Comments on: MADONNA – “Into The Groove”

By: Brooksie

Brooksie — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:29:02 +0000

The ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ movie and this song were the definers of Madonna’s image at that point in time, even moreso than ‘Like A Virgin’ or ‘Material Girl’. It’s also the enduring image of ‘pop star’ Madonna, which was then superceded by her spiky hair megastar image from ‘True Blue’.

The fact that this song was never released in the US seems almost insane! It was the B-side on the ‘Angel’ single, because the record company didn’t want Madonna competing with herself as earlier in the year with Material Girl and Crazy For You. Really? Angel from Like A Virgin (which was a year old at the time) was a better choice for a single than this?! If they couldn’t hear the difference between a # 1 single and a # 5 single (which they ended up with) then they must have been deaf.

Very popular joke at the time: What’s Madonna got in common with toilet paper? They both get into the groove.

It’s hard for me to be objective about this song because it’s so burned into my pop memory, and as it’s still played a lot it doesn’t feel like it’s ever gone away. At the time Madonna was a fast-exploding pop star, but there was no collective “She’s been around for ever”. It’s very hard to remember when she was ‘fresh’. I still love it, but it’s very rooted in it’s era for me. When I hear it I’m back in ’85. This was the point at which pop’s new Princess became a Queen. 9 for me.

By: DV

DV — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:28:59 +0000

It is only the slightly duff intro that stops this from being the perfect pop record.

By: Paris Wilkens

Paris Wilkens — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:56:56 +0000

Thank-you! I am getting into it more and more! Some days it is hard to find the time though!

By: loomer

loomer — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:59:01 +0000

#54 There’s only a couple of nsfw pics there, honest!

Another factoid about “Into the Groove” was that Madonna had originally written it for the singer Cheyne, who was devastated that the song was pulled from her at the last minute and she wouldn’t get the chance to be the black Madonna after she had recorded her Mark Kamins produced version.

Here’s Cheyne’s US dance #1 “Call Me Mr Telephone”, a cover of an Italo disco song as was often the case back then – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZMsE8iaeDk

By: swanstep

swanstep — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:58:51 +0000

@53 Promethea. Good anecdote about Thorn (I too find that I’ve committed odd NME reviews/interviews from back to memory – strange whhat sticks with you). I wonder when that interview was: my experience was that people in other bands were *very* cutting about Madonna until after ITG. Hell, I was in a (no name) band at the time and we picked each early Mad. single that came out to death (while not-so-secretly enjoying dancing to it a lot). So, e.g., Holiday stole the baseline and chords from ABC’s ‘look of love” and ‘like A virgin’ just ever-so-slightly changed the bass-line to ‘billie jean’, and so on. Bitch bitch bitch. It was only after ITG and 1985 more generally (when Mad. had those three, excellent movie-soundtrack songs as well as appearing in Susan) that in some sense it became clear that Mad. was really going to be a cultural force to be reckoned with so that minor musical criticisms were always going to be beside the point.

As for Thorn. She’s quite the master musician, and has all the melodic chops/interests of the pre-rock era. At least until clever cloggs like the trip-hop crowd came along, she probably wasn’t herself much inclined to see the good in dance or simple pop music. And as a Marine Girl from way back, she probably found the boy-toy girly side of early Madonna hard to swallow, as it were, politically.

By: logged out Tracer Hand

logged out Tracer Hand — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:45:51 +0000

Madonna sang this song in the background during a club scene in Desperately Seeking Susan; it was to have been dubbed over with something else. But between the time of filming and the movie’s release Madonna just happened to become one of the biggest stars in the entire world so the producers left it in. She’s anonymous in that scene, virtually ignored, and while the song is great, I agree with The Lex that its greatness is in its lack of ambition – it knows its place and executes.

Madonna sounds a little weary, like she’s been singing this song for hours, and she sings the entire thing through her nose, which lends the whole deal an authentic bored Jersey girl vibe. A fluke of a hit, a genuinely fun song, but no better than hundreds of similar tracks from that time that have vanished forever. This song’s remarkable only in retrospect, which gives it a special place in my heart.

By: Steve Mannion

Steve Mannion — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:50:20 +0000

#52 ha ha yes i’d be afraid that blog was nsfw and devoted to page by page reviews of “SEX”

By: Promethea

Promethea — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:45:14 +0000

Madonna’s bestest!
Random memory: around this time Tracey Thorn of Everything But The Girl was asked in either Smash Hits or NME a series of questions which included “What is your favourite Madonna song?” Her response was along the lines of “God, they’re all so vile. I suppose Holiday is the least offensive.” As a result I have had an unreasoning hatred of Tracey ever since and cannot bear the sound of her voice. It’s not even as if I was, or am, that much of a Madonna fan, I was just outraged at the time that someone could be so dismissive of excellent pop. Strange the things you remember.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:07:55 +0000

URL disaster!

By: loomer

loomer — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:02:47 +0000

I thought this would get a 10. The best ever Madonna record and hence one of the best pop songs ever, easily up there with the likes of “Dancing Queen” as magical pop songs go.

It captured her at the perfect time, before she started to take herself too seriously and was less fun – though much bigger leaps would be made with her music to come. Joyous perfection.

And didn’t the bassline of this inspire The Pet Shop Boys? Not to mention the US dance #1 “Baby Talk” by Alisha, which was remixed by one Shep Pettibone – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SEOfwfRvAc

You might like this ultra in depth Madonna blog – http://madonnascrapbook.blogspot.com/

By: Gavin Wright

Gavin Wright — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:46:21 +0000

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.

By: MikeMCSG

MikeMCSG — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:07:10 +0000

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.

By: Andy Pandy

Andy Pandy — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:12:17 +0000

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”.

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:56:47 +0000

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…

By: thefatgit

thefatgit — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:08:38 +0000

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.

By: swanstep

swanstep — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:06:44 +0000

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.

By: Rory

Rory — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:34:23 +0000

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.)

By: lonepilgrim

lonepilgrim — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:37:33 +0000

re 42 yeah….that did occur to me after I wrote that

By: Mark M

Mark M — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:47:02 +0000

Re 41 Or possibly she’s just rubbish at acting.

By: lonepilgrim

lonepilgrim — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:10:42 +0000

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.

By: Steve Mannion

Steve Mannion — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:00:01 +0000

#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…

By: Izzy

Izzy — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:08:44 +0000

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)

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:09:13 +0000

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…

By: MichaelH

MichaelH — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:10:20 +0000

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.

By: LondonLee

LondonLee — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:27:51 +0000

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.