Category Archives: Music

{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.}

Papa, I know you’re going to be upset,

Cause I was always your little girl,

But you should know by now

I’m not a baby…

1986 ~ When Mom told me and my brother that our paternal grandmother had died, Dad was already at work. Yes, the day after he found out his mother was dead, he had to go to work, because when you’re a doctor you can’t always call in sick or bereft, especially when another life hangs in the balance. All through the day I pondered if he was all right. Having never seen my father cry, I wondered if he would. When he returned from work, I watched him walk into the family room like usual. There was none of the excitement that occasionally accompanied him home, just a slightly downtrodden look to him. I wanted to go up to him and hug him, but he’d never been that kind of man, and in the strict Catholic upbringing we had, I wasn’t that kind of boy. Instead, I think I did my best and uttered a heartfelt ‘I’m sorry’ when I finally got over my shyness.

The next day, we took him to the airport to make the long journey back to Philippines to bury his mother. I remember he wanted gum for the plane rides, so his ears wouldn’t pop. I had never met his mother. In fact, the only grandparent I ever knew was my Mom’s mother. Because of that, I held her a little closer to my heart. Grandparents were a luxury to me, and I listened with envy to tales of other kids seeing their grandma or grandpa every weekend or, fantasy of fantasies, having them live in the same house. As much as I cherished solitude, I longed for a large family on the periphery.

We hugged him good-bye, drove back home, and began the long wait for him to return.

You always taught me right from wrong

I need your help, Daddy, please be strong

I may be young at heart

But I know what I’m saying…

On an afternoon a few days later, the sun came in through my brother’s bedroom window spotlighting the tiny particles of dust in the air. My brother was outside somewhere, and I was alone. I shuffled idly through his cassettes, moving them out of the direct sunlight. Madonna’s ‘True Blue’ was still in its case. (Amazing fact: my brother is the one who bought the ‘True Blue’ album first.) I popped it into the tape player and the opening strings sounded. I’d heard it on the radio, and started to sing along, still not putting together what all the words meant.

The one you warned me all about

The one you said I could do without

We’re in an awful mess

And I don’t mean maybe…

Please

Papa don’t preach, I’m in trouble deep

Papa don’t preach, I’ve been losing sleep

But I made up my mind, I’m keeping my baby.

I didn’t quite know what the song was about. I was only ten, and ten-year-olds in 1986 were far less advanced and worldly than ten-year-olds today. But I did sense the note of rebellion, the cries against a father’s advice, and for some reason I couldn’t listen anymore. I quickly stopped the tape. For the first time ever I silenced Madonna.

My thoughts returned to Dad, who was somewhere in the Philippines now, at the funeral of his mother, and hearing Madonna tell a fictitious father not to preach seemed disrespectful. The fierce but veiled protectiveness I have always felt towards my family reared its overcompensating (and often nonsensical) head. (I once took great offense at a girl who mentioned that the milk I brought in for lunch – the milk that was packed by my Mom – was made at her Dad’s plant, as if she was somehow attacking my Mom and taking away from something she had done for me.)

The slightest bit of talk-back-to-your-parents defiance seemed ill-timed then, and I shut off ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ for the rest of the week that Dad was away. It felt like I’d be jinxing his safe return if I played something like that. I can’t explain it. At least, I can’t explain it well. Who knows, maybe such childlike rules made a difference. More likely they were just a waste of worry and concern for a ten-year-old. Whatever the case, Dad returned from the Philippines intact. He brought us back the miniature amenities from the plane – the neatest gifts to us kids. I studied him from a slight distance, wondering how something like this would change him, but couldn’t discern any distinctive differences. He had always been hard to read, at least for me.

He says that he’s going to marry me

We can raise a little family

Maybe we’ll be all right, it’s a sacrifice…

When Mom was going to school at night, Dad would be the one to tuck us in. On one evening, when I was missing her, I had dabbed some of her perfume on my neck, and as he tucked me in he said I smelled nice. Out of everything I had done to try to get his attention over the years – and out of all the convoluted ways in which I would attempt to gain his love in the future – it was my mother’s perfume that elicited one of the moments of affection I remember most fondly.

My father never talked to me about girls (and certainly not about boys). In fact he never talked to me about much. He taught his greatest lessons through example. A hard worker. A loyal husband. A good provider. Love wasn’t expressed or talked about, and rarely shown. He was not raised that way. As a child, that’s sometimes tough to understand or take. As an adult, I can understand a little better.

But my friends keep telling me to give it up

Saying I’m too young, I oughta live it up

What I need right now is some good advice

Please…

In some ways, it’s rather befitting that this song from 1986’s ‘True Blue’ album should so remind me of my father. It was, according to some, a metaphor of Madonna’s own ambivalent relationship with her father, masked in a fictional narrative about a girl getting pregnant and seeking her father’s love and approval over scolding and punishment. She would more directly address the theme in 1989’s ‘Oh Father’, but back then ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ was a more-than-compelling study of parent-child relationships, and let’s face it ~ like it or not ~ they form the basis of the people we will one day become.

My rebellion wouldn’t begin for a few years. For now I was still under the authority and ambivalent auspices of my father. Defiance was too far ahead for me to realize its worth.

Daddy, daddy if you could only see

Just how good he’s been treating me

You’d give us your blessing right now

Cause we are in love

We are in love…

That year ~ 1986 ~ I loved my father as I always would ~ unconditionally, helplessly, trepidatiously, hesitantly, earnestly, wistfully, willfully, reservedly, all-encompassingly ~ and it was unthinkable, as much as I might sometimes disagree with him, to ever tell him not to preach. My life-long dance with Madonna, which had just begun, found us – for the moment – at opposite ends of the ballroom.

Yet I was drawn to the song. It haunted me, calling from the future ~ from a time when I finally realized that parents weren’t perfect, a time when parents let their children down, a time when a father could be ashamed of his son. But that time hadn’t quite arrived, and I unknowingly – blissfully – basked in the final vestiges of the love that childhood protected. At the very least, I would always have that. I wasn’t quite ready to let that go, because when you lose the love of a parent, there’s nothing that ever makes up for it.

Don’t you stop loving me, Daddy…

Song #93: ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ ~ Fall 1986

{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.}

One of two new original songs from Madonna‘s third Greatest Hits collection, ‘Celebration’ , ‘Revolver’ is instantly catchy, but just as instantly forgettable. Used to decent effect on the opening gun-filled salvo of her MDNA Tour, with a cameo by a ridiculous Lil Wayne (she should choose her collaborators more carefully), it’s mostly filler, put over by the gun-toting choreography and Madonna’s sassy strutting.

Songs like this remind me that not every Madonna piece must be personal and profound, not every one must tell a story, conjure a childhood memory, soar into the stratosphere, or revisit a broken heart. Even if without ‘Revolver’, there would be no ‘Celebration.’

Song #92: ‘Revolver’ – Summer 2009

{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.}

Hey!

What?

Listen…

The title track to Madonna‘s third album, ‘True Blue’, this was a sugary-sweet pop confection recalling the girl groups of the 50’s, transformed 80’s-style. It was the perfect soundtrack to the summer – and that summer was certainly dominated by this album (such as the hot garage moment of ‘Live to Tell’). My memories of the original release of ‘True Blue’ were mostly of the ‘Make My Video’ contest that MTV had sponsored. The black and white nostalgic clip was vastly superior to Madonna’s own soundstage produced blue-soaked effort, Debi Mazar be damned. The song had greater relevance later in my life, in the early nineties.

I’ve had other lips

I’ve sailed a thousand ships

But no matter where I go

You’re the one for me, baby, this I know

Cause it’s true love,

You’re the one I’m dreaming of

Your heart fits me like a glove

 And I’m gonna be true blue, baby, I love you.

I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car of the young lady who would become my first serious girlfriend, riding to a music rehearsal. She played the flute, I played the oboe, and we both needed someone who played the piano. At the very end of spring we drove across the winding roads of upstate New York, en route to this piano accompanist who would be my only guide as I played some three-movement Handel piece for NYSSMA (don’t even ask what it stands for as I can’t be bothered to remember).

I’ve heard all the lines

I’ve cried oh so many times

Those teardrops they won’t fall again

I’m so excited cause you’re my best friend.

The sun was stationed in the clear blue sky. The trees were lush with that chartreuse shading signaling the start of the season. The grass was already high. I looked over at her hair blowing in the wind, catching the faint hint of her perfume as the wind whipped it around. I don’t know why – as we had always been only friends – but this song came on and I had a premonition that we would one day be more. That day would come that fall, but for now it was just a song playing in the car, and we were driving along with the windows open and the spring air filling the space, and the end of another school year was in sight, and I saw the world open up and become just a little bit brighter.

So if you should ever doubt,

Wonder what love is all about

Just think back and remember dear,

Those words whispered in your ear…

You never forget your first love. We were both so innocent then, so unscathed and unrocked by life. You can never get that back, and if you’re lucky enough to share that time in your life with someone kind, someone trustworthy, someone decent and honorable and good – it makes a binding pact with the world that things might be all right. That would prove invaluable – lifesaving, in fact – later in our journey. She would go on to be one of my best friends, and we survived our break-up and somehow became better, and closer, for it. Whenever I felt scared or lonely or lost faith in people, I looked to her. Sometimes I would call her, in the middle of the night, in sleepless college darkness, just to feel reassured. Sometimes I would visit her and her family to confirm that there was still kindness and goodness in the world. Sometimes it was enough just to remember our time together.

No more sadness,

I kiss it good-bye,

The sun is bursting right out of the sky,

 I’ve searched the whole world for someone like you…

Song #91 : ‘True Blue’ ~ Summer 1986/1992

{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 had all of me, you wanted more

Would you have married me if I were poor?

Guess if I was your treasury,

You’d have found the time to treasure me…

This stunning song, one of the strongest cuts from last year’s darkly gorgeous ‘MDNA’ album, was wisely added about half-way through the ‘MDNA’ tour, given a stripped-down acoustic makeover that made the scorchingly personal lyrics all the more powerful. In it, Madonna scolds a former paramour (likely Guy Ritchie) about preferring her bank account over her love. On paper it sounds a bit trite and forced – in song, and certainly in that live performance, it becomes so much more.

How come you can’t see, all that you need is right here with me?

Up until the end, all this pretend wasn’t for free…

I don’t know what it’s like to be used for my money (mostly because I’ve never a substantial amount of my own), and I’ve certainly never latched onto someone because they’ve had money either (having never dated a rich boy). But I’m told, and I can understand, that money is one of the biggest causes of break-ups and relationship troubles. (Tell it Suze Orman.) I suppose no one knows that more than Madonna, who reportedly moved into the billionaire’s club recently.

Hold me like your money,

Tell me that you want me

Spend your love on me

Spend your love on me.

Now you have your money

Spend it ’til there’s nothing

Spend your love on me,

Spend your love on me.

It’s hard to work up much empathy for a billionaire, but it does add another layer of complexity to the Madonna mystique. Imagine having that kind of money, the worries and responsibility that goes with being a corporation unto yourself. Sure, she has people who can take care of all of that, but how do you trust all of them? And how do you know if you’re being used? There’s whole other levels of worry, doubt, and dilemmas that grow exponentially as your net worth increases.

If we opened up a joint account,

Would it put an end to all your doubt?

Frankly if my name was Benjamin,

We wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in.

You played with my heart,

Til death do we part,

That’s what you said…

To some, this song might be read as another trifle of self-indulgence, but I don’t see it that way. I don’t hear a rich lady complaining about having too much money, I hear a woman crying out to be loved for herself as much as for her riches. I hear a person’s lament at not being the most important part of their beloved’s life. I hear the plaintive request that the passions a paramour feels include those of their partner. In essence, I hear the hurt of someone who will never be all that their loved one wants.

I want you to take me
Like you took your money
Take me in your arms
Until your last breath
I want you to hold me
Like you hold your money
Hold on to me
Til there’s nothing left

That’s a desperate place to be ~ offering your love but being wanted for something else you possess. Whether it’s money or fame or power, so much of life is simply bits for barter, this for that, and so little is unconditional. This is the sound of one of the richest women in the world begging for something more- something that money can’t buy. It is the currency of love.

Love spent
Really love spent
Yeah, I’m love spent
Wondering where the love went
Love spent
Yeah I’m love spent
Really love spent
Wondering where it all went