Category Archives: Madonna

{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.}

When I move a certain way, I feel an ache I’ve kept at bay

A hairline break that’s taking hold, A metal that I thought was gold,

And pure so sure it struck a vein, I wanted you to feel the same,

So when you did ignite a spark, Rescue me from all this dark,

See our hearts are intertwined, Then I’m free, free of mine,

I’m falling free…

A non-traditional Madonna Timeline entry, as I have yet to make a memory that corresponds with ‘Falling Free’… or perhaps I’m making that memory now. Across the stark, barely-snowy landscape, an equally stark string of piano notes rings out. In this winter of so much discontent, I yearn to be free too. In the remnants of relationships once held so dear, in the aftermath of battles fought long and hard, I seek some sense of understanding, some reason for why, but nothing comes of it. I draw closer to Andy then, as much as I can, but even he only lets me so near.

See our hearts are intertwined,

And then I’m free, I’m free of mine.

Deep and pure our hearts align,

And then I’m free, I’m free of mine.

The song contains an almost Gaelic lilt, and suddenly I’m transported back to Ireland, to the day when the clouds parted and the rolling hills were redolent in wild, vivid, acid green. A precarious kissing of the Blarney Stone, a perilous spiral of stone stairs, and a lonely walk along a stream comprised the day. A solitary swan swam in the lake behind our little hotel – a single spot of white amid the slate and blue-gray water. Pebbles on the beach, and a long black coat billowing behind me. The other side of the ocean, half a world away.

When I raise the certain wing, And crawl beneath that growing thing,

It throws a shadow over time, And keeps yours falling next to mine.

Your days were meant to fly and do, I fall and fold mine into you,

And what you take is just enough, And what you give is what I love.

And when you lift you raise the sail, And then I’m free, free to fail.

I’m falling free…

She sings of the intertwined, the once-bound, and the newly-free. She speaks of herself, she speaks of him, she speaks of me. I think back on all the couples who were together when Andy and I first met, how I looked with wonder on them, and how, slowly, day by day, and year by year, some fell apart. What fickleness, love today. What ease, what hurt, what pain, what apathy. What clean-cut mess, what nasty cleaving.

Deep and pure our hearts align, And then I’m free, I’m free of mine

When I let loose the need to know, Then we’re both free, we’re free to go.

When I lose a certain claim that tries to know and needs to blame

Whatever river runs aground, It turns my head and washes down

The face of God that stands above pouring over Hope and Love

That all of might, and life, and limb could turn around and love again

When I let loose the need to know, Then we’re both free, free to go

I’m falling free…

No longer like a prayer, this is a prayer – an incantation – begging for salvation, for hope, for something to be set free. For something to fall. If you listen closely, if you know her voice inside and out, if you’ve heard it almost every day for the last twenty five years, you will hear a difference. Madonna’s instrument – recently ravaged by a head-cold, or maybe just the advancement, once so cruel, of fifty-four years of living, has changed ever so slightly. Deeper, raspier in sound, worn and a little frayed, it bespeaks both splendor and ruin. Every last one of us is getting older. We are all moving in that one direction. Closer to death. Closer to freedom.

At 3:36 then, the magic of William Orbit. The origin of ‘Ray of Light’, one might say her ultimate rebirth, echoed in the delicate music, moving, like she constantly does, but not quickly, not like light, but fluid like water – undulating, pulsating, ebbing like life – like waves on a distant shore. There it ends ~ without fanfare, without release, without definition ~ hanging in the air, like the quick notes of spring on the wings of a brief thaw, gone by the morning.

Deep and pure our hearts align

And then I’m free, I’m free of mine

When I let lose the need to know

Then we’re both free, we’re free to go.

Song #83″ ‘Falling Free’ – Winter 2013

{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.} 

I have a tale to tell
Sometimes it gets so hard to hide it well
I was not ready for the fall
Too blind to see the writing on the wall…

It was the summer of 1986. In many ways it was the last summer of my childhood. ‘Stand By Me’ was in the movie theaters, and around every corner was an adventure that could only be reached by bicycle. In the stifling heat of the garage, sitting in the station wagon, my Mom and I waited for my brother. The bitter scent of exhaust filled the hot space. At odds with the sunny day, the dim wood and oil-stained cement lent the moment a purgatorial feel. Despite the rising temperature, I was not uncomfortable. That’s one of the tenets of childhood – you don’t notice the extremes of hot or cold. Getting in the car after a day at Disneyworld was nothing back then, and going out in a snowstorm was a cakewalk.

I stared at the door going into the house, willing my brother to appear sooner rather than later. On the radio Madonna‘s ‘Live To Tell’ was playing. At the time, I didn’t like the song (a sign that I would later love it – see ‘Frozen‘.) It wasn’t that I actively disliked it, I simply preferred her dance songs, something more upbeat. I liked my pop songs to be a form of escapism. On this day, however, something changed.

A man can tell a thousand lies
I’ve learned my lesson well
Hope I live to tell the secret I have learned, til then…
It will burn inside of me.

The mysteries and secrets of childhood were all around me. The unfairness of being a child was always in suspense, waiting to be released in a flood of messy tears and red-faced anguish. What secrets can a ten-year-old hold? You’d be surprised. Time moves differently when you’re a kid. The magnitude of minutes can be immense, and a year can feel like an eternity. Everything is magnified, everything means more. The intensity of childhood equalizes its carefree aspects, and that’s a precarious balance. Shift in either one direction too far and disaster is imminent. We don’t give children enough credit sometimes. We don’t know how much of what adults do weighs down upon their shoulders. Luckily, as children, we don’t always know either.

I know where beauty lives
I’ve seen it once, I know the warm she gives
The light that you could never see
It shines inside, you can’t take that from me.

On the verge of turning eleven, I was lucky that summer. I had not quite turned the corner to adolescence. Any notions of sexuality or being gay were too far in the distance, and though there were definite signs, I could still operate within the safety of childhood. My parents could still love me unconditionally. If you can make it through the first decade of life relatively unscathed, you might stand a chance. In that way, I was fortunate. But something told me the luck was about to run out. In the ticking of the song, in that moment of waiting, the last bit of sand was squeezing through the cinched waist of the hourglass.

A man can tell a thousand lies
I’ve learned my lesson well
Hope I live to tell
The secret I have learned, til then
It will burn inside of me…

The truth is never far behind
You’ve kept it hidden well
Hope I live to tell
The secret I knew then
Will I ever have the chance again?

The song suddenly stopped, or I thought it did. The low hum of a single synthesized bass was lost in the car. Then, slowly, a few chords sounded. At the moment that the powerful bridge began, I distinctly remember opening the door of the car. I paused there, the door handle in my hand, as the song filled the garage.

If I ran away, I’d never have the strength, to go very far,
How would they hear the beating of my heart?
Will it grow cold, the secret that I hide?

Will I grow old?

How will they hear?

When will they learn?

How will they know?

That’s when it all changed for me. The song. The innocence. The childhood. It all broke – not for any specific reason, not for any dramatic turn of events – it simply happened. In so many ways, I grew up then. That it was Madonna who guided me through it was fitting. I did not know how much she would come to influence me and see me through the difficult times. I did not realize that she would be the perfect person to raise a gay son. I did not understand how much I would have to do alone.

There, in the midst of the heat, still waiting for my brother to come out of the house, I felt a chill. Call it a premonition, call it foreshadowing, I just know that at that singular moment my world shifted. Though it lasted but half a minute, it has stayed with me, frozen in time and memory, for all of my existence. Something in the song called to me from what was to come, some strange but vital message from my future whispered that I would need these words to survive, that, someday, Madonna would save my life.

It may sound silly and stupid as an adult, but nothing is silly when you’re a kid. I ran into the house and shouted for my brother. Back in the car, the rest of the song played on. Patiently, my Mom and I waited. It was dark in the garage, and we were probably going somewhere I didn’t want to go, but I still didn’t want to be late.

A man can tell a thousand lies
I’ve learned my lesson well
Hope I live to tell
The secret I have learned, til then
It will burn inside of me.

As for its place in Madonna’s storied career, ‘Live To Tell’ was (at least according to a 1995 interview promoting her ‘Something to Remember’ ballad collection) one of her favorites. Oddly enough, she has only performed it on three tours. While I loved the confessional Catholic drama of her Blonde Ambition rendition, it was her Christ-on-a-cross pose for the Confessions tour that stands as my favorite. Witnessing the rise of that arresting image was a highlight of the show – the deliberate droning of a church organ playing tensely in-between verses, and Madonna in a crown-of-thorns singing for the children, for the lost, for the crucifixion of innocence.

The truth is never far behind
You’ve kept it hidden well
If I live to tell
The secret I knew then
Will I ever have the chance again?

Song #82 – ‘Live To Tell’ ~ Summer 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.}

As quiet as it is tonight
You’d almost think you were safe
Your eyes are full of surprises
They cannot predict my fate
Waiting underneath the stars
There’s something you should know
The angels they surround my heart
Telling me to let you go…

This is one of those ‘morning-after’ songs, when you look at the world through the dim lens of regret, a look that is both frightening and unforgiving. Perhaps it’s the death knell of a relationship, or the realization that you’ve been betrayed. Perhaps a friendship has fallen apart and you understand and accept that there is no way to right it. Perhaps it’s the simple acknowledgment that what has passed is indeed, and finally, in the past, and we can never be the same. It is a chilling notion, and this is a chilling song.

From the 2008 album ‘Hard Candy’, this is Madonna at her most brittle and bitter, but there is beauty at work too. Resignation can be redemptive, and the cleaving of heartache a necessary, if brutal, form of self-preservation.

I bet he couldn’t
I bet he couldn’t recognize
But I played right into it
Who am I to criticize
So now I’ve been through it
And you won’t even realize
You’ve fallen for your own disguise…

Drugs or drink, sex or danger, debauchery or depravity – we all have our demons. They prey upon us in the night, they use and expose our vulnerability, they turn us inside out. “I know what it’s like to be bad. I’ve been bad…” In the gray light of dawn, the morning that always comes, no matter how late, we pick ourselves up, and clean up the mess. There is no happy ending, no quick and easy resolution, and we will do it all over again until it is all we know.

It’s like over and over
You’re pushing me right down to the floor
I should just walk away
Over and Over
I keep on coming back for more
I play into your fantasy
Now that’s its over
You can lie to me right through your smile
I see behind your eyes
Now I’m sober
No more intoxicating my mind.

Even the devil wouldn’t recognize you
I do…

Like her best songs, this one can be read on multiple levels – but in the end I think it’s as much about pointing the finger at yourself as it is about blaming others, confronting the visage in the mirror, the person we don’t always want to recognize, the person we pretend isn’t really there.

You’ve almost fooled yourself this time
Let all of the saints be praised
You hide your sadness behind your smile
And you keep your lost heart raised
With steps that edge along the ledge
It’s much higher than it seems
But I’ve been on that ledge before
You can’t hide yourself from me…

On her ‘Sticky & Sweet Tour’, Madonna performed a haunting rendition of the song, cloaked in black for much of its duration, only rising and revealing herself toward the end. In a career made out of pretend, it is a magically stark moment.

Song #81 – ‘Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You’ – Winter 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.}

You lost your reputation on a woman
You didn’t understand or care to know
You get your education from your lovers
But now there’s just no place for you to go

It doesn’t pay
To be a runaway lover
It doesn’t pay
To give away what you lack
You’ll never get your money back

One of the throwaway filler tracks on 2000’s ‘Music’ album, ‘Runaway Lover’ is one of the lesser songs on that eclectic opus. It seems as if producer William Orbit felt a bit of the heat from fellow producer Mirwais and tried to do a little too much, only to end up with a racing song that throbs and chugs full speed ahead, but never really gets anywhere.

The blips and beeps sound too silly to convey the admonishing tone of the song, and the lyrics are rather a jumble of tired cliches. That’s all there is to say about it.

You’re set adrift with no direction
Just like a ship that’s lost at sea
You don’t care where you drop your anchor
Make sure it doesn’t land on me

It doesn’t pay
To be a runaway lover
It doesn’t pay
To give away what you lack
You’ll never get your money back

Walking around on a cloud
Cause every girl you meet just trips on you
Saying your name out loud
I guess you met your match
Now what will you do

It doesn’t pay
To be a runaway lover
It doesn’t pay
To give away what you lack
You’ll never get your money back

Song #80: ‘Runaway Lover’ – Fall 2000

In honor of her Madgesty’s return to New York, this is an Immaculate Collection of what I feel are some of the stronger Madonna Timeline entries. (Please disregard some of the formatting of the older ones – I haven’t yet had the opportunity to revamp absolutely everything on the site, but it will happen, I promise…) We’ll go in rough chronological order of their appearance on this site, so it will be as random as the timeline itself.

The Madonna Timeline #14: ‘Frozen’ ~ Winter 1998: In which our protagonist falls for a chef in the cruel winter of Rochester, NY, and our heroine implores him to open his heart. The lesson learned here? Never fall for a one-night-stand (and never lead one on…)

The Madonna Timeline #40: ‘You Must Love Me’ ~ Fall 1996: I’m taking this one out of order already, because it’s sort of the first of a two-parter, so to avoid further confusion, here it is. In which our heroine shows a softer side, and our protagonist goes ape-shit bonkers over a boy in his Comparative Literature class, and embarrasses himself over and over and over again.

The Madonna Timeline #17: ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’ ~ Nov./Dec. 1996: In which the continuation and emotionally-bloody aftermath of a doomed relationship that never was comes to a sad (some might say pathetic) conclusion.

The Madonna Timeline #26: ‘Music’ ~ September 2000: A happier entry in which our protagonist meets his future husband and Madonna goes old-shool by way of the future. Hey, Mr. DJ.

The Madonna Timeline #39: ‘Erotica’ ~ October 1992: In which our heroine teaches our protagonist a few things about art, and paves the way for The Projects. Oh, and takes her knickers off to piss off the collective universe. Brilliance all around.

The Madonna Timeline #48: ‘You’ll See’ ~ Fall 1995: In which Brandeis and Boston form the backdrop to a spectacularly dismal first attempt at love. The lesson learned here may be not to fall in love with a realtor. It’s their job to sell, and they’ll do it well.

The Madonna Timeline #55: ‘Drowned World/Substitute for Love’ ~ March 1998: In which our heroine stages her greatest comeback (and releases her greatest album) and our protagonist tumbles once again into the messy world of love, coming to some sort of acceptance of that glorious, infuriating, life-altering force.

The Madonna Timeline #75: ‘Oh Father’ ~ Fall 1991: In which we confront the hurt and the hope of childhood, the failings and forgiveness required in growing up, and the ache and regret that comes of letting it all go. It’s never easy being a child, and it may be even harder to be a parent.

The Madonna Timeline #79: ‘Give Me All Your Luvin” ~ November 2011: Because it’s about one year since this all happened, and I’m back in New York City about to see Madonna in the MDNA Tour, and this song is one of the highlights. No more, no less.

{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 don’t have to be beautiful

To be understood

You don’t have to be rich and famous

To be good

You just gotta give more more more

Than you ever have before

And you gotta move fast fast fast

If you want this good thing to last…

A somewhat lack-luster cut from 2008’s ‘Hard Candy album’, ‘Dance 2night’ featured Justin Timberlake, and wouldn’t have sounded out of place on one of his albums. On a Madonna album though, she makes it her own, and it’s got enough spice and a vaguely-70’s retro groove to use for a backing track when setting up for a night out. Being a duet, however, it dilutes the Madonna-centric focus to which we’re all accustomed. I have yet to be impressed by one of her collaborative efforts.

That’s really all there is to say about it, so I’ll include a shot of Mr. Timberlake popping a squat and posing with his posterior to make up for what’s otherwise lacking.

On second-spin, this is a decent-enough track from the percolating jam that was ‘Hard Candy’ – and the chorus is fine, fine, super-fine. It’s rather perfect for preparing for an evening on the town, when you don’t want to cut too loose, but you still need some inspiration. 

Song #78: ‘Dance 2night’ – Spring/Summer 2008