Madonna enters this story already a superstar – eight-figure sales of her last album, this her third top-three hit of the year in Britain. “Into The Groove” is no kind of introduction, more a victory parade, and it’s become one of her calling-card singles. Perhaps because it’s a manifesto of sorts: not lyrically, but in the way that everything great about Madonna and her pop – movement, power, willpower, sex, hunger, vulnerability – is in here somewhere.
Actually, most of it’s in one place – the series of repeated “now I know you’re mine”s that serve as the bridge into the final chorus. At first she sings the line at the lower end of her range, with the husky strength that’s made her ballads so compelling, beckoning her dancer-lover closer. And then suddenly she can’t keep it in any more, and “now I know you’re mine!” rings out in her other voice, the sparky, raw, New York clubland hustler voice you get on “Burning Up”, “Holiday”, “Angel”. It’s pure triumph: the moment when a girl singing “you’re mine” to a guy in pop finally, irreversibly flips from domestication to predation.
But most of “Into The Groove” isn’t like that: unlike several of her previous singles which really were all about her and her teasing and shocking and winning the crowd, this is highly functional. A little bit freestyle, a little bit pop, it’s a good, modish dance record. You could imagine this as being by one of the post-disco club scene’s many two- or three-single acts, a Carol Jiani or a Stacey Q but with thinner vocals. Well, you could if Madonna’s presence wasn’t so unmistakable: anonymity’s the only flirtation she could never have pulled off.
Madonna is one of pop’s foundational figures – perhaps the last of them: one of the people without whom modern music just doesn’t decode properly. She’s the closest thing to an Elvis in my lifetime – someone who emerged out of populist, underappreciated musics and whose sheer charisma changed the culture – how pop singers (and their fans) dressed, danced, behaved, thought about themselves. That doesn’t mean all her records are good – though a remarkable number are, this included. “Only when I’m dancing can I feel this free”: this is the dancing queen all grown up, and determined to hold the spotlight on her own terms.
Score: 9
[Logged in users can award their own score]
Aaaaand that’s halfway.
*applause*
Well done.
This is a ten for me – she never got anywhere near this good again.
It used to be my clear favourite but I think I’ve heard it too often, and some of her other records are just amazing. It’s a high 9 though.
*more applause*
a ten from me, probably my last until the early 00s. as well as the glories tom captures, it’s the enormous certainty of its solipsism that’s so compelling – as you say, this is what’s inside the dancing queen’s “i hope this feeling never ends tonight” seems almost a deliberate denial ABBAs sad carping. as well as a switch from domestication to predation, a big leap is that it’s a female sung love song that’s not about the man and what he does (or doesn’t do, or wants me to do – should i?) but about her and how she feels. and she doesn’t care. she can have this man if she thinks he’s worth it and she fancies it, or she could not bother and it’s the satisfaction knowing that, rather than anything at all to do with him that’s what make her feel so free. on top of this she’s rocking the absolute perfect madonna look on the cover too.
“I’m wai-ting,” she coos at us at the beginning, as though we’ve been slow to catch up. Bearing in mind that there is a lot of Madonna – or lots of Madonnas – to get through on Popular, at this early stage here is a Madonna we all could love with her immense earrings, unshaven armpits, Elvis lips, wonderfully imperfect roots and an endearing underlying gangly awkwardness. At this point we are still able to trace Madonna back to the late days of disco, even to post-punk and No Wave, and certainly to New Pop (“Holiday” would have been unimaginable without The Lexicon Of Love). If “Like A Virgin” and “Material Girl” – yet more productions from the latter days of Chic – had already shown warning glimpses of stubborn ego, then Desperately Seeking Susan and “Into The Groove” signalled a temporary switchback. Watching Madonna interacting with and against Rosanna Arquette, effectively playing herself, you feel that for one of the rare times in her career she is genuinely happy and significantly free.
“Into The Groove” was co-written, produced and mostly played by Steve Bray, and it remains a marvel of metapop in that, although it can clearly be enjoyed and savoured on a high-grade dancefloor level – that Man Parrish electro stutter throughout, the triple salvos of emphasis in the chorus (“GET,” “BOY,” “YOUR”) – it is also one of the most sublime commentaries on the joy of music in itself, the way in which it can simultaneously absorb the body and free the soul. “Only when I’m dancing can I feel this free” might be the key pop lyric line of its era, and here, coupled with its immediate successor, “At night I lock the doors where no one else can see,” indicates the importance of music as a shelter of refuge from a belittling cold rationalist world – Travolta with his irritating family and crappy paint job who only truly exists when he is dancing. However, Madonna is also wise enough to realise that the shelter can easily become a barrier if one isn’t careful. “I’m tired of dancing here all by myself/Tonight I wanna dance with SOMEONE ELSE!”
So “Into The Groove” also represents a refractory move back into the world, approaching it, signalling that the singer’s central love of music, if expressed with the right articulacy and honesty, can reach out and be touched by whoever needs to touch her – “Live out your fantasy here with me” – and the final confident and ecstatic affirmation of “Now I know you’re mine!” shows that life has been reclaimed. This is one of the highest and noblest things that music, or any art form, can do, or at least act as a catalyst towards. In that locked room, through those grooves, she finds herself, and by transmitting her feelings outwards, she enables her Other to unlock that Rochester door and find her.
How phenomenally “Into The Groove” succeeded in this aim can quickly be demonstrated by Ciccone Youth’s “Into The Groove(y)” single from the following year; initially one feels that Sonic Youth are applying the AMM treatment, i.e. painting abstract noises atop the song (in their early mid-sixties days, AMM had the habit of playing contemporary hits such as “Barbara Ann” or “Lightning Strikes” at ear-splitting volume and then attempting to drown them out with their own strategems), turning it into a de Kooning canvas with a touch of Tackhead (those dentist’s drill drum samples at the beginning and end) – but then, via Mike Watt’s lovingly nerdy lead vocal, we realise it is a homage of love, and there is an electrifying and affecting moment halfway through the second chorus when Madonna’s original record, playing in perfect tandem with the band, suddenly comes into the picture to act as harmony with Watt’s lead, and we imagine him, in his locked bedroom, thrashing away at his starter guitar and singing along with the record, trying to keep up, putting the record to the very test which it celebrates. So the Ciccone Youth record closes the circle by confirming the original’s affirmation – and Madonna herself seems to have approved of it.
In the end, of course, “Into The Groove” signalled the triumph of Madonna’s will; boosted by Live Aid, she repeated the Frankie feat of keeping herself off number one as the revived “Holiday” swept back up to number two – and with “Crazy For You” still in the lower reaches of the Top 20, she was the first female artist to have three singles in the charts simultaneously since Ruby Murray thirty years previously. There was the uncomfortable moment at the climax of her Live Aid performance where she suddenly exclaims: “Sing it to the world – NOW I KNOW YOU’RE MINE!” and there was the palpable feeling that she did not mean that metaphorically. But that mindset(list) can be explored another time. For now, celebrate “Into The Groove” for its uncomplicated, elemental and superbly effective celebration of what music is capable of generating in a human being.
Finding it too difficult to talk about JUST this song and not everything after, the broader context of Madonna’s success (including how what she offered seemed to go down better in the UK than what Michael Jackson had…if you were to go by chart positions generally, but then she wasn’t quite that untouchable or troubled and able to be much more prolific).
Madonna v1 is eternally pleasing mainly for the simplicity, no real baggage or politics to either enrich or muddy proceedings, just the spark of a new icon rewriting rules and making up new ones as she went along, the world her playground and her playmates mostly under her spell from the beginning. I’d suggest she and this song aspire to sophistication without complication, brilliantly and succesfully. An invitation to dance, or follow any of the other suggestions (at least they still feel like suggestions at this point, turning to commands as her stature shot through the roof) she makes, couldn’t be more appealing.
That’s a really interesting idea – How would we feel about this record if it wasn’t by Madonna? The much-vaunted charisma always largely eludes me – I sense hard work and opportunism, but never much of an enticing or intriguing personality. Which isn’t something that I’d ever say about, say, Elvis or Michael Jackson, and Madonna is clearly in that order of stardom.
And yet, ‘Into The Groove’ would certainly be lesser without her, although a tremendous disco single. I certainly loved this when I was 12, and haven’t gone off it at any point. The pull of the dancefloor and the release of dancing are evoked as well here as anywhere.
And more applause. What a terrific halfway marker.
To Tom’s ‘she was already massive..’ point I’d just add that m. simply hadn’t put a foot wrong musically, video-wise, or any other wise since ‘Holiday’. In effect, she’d be immaculate for at least another year or two until some first wobbles around Who’s that girl? and the You can dance remix album. It was an incredible hot streak, one that still genuinely inspires.
Anyhow, as for this track, have loved it to death so almost can’t hear it now. I guess 9 does feel about right: ITG has to fall below Wuthering Heights/Whole lotta love-level blow-my-mind genius-ness, but it’s close.
I recently discovered thanks to youtube a track that evidently provided a good bit of ITG’s musical template: YMO’s 1000 Knives, e.g. here (esp., say, beginning 2 minutes in). Evidently that confirms Tom’s point that on one level ITG could have been any disco dolly’s record. But Madonna, the hardest working woman in show business at this point (and probably still), got it and deserved it all. Great stuff.
Hurrah. I prefer other Madonna songs – the idea that she never matched this is pure nonsense! – and this is partly because her incredibly rich, deep back catalogue lends itself well to forming more personal attachments to lesser-known cuts rather than the wedding-disco, still-ubiquitous staples.
But this would be an easy [10] for me; I don’t think it encapsulates Madonna herself so much as encapsulating the appeal of Pop Music itself. In fact, beyond the determination and hunger of “now I know you’re mine”, what stands out is how little of Madonna’s personality, charisma and ego need to be put into it. Contra “I’m not the same, I have no shame” or “I’m gonna break the circle, I’m gonna shake up the system”, it’s where she submits herself to something greater than herself, the vehicle she uses to create herself – she takes her personal relationship to music as a pop fan and makes it sound like life-changing, life-saving, the very best thing it’s possible to feel. Which it is.
10. Absolute 10. Everything good and fun about pop music in the ’80s is summed up on this single, pretty much. “Borderline” has a little more resonance for me personally, but I’ll take this one whenever it’s offered.
and congrats on the halfway mark, Tom.
Insightful review as always, and great comments too. I suppose from a more purist pop perspective, one could call it her greatest song – though I think she almost always hit the mark when aiming for more emotional/musically ambitious highs. Still, if this isn’t a 10, I don’t know what is!
If I may add a further opinion to the chorus, my full review (and one of every other Madonna single, eventually) relating to the song’s near-mythological status: http://iconography.tumblr.com/post/181297211/into-the-groove
Yes, people into Madonna should 100% be following Richaod’s blog!
Total joy and release. Particularly like the coquettish “at night I lock the door…”. For me, Like A Virgin and (especially) Material Girl (re 7: non-political???) were way too “look at meeeee”, and the delivery squeaky and irritating. The production on this makes it feel – like Dancing Queen – like a three minute high, a sustained hook with no flab whatsoever. I’m intrigued to know which Madonna 45s people think are better, but I’m assuming a whole lot of them are in bunny territory. 10.
Tom – hats off. Amazing. Good luck tonight. And congrats on the Pet Shop Boys piece too, you busy chap.
@#15. What’s better and unbunnyable? Ultimately Lucky Star is for me the more complete package…. a ripper of a song, and then one of the ultimate videos. *Here* was someone who was *really* ready for her close-up. The whole thing was aerobic but also intimate; danceable but intense and almost psychotically transfixingly sexy. It was like discovering a new energy source.
And, on a strictly personal level, the moment when the piano comes in at the end of the original mix of Holiday is a more perfect dancefloor memory for me than ITG’s grand final bridge. But….obviously these are very fine hairs I’m splitting here – all of these records are enormously pleasurable stepping-stones in as fine a pop career as we’ll ever see.
Of her records before this, Borderline and Burning Up would have got 10 from me, I think. But on the right day I like this just as much, so don’t worry about the mark too much![🙂](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/svg/1f642.svg)
Madonna on everyhit:
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In any event, I’d been really conflicted by “Lucky Star” (which I now like quite well) since Madonna was appropriating punkette regalia for girly-girl purposes, it seemed, and she was being really sexy, but I didn’t think she had the right to the regalia if she was just going to attract the world without also upending it. Oh yeah, and she was being really sexy.
With this one, I was on more familiar ground, ’cause it was a good dance track but it also scared me. Predatory indeed. I did not believe I could prove my love to her, if it came down to that.
I had to walk into a club and see a whole bunch of twenty-year olds dancing to this track to really grasp what a good song it was. I can’t explain that moment, since I’ve walked into clubs and seen people dancing to songs plenty of times, why this particular moment delivered this one. Was a strange, futuristic club where an indie woman’s band with two basses was booked, and someone somehow got me onto the guest list, and I didn’t quite get what this band was doing in this club, but walking into the room full of dancers, all this steel above them, and “Into The Groove” seemed to fit and create everything, the steel and the motion.
I’d loved “Everybody” early; it was a terrific New York song. I once saw a girl in a body-building competition doing her routine to it, “Dance and sing, get up and do your thing.” It’s still my favorite Madonna song, but it really was an everybody song, in that some unknown singer other than the unknown Madonna (1982) could have pulled it off too. Same is true of my second favorite (and unbunnied) Madonna, “Justify My Love” (though only Madonna could have taken that track to number two). Whereas I agree with Billy that “Into The Groove” would be lesser without her. But what she brings to it is insistence and even chill. I generally prefer lots of the ’80s freestyle and girl twirl one shots/three shots to Madonna – Shannon and Judy Torres and all, for their heat.
(By the way, when I did my album of the ’80s list in March ’90, Stacey Q’s Hard Machine was number two. I had Madonna’s You Can Dance at number six: a compilation, dance remixes.)
“Into The Groove” is probably the quintessential Madonna single, if there can be such a thing in such a chameleonic career. A great track, so simple and perfectly executed. Interesting that the production still stands up really well, which in part I put down to Madonna not yet needing (or feeling the need) to work with the producer de jour.
It’s effortless, an artist on top of her game. She isn’t trying to be cutting edge, just celebrating the groove.
8 from me.
And congratulations Tom!
It’s much of a muchness, with the Madonna songs I prefer being liable to change from hour to hour, but I’d say that on a par or higher are: “Deeper And Deeper”, “Bad Girl”, “Die Another Day”, “Justify My Love”, “Like A Prayer”, “Open Your Heart”…maybe “Take A Bow”, “Secret Garden”, “In This Life”, “Dress You Up”, “Burning Up” omg I love this bad bitch so much.
Oh sorry for inadvertent bunnying, I actually have no idea offhand which pre-1992 Madonna singles were UK No 1s and which weren’t.
Lex, you only brushed the bunny once there.
To be honest this didn’t stand out for me as much as “Like a Virgin” had the winter before (and I much preferred “Crazy For You” too), but looking back you could see this was someone making the logical next step to the top of the pile on both sides of the Atlantic. An act creating a fuss as much with what she said as what she sang (remember that “I saw losing my virginity as a career move” quote? – itself calculated to get her where she wanted to be). Creating a sensation, indeed causing a commotion, as pop acts have done at every stage in pop history, but this time, crucially, as a woman setting her own agenda. The image to turn heads and the music to go with it.
Punctum’s reference above to Madonna having three singles in the chart simultaneously doesn’t tell half the story. I have my trusty exercise book with me detailing the 1985 Top 30 week by week. “Material Girl” drops out of the 30 on 16 April, then there’s a 7-week gap before “Crazy For You” enters on 4 June. That goes 25-9-3-2-3-3-5-6-12-15-19-24; in its 8th week, 23 July, “Into The Groove” enters and goes 4-1-1-1-1-2-4-7-12-20-29; two weeks later, 6 August, “Holiday” re-enters and goes 5-2-3-6-14-23 (she’s at 1, 2 and 19 on 13 August). As “Into The Groove” leaves the top 10 on 17 September, “Angel” enters and goes 10-5-6-8-16-30; in its fourth week, 8 October, “Gambler” enters and goes 20-7-4-5-8-14-22; that leaves the top 30 on 26 November, and the following week “Dress You Up” enters and goes 12-5-8-9 by Christmas. Only four weeks at number one, but eight top ten hits in the year. As an overall chart presence it’s greater than FGTH or Abba at their peak, and no one’s had such an Elvis year since, well, Elvis.
Scroll back to 27 January 1984. I recently read a piece in a Manchester United fanzine by a bloke who was at the Hacienda that night, watching a young American singer low down on a bill including the Factory All Stars (a couple each from A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column and New Order) and Marcel King, the tragic singer of Sweet Sensation fame. It was going out live on The Tube, and the American singer had her first UK hit single at number 29 that week. I don’t know whether the United fanzine writer was aware of this, but he recorded his thought processes as follows:
“She looks alright.
“She’s on her own, probably knows nobody in the place, I could be in here.
“Mind you if she’s on her own you never know, could get clingy.
“Come to think of it, she looks a bit weird.
“Yep, definitely last pint of the night material.
“And anyway I’m bursting for a piss.”
“And that (he concluded) is why you never read about me and Madonna in the papers…”
It is a compelling record – song seems the wrong word for it somehow – one that, like the red shoes, forces you to dance.
As mentioned in previous threads I was working on a summer camp near Toledo, Ohio at the time this was a hit (on both sides of the atlantic) and it was interesting to see how some of my American co-workers – many of whom were dyed-in-the-wool ROCK fans – responded so positively to this – largely because the whole package of image and sound was so compelling – the post-punk attitude and look may well have sugared the pill of what was effectively the disco revival. Her success in the US Pop charts (rather than just in the dance charts) also seemed to allow them to afford her legitimacy.
I don’t think any other woman in Pop has maintained such a high profile AND artistically successful career as Madonna. We are halfway through Tom’s project and she is still as likely to produce a number 1 now as she was then. She has managed to do so by removing from the foreground most of the qualities that were previously associated with women performers – vulnerable/confessional lyrics rooted in a stable/authentic musical identity. Even songs which did appear confessional were less authentic than they may have first appeared.
Being based in dance music allows her the opportunity to change style in a way that seems innovative yet not as fractured as say Dylan or Bowie changing from one genre to another.
For me Madonna embodies the triumph of the will – summed up in her phrase Blonde Ambition – rather than channeling some essential outpouring of her soul. The imperative mode of the lyrics to Into the Groove reflect the commanding role which has assured her continuing success. It’s easy to submit to that will and let yourself go – even if I can’t warm to her as much as I can to other performers.
Yes I noticed via everyhit how there had been at least three Madonna singles per year between the very start of 1984 and the very end of 1987, 18 in total. Would this be some sort of record? I can think of at least two 00s groups who come close to this tho.
Brilliant record to reach the halfway stage.
I stumbled across Popular on a search engine just before Christmas last year and am very glad for that.
Have fun those of you attending this weekend.
and you can dance
for inspiration
#15: of the hits Madonna had already had by this time, I still prefer Material Girl to this. I love all the double meanings in the lyrics and the music is bubblegum of the highest order. Like Into the Groove, the edit of Holiday has suffered slightly from overfamiliarity, but the album version with all those pianos has somehow kept its surprise factor. I found it on picture disc just last week
Like A Virgin is the first Madonna song I can remember seeing, because the nine year old me fancied her almost as much as I fancied a girl in my class!
Of those which might be/are definitely bunnied, we’ll get to them by and by. For me, 9 is right for this, because I can think of at least one that I would rate higher. More generally, I agree with Lex at #20. As with Abba, my favourite Madonna song tends to be whichever one I heard last.
When we discussed Billie Jean on here, there was a comment to the effect that Jackson’s number ones total wasn’t a true reflection of his popularity. The same is true of Madonna in this period. As mentioned in #23 above, she seemed to have a single out every week, but this was the first one to go all the way. Strange that it wasn’t released in the States because the record label were worried about Madonna competing with herself.
When my late grandfather mentioned that he liked Desperately Seeking Susan, I was and remain flabbergasted. Until then I’d thought his knowledge of popular culture, particularly something as obviously ‘new’ and American as Madonna, was on a par with that of high court judges. My grandparents didn’t own a TV for years because my grandmother had very definite views on how rubbish the medium was.
Congratulations Tom on reaching the halfway point!
yes, congrats tom! what a fantastic project, you’ve helped me to discover most of these songs all over again.
madonna here regains the Dancing Queen momentum of her early work after several “gimmick” singles (“like a virgin” and “material girl”, though these are still brilliant pop songs) meant to quantify her personality for the public. once we knew who she was and what we could expect from her, she went on a run of classic singles unmatched by anyone save perhaps the Rolling Stones in ’65-’66 (the opposite gender side of the same psychosexual coin). a quick shout-out in particular to “crazy for you”, certainly one of the best ballads of the period (which could also be said of another Madonna song from the following year [not sure if the bunny would let me live to tell about mentioning it!]).
i agree with tom that this is the highest [9] possible. not really sure what keeps it from a top mark but there are certainly better Madonna singles (hello “Borderline”), so everyone wins!
have fun this weekend, gang! if i wasn’t on the other side of the pond i’d be right there with you.
I’m probably more or less on my own on this one. I have to struggle to remember when the various Madonna singles came and went, because they just don’t stand out. I have the same problem with the disco hits of a decade or so earlier. I found this (and her) at best indifferent. A chancer who knew how to sell herself. She is hugely admired for those Eighties virtues of hard work and enterprise, and of course the stuff about about being in control of her own companies. But the problem is, that doesn’t actually make this record much good. I don’t like coming on here to pan records but this one and almost anything else she did was grossly overrated. A 4 from me.
No 73 watch: 3 weeks into this record’s number run at the top the first house record to become a hit Colonel Abrams “Trapped”* entered the charts. It then all went a bit quiet pop chart wise on the house front until the more obviously house stuff one of which I can’t mention over a year later. But definitely the first slight tremor in what would become a cutural and musical earthquake…
* 24 years later its easy to forget this was classed as house at the time but it most defintely was and for many people its use in connection with this record was the first time they’d heard it
PS I agree with you Tim at 29 I wonder if it was purely about the music would Madonna be held in anywhere near the same esteem. Surely its more a case of a massively strong will making the most out of a pretty unremarkable “talent”…
re #24, her appeal was pretty ubiquitous by this point wasn’t it? to US rawk fans, and to quite a lot of people up the mid-80s alternative/indie/little underground cul de sac over here… madonna and prince pretty much encompassed the dance/pop it was ok to love, for a year or two. I refer as evidence to my small & yellowing collection of ‘Debris’ (a fanzine produced by Dave Haslam pre-Hacienda DJ superstardom) which enthusiastically endorsee the likes of ITG alongside the latest releases from the Fall, Tools you can Trust, the Bodines, Big Flame (ha! mentioned them again!), articles on tarkovsky and the left book club, etc etc.
@24,31. Relatedly, ITG was definitely the tipping point for other bands with Madonna. Almost immediately, at least where I was (NZ and Australia), all sorts of bands from metal to indie to bluegrass started dropping in covers of ITG into their sets, always getting a massive response when they did so. ITG’s really elastic under re-instrumentation and the different lyrical currents that others have nicely remarked upon that are wound ecstatically tight in the original, have the power to surprise (still) when given some space.
@30. I know what you’re saying about Mad. as a triumph of the will etc.. It does seem that there have always been, as it were, genetic superiors to her at every turn: better singers, better dancers, better looking popettes, more musically educated, whatever etc.. I do always think of her in connection with the swimming scenes in _Gattaca_ (go here if you’re interested) for this reason. Her genetic superiors see her surge past them, and demand to know how it’s so much as possible that she’s beating them, etc.. She didn’t save anything for the trip back. The over-achievement relative to her evident gifts makes her very inspiring to many (including me of course), but the skeptical note you sound and #29 sounds has been there from the beginning too, and does make some sense.
Just when you thought Madonna was going to be identified with a “Like A Virgin” or “Material Girl” as her defining moment, she one-ups everybody with a brilliant dance move. Here’s a surprising chart fact: this song never charted in the States. With so much Madonna on the charts, Sire Records decided to release this as a 12inch single only. That was a big seller, and the airplay for “Into The Groove” was enough to make you think that it was a big charted single, anyway. This is an obvious 10.
‘Manifesto’ is the word I’ve been looking for all the years I’ve been thinking about this record, and I’d like to give it a 10
… but every time I look it out I start out all enthusiasm, then I play it once or twice and I think ‘is that it?’. ‘A tremendous disco record’, ‘a sustained hook with no flab whatsoever’, ‘Only when I’m dancing can I feel this free’ – I want all those wonderful things to be true and in my head they are. But I’m not feeling it. The concept is perfect – in truth I’m probably too much in love with the idea to be able to spot it if there was – it just falls a little flat in the simple yet crucial area of being fun to listen to. Only a little, there’s nothing much wrong here that a good remix couldn’t sort out, or a stronger voice. But that’s the problem. In theory it’s an overwhelming experience impossible to derail – but it’s just … good.
(and congratulations to Tom and here’s to the second half – but can I make a personal plea before we plunge in: can everyone *please* stop saying ‘bunny’ all the time now? I think everyone understands the idea, and the last thing popular needs is an in-joke)
This was her “coronation” song wasn’t it? The record that an upcoming act builds towards, then – boom – they’re on top of the pile and seem to hit some pop-cultural sweet spot and be the center of the universe for a moment (though she managed it for quite a while).
This one almost seems too easy and light though somehow, I don’t know if that’s a flaw really but some of her other singles have more sustained pleasures for me. Still dead good but not quite truly brilliant.
And I still can’t hear it without thinking of her drying her armpits.
Okay, I will clearly be in a minority here.
1/ Every single sound in this record is horrible. Like every single sound in Level 42 records is horrible. I didn’t much like the sounds in 1985, and at 24 years’ distance they sound even tinnier and nastier. The production of this era is an absolute nadir for pop. This doesn’t have the lushness that one wants of a record of a record for which these claims are made: it sounds 10-bob, but in a bad way – not in a “we’ve got 10 bob and 10 minutes to capture the moment” way! It sounds like a kit record.
2/ I don’t buy the theory that the innuendoes about dancing by myself/wanting to dance with someone else/at night i lock the door are actually anything more than smutty innuendoes. Unless we’re also going to grant whoever wrote lyrics for Billy Idol retrospective “poet of the semiotics of dancing” status.
3/ That probably makes it sound like I hate the record; I don’t, I just can’t understand loving it that much. As Tom notes, it’s efficient, and that efficiency is what underwhelms me – on Borderline you sense Madonna is reaching for more than she can maybe achieve, and that seems charming; on Material Girl there’s the playful and ruthless construction of an image; here there’s just, “Right, time for a single.”
4/ Every single girl I knew in 1985 loved this record. Not a single boy did. Maybe that’s just Slough.
And when she appealed to the girlies (songs, image, dance beats), lads (sexy image) and critics/trendies (what she symbolised etc)she could hardly go wrong could she
but it was clever marketing and positioning that helped made prety workmanlike product so massive not the spark of magic that a Michael Jackson or a Prince brought to pop. Madonna could be seen as the Kevin Keegan of pop making it to the very top through sheer hard work and making the best of what they had…
I agree, but there can only ever be one Kevin Keegan of pop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-JtHe3hGUs
(which I quite like, by the way)
#30 re ‘Trapped’ interesting I’ve never thought of it as a House record really, probably just because it’s not straight 4/4 and for it’s similarity to the likes of ‘Axel F’ instrumentally. Great track in any case.
Trivial factoids: Later in ’85 a medley of Madonna hits by Mirage entered the top 100. ‘Into The Groove’ has been sampled by Norman Cook’s Mighty Dub Katz on ‘Only When I’m Dancing Do I Feel This Disco’ and Dannii Minogue’s lazy yet likeable ‘Don’t Wanna Lose This Feeling’. Curiously Madge has been less resistant to people sampling her as she’s been to licensing her songs for compilations.
I sympathise with Izzy a little re bunny excess. Sometimes I doubt whether it even exists to be honest…
although I said earlier that Madonna’s longevity reflects the triumph of her will to succeed I don’t accept that she is simply workmanlike and efficient. I think that she has written some fine lyrics – many of which are embargoed, but include ‘Live to tell’ (which wasn’t a number 1 IIRC) and she has creatively curated her own image – reframing/reinventing herself like Vivienne Westwood presenting her new season’s collection.
I think that what I find both compelling/repelling about her is that as much as I value artifice over authenticity for Madonna her artifice is or has become her authenticity. I think it’s why post-Desperately Seeking Susan (where her image was still unformed) she has failed to convince as an actress. I’m so used to her playing a role that when I see her on screen I think ‘oh, there’s Madonna’s new image’ – this may well be a problem for most pop star actors (esp. Bowie – apart from MWFTE) but seems particularly evident in her case.
Re 41 Or possibly she’s just rubbish at acting.
re 42 yeah….that did occur to me after I wrote that
Lots of intriguing comment here; I hope you don’t all burn up your Madonna thoughts in one thread, but somehow I doubt it.
Madonna’s albums were another of my brother’s departments, but I liked some of the tracks on those first two, especially “Burning Up”. It was to be a while before I really appreciated her in my own right. Re-listening to this, I can remember what triggered the switch: it was when she lost the squeaky cuteness in her voice, which I always found off-putting. Squeaky cuteness didn’t bother me in other performers’ songs, though, so perhaps it was the overtones of predatory squeaky cuteness that were, um, unsettling. As in the cover of Like a Virgin. Not for nothing did we and our friends call her “Madoona”. (Doona in Australian English = duvet (UK)/comforter (US). We were teenage boys, after all.)
Plenty of other things about Madonna marked her out as a performer worth attention, of course, including her playful shifts in persona in 1984-85. But “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl” (the first being her first Australian number one, for five weeks from 10 December 1984) both appealed to me more than “Into the Groove”, and personally still feel like the biggest early-Madonna landmarks.
Madonna owned the Australian charts for eight weeks in mid-1985, first for the double A-side of this and “Angel”, then for “Crazy for You”. This is certainly the highlight of that trio, but it just wasn’t for me, and these days I can only hear it as ’80s nostalgia rather than as a rediscovery… plus I’ve got to agree with the doubters that the production sounds a bit too ’80s-thin from this distance. So all your 9s and 10s will have to cancel out my 6.
(…7…6… I’m wavering. Not that it matters, it’s still got an awe-inspiring average mark up there.)
BTW, the version of ‘Into the groove’ on Madonna’s original greatest hits, _Immaculate Collection_, omits the repeated, growing in urgency, ‘now i know you’re mine’s to which Tom rightly draws attention. Given that the version of ‘Holiday’ on that collection omits its piano payoff, the Immac. collection should probably be avoided. (The problem’s worse for ITG because that song didn’t appear on a normal album in many territories.) The new collection _Celebration_ has properly lengthy versions of both ‘Holiday’ and ITG. Here’s hoping that the remastering isn’t brutally bricked/compressed loud.
Re:45 ITG on the Immaculate Collection album is a Shep Pettibone remix. The original demo recording taken from Desperately Seeking Susan soundtrack doesn’t appear in any vinyl format apparently.
Steve @40: yes very different than the blatant out and out house as we came to know it of the jack tracks that were hits a year later and it still had elements of straight disco but if you look at the reviews from dance columns around then “house” was most defintely one of the words used to describe it and from then on the recods started coming over and featuring in the club charts more or less without break…
I’d be interested to know when Jazzy M (the first dj to play house in this country) had his pirate radio show on in London – does anyone know if it was as early as 1986 – there would have been enough proper house being imported then I should imagine to base a radio show on it…
Further to my last comment above the similarities between “Trapped” and the stuff from later is far easier to see between it and the next big house hit “Love Can’t Turn Around” than the more stripped down and radical sound of “Jack Your Body”, “This Brutal House/Lets Get Brutal” or “Jack the Groove”.
Besides being the halfway marker this is also significant in that for the first time we’ve come to an artist who is more than likely to add to their current total of chart toppers on their own terms. (Elton only gets there in gimmicky collaborations and MJ isn’t around to enjoy his final number one).
I think this is probably the best number one of 1985. There’s a raw vulnerability to her vocals which added to Steve Bray’s melodic skills make her 1985-7 work her most appealing.
I’d struggle to think of an artist whose number one singles tell a more interesting story than Madonna’s do so I’m glad we’ve reached this point (as well as the halfway stage of course). Many of the posts above sum up the appeal of this song perfectly so I’ll just add that I’d give it a 10 as well although I think ‘Lucky Star’ edges it as my favourite Madonna overall – the production is just that bit more sprightly.