Category Archives: Music

“One shouldn’t ask oneself how a person flies or why, but simply start flying.” ~ Tomas Eloy Martinez, ‘Santa Evita’

It was a frigid evening in Rochester, New York in the earliest days of 1997, made more brutal by the fact that I had just come from a spell of 80 degree days in St. Croix. The sky was dark, even with all the snow on the ground. No more snow would come tonight – it was too cold. Strange, the way that works, and the way we understood it. I pulled the ridiculous faux leopard fur coat tighter around me, its satin lining sliding against my fuchsia satin shirt. Along with my dark tan from the few days of sun that now felt so far away, I made quite an absurd visage. A heavy black cross topped with a silver Christ figure dangled from my neck on a black silk cord. Taken together, this was my get-up for the Rochester stop of The Royal Rainbow Tour 1997, and I was heading to the movie theater with friends to see ‘Evita.’

My biggest fear in life is to be forgotten. ~ Evita Peron

 {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.}

THIS WILL BE A REVOLUTION OF INQUIRING FURTHER

OF NOT WORRYING ABOUT WINNING OTHER PEOPLE’S APPROVAL

OF NOT WISHING YOU WERE SOMEONE ELSE BUT PERFECTLY CONTENT TO BE WHO YOU ARE:

SOMEONE UNIQUE, AND RARE, AND FEARLESS.

I WANT TO START A REVOLUTION OF LOVE…

A grand orchestral introduction and a parade of shirtless minotaur-men ushered in the Madonna of 2015, as she took to the Grammy stage to kick off the ‘Rebel Heart’ era. Most pop stars have only one or two ‘eras’ for which they are known. Madonna has had many: ‘Like A Virgin‘, ‘True Blue‘, ‘Like A Prayer‘, ‘Blonde Ambition‘, ‘Erotica/Sex‘, ‘Evita‘, ‘Ray of Light‘, ‘Music‘, and ‘Confessions on a Dancefloor’. Her ‘Rebel Heart‘ era may be the most interesting and compelling, at least for long-time fans, as it is the first in which she has not enjoyed major mainstream success. And yet it may be her most artistically powerful and critically lauded.

In early 2015, after the gut-wrenching leak of much of the ‘Rebel Heart’ album, she set out to do a proper intro to her new work with the first single ‘Living For Love’. With an updated 90’s house feel and some gospel backing, it was first-rate Madonna – an ‘I Will Survive’ for the current generation – rousing, empowering, and gloriously uplifting.

FIRST YOU LOVE ME AND I LET YOU IN,

MADE ME FEEL LIKE I WAS BORN AGAIN

YOU EMPOWERED ME, YOU MADE ME STRONG

BUILT ME UP AND I COULD DO NO WRONG.

I LET DOWN MY GUARD, I FELL INTO YOUR ARMS

FORGOT WHO I WAS, I DIDN’T HEAR THE ALARMS

NOW I’M DOWN ON MY KNEES, ALONE IN THE DARK

I WAS BLIND TO YOUR GAME, YOU FIRED A SHOT IN MY HEART.

This was a Madonna draped in the richest red, her passion and heart on full unabashed display, but shot through with a prickly world-wariness that read less as bitter and more as wise. The anticipation and excitement for new Madonna music was always grander than it was for others, and this lead single was a throwback and a step forward. Like a phoenix, she would be called upon to rise a few times, and even though she’d always succeeded, nervousness greeted the arrival of any new work. It was as if I had some vested stake in the reception and success of one of her projects, as if somehow my existence depended in part on the existence of Madonna, as if a failure for her would somehow be a failure for me. That’s a little crazy, but that’s true fandom, and I’ll never apologize for it.

Thanks in no small part to its early leak, the song and video for ‘Living For Love’ failed to catch fire on the charts (with the notable exception of the Billboard Dance charts, where she would land a history-shattering #1, breaking her own record). In a landscape where melody and meaning are losing out to shock and salaciousness, the OG shock mistress barely made a dent. As for the video, I find it may be too deeply beautiful and symbolic to find a place in the current pop world. Yet it appears that Madonna is far beyond that, and has been for some time. For die-hard fans such as myself, the charts no longer as much, if anything at all. The lack of airplay and Billboard numbers has not diminished my love for Madonna’s music; if anything, I listen to it more intently and defiantly.

TOOK ME TO HEAVEN, LET ME FALL DOWN

NOW THAT IT’S OVER I’M GONNA CARRY ON

LIFTED ME UP AND WATCHED ME STUMBLE

AFTER THE HEARTACHE I’M GONNA CARRY ON

LIVING FOR LOVE,

I’M LIVING FOR LOVE

NOT GIVING UP

I’M GONNA CARRY ON

LIVING FOR LOVE

I’M LIVING FOR LOVE

NOT GONNA STOP

LOVE’S GONNA LIFT ME UP

As for my own little maelstrom of a life, at the time of this song’s release – right around the holidays – I had my own bit of family business to move beyond, so this song doubled as more than just a break-up rebound anthem. It was a clarion for anyone who’d been hurt or wronged, a way of working out the pain in a piece of pop music, the kind of therapy that Madonna has been giving me for years. The best kind.

I COULD GET CAUGHT UP IN BITTERNESS

BUT I’M NOT DWELLING ON THIS CRAZY MESS

I FOUND FREEDOM IN THE UGLY TRUTH

I DESERVE THE BEST AND IT’S NOT YOU

YOU’VE BROKEN MY HEART, BUT YOU CAN’T BREAK ME DOWN

NOT FALLING APART, ONCE WAS LOST NOW I’M FOUND

PICKED UP MY CROWN, PUT IT BACK ON MY HEAD

I CAN FORGIVE, BUT I WILL NEVER FORGET

The best revenge is happiness. The best way to finding peace is to put your faith in love. Not in being loved, but in loving even when it’s not returned. It’s a waste, and, worse, a source of anger, to continue to wish for people to be fair and righteous, to love you as you have loved them. It’s a certain guarantee of heartbreak to rely upon others to provide such a safe haven.

Yet in spite of this, I will love, without condition or expectation, and I will put my faith in that.

TOOK ME TO HEAVEN, LET ME FALL DOWN

NOW THAT IT’S OVER I’M GONNA CARRY ON

LIFTED ME UP AND WATCHED ME STUMBLE

AFTER THE HEARTACHE I’M GONNA CARRY ON

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LIVING FOR LOVE,

I’M LIVING FOR LOVE

NOT GIVING UP

I’M GONNA CARRY ON

LIVING FOR LOVE

I’M LIVING FOR LOVE

NOT GONNA STOP

LOVE’S GONNA LIFT ME UP

As I watched Madonna at the Grammy Awards last winter, premiering her new song for most of the world, I felt a little better, the way Madonna always made me feel a little better. At one point she spun in a circle, tossed her hair forward and back, then led her dancers in sweetly-choreographed abandon, much the same way she bounced around to ‘Like A Virgin’ three decades ago.

The spark was still there. The girl was still inspiring. Best of all, I still needed her.

LIVING FOR LOVE,

I’M LIVING FOR LOVE

NOT GIVING UP

I’M GONNA CARRY ON

LIVING FOR LOVE

I’M LIVING FOR LOVE

NOT GONNA STOP

LOVE’S GONNA LIFT ME UP

SONG #118 – ‘Living For Love’ ~ Winter 2015

{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.}

YOU’RE GONNA LOVE THIS

YOU CAN’T TOUCH THIS

CAUSE I’M A BAD BITCH!

Here is the colorful set of stairs she playfully climbed.

Here is the red water fountain from which she sipped.

Here is the bar where she dumped a drink down a cute male model’s throat.

This is the Standard High Line, where Madonna filmed her latest video – ‘Bitch I’m Madonna’ – the last single from the amazing ‘Rebel Heart’ album. For some of us die-hard Madonna fans, every place she inhabited – no matter how fleetingly – is sacrosanct ground. We worship such locations as though they were little shrines to Our Lady of Perpetual Reincarnation. (The only reason we ever went to the Gaiety was to be in an actual place that Madonna had also been in. I swear.)

When I found myself ensconced at the Standard, I made a point of seeking out some of the spots where she filmed the video, and I felt the same thrill as I did when passing into that seedy theater where some of ‘Sex’ was shot. Decades later, I am riding up in the elevator to the top of the hotel. Psychedelic and surreal videos play on the walls, while foreboding orchestral music taunts from the blackness above.

Here she may have risen, I think with a giddy burst of excitement.

The floors of the Standard, accessible only by those with a proper key card, silently and invisibly zoom past. Pop scenes continue to unfurl on the video screen – Julie Andrews in ‘The Sound of Music’ juxtaposed with an abundance of bare-breasted ladies – as I reach the upper floors. The doors open to a brilliant white hallway. Everything is brighter this high in the sky.

WE HIT THE ELEVATOR RIGHT UP TO THE ROOFTOP

THE BASS IS PUMPING, MAKES ME WANNA SCREW THE TOP OFF

YEAH WE’LL BE DRINKING AND NOBODY’S GONNA STOP US

AND WE’LL BE KISSING ANYBODY THAT’S AROUND US.

Like the greatest Madonna songs, ‘Bitch I’m Madonna’ is, more than anything else, inspirational. It makes me feel like I can do anything. Act like a forty-year-old fool. Be brave. Take all my clothes off in front of an entire city. It’s the same feeling Madonna inspired when I was a frightened little boy, dancing in a neighbor’s basement and forcing myself to be seen and heard, the same feeling I had when I traveled to Russia at the height of summer, and the same feeling I had when I drove through an early spring night blasting her ‘MDNA’ album. It’s something that no other artist has yet to inspire in me, this sense of courage to be completely myself in the face of a world that wants us only to conform. Madonna does that for me, and no matter what anyone else might say or think of the woman, it’s something that has literally saved my life. Best of all, it’s something that can never be taken away.

I JUST WANNA HAVE FUN TONIGHT!

PULL ME UNDER THE FLASHING LIGHT!

LET ME BLOW UP THIS HOUSE TONIGHT!

I walk around the hallway where some of the video was shot. Bending over to take a sip of water from the red fountain, I pause while my friend Chris takes a picture. Outside the gym area, a circular window looks out onto water. In the center of it, far in the distance, stands the Statue of Liberty – the same one that made a cameo in Madonna’s’Papa Don’t Preach’ video. At this point in her career, it is almost impossible to avoid self-references, and there’s a certain sadness in that. A sorrow in the way that it must feel constricting. Memories can be chains that bind, and the past can be a lugubrious albatross that lurks behind every turn, showing up just when you think you’d gone far enough beyond what you wanted to escape. I look out the window and wonder if Madonna looked out the same one, longing for something.

Brazen, blistering and bodacious, ‘Bitch I’m Madonna’ manages to be classic and new Madonna at once. The sound is of the moment; the attitude is one she’s had from the beginning. A rallying anthem for fun and good times (much like ‘Turn Up the Radio’) it’s a desperate plea for throwing caution to the wind, and for proving that we can still go hard all night long and meet the break of dawn. In the city of New York, it’s the perfect music of the night.

WE’RE JUMPING IN THE POOL AND SWIMMING WITH OUR CLOTHES ON

I POURED A BEER INTO MY SHOE AND GOT MY FREAK ON

THE NEIGHBOR’S PISSED AND SAYS HE’S GONNA CALL THE FIVE-O

IF THEY SHOW UP THEN WE ARE GONNA GIVE A GOOD SHOW

I JUST WANNA GO OUT TONIGHT!

PULL ME UNDER THE FLASHING LIGHT!

LET ME BLOW UP THIS HOUSE TONIGHT!

Many of us have had such nights in the city, when the phone is telling you it’s 4 AM and you don’t believe it, so you end up crawling to some diner because you still don’t want it to end. It’s that romantic possibility of a few more minutes of the moment, when anything still might happen, or when you know it won’t but you like the company and feeling so much you can’t face closing your eyes to it. A night that’s so good that the arrival of morning is not met with relief or rejoicing, but almost sadness.

WE GO HARD OR WE GO HOME

WE GONNA DO THIS ALL NIGHT LONG

WE GET FREAKY IF YOU WANT

NAH, NAH, NAH, NAH, NAH…

BITCH I’M MADONNA.

Whenever I feel down or apprehensive about something, when the world is waiting to strike through the heart with its cold indifference, I put on a song like this. It builds me up from within, giving me an internal armor that lets me be the man everyone thinks I am – the guy who doesn’t care, who can charge through life confident and collected, put-together and perfectly secure in who he is.

It doesn’t matter that it’s not exactly true. Confidence can be built from the ground up. On the roof-deck of the Standard, looking out over what might as well be the whole world, I feel invincible – and for that one moment, I am.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

YOU CAN’T MESS WITH THIS LUCKY STAR.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

SONG #117: ‘Bitch I’m Madonna’ ~ Now, 2015

{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.}

A million miles later
We walked through the valley of the darkest night
We made it through the fire
We’re scarred and we’re bruised, but our hearts will guide us
Together
I know our love’s gonna last forever
We’re gonna be alright
Tonight

In a record-setting fourth-song-in-a-row-from-a-single-album, the Madonna Timeline has once again randomly skipped to a ‘Rebel Heart’ track. This time it’s ‘Hold Tight’ which features a straight-from-the-radio-even-if-it-won’t-be-played-on-it percussive percolator that finds Madonna espousing clichwd-verses of the everything’s-gonna-be-all-right sort. For me, it’s pure filler, but I think if she found a live venue for this (with some serious drums filling the stage, as seemed to be a possibility in the advance video peeks of tour rehearsal footage) it might make me a bigger fan.

For the moment, this is a filler in the Timeline too. We are getting closer to the final twenty-five percent of Madonna songs left on the iTunes circle for this Timeline, but there are still a few gems and jewels with memories to rival the best – after all, we have yet to hit – ‘Express Yourself’ or ‘Vogue’ – two monumental songs from the Madonna canon that speak wonderful words, elicit lovely memories, and conjure some life-changing moments. For now, just hold tight…

We’ll live with no limits
We’ll dance in the middle of the freezing rain
With you and I in it
Survive the eye of a hurricane
Together
We’re gonna make this better
We’re gonna be alright tonight

Hold tight
As long as you’re by my side
Hold tight
Everything’s gonna be alright

Only love, only love tonight
Lights off, we’re burning so bright
Hold tight
Everything’s gonna be alright

SONG #116: ‘Hold Tight’ – Spring 2015

There are two widely acknowledged but mostly-just-perceived failures in the course of Madonna’s long and winding career. The first and most spectacular would have to be her ‘Sex’ book. Along with her ‘Erotica album, it remains the most striking milestone in three decades of controversy. After that the most notable failure would probably be considered the ‘American Life’ album and video. In the aftermath of each she put out fall albums that resurrected a career that wasn’t quite prepared to be nailed to the cross. The first was ‘Bedtime Stories‘ following ‘Erotica.’ The second (and the one for which we are celebrating a 10th anniversary this week) is ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’ following ‘American Life.’

To be fair there were successful endeavors after those low-points (the ‘Girlie Show Tour’ and the ‘Reinvention Tour’ were actually the most immediate follow-ups – evidence that Madonna on tour is a foolproof way to win over everyone all over again) but I think it’s her musical output after each questionable career lull that is the true mark of her merit.

Despite the crowd-pleasing closest-to-a-greatest-hits-tour-she’ll-likely-ever-do ‘Reinvention’ jaunt of 2004, the reparation to the ‘American Life’-scarred Madonna only came to full fruition in the fall of 2005. She’d just broken a bunch of bones falling off a spooked horse, and the weeks of recuperation in advance of her new album left her chomping at the bit. When she is hungry for a hit – commercial or artistic – Madonna is at her best. When the world has counted her out, she comes back better than ever. By the time ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’ was released, the time was ripe for a Madonna Renaissance.

With its brilliant, if somewhat predictable, sampling of the classic Abba arpeggios, lead single ‘Hung Up’ was huge. An immense international hit that brought Madonna near the top of the charts again, it barreled into November with a stomping bass-line and catchy chorus that stampeded dance clubs and brought back a bit of glamour to a tired scene. The video was a cheeky ode to ‘Saturday Night Fever’, and no one but Madonna could have melded the 70’s, 80’s and current dance music so effectively.

Dance music was where she had first made her indelible mark, and whenever she seemed to be losing her way, a dance classic brought her back home. (See ‘Ray of Light’.) ‘Confessions’ was literally a non-stop dance explosion, each track segueing seamlessly into the next, yet the songs were gorgeously distinctive enough to stand on their own – a nifty hat trick that’s more difficult that it might seem.

No matter what transgressions Madonna may have perpetrated in the past, all is forgiven when she returns to the dance floor. ‘Confessions’ was a love letter to her most die-hard fans, but a brilliant record on its own terms, garnering almost universal praise and re-establishing her prominence in the fickle pop culture world.

The ‘Confessions’ era of 2005 was a pivotal return to form for Madonna, one that winked at the past while looking unflinchingly toward the future. With its perky pastiche of dance music inspired by the previous three decades, it was a pleasant reminder of what Madonna did better than anybody else. Yet there were deeper things at work too, with admittedly-confessional lyrics that brought some substantive heft to the twinkling mirrorball surface. When she snarls, “Just watch me burn” in ‘Let It Will Be’ and invokes the listener to “Wrestle with your darkness” in ‘Isaac’ she’s not just laying down meaningless word-play over driving beats – she’s seeking something closer to a spiritual exercise, some essence of the human experience that might remain when the lights come up on the dance floor.

It’s strange that I should remember events that happened twenty years ago better than I remember what happened yesterday, but that’s what being 40 years old does to a person, and quite frankly things often seemed a lot more exciting then. Well, not so much exciting as simply less predictable. In November of 1995, when I was first moving into the Boston condo, things were decidedly chaotic, even if it was mostly on an emotional plane. (That particular plane has never been exactly stable anyway.)

Madonna, aiming for a softer, quieter image in the months leading up to ‘Evita’ had released her first compilation of ballads, ‘Something to Remember’ and I traveled into Boston to pick up a copy from Newbury Comics. Back then there was a store by Government Center (before the one at Quincy Market opened). It was a drab, gray day – typical of a New England November, and a slight mist was hanging in the air. Not even falling, really, it was more like a very thick fog that disappeared as soon as you tried to disappear into it. I walked by the unremarkable City Hall building, surrounded by further drabness, and the city felt shrouded in a sheath of gray, everything muted and quiet like the murky beginning of the album.

Pausing at the top of the stairs that led down to Faneuil Hall I opened up the liner notes and read the songs she had chosen for this one, looking at the elegant photos and wardrobe from her recent Versace shoot. Each entry would eventually have its own memory attached to it. The new ones would have theirs as well, even if I didn’t know them yet. Together, they were a way of looking back…

1. I Want You

2. I’ll Remember

3. Take A Bow

4. You’ll See

5. Crazy For You

6. This Used To Be My Playground

7. Live To Tell

8. Love Don’t Live Here Anymore

9. Something To Remember

10. Forbidden Love

11. One More Chance

12. Rain

13. Oh Father

14. I Want You (orchestral version)

I looked around as Madonna’s collaboration with Massive Attack percolated in my ears. Across the expanse, I could see the beginnings of the walk that would lead to Beacon Hill, where the first man I ever kissed might have still lived. I’d lost track of him the year before. He almost broke my heart, but I was not yet bitter. I wondered, as I often did, what had or would become of him. Beneath his plain white sheets, in the sunny then dark fall in which we met, there had been some measure of love, or at least some fleeting bit of affection that might pass as love for the very desperate (of which I had to count myself). He was gone now, and would remain so, but that was ok. I mean, I was ok with it by that time.

Turning back and looking down over the cobblestone patch that marked the entrance to Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, I thought of my mother. She had first taken us there a number of years ago, and we had stayed at a Holiday Inn just a few streets down. We watched ‘E.T.’ in the movie theater, and my brother and she had cried. I forced myself not to, knowing that once I started I might never stop. We’d gone to Quincy Market and ate pizza in the food hall. The bull markets fascinated us with their useless and overpriced items, and shops like The Nature Company and Geoclassics held allure with their semi-precious stones and minerals. Even in the midst of Boston, the pull of nature held me rapt as a kid. I went through a few visits in my head, as ‘I’ll Remember’ played in the background.

By the time ‘Take A Bow’ began, I was walking down the stairs, covered in the finest mist blowing in from the harbor. This was only the beginning. A Boston winter was rarely an easy time. Far worse was in store for us, and the foam-capped sea, tumultuous and churning, mirrored the raging heart, and all of it under the lunacy of the moon made for a memorable few months. As soft and quiet as these ballads were, beneath them roared an emotional tempest. Yet because I did not know what was to come, I faced it all with some foolhardy courage, born from sheer ignorance, and fostered in unwitting innocence. I was only twenty years old.

Twenty years later, I still remember.

{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.}

Woke up this morning feeling good that you were gone
Hurt for a while, but I’m finally moving on
Said it, did it, hit it, quit it
Then you let it go
See you tryin’ to call me, but I blocked you on my phone
It took a minute, but now I’m feeling strong
It almost killed me, but I’m better off alone
Now you’re saying that you’re sorry, I don’t wanna know
Better face the fact you had to go

Saucy, sassy, brash, and brilliant, this is Madonna giving a grand fuck-off to those paramours who have done her wrong. With a reggae-inspired beat, it’s a departure from almost every other song she’s done. (Though a bit of the feel did make it into the ‘Erotica’ save-the-world anomaly ‘Why’s It So Hard’.)

This wasn’t a particular highlight of the ‘Rebel Heart‘ album for me, but to each their own. It has since grown on me after enjoying Madonna’s rendition of it on her current tour. As the penultimate song, it carries the weight of a finale, even if it falls a bit flat in the end.

I know you’d like it if I sat at home and cried
But that ain’t gonna happen, here’s the reason why
When we did it, I’ll admit it, wasn’t satisfied
When the gun was loaded you were never on the side
I’m popping bottles that you can’t even afford
I’m throwing parties and you won’t get in the door
Said it, get it, love it, hate it
I don’t care no more
Tell me how it feels to be ignored

For that performance, Madonna has been bringing up a special co-dancer for the last portion of it. She spanks them, kicks them in the ass, and presents them with a surprise gift (usually a banana). Guests so far have included Amy Schumer, Anderson Cooper, and, when I saw her in Boston, her ten-year-old son David who was celebrating a birthday that night. Some raised eyebrows at a kid being named the ‘Unapologetic Bitch’ but when Madonna’s your mother, well, it works.

The song itself carries a classic Madonna mantra: she’s not sorry, and she never will be. In this instance, such a stance seems justified, and the seething anger of the lyrics is tempered only by the ability of Madonna to move forward without giving her wrong-doer a second thought. Cold, brutal, and the best method of survival, it masks hidden hurt and regret, something much of Madonna’s work manages to convey. A complex notion from a complex woman, and all the more compelling because of it.

It might sound like I’m an unapologetic bitch
But sometimes you know I gotta call it like it is
It might sound like I’m an unapologetic bitch
But sometimes you know I gotta call it like it is

You know you never really knew how much you loved me, till you lost me
Did you?
You know you never knew how much your selfish bullshit cost me
Well, fuck you

SONG #115: ‘Unapologetic Bitch’ – Late Summer 2015

{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’s only fitting that the Madonna Timeline is shifting to songs from the current ‘Rebel Heart’ era, as Madonna is out and about on her ‘Rebel Heart’ tour. A thorough review of the show I saw in Boston is forthcoming, but for now a Madonna Timeline to whet the appetite.

Originally released at the tail end of 2014 in the midst of the disastrous leak that saw most of the ‘Rebel Heart’ album exposed well before its time, ‘Ghosttown’ received universal praise, a magnificently haunting video, but little promotion. In the tumultuous scramble for how best to salvage Madonna’s greatest album since ‘Ray of Light’ it seems the powers-that-be jetted from one song (‘Living For Love‘) to another (‘Ghosttown’) to another (‘Bitch I’m Madonna‘) hoping one would instantly ignite. Of course, without any sort of singular sustained or focused promo push on a single one, each made little impact. That’s a damn shame, as ‘Ghosttown’ is easily one of the most moving songs of her last three albums.

MAYBE IT WAS ALL TOO MUCH

TOO MUCH FOR A MAN TO TAKE

EVERYTHING’S BOUND TO BREAK

SOONER OR LATER, SOONER OR LATER

YOU’RE ALL THAT I CAN TRUST

FACING THE DARKEST DAYS

EVERYONE RAN AWAY

WE’RE GONNA STAY HERE, WE’RE GONNA STAY HERE

I KNOW YOU’RE SCARED TONIGHT

I’LL NEVER LEAVE YOUR SIDE

WHEN IT ALL FALLS, WHEN IT ALL FALLS DOWN

I’LL BE YOUR FIRE WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT

WHEN THERE’S NO ONE, NO ONE ELSE AROUND

WE’LL BE TWO SOULS IN A GHOSTTOWN

WHEN THE WORLD GETS COLD, I’LL BE YOUR COVER

LET’S JUST HOLD ONTO EACH OTHER

WHEN IT ALL FALLS, WHEN IT ALL FALLS DOWN

WE’LL BE TWO SOULS IN A GHOSTTOWN

A post-apocalyptic love song, it touched on a timely theme that the entire ‘˜Rebel Heart’ album expounded upon: the survival of the soul through the act of love. Having just made it through the god-awful winter of 2015, where snow covered and ravaged the Northeast for a good four months straight, many of us could relate to what it was like having to hold onto each other to get us through the dark times.

I would sit in the dim gray rooms of early morning, typing away on my lap-top, its glowing screen the only portal to light, and I remember feeling like that winter would never stop. Storm after snow-storm left us shut in, my regular trips to Boston canceled over and over again. It was the longest I’d been away from that favorite city in over a decade. I felt isolated, removed.

I listened to this song like a mantra. When tears threatened, it quelled them. When anger arose, it calmed me. Some songs were made for helping us get through things.

TELL ME HOW WE GOT THIS FAR

EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF

EVERYTHING’S GONE TO HELL

WE GOTTA STAY STRONG, WE’RE GONNA HOLD ON

THIS WORLD HAS TURNED TO DUST

ALL WE’VE GOT LEFT IS LOVE

MIGHT AS WELL START WITH US

SINGING A NEW SONG, SOMETHING TO BUILD ON

I KNOW YOU’RE SCARED TONIGHT

I’LL NEVER LEAVE YOUR SIDE

WHEN IT ALL FALLS, WHEN IT ALL FALLS DOWN

I’LL BE YOUR FIRE WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT

WHEN THERE’S NO ONE, NO ONE ELSE AROUND

WE’LL BE TWO SOULS IN A GHOSTTOWN

WHEN THE WORLD GETS COLD, I’LL BE YOUR COVER

LET’S JUST HOLD ONTO EACH OTHER

WHEN IT ALL FALLS, WHEN IT ALL FALLS DOWN

WE’LL BE TWO SOULS IN A GHOSTTOWN

How did we get through it? Andy was here. And JoAnn made a visit. And even in the midst of snow, my work pal Ginny and I would brave the road to Starbucks for a mid-day escape of laughter and fun and vital escape. Pumping gas or shopping for groceries, I’d look into the eyes of strangers and feel a sympathetic understanding, some sense of ‘we’re-all-in-this-together’ that made things better. I’m not usually so attuned to others, so willing to let down my guard and shared in an experience, but sometimes it gets you through the day – and a terrible winter.

Madonna was reaching out too, in her music was a new warmth and vulnerability not quite there on her otherwise-scorching ‘MDNA’ album and its predecessor ‘Hard Candy’. The ‘Rebel Heart’ era was ushering in a red-hot yet heartfelt woman who seemed to feel rather keenly the need to connect again. We were all ready for it.

I KNOW WE’RE ALRIGHT

‘CAUSE WE’LL NEVER BE ALONE IN THIS MAD MAD, IN THIS MAD MAD WORLD

EVEN WITH NO LIGHT

WE’RE GONNA SHINE LIKE GOLD IN THIS MAD MAD, IN THIS MAD MAD WORLD

WHEN IT ALL FALLS, WHEN IT ALL FALLS DOWN

I’LL BE YOUR FIRE WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT

WHEN THERE’S NO ONE, NO ONE ELSE AROUND

WE’LL BE TWO SOULS IN A GHOSTTOWN

WHEN IT ALL FALLS, WHEN IT ALL FALLS DOWN

I’LL BE YOUR FIRE WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT

WHEN THERE’S NO ONE, NO ONE ELSE AROUND

WE’LL BE TWO SOULS IN A GHOSTTOWN

WHEN THE WORLD GETS COLD, I’LL BE YOUR COVER

LET’S JUST HOLD ONTO EACH OTHER

WHEN IT ALL FALLS, WHEN IT ALL FALLS DOWN

WE’LL BE TWO SOULS IN A GHOSTTOWN

WHEN IT ALL FALLS, WHEN IT ALL FALLS DOWN

WE’LL BE TWO SOULS IN A GHOSTTOWN 

Though the song made the aforementioned lack of impact, it came with one of the most beautiful videos of Madonna’s career, featuring Terrence Howard and telling a hopeful story of being the last few people left standing, and coming together in the midst of a ruined world.

Madonna has made a life of rising from the ashes of any burnt-out shell of destruction – whether said doom was of her own making or someone else’s. She’s rebounded from all sorts of calamitous scandals, from caustic relationships, from failed marriages, and from personal and professional failures. That resiliency is at the core of ‘Ghosttown’ – it’s raw, it’s romantic, and it’s the only road to salvation she’s ever known.

SONG #114 – ‘Ghosttown’ ~ Late Winter/Early Spring 2015

{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.}

[On the eve of my 40th birthday, a most-fitting Madonna Timeline: the title track to her latest album (and current tour) ~ ‘Rebel Heart.’ The demo leaked early, and remains, in my humble opinion, the superior version, but I’ll include the more acoustic and stripped-down album version at the end, as that’s almost as good.]

When Madonna turned 40, or shortly before or after, she delved into yoga and put out her magnificent (and yet-to-be-topped) album ‘Ray of Light.’ According to a New York Times interview at the time, yoga had brought about a profound transformation in the once-material now-ethereal girl. At one yoga session she once found herself in a particularly strenuous pose and suddenly just started crying, letting out emotional baggage she’d been carrying for 40 years. I’ve always been struck by that image, and I’ve since wondered what will come of me when I hit 40. I guess we’re about to find out. Will the torrents of four decades of pain be released or relieved? Will I heave forth some cleansing expulsion of pent-up sadness or anger or fear? Will I rejoice in a new freedom? Somehow, I don’t think it will be as dramatic as all that. It’s just another day, and a Monday at that. Still, like it or not, the number means something, even if it’s been impressed upon us by a society hungry for drama and terrified of aging.

I LIVED MY LIFE LIKE A MASOCHIST 

HEARING MY FATHER SAY, “TOLD YOU SO, TOLD YOU SO.

WHY CAN’T YOU BE LIKE THE OTHER GIRLS?”

I SAID, “OH NO, THAT’S NOT ME,

AND I DON’T THINK THAT IT’LL EVER BE.”

The steady stream of water falls hot from the shower head. I stand there in the wet, stilled suddenly by the woman who has never failed to thrill me, and thirty years into her storied career the words and music touch me like the very first time. As her new song sounds brilliantly against the tile of the bathroom, I stop in my scrubbing, look through watery eyes, and simply listen. So much of my shower and car music is Madonna, but most of the time it’s background noise. Far more intent on testing out a new Aveda body wash or jockeying the Ice Blue Show Queen out of a bottleneck situation, I hear her, but don’t always listen. On this night, I do. Standing there, naked and quiet, I listen to ‘Rebel Heart’ while water surrounds me. Forget a reinvention, this is a rebirth. Thirty-nine years into my life, it feels like a baptism.

Her voice reveals further shades of vulnerability, with an underlying resilience that has allowed her to survive, and thrive, this far into an entertainment career, unrivaled by almost everyone. In ‘Rebel Heart’ she was a little girl, a grown woman, and the very sensitive human who registered hurt and love in ways both wizened and misunderstood.

THOUGHT I BELONGED TO A DIFFERENT TRIBE

WALKING ALONE, NEVER SATISFIED, SATISFIED 

TRIED TO FIT IN BUT IT WASN’T ME, 

I SAID, “OH NO, I WANT MORE,

THAT’S NOT WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR.” 

It is just another number, and tomorrow is just another day, yet there is an albatross of significance to the person turning forty years old. Society has largely assembled such an onus, creating a false notion of anxiety upon hitting the much-maligned milestone. Some, like Madonna, have pushed back against such limitations, railing in opposition to the notion of the prim, proper, and age-appropriate – subjective terms at best, ageist and elitist at worst.

In that respect, it is not the number that scares me. It’s the question of whether I’m where I want to be, four decades into this journey. That’s a question that has plagued me since I was first cognizant, and I hope it bothers me until the day I die.

SO I TOOK THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED BY AND I BARELY MADE IT OUT ALIVE

THROUGH THE DARKNESS SOMEHOW I SURVIVED

TOUGH LOVE – I KNEW IT FROM THE START, DEEP DOWN IN THE DEPTH OF MY REBEL HEART.

During my freshman year at Brandeis, I took an Introduction to Astronomy course. I thought it would be all stars and moons and romantic dreamy prose, so when it turned out to be mostly physics and difficult calculations, I was less than thrilled. The scope of it, however, was impressive, and on clear November nights, we’d ascend to the top of the science building and view the skies through telescopes and binoculars, and begin to feel just how large the universe was. Up until then I’d eyed my professor’s unruly and unkempt beard with disdain, judging his soiled jeans and dilapidated belt with profound displeasure. Now, I realized something. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. He simply knew it didn’t matter. Not when other worlds expanded ad infinitum, not when we were smaller than specks of dust in both time and distance.

Whenever these big-picture conundrums rear their weighty, philosophical heads, I panic a bit. There’s nothing reassuring about being nothing, and it’s frightening to think about how minute our place in this world is. To combat that, part of my existence has been dedicated to making myself seem larger-than-life. Maybe Madonna does that subconsciously too. It’s a fear of oblivion, a fear of not being known, a fear of not mattering. ‘Rebel Heart’ might be her way of reassuring us, and herself, that it’s ok. We did what we had to do to survive, to feel safe and secure and prominent when the reality of the universe was doing everything it could to make us feel small and insignificant. We acted out, we dressed outrageously, we thrashed our bodies and brains to excesses of emotion just to leave an effect, an impression. We loved ourselves because sometimes it felt like no one else in the world did, and even if we were faking it, there was truth and loneliness and hope in that.

At times of feeling unseen and small, when the universe expands in terrifyingly exponential form – unending and beyond the scope of my limited comprehension – I try to shrink the view, to narrow my focus on the most minute particle I can hold in my hand. There may be something to this theory of relativity after all. A ragged cube of salt, a jagged piece of sand, an oblong grain of rice, or a seed in a sea of thousands of seeds – there is comfort in carrying the whole of their existence in the wrinkled landscape of an upturned palm. I limit my gaze to a single coneflower, and follow the circles to its very center, or blow off all but a single parachute of a dandelion seed.

A drop of water joins another, collecting en masse, running into tiny rivulets, gaining in volume, rushing into small streams, raging into rivers, surging into seas, overflowing into oceans and finding their sunlit way into the sky again, in sunbeams transporting them back to the clouds, from which they will fall again. The push and pull, the rise and fall, the ebb and flow – it begins and ends and begins again.

OUTGROWN MY PAST AND I’VE SHED MY SKIN, LETTING IT GO AND I’LL START AGAIN, START AGAIN

NEVER LOOK BACK, IT’S A WASTE OF TIME

I SAID, ‘OH YEAH, THIS IS ME, AND I’M RIGHT HERE WHERE I WANNA BE.”

I SAID, ‘HELL YEAH! THIS IS ME, RIGHT WHERE I’M SUPPOSED TO BE.”

Above me, the shower spurts more hot water over my head. It runs down my body, this body that has grown around me for almost forty years, that has carried and cushioned me from a hard world. Here, a scar on my shoulder from when I scraped the rough bottom of my parents’ pool – there, above my knee, a recent red welt from where a bamboo stake pierced the skin in an over-zealous pruning expedition. I watch a drop of water travel down from my chest, pausing for some literal navel gazing around the spot where they cut me off from my mother, and follow it as it drips off the tip of my sex, landing on my toe and trickling away down the drain. I stare down at the glistening, damp patch of hair surrounding where I’d create life if ever I were to have a child. I know now, and I’ve known all my life, that I will never use it for that purpose. I won’t have children. Turning forty won’t change my thoughts on that, but it does cause pause, and wonder. It also brings up the prospect of mortality looming on a distant horizon. I’m probably about halfway there. What, if anything, will I leave behind?

I’ve tried different ways of leaving a legacy, desperate attempts at not being forgotten – attention-getting antics, doing something or wearing something or writing something that wants only to be remembered. I won’t have anyone who will tell my stories later on, just what exists here, in this virtual online realm, a ghost until my host stops receiving payments, and then a page that cannot be located. One day I may only be an Error – Not Found. Then will I truly be gone? I don’t know. I don’t know how dark that place may be.

Until that darkness arrives, however, I will be here. Even if it’s futile, I’ll go down fighting. I will do my best to display a galvanized compassion, to uphold a nobility that may not even count for much in this world. Even if it doesn’t matter to anyone else, it matters to me. Maybe these words will live on, maybe they won’t, but for now, for this day and night, I am here. You are here. We are here, and we are together.

The shower stops. The song ends. I wipe the water off of my face. Tomorrow I will be 40.

Madonna has said that ‘Rebel Heart’ is the embodiment of two sides of her personality – the rebellious controversial part, and the romantic softer side. It’s a fitting juxtaposition: a warrior is nothing without heart, and a heart cannot beat without some protection. It seems both strange and inevitable that thirty years into her game, and one day short of forty years into my life, she has become the woman warrior forging the way to the future – unstoppable, heroic, and brave.

SO I TOOK THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED BY AND I BARELY MADE IT OUT ALIVE

THROUGH THE DARKNESS SOMEHOW I SURVIVED

TOUGH LOVE – I KNEW IT FROM THE START, DEEP DOWN IN THE DEPTH OF MY REBEL HEART.

IN MY REBEL HEART… IN MY REBEL HEART.

SONG #113: ‘Rebel Heart’ – Right Now