Friday, October 16, 2009
Whatevs Madonna Distances Herself From 'Retarded Songs,' So Do I [Yesterday's Gone]
Posted by Steve Haruch on Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 1:09 PM
I never thought I would write a blog post about Madonna, but then she went and referred to "Into the Groove" as "another song I feel retarded singing."
Nevermind, as Maura points out, the sudden (and kinda egregious) use of the term "retarded." And nevermind that "Into the Groove" was possibly or possibly not playing during or in the hours and weeks leading up to my first ménage à moi, and forget even that it's a pretty good pop song. (Especially by today's standards--looking at you, pretty much everyone.) Has she heard some of her other songs?
Whenever I get together with my college bandmates, two of us end up making fun of our overly earnest, embarrassingly incompetent college band (we were called Pavement), and one of us ends up getting a little mad. "I want my kids to think I was cool once," he says. If we had ever put out an album, and anyone who was not one of our girlfriends had ever bought it, I'm sure I'd be telling interviews that I no longer want anything to do with those songs. Even if people requested them at shows. Which they wouldn't. But it's much easier to take back something no one ever heard you say.
It can be bemusing to watch artists try to distance themselves from their past work--which has been pressed, distributed, purchased, dubbed, burned, ripped, digitized and BitTorrrented every which way. Sometimes, it's just because they want to remake their image and leave their pre-stardom self locked away in relative obscurity, like Katy Perry (née Katy Hudson, Christian singer). Other times, it's because they've grown older and wiser and Buddhist-er, like those "outgrown our stupidity" Beastie Boys. Sometimes it's a band's more recent material that they brush under the drum rug--Metallica, for instance. Speaking of the Beasties, I caught them at Bonnaroo, and during "Paul Revere" they let the crowd shout the line about the wiffle bat doing this and that to the sheriff's daughter--and I wondered how much of a redaction that really amounted to.
So it's a fine line--you basically tell your fans they're "retarded" for liking your "retarded" songs, then you sing them anyway? Or you don't sing them and basically tell your fans, "You're retarded for wanting me to play that song, so I'm not going to do it, because I am now less retarded than I was when you made that song a huge, retarded hit." The humanity.
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Comments (16)
Showing 1-16 of 16
You're totally overreacting, Madge is just sick of people that want to hear the same 80's songs over and over. Some of her best work is actually from the 90's and 2000's (deeper lyrics, more meaning) and I think she gets tired of the fans that only listen to songs that appear on the Immaculate Collection. If she didn't care about her fans she wouldn't have sang Into the Groove on her last tour or Like A Virgin on the one before.
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Oh for the love of God give it a rest, everyone takes everything Madonna tries to say and makes a debate about it. She meant nothing by what she said is a bad way so leave the woman alone for a change.
Every decade from Madonna´s muscic is special! only let her express herself for us!
her last 3 albums are garbage. what does she expect?
The first time i heard 4 Minutes, i thought it was a digital short skit from SNL.
and let's not forget her rap verse on American Life.
She's entitled to her retarded opinions about her own body of work.
Does she really think "Ray of Light" is better than "Cherish?" Come on lady.
Far be it from me to stick up for Madonna, who I still think is one of the most overrated performers ever, but she didn't say the song was "retarded," she said she felt that way singing it.
I have often wondered what it must be like to be a performer chained to singing a few songs that he/she recorded in the distant past when practically a different person. I think some of them really must have to turn their brains off in order to keep singing the same songs over and over and over and over and over. The audience is busting to hear the song performed live--maybe they never have before, and the record is a treasured memory from their childhoods. For the singer, one more performance of it may be about as exciting as one more box of widgets packed is for a widget factory worker.
Madonna may very well have meant the song is "retarded," but I can see how it would start to seem that way to her after it becomes nothing but a recitation and a set of moves and performing it makes her feel like an audioanimatronic representation rather than a real human.
Thinking like this probably explains why I hardly ever go to see any concerts.
“I’ve never been a good judge of what things are going to be huge or not. The songs that I think are the most retarded songs I’ve written, like ‘Cherish’ and ‘Sorry,’ a pretty big hit off my last album, end up being the biggest hits,” she tells RS. ” ‘Into the Groove’ is another song I feel retarded singing, but everybody seems to like it.”
Sounds to me like she's calling "Into the Groove" "retarded." Just saying.
Some of her best work is more recent. Ray of Light is one of the greatest albums of all time. Confessions on a Dancefloor is one of the best dance albums. Yes Madge has had a few misteps along the way (the American Life single, Sex Book) but her music speaks for itself and she has a phenominal body of work. Even Michael Jackson didn't ever have as many classic hit singles as Madonna has had. Just think the woman has been around for nearly 30 years and is still breaking her own records. No other solo artist can say that.
I think her last album "HARD CANDY" and a great album funny how people trash an album they most likely don't own or even heard the whole thing. $ Minutes was a really good song and the album has much better songs on it that were sadly never released! And the thing is with a;; Madonna albums the more you listen the more you love! American Life was a really good album as well it just did not sound like an Madonna album and "Confessions On A Dance Floor" was a masterpeice! So to say her last 3 albums were crap....come on they were better than anything realease in the past decade period. Most artists you buy the album get 1 goog song..BUY an Madonna album get 10-12 great songs with maybe 1 throwaway period. The magic of Madonna is un challenged.
@ Kevin
Confessions is a bore. It was the beginning of the end of Stewart Price as a producer. At that point in his career everything remotely pop was little more than phoned in and calling it "one the best dance records" would leave me to assume that you know very little about dance music outside of what is played in top 40 clubs.
I will agree on the other hand that Ray of light is a fantastic record, and for it's time, Music was as well.
This would have to be the most pointless blog post I have ever read. The woman is allowed to have her own subjective likes and dislikes of her own (immense) back catalog. It's.. um... HERS?! That she sang this song on her last tour shows that she at least balances what the fans want from her yesteryear with her new material. I don't see the problem.
My youngest daughter has special needs. She's very loud and people tend to stare at her. Many years ago my older daughter was in a gym class with Lourdes. I was very impressed with her because she was the only kid who didn't stare. She just smiled and said hello. What a breath of fresh air. Maybe it's not to late for Madonna. Maybe she should get it together and realize that using the word retarded as slang demeans my kid and millions like her.
Additional information acknowledged, Steve. I still think having to sing the same songs over and over has a lot to do with this. Madonna has to face whatever she doesn't like about them practically daily and I'm sure it makes her wince after a while. If the same song had gone nowhere she'd probably remember what she liked about it and forget what she didn't (and she might berate those who ignored the song way back when).
I enjoyed the responses from Madonna fanatics. Wow!
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