True (Re)View Eric Saikali, Nich Welburn

Grab your soy lattés with double shotés and gear up for our first episode after our (impromptu) summer hiatus. Madonna’s ninth studio album, American Life, was one of her least commercially viable albums but has become a fan favourite in recent years. In this episode, we dive deep into the album’s controversial quasi-political context, confrontational sonic nature, overall peculiarity, and recent reappraisal. Spoiler alert: this is probably the first episode where we outright disagree with the contemporaneous critical consensus of a Madonna album.

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Is picking holes in the middle of Madonna’s second cultural renaissance a fruitless exercise? Maybe! But exactly half of the duo are going to try. Our first real disagreement stems from the artistic merits of Music being able to stand on its own two legs. An experimental precursor to hyperpop or an exciting concept that quickly runs out of steam? Join us for our most controversial and lively episode yet. (Sorry Mirwais, still love you and all your bloops - Nich x)

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Ray Of Light is that once-in-a-lifetime career move (if you’re lucky): a bold, risky, experimental, progressive comeback album that has taken on a life of its own. With its diverse musical influences - from ambient to trance to dub to techno to bossa nova to grunge to Eastern and classical music (whew) - its influence has been massive. While Madonna was hardly the one to pioneer these genres, she was undoubtedly one of the first to integrate them into a cohesive pop package, acting as a catalyst for their mainstream acceptance and once again shifting the pop discourse. To listen to Ray Of Light is to embark on an introspective and spiritually-attuned sonic journey. Eric thinks that, for all of its endearing flaws and would-be eye-rolls, Ray Of Light is pretty much a perfect album. Nich maybe agrees? One thing’s for certain: Ray Of Light is the Pop Bible.

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Where were we? An unexpected mental health break or an intentional month-long pause to help us give Erotica the praise it fully deserves... you decide! In any case, Bedtime Stories eases us back into Madonna's discography with such discerning suppleness and comfort that you'd be forgiven for overlooking how challenging the actual production landscapes and lyrical content truly were. Was this album a course correction, as common narratives suggest? Or was it a brilliant example of pop’s heavyweight champion flexing her muscles before her next knockout?

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Erotica. Romance. We’d like to put you in a trance this week as we jump straight into the 1990s (in our opinion, the Queen of Pop’s greatest decade). Strap yourself in (winky face) as we attempt to swallow (no pun intended) what the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame called one of the most revolutionary albums of all time. Despite being a risky move for her career at the time, Erotica saw Madonna at her most culturally and politically important, reaching creative heights that continue to percolate through pop music today.

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Get your patchouli oil ready: this week we have a reservation with the magnum opus (one of many?) that is Like A Prayer. This was a record that bridged the divide between Madonna the controversial pop star and Madonna the person - artistically forward, introspective, and thought-provoking. Is Like A Prayer the pinnacle of Madonna's 1980s career? Did it perhaps... change pop music forever? Let's just say that dissecting this album was a journey.

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