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Replete with each a Clint Eastwood reference (“Make my day”) and audio snippets of James Cagney in raving madman mode from the 1949 gangster flick of the identical name, “White Heat” is a rock-tinged dance-pop jam from True Blue‘s A-facet that finds her warning/threatening a potential lover (“My love is dangerous/ This can be a bust!”), which we are able to only assume is how all of Madge’s relationships begin. “The Look of Love” was not impressed by the oft-recorded ’60s pop basic of the identical identify, however presumably from a favorite moment of Madonna’s between James Stewart and grace Kelly in the Hitchcock thriller Rear Window, which she described as “the most pure look of love and adoration.” The song’s aqueous production and mysterious melody give it an eerie quality befitting that inspiration, one among Madonna’s most bewitching soundtrack compositions. A publish-breakup missive assuring Madonna’s ex that she’ll be just advantageous solo, “You’ll See” is way too seething and free adult sex chat melodramatic for anybody to mistake it for Madge’s Gloria Gaynor moment. Not much of an affirmation, but it surely still feels vividly real, an honest second of self-delusion from Madonna’s best era of ballads. Inspired by Madonna’s toxic marriage to actor Sean Penn, the lyrics are a few of her best, and the track set the bar so excessive for the singer-songwriter’s ’90s ballads that it ultimately ended up titling a 1995 compilation of her finest.
Like “Spanish Eyes” three years earlier, “In This Life” is an AIDS-impressed eulogy, however her grief has hardened into fury over the senseless loss of life of her mates and the total public ignorance and lack of response to it as everyone waits “for this factor to go away.” With its menacing piano chords and mournful horns, the song’s a brutal subversion of the Beatles’ way more peaceful meditation on demise a era earlier, and Madonna’s incredulous rage as she asks “Have you ever watched your greatest buddy die? Comes Around” for this difficult Candy deep lower, which showers the in any other case upbeat album with shadowy piano riffs and background samples of an actual storm. This time round, she deep into her treasury of controversial Christian metaphors as she in contrast her, err, juices to holy water and threw in a self-referential “Vogue” pattern for good measure. Oh well: Madge obviously had such jams to spare in ’84, and “Over and Over” remains a pleasing shock buried deep in each her Diamond-selling Like a Virgin album and her ’87 You possibly can Dance remix collection. The primary line of the chorus might be learn as a woman turning to religion in a attempting time (“Jesus Christ, will you have a look at me?”) or a self-owning eye-roll from someone all too aware of her want for consideration (“Jesus Christ, will you take a look at me?”).
On an album with no shortage of call-backs and references to her storied career, she wrote the perfect theme song for herself: “Rebel Heart” is a sentimental sing-along that looks back on her bumpy street to stardom, adding some shrugged-off self-awareness (“I spent a while as a narcissist…trying to be so provocative/ I stated, ‘Oh yeah, that was me'”) to maintain things from getting too schmaltzy. It’s not that the first model of “Nobody Knows Me” was soulless: For a tune about identification – changing it, obscuring it, destroying it, rebuilding it – it is sensible that Madonna’s voice would be processed and Auto-Tuned into oblivion. Madonna’s still in too reflective a mindset to go full incense and peppermints with it, but she’s sport enough to satisfy Orbit’s woozy reverb-soaked groove with certainly one of the nice sensible-dumb lyrics of her profession: “If I’m sensible then I’ll run away/ But I’m not, so I guess I’ll keep.” – A.U.
Built round certainly one of pop music’s most timeless central lyrical photos, it’s got a depth of manufacturing and vocal nuance that suggests Madonna’s spin on a terrific late-’80s Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis sluggish jam. But the sting’s central objective had failed: Thompson confessed to nothing. While Madonna’s movie and soundtrack model of Evita’s central ballad “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” followed within the somber footsteps of the Andrew Lloyd Webber unique, the version worked to radio in 1997 – recognized because the “Miami Mix” – is a weirdly fulfilling menage à trois between Broadway, Latin and club music, with a pounding beat and lively tango flourishes buoying Madonna’s earnest delivery. This one’s not from a soundtrack but perhaps should’ve been: The drive and peppiness of this pop fizzer appear customized-fitted for mid-’80s montages of teen ne’er-do-wells finally beginning to make good on their promise. Evidently uninterested in attempting to predict pop’s EDM-led future with their Ray of Light collaboration, Madonna and producer William Orbit teamed up again for this psych-colored ’60s flashback from the soundtrack to the Austin Powers sequel. If you happen to have been unconvinced of the sharp diploma of the left turn that Madonna’s 1998 album Ray of Light would represent, one listen to “Shanti/Ashtangi” made clear that the LP meant enterprise: a 4-and-a-half minute recital of a Hindu Sanskrit prayer over a psych-dub William Orbit beat of fluttering synths and zooming guitars.