Category Archives: Music

Thirty-five years ago Madonna unleashed the iconic ‘Like A Prayer’ album upon a somewhat-suspecting world – a majestic and monumental album that has remained one of her most powerful musical statements all this time later. It formed an integral backdrop to some of the most formative years of my life, coming out at a time when I was thirteen going on fourteen – which is a key portion of life when music is often what matters most. I was lucky in that respect – lucky to have been alive and fully aware in the era of ‘Like A Prayer‘. 

While that feels like a long time ago, it’s testament to Madonna’s enduring relevance and power that her recent take on the title track is still a compelling watch – see below before we go back in time…

In March of 1989, I was but a wee 13-year-old at Wilbur H. Lynch Middle School in Amsterdam, New York. It had been a school year plagued with illness – the wreckage and remaining lung function of a difficult turn with asthma left me drained and often gasping for breath, while a burgeoning and debilitating onset of undiagnosed social anxiety kept my mental engagement removed and woefully private from my classmates. I was looking for a source of power in every sense, and my thirst for such inspiration was satiated as Madonna released the ‘Like A Prayer’ single. 

It was, and likely remains, the best kick-off single for any of her albums (with the possible exception of ‘Vogue’) and it was a critical, artistic, and commercial smash. In my life, I was equally thrilled and terrified by it – the flirtation with blasphemy, the undeniable pop-hook mastery of Patrick Leonard’s music, and the assertion of this woman as artistic provocateur proved impossible to resist. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was that spoke so deeply to me, I just felt its power, physically pricked by its heat, and the abandon, when I fully gave in to it, was like some spiritual orgasm that shook my entire body out of its teenage trappings. (And at that point in my life the only kneeling I had done had been at church, serving as an altar boy.)

The full album ended up scaring the shit out of my Catholic-raised ass, so much so that I almost smashed it beneath a rock in my backyard as proof of my devotion to God. (And we wonder what might be wrong with organized religion…) Eventually, I came around, and maybe it was all those shirtless gods from the ‘Express Yourself’ video or the ‘Love Song’ duet with her iconic equal Prince. 

The entire album was filled with sonic surprises, perhaps because Madonna was finally going deep, as she explored her imploding marriage on ‘Til Death Do Us Part‘ or the death of her mother on ‘Promise to Try‘. There were some light-hearted moments, such as the whimsical ‘Dear Jessie‘ and lushly-romantic ‘Cherish‘, but the main themes were family (see ‘Oh Father‘ and ‘Keep It Together‘) and religion (see ‘Pray for Spanish Eyes‘ and ‘Act of Contrition‘). It was a combustible combination, and a musical collection that stands up to the ultimate test of time. 

Three and a half decades later, I still find inspiration and strength in listening to this album, and music that manages to last that long is an artistic achievement. I leave you with this performance of ‘Like A Prayer’ from her 1990 Blonde Ambition Tour. It’s the stuff of immaculate pop icon history, and set the stage for a few decades of indelible ‘Prayer’ performances. Only the most powerful remain.

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people.

You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.

But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.

You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.

I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing a woman, then I don’t even know…

~ From ‘Barbie’, by Greta Gerwig

Each time they take a photograph
I lose a part I can’t get back
I wanna hide, this is the part where I detach

Each time they write a hateful word
Dragging my soul into the dirt
I wanna die
I never admit it, but it hurts…

When I was going through my formative years, girls ran the world. At least, they ran my world.

My Mom was the real head of our home. Dad may have outwardly been the powerhouse disciplinarian, but my brother and I knew that the way to get something we wanted was to have Mom on our side. We also saw how she ran the house, and the finances, and our lives. We watched as she went to graduate school, worked her way into a career as a nursing professor, and somehow kept us all going. 

My friends from school – Suzie, Rachel, Lynn, Jill, Missy, Ann, Kate – were the people who inspired me. I wanted to be one of them. They held all the power and sway over what mattered to me. They were smart and funny and caring and kind, they knew how to put themselves together, and, to put it into the simplicity of my childhood mind, they were just cooler. Boys were clunky, awkward, and so much slower to develop. In later years they would appeal in a different way, but for grade school I much preferred the company of females. Before sexuality and forced gender assignations got in the way, my nature related more to women than to men. In the way I grew up viewing the world, women were the better sex in every way. 

The mothers I knew – Suzie’s Mom, Missy’s Mom, Ann’s Mom,  – were the powerful people who, in my head and likely in reality, ran their own families and households. Best of all, they would guide me at times when I needed intelligence, grace, and strength. 

The teachers I had – all women until seventh grade (aside from physical education) – were the people who gave me the greatest gift of all: knowledge and a thirst for learning. 

And my grandmother, whose birthday would have been today, was from a time and place where she couldn’t see her own power, or how much she influenced my young life. She saw herself as a quiet and shy person, who only came into her own when surrounded by familiar people and family, who counted on her husband, even in the many years after he was gone. (He died before I was even born, and yet her allegiance and deference to him was part of her regular narrative.) I only saw her steely grit and strength, the way she survived on her own for most of her adult life, and the way she wove glamorous stories of Greta Garbo alongside tales of Peter the Rabbit (which may explain more than I realized at the time). 

I don’t wanna talk about it right now
Just hold me while I cry my eyes out
I’m not Joan of Arc, not yet
But I’m in the dark, yeah

I can’t be a superhero right now
Even hearts made out of steel can break down
I’m not Joan of Arc, not yet
I’m only human

Anything they did to me, said to me
Doesn’t mean a thing, ’cause you’re here with me now
Even when the world turns its back on me
There could be a war but I’m not going down.

Along with all those women who ran my world, there was one singer who cast a spell on me in the way that everyone should so have a spell cast upon them in their formative years, and Madonna was that guiding force. While she was consistently being pilloried for her sexiness, her desire, her provocation, for her survival as a woman and for her domination as an artist – all I saw was her majesty and might, and the way she ruled the pop world throughout the decades in which I grew into an adult.

One little lie I can ruin my day
Words are like weapons, they betray
When I am afraid, one word of kindness it can save me

I don’t wanna talk about it right now
Just hold me while I cry my eyes out
I’m not Joan of Arc, not yet
But I’m in the dark, yeah

I can’t be a superhero right now
Even hearts made out of steel can break down
I’m not Joan of Arc, not yet
I’m only human

Anything they did to me, said to me
Doesn’t mean a thing, ’cause you’re here with me now
Even when the world turns its back on me
There could be a war but I’m not going down

In the skewed view of my youth – skewed only in the view of the rest of the world – my limited and somehow visionary idea of women as superior to men worked to instill an idea of equality in my head, particularly when the  underlying-yet-ever-prevalent patriarchy worked to skew things the other way. It was only after the first blush of innocent youth that the world began encroaching its sexist and misogynistic awfulness upon my mind, and as my friends and classmates fell into socially-prescribed gender roles, the safety and happiness I felt in my matriarchal existence was quickly threatened, and just as quickly extinguished. When it suddenly wasn’t safe to be a girl or a woman, then it certainly wasn’t safe to want to be like a girl or a woman. 

I didn’t see that then, I only felt the diminishing of joy – something I likely attributed to growing up and losing the exuberant innocence of youth. But from that removal of joy came a slow substitute of strength and power, something that many women have had to conjure simply from being a woman in a world still so hostile to equality. 

Being destructive isn’t brave
They couldn’t say it to my face
One day I won’t care
But for the moment I’m not there
I’ll just close my eyes and let you catch me now

A gay man attempting to understand what it’s like to be a woman is as trifling and trivial as it can be noble and empowering, depending on how one goes about it. These days I approach such endeavors with wary humility, and a keen acknowledgment of all the limitations that my privilege and charmed life have bestowed upon my life and my viewpoint. I count myself extremely fortunate to have been raised by all the women who made my first view of the world one where women were in absolute control. That I still believe that to be true in so many ways is a would-be/should-be truth I will endeavor to bring into reality. 

I don’t wanna talk about it right now
Just hold me while I cry my eyes out
I’m not Joan of Arc, not yet
But I’m in the dark, oh yeah

More than that, I wonder how they feel at those moments when the world demands they be the women we think they should be, when the weight of being a woman is piled upon all their other roles as wives, mothers, professors, nurses, directors, aunts, sisters, and friends. I wonder how they do it, and in making me wonder that they open my heart to things I need to learn. Women still run my world.

I can’t be a superhero right now
Even hearts made out of steel can break down
I’m not Joan of Arc, not yet
I’m only human

Anything they did to me, said to me
Doesn’t mean a thing, ’cause you’re here with me now
Even when the world turns its back on me
There could be a war but I’m not going down

My mother’s mother, Marion Louise Mitchell, born on this day, March 13, in the year 1911, in the little town of Hoosick Falls, remains a guiding spirit in my life. To most who knew her in my lifetime, she was a quiet and docile grandmother, a somewhat anxious worrier who relied on her rosary beads and bible to see her through the nights. But that’s not entirely the woman I knew and loved. In addition to the unshakeable faith she exhibited, she was one of the first people to show me the power of a story – in the tales she would share with me and my brother as we snuggled into the twin bed that she had in the guest room of my childhood home – the same bed that my Mom slept in as a child. More than that, she shared stories of working in the arsenal during the war, stories of a childhood with four siblings, stories of nights out when she would dress up and dazzle, smoking a cigarette for effect even when she didn’t smoke the rest of the time. She embodied another lifetime – and another life of which we merely heard echoes – and in that world she raised the woman who would become my mother. 

Whenever I listen to this song, I think of my Gram, and all the women in my life, and I am grateful for them. 

Anything they did to me, said to me… Doesn’t mean a thing, ’cause you’re here with me now
Even when the world turns its back on me
There could be a war but I’m not Joan of Arc

Song #176 – ‘Joan Of Arc’ ~ Winter 2016

Last year Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’ album turned 25 and we celebrated its silver anniversary within this post. On this day, I am scheduled to find myself departing Boston from a weekend there, which is where my ‘Ray of Light’ experience originally took place. The world occasionally circles back in such reassuring fashion, though that night grow ever dimmer with each passing year, if I think about it hard enough, and pace myself there again, I can rekindle the faded magic of that time in my life. 

Mostly, it was a time of solitude, and for me that’s where the majority of my growth and resolve as a human being began. When you’re alone, you have to deal with the inner-voice, alternately heckling and pushing, degrading and supporting, celebrating and criticizing – and learning how to control and live with that before getting entangled with a romantic partner. It is, I still believe, one of the best ways of beginning a relationship, and I watched as I and many of my friends thought that finding a partner was the best way of finding ourselves, only to have it fizzle out because we didn’t even know who we were then. 

‘Ray of Light’ was setting the stage for my adult relationships, even if I felt entirely out of control and disastrously lost when it came to romance. Madonna’s lyrics, and the accompanying majesty of the ambient groove that opened the album (in the exquisite ‘Drowned World/Substitute for Love‘, which remains my favorite Madonna song) and drifted into more worldly concerns such as in ‘Swim‘ and the epic wonder of that thumping title track, resonated in ways that felt more personal than any of her albums prior or since. 

I traveled many miles listening to ‘Sky Fits Heaven‘, seeking and searching for a destination that looked like peace and tranquility, and never finding anything remotely close. I drove south with a boyfriend as ‘Nothing Really Matters‘ was released, desperately aiming to mold myself into a creature made full and complete by a command and understanding of love, only to lose him in a winter that ended up rivaling the lonely winter in which I first heard ‘Frozen‘. (In some ways it only made sense, as I met him when ‘The Power of Goodbye‘ was being released.) The more I learned, the less I knew, and I was too deep in it to see the overreaching arc of any progress or discovery I might be making. Whenever I got lost, ‘Ray of Light’ was the musical journey that set me back on the right path.

To this day, the music brings me back, as much as it brings me forward – a testament to the enduring power and legacy of this album – still the best in Madonna’s vast catalog and at this point unlikely to ever be topped. Music, when it is heard at the crux of winter and spring, on those warmer nights when the earth seems to be awakening again, and all sorts of possibility and hope ride on the Western wind, strikes at the heart, and renders me breathless. With ‘Ray of Light’, Madonna proved that she still knew how to cast a potent spell.