm like, yo, let me see that. She's like, No, no, I don't want you to see anything until you play some bass. She loves talking shit with the boys. And he's like, I'm not doing anything until I see some titties in the Yeah, check out these broads. It's pretty hot, right? Bang her. So Andre Betts, obviously, we know him from Justify My Love. Um that's how he got roped into this album. And you can hear it for sure. And all the backing vocals throughout this album are Donna Deloria Nicky Harris. It's interesting. I know that I know that. is part of the narrative that the release of the sex book overshadowed the erotica album. But they really were of a piece, I think. It's like you can see the concept of calling the album erotica. And then the book being sex and it's like behind a mylar bag and it's like being advertised like the visual identity is very similar. Also, just even during the making of the album, she's doing both at the same time. So she's constantly in and out of the studio going to shoot for the sex book. So her head space at the very least is all one place, you know? Yeah. Um and the images intersect a lot. Totally. And you know, the alter ego. Mistress Dita. My name is Dita. That came from the sex book. Inspired by the German actress Dieta Parlow. Love. Madonna being an actress again. Um, I love that they did uh a league of their own and then this. They're like, all right, change it up. Different wholesome lesbian no more. Yeah. The artwork for Erotica was uh Stephen Mizel, under the artist's direction direction of Baron and Baron Inc. Of course. Consisting of Fabian Baron and photographer Siung Fatiha. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What's your favorite? What's your favorite image from the sex book? My favorite image from the sex book is The one that's full color. She's butt naked. She's um squatting. Over the mirror? No, she's outside. There's a big plastic water bottle covering her. Yes, I know. She's just lighting a cigarette. Yeah. And her Gucci handbag is off to the side open. Yeah. It seems like it's like poolside or something. Yeah. That's just like The realist. Coolest. It's really good. But there's so many iconic images from the sex book, of course. I hadn't looked at it in a long time. I remember like my uncle had it and we all like, Oh, we gotta go look at it. And then a my beautiful friend, Andrew Garretsen, thank you so much, Andrew, gifted me one after Tiny Violin fires. And I hadn't actually looked through it because it was still s almost pretty much sealed in the thing and then I was like, whatever, I'm not gonna keep it sealed for I wanna like look at it and use it. Maybe if you sell it again, but I don't care. I'm not gonna sell it. So I was like looking at it at night and I was like, This is actually way tamer. than it's been made out to be. Yeah, it's not hardcore. It's not hardcore. Like it's it's obviously for the time. But a lot of it's innuendo. There's like There's certain things are so iconic in it that they like still get repurposed and used as like Madonna merch and things like that. Like the I'll teach you how to fuck, just type down the page. But there's like Madonna sitting on the stool and she's sucking her finger and fingering herself in the like black leather with the But she's it's not like you can't see the penetration. It's implied. Madonna biting Tony Ward's nipple ring. Yeah. There's Madonna like simulating giving a guy a rim job. Tony drinking piss. Yeah. Um the shaving pubes picture. My favorite and maybe 'cause I'm lame, but I or maybe no, I don't want to say my favorite, but the one that I was like so drawn to this time was like There's one that's where she's wearing like a baby blue. Tot sweater, like an Do you remember this? No, but it sounds cute. It's super cute. It's in color. It's really beautiful. There's one where she's h climb over a fence and her butt's out. Yeah. There's like orgy spanking, smoking, fucking naked in Miami, masturbating in the mirror. The the pizza parlor one is amazing. Getting finger blast by vanilla ice. In the boxer shorts, right? It was a different time. Making out with Naomi Campbell. Big Daddy Cain is in this Hitchhiking Naked in the Coconut Grove is a very famous image. That's my favorite image of all time, I think. I had the poster on my wall as a kid. Sorry, we gotta head to the sex book, but let's get back to erotica. It got mixed reviews. Mm-hmm. My guy A C plus from Entertainment Weekly 'cause suck yourself. He David Brown said before we begin, may I mention that as a single erotic as depressingly trite, that between frigid melody and your scary my name is Dita Spoken Bits, it's about as sexy as an episode of the Shelly Hack era Charlie's Angels. L and the LA Times gave it two stars. Robert Criskow, the God. Guess what? Give it an A. And look what he said. Amazing. Okay, everybody, let's use our imaginations, shall we? It may be a little hard at first, but if we try we can have lots of fun. To start, let's pretend that we have nothing against dance music. that instead of fixating on impersonal and mechanical and all those obvious things, we can just enjoy it for what it is. What a what a genius. Yeah. Like he doesn't he like nailed what that what people were missing getting. Everyone's like, it's cold. It's like soulless. Yeah, and he's like it's dance music. And Rolling Stone give it four stars, too. So again, it's just like kind of all across the board. You either get it or you don't. You either get it or you don't. I Which is cooler than just being pandering to the masses and like spoon feeding everyone the same. I think it's amazing having the success of Like a Prayer, which went like untold times whatever, diamond or whatever. And using Your newly found collateral in the business world. to make exactly what you want. Yeah. And not try to replicate anything and follow the one thing I think that I admire so much about Madonna is that she always follows her interests and what lights her up and makes art around that. You know, like and it doesn't matter if it Doesn't feel Like it's gonna hit, you know? She's just like, This is what I'm interested in. This is what makes me excited. But there also are heads off. Of course. Of course. So it's like I don't think she's doesn't want to make heads I'm just saying it's like that's if she wanted, she could have made like a prayer part two, you know, like or something. This is definitely a leap. It's a leap and also but when I look at it, I'm like I don't know what other direction she could have gone in. Like it just feels so inevitable. Like it's such an inevitable follow up. Once you had Chekhov's Justify My Love. Yeah. It was never going any other direction, I think. Um okay, so we talked about the single erotica. I Love this cover of Fever. I really do. The more I listen to it. I'm I listened. It's my most listened to version of Fever, probably. Yeah. It's a it's a song that does have many covers. It's sort of neck and neck. I love the Cramps one too. The Cramps one is really fucking good. They're neck and neck for me. But yeah, this song has been heavily covered. Um but God, her version and also all the all the remixes of her version. It's just she really that beat is so sick. Apparently this song started as a real song, like an original song called Goodbye to Innocence, but it like wasn't working. And so they're trying to fix it. And then she just like randomly starts singing Fever while they're trying to fix it and then they're like, Why don't we just actually cover that? Yeah, exactly. It's a Peggy Lee originally. Or I don't know if Peggy Lee wrote it, but the Peggy Lee is the famous. Yeah. Alright, the next one is Bye Bye Baby. Which samples LL Cool J'jingling baby. Jingling baby. Go ahead, baby. Jingling baby. I fucking love this song. Yeah. This is sixth single. Anthony Shimmer. Well once you didn't realise once you get to the sixth single, you know, you're kind of like maybe not because we're in we're in the November of ninety three. We've gone like a full year Anthony Shimkin, who worked with Pettibone, said Bye Bye Baby was committed to tape with a filtered vocal. It wasn't an afterthought. It was how she heard herself when doing the song. We went to tape with that effect. There was no removing that. Sometimes you apply treatments like that in the mix, but that was committed to tape. Everything was tried that wanted to be tried. I think the vocal effect is makes the song. Yeah. Like what a vision to have It's like she's on the phone. Yeah, exactly. Deeper and deeper. I've heard many people call this like one of her most perfect pop songs. Do you agree with that? I agree. Yeah. This is a second single. What about it? makes it such a perfect pop song for you. It's a bit like what I was saying about Vogue, which is like It runs away with itself. It's like very swee away kind of song. Yeah. You know? It does it's there's songs that are like like Bye Bye Baby. It's very like hang out, cute, fun, whatever. It's like there's like chill songs, there's like vibe songs, and then there's like songs that are like giving you like drama, romance. Passion. So funny. I was gonna say the way you're off your feet. Yeah. And that's deeper and deeper. That's like very dramatic, you know? It also feels like there was this kind of house music style that was like Very like minor key Malcolm McLaren like that would had become big in like fashion. And this feels like a nod to it, but that she kind of like injected it with this pop sensibility that was Faber. Maybe it's a really faggoty song. Maybe that's what it is. I can't speak to that. Um The opening phrase obviously is a reference to the sound of music. Um, when you know the notes to sing, you can sing almost anything. It's Dorami. There's also a nod to the lyrics of Barry White's I'm gonna love you just a little more, baby, which is deeper and deeper in love with you. I'm falling sweeter and sweeter. The disco I was gonna say what about the show. I light this candle and watch it throw tears on my pillow moment. The Latin bridge. Yeah. Love. Love the flamingo. The flamingo guitar. Chad Pettibone said that sometimes Madonna would call him in the middle of the night and be like I need we need to fix this. And I think of the m she call in the middle of the night was like the middle isn't working. And then she wanted a flamingo guitar. Put La Sla Bonita in the middle of it. So major. Yeah. Shep was like, I don't like the idea of taking a Philly house song and putting La Isla Bonita in the middle of it, but that's what she wanted. So that's what she got. And bitch, it works. It really does work. You wouldn't think it would, but it really does. This is what she was was doing because it's like the inspiration for this was very like disco. It was like there she wanted like the flavor of disco and it was coming across like a little gay fashion electronic. Right. She wanted to bring something like grounding into the song, I think. Yeah. Um bring him back to the barrio. Also, there's that lyrical call back to Vogue uh and the outro. So good. It's really good. I love when people do that. We both read um Harry Tafoya's Pitchfork Sunday uh what do they call it? Sunday review where they re review an album. Um and he mentioned in it, which is a I mean, it's a great in general the whole thing, you guys should read it. Um, but he mentioned how this album has so many callbacks to her earlier work. Like kind of embedded in it, which is really cool. How about the video? Deeper and deeper. Directed by Bobby Woods. Okay. What about the what about the people in it? This is where I'm gonna get in trouble. You don't like the video? Is it because of her afro wig? How do I put this? I do like the video. I love the video. But I also think it's not her best. I think the execution of the video feels A little bit cheap and ludicrous. I don't know, it's like move bitch get out of the way, ludicrous, or just like silly? Like the afro wigs and the like it's also how it was shot. It's sort of But it's cool. I like that it's shot like that. I what she was going for was like a war hall thing. Yeah. You know, she wanted it to be like Those like Paul Morrissey, like Joe D'Alessandro type. It doesn't really have that feeling though. No, it doesn't, 'cause it's shot in a very nineties way. Yeah. To me, it really reminds me of that Janet Jackson video that also has everyone hanging out in a room when you're That's the way it goes is better directed, I think. Yeah. Like the d I just don't love the directing of this video. I don't like the shots. It's very awkward. Some of it is so candid where you're like they should have cut that take. Why is it watching parts that are a little bit it didn't need like I think like the element If they had just I feel like it didn't need to go so many places. Like if I when I think of the parts that I like, like I love the part in the house party and like the bananas, like the girls with the bananas and like I mean, but there's some that's what's so charming about it though, it has this like nineties fashion lunacy to it. And then but it's when they go to the club, I'm like this is kinda boring. You know, like I don't need you to be in the club. It all feels kind of like for I've you know This video actually impregnated Madonna with Addison Ray. Like I feel like Addison Ray's vibe is so the deeper and deeper video. Yeah, that makes so much sense. You know what I mean? It's like Pillow fight. Yeah. There's well anyways, the King girl like include Barrets. Udukir Udu Kir. Mm-hmm. Who's also in the sex book. Debbie Mazar, Inger Casaras, Sophia Coppola, who was probably like, I won't be in your sex book, but I'll be in your video. Seymour Stein and Guy O Sierra are in this. Also Hollywoodlawn. Porn director Chichi LaRue, porn star Joey Stefano. Madonna's factory. So great. Yeah. Um, the next song is Where Life Begins, which I'll I'll say it is a sort of a weak moment in the album for me. I actually love this song. It's weird. I love how weird it is. I don't think it's a bad song at all. It's just a little like I get tripped up by it calls attention to itself a little bit in a way that like it trips me up. Like it takes me out of that like long hang. You know? Yeah. But obviously I think any song that you're ex overly talking about Cunny Ling this is is cool. But it's one of those like it's tongue in cheek and it's a little too much tongue in cheek. Where you're like, okay, har har. It's like the only thing you could eat without getting fat. You're like, okay. The next song is Bad Girl. Let's fucking go. Let's fucking go. It's crazy to me. What a song. What's interesting about this is like Bad Girl is a song that feels like it could have come out in any Madonna era. I agree. This could have been on True Blue. Could have definitely been on Bedtime Stories. Could have been on Bedtime Stories. It's like This to me is like just quintessential Madonna. The video is fucking incredible. It's it it's a movie. That video is the closest we ever came to getting a David Fenture movie starring Madonna. Totally. You know what I mean? That video is a movie. What if that had happened? What a sliding motherfucking door is what we would be speaking about Madonna's film career probably very differently right now. I wouldn't be surprised if she was like supposed to star in the game. Oh my God. You know what I mean? That would have been so good. I know. Um well we got this beautiful video starring Christopher Walken, and you know I love a movie where someone plays an angel. Mm-hmm. And this is a little movie. On a dolly chair always, which was like a nod to filmmaking. It's so charming. And she is uh playing Apparently had a name. Did that did you notice that? Louise. Where did it's a music video. They never talk. How did you know her name was Louise Oriel? She Madonna does this. That's great. I love it. Mistress Dina, Louise Oriel. Louise Oriel is a successful but promiscuous Manhattan businesswoman. Yeah. She creates a lot of things. Who engages in one night. She builds worlds. Right. Also I just love that she's an alcoholic and a chain smoker and Which is so not her because she's at this point still doesn't really drink much. And she looks good doing it. The fluvogs are back. I have a deep obsession with those fucking fluvogs. They're in truth or dare in the m in the scene where I've never seen one single woman look more gorgeous and cooler and hotter than she does when she's getting ready to go out with fucking Warren Beatty and wearing that little dress and her hair up in the thing with the thing and then she's got the flu vlogs on. I found those flu vlogs, but the only size they had left was one size bigger than my foot. Flu vlogs used to advertise I used to have to shoot flu vlogs. I used to have to force flu vlogs on my artistino. So can someone remake those shoes? I think they still make them. No. I've searched far and away. That's my dream shoe. They will now. When they hear those. Thank you so much. Call them the Yasse. You know, I love the pathos of this character she created because it's like she's chain smoking, drinking, and she's like sleeping with m strange men, but she has like this like mortal terror about her. Like she knows her life is like out of control. Totally. Well she's not happy when she lives this way. Exactly. But um My favorite part is when she like has the one night stand and then she goes back to her office the next day and she rips the plastic dry cleaning cover off the Aya suit. So she is hanging in her office. Just happens to be back from the dry cleaner. She's like needs to change clothes. Keep working. She's a high she's a high powered business woman, babe. The wardrobe is all Come de Garcon. Vivian Westworth. Hair looks so good. Oh my God. The hair the hair was by Orlando Pita this time. Makeup was Pat McGrath's. She's uh some one of the most peak gorgeous she's ever looked. Yeah. And there's like Oh my god. The but when she when she comes home and she like picks up her mountain of mail at the base of the door. First you see her through the people. For weeks 'cause I've been out hoeing. This much mail has I'm such an out of control slut. And then she gets home and her mail is piled up on the ground. And then she gets startled and it's her cat that she forgot exists. And so she feeds her starving, neglected cat, and she dumps the cat food out of this giant can. And then as she stands up, she's pouring herself a glass of wine and as she's Drinking the wine, she licks the cat food off her hand that she got on her hand. Did you feeding the cat. This is acting, bitch. But this is post I was gonna say it really reminded me, and it is post Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, which was very much that. It w it has a very similar feel. She's out all night. Doing fuck shit, comes home, has the cat, is she's like licking the cat. Wonder if that was like a nod to that. 'Cause it's very similar. Um anyways we've got a mavon victim. Very special. She dies at the end, spoiler alert. Oh my god, I wan Chris when when he closes and he takes her away. I love waiting. I think it's I think it's an amazing song. Great. Next time you want pussy, just look in the mirror, baby. That was about Warren. I guess so. Must be. Yeah. Next time we want to see. Just like a man baby. Thief of Arts. So good. Here she comes, little Susie Homemaker. It's Fierce. in January of this year, this song went TikTok barrel. Yeah. I was. Because everyone realized it's about Annette Benning. Is it? Allegedly. Cause she took Warren? Yeah. Bitch, you'll do it, you'll take it, you'll screw it, you'll fake it. Yeah. can't be why it went TikTok viral, though because I think it is why. I think the internet was like, ooh, catfight from But then what were people weren't they doing years ago weird cooking challenges to it or like things take on a life of their own, you know. But it it was part of the People were revisiting it. Got it. For whatever reason. And it's just a really fun song. It's such a fun song. You know, it's like women beefing with each other can be fun. I mean, obviously gay culture is built upon this, so is the television network Bravo, but we like we like when women fight. And you can get a lot of it because we hate each other. Yeah. Intra intra You heard what we said about Cher. Intra female uh competition is very real. I don't have anything written down about words. It doesn't mean I have nothing to say about it. No, I actually like revisiting this album was really 'cause I do just play it in the background a lot, as I said, but then listening to it intentionally, I'm just like, Love the song, love the song. Exactly. Just love the song. But now I'm gonna need An umbrella. Because It does a little bit stick out. Vibes wise. Yeah. It's a total change of pace. But there's something about the kind of minor key that the whole album is in, and then it switches to like major key. I don't even know if that's true. I don't know about music. It's just how I'm and this is how my brain is Formatting it. Yeah. There's a shift in the song into another register. that feels like an epiphany from the album. It's like the whole record has all of this like tension. And then Rain is like the release. And it's very much like written that way. designed that way. It's like what Rain is, you know, elementally It's so beautiful. I think that it was the The idea that it was originally written. For that. musical adaptation of Wuthering Heights that never transpired makes a lot of sense. And how maybe it was then put onto the album. Yeah. But fits in. Shep Pettibone created so there's like a panning percussion that happens. And I which may I love it because it does kind of simulate the feeling of hearing rain. Um when you listen with headphones and stuff, it's like very surrounded kind of. And he did that by cutting and splicing samples of Go off. There you go, for my squitty pality heads. I love the song and I could listen to a hundred times in a row. The video The Video is very important. Mark Roman. The Love Letter to Japan. Even though they originally wanted I think Fellini to play the director, but he couldn't do it. And and then m maybe another crazy iconic director also couldn't do it. And then they decided on Ryuchi Sakamoto, the composer who plays the director. Yeah. This hair. Okay, you want to get into the hair? Yeah. Joanne Gare did the hair, who worked with Madonna a lot actually. And she did the makeup. Now is that her real hair or is that a wick? I just mean I I did she have a black pixie? Did she have a dark brown pixie? I just like I don't know. She called it the glass hair. That was like the title for what she did with that look, which was like to make it look really shiny, really. And also there's the outfit. She's I s I still try to recreate the outfit. Like It's ten times a year. With just like the slinky black dress with the gazelles. Everything in it is Come de Garcon, Vivian Westwood, again, and she's wearing them a lot. But she also said the video was inspired by Yoshi Yamamoto, but I don't know if she's actually wearing Yoshi in it. I think probably some of the the crew are because it's a video within a video concept. A little bit. Yeah. Her eyes are popping the motherfuck off. Directed by Mark Ramonic, I don't know if we said it. Shot by Harris Savitas, the legendary director of photography. One of those. very few people have ever looked this beautiful, once again. The B side, just want to give a quick shout to the B side of Rain. The up down suite. This shit is fucking amazing. Yeah. Fan favorite. Twelve minute Chicago house in the style of Madonna. I'll take it. She brought it back for the celebration tour. The fans went crazy. You heard it in the room if you were there. And then I fell down the rain tapes rabbit hole, which I g we can't get super into right now, but there is a collection of demos Called the rain tapes. That are online. And was submitted to the Library of Congress for copyright registration, which is how they know it exists. And so there's a lot of like fodder about these rain tapes 'cause there's some songs that never came out. Okay. Something to look forward to. Yeah. Um why is it so hard as the next song? It's nice. Yeah. It's nice song. In this life is really beautiful and sad. It ends things on a serious note about it. Although I know that did you do it? Right. Then unends it on a serious note. Well, okay, so it now they've removed that song. Yeah, that song's gone. But it did exist. I'll talk about that in a second. In this life is, I think, a really important song though, and it does end it on a serious, and it's like directly speaking about her friends that she lost to eight. It's like very literally like thinking about sitting on a park bench thinking about a friend of mine who's only twenty three. That's Martin Burgoyne. Um and the next verse thinking about a man I knew who's like a father to me, Christopher Flynn. And it's like a really you know, plaintive, sad, mournful song. Yeah. Erotica is really so underrated. I mean, I guess now we can talk about it. Now maybe it's more properly rated. Given like, you know, you can look at Harry Chefoya's review. I think the community has correct. They gave it like a nine or something. But at the time it was obviously like just completely misunderstood. But like as as a piece of work about sex, in quotes, it kind of encompasses A lot of what is involved with sexual relationship or human relationship, it's sex, it's power, it's also love. Rain is a love song. That's like love and connection. And This last song or Mortality. Mort and and Safe Sex. You know, it's really about like was about eight. So and she's she's never been shy to talk about that. Even the sex book, which I'm not gonna open up and read, but the in the the whole beginning Paige talks about how this all takes place in a fantasy world and in her fantasy world there isn't AIDS, but in the real world you should use a condom. Yeah. Um, anyways, I wanna talk about Did you Do It for one second 'cause it's actually really funny. Basically, um they had a r running joke with Andre Betts of he did you do it? Did you fuck Madonna? Uhhuh. And he like I guess did a rap to it or something and and had And then they accidentally played it for Madonna. Like she wasn't supposed to hear a We're putting it on the record. Tick chick tock, Mo was on the chock I did it in the limo as we went around my box off the mole my head lift the mystic off a wet We also forgot Secret Garden, by the way. That is that is still on the album. Yeah. Her's Secret Garden is her vagina. Totally. Where life begins. Secret Garden. Yeah. There is an unreleased song called Shame that the demo's on the internet and it's actually really good. I can quote Harry's pitchfork thing quickly to wrap up the radically. It's very good. I just like the way that he phrased it. He kind of encapsulated what this period was and The sound he said. Twisting and maneuvering her own fame, Madonna ditched the old Hollywood model of Stardom as a manicured cult of personality in favor of celebrity as a never ending war holy and soap opera, referring to Truth or Dare. Yeah. By the ear nineties, she had been the third rail of sexual discourse for almost a decade, electrifying audiences and sending conservatives into convulsions with every new release. Parallel to the spectacle ran an infinitely more interesting story, the tale of a lapsed Catholic and her quest to define what she really believed about herself and the world. Without a cosmic script and contemptuous of a patriarch's guiding hand, Madonna's work plunged headlong into sex and emotion. The ecstatic coupling of people between sheets and on the dance floor as the ultimate vehicle for spiritual transcendence. I love that. And what's amazing about that is that is still what she's doing. Well with Confessions. She did it again with Confessions too. This erotica to me is like the spiritual prequel. Two confessions. Yeah. Okay, so my giant galaxy brain like woo woo thing is like She sort of like starts out You know, doing this thing and then gets like we said, there was like all this sort of like stars washed from her eyes from coming up against. the control of men. So then she's like, okay, well, then I will embody control and and the div and masculinity. Because with Dita. With Dita, with control, with with being. Yeah. This is all like mas hyper masculine. And then kind of realizing Actually, that didn't fulfill me either. And then you come back around to her major one of her one of her major peaks, which is Pushing past both of those things into the divine feminine, which is actually spiritual, which is ray of light. And I think that's when she like surrendered the tropes of Totally. You know what I mean? And was able to sort of ascend to this other place, which is truly the divine feminine. And that's what you hear in real life, not to get ahead. Okay, we talk I feel like we talked enough about the sex book. We did talk about the sex book. It sold out seven hundred fifty thousand copies. Was banned, et cetera. Everything you would think. Edited by Glenn O'Brien, we should mention. One thing that is just that in two thousand twenty two, Eve Saint Laurent Uh published a reedition of the sex book through their publishing impression. Really? Yeah, and they did a whole exhibition at Art Basel, Miami Beach. They like built a gallery on the beach and they showed all of the Myzel photos. So cool. And She flew out Udo Care for it. He came to it. She loved Udo. Their relationship is really cute. Um Yeah, they released 800 copies. So She still owns it. Good. Still loves it. I heard from a source that she still buys them off eBay when she sees them pop up because like she feels like she doesn't have enough of them in the archive. So good. It's it's beautiful. And like Just if you haven't ever seen it, like This was very difficult to produce. Like she wanted this like metal cover, like Canum who it was that was an interview with her was like it was really annoying to read it. Um People lost their goddamn minds. Yeah. About the sex book. That infamous interview in Sixty Minutes Australia. With Richard Carlton. You've seen that, right? The clip. Yeah. Where he's like, I just think these images are so horrible. And he's specifically talking about the one where she's like astride the mirror, masturbating. Yeah. And she has such a good response to it where she's like, I think people's reactions to specific situations in the book are much more a reflection of that person than me. I mean, you were scared of that picture. What does that mean? Are you frightened of a woman that can turn herself on? Are you frightened of a woman who is not afraid to look at her genitals in the mirror? And he's like a little bit yes. Getting Freudian up in here. Yeah. Also during this whole period, she did another shoot with Myzel. For Vanity Fair. Which is the one where she's like in the pool toy in the pool with the pigtails. Stuffed animals in the playground. She's playing with like little girl She's deer girl. Slutty little girl. Excuse me. Um she also did interview magazine with her breads in ninety three, tail end of all of this. Yeah. And then did Vogue by Myzel style by Grace Cottington, which was sort of like a hippie vibe, randomly. Yeah. Maybe she maybe at that point she was kind of trying to like um Well she did I mean She lost a big chunk of audience with this. Like I think that is also something people need to, like, remember who didn't live in real time. I mean, including myself, obviously I was a child, but like She was a America's s sweetheart pop star. Even though she was like pushing buttons with like a prayer and with you know, increasingly pushing buttons. But but with like her parish, she was an international sensation pop star on the level of Michael Jackson. With Eronica, she lost a big chunk of market share. Those people did not come with her. They were like more we don't I don't know about that. Right. It's like poking at religion is one thing 'cause you may offend some people from that religion. At worst you offend all of them, which she didn't I don't think. Yeah. But then you know, explicit sexual imagery, you're like basically being like adults only. This is not for kids. People are freaking out. They don't want their kids seeing kids are obsessed with Madame. It spiraled out of control because the idea of it was far worse than the execution. Mm. Because it was nobody saw it. Seven hundred fifty thousand people saw it. But like it wasn't You couldn't just go on the internet and look at it. So I think even the way I misremembered it being like so hardcore porn and it's not, I think that got out of hand, you know. Some of that was also the marketing, which like was funny and cool, but it's like it backfired a little. Like putting it in the mylar bag, like having to say adults only. Like that's what like Hustler magazine looked like when you w went to buy it at the store, which is why they did it. It was like kind of they're being cheeky about it. What she said was like No one got the humor. Like no I I was trying to be like I was trying to poke fun at everyone's prejudice about other people's sexuality and no one got it. And then more crucially, she told Charlie Rose in nineteen ninety nine that after that the backlash, I lost confidence in humanity. I thought that people were being unbelievably cruel to me for no reason. And when I lost confidence And not being able to feel like there was a certain level of behavior that I could depend on in other people, a certain decency. When I lost confidence in that, I began to lose confidence in myself. Right. And like, you know, according to testimony, this was like sort of a low period for her that affected her a lot, how this was received. Yeah. And then to add insult to injury, like you're already like in the rip tide and then someone's like hold your shoulders down, body of evidence comes out. January seventh. I'm like, I don't see how that can be anything but incredible because I love that movie. Same, but the reviews were brutal. But that was this is something that my friends and I talk about with pop stars in general. It was her time to be hated. Yeah, totally. Everyone has their time to be hated. It happened with Lady Gaga during our pop. It's like there's a moment where it's like you've been riding too high for too long and we are gonna knock you off your pedestal and drag you into the dirt. Yeah, and I feel kinda bad because I think body of evidence suffered from That of her because it's actually a totally great movie. I've been watching a lot of erotic thrillers from like the eighties and early nineties and like I'm not trying to shade anybody, but it's like it's directed so much better than like Jagged Edge. Yeah, or like Sliver or like I'm trying to think what's Okay, people everyone loves Basic Instinct. I didn't find it that much like I didn't find it I don't find Basic Instinct that much more elevated than this. And they're both very enjoyable. They're both really well directed. Yeah. Uli Edel is like an incredible director. He directed Christian F. Like he was part of this like German new wave of directors who were sort of shooting in this like very visceral gritty style but still with like kind of high style composition. Yeah I think it's such a really smart choice of that. on top of a sort of dumb dumb script. You know? Like it is a little like You know, blue notes, a few in the script, but that's what makes it great. Oh my god, whatever. It's like it really is just like it came a year immediately a year after Basic Instinct. Yeah. And so there's a bit of like, Oh, she wanted to do what Sharon and Basic Instinct was like a movie that was not expected to be as big of a hit as it was. And the film is lurid and over the top at times, but like her performance is like incredibly calibrated. She's like enigmatic and naturalistic. I think if Glenn Close gave the same performance, it would have gotten good reviews. But everyone wanted to hate her at that time. She had too much. She sees the culture. She was hot. She had all the hottest men. She was dominating the pop charts. I think this also didn't help, obviously, that she was being Castigated for being too sexual, and then her most s explicitly sexual film performance comes out at the same time. It's just like people were like, enough with you. But it was like audacious and it was a cool choice. Everyone who she worked with in that movie, it was like fab that it was Willem Dafoe and Joe Mantania and like fucking Frank Langella and Julian Moore. Full frontal pussy in the parking garage. Like It's a really hot movie. Sharon Stone uncrossed her legs so that Madonna could go spread eagle on the hood of that. Once again, you don't see lip, but yes. Um she's the the best line in it where she's like, Don't look so hard, Alan. I fucked you. I fucked Andrew. I fucked Frank. That's what I do. I fuck. And I made eight million dollars from it. She lives on a houseboat. It's randomly filmed in Portland. Nobody like that has ever lived in Portland. What did you do to you, Frank? What are those marks on your chest? Are those bites? Julian more. Incredible. She slaps her in the bathroom. It's a great movie. You guys reconsider our body of evidence. Okay. So she goes on still, regardless of having a hard time in the press. She goes on Saturday Night Live and does uh Bad Girl in Fever. The host is Harvey Kitel. This is just a moment for me. She's on the thousandth episode of the Arsenio Hall Show and sings Fever and per also performs The Lady as a Tramp alongside Anthony Ketis, where they're wearing matching skirts, stockings, leather vests, and cat ear caps. And it is burned into my brain this image. Got it. It's really important. Okay. For my personal how my personal canon of intersecting interests. Erotica Okay, we said it largely slept on. People do not It doesn't get the attention that it should because of the book. Um, and Madonna's in a bad place. So and with this vibe we go into the girly show tour. Incredible, legendary. We have we're beautifully designed to. I don't remember her ever having bangs, but yeah, there she is. The title came from an Edward Hopper painting of a naked woman on stage at a burlesque house. Christopher is now made the tour director as well as art director, moving on up. They track down Gene Kelly. eighty one years old to help with choreography. You would if you could. Famously fired him, I believe. He deserved it. Um retire bitch. They cast the female dancers by posting flyers at lesbian bars in Manhattan. Cool. And Carlton Wilburn came back. Nikki Harris and Donald Delorie are back. Jeff Hornday, who had choreographed the Who's That Girl tour, came as stage director. Now all the costumes are Dol Jangabana. I don't want to say new, but weren't like It was peak 90s Dol Jangabana. Just poof. What about Carrie Ananaba being one of the dancers? I don't know who that is, but I'm happy for her. Is she dancing with the stars? That's right. That is correct. She came down in a thong in a G string on an aerial ballet. Here are the songs. Erotica, fever, vogue, rain. There's an interlude where Gene Kelly's choreography actually came in. Eight dancers performing with umbrellas. Rain get it. A little bit of soft chill, a little bit of a shuffle. Express yourself. She did do that in the afro. Just wanted you to Why is it so hard? Justify My Love. Marlene Dietrich's nineteen thirty song Falling in Love Again. Bye bye baby. Wow. I'm going bananas, La Isla bonita. Fake ending with holiday. And then she comes back to stage to sing Everybody as a Star by Sly in the Family Stone into first single everybody. And then here's a little moment. She enters the band, the singers and the dancers then leaves, and then Perot? Is that a clown? Yes. Well a clown comes on stage, but he was in the beginning. Inviting everyone then comes back on stage. Goodbye. Blowing kisses. And guess what? It's Madonna. Rips off the Tears of a Clown. It's me. Paliot. Keith Cameron gave it a bad review. The only thing I want fuck her. I just want to mention one line that will blow everyone's mind. Okay. One hesitates to say that at thirty five she's too old for this. Gun into my mouth. Well and now bring it up to point out that like she pushed past everyone's expectations so that now someone like a Taylor Swift or whatever is thirty seven years old and not no one even thinks for a second they're too old to be a pop star. Yeah, exactly. Because Madonna did it. You know? She put she was like, No. And Of course not. She hadn't she's like, I haven't peeked yet. Exactly. We're still waiting. Now your favorite movie, Dangre's Game, comes out while she's on tour, directed by the the great Abel Ferrara. Really sick. It's really complex, and I will say for like someone without the like great filmic mind of Patrick Sandberg, you might need to like Be open minded and also like For me, I had to like marinate afterwards for like an hour and like really use my big brain and think about what I had seen. Because I think what's so genius about what Able Ferrara does is that the f the surface layer, if you just buy into the surface layer, you will be outraged, you know? You will be like, this is misogynistic or whatever. And then you kind of back up and realize that actually it's a meta commentary about misogyny, about Hollywood. It's so brilliant the way it's done. Anyway sorry, I'll save it for the big pic, but It's the coolest movie she ever did. It's really cool. For sure. It's like It's avant garde. It really is Avon. It's the most risky high art independent. She's great in it. Her performance in it. Okay. Harvey Keitel's hair is absolutely satisfied. Maverick produced it. Yes. Which is fucking sick. But she's, you know, and maybe she was going for kind of like a gritty arthouse credibility, which is The timing of it is so interesting to me, but it it it's Like To me it's just such an unexpected move after all the sort of movies that she was doing. Yeah. And it's like, Lady Gaga, we're waiting. Where's your cool movie? It's kind of part and parcel with Body of Evidence, though. Even though Body of Evidence is a totally different kind of movie. It feels at least like You're going further in a direction and not like towards like blockbuster or like Family friendy comedy like a league of their own, you know? Like she's she's going like more depraved in a way because it's so more film festival. More illegible for the general population. Like the tone and the language of the movie is so scorched. Th like actually like my issue with the movie, if anything, is that I feel like it could have been funnier. Yeah, there's not one There but are inadvertently funny. But also I don't think I think that's like I like even realized later that I was like, Oh, um, what's the guy's name? Joe Russo? Joe Russo. I'm like, oh his like ham fisted over the top performance is like on purpose to be obscuring that kind of male ego. Totally. It's so genius. But Harvey Kitel's hair needs to be changed. But all yeah. I mean the hair is so but it's so like I'm this greasy, like kind of shitty guy. Well the fact that it's fucking able Ferrara's real wife Then plays his wife? But there's mind. It has this like kind of absurd like aesthetic romance to it to me. Like where the writing is so like corrosively nihilistic. And then it's like coupled with Madonna's kind of like Warholian glamorous actress. Performance. Right. Where she is kind of playing herself in one part of it. Yeah. You know? It's like it's a little bit camp, but it more than that, it just feels so like Yeah, it's almost not funny enough to be Camp. And it's not bad. The act is like actually sensational and what she does in it is like she gives her most naturalistic performance that I think she ever gave in a movie. It feels so real and lived in. But then she's playing an actress and we're seeing that actress's performance on top of it. So there's like layers to how heightened she's being or not, or how frustrated she is. She's incredible in it. You know, it's like It's the self reflexive meta referential kind of magic trick of an act job because she's like weirdly Playing an actress who's trying to be a serious actress, which is like also what she was doing. Yeah, but but that's that the great part where he's like you commercial bitch. You commercial piece of shit. She should be proud of this movie, is what I'm saying. And it looks fucking sick. It looks like a fashion would look nice. Because it's like incredible. There is one part where I'm like, oh the wig is not wigging here. Uh but okay. It's time to gain back some audience, you guys. We've maybe She went over the edge. She's she's reeling it back in a little bit. I'm sure someone was in her ear being like Okay. Okay. You've been in your Chloe seven bag. Yeah. Let's soften it up, babe. Let's so Back to being America's sweetheart, please. That's why we got the I'll remember single. For the film with honors. Honestly, a fucking forgotten classic. It's a wonderful movie. I loved that movie. I love that song. Directed by Alec. Ca she shein. Yes. Um It's wonderful. It is very like I'm sorry, I love a corny ballad and it's a it's a peak Madonna corny ballad. There's a great William Orbit. I don't think it's corny. Thank you. I think it's so beautiful that it surpasses corny. The video she's luminous. Stunning. Great eyebrows. Great eyebrows, good hair, great necklace. I didn't lock into the the uh the crew of this video. I don't know who did it, but go off. After that Unfortunately, she does erode a bit of the goodwill she re uh negotiated with I'll remember by appearing on David Letterman and saying the word fuck fourteen times. The most censored uh episode in American network television talk show history. She was hanging out with Tupac at this time. And she did tell Howard Stern that she had been with him the hours before the taping and he quote got her all riled up about life in general. So when I went on the show, I was feeling very gangster. I know exactly what she's talking about. And she smoked a joint. So she was uninhibited. Um she also said that Basically, backstage, they had been like, you should like do this, you should push him, or whatever. So she thought she was kind of playing with a bit, whatever it happened. There's an incredible Esquire profile by Norman Maylor. Mm-hmm. You guys don't know Norman Maylor, two time Pulitzer winning uh writer, journalism and film journalist and filmmaker. He was like an elder intellectual god. You know? And they were shot by Wayne Master and he's in the photos. Yes, because he's so f and he you know, he was such a famous person in his own right. And he really gets her. Like he like it's Yeah. Well I'll drop a link maybe in the show notes to the real recognized real. Norm Mailer's like, so you're talking for all women. And Madonna says, no, I'm not talking for all women. I've been accused for years and years, especially at the beginning of my career, of setting the women's movement back because I was being sexual in a traditional way with my corsets and pushup bras and garter belts. And feminists were beating the fuck out of me. What are you doing? You're sending out all the wrong messages to young girls. They should be using their heads, not their tits and their asses. My whole thing is that use all you have. All you have. Your sexuality, your femininity, your any testosterone you have inside of you, your intellect, use whatever you have and use bits and pieces wherever it's good. I love that. Yeah. That's my feminism. Whole hog. Yeah. That is my feminism. So to speak. And then the ending is really sweet where he just says, I want to leave you with an idea. I've come to the conclusion that you're a great artist. And she goes, Okay. And he goes, That's gonna be the theme of this piece that we have among us. What we have among us is our greatest living female artist. Boom. Norman Maylor, babe. Afterwards she's asked Save it for the Obit. Yeah. She's asked to present an award at the VMAs and Savily she hits up David Letterman and says, Why don't you come on with me? And they do. I fucking hate this. And get sexually harassed by Steven Tyler. Sexually harassed by fucking Steven Tyler. So they present an award, which Arosmith wins, and Steven Teller gets up there and is like, Madonna, I saw your book and then he goes, Joe Why do you think Madonna uses these two fingers to masturbate? And Joe Perry goes, Why? And Steam T goes, because they're mine. Then don't worry, Madonna comes to the mic and it goes, if it was your fingers, it's not masturbation. And then he's like, Well, you know, what is it then? She goes, It's sexual abuse Boom. And then anyways, that month she's jogging in Central Park and she meets a thirty year old Cuban American man named Carlos Leon. We start dating. First single of the next album comes out now. Oof. Secret. September twentieth, nineteen ninety four, written by Madonna Dallas Austin and Shep Pettibone. What a tune. Yeah. One of my faves. Something's coming over. Would you like me to read you the audio message that preceded the online release of the song on AOL. It's the production as part of this. Hello, all you cyberheads. Hello, all you cyberheads. Welcome to the nineties version of intimacy. You can hear me. You can even see me, but you can't touch me. It's wonderful. Also very s I think ten percent of all people in America were online at that point. So I already was. Same. I was in those AOL chat rooms, babe, pretending to be older. Um this was her thirty fifth c consecutive top ten single. It's an amazing song. The idea to go work with Dallas Austin was so genius. At that time he had been he had done the TLC album, the first TLC album, right? And he was part of this like incredible sound coming out of uh Atlanta. The video's fine. It's like iconic to me. Right. Directed by Melody McDaniel shows Madonna as a nightclip singer in Harlem. Yeah. Wearing a coat, looking over her shoulder. Yeah. Sig with The album comes out on October 25th, 1994. What say you about the cover? Listen. Is it the nose ring? No. I like the nose ring. I mean I love this record, so I just associate the cover with the record. I do like the art direction. I always liked the type that I like the color story. I think it's very nice. The pink and green and blue is very nice. Well what happened is originally Paolo Reversi had shot the cover. And the label next to those photos 'cause they were too quote unquote artsy. Oh meaning dark. Right. I think yeah I remember reading that they said that like it doesn't look like you. We want them we want it to look like you wanted a bright, colorful, poppy. Well we're trying to regain audience. We're trying to remind people that this is Madonna. So is it my favorite cover? No. Right. Shot by Patrick DeMarchelier. I really have it burned in my brain though of like the of the albums of nineteen ninety four. Like to me it was like it was like part and parcel with my alternative music. Like it was also alternative music. Do you know what I mean? Maybe it's the nose ring. Probably. So Babyface works on this album? She had become a big fan of the song When Can I See You? Um and he he's a master of Lush Ballads. So he shows up. Dallas Austin, who we mentioned, is twenty-three years old and has uh worked with on TLC. TLC, baby. And then Nellie Hooper. Uh, who famously worked uh was part of Massive Attack Attack and worked with Soul to Soul. He actually left working on the Massive Attack album Protection to come work with Madonna. Um but he I think also maybe more importantly to this case had produced Nothing Compares to You, the Sinead O Hunter song. And of course the first Bjork album. Cool choice. Love it. Love it. Great choices. She's really good at choosing collaborators. Okay, here's the themes of this album. She's Big Mad. She's Big Mad? Yes, she's Big Mad because you guys fucking focused on her sex life and didn't let her be an artist and didn't appreciate her gorgeous work of art. Exactly. You reduced it to something lurid, sensational. I do think another theme of this album, and we'll get into it when we talk about it, besides the anger is like loneliness and like feeling alienated. Which I guess is like goes hand in hand, right? But had she she had had a falling out with Sandra Bernhard. at this point. I think so. I think some may I don't remember the exact timing. She got angry at in the divorce. Yeah. Okay. This first song is Survival. Mission State. Love. Yeah, it's really good. Produ written by Madonna and Dallas Austin, but produced by Nellie Hooper. It's a gorgeous song. It's a perfect album opener. Um we talked about Secret already. Bedtime Stories is interesting because it's also a Vibes album. It is, but it's it there's something more melodic about it than erotica. Like it felt like an album that had more hits. Like on MTV and VH1 at the time. It is less cold. It's much warmer. Mm-hmm. It's much more like you luxuriate in it in a different way. Yeah. Um I'd rather be like warmer tones. Exactly. Yeah, because it's like probably came from Dallas and Babyface and beautiful R and B tunes. I'd rather be Your Lover featuring Michelle and De Gay Ocello, who at the time I believe was signed to Maverick. Shep Pettibone is not credited in the album booklet, but he actually received credit for the song because it came from one of the demos they made together. Tupac Chakur originally did the part of Michelle and De Gay Ocello, but allegedly They broke up. Well also he involved he got involved in that sexual assault case. And she was like, Nope, we're reclaiming our audience. We are rehabilitating our image. The inner publicist jumped out. I was I wonder if it was ever laid down, because I would think it would have leaked by now, but no one's ever heard it. Um Don't Stop, Madonna Dallas Austin and Colin Wolf, uh who plays bass on the song. And by the way, had worked with N W A. Cool. Um It's a good song. Inside of Me. Inside of me is really pretty. I love every song on this record. And Senami is so pretty. It has uh really underrated. Yeah, I love it. It definitely Nellie Hooper having the writing credit, I think makes a lot of sense with Dave Hall and Madonna. Madonna's w all the songs. Yeah, the back and forth Aliyah Sample. S. Obviously human nature, I think, is The second standout on here. Built up. That was a big deal at the time. The video but The song is built off a sample from main source. You know what? I am gonna find a way to work the Large Professor into the Madonna episode. Actually, Large Professor is not part of this because he had already left Main Source, but this is from the second Main Source album. The song is What You Need. Really crazy that main sources has writing credits. That sample is so like hits like crack. When you hear it. So good. It's crazy. Maybe one of the most successful samples. Ever in pop music. Couldn't agree more. It's really It's on a pretty high level. It's a pretty obvious song. It's like Martin Carey using Tom Tom Club level of like you just instantly get hooked in. Yeah. Nobody on earth listened to that second main source album, so I don't know how they found that sample, but um They like to scour and find something a little unexpected sometimes. This is just incredible. It's obviously her being like It's literal. I'm not sorry. Yeah. You know, I'm not your bitch. Don't hang your shit on me. But she's being very campy and over the top about it. So great. Like just as an example, like being and obviously I was a little older at this point, but and my parents had been had watched me watching Madonna and seen all her provocations up until that point. They'd also heard you say that you're not interested in mediocrity. They had your number. And so by the time this came out, they were like done trying to be like, that's too risque, don't watch that. And even though it's such like a a fetishy music video. It's like there's something that was so and like fun about it that it was like not offensive. I think it even proves her own point of being like, see, I was being funny. This is funny. Yeah, yeah. You know? It was sort of like, oh, there she goes again. Yeah. That was like attitude toward the video. Love the video. Love the in the dancing in the glass boxes. Probably shot again, Mondino. Would it sound better if I were a man? That's me to the mean comments on the band's plan uh episodes about my vocal fry. Yeah, what about my vocal fry, you guys? Yeah. Doesn't sound better. If it I were Patrick Sandberg. Would it sound better if I was a gay man? Yeah, if it was what's his name? Chris Ryan. Chris Ryan Vocal Fry. Would you like that? Would you like that? Zero Vocal Fry. Um the remixes are amazing. We just do not have the time or wherewithal to get into all the remixes, but this whole episode we've kind of bypassed like ten thousand remixes. They're just always there. Some blurking, bubbling up. What's that new like that like Guido remix of the song? It's like the club the real club remix. It's so fucking good. Um, yeah, the video is We talked, gorgeous. Um, it was oh, I will say it's important to mention the video was inspired by bondage illustrations by this artist called Eric Stanton, who had only ever had one show in his lifetime in nineteen eighty four at Dancatria. So still bringing back her like cultural roots. And it's choreographed by a twenty three year old named Jamie King. I also want to say Quickly or at some point. Uh-huh. that an integral part of Madonna's legacy Is that she holds the record. for the most number ones by any artist on any single billboard chart. Which is that she's had fifty number one songs on the electronic dance chart. Oh. And She's the only artist to have a number one on any chart like that in five separate decades. So throughout her work. Dance is obviously very important to her, but I do think it's a consideration with all of her records of like which one's topping the dance chart. Totally. Totally. Because she needs that every time and she gets it every time. Well it's it's a huge part of who she is as an artist. Um all right, Forbidden Love, great song. Mm-hmm. Love tried to welcome me. Great song. Title lifted uh title and chorus are lifted from Love Three, a poem by the Anglican priest George Herbert. Of course. She brings it every role, honey. Sorry, Anglican priests, bitch. She's she's reading widely and broadly, babe. Yeah. Um Sanctuary, just need a problem. Something I'm obsessed with. This song has writing credits for Madonna and Dallas Austin, also for Anne Prevan and Scott Cutler, who wrote the song Torn. Ooh I'm all out of faith. Wow. This is how I feel. This samples Herbie Hancock, Watermelon Man, and uses lines from the poem Voices by Walt Whitman, uh from Leaves of Grass. Heard of it. And then there's bedtime story. There we go. Written by a little lady called Björk. Yeah, a little hater. Well Here's the thing, Madonna's a fan. She's like, I want you to write something and as the story goes, Nelly Hooper was like, She wants to write something. She was like um I don't know. In her words, my instinct was to say no. I respect her, but it just didn't feel right. Um, but then she was like, Okay. She wrote a song initially called Let's Get Unconscious with the opening lyrics. Today is the last day that I'm using words. She's so Björk. When I was offered to write a song for Madonna, I couldn't really picture me doing a song that would suit her. But on second thought, I decided to do this to write the things I've always wanted to hear her say that she's never said. So that was Bjork's vision of what she wished Madonna would say. She later said she liked it and was happy she didn't. Yeah. It's a great fucking song. Totally. And it has You can't hear it and not hear Bjork's cadence. It's so the cadence of a Björk. Does Björk ever do the song? I feel like she should do it live or something because it's it so it feels like it's part of her discography. Totally. Marius DeVries is a writer on this too, has been working uh with them. For a while. This is really funny, Björk later confessed that Madonna actually got a few of the lyrics wrong. The original lyric said learning logic and reason, and Madonna sings leaving logic and reason to the arms of unconsciousness. Honestly, which one's more appealing to you? A or B. Right about now I'm thinking B. But the original demo did become a Bjork song. Uh Sweet Intuition. It's a B side of the Army of Me single. This is the one that I spent like a whole day listening to the remixes because there's so many good ones. It was I think it was a stroke of genius for her to work with Bjork and to do the song. I think it's a I for me it's the high of this album. But human nature is like the most like grabs you accessible, but like the like thing that takes me out of my body, like ascending is this song. It's so cool. It's also partially the video. The video is Which is a mark Romanic masterpiece. Just a real dolly ass orgy. Yes. Which was like scary and cool, though very although it's Well you know, 'cause he wanted to the bad Well, he was not wanted to. He was supposed to do the Bad Girl video. But I think he was just like not interested in the premise. Yeah. And But when he met with her about it, she was staying at this hotel in New York and she had with her the painting she always takes with her everywhere, My Birth by Frida Kolo. And he he saw it and he was like, Wow, it would be cool if you could do a video that kind of looked like that one day. And he kept that thought in his mind. And when he heard this song, he was like boom, we're doing that. And so that's why it's so like It's very that, right? It's Leonard Carrington. It's it's like that kind of like fantastical It's in the permanent collection of the MOMA. That part annoys me, I have to say, because it's just because it's so like art referency of course Moma liked that one. And the music. All her music videos should be in the permanent collection of MOM. Put them all in the Louvre. You don't have to reference Dali and Frida Kolo to get in the Moma. Come on. Stop being corny. Let's get unconscious. Me disagreeing about that being the high point of the album. What is your point? Because my high point is take a bow. It's okay well. I'm being a little bit of a queen with that one. That's a stone cold classic ballad. I also just think that video. It's so beautiful. You mean her audition tape for a Venus? Yeah. It's so beautiful. You mean her expensive, highly produced edition tape for it. It's so gorgeous. It's like drenched in romance. It's like Being Like twelve years old or however old I was when this came out, I wanted to like die. I was ready to throw myself off a ledge. That's how I feel right now. Because of the high drama of Take A Bow. Yeah. It's It's stunning. Babyface motherfucking snapped on this one. And obviously Madonna. There's a co writing song. the t queen of top line is fucking killing it here, but Th the orchid the full orchestra? Yeah, all the worlds of stage, her favorite thought. Her favorite. Her favorite introduction. She's been wanting to do that since the final shot of the like a prayer video. This song charted for thirty weeks. Cause it's incredible. Tying with Borderline is Madonna's longest running song on the Hot One Hundred. Um yeah, it's incredible. It's gorgeous. This is a slept on album. I'll say it. I think Erotica used to be the more slept on album. Bedtime Stories is really slept on. It's a really high point. I can't t determine I can I can't see any. No, but it's just because me and my friends go through phases of different Madonna albums all the time, like di like a different summers. Right. You know what I mean? When we go to like Spain or Fire Island or Mexico or wherever we're we're fagging out at at any given time. It's like suddenly we're doing only American life. Right. You know what I mean? Or we're doing only bedtime stories and we've gone through the phases of each of them. So I'm like, everyone loves this album. Right. I'm like, is it just me? No. Everyone should. Just to give respect, the video is directed by Michael Housman. Um And again, we Stunningly I made a joke, but it she did really want the part of Avita and this was a hundred percent. Like she wore brown uh contact lenses in the video? That I don't remember, did she? 'Cause that's really really pushing it. Uh some something like that. Um maybe she didn't. A real life bullfighter in it. Emilio Munoz. It's amazing. I yeah, I think this this album needs to be reevaluated. I don't know what it did in terms of regaining her audience. What do you think? Tig a Bao was major. It felt massive at the time. Yeah. It was inescapable. Take a bow was like don't speak, no doubt levels of like reaching my mother again and being like, I love it. You know? Like moms around the world were like I love it. Don't speak. It was also like This period of time in the nineties was like kind of the rise of VH1. Oh yeah. There had been NTV and then it kind of split off. Yeah there's MTV and there's VH1 and VH1 was playing more like adult contemporary videos and it was like about all the time. We were like About to tumble toward the Lilith Fair. You know what I'm saying? I do. It was like Sean Col then. Pollicole. She came, yeah. The cowboys were gone. We don't know where they went. Jewel was gonna save our souls. Cheryl Crow was Nipping at Madonna's heels. All she wanted to do was have some fun. But there was something that happened when VH1 became part of the cable package on everyone's television, which was that this show called Papa Video came out. And I don't know what year that was. Why would you do this at attention? We're literally five and a half hours in and I'm trying to wrap this shit up and then you fucking bring pop up video in as if I'm not don't want to talk about it. I know, but like okay, just quickly, pop up video started playing all the time like the like a prayer video. Because like videos that had like controversy or stories behind them had made good pop ups. And so like people were reading. Spiritual spiritual descendant and pop up video. True. And then people were sort of like This was like a moment in time where you people started reevaluating her earlier work. Yeah. So there was like a new appreciation. I don't even know if that was something that she planned or the label planned, but it was it worked. The reappraisal happen. Started happening. Okay. Well Take a bow, the show is over. Take a bow, the show is fucking over. Um Please join us next week. We will be the Celsius over the We're I'm cracked out, so I'll never sleep again. Come back next week where we will be kicking off um with Madonna's midnight pajama party at Webster Hall to celebrate bedtime stories in nineteen ninety five and taking it all the way through uh American life. So we'll see you next week. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplane. Our guest today was Patrick Sandberg. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderman and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Jacob Hornett. Executive producers for Bansplanner Gina Delvach and me, Yassi Salett. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavin, and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Pepper Roper, and also Sean Fennessey, Sarah Natov, and the Madonna Splane group chat. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Van Splane on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Who's that terrible lawyer who everybody hates? Aaron Brock. Oh my God. No, I'm sorry. I don't know who you're talking about.