Madonna: Part 3 With Paul Hamann

Yasi is joined by creative director Paul Hamann as they continue the Bandsplain Madonna deep dive. They discuss Madonna’s celebrated acting role in Evita and the lasting vocal changes that came with it, her career-elevating work of Ray of Light, the ahead-of-its-time Music, and how the increasingly fraught political situation in America impacted one of her most misunderstood works, American Life. Plus: motherhood, mysticism, the perfect pop single that landed on the Austin Powers soundtrack, and how Madonna kept finding new ways to bend pop stardom around her own evolution. Episode PlaylistListen to the Madonna: Part 3 playlist here. CREDITS:Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuests: Paul Hamann @hamann.coProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really like this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain.

• 0:45Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is part three of four about, again, perhaps the most iconic artist of all time, Madonna. My guest today, you guys, has got herself a universe gone quickly. It is creative director Paul Hammond.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:11Yasi Salek?

  I was just informed two minutes ago that I have been fully saying your last name wrong in private, but also on the last episode of this podcast. I just need to apologize.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  It's technically the correct way to pronounce it, but nobody says that.

• 1:24Yasi Salek?

  What kind of friend am I?

• 1:26Speaker 02

  A good one.

• 1:27Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Paul, I'm so excited to have you here. Before we jump in, I want to, once again, give my greatest thanks to all of the resources that I have been using to research all these episodes. Today on Madonna History, Madonnapedia, Madonna Underground, Madonna Tribe, the Inside the Group Podcast, the Encyclopedia Madonna, the Bible, the 2023 Mary Gabriel Madonna Biography, Weibo.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Girl.

• 1:55Yasi Salek?

  Weibo Girl Instagram, Madonna Brennan Instagram. There's many more. Thank you for your work, because you've helped me a lot.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Seriously, thank you.

• 2:05Yasi Salek?

  Paul, before we get into it, do you want to tell me about your personal journey into Madonna fandom?

• 2:15Speaker 02

  I'm gonna age myself, but I started at the beginning. I heard... Um, I think I was in sixth grade and I heard Holiday probably on the radio. And I was like, wow, I'd never heard anything like that. I don't think they played, you know, in those days, like, there wasn't a lot of dance music in the top forty and that kind of, especially that kind of like New York, very specific kind of New York sound.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  And I was just like, what is that? I like, I need this. And so that just started it and it just went.

• 2:47Yasi Salek?

  What kind of stuff were they playing on the radio? Like, kind of?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  I mean, it was very, you know, it was like very genre divided was, you know, probably like top forty and that was probably heard it on top forty.

• 2:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  So it was like top forty and then, you know, rock stations. But then, you know, like, if you listened late at night, there would be like, kind of more specialty shows.

• 3:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  And actually, now that I think about it, I feel like there was, I heard everybody because they played that.

• 3:10Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  On a late night, kind of like dance.

• 3:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Related thing. I had no idea what it was, but, you know, I, I was, I was very intrigued. So that started it and I kind of just never gave up after that.

• 3:24Yasi Salek?

  Love that. Yeah, I guess I had to look it up because I was, I was only one. But then it was like very Every Breath You Take by The Police and Flashdance, What a Feeling and Billie Jean.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, Billie Jean, Urhythmics. There was like, there was more and more kind of like electro sound, I think.

• 3:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, starting to percolate.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, starting to percolate. And at that same time was also Shannon, Let the Music Play, I think was very similar.

• 3:51Yasi Salek?

  Let the music play.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it was kind of the, kind of burgeoning sound of that New York, whatever that club was where Jelly Bean played. It wasn't, it wasn't.

• 4:02Yasi Salek?

  Fun House?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Yes, Fun House, yeah.

• 4:04Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my God. I shock myself, honestly, the fact that I can retain any piece of information.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  I mean, great. I'm glad you can because I definitely cannot.

• 4:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so you, you're, you're, you're a lifer. You're a day one.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  I'm a lifer.

• 4:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:16Yasi Salek?

  I was really happy to have you because

• 4:20Yasi Salek?

  you were like saying, oh, I need to like prep. And then you just know every, like, I would just be like, what's this? And you like from off dome, you'd be like, oh yeah, that was Drowned World Tour. Um, she was wearing this and these, this is the setlist in order. And I was like. Human Wikipedia.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Not quite. Let's just make that clear. But yeah, I did live the timeline and it's kind of somewhat in there. I can sometimes access it. So let's see what happens there.

• 4:45Yasi Salek?

  Okay, amazing. All right. Well, let's, we're picking up where we left off in episode two, which episode two, if you guys, it'd be very strange. I think if you didn't listen to episode two, you just jumped straight to episode three, but that's okay. Like, maybe you just love Ray of Light and you wanted to get straight to the point. But we can say that in part two, we covered the You Can Dance remix album, Like a Prayer, the Vogue single, Blonde Ambition Tour, I'm Breathless, the music from Dick Tracy. We covered a lot. The Immaculate Collection, This Used to Be My Playground, Eroica, Sex Book, The Controversy,

• 5:29Yasi Salek?

  The Fallout, The Girlie Show Tour, then sort of regaining, regaining audience with All Remember and Bedtime Stories. And we kind of left off with having put out Bedtime Stories at the tail end of 1994.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:48Yasi Salek?

  And now, I guess we were gonna start off at the top, top-ish, spring of 1995. I'm curious if you went to this. So Madonna had a midnight pajama party at Webster Hall in, still in promotion of Bedtime Stories, and danced in a nightgown with fans and read them children's books. Were you there?

• 6:11Speaker 02

  I unfortunately was not there. But it was very legendary and I knew about it. I was in New York at the time. And, I mean, that's such an iconic performance. When you see it now, I feel like there's so many viral clips of it that you see now. I mean, mostly because her breasts look absolutely incredible and then she's dancing around on that stage. And it's, it's just like, I mean, it's just such a moment. Also, I think what's interesting about that is that relationship she had with Junior Vasquez, who had like remixed all of the Bedtime Stories, you know, remixes.

• 6:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Some of my favorite ones off Bedtime Stories are by him, for sure.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  And that was kind of like also in New York and, you know, it was kind of the tail end of. The Sound Factory era.

• 6:57Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Which is where, you know, like all those dancers for, for Bond Ambition were recruited.

• 7:02Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Vogueing was happening and I was there too.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  And so, you know, I think that I believe that closed like towards the end of 95. So it was still kind of in like peak junior in New York. So it was very New York that like the idea that she chose him and worked with him. I know they had a huge falling out later.

• 7:23Yasi Salek?

  I'm so sad because like Hello Junior, This Is Madonna, are you there?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:27Yasi Salek?

  Call me in Miami is like one of the most like god tier songs. And it does kind of break my heart that it like, he had to sacrifice his relationship with Madonna for that song to exist.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Totally. And like, and there was like an era, it was kind of after the Sound Factory closed and he moved to another club. But he was like obsessed with Madonna, like completely obsessed in his. He had this one remix that he would play that would go on for like, I don't know how long it seemed like all night. And it was like a remix weirdly of, of You'll See, which like, you know, was that valid? But it had If Madonna Calls in it and it had samples from, you know, Fast Eddie, Let's Go, Let's Go. And it had samples from Like, Like a Prayer. It was like this insane mashup that he would do and it were, people went absolutely crazy over it.

• 8:13Yasi Salek?

  We Used to Be a Proper Country, guys, I'll have to say about that.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  It was, it was pretty fun. It was pretty special. And you're like, you couldn't hear it anywhere else. And that's another thing about all of that is like those, it was like the early era of singles where these were commercially released. But I think, you know, there was like that sort of underground feeling of leaving the club and going to the record store and seeing like what singles were out and like what 12 inches. And so she kind of like put herself in that stream in a cool way that was very relevant to that, to that culture.

• 8:45Yasi Salek?

  I love it. I do feel like we're remiss and unfortunately I'm sorry, just like we can't do this. But it, it would absolutely be enough material for an entire episode to do an episode about all her remixes.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Just the remixes, absolutely.

• 8:56Yasi Salek?

  And I'm sure there is like some great podcast or content out there about it. So I, you know. Go on over there. But yeah, she's, that's like, to me, one of the like, most interesting and like dynamic parts of her career is like this, which is like, she's the pop star of the masses, but then this part is for the heads, you know? And I think that's so cool. Like, to continue to service that part of your audience all the way through is like so genius.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think Patrick pointed that out in that last episode, though, just about how important it is that she, every, all the singles that she releases, she releases the dance remixes and those chart on the dance charts. And that's like definitely part of the whole sort of like success story and just the legend of her, like the sort of subcultural impact and the cultural impact, like on those kind of two levels. It's very, you know, intelligent marketing, but also I think true to who she is.

• 9:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but also like following her own interests, which has always been.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  The, the club.

• 10:00Yasi Salek?

  The club. Yeah. I brought up the Midnight Potama Party, A, because it's cool, but B, because she didn't tour Bedtime Stories. Because she got a film part.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 10:12Yasi Salek?

  It worked. The video, the music video worked.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Of Take a Bow.

• 10:19Yasi Salek?

  Of Take a Bow.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Her, her audition tape.

• 10:21Yasi Salek?

  And she is cast in the titular role in Ibiza. Apparently it was quite difficult to get that role. Like Disney wasn't exactly like, yes, please, the erotica lady, you know? And according to Tim Rice, who was the partner of Andrew Lloyd Webber, who created this, the musical together, he said that Andrew Lloyd Webber felt, quote, "She had been rude to him. So it was a clash of the giant egos." He was also worried because he didn't think she could sing the part. But Rice was like all in. He said, "I never, I wanted someone accustomed to putting over a story and emotion in song. Madonna acts so beautifully through music." So true. It's a really good point that he made. Better actresses like Meryl Streep weren't right because they're not singers.

• 11:04Yasi Salek?

  They can hold a tune, but they're not brilliant interpreters of song.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:08Yasi Salek?

  She was like, so, that's exactly what Madonna is. Yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's interesting to, there were like rumors. As I remember that like the timeline is flattened, so I can't really fully remember. But I do remember that there were like rumors about her trying to get that part for like years.

• 11:24Yasi Salek?

  Oh, years before it had even

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:26Yasi Salek?

  Found a director or become a production.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 11:29Yasi Salek?

  Years and years. Yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  She was angling for that for a long time.

• 11:33Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  And so, you know, it was great and exciting at the time when she got it. Everybody was all the fandom, so to speak. I was very excited for her for that.

• 11:44Yasi Salek?

  You got you got the thing you wanted. Well, we'll we'll pop back into that later. This is just that she got the part, but the next month, um, her stalker, Robert Hoskins scaled the wall of her house, Castilla del Lago, uh, which I don't know how I didn't realize until like very recently. It's actually quite close to my house and like right by the Lake Hollywood reservoir where we all go walking. And I was like, damn, that's just a sick house. You can see like you can see the gate and stuff like over there. Anyway, she doesn't live there anymore, so don't go over there and try to stop her.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Never.

• 12:17Yasi Salek?

  Um, but yeah, he wandered around the property, like scaled the eight foot wall and like wandered around the property, got chased off by our security guard, came back the next day, ringing the bell, threatening to kill Madonna. Security guard again chased him off with his gun, but he like saw Madonna on the way out. Like she was biking up to the gate. And then two months later, he came back and scaled the wall again. And then the security guard like confronted him and he lunged at him and he shot the guard. Security guard shot him twice. And when he was being taken to the hospital, he told the police that Madonna was his wife and he had a right to be there. And he had some like object he had made for her or something. It's so scary.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Scary.

• 12:51Yasi Salek?

  Just want to bring that up because it's a

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Major part of

• 12:56Yasi Salek?

  Kind of telling of what level of fame

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:58Yasi Salek?

  She's reached, you know? Madonna starts prepping for Evita with three months of intensive vocal training with vocal coach Joan Later. Madonna Later told the LA Times, "The training that I did for Evita, I started working with a vocal coach and I suddenly discovered that I was only using half of my voice. Until then, I had pretty much accepted that I had a very limited range, which is fine. Anita O'Dean, E F P F, had very limited ranges too, and I'm a big fan. So I figured I'd make do with the best that I had. I remember also reading something that like she started to sing and was like, I can't believe I made that sound. Like, where did that come from? And the vocal coach was like, from God.

• 13:38Yasi Salek?

  It's polarizing a little bit within the fandom about how this intense vocal training affected her voice. Is that, am I correct to say that?

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Probably. I think it's definitely a dividing line in the career where you definitely see that there's a big shift in how she is vocalizing after. Like before, she's kind of like winging it and just like putting everything into it a lot. And afterwards, there is a lot more nuance and a lot more kind of, she does a lot of really beautiful things with her voice. And not that she wasn't doing that before, but I think it even enhances that more. There's like, she just finds her tone, I think, in a way. That's like, really, really beautiful and compelling. You know, but it also feels, I guess, more studied oftentimes.

• 14:28Yasi Salek?

  There's always gonna be haters when you're bettering yourself. And they're all, never want you to change. They never want you to grow. They don't want you to evolve. Me personally, I love Ray of Light, and I don't think Ray of Light would have been possible.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Without that.

• 14:40Yasi Salek?

  Without that.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  100%.

• 14:41Yasi Salek?

  Not in the way that we have had it. Okay, so she also takes a quick break to just be the face of the spring/summer Versace campaign, shop by Steven Mezal. Also, fall/winter, shop by Mario Testino. Then it's August of 1995, and it's the MTV VMAs. The way that I borderline have this, I'm not gonna do it because I don't have Patrick's like flexibility of mind and like prowess, but like, I pretty much, I think in my mind, this will be there. Like, like me and Patrick were saying, like, I will develop dementia, and I'll be 89 years old, and I'll remember the dialogue between Madonna, Kurt Loder, and Courtney Love at the VMAs.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 15:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. But for those of you that haven't seen it, Madonna is sitting in one of her most iconic looks, the Gucci by Tom Ford, like, kind of teal, like, blue button down.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Button down.

• 15:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that was a kind of open.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Velour or velvet pants that he had with the low waist. And, I mean, it was so iconic for her to do that, just because that was like, kind of, Tom Ford really coming up in Gucci at that time. And that was kind of, I don't know if that was his, like, it was early, anyway.

• 15:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I remember that look really specifically from the campaign as well. Amber Valetta wore it.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 16:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I just like.

• 16:04Yasi Salek?

  I was a Vogue kid.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:05Yasi Salek?

  Um, but yeah, she looks.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  And that hair.

• 16:07Yasi Salek?

  Just, yeah, it's, it's, is it seventies? Like, what is that, like, hair?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  It felt like, kind of like a sixty's, seventy's.

• 16:13Yasi Salek?

  Sixty's, yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Sort of like, uh, swinger-y.

• 16:17Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  You know, like, hot wife.

• 16:19Yasi Salek?

  Yes, she looks perfect.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  She looks perfect.

• 16:22Yasi Salek?

  And Kurt Loder's interviewing her, and then you are like, you, you don't really see what is happening, but you see Kurt Loder be like, what?

• 16:30Speaker 02

  They're on like a double-decker bus, like.

• 16:32Yasi Salek?

  They're like elevated above.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure it was a double-decker bus, like, one of those tourist bus.

• 16:37Yasi Salek?

  And they're on top of it, because they were, they were like, obviously accessible from wherever, like, people from the red carpet were coming.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Of Radio City.

• 16:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  And I think, yeah. So go on.

• 16:47Yasi Salek?

  Courtney like starts flinging items to like, over the thing, and then Kurt Loder's like, "Oh, it's Courtney. Everybody, it's Courtney." And I think Madonna goes, "Courtney is in dire need of attention." And she comes up.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Game recognize game.

• 17:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, it's, there's a great part that I had forgotten, where, and I wish I'd brought up in the last episode, but whatever, this is one long episode, it's my whole life now, all I, I don't remember a time, but when I wasn't thinking or talking about Madonna, but she tells Madonna in, in the process of this in amazing interview between like, two of my favorite women of all time, geniuses, she said that her and Kurt went to see Truth or Dare in the theater, and that Kurt turned to her and said, "That's you." And she said it was specifically the part where, um, Warren Beatty says, "You can't live off the camera." And I was like, "Oh, that's so cool." But yeah, they have this like, really funny conversation where Courtney is like, "I don't date musicians anymore."

• 17:46Yasi Salek?

  And she says something to Madonna, that's like, as, as, um, Michael Stae would say, like, "You dip into the population about her dating." It's like, so good. And I was like, "Yeah." She's like, "Yeah, I don't know. I'm like, I'm at the hospital, and I'm a surgeon, and I want to run the hospital. So I like, I date other surgeons, and then they're assholes." And she's like, "But you, like, you know, you date orderlies, and like, she's like, "Maybe I should date a candy stripper." Madonna goes, "Maybe you should get out of the hospital."

• 18:13Yasi Salek?

  Courtney is so good. She goes, but I like it in the hospital. Good clothes, great money. And then Madonna goes, and access to a lot of drugs. It's just a, it's like a really wonderful.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  It's perfect.

• 18:25Yasi Salek?

  Courtney looks awesome, too. Like, she's, it's such a.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  It's no notes situation.

• 18:30Yasi Salek?

  It's the most 1995 moment, I think. And, and they were friends, you know, like, they're like, it's a funny playful thing, but I know that they were friends and they like had a relationship. Um, but yeah, I just, that's, that's canon. For a certain kind of person, that's like the moon landing, you know?

• 18:47Speaker 02

  And weirdly, like a side note to that is that I don't even know what this was from. I just only saw this kind of recently. The pictures from that, from her on the like red carpet or whatever.

• 18:58Yasi Salek?

  Madonna?

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, wearing that Gucci look with that hair. There's this one funny picture of her where she's making a funny face, like they caught her in between. It's like, you know, we're probably in the Getty Images or whatever. Anyway, these like Russian, like people put it on like these posters and they're burning it. I mean, the images of it are crazy. You can look it up. They were like, like Orthodox Russian. I, I wish I knew better.

• 19:20Yasi Salek?

  It was some sort of like protest against Madonna?

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Her feel, being like, you know, sort of a blasphemous kind of figure, like a.

• 19:28Yasi Salek?

  Wow, what a cool item to own.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  And there's those pictures that they had on these huge posters.

• 19:32Yasi Salek?

  Just her doing the weird face?

• 19:33Speaker 02

  In flames. Yes.

• 19:35Yasi Salek?

  So wild.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Really, it's so kind of incredibly iconic. I mean, it just adds to the whole.

• 19:40Yasi Salek?

  Honestly, Madonna should purchase those images and make merch from them.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Out of 100%.

• 19:45Yasi Salek?

  I would buy a t-shirt of that, of the burning of the picture. So then in September, after the VMA, she goes to London to begin rehearsals for Evita. And in November, she releases another project. That, I love your opinion on this, that may or may not have been with, set out with the intention to sort of once again, repair her image, so to say. I, I don't, I want to be clear. I don't think that like Madonna was like tail between her legs after erotic sex. But I can see being like once bitten, twice shy a little bit and being like, well, now I kind of feel like doing this, you know?

• 20:23Yasi Salek?

  But it's something to remember. The compilation of all her ballads, November 3rd, 1995.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  I mean, there were rumors that she was, she was really. Hurt and upset by, you know, the backlash from the sex book and that kind of surprised her.

• 20:42Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Which is, I mean, funny in and of itself.

• 20:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but it's cool. It's like, it speaks to like how pure maybe the like intent was.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Kind of intention was behind it. Like, just you just thought people would be like receptive to this idea of like exploring this and people were just like.

• 20:56Yasi Salek?

  Or at the very least be like, oh, there go Madonna again. And not being like, this like, this is like disgusting. You're like, you know, you're corrupting the nation or whatever.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  So I'm sure there was an element of that in it, but I think also just probably it's pretty savvy business like decision too, because I think, you know, her, her ballads always did exceedingly well on the charts. And I think, you know, they were like some of her most loved songs, obviously.

• 21:21Yasi Salek?

  And we talked about it in the last episode, Take a Bow was like.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Huge.

• 21:24Yasi Salek?

  Massive.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Live to tell. Huge. Like, so it's like, I think it just, it just made sense as a, as a collection, where she had already done the Immaculate Collection, which was kind of like, you know, it was a continuous mix of like everything.

• 21:37Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  So this was kind of a way of showing that other side of it.

• 21:41Yasi Salek?

  It's so great. I mean, it has a couple of new songs. She always does that. One is a cover of I Want You by Marvin Gaye with Massive Attack. It's so fucking cool. I really wish she had moved, uh, been able to work more with Massive Attack.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  I mean, the rumor was that it split the band up.

• 21:59Yasi Salek?

  Well, yes. Well, yes. And if you guys are interested in that, we have a whole Massive Attack episode that I think touches upon that.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  She was always talking about, you know, that kind of like trip hop scene, tricky. She was obsessed with, she, I remember reading this very specific quote. I will never forget it, that she talked about driving around in her Mercedes. I can't get the quote quite right because I'm not Patrick. I didn't memorize it. But it, but like that she talked about driving around in her Mercedes, lis- listening to the Stereo MC's remix of this tricky song.

• 22:33Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  And bumping it so loud that this, like, the car would vibrate. And so I think she really loved that.

• 22:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, genuinely.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  That genre and that music and what was going on there. I mean, we all did. It was so cool.

• 22:46Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  And so I think, you know, this was her way of kind of like getting in there.

• 22:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and she worked with Nellie Hooper, obviously, you know.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Quite a bit.

• 22:54Yasi Salek?

  And we later, I don't, I don't want to get ahead, but I do want to foreshadow Massive Attack's. One of Massive Attack's most interesting and unusual albums is a big inspiration for one of Madonna's most interesting and unusual albums. So we'll talk about that, which is, I think, really cool. "You'll See" is the first single off of this.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  I remember it being kind of positioned as a Take a Bow Part Two, kind of.

• 23:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Kind of. And the video is kind of very similar, too, from what I remember.

• 23:25Yasi Salek?

  There's like a lyrical reference, too, right? It's like, I have truth on my side, you only have deceit.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:29Yasi Salek?

  Where it's just like lyrical reference to take about the guy having like a public personality and a private one. I don't know. This is just a genius dot com.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a, it's a good ballad.

• 23:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:52Yasi Salek?

  The "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" remix.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 23:56Yasi Salek?

  Absolute let's fucking go hours. I mean, we talked about it, I guess it would have been with Mel, because that's episode one, how much we love that song. But then it getting like this amazing remix and being on the air, it's like you're forced to remember.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  To revisit it.

• 24:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, how fucking good this, also a cover.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  It brought it to another level, that remix. Like, it just felt like somehow the vocal feels just like more forward, less kind of like.

• 24:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, more forward in the mix, for sure.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just feels like, really, she hits it so beautifully in that. It's just like really incredible.

• 24:35Yasi Salek?

  And then there's a song called "One More Chance" that I actually really like, but I feel is sort of forgotten to time. Do you feel like that?

• 24:42Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 24:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It was only released in the UK as a single. It's really good.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good song.

• 24:48Yasi Salek?

  It has a nice little, it's a nice little vibe. And an alternate version of "A Father."

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Good and interesting, yeah. It was good, I thought, also. And then that orchestra version of "I Want You," which is so amazing, it's like Craig Armstrong, I think, was the guy who did all the, yeah.

• 25:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think so. I'm just not, I don't have it in my notes. I think so, it sounds like it.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was, anyway, he had an album, and I feel like that riff from that was on that record.

• 25:13Yasi Salek?

  Was on his album, yeah.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a different, but he did a lot of stuff with Massive Attack over the years, too.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, really beautiful. That that version in particular is so.

• 25:24Yasi Salek?

  This is a great, this is a great release.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a great.

• 25:26Yasi Salek?

  Genius, genius move.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Picture from the outtake from the Versace campaign on the cover.

• 25:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's so beautiful. It's soft.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, soft.

• 25:34Yasi Salek?

  Soft tones.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:35Yasi Salek?

  She's blonde. She's not gonna hurt you. She's not scary. All right. Then on, in December, she goes on Nightline to talk to Forrest Sawyer. I bring this up because it's, it's actually a great interview and you can watch it on YouTube, but she basically tells him that her biological clock is ticking. My cousin Vinny voice, my biological clock is ticking. And she wanted to be a mother. This is also the interview where he asks her if Sean Penn was her one true love and she said yes. And he asked if anyone else has come close and she said no. And she talks about kind of like how hard it is to date and how she doesn't meet anyone interesting. And I was like, scream it from the rooftops, sister, who amongst us?

• 26:17Yasi Salek?

  Even, even mid-range podcast celebrity over here has the same issues. She gets the most fashionable artist of 1995 at the VH1 Fashion Awards, presented to her by. Sean Penn, who was at the time separated from Robin Wright. There was a lot of rumors at the time that she was like gonna have a baby by him, but that didn't happen.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:37Yasi Salek?

  She packs up instead and January of 1996 goes to Argentina to film Evita, during which she learns that she is pregnant with her first child with, if you guys remember from episode two, the man she had met in the park, Central Park, Carlos León, who she was dating on and off. And she's due in October and they somehow managed to wrap the fuck up out of this film before she started showing too much, which is so crazy. There are, there's definitely like the scenes where I'm like, oh, your boobs look so big.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, definitely.

• 27:06Yasi Salek?

  It looks great. It's like not shocking. I'm like, oh, those are pregnancy boobs, you know?

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Once you know, you kind of can't not see it, but yeah.

• 27:14Yasi Salek?

  Another monumentous occasion during this time is six and a half months pregnant. She goes to a dinner party in LA and is seated next to a film producer called Susan Becker, who I guess they're talking and, you know, just, you know, girls chatting about what's going on in their lives and how maybe things are hard. And she's like, well, I'm taking a class with a rabbi. It's called Kabbalah. Madonna's like, I'm listening.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  She sure was.

• 27:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Also in March, so important, I think, to people who have exceptional taste and love gorgeous things and good movies and Madonna looking cool as hell is her cameo in the Spike Lee film Girl Six.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  So good.

• 27:53Yasi Salek?

  Free Girl Six.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, Free Girl Six is right.

• 27:55Yasi Salek?

  The fact that you just can't fucking watch it anywhere, I believe because of the

• 27:59Speaker 02

  You can't, really?

• 28:00Yasi Salek?

  I think it's because of the Prince music in it. Um, will not, was not, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, but like, I think it's something to do with like, when you negotiate rights, like in the nineties, there was no such thing as Netflix, there's no streaming.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  No digital, right?

• 28:14Yasi Salek?

  It doesn't exceed, extend to that and like, the estate now will not sign off on that. So.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Too bad. I'm sure we can.

• 28:22Yasi Salek?

  There's no Blu-ray. Fucking release the Blu-ray.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, seriously.

• 28:26Yasi Salek?

  There's DVDs on eBay for three hundred and fifty dollars. Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  I mean, she's so good in that.

• 28:33Yasi Salek?

  She plays a phone sex operator boss, um, boss three, and Debbie Mazur is also in this film. It's an amazing film.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Really feels like New York at a particular time.

• 28:43Yasi Salek?

  I think it's my favorite Spike Lee movie.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I'd say.

• 28:46Yasi Salek?

  I mean, there's so many good ones, but.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  There's so many good ones, but it is, it is really good.

• 28:48Yasi Salek?

  I just visually, I love the visual language of it. It's so cool.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Just like really well done.

• 28:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Really amazing.

• 28:54Yasi Salek?

  And then October fourteenth, Lourdes Maria Chaconi Leone is born into this world at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. Madonna said that when her mother was very ill, she had always wanted to go to the town of Lourdes, which is in France, a world renowned Catholic pilgrimage site. Um, where I guess people, in eighteen fifty-eight, there was apparitions of the Virgin Saint Mary to Saint Bernadette.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:18Yasi Salek?

  That's why she wanted to go. She couldn't go, so she named her daughter in homage to her mother.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  I mean, Madonna played with so much over her whole career. It's like this kind of mystical aspect of Catholicism that focuses on Mary as a figure, as opposed to like the father, son, the holy ghost.

• 29:34Yasi Salek?

  Divine feminine.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's like this.

• 29:36Yasi Salek?

  It's the most divine feminine religion, I think. Even though it's obviously like a hater, hating ass religion as well, but.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Totally, completely. So, yeah, I think it's, it just, it made sense and it, it's a great name. I love that name.

• 29:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I love it too. Okay, Evita comes out November of ninety nine, well, actually December of nineteen ninety-six, but the soundtrack comes out in November. Here's, I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm gonna keep it a hundred. I saw it for the first time last week. I'm not a musical person, but I did think Madonna was ravishing and did an incredible acting job. Do I wish movies had words in them in addition to the songs? Yes. Do I think that if you didn't have a firm grasp on the geopolitical history of Argentina prior to going into watching Evita, it might be challenging to follow the story? Yes. But she looks gorgeous dresses.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm not a big musical person either. I, I think it's kind of interesting. It's just, it feels very like a vehicle. I think we were talking about this the other day too, just like, you know, just as just the choice to have Evita as that character, you know, just to write a play about it, write a musical about it. Felt like a vehicle for a female vocalist star to, you know, have a, have this kind of power, woman of power, you know, and express. And so it isn't really a piece of history so much as it is a sort of like a snapshot of some, you know, like a female figure that had.

• 31:04Yasi Salek?

  If you ask Argentinian people.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, of course. She's a cult. I don't, I meant the play itself, rather than not, not the story. Obviously the story is like major.

• 31:14Yasi Salek?

  What we maybe didn't talk about in the last episode is important to point out is that the reason she wanted this part so bad is that, is that she so strongly identified with the story of Eva Perón, which was that she came from kind of like poverty or lower, lower class in a more extreme way. I mean, she was a bastard child in a time that children who didn't have married parents actually didn't have the same legal rights as like, it was like two classes of people, literally. And like used kind of her talents and charms to, and beauty to ascend into the arts, becoming an actress and then met a general who became president and she kind of became this like.

• 32:00Yasi Salek?

  Hugely famous and beloved figure. And so I think she could pretty, and obviously makes sense, could map her own story on to that.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Also extremely polarizing. So like, you know, I think that was like a big part of it as well. Like she had very powerful and like inspired a lot of people, but also a lot of people, she had a lot of haters. So as did her husband. So, but it was, yeah.

• 32:24Yasi Salek?

  So it's, it's worth watching.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  It's worth watching. I think it was a, it was a great vehicle part for her.

• 32:30Yasi Salek?

  Totally. She finally put the fucking haters to bed with like, you can't act. Cause she absolutely acted the house down boots.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  And she had that, you know, she can't sing thing following her around a lot.

• 32:41Yasi Salek?

  And she sings incredibly.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Incredibly. And so, I mean, she, she tore it. It's like an incredible performance.

• 32:48Yasi Salek?

  A hundred percent.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  And she, yeah, she really did. And it's, you know, it's interesting time too, because I remember really specifically the Vanity Fair issue that came out that like showed her at dresses Ava Perron with the brown contact lenses. And she closed her tooth gap, which, you know, was like this huge major moment. And just presenting herself as somebody else in this way, like in this kind of editorialized way, which she had always done, but it kind of always had that sense of like Madonna where this felt like this very sophisticated, it kind of signals the next era of her career in a way, like her kind of more mature.

• 33:24Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Kind of presentation or like way of like addressing and styling.

• 33:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I love that. I sound so right.

• 33:43Yasi Salek?

  Well, she did great. She is nominated for best actress at the Golden Globes the following year, 97. She wins best actress in a musical or comedy. And Evita wins best motion picture musical comedy. You Must Love Me wins best song, which we didn't point out, but You Must Love Me is the only original, obviously because this is a pre-existing musical, but in order to be nominated, you have to have an original song. So they wrote this song for it.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  And that dress that she wore. She was like just postpartum.

• 34:14Yasi Salek?

  You're obsessed with her breasts.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, who isn't? Aren't we all?

• 34:17Yasi Salek?

  I think it's like. I have, I've talked a lot about her breasts. I'm sorry, Madonna, if that's.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  She has like the most perfect breasts.

• 34:22Yasi Salek?

  The most really perfect.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  So it's like.

• 34:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this was a great time for Madonna lovers because there's all this like red carpet stuff. They didn't actually get any nominations in the major Oscar categories, but Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber won for that best song Oscar. Around this time as well, sometime in 1997, her longtime manager Freddie Deman steps back from managing Madonna. He was made like the chief executive at Maverick. And actually the next year Madonna buys him out for like 20 or 25 million dollars. So he kind of retires, but her assistant, Chris Henry, takes over the management of Madonna. And Guy O'Seary is still there. He's just like an elevated figure in Maverick right now.

• 35:08Yasi Salek?

  By the fall of 97, Madonna and Carlos Leon had actually broken up. Of course, continuing to co-parent. Now that all that's over with, now that we acted the house down boots and got a Golden Globe and learned to, you know, really use 100% of our voice. It's time to make a new album.

• 35:27Yasi Salek?

  She went to Babyface first, but it didn't work out.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  She went in a few directions at first that that weren't quite. She went to her familiars.

• 35:36Yasi Salek?

  Right, totally. She went to my, my guy, my dog, Patrick Leonard and Patrick Leonard truther. If there's one fan in the room, it's me. What was that thing with there's 100 people in the room and I'm your fan or whatever? I don't remember how the meme goes. Anyways, she goes to work with Patrick Leonard and to put some respect and credit on his name. They did write four songs together, Sky Fits Heaven, Nothing Really Matters, Skin and Frozen.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  I mean, all major songs, right?

• 36:03Yasi Salek?

  Yes, I do think obviously they evolved quite a bit from whatever those demos were, but he had a hand in the bones at least. That was a great story too, that after this session, he had a tape of the demos with the, just the letter M on it. And he had gone to return his rental car and left it in the fucking rental car and was like in a panic mode. Like I just leaked four, like.

• 36:28Yasi Salek?

  Baby skeletal songs, but apparently it, someone probably just took it out and threw the trash because it never, it never surfaced.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 36:35Yasi Salek?

  And then she's like, okay, new collaborator. So she finds Rick Knowles. Actually, Rick Knowles finds her. Rick Knowles had worked on Celine Dion's album Falling Into You. And there she was shopping at Barney's. May it fucking rest in peace. I miss it every day of my life. Barney's, New York. And he introduced, he walks in, hi, Madonna. I'm.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  I'm Rick Knowles.

• 36:58Yasi Salek?

  I'm Rick Knowles, babe. And he tells her she's such a great songwriter. And two weeks later, they're in LA working on music together.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  What I love about that little story too, is that he was like, oh, I, I produced Celine's Falling Into You. And she's like, oh, I love that song. Which is like, kind of great. Like, I thought it was great. He also worked with Stevie Nicks on.

• 37:19Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  One of her records at the end of the eighties. It was an interesting period for Stevie, but also like just the production, vocal production is very interesting. So it could have been an interesting combination there.

• 37:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Good writer, I think, too.

• 37:32Yasi Salek?

  They did write nine songs together.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:34Yasi Salek?

  In 10 days. Three of them end up on the album. To Have and Not To Hold, The Power of Goodbye and Little Star. And then she's like, I want, like, back to what you were saying. I want trip hop.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:47Yasi Salek?

  Type producers. And again, apologize to the trip hop community that thinks trip hop is not a real genre. I know, but like, I need to, it's like indie sleaze now. I need to use a shorthand for you guys to understand what I'm talking about.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  We all know what we're talking about when we say that.

• 38:00Yasi Salek?

  Apparently, this I thought was very interesting, that she asked Tricky and Goldie and The Prodigy, who were signed to Maverick?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:08Yasi Salek?

  And they all told her, no. Imagine you're on this woman's label and you're like, no.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it speaks to that time also where, you know, just like, people were, they didn't want to work with a pop star because that would make them not look.

• 38:25Yasi Salek?

  Not smack my bitch up prodigy. They're probably like, no, I don't think so. That doesn't fit with our.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  I mean, it just, it's just kind of an interesting commentary on that, how things

• 38:33Yasi Salek?

  Have changed.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Have changed since then. I mean, it was already starting to change. I feel like this kind of like. Blending of genres and the idea that she would be even shopping around with those kinds of artists was pretty forward.

• 38:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  But they were not ready for it.

• 38:47Yasi Salek?

  I don't know what the prodigy version of Ray of Light sounds like, but.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Would have been amazing.

• 38:51Yasi Salek?

  We'll never know. That's a good use of AI.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Somebody do that and send it to us.

• 38:56Yasi Salek?

  Make me the ray of light that prodigy.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Which actually, that song as a prodigy song, let's hear it.

• 39:03Yasi Salek?

  I know. Her quote about it was that they all basically, quote, turned their elitist noses up at me and said, oh, we can't work with you. You're a big star.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Big pop star.

• 39:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Guy O'Seary was like, what about this guy Billy Orbitz? That's not his name. William Orbitz. He who, quote, had done some remixes of my records and he sent over some stuff he had been working on and it was absolutely the direction I wanted to go. William Orbitz.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  William Orbitz.

• 39:28Yasi Salek?

  Born William Rainwright.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, he had done a couple of remixes, right? He had did a remix of Justify My Love.

• 39:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. He also made his own music under the name Strange Cargo. Madonna's called him a complete madman genius with no pretenses, who doesn't care whether people think he's cool or not.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  That's a pretty fair assessment.

• 39:46Yasi Salek?

  Sounds like a great person to know and to work with. Madonna said, I'd been away for so long that when I got into the studio with him, I felt like I'd been shot out of a cannon. I had so many ideas and Ray of Light's, Ray of Light reflects that. Quick fashion footnote before we get into the Ray of Light cycle. In November of nineteen ninety seven, the Rolling Stone Women of Rock cover comes out. Very funny grouping. Women of Rock and it's Madonna, Courtney Love and Tina Turner.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  It is a funny grouping.

• 40:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Tina Turner, obviously, original rockers.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:21Yasi Salek?

  And Madonna, sure.

• 40:25Yasi Salek?

  Sure. It's, I bring it up though because it's notable because Ariane Phillips meets Madonna here because she's styling Courtney Love.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:34Yasi Salek?

  And they form a kind of lasting.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Bond there.

• 40:37Yasi Salek?

  Bond and partnership that's gonna go on into a lot of the next cycle of her looks. Including the look that she has for the Frozen single. The next release.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Which also has the same colored background as the Rolling Stone cover.

• 40:53Yasi Salek?

  Oh, interesting.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Thing. I always thought about that because that came out right in 97 and the she had that hair. So they're already started to change her hair tone and like you started to see this evolution towards Ray of Light. And looking back at that, I remember thinking about how those covers seem very similar.

• 41:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you're right. It's this like sort of like.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Golden tan.

• 41:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. Which is crazy because then the visual imagery around the video is completely different.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, completely different.

• 41:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I know that part of that is because they had, she had to wear a black wig to make it work. The effects.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  For the effects.

• 41:30Yasi Salek?

  Because you couldn't do it with blonde hair.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Coming out of your blonde hair.

• 41:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. You couldn't turn into a black, black Doberman dog.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:38Yasi Salek?

  Okay, let's talk about Frozen.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  I mean, just the first time I heard that.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  It was just a, it was such a, it was mind blowing just because it was so different sounding and just the, I think the, the level of vocal production. I always started to see on Bedtime Stories sort of like a new direction of vocal production for her. And where's, you know, like lots of layered backgrounds and, you know, just kind of like different treatments on the voice.

• 42:05Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Which really suited her quite nicely. But here it's really taken to another level and that humming that she does and the, yeah, just like, and the sort of like, you know, it just like the hint of like, sort of far eastern, let's just say, kind of influence on it. And it just was just all so new that felt really exciting. It was very, very exciting.

• 42:38Yasi Salek?

  I hope and pray that it's not just people my and your age and above listening to this podcast. And there's some young people, and if there are, I need to, I need you to understand. The the vice grip that eastern culture had on alternative and pop culture in the late nineties.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:02Yasi Salek?

  Like, I had Nepalese prayer flags on my wall, babe, okay? We were wearing beads, we were getting Henna tattoos on our, we didn't know the words cultural appropriation. That wasn't a thing yet. We were, oh my god, sari, um, fabric as skirts. Oh, you wanna hear the ugliest thing you could ever possibly think of? They took that fabric and went ahead and stitched it around the bottom of jeans. They made a little culotte jeans and then they made the bottom the sari fabric with the gold.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Nose rings and the jewels and like the, yeah, all of it.

• 43:36Yasi Salek?

  Gwen Stefani has a bindi, babe. We are like, we're balls deep in appropriating the culture of the East.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  It was part of a sort of, you know, I mean, there was like a lot of that Free Tibet energy.

• 43:48Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Like floating around in the world of pop music and rock music.

• 43:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Through the eighties and into the nineties.

• 43:55Yasi Salek?

  I think it was very pure hearted.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  It was like, it felt very organic as part of just like thinking about, I mean, it's different. We think of things differently now. It's like, this was the beginning of globalization in a way. And then like, you know, where the world was really becoming global because the internet was coming in. It was the first time that we're really able to travel globally in an easy way. So it's like, you know, it was just a natural way of like being like, wow, look at this whole.

• 44:19Yasi Salek?

  I think so too.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Thing and just feeling very passionately like moved by it and wanting to kind of like engage with it. So I think it, it wasn't, I don't think it was cynical or had any kind of edge to it that was.

• 44:32Yasi Salek?

  I also think it's partly connected to like the mainstreaming of alternative culture. Because part of alternative culture that everyone always forgets is like yoga and the head shop. And like, you know, like that was very much happening.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  And just, yeah, a Buddha statue.

• 44:49Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  So it's like.

• 44:50Yasi Salek?

  And Madonna great yoga. So anyways, I just wanted to paint you the picture and make you think of those horrible pants that I may or may not have worn. This song is God tier. This is a God tier song. Madonna said she was obsessed with the movie The Sheltering Sky. Have you seen that film?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:06Yasi Salek?

  Oh, is it good? I haven't seen it.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  I mean, it's really long.

• 45:08Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Deborah Winger. I mean, it is great. Yeah, it's great.

• 45:12Yasi Salek?

  It's Bernarda Bertolucci, set in northern Africa, starring Deborah Winger and John Malkovich.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, just like incredible landscapes and just like, you know, really just that sort of Bedouin energy. So again, that kind of like-

• 45:27Yasi Salek?

  The song feels like that, for sure. It feels like a North African desert song in that way, you know? Yeah, so she said, "I was obsessed with that whole Moroccan slash orchestral slash super romantic slash man carrying the woman he loves across the desert vibe." So I told Pat, because this is a Patrick Leonard song, that I wanted something with a tribal feel, something really lush and romantic. When he started playing some music, I just turned the dat on and started free associating and came up with the melody. That level of talent, though, by the way, I just need to once again point out, like, she could just come up with a top-line melody that good like this.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Like that. I mean, I think, you know, you see that over and over again, all of the people who've worked with her said she works incredibly fast. It's like, no.

• 46:05Yasi Salek?

  I think it vibes with what I think about her as being one of the most intuitive artists of all time. Like, it's so clear that she's just tapped into something and she doesn't, thank God, question it. Yeah.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  And once it's out, it's like, well, don't think about it again. Just like, that's it, you know, like-

• 46:25Yasi Salek?

  Which is why she takes so many risks, I think, you know? She said, "Some of the lyrical sentiment in Frozen was drawn from my own personal experience." Then she also cites another movie that the lyrics are inspired by, which is The English Patient, one of my favorite films. Merchant Ivory, Hives, Stand Up, Amanda Dobbins, if you're listening, you know, you love that movie. She said, "I know it sounds so dorky, but it really moved me. I wept and I can't even tell you why. I also wept when I saw that." Yeah, I think it was in high school.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  It was such a huge movie at the time, too. It's like-

• 46:56Yasi Salek?

  Rafe Fiennes, it was like so hot.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  And Kristen Scott Thomas.

• 46:58Yasi Salek?

  Kristen Scott Thomas, what a-

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Amazing, yeah.

• 47:01Yasi Salek?

  Oh, to be loved in that way. Oh, to love someone that way. That's Madonna's quote, but also me, I'm echoing it. We'll start with the video, directed by Chris Cunningham, my goat. I know you guys had this. Well, if you're my people, you had the DVD. You had the Chris Cunningham, Spike Jones, and Michelle motherfucking Gondry.

• 47:21Yasi Salek?

  Um, which I'm angry with him because he forced me to say on record how much I love a piece of Foo Fighters art.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:30Yasi Salek?

  Which is the ever long video that he did with the big hands.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:33Yasi Salek?

  Um, anyways, I just love the idea that Madonna's at home being like, watching Aphex Twin music videos. And she gets obsessed with his music video for Come On, uh, Come to Daddy.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  So good.

• 47:45Yasi Salek?

  Really terrifying music video, as, as are the Aphex Twins.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:49Yasi Salek?

  In the genre, but like, she was like, I want something like that. Although I don't, Frozen is not quite in the same.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 47:57Yasi Salek?

  It's, it's more mystical than it is like horror movie. It's filmed in the Mojave Desert.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  It's a piece of like, uh, uh, art that's like timeless and.

• 48:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  And I mean, it also so innovative again, just like not to keep, but for her to be like goth. And like to kind of go in this direction of like, the mystical themes, which we've already kind of touched on, but just also kind of her presentation of being that kind of like witchy figure.

• 48:24Yasi Salek?

  She's wearing all goatee.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:26Yasi Salek?

  He had done a collection inspired by like Marilyn Manson.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:29Yasi Salek?

  And it was from that collection. She looks so cool.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  She looks so cool.

• 48:32Yasi Salek?

  And then, yeah, the like dancing to become into like the birds and the, it's so beautiful.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  So beautiful.

• 48:39Yasi Salek?

  And all the clothes, she looks so beautiful.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  She looks so beautiful. And the, I mean, it just like perfectly fits the song too. It's like very, it was really something else.

• 48:46Yasi Salek?

  Worst dance. Um, in 2021, there was a trap remix of Frozen made by a Canadian DJ called Sick Kick. And that went viral on TikTok and Madonna, because genius, was like,

• 48:58Yasi Salek?

  I will be making money off of that. So December 3rd, 2021 officially released as the first single from Madonna's entire catalog reissue project. Um, and they did three more versions, um, one featuring Fireboy D M L, one, uh, featuring, uh, Oh Seven Oh Shake.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:17Yasi Salek?

  And then one featuring vocals from Sick Kick himself. Frozen on Fire. And I'll be honest with you, I've not heard these.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  I have heard.

• 49:27Yasi Salek?

  Um, what's your favorite?

• 49:28Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I love Oh Seven Oh, so I, so I like that one.

• 49:32Yasi Salek?

  So that was top of 1998, January, and just a smooth month later.

• 49:40Yasi Salek?

  Ray of Light is released. Do you agree with the like, kind of sentiment that this is like her Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club moment, or like, I heard someone else kind of compare it to Bob Dylan going electric? Like this like, major shift?

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  I definitely, I mean, definitely think it was a major shift. It's kind of her.

• 50:06Yasi Salek?

  Masterpiece?

• 50:07Speaker 02

  It's kind of her magnum opus, I would say, like, just like as a, as a work.

• 50:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Like, you know, as a, as a record and as like, a direction, it feels like, fully realized, right? Like, it just feels like she, she, she chose the sound, she took voice lessons, she had kind of new real revelations about life and about who she was and her celebrity, and had this kind of like retrospective looking back, and it just kind of really brings all of those things, that kind of lyrical sentiment, the music and the production, just like, into like, a, just really feels like a masterwork.

• 50:43Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I mean, it's art with a capital A, right? But a part of me, like Brussels looks, I'm like, oh, like, I feel that so much of your past work was also art, but, but this one is more widely considered because it fits back into what people consider art, which is this, not like, bubblegum pop music, but this sort of like, more nuanced style of music that is post her singing lessons, you know?

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Right. And also not controversial. Like, I think that, like, you know, this, her sort of being more introspective and spiritual, spiritually minded, and also somewhat, I wouldn't say contrite, but kind of just looking back at, you know, what, you know, so many of the songs are like, reflecting on celebrity, reflecting on what you valued before and realizing that there's more valuable things. I mean, obviously she had had a daughter, and that's like, a huge life-changing experience. So, I think people found all of that very relatable.

• 51:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Whereas a lot of, I think, in, you know, like erotica or something.

• 51:44Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Put a lot of people off because they have hangups about sex, and so therefore, that stuff just touches on nerves that people, it's triggering, right? So like.

• 51:52Yasi Salek?

  I love this album, like, immediately off jump. But we've talked to some friends who were like, I didn't fuck with that until later. Like, I didn't know what was going on. Like, I wanted erotica Madonna, you know? I, I kind of started to posit this theory, I think, in, in episode two, but like.

• 52:07Yasi Salek?

  I really feel like, okay, starting with Like a Prayer, and even probably everything coming up to that, like, this was sort of like, she's, she's, you know, nascent artist, like, just like having a good time, finding her voice, you know, falling in love, true blue. Like a Prayer is like a reckoning, it's your Saturn return. It's about loss, it's about pain, it's about hurt, it's about losing power and losing things. And then you get to Erotica, which is about regaining power and dominance, and to me, all, that's very masculine, right? Exerting power is very masculine. And then you go kind of to bedtime stories, which is like, like, maybe a return to like,

• 52:50Yasi Salek?

  okay, you didn't like, like, not even like, that's what she was thinking, but it was like, okay, I went super hard in the masculine paint, now I'm going a little more towards the middle part of like femininity, and then, I think, to me, Ray of Light is a divine feminine. Like, it's like, very much like, I'm encapsulating, because the divine feminine is like, a sort of like, um, I don't know, we just talked about Marian Catholicism, you know? I don't know if I'm making sense, but-

• 53:17Speaker 02

  I think you are, I mean, the way I would describe it is probably in kind of a woo way, but it's like, it feels very embodied, right? Like, it feels like, whereas, you know, Erotica is like exerting power, it feels very much like, like, it kind of has a sort of aggression to it, you know, and it is like, kind of putting it in your face, kind of thing, where, and whereas this feels much more like, quiet and self-assured,

• 53:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  in a, in a way that, I wouldn't say that Erotica doesn't feel self-assured, because it is self-assured, it just feels much more rebellious.

• 53:52Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  And this feels just like, quiet and self-assured, and kind of like, embodied.

• 53:57Yasi Salek?

  And like, receiving, right? Receiving is feminine. I just like, I can't, more because it all clicked more into place with me when I was listening to the, to the American Life single, and she's kind of lays it out in there, where she's like, I tried to be a girl, I tried to be a boy, you know? Like, and I'm like-

• 54:24Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, that's my, that's my big brain.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Big brain take for the day.

• 54:29Yasi Salek?

  At the same time, very stupid take about.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  No, I think, I think that's what she's saying, right? I made you think it's like, like she's trying things on and this feels like, you know, the birth of the daughter.

• 54:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because being a mother, again, what, what's more divine feminine than giving birth? You know? Like you are embodying the, your, it's creation is feminine, you know? I, I think it's, yeah, I just, it's a wonderful.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  I'm feeling kind of content and happy there.

• 54:56Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Like it really feels like she's happy.

• 54:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and like I walked through the fire of being burned at the stake for erotica and I came out the other side, you know?

• 55:06Speaker 02

  And now I have this beautiful baby and my life is actually pretty good. Like I had a very successful musical.

• 55:13Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  You know, and all, you know, so it feels like she's come to a place where she feels content and she's happy and she's able to kind of like write about it and.

• 55:22Yasi Salek?

  And we can't understand the influence of her journey into Kabbalah because she's become very spiritual and in a, in a further, not further is my, without the word, but in a different path than she had been her whole life. She deepened into the study of one specific spiritual tradition.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Also, I mean yoga, because I think that, and maybe is more influential on this record in particular.

• 55:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Cause I think Kabbalah is a through line for this entire episode that we're talking about, but in this particular moment, you know, yoga was really big and that's where she was going to this studio in New York, Eddie Stern's studio that was.

• 56:00Yasi Salek?

  It's normal for you to know that.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  I know because I went there too. She, that's where she met Gwyneth Paltrow, I'm pretty sure, because they were both there doing yoga.

• 56:09Yasi Salek?

  Remember Gwyneth Paltrow being like, no, like I invented doing yoga or whatever? She's not wrong. She was very ahead.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  It was, it was pretty leading. I mean, there were like a few big studios in New York and it was like, it was like the hot thing to start doing yoga. It was pretty, it wasn't new. There were like, there were plenty of places around doing yoga, but it was catching on where people were starting to do it in a more of a mass way.

• 56:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  And this guy was doing Ashtanga yoga. It was pretty mysterious.

• 56:33Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I was gonna say, I think what people maybe wouldn't understand, or some people. I don't want to misspeak, wouldn't understand now with the like commodification of yoga into like, we do, we have weights and we do like HI yoga. It's like, what even fuck is that? This is like, yoga is a spiritual practice. It is also obviously a movement of the body and does provide exercise, but what it is at its core is a spiritual practice.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  And I think at that time, there weren't, like, you couldn't really take yoga at a gym. Like, it wasn't, there weren't yoga classes at your gym. So like, you had to go to a studio where people were, you know, had gone to India.

• 57:11Yasi Salek?

  Where they had incense burning and some prayer flags on the wall and a Buddha set.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  And did that whole prayer and all that stuff. That's like that Shanti Astanga, the Shangi thing. And like, so was, you know, that was all part of that world. And if you like, were in there, there was that smell of Nagchampa and that like kind of, so this record also, I think, like, references that world.

• 57:30Yasi Salek?

  It came right out of the yoga studio.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 57:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Okay. So, well, let's dive deeper into the, into the album. So, it's engineered by Pat McCarthy and Marius De Vries, who was a massive attack, Nellie Hooper, associate, who works with Madonna a lot going forward. Patrick Leonard did like, kind of handle the quote, "classic sensibility album" because he was like managing the strings and woodwind sections. There's 20 violins, six violas, six cellos, four double basses, two flutes, and an oboe on here, which were conducted by cellist Suzie Katayama on Frozen and the Power of Goodbye. Madonna said of this record that how it was different from her previous records was that she took more musical chances.

• 58:18Yasi Salek?

  "I let William Orbit play mad professor. He comes from a very experimental, cutting-edge sort of place. He's not a trained musician, and I'm used to working with classically trained musicians, but I knew that's where I wanted to go, so I took a lot more risks. Oftentimes, the creative process is frustrating because I wasn't used to it. Took a lot longer than usual to make this record. But I realize now that I need the time to get where I'm going."

• 58:37Speaker 02

  I mean, I think that's interesting because especially that Pat Leonard was still kind of involved.

• 58:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Because he had talked about, you know, I think was specifically talking about the, "Who's That Girl" soundtrack and how quickly she worked on that, like that it was just like,

• 58:54Speaker 02

  An hour, like, you know,

• 58:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  The song would come out and she'd be like, we're done.

• 58:57Yasi Salek?

  And she was like, can't S- esthenemia. Call it a day, we're going home.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  We're done, like, close it down.

• 59:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  No more work for you either, like, we're done. Like, she had that saying, like, the time is money and the money is mine.

• 59:08Yasi Salek?

  I feel like that was like- So good.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  I think, you know, so I think she, it's very clear from this album and the sound of it, that she, she really took time with it. Like, it had to, and, you know, I know he was fussy, meaning he-

• 59:24Yasi Salek?

  William Orbit.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, just like, he's a fussy kind of worker, like, he just has to, he needed an iterative process to kind of get to where he, especially if you listen to the demos, you can hear sort of like substantively what the song was, but like, it evolved so much.

• 59:39Yasi Salek?

  So much, yeah.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  She had to learn patience, which I guess her yoga, like, helped her develop, so she was ready for it.

• 59:46Yasi Salek?

  Yes. I like the, what William Orbit told the journalist Johnny Black, which is that, "The first day I was in paralysis, because I was used to going off and being left to get on with it." But she said, "I'm not the kind of girl that leaves the guy to get on with it. Get used to it." And he said, "The moment I saw her jumping onto the tracks in such an artistic way, I instantly thought how great it was gonna be. She's an amazing producer, and it was a true collaboration. It's important to get this across. I don't like it when people assume I was the clever one doing the whole job." This is a through line, by the way, we've said it a couple of times in other, from other producers, all producers say this, like, Madonna is in there. Like, she's not like, "I produced it, because I want advantage of credit," you know? I mean, we even saw it, I'm jumping ahead, but we watched the tour documentary.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  The "I'm going to tell you a secret."

• 1:00:32Yasi Salek?

  "I'm going to tell you a secret" last night, and like, there's a part where she's checking every dancer's makeup.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:00:37Yasi Salek?

  Before they go, like, this woman cares deeply about every part of this process of her work.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and I think there was, there's also in the Drowned World Tour, which we're obviously gonna talk about, but one of the music engineers, like, gave an interview or something and made a comment that she could hear so precisely in the mix, like, things that weren't sounding right.

• 1:00:57Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  So they created all these innovations to make the sound happen, like, playing things at different desks. Levels and like, you know, different kinds of monitors because she was so particular about hearing things.

• 1:01:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so she's a good producer.

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's a good producer.

• 1:01:12Yasi Salek?

  Um, I really loved, okay, shout out to former guest of the pod and one of the greatest living music writers, in my opinion, Sean De Souza. He wrote, he did a review, actually it was of music, um, I think in Pitchfork Sunday Review, but he mentioned, he obviously talked about, um, Ray of Light, and he said Madonna's pivot on Ray of Light was wildly successful. Her Britpop-suffused entry into the world of eastern spirituality and clean living cannily marrying the tastes of a culture as interested in pure moods as Oasis. I'm so interested in that Britpop element. Do you hear that in Ray of Light?

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  I feel like it has that kind of like guitar-y.

• 1:01:54Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  You know, like, almost 60s throwback.

• 1:01:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like a power pop jangly guitar.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  It feels kind of like Beatles adjacent, or that kind of like, you know, summer love.

• 1:02:06Yasi Salek?

  Which obviously Britpop is very much.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  Right. And that feels like Williams world, really, like, and so it does have that.

• 1:02:13Yasi Salek?

  He is British.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's interesting because this, I do think, like, from here forward, at least in terms of this block that we're talking about, she does really go in a much more European direction. Like, she works with a lot of European people.

• 1:02:29Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  And she's, she's really, like, turned towards Europe quite a bit more. And the sound is obviously reflecting that.

• 1:02:36Yasi Salek?

  I think that's so, that's so true. All right, the cover.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  The cover is just, I mean, I mean, you can say what the facts are, but.

• 1:02:44Yasi Salek?

  It was shot by Mario Testino, you might have heard of him, um, styled by Lori Goldstein, and they opted for textures evocative, the elements of water and air, which are recurrent themes in the album, and she is wearing a turquoise Dolce & Gabbana Spring Summer 1998 vinyl raincoat.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Again, it was just like, a just completely different way to see Madonna, like, nobody, we hadn't seen her that way before. And you, and when you see. Those pictures, I mean, they're so obviously, she has tons of makeup and it's so obviously so produced, but it had this like very natural feeling, like there's texture in her skin.

• 1:03:20Yasi Salek?

  Totally. There's like- Her hair is like a different blonde.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Kind of a minimal, no makeup, but it feels like that kind of much more natural strawberry kind of blonde color.

• 1:03:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, her eyebrows are a bit thicker.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, just all of it feels like, you just feel this presence, much more there, less like remote and sort of like Marilyn Monroe, you know, icon and more kind of like, yeah, Earth Mother, like you say.

• 1:03:41Yasi Salek?

  Down to earth.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. So really beautiful, like very compelling. And he just had such a beautiful way of photographing skin always. That's like, you know, dewy and fresh and has just the red and yellow texture.

• 1:03:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  So it's like, we all want that skin. That's like the, you know.

• 1:03:56Yasi Salek?

  Don't I want it so bad?

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:03:59Yasi Salek?

  So bad.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  It was just, it was like perfect, I think. And the textures of the coat and the, but with the hair is like the perfect kind of like marriage of that.

• 1:04:08Yasi Salek?

  I just have that blue, like blue is so nineties too, like that, like.

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  I personally love the frozen ones because those are that, that kind of like golden one.

• 1:04:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  It's just, to me, so, so beautiful and encapsulates it so well. But it, I mean, they're, all of them do. And I think it's like that earthy feeling with this kind of like, a little bit like reference to that, the tech sound that she's using. So it's like, it feels very forward and feels very futuristic and modern, but at the same time, there's this like earthy element.

• 1:04:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally. To me, this is a very blue album. It's a color blue album. I think of blue when I think of it because of the music. Okay, what is this album about? What are the themes?

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  I mean, it's very personal, I think.

• 1:04:52Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  I think there's a lot of reflection happening, right? There's a lot of reflecting on life as a celebrity up until this point.

• 1:04:59Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Things that, things that she'd put a lot of value on that she'd realize aren't so valuable. I mean.

• 1:05:05Yasi Salek?

  Which will be kind of a recurrent theme for the next few albums.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  So that's kind of introducing a new idea. I think that, you know, obviously the birth of Lourdes was a huge factor in all of that. And the spirituality practices and all of those things, kind of like. Just bringing her to kind of like a little bit of a more grounded place, like,

• 1:05:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  And just kind of musing about that from that perspective.

• 1:05:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think that's, that's so right. I like, I see it like, to oversimplify it as like, an album about like birth, death and rebirth.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Yasi Salek?

  You know, it has like all of that in there, like birth very literally with Lourdes, but also like, I don't know, the birth of a new sound, the birth of a new direction. And then the rebirth of, we talked about of like, kind of a phoenix from the flames of the pain and suffering after post-sex book erotica. And there's always death in her albums.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Yasi Salek?

  But it's all.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  These are also themes in like, in Like a Prayer.

• 1:06:07Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  So they're like, they've been sort of like there. She's just really kind of like pulling them down.

• 1:06:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  And making them much more sort of legible.

• 1:06:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it feels like in like, in the prior times, those themes showed up, Like a Prayer is a very urgent.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:22Yasi Salek?

  Desperate seeking of spirituality, whereas this feels like a landing.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:28Yasi Salek?

  You know, where it's like, oh, like there's no urge or desperation. Like, I always remember someone telling me that like, if you have a feeling and it feels urgent, that's not your intuition.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:39Yasi Salek?

  That's like fear or anxiety because your intuition never feels urgent. And I feel like this album is like, whatever, the album version of that. It's like her intuition, it doesn't feel urgent.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, completely. Again, I think that's like, that idea of embodying things, right? Like, whereas before she was like, inhabiting things.

• 1:06:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's so good.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Like, she's embodying this, these things.

• 1:07:02Yasi Salek?

  Someone asked her very directly, so I can talk about it. What are the album's themes? And they said, are you, you know, they seem more personal than before. Are you just expressing yourself better as a singer? And she said, I feel it's probably a combination of the two. I've written lyrics that were quite personal before, certainly in like the Like a Prayer album, and even stuff on bedtime stories felt very personal. But perhaps I was in a much more vulnerable place when I was recording this album. And because I feel I've done a lot of growing and evolving spiritually and emotionally. And then the interviewer said, is there a reason you were more vulnerable? And Madonna said, first of all, it was after doing Avita, which was really a challenging, emotionally exhausting, soul searching couple of years for me. It also kind of gave me time off from being me. Like, like you were saying, she like became Eva Peron in the Vanity Fair, you know?

• 1:07:48Yasi Salek?

  And so she was kind of able to vacate herself for a little while. This is the album that we were kind of, remember we were talking on our way here, like what was, what was, what did Titanic do to Madonna? And it's like, so what Titanic soundtrack did was keep Raym Lai off of number one. It was, nothing could beat the Titanic soundtrack.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  Nothing could beat the Titanic ultimately.

• 1:08:09Yasi Salek?

  Once again, if you weren't there, my heart will go on. The amount of times that you heard that song in the year of-

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  I still can hear it.

• 1:08:19Yasi Salek?

  I can hear it right now. It's echoing around my head. Great song, honestly.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, great song.

• 1:08:23Yasi Salek?

  Okay, let's just go, I guess, in order, even though it won't be in the order of the singles were released. But the first song on the album is actually the third single, Drowned World slash Substitute for Love.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 1:08:38Yasi Salek?

  Amazing. We're just like, love it, love it, love it. Let's move on. Of course, amazing. And the title is inspired by J.G. Ballard's post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, The Drowned World. This is another one that I'm pretty sure I got this right, that this is the demo.

• 1:08:56Speaker 02

  It sounds-

• 1:08:56Yasi Salek?

  And they just slapped it right on the album.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  Pretty much, I think so. But probably not the original demo.

• 1:09:01Yasi Salek?

  Right, the like demo version where they landed on-

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  But again, that's her way, right? I mean, it's just like, when she lays it down, it's kind of done. And I mean, I can't imagine her doing it more perfectly than that vocal.

• 1:09:15Yasi Salek?

  So the very beginning is, I traded fame for love without a second thought. Is that becoming a mother, do you think?

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah. I think that's like, you know, just what she said in that just quote that you just read a minute ago about coming off of Evita and like all of that stress and just like having that, you know, she was just kind of have the baby and then just like, wow, my whole life is different. Like that's how I imagine it anyway. And just like feeling like, wow, the whole center of my focus is now right here.

• 1:09:47Yasi Salek?

  I also like can't help but think now, like, kind of the idea that actually like-

• 1:09:55Yasi Salek?

  You know, this, this is a, we've talked about it in two episodes now. One of the most ambitious people of all time, right? And ambition has goals. What was left, you know, like, she had obviously topped charts and hit fame peaks all over, tour records. She put the fuck, she finally acted in a film that no one could say was bad and that she won a Golden Globe for.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:10:22Yasi Salek?

  No one can say she can't sing anymore because she mastered that. She wanted so bad to have a baby, she had a baby. And I wonder if Ray of Light is very much from that because it does, there is also a thematic thing of like, I got everything I wanted, but now what? You know? And I think she's, there's a lyric that made me think of it. I got exactly what I asked for, wanted it so badly.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:41Yasi Salek?

  And then you kind of realize, like, once you've gotten everything you wanted and nothing changes.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:47Yasi Salek?

  Like, because, because kind of it doesn't, right? You're still there with yourself.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, and what she says too in that song is like, I suffered fools so gladly. You know, and now I, it, now I find I've changed my mind. But like, I mean, I do think, I can't imagine that.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  And there's nothing more powerful, I would imagine, I haven't had a child, but I can't imagine that there's anything really more powerful than that, that like is going to shift your focus and shift the meaning of your life in such a profound way that feels,

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  you know, just really transformative.

• 1:11:32Yasi Salek?

  There was a really interesting interview with her later on where they asked her if that was her most, that was her biggest work of art, or that was your biggest, do you know what I'm talking about?

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, kind of.

• 1:11:43Yasi Salek?

  And she was like, that's what I'm supposed to say. And it was so interesting, right? Because she was just kind of like, I guess glancing sideways at the idea, not that, obviously she doesn't love or find it fulfilling, but that the idea that like, it's the be all, end all, you know?

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  And I, I think, just to be clear, what I'm saying is like, this is a moment, right? Like, so she's having this moment and that's. The experience around this album and around this time. So obviously, you know, things evolve.

• 1:12:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, the song is God Tear. It's gorgeous. It's a perfect start to kind of ease you into the.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  And the, just the like little kick of like those little drum and bass kicks and the like little like. Yeah, just like.

• 1:12:25Yasi Salek?

  Picks up a little bit.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. Just a little introduction to like how this record's gonna sound. And like, it really feels innovative and cool and still, still kind of like, sounds kind of futuristic and cool to me.

• 1:12:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  But, you know, like the sort of like tech era of like the 90s and the 2000s, it like, just that sort of ambition towards the future. And, you know, what that would sound like or look like or, or feel like. I think these, you know, there still falls within that.

• 1:13:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, sort of the cyberpunk.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, like that kind of like idea. And, you know, it really captures that. This mixture of that ballad with the, with the sort of tech. You know, she was really influenced also by that group Mandalay. Like, that was a, I can't remember who they produced with, but they had a couple of records at this, right at this time too. And there was this, the girl was this singer called Nicola something. I'm screwing everything up right now. But it was, you know, it was kind of this genre of like very soft.

• 1:13:32Yasi Salek?

  Nicola, you were right.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. This very soft kind of female vocalization with this kind of, you know, drum and bass are very sort of like electronic kind of under music. So she took it to another place even, I feel like with this. Yeah, this song in particular.

• 1:13:50Yasi Salek?

  I agree. It's, it's really great. And she said pretty explicitly, like, it's right there in the lyrics what it's about. But she's also said, like, fame is a great substitute for feeling approval, for feeling love. It does give you a certain kind of fulfillment. But at the end of the day, it's not what love is. Like, it's all right there.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:04Yasi Salek?

  The video is directed by Walter Stern. It's Madonna being chased by a paparazzi in a car. And when she gets home, she reflects on what she has traded for fame. She is wearing Versace trousers with a crystal belt. Styled by Ariane Phillips.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  Beautiful video.

• 1:14:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it is a beautiful video. Cool outfit.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  Cool outfit.

• 1:14:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  Cool locations. Just like, it's cool.

• 1:14:26Yasi Salek?

  I love Swim.

• 1:14:29Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if it's because I'm partial to guitar, that you had me at hello, you know, with a bit of, but I just really love that song.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  I love that song too.

• 1:14:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  And I love the sort of way she's using that humming vocal in the background. That's like the, you know, it kind of has this kind of divery quality to it. It just has the, it all feels very articulated and it's really beautiful.

• 1:15:03Yasi Salek?

  William Orbit said that Madonna recorded the vocals for that the day that Johnny Versace was killed. And he said, that's probably why the, if the track has emotional impact, it's because of that, because she was feeling probably quite emotional. The next song is Ray of Light, which is kind of shockingly the second single. You would always imagine it would be the first single, but it's the second one. We said Frozen was the first one. The song is based off the track Sepharin, which was written by the English folk music duo Curtis Maldoun, consisting of Dave Curtis and Clive Maldoun.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  It really feels like that kind of like electric folk tradition of like, that was kind of like, I don't know, Jethro Tull, Steelice Band, like those kind of bands that were doing like traditional folk, British folk, British Isles folk music and putting like electric.

• 1:16:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  It's a kind of that whole, anyway, but I think it's interesting that that's the genesis point of that song. It's like a.

• 1:16:12Yasi Salek?

  And they, they obviously have writing credit on the song. Here's, well, here's what happened. William Orbit re-recorded this song with the niece of Clive Maldoun of the duo, named Christine Leach, before he ever started working with Madonna. And when.

• 1:16:30Yasi Salek?

  They were doing Ray of Light. He brought it in and she was like, yeah, like, so she kind of changed the melody and instrumentation, but retained the lyrics. And that's why they have the writing credit. They did not know that Madonna had recorded the song and they heard it for the first time on the radio.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:16:48Yasi Salek?

  And the one guy was like, I couldn't believe it. And apparently he was initially a little bit annoyed, but then when he learned that he was gonna receive 15% of the royalties and a songwriter credit, he was quite happy, actually. Yeah. This, I thought, was interesting. I wanted to ask you if you can hear it. William Orbit apparently kept Ray of Light a semitone higher than Madonna's limit, and it resulted in a strain added to the vocals?

• 1:17:12Speaker 02

  My friends and I, when this came out, we lost our minds over this song in particular, just because of especially what she does at the end of it with her voice. Something you'd never, yeah, like something had never heard her really do before.

• 1:17:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  So I think that was, you know, it was just, you know, the gays were losing it. It was just very, it was cool and something that, you know, you didn't really think of her as like singing like that. And so I think that this makes total sense that he did that, that the way he did it does kind of, it's a forcing function that created that kind of energy behind that song that probably wouldn't be there if she just sang in her natural register.

• 1:17:53Yasi Salek?

  Because it is, this song does have sort of like an energy and a reach.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  And a sort of like urgency behind it. Yeah. Like, so it's cool. That really worked.

• 1:18:12Yasi Salek?

  I love it. William Orbit says she got frustrated when we were recording, but you want that bit of edge with singers, that thing of reaching. You can't fake it. And you can hear it when she cracks it on the record. Um, this is one of my top five Madonna songs.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  That's, I mean, yeah.

• 1:18:24Yasi Salek?

  I learned that at dinner when, after we had recorded for five and a half hours here and then went straight to dinner and talked for three more hours about Madonna, like insane people, that I was like, if I'm, if I'm being really looking in the mirror, I listened to this song. A lot.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 1:18:41Yasi Salek?

  A lot, a lot.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  A lot. Yeah.

• 1:18:43Yasi Salek?

  Um, and I love it.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  I love it too. Amazing. It's like a, I mean, it's like, it's now canon Madonna song, right?

• 1:18:51Yasi Salek?

  How can you not, how can you feel bad when you put this on?

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  I know, totally.

• 1:18:55Yasi Salek?

  You know, pick me up?

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Right. And the guitar on it is so cool, like the, just the sort of like, and the beat, the, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's like very-

• 1:19:05Yasi Salek?

  And you can't, you just wanna be like, like her in the video.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally, yeah.

• 1:19:20Yasi Salek?

  Um, speaking of the video, directed by Jonas Sakerland.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  Is this the first time she works with him?

• 1:19:25Yasi Salek?

  I think so.

• 1:19:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Yasi Salek?

  He directed the video for Smack My Bitch Up.

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  Yes, he did.

• 1:19:31Yasi Salek?

  By Roddy G.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  It was an early sign to Maverick Records.

• 1:19:35Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yeah. This video is so awesome because it like really encapsulates the energy of the song we were talking, this reaching like frenetic energy of the song and it's, in the video, it's like time lapse, right? Like everything's moving so fast and like, I heard someone phrased it as like pummeling towards the millennium, right? Like, oh my God, we're about to hit the millennium, like we're going, going.

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  And it really was that energy then too. I think there was like so much hype towards the millennium at that time.

• 1:20:01Yasi Salek?

  I also think it's because there was such a rapid increase in the internet, like you're saying, like that, the world changed really fast over time in a way that it had it in like the eighties, for example.

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:20:14Yasi Salek?

  Like each year, the internet brought like a new thing to your door where you were like, oh, I'm in a chat room now. I have, I have email, like we have dial up at home, like, I mean, really, like these things, every time something new happened, you did feel more and more like, what's happening? I'm more and more connected, you know?

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  And the world just felt more and more connected. And then there was like this idea of the global world in like the early nineties. Yeah, I think that, that was something that- People talked about a lot in global trade and all these kinds of things.

• 1:20:42Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  And I think the internet, like this period is when that really started to like come home to like people on the ground, so to speak.

• 1:20:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:50Speaker 02

  Like the mud people.

• 1:20:51Yasi Salek?

  By 98, most, not most people, but like, I think a good.

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  A lot of people.

• 1:20:56Yasi Salek?

  Large portion of people.

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  Were on the internet in some way.

• 1:21:00Yasi Salek?

  Were on the internet in some way. Like, a lot of people had internet home. Like, you had ICQ, you had these chat rooms, you had early websites, you had forums and gathering places.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  So that, that was like a big thing too. I think that, you know, forums being part of the sort of way that people discovered things and talked about things was a.

• 1:21:20Yasi Salek?

  I was on girl.com, G U R L dot com. Some of, some of you heads will remember. Yeah, it was, it was a cool time.

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  It was a cool time.

• 1:21:29Yasi Salek?

  On my, my parents' PC in the office.

• 1:21:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

  This video does sort of, you're right, it kind of really captures that energy of that time and that feeling like the future's rushing towards you and that like.

• 1:21:46Yasi Salek?

  And little did we know, it was all, it was gonna be clavicular, looks maxing, and people spreading Hitler memes on the internet and us being like, we're sorry. We take it back. We would love to go back. We want to.

• 1:21:59Yasi Salek?

  And you could.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  Dance backwards.

• 1:22:01Yasi Salek?

  Yes. You could do the time lapse in the opposite direction, please. We'd just love to go back to girl.com and ICQ and all the chat rooms.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  One of the fandom podcasts I listened to about this talked about how it's all time lapse and sped up, except for this one part, Jonas Akerlin actually made her dance in real time for like this one portion of it. And she's like totally wiped out and like, but doing it, because you know, of course she's the boss and she's gonna, she's gonna finish the job. Again, sort of like to that point of technology where it's like, you know, a little, like, we don't have this sort of like AI capabilities.

• 1:22:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like a little janky.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like a little bit real and a little bit, like, you know.

• 1:22:42Yasi Salek?

  Maybe that was the best moment where we were just like one foot in each place.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  It's like, it's kind of something about this whole record. Kind of encapsulates that moment, the sort of like warmth of it. And also that like, you know, that's kind of like cold, very technological element, but this

• 1:22:57Yasi Salek?

  Bringing them together.

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:22:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  And Orbit is so great in that way, too, because he's like, like we said earlier, he's like referencing this kind of very 60s psychedelic, you know, rock sound. And it's always kind of like there and his guitar playing, it's like his guitar playing style.

• 1:23:14Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely like modernizing it.

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  So it's like brings it, so there's these two elements, her voice and point of view and this kind of yogic perspective that she has and his kind of like 60s influenced like Brit pop.

• 1:23:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  That feels really warm on top of this, or mixed into this layer of like really cold futuristic technological electronic music.

• 1:23:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, creates like a tension.

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38Yasi Salek?

  It's like so, well, Candy Perfume Girl, this is my time to shine.

• 1:23:43Speaker 02

  Okay, let's go.

• 1:23:44Yasi Salek?

  Because I need to tell you some lore that I couldn't be more excited to talk about.

• 1:23:47Speaker 02

  Very exciting lore.

• 1:23:48Yasi Salek?

  This song, Candy Perfume Girl, is written by Madonna, William Orbit and Susanna Melvoin, who, strap in babe, we're gonna talk, we're gonna get lore heavy right now. Susanna Melvoin was a Prince associate in the mid 80s, along with her twin sister Wendy. She was a member of the Revolution and she was also, you know, Wendy and Lisa, heads will remember, and she was also a lead vocalist for The Family. Also, Nothing Compares To You is heavily rumored to be about her because she dated Prince. Okay. Anyway, William Orbit had given her some tracks and asked her to write some lyrics. And she wrote Candy Perfume Girl, actually very tragically, while she was mourning the

• 1:24:31Yasi Salek?

  death of her brother Jonathan Melvoin, who had died of a heroin overdose in 1996 while on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins. There was an MTV story about this death that Sarah McLachlan saw in a hotel room somewhere and then wrote the song "Angel" about.

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  So, this is like-

• 1:24:54Yasi Salek?

  I just wanted to try and highlight for you like three of the most iconic songs-

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  Three god tier songs.

• 1:24:58Yasi Salek?

  Connected to this family.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  To this person.

• 1:25:01Yasi Salek?

  To this person, yeah. So-

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  To Wendy and Lisa.

• 1:25:04Yasi Salek?

  To Wendy and Lisa and Jonathan, this family. It's just kind of mind blowing.

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  Kind of mind blowing.

• 1:25:09Yasi Salek?

  Like "In the Arms of the Angels," like "Go Adopt a Puppy," or "You Fucking Sick Fuck, You're Gonna Rotten Hell." Like, that comes from Jonathan. It's just, I live for this. I live for this level of-

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  What was that little line in "Purple Rain" at the beginning of that song, just like, "Wendy, yes, Lisa. Is the water warm enough? Yes, Lisa. Shall we get it begin? Yes, Lisa."

• 1:25:30Yasi Salek?

  You'll never be this iconic.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:25:32Yasi Salek?

  I'll never be this iconic. Nobody will ever be this iconic.

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:25:35Yasi Salek?

  Anywho, this, I know, kind of reads like a love song, "Candy Perfume Girl," but what it actually is, is a song about the allure of drug addiction, since she was writing about her brother and his heroin overdose, which you can, I think, very, kind of, once you know that, hear it in the, you know, it's a sticky, viscous song about, yeah. I feel like you can, you know-

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  It has that sort of double meaning too, where it's like, you know, you're not sure exactly what it's about. Like, all good drug songs-

• 1:26:07Yasi Salek?

  Yes, are kind of like that. They're either about candy or sweetness-

• 1:26:10Speaker 02

  Obsession, or, you know, like, just like, you know, strange delight.

• 1:26:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Yasi Salek?

  I think it was leaked, but also, in September of 1987, you know, well before this album came out, it was heard during a Versace show.

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't even know that.

• 1:26:39Yasi Salek?

  Because Donatella loved it, and she wanted to kind of honor her brother, which makes sense. It's kind of a song honoring the death of a brother. And so Madonna was like, "Yeah, sure, of course."

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  Enduring relationship there.

• 1:26:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:52Yasi Salek?

  Skin, once again. You throw a little guitar on something, and you had me at hello.

• 1:26:57Speaker 02

  I mean, for a long time- I'm not hesitant to call favorites on Madonna stuff, but this is this was the song on this album that I really listened to like a lot. I loved it. I just loved the speed of it. I love the like, I loved her vocal on it. I love the I love just the chorus. It's so beautiful, like shift into the chorus that like, do I know you from somewhere? It's like, it's just so it's perfect. It's just like, it's totally perfect.

• 1:27:38Yasi Salek?

  It's such a beautiful love song.

• 1:27:40Speaker 02

  It's beautiful. Um. Perfect use of like techno beat and just like

• 1:27:44Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And what a great, what a great type, like skin.

• 1:27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:48Yasi Salek?

  And then the song being just like about touching and skin and put your hand on me and uh, it's

• 1:27:55Speaker 02

  Really great song. Go listen now.

• 1:27:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Nothing Really Matters, sixth, sixth single, which is kind of crazy.

• 1:28:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and very late in the rec, in the album cycle.

• 1:28:06Yasi Salek?

  Full year, it's 1999 now.

• 1:28:09Speaker 02

  It was never one of, it was never my favorite, but now I like, like everything, after you hear it enough, you recognize the genius of it and like, it, it's like, especially what, the way they did it at the Celebration Tour, I think was really great way of bringing it forward. Um, and the video is amazing. Like, I don't know, it has like a lot of things around it that make it great to me.

• 1:28:35Yasi Salek?

  This song is interesting because it's a little bit of a No Thoughts Just Vibes song, where I think she's even said like, I wanted people just to have visceral and emotional reactions to things rather than like thinking in their minds what it's about or whatever. And I feel like, I mean, it's right there in the title, Nothing Really Matters, but I feel like this is one of those songs, like

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  To me, it always like signaled like a Buddhist thing.

• 1:28:59Yasi Salek?

  Hmm, yes, totally.

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  Like, I mean, in the context of this record and everything that she was doing.

• 1:29:04Yasi Salek?

  Not being attached.

• 1:29:04Speaker 02

  At this time, like Not Being Attached, Nothing Really Matters, it kind of was like a That's how I always read it, but yeah, like it's kind of.

• 1:29:12Yasi Salek?

  It's, it's also, I think, one of the tenants of Kabbalah that like you have to give what you want to get it. So, everything I give you all comes back to me.

• 1:29:22Speaker 02

  Well, right. I mean, I think that's like, it's karma. It's like this idea of just like the cycle of life and, you know.

• 1:29:28Yasi Salek?

  Hakuna Matata.

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:29:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the video is incredible, directed by Johann Renk. This is the first appearance of the Madonna as a geisha in a red kimono.

• 1:29:50Speaker 02

  Iconic, with the red eyebrows, like so good.

• 1:29:54Yasi Salek?

  Somebody read Memoirs of a Geisha.

• 1:29:56Speaker 02

  Yes, they did.

• 1:29:57Yasi Salek?

  And it was all, and it was called All of Us.

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  Who amongst us did not?

• 1:30:00Yasi Salek?

  It was everyone in the world.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  Literally, everybody was carrying that paper book everywhere, every treadmill, every Stairmaster and everywhere, like, somebody was reading that book.

• 1:30:09Yasi Salek?

  Great book.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  It was a great book. I couldn't put it down.

• 1:30:11Yasi Salek?

  No, really wonderful. And definitely Madonna liked it.

• 1:30:14Speaker 02

  I think she did the choreography herself.

• 1:30:17Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 1:30:18Speaker 02

  As what I remember.

• 1:30:20Yasi Salek?

  That would make sense.

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  So it had this kind of like, very idiosyncratic, like, way of dancing in it, that kind of like herky-jerky.

• 1:30:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  Thing that she does and the way the camera follows just her hand as she's doing that thing, like, the video is just very, very cool.

• 1:30:34Yasi Salek?

  God, it's really one of them, I just had to remind myself, it's really one of the most, like, beautiful things. Again, it's, we wouldn't do this now.

• 1:30:44Speaker 02

  Like what we were saying before, I think this applies here again, is that idea of like, it wasn't a cynical play towards trying to use another culture to make yourself interesting or make yourself. You know, everybody was reading that book and we were all immersed in that world and it was like.

• 1:31:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's being enamored by the beauty of something.

• 1:31:04Speaker 02

  It's like a fantasy play about, you know, this world that she imagined. And she also said that she imagined herself, she saw herself in the role of the geisha.

• 1:31:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, much like Eva Peron. There's like a great, some great quote from her, I have it somewhere in the doc where she's like, it's like, being a geisha is like being a pop star, where you're sort of like imprisoned.

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  And like, put in front of people to, yeah, perform something.

• 1:31:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. What about Sky Fitzheaven?

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  I love that song.

• 1:31:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  It's like.

• 1:31:31Yasi Salek?

  There's no skips on this album.

• 1:31:32Speaker 02

  No, there's no, there's no skips. I think that song is like, again, great use of techno. The speed is amazing. Like it, it, at the place it lands in the album sequence. It's like the right energy there. And I think the lyrics are a classic spiritual Madonna.

• 1:31:50Yasi Salek?

  Do you know that some of them are taken from a 1993 Gap ad?

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  Yes, I.

• 1:31:55Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Featuring a poem called What Fits by the poet Max Blag.

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:01Yasi Salek?

  Sky fits heaven, so fly it.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  Sort of Madonna coded, right? Like someone wrote a poem that was spiritual, the Gap. At the, at that time, it just makes sense that this was all in the mix in that way.

• 1:32:12Yasi Salek?

  I think his line was, sky fits heaven, so write it. But she changed it to fly it. It's so funny to be like, the inspiration here? A Gap ad.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  But I mean, the, the Gap ad itself was coming from like, had this kind of like art reference.

• 1:32:32Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  So that was like, again, not to sound like an old person and then things were different. But I think that, I think that, you know, this, it's the legacy of the 20th century idea in culture was that you could sort of take, be in a commercial space and use art as a reference and that it had some kind of integrity.

• 1:32:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  Like, I think that it still exists, but not to the same degree anymore. Everyone is more cynical and more sort of on to things.

• 1:33:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  Because the internet has just kind of exposed everything. So it doesn't feel.

• 1:33:04Yasi Salek?

  You, you almost can't be like, properly referencing was an art of its own back then. But now it's everything like Pinterest, you know, has everything available to everybody.

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  So it just doesn't feel like the sort of curation itself doesn't feel as, you know, special or as unique, I guess. And so, but I do think this was still in that time where it felt, you know.

• 1:33:30Yasi Salek?

  All right, what about Shanti Ashthangi?

• 1:33:32Speaker 02

  So just to me personally, because I did go to that yoga studio.

• 1:33:37Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  And like, they did that pooja, which is like the prayer. If you went to the early class.

• 1:33:43Yasi Salek?

  So you have this memoirist.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:33:46Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  And so, I mean, it was said in such a completely different way than the way that she does it. But it was part of the experience, right? Like if you went in there early, then. They would be in there doing this incense and candles and saying that prayer. And it was like part of the whole thing in that new practice, that new yoga practice.

• 1:34:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:04Speaker 02

  So that, that she brought that in there was like cool and if you know, you know, reference.

• 1:34:09Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:34:09Speaker 02

  Like, you know, um, and I, I actually love the way they produced this and put it together. I think it's, it's very cool. And again, like a cool interlude in the album sequence, like it lands in.

• 1:34:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:21Speaker 02

  A perfect place.

• 1:34:22Yasi Salek?

  For the pacing of the album, it's quite nice. Yeah.

• 1:34:34Yasi Salek?

  There was a very funny thing where I guess like she had, obviously she's not a native speaker, had had some errors in her pronunciation of Sanskrit and the BBC arranged for her to take telephonic lessons to learn the basic pronunciation from an eminent scholar named Vagishastri. So I thought that was, and then she made some corrections.

• 1:34:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:34:55Yasi Salek?

  We already talked about Frozen, that's the next song. The power of goodbye, the god tier ballad.

• 1:35:00Speaker 02

  Beautiful. What, what else is there to say? Just like a gorgeous, perfect ballad.

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  Again, voice lessons, like this, the tone of her voice, something you again, had really heard before. She was a great ballad singer always, but this is like.

• 1:35:18Yasi Salek?

  I always thought it was strong, but here she's like doing acrobatics.

• 1:35:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really quite, quite something, right? Quite beautiful.

• 1:35:34Yasi Salek?

  The way that it builds is so wonderful. And then when it hits the interlude and you're just like.

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  Right. So gorgeous.

• 1:35:46Speaker 02

  And the, the way that like the production or like the pace of the song like changes a little bit.

• 1:35:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:52Speaker 02

  It pushes forward and pulls back and pushes forward and pulls back. It, I mean, it's just so great.

• 1:35:57Yasi Salek?

  Good job, Rick Knowles and William Orbit and Patrick.

• 1:36:01Speaker 02

  Right. This is a Rick Knowles song.

• 1:36:02Yasi Salek?

  Yes. There's just what else to say about it, except that it's fucking phenomenal.

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  Fucking phenomenal. Amazing video.

• 1:36:08Yasi Salek?

  Um, directed by Matthew Rolston. Madonna and her lover play chess. She wins. When he reapproaches her, she ends the relationship and walks away alone.

• 1:36:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:36:17Yasi Salek?

  That's the power of goodbye.

• 1:36:18Speaker 02

  That's the power.

• 1:36:18Yasi Salek?

  Makeup by Kevin Alcoyne.

• 1:36:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Amazing.

• 1:36:20Yasi Salek?

  First, I think first time working together.

• 1:36:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:36:22Yasi Salek?

  Oh, no, no, you're right.

• 1:36:23Speaker 02

  Rolling Stone cover.

• 1:36:24Yasi Salek?

  Rolling Stone cover. You're right. So they've met there.

• 1:36:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:26Yasi Salek?

  So two huge relationships.

• 1:36:29Speaker 02

  Moments. Yeah.

• 1:36:30Yasi Salek?

  I know it's kind of simple, but I, I love the, in like the, the title of this song.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 1:36:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like the sentiment of the song is just so great too.

• 1:36:40Yasi Salek?

  Back to like Buddhism. Yeah. Not clinging or holding on to things.

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  And like moving on and that that's something powerful. I mean, you could look at this in two ways, right? Like this entire album, it's, it's like, it's, it's so self-helpy in this one way.

• 1:36:56Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  But I think she does like a really great job of making all those sentiments not feel like hackneyed or trite. And it feels like, again, really true and sort of embodied.

• 1:37:08Yasi Salek?

  Also, honestly, if you're put off by that, it sounds like you're one of the people that might need some help for yourself.

• 1:37:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:37:14Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 1:37:16Yasi Salek?

  If it bothers you some.

• 1:37:17Speaker 02

  It has a little bit of woo or new age edge to it, right? But I think like again.

• 1:37:22Yasi Salek?

  I'm not gonna kick that out of bed myself, but.

• 1:37:24Speaker 02

  Completely. I mean, just welcome to my world.

• 1:37:29Yasi Salek?

  That's why for me, the days came out, I was like, yes, thank you. Not one, one second of hesitation. Slap that right into the CD, uh, the Discman. Little Star is really sweet too. That, that was a single. It was the fifth single.

• 1:37:42Speaker 02

  I love Little Star. It's like, just so sweet. It's like, yeah, really.

• 1:37:46Yasi Salek?

  Her song for, it's kind of the Dear Jesse of.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:37:49Yasi Salek?

  This album. Yeah. For Lourdes. Marigirl is such an interesting song.

• 1:37:54Speaker 02

  Very interesting.

• 1:37:56Yasi Salek?

  Great closer.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  Great closer. And again, maybe signaling a little bit the sort of future of her sound. Cause it's like, like much more experimental, kind of just, you know, a li, like. Compositionally free-floating.

• 1:38:13Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:38:13Speaker 02

  And, you know, just kind of like the, the music and the, the vocal kind of, they're synced, but they just feel a little bit like dissonant.

• 1:38:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  You know, in that way, that's kind of haunting and interesting, challenging, maybe even a little bit, which is.

• 1:38:30Yasi Salek?

  It is a challenging song, I think. It's not like, while every other song on this album is obviously a departure from what she's done before and is bringing in new elements, they're all really easy to get into.

• 1:38:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:38:42Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 1:38:42Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:38:43Yasi Salek?

  Like, you could just bop right into it. This one is a little harder.

• 1:38:47Speaker 00

  I ran and I ran. I was looking for me.

• 1:38:55Yasi Salek?

  She wrote this, she said she was at her father's house and she went running and it started to rain, so I went to a cemetery near where my mother and I grew up. It's not the cemetery where she is buried, but I used to go there a lot. The rain kept coming down. That was the blackest sky you've ever seen. I went against the instinct to run away and I just stayed there as the rain got to the leaves and everything became heavy and muddy. When I got home, I was feeling this incredible sense of melancholy. Everybody had left the house and I was happy to have the silence. That's when I wrote "Mare Girl." It was only six lines at the time. Later, I heard the music William Orbit had written to go with it. I was back in L.A. and I just laid on my bed, playing the music on a boombox over and over and writing and singing and redoing the song until I got it right.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  Cool. Great story.

• 1:39:35Yasi Salek?

  It makes sense because so much of this song is about running.

• 1:39:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:38Yasi Salek?

  Running away. I ran and I ran and I was looking for me. I ran to the forest, I ran through, you know? The smelling, the burning flesh and the rotting, but it's very evocative.

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  Very evocative.

• 1:39:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:49Speaker 02

  She puts it in the Drown, she performs it on Drown World Tour.

• 1:39:53Yasi Salek?

  That's cool.

• 1:39:53Speaker 02

  Which I think is an interesting choice.

• 1:39:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. But she must really love it.

• 1:39:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it has felt like very much about her.

• 1:40:01Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:40:01Speaker 02

  You know, like. It felt very autobiographical. I mean, even if it, I mean, it pretty much is, right? She's saying, I ran and I ran. And so it's like, kind of like her mother and this like whole sort of like this deep sort of melancholy around, you know, that experience and about having her own daughter.

• 1:40:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  And this kind of like, yeah, like, you know, this kind of, the cycle of rebirth that involves a death. And, I don't know, something kind of powerful and sort of cathartic about it, I guess, you know?

• 1:40:30Yasi Salek?

  I also love it because we've just been talking so much about the like embodiment of Ray of Light and the positivity and the Buddhism and the, I mean, I don't think it was actual Buddhism, but you know, the, whatever, the spiritual tenants of letting go and karma and whatever. And Mare Girl is kind of rooted back in like being really human.

• 1:40:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:40:50Yasi Salek?

  And being really sad and still having and dealing with the darker side of life, you know? And I like that that's there because it would, I think it would almost ring false if the entire album didn't have a bit of that darkness.

• 1:41:05Speaker 02

  Just had like, it's right.

• 1:41:07Yasi Salek?

  It's a ray of light, but at the end there's.

• 1:41:09Speaker 02

  Sort of brings it down to earth in a way. Not that it wasn't.

• 1:41:12Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's like, if you had self-actualized that far, you'd be Buddha and you wouldn't make an album or touring, you know? Like, you'd just be minding your own business at the yoga studio.

• 1:41:20Speaker 02

  You've already ascended to the above the looks maxers.

• 1:41:24Yasi Salek?

  Above clavicular. Okay. Did we talk about the critical reception of Ray of Light?

• 1:41:32Speaker 02

  I mean, my recog- my.

• 1:41:34Yasi Salek?

  Recollection.

• 1:41:34Speaker 02

  Recollection of it was that it was universally like well-received.

• 1:41:41Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:41:41Speaker 02

  And like very, like excitedly received. I think people were very excited by it.

• 1:41:46Yasi Salek?

  I think it's one of her most critically acclaimed albums.

• 1:41:51Speaker 02

  I would think so. Like, I feel like everything about the album cycle, promotion, the, everything I remember about it, it was like her look, her, like her, just the way she was like presenting herself, like we talked about earlier too, like her appearance on the Oprah show and like all of this stuff just felt like, like people felt very connected.

• 1:42:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:13Speaker 02

  To this album and to her at that time. It felt like she looked beautiful and natural and like were approachable. And she was a mom and had all this like.

• 1:42:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:21Speaker 02

  You know, so I think it was, I think it was just like a really positive, like shift.

• 1:42:27Yasi Salek?

  And the music got a ton of praise from more. I hesitate to say snobby, but like more indie publications that were like, wow, like, like someone wrote, I think it was Q Magazine, and they were like, until Simply Red enlists John Zorn or Mariah Carey works with Tortoise, she is the only pop aristocrat who's keeping her ears open.

• 1:42:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:42:48Yasi Salek?

  They were very much like, oh, like, this evokes Saint Etienne and Björn. They were really giving her the flowers of like, for her taste as well as her like, risk-taking. And yeah, it's kind of really universally critically anyways held up.

• 1:43:04Speaker 02

  Which I think is very interesting, just as a commentary on music journalism.

• 1:43:08Yasi Salek?

  It can't be legitimate if it's not.

• 1:43:10Speaker 02

  Well, if it's gay, right? I mean, I feel like, I feel like, like if you think about erotica, like she was definitely doing the same thing. She was like, listening.

• 1:43:18Yasi Salek?

  You're so right.

• 1:43:19Speaker 02

  And she was going to the place where, you know, where there were like, where the innovation was happening. But it was gay. So people were, it was, didn't get the same kind of respect that this kind of thing did. What, whatever. I just think it's like an interesting.

• 1:43:32Yasi Salek?

  I think you make a great point. I mean, again, what gets respect is one, one very specific type of thing. And so it's like, I don't think she tried to do that to get the respect.

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  No, no, no, not at all.

• 1:43:43Yasi Salek?

  It's like the one time in her career that her interests intersected with what people think is art.

• 1:43:50Speaker 02

  Was acceptable to be cool, right?

• 1:43:52Yasi Salek?

  Thank God, because it is.

• 1:43:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, she, she needed it. She deserved it.

• 1:43:57Yasi Salek?

  We needed it.

• 1:43:58Speaker 02

  We all needed it, and we got it.

• 1:44:04Yasi Salek?

  We're riding high, babe.

• 1:44:05Speaker 02

  We really are.

• 1:44:07Yasi Salek?

  And we come into 1998, the rest of 1998. Dating a new man. Okay, so she's dating this guy Andy Bird, who William Orbit has set her up with.

• 1:44:19Yasi Salek?

  It's not going well, I guess. He's like an underemployed screenwriter. I think I sent this to the group chat, because there was like a Page Six. You know, Page Six love to be mean. That's like Madonna dumped by unemployed guy. And I was like, you know what? My relatable queen, who amongst us?

• 1:44:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:44:37Yasi Salek?

  Has not been dumped by an unemployed guy. It's probably one of the only two things we have in common. But she's in, she's in London to film the video for Drowned, World's Substitute for Love. And she is still seeing Andy Bird and Sting and Trudy Styler. Normal friends.

• 1:44:56Speaker 02

  Normal friends.

• 1:44:56Yasi Salek?

  Are like, come on over for luncheon. And so they go over and they seat Madonna next to a young film director named Guy Ritchie.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  Fateful day.

• 1:45:05Yasi Salek?

  Yep. Who had just finished making his first film, Walk, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which Trudy Styler had helped finance. She was a film producer. It hasn't come out yet, though. It's March 1999. In an interview with The Face in 2000 with my beloved and brilliant Miranda Sawyer. Hi, Miranda. Former guest of the show, one of the best people ever. She said, when you met Guy, was it like impressive instant? That's a song reference, right? She said, yeah, I had a whole premonition about my life fast forward. It's the only, that's only happened to me once before. And Miranda goes, with Sean Penn? Madonna doesn't answer. Miranda says, is it frightening? And Madonna said, no, it's invigorating. Miranda said, did you tell Guy how you felt? Madonna said, no, not then, no way.

• 1:45:49Yasi Salek?

  I went into a state of denial because he lived here and I lived in America. And I wasn't interested in torturing myself by having some long distance love affair. But it happened anyway. It was just one of those inexplicable uncontrollable things. But it's hard work having a long distance relationship and he's really stubborn and so am I. I liked this part because Miranda said, did you have, when you say you had a premonition about what was going to happen, what do you mean? It's really interesting because she said that about Sean Penn, too. Like she said that she knew like they were going to be together. And then also that she knew when he was going to propose before he even said anything. She just said, just ask me, I'll say yes. It's a little psychic. She's, Madonna said, it's weird. I couldn't even tell you specifically what my thoughts were. It was just, you know, when people say he turned my head? My head didn't just turn. My head spun around on my body. Do you know what I mean? That was sweet.

• 1:46:34Speaker 02

  I love when she says, and you meet, you meet a lot of interesting, you meet a lot of sexy and glamorous people. And then she's like, and you go, interesting, interesting, interesting. I like the way she said that.

• 1:46:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Interesting, interesting, interesting. They're interesting, but not many people stop you in your tracks. And she was attracted to his confidence, she said, and his cockiness. Guy Ritchie has a funny proposition because he sort of had this like tough, oi mister, I'm from the streets thing, you know? And he told reporters in like 1999 around the movie, I've lived in the East End for 30 years. I've been in a load of mess ups. I've been poor all my life. When actually, actually, um, his father, Captain John Vivian Ritchie, was an advertising executive and his mother, Amber Parkinson, is a former model. And when they divorced when he was five, they both married aristocrats. And he was raised-

• 1:47:26Speaker 02

  From the streets.

• 1:47:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, from the streets of Shrewsbury, which is where his mother's husband, Sir Michael Layton, had an estate. And he went to boarding school. That's all. I don't want to like-

• 1:47:37Speaker 02

  No shade.

• 1:47:38Yasi Salek?

  I'm simply, I'm simply reporting the facts. Okay.

• 1:47:44Yasi Salek?

  Madonna is nominated for six Grammy Awards. February of 1999. In 16 years, she has not won a Grammy. Isn't that crazy?

• 1:47:53Speaker 02

  Insane, actually. For everything that she's done up until-

• 1:47:57Yasi Salek?

  And accomplished, yeah, and created, not one Grammy. She was nominated a few times, not as many times as you think she should have been.

• 1:48:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:48:05Yasi Salek?

  The Grammys are hosted by Rosie O'Donnell. Christopher is there helping her with the performance, which she does. She performs Nothing Really Matters, joined onstage by William Orbit and Donna and Nikki. This is where she does the geisha look.

• 1:48:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:20Yasi Salek?

  Which, again, I think it's the debut because the single with the video doesn't come out till after the Grammys.

• 1:48:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:48:26Yasi Salek?

  Here's the quote about the geishas. She said, it was on CNN, "The whole idea of geisha is a great metaphor for being an entertainer, because on one hand, you're privileged, and on the other hand, you're a prisoner." Sure.

• 1:48:36Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:48:36Yasi Salek?

  I feel that way too, babe. I'm privileged and here I am, a prisoner of the five hours in the studio and the Google Doc. So Guy Ritchie was there too. A little dating. Ray of Light wins four Grammys, Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Dance Electronica Recording, Best Short Form Music Video, those were both for the song Ray of Light, and Best Recording Package. She lost Album of the Year to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. That's a tough one. Hard to like, pick a favorite of those, you know, hard to be like, oh, she was robbed. You know, and record of the year to there it go again, my heart will go on by Celine Dion.

• 1:49:19Yasi Salek?

  And then she commits to her next film project. We could watch that tonight. The next best thing with her good friend Rupert Everett.

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  Who was around town a lot at that time. He was.

• 1:49:30Yasi Salek?

  You mean up in, up in the clubs?

• 1:49:32Speaker 02

  Uh, more just like on the streets. Like I just, he was like, he lived in the West Village. I just remember seeing him.

• 1:49:39Yasi Salek?

  He was unhoused. He lived in the street.

• 1:49:41Speaker 02

  No, he was just, he was just like, he lived in the West Village for this period around this time. And there was this little, um, tea shop, which I think is still there called Tea and Sympathy on Greenwich Avenue.

• 1:49:52Yasi Salek?

  Oh, sure. Yeah, of course.

• 1:49:53Speaker 02

  And he used to go, he used to go there a lot. I used to see him there.

• 1:49:56Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 1:49:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:57Yasi Salek?

  I love him.

• 1:49:58Speaker 02

  He was so handsome at this period. He was like devastatingly handsome.

• 1:50:02Yasi Salek?

  I mean, the, my best friend's wedding, like, what? So I didn't realize this until I was doing these features that he had known Madonna since 1985 because he had been friends with Sean Penn.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 1:50:13Yasi Salek?

  And they, him and Sean Penn met while driving their cars in the street and like they rolled their windows down, like exchanged, like as in their very early acting career.

• 1:50:22Speaker 02

  Really interesting. Sean Penn was quite a connector in the Madonna world. Like he knew a lot of people. Shit, that shared connection.

• 1:50:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:30Speaker 02

  Kind of interesting Malibu world.

• 1:50:34Yasi Salek?

  Malibu world, totally. And he, Rupert Everett, I think it's worth mentioning, obviously, especially we're talking about the film, that he had been one of the very few actors to come out as gay back in 1989. So they start shooting this project in April of 1989. And we'll talk about it later when it comes out, but I will say that making of this film is allegedly the reason there was no tour the year of 1989 that would have been the year you would think there would be a way of light tour.

• 1:51:04Speaker 02

  Right. There was like, talk of it. I think they had, she had, she wanted to go on tour for it, but yeah, I guess.

• 1:51:12Yasi Salek?

  I think that movie was hard to make and there was a lot of issues and maybe like it precluded, like it didn't

• 1:51:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:51:19Yasi Salek?

  wrap up as quickly. I don't know, you know, whatever it was, there was no way of light tour in 1989. Instead, we got On My Birthday.

• 1:51:28Yasi Salek?

  My 17th birthday, May 19, 1999. The beautiful stranger single.

• 1:51:34Speaker 02

  Incredible, perfect pop song.

• 1:51:36Yasi Salek?

  Fucking perfect pop song.

• 1:51:39Speaker 02

  Again, bringing all those things that we talked about, you know, like all those, that 60s sound, that kind of like, a little bit electronic, just the right beat that felt like a dance song, really perfect, just like everything about it.

• 1:52:04Yasi Salek?

  This is a god tier song. It should have won five Oscars.

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  It should have won ten Grammys. I'm sorry, it's a perfect song.

• 1:52:11Yasi Salek?

  The origin of it is, it's a song off of the soundtrack of the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shot Me, the sequel to the greatly popular Austin Powers film. These are really formative in my youth, Austin Powers films. Anytime I have to go into a driveway and then reverse and try to get out of a small space, I think of him in the little, in the like moving car thing in the hallway. Oh, mm, mm, that, I like really feel like that. The soundtrack was executive produced by Guy O'Seary, which is, I think, how the Madonna connection comes to be. You had mentioned earlier that you had heard that it was very competitive.

• 1:52:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that a lot of people apparently wanted to get on that soundtrack. And like, he was the one who said that, and that's something I read.

• 1:53:03Yasi Salek?

  I think it made sense. I mean, we're still in, we're still in like, peak soundtrack period where like, people are buying CDs left and right, and people really bought soundtrack CDs, myself included. So you would probably make a lot of money if you were on a soundtrack CD.

• 1:53:15Speaker 02

  Especially if a really popular movie like Austin Powers.

• 1:53:18Yasi Salek?

  The soundtrack is crazy. It has songs by R.E.M., Green Day, and Lenny Kravitz. The American Woman is from this soundtrack.

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, wow.

• 1:53:25Yasi Salek?

  And Mel B. Word up, if you guys are Spice Girls heads.

• 1:53:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:28Yasi Salek?

  So this song borrows maybe, maybe, a little bit, sounds like. It might have shades of.

• 1:53:36Speaker 02

  Inspired by.

• 1:53:37Yasi Salek?

  She Comes in Colors by the band Love, the da-da-da-da-da on, that I just da-da-da-da-dod for you guys. Uh, is maybe based on an instrumental flourish. That's quote, "an integral part of the love record." It may be an conscious or unconscious homage. Gary Stewart wrote that in a USA Today. Madonna said she had never heard that song.

• 1:53:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:53:58Yasi Salek?

  She said, "I don't know her."

• 1:54:01Yasi Salek?

  And that's fine. Maybe William Orbit had heard it. He isn't, he was not questioned.

• 1:54:07Speaker 02

  Given where William Orbit's influences came from, it seems.

• 1:54:11Yasi Salek?

  He would know love.

• 1:54:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Anyways, who cares? I love this song.

• 1:54:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, like we said, it's perfect.

• 1:54:17Yasi Salek?

  It's perfect. The video.

• 1:54:19Speaker 02

  Video's amazing. She looks insanely hot in this video. Like, it's so crazy how great she looks. Like, she's cut her hair to that short level, her, those pants. I mean, just like.

• 1:54:33Yasi Salek?

  Babe, you don't understand how big Capri pants were in 1999. And her sick ass Capri pants, she looked amazing.

• 1:54:42Speaker 02

  The tan skin.

• 1:54:43Yasi Salek?

  Oh, she's wearing a Collette Denigan, spring summer 1999, black sequin chiffon camisole. Her arms are popping.

• 1:54:50Speaker 02

  Arms are popping.

• 1:54:51Yasi Salek?

  She's done a lot of chaturangas.

• 1:54:53Speaker 02

  She's looking.

• 1:54:53Yasi Salek?

  And it's paid off.

• 1:54:55Speaker 02

  So good.

• 1:54:55Yasi Salek?

  The video's directed by Brett Ratner, which is kind of insane.

• 1:54:57Speaker 02

  It's kind of insane, actually.

• 1:54:59Yasi Salek?

  Obviously, Mike Myers is in it, um, in, in Method, doing Austin Powers.

• 1:55:05Speaker 02

  Flawless makeup by Kevin.

• 1:55:07Yasi Salek?

  It's really wonderful.

• 1:55:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:09Yasi Salek?

  The song was not commercially released in the United States, like, as a single, but it still hit number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 because it was played on the radio so much. And it hit number one on the US dance charts, and she did win a Grammy for it.

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  It was the dance remix was Victor Calderon, I'm pretty sure. Yeah.

• 1:55:26Yasi Salek?

  I wanted to ask you, because I was listening to maybe one of the podcasts and they said that they felt that the Victor Calderon remixes sound dated now. Do you feel like that's true? I listened to it and I didn't think so, but I'm not a, um.

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, you know, I, I feel like.

• 1:55:38Yasi Salek?

  Denizen.

• 1:55:39Speaker 02

  It's a certain, it's just a very certain kind of like, he, he played a certain kind of like tribal house, like, energy that doesn't feel very fashionable right now, I think is kind of part of it. And, you know, like, some of those other remixes, they're just like a little more, a little richer in terms of like, he's this kind of minimalist, and so there's not much to give it more, I guess. I think maybe just a quick note, side note, because of the. Other remixes for this whole album cycle are, again, she's like pushing out into the world of like techno much more than she ever has.

• 1:56:16Yasi Salek?

  You mean the ray of light?

• 1:56:16Speaker 02

  Ray of light and this, you know, just like all of the, with Sasha and John Digweed.

• 1:56:21Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:56:22Speaker 02

  And like, you know, just kind of really going, leaning into that kind of world of like.

• 1:56:27Yasi Salek?

  We really didn't talk about the ray of light remix. There's a Stereo MC's remix that I quite like.

• 1:56:30Speaker 02

  Of Frozen.

• 1:56:31Yasi Salek?

  Of Frozen that I'm really into, maybe because she had heard that Stereo MC's.

• 1:56:35Speaker 02

  That's probably a certain way. It was, it makes me want to die. That was the tricky song. It was amazing song.

• 1:56:41Yasi Salek?

  Really good. Stereo MC's famously had the massive radiohead connected.

• 1:56:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:47Yasi Salek?

  Make sure you're connected.

• 1:56:49Speaker 02

  I mean, Stereo MC's themselves is the whole thing, but yeah.

• 1:56:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. We don't have time for that right now. Keep it together. Keep it, keep it together.

• 1:56:57Speaker 02

  But yeah, I just think that remixes were just a big part of the tapestry of how this album, like, you know, was supported and just like fit into the sort of ecosystem of music that was happening at that time.

• 1:57:12Yasi Salek?

  I think you're so right.

• 1:57:12Speaker 02

  Early Coachella, like all of that, like.

• 1:57:16Yasi Salek?

  Coachella, was it the first year of Coachella?

• 1:57:18Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure it was either 99 or 2000. I went the second year.

• 1:57:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it was 99. I went the second year too.

• 1:57:25Speaker 02

  Oh, you did?

• 1:57:25Yasi Salek?

  Which was actually 2001. They skipped 2000.

• 1:57:28Speaker 02

  So I went that year too.

• 1:57:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:30Speaker 02

  And it was all these guys. It was like Sasha and John Digweed and like San Jermain and like, it was all these kind of like experimental, that's what they were kind of thought of, like house and techno and like, so this was like a big thing going on and she was really.

• 1:57:45Yasi Salek?

  Paul Oakenfold.

• 1:57:46Speaker 02

  Paul Oakenfold.

• 1:57:47Yasi Salek?

  The orb.

• 1:57:48Speaker 02

  The orb, yeah. Oh, God, the orb was so good. It was pretty much experimental music.

• 1:57:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:52Speaker 02

  Or just dance music and techno music.

• 1:57:56Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my God, Ozzy Motley. My, we used to, the headline was Jane's Addiction. So it's like.

• 1:58:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, right.

• 1:58:01Yasi Salek?

  Such an interesting.

• 1:58:03Speaker 02

  Mix.

• 1:58:04Yasi Salek?

  My God, what a time. Acelone, some, this is just for heads that know who Acelone is, but like, Acelone once slept over at my house in college.

• 1:58:11Speaker 02

  See?

• 1:58:12Yasi Salek?

  Um, okay, so.

• 1:58:17Yasi Salek?

  We're firing on all cylinders. Ray of Light is fucking amazing. Beautiful Strangers is fucking amazing. They, William Orbit and Madonna start working on the next album. They get to nine songs and Madonna's like, you know what? This sounds too much like Ray of Light. I'm sorry, goodbye. There was no bad feelings, but she did say that. She decides to start over with another artist. And who is that?

• 1:58:40Speaker 02

  Mirweh Amandai.

• 1:58:43Yasi Salek?

  Mirweh Amandai, who had been looking for a US record label and asked a friend to pass his 2000 hit single Disco Science to Guy O'Seary. And Guy O'Seary in turn was like, Madonna, listen to this. And Madonna said, and I just said, oh, my God, this is what I want. This is the sound. What do you feel like she heard on Disco Science? That she was like, this is what I want?

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  My guess is like, I remember when that came out. She's on, not the first album, but the second album, she's on it. And it came out before Music.

• 1:59:17Yasi Salek?

  On his album.

• 1:59:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that song Paradise Not For Me was on that album production. And it sounded like so, like you didn't, I don't think anything else sounded like that. Maybe I'm ignorant and there were some other things that I just didn't know about. But I think she really was drawn to that. Like, I think she was ready for, wow, let's push this. This is going really well.

• 1:59:39Yasi Salek?

  It is a kind of a wild sounding song.

• 1:59:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:42Yasi Salek?

  In a very cool way.

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  Disco Science.

• 1:59:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:46Speaker 02

  With those like.

• 1:59:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And you could, obviously she was gravitating in that direction even on Ray of Light.

• 1:59:52Speaker 02

  Well, I think that's what I was trying to say. I think, yeah, she's just like, she's like, this is working. We pushed the envelope. Let's go even further with this. This is like something I've never heard. It didn't, it wasn't Goldie, it wasn't AFX Twin. It was like some other kind of like thing.

• 2:00:07Yasi Salek?

  She's getting really European also. It's real French.

• 2:00:10Speaker 02

  Very French.

• 2:00:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:11Speaker 02

  Right. And he had that, he had that kind of like very plucky and stuttery way of production. That was like, pretty unique at that time. So I think, yeah.

• 2:00:21Yasi Salek?

  I love that.

• 2:00:31Yasi Salek?

  We have to release a film in March of 2000.

• 2:00:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:33Yasi Salek?

  The Next Best Thing, directed by 73-year-old John Schlesinger, who was a legend. He had done Midnight Cowboy. But apparently, there was, it was not a good time.

• 2:00:43Speaker 02

  No, it doesn't seem like it went very well.

• 2:00:45Yasi Salek?

  The producer refused to include a gay sex scene, even though this is a story of a straight woman and a gay man and their lives.

• 2:00:52Speaker 02

  As best friends.

• 2:00:53Yasi Salek?

  As best friends who decide to have a child together, right? And Madonna refused to do a heterosexual sex scene.

• 2:00:58Speaker 02

  Which is weird with Benjamin Bratt, like, why?

• 2:01:00Yasi Salek?

  Maybe because she had had a child and she felt different? But I don't know. Apparently, the lore goes that she even had to have, like, drinks to even kiss him on the thing. So maybe she was just like in the throes of love and couldn't be into anyone else.

• 2:01:12Speaker 02

  Totally. And it doesn't sound like the whole experience on this movie was good for anybody. Didn't, didn't, like Rupert Everett say, like, within a few days, it was clear we were like in a shit show or something like that.

• 2:01:23Yasi Salek?

  Ship, ship without a caption. Yeah. I thought it was very funny that apparently, because she had to have those drinks to, like, do the kiss scenes or whatever, she's like, not a heavy drinker. And so she would just get kind of like hammered and then start like making shit up. And the director would be like, fucking stop. Like, they would like beef, because she would be like,

• 2:01:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:01:41Yasi Salek?

  New lines are here. Also, at some point Rupert Everett accidentally knocks John Schlesinger over and he's 73, so he like chips his coccyx, is that what you call it? So he's not loving them. The one thing that came out of this, and maybe you'll say, yay, or maybe you'll say, the cursed movie and cursed output, but is Rupert Everett convinced Madonna to do a cover of Don McLean's American Pie? Produced by William Orbit with Rupert Everett on backing vocals.

• 2:02:12Speaker 02

  I thought it was fun.

• 2:02:12Yasi Salek?

  I like it.

• 2:02:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thought it was fun.

• 2:02:14Yasi Salek?

  I like the original. I like this version. I like it.

• 2:02:17Speaker 02

  Maybe she thought it was okay as a standalone, but she made some comment about how she didn't like it being included in the, because I guess it was included in the sequencing of music on some releases.

• 2:02:28Yasi Salek?

  Oh.

• 2:02:29Speaker 02

  So she didn't like that.

• 2:02:30Yasi Salek?

  Doesn't fit in, it shouldn't be on music. That I understand.

• 2:02:34Speaker 02

  But, yeah, I mean, it's cute.

• 2:02:36Yasi Salek?

  It's cute.

• 2:02:36Speaker 02

  It's cute. And again, it's like that with William Orbit, that it gets a little bit more of that sort of 60s throwback thing that she was doing and it... People liked it, I think.

• 2:02:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's inoffensive.

• 2:02:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:51Yasi Salek?

  She made a video, debuted on MTV a month before the movie came out. It actually hit the top of the dance chart in the United States. The, I guess, a remix of it. This March is also the month she confirms that she's pregnant with Rocco.

• 2:03:02Speaker 02

  All right, so here we go.

• 2:03:03Yasi Salek?

  Rocco Ritchie, who was born August 11th, 2000, which means she's pregnant with Rocco during the making of music.

• 2:03:10Speaker 02

  New chapter.

• 2:03:11Yasi Salek?

  New chapter. Let's talk about music. September 18th, 2000, produced by Madonna, Miri Way, William Orbit, Guy Sigsworth, and two other people, Mark Spike Stent and Talvin Singh. They all have production credits, but it's largely a Miri Way album.

• 2:03:27Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 2:03:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:28Speaker 02

  I mean, I think that's what you hear the most. You can really hear where William Orbit's contributions are on this record, but I think, you know, yeah, it really sounds like Miri Way's record at the end of the day.

• 2:03:40Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:03:40Speaker 02

  Except for What It Feels Like for a Girl, which-

• 2:03:42Yasi Salek?

  Which is a Guy Sigsworth song. And Mark Spike Stent was the mixer, so I think he just, like, maybe got elevated to a production credit. I'm not sure. And we'll talk about Talvin Singh. He has something to do with, like, one specific song. Actually, seven of the songs are Miri Way and Orbit or did three. Is that, do you-

• 2:03:58Speaker 02

  I think that's about right.

• 2:03:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:00Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah.

• 2:04:01Yasi Salek?

  He was super into vocal effects.

• 2:04:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:03Yasi Salek?

  Which obviously we're gonna get into on this album. He actually says that his 2000 song, Naive Song, was the first electro track with autotune effects on the vocals. I have no way of proving that, but I believe you, Miri Way. Believe all Miri Way. But he also wanted to have a song with Madonna's naked, unadorned vocal, which I don't know if there's only one on here, but there's definitely one.

• 2:04:25Speaker 02

  I think there's one. I think it's just that one, yeah.

• 2:04:27Yasi Salek?

  I wanna read again, Sean De Souza, my guy, my bud. "This was an album designed to unite the disparate tastes of America and Europe, to act as a bridge between teen pop and sophistopop, the mainstream and the underground." Quick sidebar, you guys, to place us in time and space, because I haven't been really doing that, because- I, for the most part, in time and space, I don't think it's mattered what's been going on. Do you know what I mean? Like Madonna has been occupying her own lane for songs.

• 2:04:58Speaker 02

  Agree.

• 2:04:59Yasi Salek?

  But I think here, it's where we're starting, it's important to talk about what's happening in pop music.

• 2:05:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:06Yasi Salek?

  Because some of the, I mean, we dealt with other Madonna, um, children. The children of Madonna, but they never really.

• 2:05:16Speaker 02

  Are, they're, she's kind of untouchable in an league of her own.

• 2:05:20Yasi Salek?

  In a league of, there's no crying in baseball. But by, by two thousand, there is this whole teen pop. Girl, teen queens of pop, that is a huge thing.

• 2:05:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:05:32Yasi Salek?

  Britney Spears, obviously, first and foremost, who's come out of the all new Mickey Mouse Club, like a bat out of fucking hell. Getting signed to Jive in nineteen ninety seven and like, you know, she fucking hit prominence with Baby One More Time. She's a global chart topper. She's, that's one of the best selling singles in history. And she also became the best selling teenage artist of all time with Baby One More Time and Oopsided It Again, which were ninety nine, two thousand. So she's like. This is Britney Spears.

• 2:05:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:05:57Yasi Salek?

  Really like, probably supremacy at this time.

• 2:06:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:01Yasi Salek?

  And then Christina Aguilera, obviously also, who was another graduate of the all new Mickey Mouse Club. Um, she had put out her self titled album in ninety nine, um, with Junie in a Bottle and What a Girl Wants. I think those are the two, two of the main ones, but there's a lot, you know, there's Jessica Simpson. Um, she had put out her first album in nineteen ninety nine, um, Mandy Moore, Never Forget Candy.

• 2:06:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:06:22Yasi Salek?

  Ninety nine. Destiny's Child, I think, kind of falls into this category. Yeah. They were quite young and they had these huge hits. And then you can loop in, they're not, you know, women, but MMBop by Hanson, teen.

• 2:06:34Speaker 02

  I mean, but all of them, right? N'Sync.

• 2:06:36Yasi Salek?

  N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, totally.

• 2:06:37Speaker 02

  So it was like, just that, it was very much like this heavy concentration of super young talent.

• 2:06:43Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:06:43Speaker 02

  New on the scene, T R L, right, yeah.

• 2:06:47Yasi Salek?

  So I, I don't know if Madonna was or was not into this. All I know is that she has a couple quotes. One is, the world is in the doldrums musically. It's also generic and homogenized. If this record happens, she's talking about music, it might mean that people are ready for something different. She also did an interview with Rolling Stone in 2000 when, where the interviewer asked her, "When is the reign of teen pop gonna end?" It always goes in cycles, but Madonna said, "But can a reaction hurry up, please? Will someone just start puking? Can we have some version of the punk music movement again?" The interviewer goes, "In the meantime, the current crop is still hanging on." Madonna says, "What, kiddie bands? I hope not much longer."

• 2:07:29Yasi Salek?

  "We always talk about it at our house because there are so many great people in the music business who are languishing right now, especially a lot of the great English bands. You talk to the guys from Massive Attack or Tricky or Goldie or any of those people. It's like there's no outlet for any of their music. Record companies don't know what to do with them. I mean, the only people buying records are teenagers. God, it's depressing. I mean, I hope people like my music." And then the more important part is, the interviewer says, "It's an interesting visual. Your album nestled amid all the dreck in the top 10." And Madonna said, "I know. Well, who knows? I mean, I've been told that I have inspired Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears." Rolls her eyes. But you pointed out, and I saw Mel posted this recently, like,

• 2:08:11Yasi Salek?

  while she was promoting music, she often wore T-shirts that said, "Britney Spears and Rhinestones." There's one in Interview Magazine, so. And she used to like stand up for Britney in the media and like about her treatment.

• 2:08:23Speaker 02

  She kind of always has, I think. She always felt that towards Britney. And, you know, she always says, she like, she loves a wisecrack. So just, you know, saying all the things that she said in that interview.

• 2:08:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she's just jokes.

• 2:08:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's just like, she likes to, she likes to be a wise ass about stuff. But I do think, like, to your point, that, you know, she was like, as a pop star, like, at the arc of her career, it's like, it's an interesting time for her because it's like, she's put herself now in this, she's kind of made this magnum opus, right? And it feels very forward and very innovative. How's she gonna follow that up? In the meantime, all these kids have like flooded into the scene, TRL, this kind of like whole different approach to music. It's very different than the, than the way you would listen to something like Ray of Light. It's a very different kind of engagement with music, internet-y, you know, singles oriented.

• 2:09:17Speaker 02

  Just like this kind of like, just very, a lot different. And like, You know, so and I think she's pushing into this experimental space with Mirway, trying to like, you know, push the boundaries a little more of what pop music can do, which kind of puts her in a league more with like Kid A.

• 2:09:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:36Speaker 02

  You know.

• 2:09:36Yasi Salek?

  Totally, which is also 2000.

• 2:09:38Speaker 02

  Right. So just like things that were also happening at that time that are, you know, and she's talking, I think, about those bands, but I think, you know, also them as well, obviously.

• 2:09:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:49Speaker 02

  So it's just an interesting place for her to be because she's still definitely playing the game of the charts.

• 2:09:56Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:09:56Speaker 02

  And like being a pop star, but at the same time, she wants to kind of like get the credibility and the

• 2:10:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she wants.

• 2:10:02Speaker 02

  like artistic, you know, freedom or like, you know, expression of like Radiohead, what they were able to do.

• 2:10:09Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  So I think she's in this like interesting sort of liminal zone at this time.

• 2:10:16Yasi Salek?

  I mean, and also thank God, because music is so cool.

• 2:10:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's so cool.

• 2:10:22Yasi Salek?

  But I, okay, so I wanted to ask before we dive into it, I'm curious. I don't think Madonna's career arc lends itself to applying the framework of the imperial phase that we talk about a lot on this podcast.

• 2:10:38Yasi Salek?

  But if it did,

• 2:10:41Yasi Salek?

  is Ray of Light the end of it? Is music the end of it?

• 2:10:46Speaker 02

  I mean, I feel like music probably is right at that, like

• 2:10:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:52Speaker 02

  about that threshold, just because music itself, the song, is just such an anthem.

• 2:10:58Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:10:58Speaker 02

  And I think it like, whether or not, like at its that specific moment it was released, it was like, it pushed through all the way, it endures as like something that like lives on sort of eternally, I think. But yeah, I kind of, I mean, I hate to like go there too much, but because I just feel like you.

• 2:11:18Yasi Salek?

  I'm just kind of.

• 2:11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I, I, I know what you're saying and I kind of, I think I agree.

• 2:11:22Yasi Salek?

  I just don't think she has one, actually, because she has so many peaks that.

• 2:11:29Yasi Salek?

  Come back around, like whereas like you could, you could, even though I think erotica is, and so do you, and I think now she's been reappraised for that album, Every Which Way to Sunday.

• 2:11:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:40Yasi Salek?

  Like, at the time, it was not considered a success creatively or commercially.

• 2:11:44Speaker 02

  I mean, it's, it's hard to say that, too. Now, as, as soon as I said that, I was like, well, Confessions comes after that.

• 2:11:50Yasi Salek?

  Well, that's what I'm saying. So she has another reapex, if you will. She has, that's kind of more her, seems like the way you would describe her career is like this series of like apexes and like light valleys and apexes and then valleys, you know?

• 2:12:05Speaker 02

  Some plateaus, maybe some, and then just, yeah, right. Or just like a series, let's call it a series of apexes, some higher than others.

• 2:12:12Yasi Salek?

  Some higher than others, exactly. All right. Well, music.

• 2:12:18Speaker 02

  I mean, are we gonna talk about the artwork?

• 2:12:19Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:12:20Speaker 02

  Just for a second, okay.

• 2:12:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. The cover, let's talk about the cover of the album.

• 2:12:23Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it's interesting, too, just like as a contrast to Ray of Light.

• 2:12:28Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:12:28Speaker 02

  Just the packaging of it being this kind of like kitsch Americana.

• 2:12:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:33Speaker 02

  Like, point of view. It's pretty, it's Mondino, but it kind of has this like almost fake paint, like, this about it. It's like the retouching, everything about it feels like almost painted in some ways. It feels like those sort of 50s posters of like, you know, I don't know.

• 2:12:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:50Speaker 02

  You know, like Cheesecake Girls or whatever. And so it's like, it's playing on that in a way that, you know, it has this like real kitsch factor that is not at all present in Ray of Light. So very much a departure.

• 2:13:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the Earth, Earth Mother is gone.

• 2:13:04Speaker 02

  Right. She's at the rodeo now.

• 2:13:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:06Speaker 02

  And I love, you have this in the notes, but, you know, Ariane Phillips did the styling, and we could talk more about that. And she was just inspired by that book, Rodeo Girl by Lisa Eisner, who, I mean, anything she ever recommends in any article, I do it if I can afford it. But I think she's, you know, so cool. And it's so cool that she picked up on that. And, you know, Lisa was obviously amused for Tom Ford also. So like, kind of like that world, again, kind of like of fashion. She's like, you know, she's such a player in that world, Madonna. And so it's like, this just cool sort of crystallization of like things that were going on there. I love it. I think it's,

• 2:13:46Speaker 02

  I think it's, I loved this album cover and the sort of like, all the graphic design on it. I just think it's really cool.

• 2:13:54Yasi Salek?

  I do, too. I also think it's a kind of interesting, like, Thinking about like a couple of things, right? One is the like, stick with me. This is a time where denim had a re like apex as well.

• 2:14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:08Yasi Salek?

  You know, like for for such a long time, it was very much like just Levi's or whatever like. But by the tail end of the 90s, early 2000s, this is like the peak of designer denim. When you're like Diesel jeans and jeans, what's

• 2:14:21Speaker 02

  Is it Seven for All Mankind?

• 2:14:23Yasi Salek?

  Seven for All Mankind, Citizens of Humanity, Frankie B's were like, your fucking pubes are coming out. Yeah. And that to me is, but but they were like, really dark denim and like, it was almost like, I think of Music, the album of that way of being American reimagined, you know? Kind of how the denim was reimagined to be like really fashion forward and modern. Like so is the music here. And and then I wonder like how much like even though like we've said, you know, American Pie isn't like, we didn't, you know, crash through any windows of amazingness. But I wonder if doing that got her in that sort of Americana headspace. That's a really Americana song, you know? Bye bye, Miss American Pie. Drop my Chevy to the levee and the levee was dry.

• 2:15:08Speaker 02

  I don't think the contents of the the themes or the album itself is like explicitly Americana or explicitly American driven.

• 2:15:16Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:15:17Speaker 02

  Does this album have a theme?

• 2:15:19Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. I kind of, I was trying to glean one and like, all I could land on was like, No Thoughts, Just Vibes, like it's a really vibe forward album.

• 2:15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:28Yasi Salek?

  But of course, she's never not saying something.

• 2:15:30Speaker 02

  No, she always has a message. I think that, you know, you can always count on her to deliver a message in that it have like, her songs have meaning and I think that's always there. But yeah, I don't feel like this had the sort of cohesive meaning that that Ray of Light had. And I I would kind of assume that that was the intention, that it was like more of a collection of songs and vibes. Like you say, like, I think, you know, it's like anthems and experiments and just like, cool.

• 2:15:58Yasi Salek?

  Like, I think as Shaw said, like, this was an album kind of bringing together Americana and European sensibilities, you know?

• 2:16:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, music itself, I mean. Such a great song. And it's like, I love that it's like just one note, the entire song is just like one note. It's just like duh, duh, duh, duh, duh.

• 2:16:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:20Speaker 02

  The entire time, but somehow you don't notice that, but it's like that, it's so mechanical. And it's like, it's almost like a metronome of like, of a song. But like, she just brings this like incredible anthemic like vibe into it with that, you know? And I think that beat is on Miri Way's record. It's like, I can't remember what the song is, but it's like, um, it's like exists. Like he literally took that beat and put it into this song.

• 2:16:47Yasi Salek?

  Is this the one that we talked about that maybe was also used on several other songs later?

• 2:16:49Speaker 02

  It could have been, but I feel like it's, it definitely is music, but yeah.

• 2:16:55Yasi Salek?

  I just feel like starting your album with, and your lead single, the first lines are, hey, Mr. DJ, put a record on, I wanna dance with my baby. It's very like, okay, we're so back.

• 2:17:05Speaker 03

  Hey, Mr. DJ, put a record on. I wanna dance with my baby.

• 2:17:14Yasi Salek?

  She said she got the idea for this song at a Sting concert. She said, I went to see him in New York at the Beacon Theater. He has a pretty mixed audience and people were pretty well behaved and enthusiastically polite for stuff he was doing off his new album. But then when he did the old Police songs and it was just him and a guitar and the lights came down, somehow the energy in the room changed. It ignited the room and it brought everybody closer to the stage. And suddenly people lost their inhibition and their politeness. And everyone was singing the songs and practically holding hands. I mean, it really moved me and I thought that's what music does to people. It really does bring people together and it raises so much.

• 2:17:55Speaker 02

  Out of all of her themes, I mean, I feel like this is one of the most recurring themes. This is everybody. This is like, you know, it's just like get up, get into the groove. It's like all, it's always this guy idea of return to music, be free, lose your inhibitions.

• 2:18:10Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:18:11Speaker 02

  Like let all of this shit go.

• 2:18:12Yasi Salek?

  Live out your fantasy here with me.

• 2:18:15Speaker 02

  And just like that's, you know, that that's the ultimate freedom. Of, you know, the ultimate liberation, which is such a cool idea.

• 2:18:23Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I also love, I just love the music, makes the bourgeoisie.

• 2:18:28Speaker 02

  Man, talk about erasing boundaries. It's like, it's so cool that she put that in there and like, it's kinda dorky, but also kinda like.

• 2:18:35Yasi Salek?

  Not a lot of songs with the word bourgeoisie and then, yeah, a lot of pop songs anyways.

• 2:18:39Speaker 02

  It's just enough of a like jarring idea that you're like, it catches you.

• 2:18:44Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:18:45Speaker 02

  It's, it's smart. I, I love it.

• 2:18:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this is a bop. This is a banger, sort of a classic. The video is directed, once again, by Jonah Sockerlin, styled by Ryan Phillips. Sacha Baron Cohen, early Ollie G days. Playing Ollie G as their limo driver.

• 2:19:00Speaker 02

  Kind of an innovation at like, for her to have him in there. I think that was like, pretty forward.

• 2:19:06Yasi Salek?

  He's kind of the star of the video. I mean, she is, but like, besides her, it's, you know? And Debbie Mazur and Nikki Harris and Donna Gloria, all her, all her girls. Apparently, at first they had cast like supermodels and she was like, I'm not feeling this. Bring in my actual friends.

• 2:19:20Speaker 02

  So much better, cause it's just that, you know, it's like, again, that like, it's return to the anthem, return to your girls, like your homies in the car. And it's just, she looks so hot, even though she's like super preg in it.

• 2:19:34Yasi Salek?

  This is her first number one hit singles in Steak About.

• 2:19:36Speaker 02

  As it should have been.

• 2:19:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I, this, this song is, I can't disconnect it from the year 2000. That's really like my senior year of high school, going into college, like dancing at parties, at clubs, like.

• 2:19:50Speaker 02

  It's perfect. Perfect song, no notes.

• 2:19:52Yasi Salek?

  I have Gucci bucket hat on. I'm ready to fucking go. Yeah. I love impressive incident.

• 2:19:59Speaker 02

  I mean, similar to how like Ray of Light felt, like you're just like, wow, this was like that too. I think that's the vocoder effects and just like that, sort of like super forward, like production, but with that disco bassline under it. And like, just really like super innovative, super fresh sounding. Never heard anything like that. Even though this is after Cher's Believe, I'm pretty sure. So you vocoder was kind of on the scene. This just took it to another place, like where-

• 2:20:32Yasi Salek?

  That was 1998.

• 2:20:33Speaker 02

  Oh, right. So it was before. So just, this just takes it to another place of the use of it. Like, just really takes her to robot voice in this cool way. And it's like, I like a bird on the wingy, wingy, wingy.

• 2:20:44Yasi Salek?

  It's so cool. Yeah, yeah, that weird little interlude or whatever.

• 2:20:49Speaker 02

  It's just, it's fucking awesome. It's such a great song.

• 2:21:01Yasi Salek?

  Mirway said that when he sent her the demo, Madonna said she had an idea for lyrics, asked her to sing it for me, and she improved my track. I was amazed. Normally, it takes about six months to a year for people I'm working with to understand my ideas. With Madonna, the first time she heard it, she loved it. She had a chemical reaction to it. An interviewer said that this song perfectly captures the druggie euphoria in a good club, the sense of abandon.

• 2:21:22Speaker 02

  I kind of understand what they might have been thinking because of the way that it kind of like, it has all these phases. It's like, it's like all these phase shifts. It's like stuttery.

• 2:21:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:31Speaker 02

  Then you go into this, I don't know, wingy, wingy, wingy. And there's like, all these like, little, like, and she like, stutters into the like vocoder moments. So it does feel like that kind of distortion of your experience that you might have on like K or something in the club. Or you're, you're like, wait, am I just hearing the cymbal? Or like, you know, kind of weird, like surrealist, like palette, which is kind of cool. I didn't ever think of it that way, but I understand what they're saying.

• 2:22:00Yasi Salek?

  I'm really into the stuttering.

• 2:22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:05Yasi Salek?

  Effect is not the right word, but the sort of the motif-

• 2:22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:08Yasi Salek?

  -throughout the thing, where he applies it in different ways to like, whether it's her voice or to an instrument.

• 2:22:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:22:13Yasi Salek?

  And it's, like, we'll get to Don't Tell Me, but like, what a cool idea-

• 2:22:17Speaker 02

  It was very cool.

• 2:22:18Yasi Salek?

  -to stutter an acoustic guitar.

• 2:22:19Speaker 02

  Such a fucking cool idea.

• 2:22:20Yasi Salek?

  Like, modernizes it like this, you know?

• 2:22:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:23Yasi Salek?

  They asked Madonna that drug question, and she was like, um, yeah, I guess, you know, I suppose there was a drug-addled sensibility running through that song. And then they asked her, like, you've done E though, right? And she's like, yeah, but not for a couple of decades. I did E in the early 80s when it first appeared in the club scene. And then she talks about, she's like, I'm not a good person for drugs. I'm too into physical fitness. What about Runaway Lover?

• 2:22:45Speaker 02

  It's great. It has a good energy. I love the way it comes on, like at the beginning. I love the way it's like these like sort of bursts of like, and then it just like races into it. It's like very driving. It's just like, it's a fun.

• 2:22:59Yasi Salek?

  It's good to keep like, go, keep the album.

• 2:23:02Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:23:02Yasi Salek?

  Going forward.

• 2:23:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really does. It's very propulsive. So in that sense.

• 2:23:07Yasi Salek?

  I deserve it as a song that we were referencing.

• 2:23:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, untouched vocals.

• 2:23:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Madonna said it was Merwey's idea to take off all the effects on my vocals, that my vocals would be dry and really present and really in your face. But at first I was disturbed by it because I hadn't done that in a long time. Then I started to see the purity of it, the juxtaposition of the rawness of my voice with the really over-processed synthesizer sounds. And I started seeing that it was a nice marriage.

• 2:23:31Speaker 02

  I feel like that kind of like encapsulates the idea of this record and this collaboration with him in general. Like, I feel like that's sort of the essence of it, right? Like this, you know, toggling back and forth between acoustic sound.

• 2:23:57Speaker 02

  Whether that's like sort of analog or, you know, or actual acoustic instruments. And then this very highly processed digitization of like, an almost sort of like degraded digital like sort of experience. Like the stuttering and the stuff makes it almost feel like it's like artifacts.

• 2:24:14Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yeah, yeah. There's a glitching feeling. It's like, like you said it earlier, but it's like the idea, kind of building upon that idea of ray of light of like, we're pummeling towards this future. But it's like, oh my God, like, like we're glitching on the way there. You know, like it's going so fast that like.

• 2:24:31Speaker 02

  Right. We're just like glitching out on the, yeah.

• 2:24:34Yasi Salek?

  It's just so interesting. I really love that song. I think it's really beautiful. And her vocal is like so, like there's such an immediacy to it because of the unprocessness, but then. Up against that.

• 2:24:45Speaker 02

  And it has that contrast, right? Because the choruses are pretty processed vocal, right? So you have the verse that's very plaintive and direct, and then it's really super hyper-processed.

• 2:24:56Yasi Salek?

  I think it's smart, because I think it would have been maybe too much.

• 2:24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. What about "Amazing"?

• 2:25:02Speaker 02

  It's cute, and it's got that orbit bop bounce to it. And it feels a little bit like Beautiful Stranger B-side to me, I guess.

• 2:25:13Yasi Salek?

  Totally. We have Beautiful Stranger at home.

• 2:25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, I mean, yeah.

• 2:25:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I don't have any notes for it, but I don't skip it. "Don't Tell Me". I can't believe that there's anyone on Earth who doesn't like this song. That shocks me. That shocks and awes me.

• 2:25:28Speaker 02

  This song is...

• 2:25:31Yasi Salek?

  It's a crack. This song is crack.

• 2:25:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. This feels like a folk picking and like country, you know?

• 2:25:38Yasi Salek?

  Totally. This is a twangy acoustic guitar. It was adapted from a song written by her brother-in-law, Joe Henry, who is her sister Melanie's husband, who is kind of like an alt-country artist?

• 2:25:59Speaker 02

  Folk-y, something.

• 2:26:01Yasi Salek?

  The song was called "Stop", and he had like kind of Tom Waitsy-inspired vocals. He said, "It's probably the last thing I have written with regard to her. It's a line I just don't cross. Musically, it's never seemed appropriate. I thought the song was a complete throwaway. I just moved and set up a studio in the guesthouse of my home. I was looking to record anything to make sure my things were working. I needed something to record, so I wrote that song in about 25 minutes, just to give myself something to do. I was a little embarrassed by it." It starts off a little "Spoon in June" and takes a cryptic turn at the end. I feel like, what a vision to hear this kind of throwaway. And obviously, it's earwormy as hell and catchy, but I think on its own, I could see why it would be a throwaway. It needs the mirror-waification and madonification of it. But to hear that and be like, no, I can do something like this.

• 2:26:46Speaker 02

  Totally. But that's the thing that we were talking about earlier, where it's just like, she just has that knack. She's tapped into something. Where she's just like, if you or I were just like, "Let's hum a little da-da-da", like, you know, you would be like, "Not that", but she would just get right away. She was like, "Yes, that's the hook right there", right? And she gets it in that way. There's some kind of uncanny ability to...

• 2:27:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's her genius, I think.

• 2:27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's her genius.

• 2:27:12Yasi Salek?

  To me, you are perfect. Don't tell me I love you so much. I love, I love the lyrical conceit of it, which is like very direct a message like, I'm 42, don't tell me to stop. But because you think I'm middle aged or past my prime, because those are things that people were starting to say about her, you know?

• 2:27:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:27:29Yasi Salek?

  And she's like, don't you?

• 2:27:30Speaker 02

  Don't tell me.

• 2:27:41Speaker 02

  I mean, another, one of her big themes is like, don't stop, keep going.

• 2:27:46Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:27:46Speaker 02

  Don't wait. Like, just like, you know, just like, there's no stopping.

• 2:27:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:50Speaker 02

  It's like, and I think that's, that's just like, this is a cool synergy of like, that idea of like, you're saying of like, how her age.

• 2:27:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:58Speaker 02

  But also just not stopping.

• 2:28:00Yasi Salek?

  I think that part that in the second verse, it's like, tell the bed not to lay, like the open mouth of a grave. Tell the bed not to lay is very much like, like, tell a cow not to moo. You know, like, I think she's like, I'm an artist, I'm gonna keep making things, you know? But also like, the, the imagery of like, the open mouth of a grave, not to stare at me like a calf down on its knees is so cool and weird. I just, I love this song.

• 2:28:25Speaker 02

  That's a great song.

• 2:28:26Yasi Salek?

  The video was directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, he's back. Um, featuring Madonna as a cowgirl walking down an automated treadmill in front of a projection screen with cowboys dancing and straddling horses in the backdrop. I have this video burned into my brain with her, like, the way she's.

• 2:28:41Speaker 02

  It's gone viral so many times, I feel like, recently too, just because it's such a good, the dance is so good.

• 2:28:47Yasi Salek?

  It's a line dance, she's doing a full on line dance.

• 2:28:49Speaker 02

  Full on line dance, apparently just like, days after giving birth to Rocco. That's the rumor and.

• 2:28:58Yasi Salek?

  What?

• 2:28:58Speaker 02

  Just that, I think it's just very interesting.

• 2:29:01Yasi Salek?

  If I get my like, period, I can't go to her for two days and she's like, I just birthed the whole human, I'll be right there at the music video show.

• 2:29:07Speaker 02

  And just like, I mean, the whole thing of her doing this Western thing, this kind of like, country music reappraisal at this moment is just, you know?

• 2:29:16Yasi Salek?

  Again, really ahead.

• 2:29:17Speaker 02

  Very, very.

• 2:29:18Yasi Salek?

  Given what, given where we are now and how like, so many pop stars have turned towards country now, like 25 years later. It was like, she was right there in the front, but also doing it in such a cool way with the technology. The stuttery acoustic guitar is just.

• 2:29:34Speaker 02

  Unbelievable, perfect.

• 2:29:36Yasi Salek?

  Chef's guess. What it feels like for a girl. What a, what a like a moment in her oeuvre. What a sparkling piece of diamond.

• 2:29:47Speaker 02

  And just like, yeah, perfect, again.

• 2:29:50Yasi Salek?

  So Madonna had developed an interest in collaborating with Guy Sigsworth. He had started his career with Seal. He co-wrote four songs, including Crazy, ever heard of it? Then he worked with virtuoso tabla player Talvin Singh, who is gonna make an appearance on this album. And then through him, he met Bjork and became Bjork's keyboard player and later music director of her live band for two albums.

• 2:30:17Yasi Salek?

  Playing harpsichord and stuff on, he plays harpsichord on Cover Me. And the clavichord on the song All Is Full of Love. Oh my God, stop it, stop. And he co-wrote Unravel with her.

• 2:30:30Yasi Salek?

  Then he met Imogen Heap in 1996, after a friend played him a demo of her song Come Here Boy. And he was, you know, in love with her voice and they wrote two songs together, Getting Scared in an Airplane. Which he produced for her debut album, I Megaphone. And then they did Fru Fru together. Do you guys remember Fru Fru? You remember Fru Fru, obviously.

• 2:30:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:51Yasi Salek?

  Well, you've heard me wax poetic about the Garden State soundtrack, which I'm sorry, I love it. It's a perfect piece of soundtrack work and it, Let Go is very famously in Garden State.

• 2:31:02Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, great.

• 2:31:04Yasi Salek?

  So that's a Guy Sigsworth. That's what, that's what we're dealing with. And she was like, I would like to work with you. And he sent her two sketches of music and she chose one that was almost finished. But like, they kept it unpolished so that Madonna could keep writing on top of it. And the backing track contained a sample from the 1993 British film, The Cement Garden, with the voice of Charlotte Gainsbourg saying, "Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short. Wear shirts and boots, because it's okay to be a boy. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading. But secretly, you'd love to know what it's like, wouldn't you? What it feels like for a girl." So that's where the title comes from. Also, what an incredible piece of dialogue.

• 2:31:49Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:31:50Yasi Salek?

  And I was like, it's true, like you call, you, you mock men for being girly because being girly is considered

• 2:31:57Speaker 02

  Degrading.

• 2:31:57Yasi Salek?

  Degrading, it's bad, it's wrong.

• 2:31:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:00Yasi Salek?

  You call men pussies because it's bad to be, you know?

• 2:32:02Speaker 02

  Completely.

• 2:32:03Yasi Salek?

  And it's like, Well, fuck you. Do you know, did that sample come with his version?

• 2:32:11Speaker 02

  It sounds like it did.

• 2:32:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it sounds like it did.

• 2:32:13Speaker 02

  And I think it again, just points to that whole thing of her just being like, so like, hearing that and being like, yeah, this is what the song is about, right? Just like that, it's like, it's like, just work with what's right in front of you and don't overthink it.

• 2:32:28Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:32:28Speaker 02

  And I, I love that she can, she can improvise or riff off of that, like, like in that way. It just feels like, that feels like so creative. It's like, just like, in very immediate, like, move now, act now, don't wait.

• 2:32:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:43Speaker 02

  Like, time, time goes by so slowly.

• 2:32:46Yasi Salek?

  Well, I think she has such, she has such a rich emotional life. So it's like, especially something like that text, of course, it's going to resonate something inside her and like pour something out. And in this case, it was, she talked about it later. She was in the process during the writing of the song, moving to London, hiding her pregnancy. She was like, pretty fed up with the fact that she's the one that had to move her whole life.

• 2:33:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:33:08Yasi Salek?

  She told Ingrid, Sishi, is that how you say it?

• 2:33:11Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:33:11Yasi Salek?

  From, who was the old editor of Interview Magazine. Said, "I wrote it kind of halfway through the album when I was pregnant and hiding it from the world. It was a really tumultuous period in my life. I was not in a terribly stable relationship at that point. And part of the reason was because we lived in different countries." And Ingrid says, "You and America, guy in Britain." And Madonna said, "It was an, okay, I don't want to move to England. Well, I don't want to move to America. Of course, being the girl, I made the first compromise. It's that extra thing that women have. I don't think we're better than the men, but I think there's an extra accommodating chromosome that we have. I picked up my life and my daughter and everything. I rented a house in London and moved there and decided, okay, well, I'll just make my record here. And that's really when our relationship started to work. But it was a huge sacrifice for me. And I know he was nervous and scared about the fact that he was going to be a father."

• 2:33:55Yasi Salek?

  I think another big part of it, the song, was, "Our generation has certainly been encouraged to grab life by the balls, to be super independent, get a great education, follow our dreams, kick ass, all that stuff. And I feel like I woke up one day holding the golden ring and realized that smart, sassy women who accomplish a lot and have their own cash and are independent are really frightening to men. I felt like, why didn't someone warn me?" And that's also what that song is about, swallowing that bitter pill. I screamed amen, sisters, so loud, I alarmed the pets. Do you know what I mean? I was like, wow, oh my god.

• 2:34:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I hear you. They said, they said, go be successful and go to college. And then men are like, I'm scared of you. I don't want to talk to you. Can you believe Madonna had to deal with that?

• 2:34:42Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:34:42Yasi Salek?

  We live in hell. I think, you know, not to be like on a monopier or whatever, but it sounds like what it is, which is like a very feminine song.

• 2:34:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:34:49Yasi Salek?

  Like it's sonically very feminine.

• 2:34:52Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 2:34:52Yasi Salek?

  Soft and beautiful.

• 2:34:53Speaker 02

  Soft and beautiful. And the vocal, the production on the vocal and also just like her sort of airy delivery.

• 2:35:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:02Speaker 02

  Is very, like, it just makes it all kind of come together.

• 2:35:13Yasi Salek?

  What do you make of the music video? Directed by Guy Ritchie, who by then was her husband.

• 2:35:20Speaker 02

  It feels very like a Guy Ritchie video to me. And I mean, maybe that's an interesting sort of meta commentary on the, on the thing like that. You know, it's like this, his name's Guy, but it's like this Guy point of view.

• 2:35:32Yasi Salek?

  Literally named Guy, yeah.

• 2:35:33Speaker 02

  On this, you know, on this. And so she's like in a hot rod car and like the, you know, like the whole kind of like presentation of it feels like, it sort of feels like different than the song, right?

• 2:35:45Yasi Salek?

  Like, that's, that's like my itch with it.

• 2:35:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:49Yasi Salek?

  It's just like the video, which is actually like, I think, a totally valid and interesting, you know, point of view to be like, girls can be.

• 2:35:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:36:00Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 2:36:00Speaker 02

  All these things, right?

• 2:36:01Yasi Salek?

  Girls can be pimps too. Go on and brush your shoulders off or whatever. Like, like, but that's not what I felt about the song, which I felt about the song is that like, back to the quote, like, actually just being a girl in its most femininity is okay.

• 2:36:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:36:18Yasi Salek?

  Good and fine. And that's not what's happening here. This is like, these are all masculine.

• 2:36:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:36:23Yasi Salek?

  Activities and traits of like.

• 2:36:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:36:25Yasi Salek?

  Violence and, you know, and again, not to say, obviously, this is, I'm talking about, I'm talking about archetypes. I'm not talking about gender, but like, I don't know, I just, I found it, it's a cool video.

• 2:36:37Speaker 02

  It's a cool video.

• 2:36:38Yasi Salek?

  I was kind of shocked to learn, because I don't ever remember seeing it. And now I know why is because it was banned from TV.

• 2:36:44Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 2:36:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Because of the violence?

• 2:36:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:49Yasi Salek?

  It's not that.

• 2:36:50Speaker 02

  I don't remember them talking about that though.

• 2:36:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:54Yasi Salek?

  She looks cool.

• 2:36:55Speaker 02

  She looks really cool.

• 2:36:56Yasi Salek?

  I love that there's an old lady.

• 2:36:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:57Yasi Salek?

  That she picks up at the old cunt's home for old people or whatever. I like that she's eating a burger and fries.

• 2:37:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's cool, too. Hair is amazing.

• 2:37:07Yasi Salek?

  Hair, yeah, she looks great. The cars are really cool. It's a fun watch. Lots of remixes of the song.

• 2:37:13Speaker 02

  I think they are great.

• 2:37:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they kind of.

• 2:37:16Speaker 02

  They really are great on this song.

• 2:37:18Yasi Salek?

  I love, I mean, obviously, I love all the remixes, but it does seem to me like where the remixes seem to really like hit like heavenly tier levels of amazing is is songs like this.

• 2:37:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:37:27Yasi Salek?

  Or like Bedtime Story, Frozen, kind of more like subtly beautiful songs that they're like kind of allowed to imprint into something else, you know?

• 2:37:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, really, though, I think the, especially those like above and beyond remixes, I think they're just like, they really take it to like another place that make like almost feels like that it fits as a production as opposed to it being just a remix.

• 2:37:49Yasi Salek?

  Yes, exactly.

• 2:37:50Speaker 02

  Almost like the right choice for it.

• 2:37:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:53Speaker 02

  Um, so.

• 2:37:54Yasi Salek?

  Um, the next song is Paradise in parentheses, Not For Me.

• 2:37:59Speaker 02

  I love this song, especially, it's a great, it's a really interesting kind of like ballad. That's not like, that's not a ballad. And I, I think it's sort of, it's again, so European, I feel like.

• 2:38:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because actually Merwe wrote it for his own album.

• 2:38:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was on production.

• 2:38:17Yasi Salek?

  Production.

• 2:38:18Speaker 02

  Be, which came out before this album, so.

• 2:38:20Yasi Salek?

  And so it's on both.

• 2:38:21Speaker 02

  Yes, on both. And it was a, like, it was a preview of what the sound was gonna be at the time. Um, cause I think, I, I remember I got that record because, you know, there was no other reason except that I heard that he was working with her.

• 2:38:36Yasi Salek?

  You're a real one.

• 2:38:37Speaker 02

  There was this record store in the West Village called Rebel Rebel, R I P. And that guy. That ran that shop was a tiny little shop on and it was on was on Christopher. No, Christopher or Westford, Westford. And it was it was tiny little shop and he he had everything and he was obsessed with Madonna. So he had every like Madonna remix and every he always was on top of the news of what was going on. And so he was like, he turned me on to that. He was like, she's working with him. And this, you know, like, because he got that record. And he had all the he had. Yeah, it was great. We used to go like roller blade over there and get when the singles would come out.

• 2:39:23Yasi Salek?

  I'm obsessed. That's perfect. We roller blade on over to the Madonna specialty record store.

• 2:39:28Speaker 02

  Any new ones out?

• 2:39:31Yasi Salek?

  No, it's a it's a cool song.

• 2:39:32Speaker 02

  It's a cool song.

• 2:39:33Yasi Salek?

  I like it.

• 2:39:42Yasi Salek?

  Gone is like a great ending for the album.

• 2:39:46Speaker 02

  I think so, too.

• 2:39:46Yasi Salek?

  It's like a kind of a perfect note to end on. I think both with the lyrical conceit and also like the sound of the song is kind of.

• 2:39:53Speaker 02

  And it kind of like, and it's interesting because like these three records, like they all end in a similar kind of way on a down note.

• 2:40:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:02Speaker 02

  With like, or just like a quieter note than the rest of the record. And they like, so it's it kind of fits into the theme of this run.

• 2:40:10Yasi Salek?

  Agree.

• 2:40:20Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so music, really interesting.

• 2:40:23Speaker 02

  Really interesting.

• 2:40:24Yasi Salek?

  Really cool, unusual.

• 2:40:28Speaker 02

  Successful.

• 2:40:29Yasi Salek?

  Successful, yes.

• 2:40:31Speaker 02

  I think just, you know, like successful as a work, creative work and successful as commercially.

• 2:40:37Yasi Salek?

  Commercially successful, totally. I think I'm pretty sure critically pretty successful, too. Like, not quite, didn't quite hit the heights of Ray Blight, but it was definitely like, like Village Voice gave it an A, Chris Gao, Spin gave it a seven out of 10, four stars from Rolling Stone, four stars from Q, eight out of 10 from NME, like a B from Entertainment Weekly. They missed the mark a little bit, but it's it's well reviewed.

• 2:41:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:02Yasi Salek?

  That's gonna change, but we're not there yet.

• 2:41:08Yasi Salek?

  What happens after music? Well, Madonna goes back on David Letterman. In November 2000, she brings her 24-year-old guitar teacher, Monty Pittman. And she was very scared because she'd never publicly played guitar. And they both played "Don't Tell Me." They played guitar. And it's very cute. You can watch it on YouTube.

• 2:41:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can watch it. It's very cute.

• 2:41:26Yasi Salek?

  I don't remember the exact story of Monty Pittman, but I feel like Guy got her a guitar for her birthday. I don't know what came first. Definitely, she hired this teacher for Guy Ritchie, I think, because he was bedridden or something. Then she also started learning guitar. Anyways, he becomes kind of an important figure.

• 2:41:46Speaker 02

  Important, yeah.

• 2:41:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. In December of 2000, Madonna and Guy Ritchie get married in the Scottish Highlands. Her maid of honor is Stella McCartney, who makes her dress.

• 2:41:55Speaker 02

  Again, I kind of like back to that when we're talking about that, like Vanity Fair, where she's like, you know, Eva Peron in the Vanity Fair. I just think I connect this to this. Like, that's the beginning of this arc. And now she's in the Scottish Highlands, getting married in a castle.

• 2:42:13Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:42:14Speaker 02

  Stella McCartney, Trudy Styler.

• 2:42:16Yasi Salek?

  Right. Like, she's entered a new world.

• 2:42:18Speaker 02

  Totally new world, right? It's just like horseback riding.

• 2:42:22Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:42:22Speaker 02

  You know, she's like...

• 2:42:23Yasi Salek?

  Madge. She puts out, oh, we're not there yet, but she does put out a children's book called "The English Road."

• 2:42:29Speaker 02

  So just this like, it's like this whole, she's entering this whole new

• 2:42:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:35Speaker 02

  phase of her life and also just like her phase of her celebrity, really.

• 2:42:39Yasi Salek?

  It is kind of very interesting, given what you're saying, that "American Life" is the album that comes out first during that phase.

• 2:42:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:46Yasi Salek?

  You know, because it's a pretty fuck-you album.

• 2:42:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, it is very interesting. I think it is really interesting.

• 2:42:53Yasi Salek?

  We need to go on tour.

• 2:42:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:55Yasi Salek?

  Because we haven't toured. We didn't tour "Ray of Light," and now we have music. So the "Drowned World" tour.

• 2:43:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:43:02Yasi Salek?

  Starting June 9, 2001. Madonna had started throwing around the preliminary ideas for the tour with Christopher Shiconi, but ultimately, she decided he would not be involved in it.

• 2:43:11Speaker 02

  But she was very disappointed by...

• 2:43:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. He had been, they had been like more and more estranged

• 2:43:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:18Yasi Salek?

  during this time period. And she also had asked her friend David Collins to redesign her New York apartment. That was like the first time Christopher hadn't done one of her residences.

• 2:43:26Speaker 02

  He was really burned by that.

• 2:43:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:28Speaker 02

  She did, according to him, steal his idea of having a big tree in the middle of the stage for the, like, he had, I guess, one of the original drawings that he said he did for this store was like a big tree in the middle of the stage and she-

• 2:43:44Yasi Salek?

  Well, she can't steal it, it was for her anyways.

• 2:43:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you know, that was his, how he looked at it, I guess.

• 2:43:50Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I do, I do think he was an incredibly creative and talented person.

• 2:43:54Speaker 02

  I mean, he developed that, like, peak, talk about imperial-

• 2:43:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, blonde ambition.

• 2:43:59Speaker 02

  Imperial aesthetic, like, just unbelievable.

• 2:44:01Yasi Salek?

  Incredible.

• 2:44:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:03Yasi Salek?

  So Jamie King, who we talked about a little bit in the last episode, takes over as artistic partner and choreographer. I think in the tour book, he's just credited as stage production director. A new person, 23-year-old Englishman Stuart Price, comes on as music director. He did music under the name Jacques Lacant. Mirway had introduced them when Madonna was looking for a live keyboard player. And then she also brought Monty Pittman, her guitar teacher, to come play live guitar, called again on Nikki and Donna, although Nikki, I can't remember how she sustained the injury to her leg, but she had had surgery and one of her legs was a little longer than the other ones. She

• 2:44:45Yasi Salek?

  didn't, she physically was not at her peak.

• 2:44:49Speaker 02

  Peak, yeah.

• 2:44:49Yasi Salek?

  And also, I think there was some quote, I didn't write it down, but like, she was like, "We were like dancing with like 19-year-olds and we're like 38 years old," or whatever. The costumes were by Jean-Paul Gaultier, most of them, the kilts and the dresses and the kimonos, but then the country looks were D Squared, which I think is also in the video, right? You were at this tour.

• 2:45:10Speaker 02

  I was.

• 2:45:12Yasi Salek?

  You want to tell us about it a little bit?

• 2:45:14Speaker 02

  I saw it in Philadelphia. It was spectacular in that it was-

• 2:45:20Speaker 02

  For the time, and I think, you know, it was like extremely technologically innovative. There was like, it felt like-

• 2:45:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, a lot of like screens, right?

• 2:45:29Speaker 02

  A lot of screens and just like a lot of like, sort of like high wire. You know, she's like flies through the air at one point.

• 2:45:36Yasi Salek?

  Mmm, aerials.

• 2:45:37Speaker 02

  Aerial stuff and like, just really just like highly coordinated, highly choreographed. You know, sort of acting out these kind of like battle scenes of like, you know. It was, it was very cool and very different than everything she had really done before, I think.

• 2:45:57Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 2:45:57Speaker 02

  Um, and this tour, which I think everybody has beaten this to death, but she didn't do any hits. I mean, she did only material really from, from Ray of Light and Music and only two, like from catalog hits was La Isla Bonita and um, Holiday at the end.

• 2:46:17Yasi Salek?

  And Human Nature.

• 2:46:18Speaker 02

  She did, she did do Secret and Human Nature.

• 2:46:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but those aren't like-

• 2:46:21Speaker 02

  But she hadn't toured those at all.

• 2:46:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:46:22Speaker 02

  So that was like just the, those were the only two songs from Bedtime Stories. Bedtime Stories really got the slay in the end.

• 2:46:29Yasi Salek?

  I know, I know. Such a good album. It would've been so cool to have it toured. Yeah, I watched a lot of this because it's all, the whole thing is on YouTube. And it's fucking cool, man.

• 2:46:37Speaker 02

  It's cool.

• 2:46:38Yasi Salek?

  The looks are so cool. I was, I was commenting to you on our way here, like I found the specifically the like punk.

• 2:46:44Speaker 02

  The punk rock look.

• 2:46:45Yasi Salek?

  The punk look is like so ahead of its time. Not even, I mean, obviously not because punk, but like it's Chapo Valona. You know, it's like, it could be like, I'm like, oh, this is so sick. The dancing is really aggressive.

• 2:46:57Speaker 02

  So aggressive.

• 2:46:58Yasi Salek?

  Like it's, the movement is really like chaotic and aggressive, obviously, you know, choreographed. I read that Jamie King said in the rehearsals, like it was so intense that he like vomited.

• 2:47:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, like people, like apparently it was very intense rehearsals and like the, yeah, there's like, it's, like I said, it was like different than anything she'd done before. And I, she's in-

• 2:47:22Speaker 02

  Insane.

• 2:47:23Yasi Salek?

  Shape.

• 2:47:24Speaker 02

  Like, I mean, it is like, I think this is peak Madonna athletic body like.

• 2:47:30Yasi Salek?

  She's about forty three, I think, during this, her turn forty three on this tour. She was incredible.

• 2:47:35Speaker 02

  Jacked, like, it's crazy.

• 2:47:37Yasi Salek?

  Very cool tour, but you said, maybe people were like, felt a little sad they didn't get more, more.

• 2:47:45Speaker 02

  I think they didn't, people felt like they didn't get more, this is again, critics and I don't know, like, I loved it.

• 2:47:50Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:47:51Speaker 02

  I, you know, I was so happy to see anything that she did, like, she, because it was all just so amazing and impressive. But I think, yeah, people wanted more hits, but with the people complain no matter what you do, kind of like, and.

• 2:48:03Yasi Salek?

  Well, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

• 2:48:05Speaker 02

  And she, she wanted this to be something new and focus on that new music and I, you know, and sort of take everything in a new direction. I think that this did.

• 2:48:14Yasi Salek?

  Really cool too also, because I do kind of feel like, back to the don't tell me of it all, like, to like, do a retrospectively set list is kind of being like, I'm done.

• 2:48:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:48:23Yasi Salek?

  You know, like.

• 2:48:24Speaker 02

  She does that next, so like.

• 2:48:25Yasi Salek?

  And that's fine, but like, she was still, I feel like, really in her, like, I have made some cutting edge new shit and you're gonna listen to it.

• 2:48:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, and I, and I think, and I'm gonna do this whole presentation around it. I think it was like, you know, this whole, it was really like world building. And I think all of her, her, her, her tours do that to an extent, but this really felt like you're in this geisha world and this like, you know, this, these anime, like battles and like.

• 2:48:53Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:48:54Speaker 02

  With those like huge sleeves that she did, like where they're holding the sleeves out and her arms are out.

• 2:48:59Yasi Salek?

  You know, again, I wasn't there, but I did watch it online and I think it's phenomenal. Um, I wish I had been there.

• 2:49:06Speaker 02

  This tour also right in the, at the very end of the tour.

• 2:49:10Yasi Salek?

  Oh, right, we didn't talk.

• 2:49:11Speaker 02

  Happens.

• 2:49:11Yasi Salek?

  It's like three days before the tour ends, nine eleven happens, and that's kind of a huge deal.

• 2:49:16Speaker 02

  And she had this like little song, I was like, that she did, this, it was like called the funny song and it was like a satire, like, you know, song that was just like tongue in cheek and she stopped singing it because of.

• 2:49:29Yasi Salek?

  Right, she didn't want to.

• 2:49:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, because it just, things got too serious.

• 2:49:34Yasi Salek?

  It's kind of wild to consider, like, that she had to go play, like, more shows.

• 2:49:39Speaker 02

  Like, I know.

• 2:49:41Yasi Salek?

  Because like, nine eleven was so insane.

• 2:49:43Speaker 02

  It was so insane.

• 2:49:44Yasi Salek?

  And how crazy the world felt.

• 2:49:45Speaker 02

  I remember like, I think a lot of artists were just like, no, we have to continue because people need it.

• 2:49:50Yasi Salek?

  People need it, yeah.

• 2:49:51Speaker 02

  Like.

• 2:49:52Yasi Salek?

  No, I was, there was zero criticism. I was just like imagining, and I sounded so fucking trite there, being like, nine eleven was so insane.

• 2:49:57Speaker 02

  No, it was so insane.

• 2:49:58Yasi Salek?

  But you get what I'm saying.

• 2:49:59Speaker 02

  It was completely insane.

• 2:50:00Yasi Salek?

  Unless you, unless you lived through it.

• 2:50:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, and it was like, it felt like nothing was gonna ever go back to normal.

• 2:50:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, reality had like shifted in this crazy way.

• 2:50:09Speaker 02

  It did seem crazy. I agree with you. I think it did seem crazy to like, go on with your show.

• 2:50:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:14Speaker 02

  And like, but I think it was kind of courageous and.

• 2:50:17Yasi Salek?

  Oh, for sure. I'm sure psychologically, it must have been incredibly difficult.

• 2:50:20Speaker 02

  Side note, but I did, I saw Tori Amos like, two or three days after.

• 2:50:25Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 2:50:25Speaker 02

  At the Beacon Theater.

• 2:50:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was, it brought people together in an interesting way because it felt like that was such a shattering kind of moment.

• 2:50:35Yasi Salek?

  I honestly don't remember at all what we did. We were in college in Santa Barbara. I'm sure what we did was what we did every day, Pinky, got blackout drunk.

• 2:50:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:50:44Yasi Salek?

  But maybe with a little more emotion.

• 2:50:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:50:47Yasi Salek?

  Well, I think nine eleven, I'm glad you brought it up for that reason because it's interesting, but also I think it was maybe a final push that Madonna was like, okay, we'll move to England. Do you know what I mean?

• 2:50:57Speaker 02

  Right, probably, right.

• 2:50:59Yasi Salek?

  Because that's when they fully relocate, is November of two thousand and one. I don't have a lot to say about this, but that same month Madonna releases her second greatest hits album, which I think was supposed to be like Immaculate Collection two, is that right? And then it became GHV two?

• 2:51:13Speaker 02

  I thought this was a weird collection. I didn't, it wasn't, I don't know.

• 2:51:17Yasi Salek?

  I mean, maybe like an update, like Immaculate Collection at this point is so old.

• 2:51:22Speaker 02

  Old, yeah.

• 2:51:23Yasi Salek?

  And she's had so many hits since, maybe just a way to put like a partner to Immaculate Collection.

• 2:51:28Speaker 02

  I think it just felt, it was fulfilling a contract.

• 2:51:31Yasi Salek?

  Well, her last Maverick album is American Life. So maybe it was fulfilling contracts so she could like.

• 2:51:36Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure that.

• 2:51:37Yasi Salek?

  Many such cases, many such cases. In two thousand and two, a new film comes out. Madonna has done another film.

• 2:51:43Speaker 02

  And what a film it was.

• 2:51:45Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna be so real with you guys. I didn't finish it and I will before we do a special episode of this podcast in which I need to watch the film for. But Patrick Sandberg is not here to defend the honor of this film and I know he is a truther, a swept away truther. I'll just give you some background. It, this is Madonna and Guy Ritchie's like one film collaboration. They decided to remake the 1974 Lena Wirtmuller film Swept Away. Actually, this is kind of my favorite part of the story is that it was the actor Stephen Weber's idea. I love Stephen Weber. I find him so hot. I don't know if you guys watched Wings. Wings was a big deal to teenage yosse finding men hot. Anyways, I don't know why they were friends with Stephen Weber. It didn't get that far.

• 2:52:28Yasi Salek?

  But he said, why don't you redo Swept Away? Which is, I gotta wonder, what did he see that we didn't see? What did he see in their relationship?

• 2:52:37Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I, I think you have a note here, which I think this really sums this up perfectly. The original film, like, and Madonna's kind of like appetite for film were one thing. And Guy Ritchie's like-

• 2:52:52Yasi Salek?

  Creative sensibilities-

• 2:52:53Speaker 02

  Was another thing.

• 2:52:54Yasi Salek?

  And interests. Yeah.

• 2:52:56Speaker 02

  And she even, I was reading something just last night, I guess, about this. And she was even saying that she couldn't get him to watch-

• 2:53:05Yasi Salek?

  The first 20 minutes because he found it boring?

• 2:53:07Speaker 02

  Or, and other movies, like any kind of serious movie.

• 2:53:10Yasi Salek?

  Sir, you're a fucking film director, but also, you know what?

• 2:53:13Speaker 02

  I think that's pretty telling about-

• 2:53:14Yasi Salek?

  I can see it in his movies.

• 2:53:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, it's pretty telling about the problems with this movie. Like, I think that's kind of, you know, like, I think she had a vision and probably Stephen, Stephen Weber had a vision for what it could be and-

• 2:53:28Yasi Salek?

  And Guy Ritchie also had a vision.

• 2:53:30Speaker 02

  Sort of, but I think he was trying to do their vision, but he just didn't have the, like, vocabulary, like you say.

• 2:53:36Yasi Salek?

  Well, he also made some drastic changes. He didn't want the subplot, which is, I think, so important to the film being successful, which is that, so the plot is about these rich people who go on a cruise, they charter a yacht cruise ship or whatever from Greece to Italy, or Italy to Greece, I don't remember, it doesn't really matter. And Madonna's character is the main character is this like very rich, wretched, spoiled woman who gets stranded on a like lifeboat with a very hot fisherman who works on the boat.

• 2:54:19Yasi Salek?

  And they have an antagonist in their relationship because she's such a bitch. But in the film, the subplot is that she is a right wing bigot.

• 2:54:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:54:27Yasi Salek?

  And then he's this like working class. And they, even from what we watched last night, which I'm gonna have to turn it off, but like, I can tell they're like.

• 2:54:36Speaker 02

  They planted a couple of seeds.

• 2:54:38Yasi Salek?

  A little bit of it, but it's not.

• 2:54:40Speaker 02

  Realized.

• 2:54:40Yasi Salek?

  He also, I think, really toned down this, the original has a lot of sex scenes between the two, including like a sodomy. And he was like, no.

• 2:54:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:54:51Yasi Salek?

  That's not happening. Again, I didn't see the whole thing, so I can't, I can't weigh in.

• 2:54:55Speaker 02

  I did see it originally when it came out and she looks fabulous. Like she looks so good. She's like this tan, her hair is like beautiful. Her body again is in this like prime athletic shape.

• 2:55:09Yasi Salek?

  The outfits are beautiful. We love Jean Triplehorn.

• 2:55:12Speaker 02

  She's trying something.

• 2:55:14Yasi Salek?

  The acting that I saw was 100% Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I want it daddy.

• 2:55:21Speaker 02

  Yes, I feel like.

• 2:55:23Yasi Salek?

  But maybe, I only didn't get that part, you know?

• 2:55:25Speaker 02

  I feel like that is the failing of the movie, though, in a way. Is that like she was trying to do this like really tongue in cheek, over the top performance, campy performance. And either didn't understand it or didn't know how to contextualize it. He was trying to bring humor into it. That's obvious. It just didn't land.

• 2:55:43Yasi Salek?

  Well, again, I don't, I can't, I can only speak to the 20 minutes I saw or the 30 minutes I saw or whatever.

• 2:55:47Speaker 02

  Anyway, not a highlight.

• 2:55:48Yasi Salek?

  Not a highlight. Open to horrible reviews, was in theaters for three weeks, made $600,000 of the $10 million that was spent and went away.

• 2:55:56Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:55:57Yasi Salek?

  Okay. In October, that same month, this is like 10 days later, the Diet on a Day single comes out.

• 2:56:07Speaker 02

  Very cool single.

• 2:56:08Yasi Salek?

  Very cool single. It was made for the James Bond film of the same name in which she has a cameo as Verity, the fencing instructor.

• 2:56:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:56:15Yasi Salek?

  And she said it was the one woman who is not interested in Bond in the movies. I liked that. Of course, this is Pierce Brosnan.

• 2:56:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:56:21Yasi Salek?

  Bond. Um, this song slaps.

• 2:56:23Speaker 02

  This song slaps. It's so cool that it kind of broke the mold of the, of the James Bond.

• 2:56:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because it was always kind of like a ballad. Yeah.

• 2:56:33Speaker 02

  And, uh, she just like, she tore it with this.

• 2:56:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. She was like, actually, my song fucks. So it's a different kind of, it's a mere way.

• 2:56:41Speaker 02

  Analyze this.

• 2:56:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:50Speaker 02

  Verity is cool as hell.

• 2:56:52Yasi Salek?

  Totally. She does some of her best work as in cameos in movies.

• 2:56:57Speaker 02

  She this tore this whole, whole unit.

• 2:57:01Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:57:01Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 2:57:02Yasi Salek?

  It's amazing. And it is our first taste of the next album.

• 2:57:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:57:07Yasi Salek?

  Which in 2003, she puts out the first single from American Life, the titular track.

• 2:57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:14Yasi Salek?

  March 22nd, 2003. It's kind of important to note that the United States invaded Iraq.

• 2:57:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:57:20Yasi Salek?

  On March 20th.

• 2:57:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, this single coming out at that time was,

• 2:57:26Speaker 02

  I mean, it was a heavy hitter. She really went, she stepped right into it and.

• 2:57:30Yasi Salek?

  It's a crazy choice for a first single, but a very awesome choice where you're like, I'm doubling down on what I believe in and what I love about this album because I think anyone who heard it would know that it might be polarizing.

• 2:57:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's, I think it's a really interesting song. I love it. I love, I mean, I've always loved it. I, she got a lot of flack.

• 2:57:51Yasi Salek?

  For rapping.

• 2:57:52Speaker 02

  For rapping on the song, which I think just like, that was part of what people reacted to. Like, it's so obvious that that, that her rap is like a tongue in cheek commentary on.

• 2:58:05Yasi Salek?

  The lyrical.

• 2:58:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's supposed to be, it's supposed to be funny.

• 2:58:10Yasi Salek?

  Drinking a soy latte. I get a double shote. Obviously she's not trying to be like, um, Big L. Do you know what I mean? Like, she's joking.

• 2:58:18Speaker 02

  Joking. And people completely miss the point of that, probably intentionally.

• 2:58:25Speaker 02

  And then the video, which was, you know, also super. Well, you pointed out this proto Kesha idea, which I think is great.

• 2:58:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's what I love this song. I will be honest, I came to American Life a little bit later. I don't actually remember, besides Hollywood, really hearing it in real time. But I love it. Like, I just loved it. I was like, this is cool. I do think she was really ahead. I like Kesha TikTok is until 2010 and by that time, people are like, we fucking love this. Let's go. And that's basically the vibe, you know?

• 2:58:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:55Yasi Salek?

  I think the lyrics of the rap are very self-aware and funny, like while everyone seemed to miss that, you know? And like the refrain of, and you know, I'm satisfied, being so obviously, I'm not satisfied. And you pointed out, like, it ending with, I just realized that nothing is what it seems.

• 2:59:15Speaker 02

  I think of it as so profound, which obviously it's cliche at the same time, but it's like, hearing her say that, like, nothing is what it seems. I think we talked about this this morning. It's like, anytime you put somebody or something on a pedestal, an idea, a country, a value, a person, once you get to know them, you realize, oh, it wasn't quite like that. And they can't really be on the pedestal, right?

• 2:59:40Yasi Salek?

  Right. Nothing can be on a pedestal.

• 2:59:42Speaker 02

  So it's like, I think that's like, that's just like a evergreen, profound thing. And I just like, always return to that in my mind of just like, I've probably dovetailed with things that I was like, I'm coming to understand in my life at that time as well. Just like, you know, just realizing like, oh, actually.

• 2:59:59Yasi Salek?

  Those are your Kylie Jenner, you're realizing things. Yeah.

• 3:00:03Speaker 02

  So just like, whatever, that just hit me that way. And so just like, that kind of really stuck with me about that.

• 3:00:09Yasi Salek?

  I also think it's because it's kind of perfect because it's also like explicitly, this, the rap is not what it seems.

• 3:00:13Speaker 02

  Right, completely.

• 3:00:14Yasi Salek?

  Putting it right in there, being like, just so you like.

• 3:00:16Speaker 02

  Just so you know.

• 3:00:17Yasi Salek?

  This is not what it seems, you know?

• 3:00:20Speaker 02

  I mean, the whole, the lyrics of the entire song are.

• 3:00:24Yasi Salek?

  Will it get me far? It starts that way, right? Do I have to change my name? Will it get me far? Should I lose some weight? Am I gonna be a star?

• 3:00:32Speaker 02

  I mean, I think the whole thing is really funny, right? I think that the whole song is funny.

• 3:00:35Yasi Salek?

  But also really, I'm sorry, really poignant and profound. Yeah, you took the words right out of my mouth. Like, sorry, but should I lose some weight? Evergreen refrain.

• 3:00:45Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 3:00:45Yasi Salek?

  For all time, like, especially, this doesn't even, this song doesn't even know about Ozempic. The American Life single, you will, you will love Ozempic.

• 3:00:59Speaker 02

  I'm digging on the isotopes. This metaphysics shit is dope.

• 3:01:03Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. It's very, I mean, when, when Insane Clown Posse said magnets, how do they work? Everyone lost their minds. But Madonna can't do it. Uh, I love this song. I think it's great.

• 3:01:13Speaker 02

  It's great.

• 3:01:14Yasi Salek?

  Uh, the, it was the lowest charting first single from a Madonna album since the debut.

• 3:01:20Yasi Salek?

  So I didn't do.

• 3:01:20Speaker 02

  I mean, this whole record had that.

• 3:01:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about the negative reviews, specifically about this song.

• 3:01:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:01:28Yasi Salek?

  Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly called it a facile confirmation of Madonna's haters' most knee jerk conviction that she does not have a worldview beyond, beyond her next Pilates appointment, which then I'm like.

• 3:01:40Speaker 02

  I mean, talk about missing the point.

• 3:01:41Yasi Salek?

  Literally.

• 3:01:42Speaker 02

  Are you like, are you intentionally stupid?

• 3:01:45Yasi Salek?

  Are you stupid?

• 3:01:46Speaker 02

  I think you're actually intentionally stupid.

• 3:01:47Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry, Ken Tucker. I think you're like, oh, actually, I believe he's like the NP, like he's like an NPR music critic. He's probably very intelligent, but this shocked me. I was like.

• 3:01:55Speaker 02

  That's pretty shocking.

• 3:01:56Yasi Salek?

  It's right there that it's, she's doing irony.

• 3:01:58Speaker 02

  That seems like straight hater aid to me. That's like, just like, you hate her.

• 3:02:03Yasi Salek?

  The Guardians, Alexis Petridis.

• 3:02:05Speaker 02

  Mocked its extreme point of view as a little more than money can't buy your happiness.

• 3:02:09Yasi Salek?

  Which, okay.

• 3:02:10Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:02:10Yasi Salek?

  Sure. That's, that is the gist, you know, a part of the gist. So, okay.

• 3:02:15Speaker 02

  It's a little reductive.

• 3:02:17Yasi Salek?

  A little reductive, yeah.

• 3:02:20Yasi Salek?

  Madonna voice. It's reductive. Look it up. They really hated the rap. Blender called it the most embarrassing rap ever recorded.

• 3:02:31Yasi Salek?

  Okay. But I really want to read this because the same month that this single comes out, Lynette Holloway writes in the New York Times, "This is how the music world is changing. Madonna, who has been a pop diva for two decades, may be looking at the final stages of a long career." First of all, who says you? And then the song, which was talking about American Life, which was released to top 40 radio stations nationwide last week, made it onto the playlist of most major radio stations. But it's been so long since Madonna had a hit that radio stations are wondering if listeners want to hear her new material. And then it quotes the vice president of a radio trade publication. "Radio is still searching for her relevance. There is some question about how much she appeals to kids, but she deserves the benefit of the doubt. Every time Madonna does something, she makes news

• 3:03:15Yasi Salek?

  and program directors add her to playlists to be on board upfront if something happens." So Madonna gets asked about this, like. Relevance, specifically that quote by Matt Lauer on NBC. And Madonna said, I don't see the point of writing these kinds of articles. At the end of the day, what is the relevance of Aretha Franklin? What is the relevance of Frank Sinatra? What is the relevance of all artists? Do we have to fall into an age group and appeal to a specific audience to have relevance? That's absurd. It's disrespectful and absurd.

• 3:03:43Speaker 02

  Word.

• 3:03:45Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely. And also, like, this is a great time to point out that, like, Madonna has pushed into territory that is unheard of at this point. Starting with Ray of Light, but as you can just go on. She's a four, she's a pop star who's over 40.

• 3:04:00Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 3:04:00Yasi Salek?

  And that alone, pink pussy hat.

• 3:04:03Speaker 02

  Pretty, pretty transgressive.

• 3:04:04Yasi Salek?

  It's an act of, it's literally an act of transgression. It's an act of, it's political to be 40. It's political to be a 42-year-old woman and try to have attention. Or try to make art.

• 3:04:15Speaker 02

  And I think it's like, back to what we were saying earlier about, like, what's her position in the sort of music pop sphere now? It's like, you know, they're evaluating, they're all evaluating her on like the same terms as like people who are 20 years

• 3:04:32Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 3:04:32Speaker 02

  younger than her.

• 3:04:33Yasi Salek?

  And 20 years younger than her creatively.

• 3:04:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:04:37Yasi Salek?

  Like, she's transcended what you're talking about. She's not playing in the sandbox anymore.

• 3:04:41Speaker 02

  Completely. And that's what they're like intentionally missing about it, I feel like. They're like belittling her because she's, she is still being a pop artist and not like doing, I don't know, like a love ballads, like covers record, whatever.

• 3:04:56Yasi Salek?

  Going into easy listening territory.

• 3:04:58Speaker 02

  Totally. You know, like, I mean, instead, just trying to, like, continuing to push forward and continuing to search for new and innovative ways of expressing her ideas. And they don't like it because it's like, first of all, it doesn't sound like it, like, the classic idea of what pop music should sound like at that time. And then also, she's old.

• 3:05:21Yasi Salek?

  She's older and I do have to point out that, like, The music that they're comparing it to, like we just said, is not taking on the Iraq war or...

• 3:05:31Speaker 02

  It's just like not in the same league at all.

• 3:05:33Yasi Salek?

  No. It's not even... I'm a genie in a bottle, rub me the wrong way, you know, which is a great song. That's not, but I'm like, she's doing something so radical might not be the right word.

• 3:05:44Speaker 02

  It's kind of radical, yeah.

• 3:05:46Yasi Salek?

  Then this is interesting, Claire, I want your opinion on it. Speaking of radical, the music video for American Life, which, the original one, not the one that ended up being aired. The original one, directed by Jonas Ackerman, has like a satirical military fashion show, which shows up again in the tour, the reinvention tour, and the endings with Madonna tossing a grenade.

• 3:06:10Speaker 02

  And a Bush lookalike.

• 3:06:11Yasi Salek?

  A Bush lookalike, Bush sharing a cigar and a kiss with a Saddam Hussein lookalike. It was like 10 minutes long, but they edited it down. Anyways, three days before it's released, Madonna announced that she's actually pulling the video, because it had been filmed before the Iraq war began, and it's not, it's quote, "not appropriate to air at this time." I feel like this is the first time, maybe in her entire career, that she self-censored.

• 3:06:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:38Yasi Salek?

  That it wasn't other people saying,

• 3:06:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:06:41Yasi Salek?

  "You can't do that. She said I can't do that." And I'm so interested, what, like, what, how do you feel about that?

• 3:06:49Speaker 02

  I think that time, it's, you know, it was extremely, it was the beginning of political polarization. Not that, not that, it's not the dawn of political polarization.

• 3:07:01Yasi Salek?

  No, no, I know exactly what you're saying.

• 3:07:02Speaker 02

  But it was the beginning of this like extreme political polarization, where this kind of like nationalistic idea that Bush really was like pushing, that was like, you're either, you're either with, you're either for us or you're against us. You're either with the terrorists, you're for, with us, or you're with the terrorists.

• 3:07:19Yasi Salek?

  And there was such, I mean,

• 3:07:20Speaker 02

  And so this idea that you could...

• 3:07:21Yasi Salek?

  There was such a nationalistic sentiment, even amongst left-wing people because of 9/11.

• 3:07:26Speaker 02

  Because of 9/11, and that's what Bush really was like riding on.

• 3:07:29Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 3:07:29Speaker 02

  Which is why there's all these conspiracy theories about it. But like, I think the idea of like violence...

• 3:07:37Speaker 02

  Which this video was like expressing, you know, this idea of like a violent reaction, a violent resistance.

• 3:07:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:43Speaker 02

  Was just very anathema to like, things that were going on at that time. So I kind of understand why she, she backed off it because I think it was, you know, like the Dixie Chicks got canceled for just like calling out George Bush at the, you know, like, and remember also that it was a little later, but yeah, I mean, like the Kanye thing at the, at the Katrina thing, you know.

• 3:08:07Yasi Salek?

  Oh, right. He doesn't care about black people.

• 3:08:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08:10Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, there's, there's a, this will be notable for some of our audience. We talked about in the Pearl Jam, so, but Pearl Jam, and you would think the Pearl Jam audience in a concert would be pretty fucking left wing. But even, even left wing, they had a song called, I believe, Bush Leager and Eddie Vedder had a Bush mask that he wore and they were booed.

• 3:08:29Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah.

• 3:08:30Yasi Salek?

  Because the sentiment, even amongst the alternative, even amongst the left wing, was very nationalistic because everyone was united. They were just like afraid to question.

• 3:08:40Speaker 02

  Right, because I think they played so heavily into the idea of the United States being attacked. It was traumatic for everybody. It was really terrible, obviously, like, no, but I think they really manipulated that and propagandized that and kind of weaponized it against people and, you know, used their fear as a way to motivate this. And I think Madonna was trying to say like, this is wrong. All the things that were happening, the cascade of things that happened politically, not to make this about politics, but I do think it's important, like the cascade of things.

• 3:09:13Yasi Salek?

  This album is political, you know?

• 3:09:14Speaker 02

  The cascade of things that came after nine 11, with the Patriot Act, this sort of like, the lying of weapons of mass destruction, these kinds of just gigantic oversights.

• 3:09:24Yasi Salek?

  Isn't it so great that everything has changed and everything's fine now?

• 3:09:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, well, I mean.

• 3:09:28Yasi Salek?

  And that we have no problems?

• 3:09:29Speaker 02

  I think this is what set us up in a lot of ways for where we are right now. And I think. Those of us who had eyes to see, like Madonna, I think, recognized that this was not good. We were on a slippery slope. And I think, you know, she was trying to make a very strong statement about that. But I think that, I think it was probably specifically this grenade at George Bush.

• 3:09:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:52Speaker 02

  Thing that just seemed like a bridge too far.

• 3:09:54Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And also, it's, it's important to remember that she is not the Madonna of 10 years ago. She has a family now. She has small, she has young children. Not, not to say that she's like less audacious, but she has other people to consider in her life that will have fallout from this.

• 3:10:09Speaker 02

  Like a little tired of it. Like, does she need to, does she need to have a dog?

• 3:10:13Yasi Salek?

  Controversy.

• 3:10:13Speaker 02

  Right. In the race of this, like, it's, it's, even with the edited video, in the end, I think it still, that message gets across pretty strongly, so.

• 3:10:24Yasi Salek?

  And throughout the album. So, yeah. Anyways, I thought that was interesting.

• 3:10:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:28Yasi Salek?

  Let's talk about American Life, the album.

• 3:10:30Speaker 02

  Let's.

• 3:10:30Yasi Salek?

  Madonna and Mirway, back at it.

• 3:10:33Speaker 02

  Back at it. It really went hard in the paint, as you said, on this one, I think.

• 3:10:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's, it's a very fascinating, imagine the way that we talked about music and it was fun to talk about. But like, we said thematically, it's a bit vibes more than thoughts, you know? This is different.

• 3:10:50Speaker 02

  This feels like a concept album.

• 3:10:52Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:10:52Speaker 02

  And it feels really like her most experimental work, for sure.

• 3:10:57Yasi Salek?

  I made a note here that she, so she had said she was inspired by two albums. One I honestly haven't heard and didn't have time to listen to, Lost Horizons by Lemon Jelly. But one is A Hundredth Window.

• 3:11:08Speaker 02

  By Massive Attack.

• 3:11:09Yasi Salek?

  By Massive Attack. And this makes so much sense to me, because obviously I listened to that and I studied it, that that is the coldest, most machine-like Massive Attack album. It's not vibey, it's not warm, it's not rootsy, like, it's cold, it's machinistic. And I'm like, oh, I can, I can hear that in this album, you know?

• 3:11:26Speaker 02

  Is that the one with the Sinead O'Connor song?

• 3:11:28Yasi Salek?

  Yes, correct.

• 3:11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 3:11:30Yasi Salek?

  Right?

• 3:11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, completely. And it's like, Yeah, that's really interesting.

• 3:11:35Yasi Salek?

  As a reference.

• 3:11:36Speaker 02

  As a reference, yeah.

• 3:11:36Yasi Salek?

  And you said you've heard that Lemon Jelly album.

• 3:11:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:11:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, what does it sound like?

• 3:11:39Speaker 02

  So it just makes, it does make sense. There's like, because Lemon Jelly, in my recollection, is a little more folky.

• 3:11:46Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:11:46Speaker 02

  Influenced and that kind of like, that like folky electronic.

• 3:11:50Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so that makes so much sense because then her next quote is like, we set out to put the two worlds of acoustic and electronic music together. Um, it's another step on, but I never want to repeat myself. I'd make the same record twice.

• 3:12:02Speaker 02

  Well, she certainly didn't repeat herself with this.

• 3:12:04Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 3:12:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:12:05Yasi Salek?

  This is, this is a very post nine 11 album.

• 3:12:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:12:08Yasi Salek?

  This is a dislute, this is an album of disillusionment. It's kind of interesting that it comes in the triptych of Ray of Light, where it's like, Ray of Light is like, oh my God, like I'm embodied, I found this like, and then almost like another layer of stars is ripped from your eyes.

• 3:12:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:12:24Yasi Salek?

  That's not the personal, but the political.

• 3:12:26Speaker 02

  Honestly, I think that was like how we all felt. I think that was like, you know, I think that was, I think that cultural moment of.

• 3:12:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we had, we had sailed on through the Clinton years, tralala, life is good, you know?

• 3:12:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was like Bush versus Gore.

• 3:12:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and even Bush winning, that was the first election I ever voted in. I remember being like, goddamn this fucking shit to hell. What are you talking about? And there was a whole thing where like Al Gore didn't, like there was a vote counting. I can't even remember it anymore.

• 3:12:54Speaker 02

  Huge controversy and the Supreme Court stepped in and ruled on the election, which seemed completely out of the right, like that's not how the voting works. So it's like.

• 3:13:02Yasi Salek?

  That's what we do around here.

• 3:13:03Speaker 02

  So it was like, the whole thing kicked off with this like, you know, really anomalous and, and just kind of seemed like such a dumb dumb. I thought like, you know, just like, it seemed so, so.

• 3:13:15Yasi Salek?

  Real tall though.

• 3:13:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:13:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:18Speaker 02

  Everything about him seemed so fake and folksy and I guess you, looking back now, it's easy to like revise it because compared to what we.

• 3:13:25Yasi Salek?

  Well, that's the thing. It's like, we thought we hit rock bottom there where we're like, we have this like dumb ass and then it's like, no, it's going to get way worse. So we're going to have Donald Trump.

• 3:13:33Speaker 02

  That's what, that's what I was kind of driving at is that it felt like we hit rock bottom. It felt like the fabric of America was falling apart. It felt like, you know. Like this idea of terrorism was just being completely like, you know, weaponized against like people all around the world, this like anti-Islamic, this idea of surveilling.

• 3:13:54Yasi Salek?

  Yes, the surveillance state really starts to kick off here.

• 3:13:57Speaker 02

  And I think, you know, I think, so I think all these themes were going on for everybody and we were, it felt very dystopian. It felt very disillusioning.

• 3:14:05Yasi Salek?

  I think that's right. Which I think is really funny because a lot of the criticism of this album, and I'll get to it later, but calls herself involved. And I'm like, this is an album about the collective disillusionment, but through the lens of one person. You know? Yeah. So we, those are the themes. It's a bummer. Lucy O'Brien said in her book Madonna Like an Icon, "If Like a Prayer was her divorce album, American life is her psychoanalysis. She even name checks Sigmund Freud and throws out countless questions. Who am I? Where am I going? What does it all mean? Much of the album is suffused with sarcasm, right from the disinfected onwe of the title track to the stroppiest of Nobody Knows Me, Madonna is kicking against the claustrophobic effect of celebrity worship."

• 3:14:50Yasi Salek?

  And I think that's true, but also like I would extrapolate it to be like, the celebrity worship as microcosm for capitalism.

• 3:14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, completely. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it's more of a critique of materialism.

• 3:15:04Yasi Salek?

  Of materialism, yes. Which is capitalism.

• 3:15:07Speaker 02

  Right, totally. But I think, you know.

• 3:15:08Yasi Salek?

  A byproduct of capitalism.

• 3:15:10Speaker 02

  Just the idea of kind of like mindless consumption.

• 3:15:12Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:15:12Speaker 02

  And that, you know, material goods or wealth is going to make you happy and, you know, and fulfill you.

• 3:15:17Yasi Salek?

  And even fame is a function of capitalism. There's no point, fame is only there in service of selling things.

• 3:15:23Speaker 02

  As a critique of capitalism. I just, I, yeah.

• 3:15:25Yasi Salek?

  Madonna, in her own words, said, "I'm saying celebrity is bullshit and who knows better than me? In America, more than any other place in the world, you have the freedom to be anything you want to be, which is all well and good, but it only works if you have a value system. And we do not seem to have one anymore. It's whatever it takes to get to the top." She also spoke explicitly about the threat of war. We had not gone to war yet when she was making the album to Meghan Malali on MTV. This is because she was on that episode of Will and Grace. Do you remember that?

• 3:15:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:15:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:15:54Yasi Salek?

  She played Liz, a dead sea, high maintenance office worker who becomes Karen Walker's roommate. Anyway, so there was this in conversation on MTV and she said, I felt the threat of war looming over us. And I wanted to make a video that was going to wake people up and say, hey, stop being distracted by all your entertainments, TV, fashion shows, you know, superficial life. There's a real war going on here or about to go on here and we have to do whatever we can to stop it. That was about the American Life video, but I think you could extend it to the entire album.

• 3:16:18Speaker 02

  That's what I think she was trying to do and she failed and we're all like, we're all.

• 3:16:25Yasi Salek?

  We're all paying the price.

• 3:16:29Yasi Salek?

  I mean, it's even right there.

• 3:16:30Speaker 02

  We're all just like paying attention to looks maxers as like the whole thing goes down and like, I mean, we've all given up.

• 3:16:36Yasi Salek?

  Looking at TikTok while, yeah.

• 3:16:41Yasi Salek?

  The cover.

• 3:16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love the cover.

• 3:16:44Yasi Salek?

  Do you think it's inspired by Chaka Vera?

• 3:16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. How could it not be?

• 3:16:47Yasi Salek?

  Or even I liked the Patty Hearst reference too, because I think that's also a famous revolutionary type. Bray wearing.

• 3:16:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I think the way it's like black and white and kind of feels like, yeah, just.

• 3:16:58Yasi Salek?

  Right here, but.

• 3:16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it feels like the way that those, you know, those spray painting like stencils that you use to do a Chaka Vera.

• 3:17:06Yasi Salek?

  Also a real obey, shepherd fairy, obey giant moment.

• 3:17:11Speaker 02

  It was like M M Paris who did it, which is like, the whole package is very cool.

• 3:17:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's amazing. You know, it's her only her second album that has the parental advisory. It's just erotica in this one.

• 3:17:22Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 3:17:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, which is surprising. The photo is by Craig McDean.

• 3:17:26Speaker 02

  Yep, she hadn't, she had worked with him on.

• 3:17:29Yasi Salek?

  Vanity Fair.

• 3:17:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a Vanity Fair shoot. It was similar militarily themed.

• 3:17:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, isn't it twisted that like that came back into fashion because war was looming?

• 3:17:38Speaker 02

  Well, we have such a, yeah, it's kind of, we've had this conversation a few times about like these, these themes of sort of like. Militant or fascist dressing in pop stars.

• 3:17:49Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:17:50Speaker 02

  You know, just kind of like.

• 3:17:51Yasi Salek?

  I mean, it goes back to like post punk and.

• 3:17:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course. It's it's been there a while. I mean, it's like, you know, rocks of music.

• 3:17:58Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 3:17:58Speaker 02

  Did that. And it's, you know, every they've it's interesting flirtation with the idea of authority.

• 3:18:06Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:18:06Speaker 02

  And the position that you're in as a as a pop star.

• 3:18:09Yasi Salek?

  Recontextualizing, yeah, like, or whatever, recolonizing. Let's talk about the leaks.

• 3:18:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:18:15Yasi Salek?

  Or like, or at the very least, the effort to counter.

• 3:18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:19Yasi Salek?

  Because this is, we're post Napster now. Napster came out in 2000, but there's LimeWire. I mean, we're in full on file trading.

• 3:18:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it was LimeWire.

• 3:18:30Yasi Salek?

  It was, yeah.

• 3:18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was I was all over LimeWire.

• 3:18:32Yasi Salek?

  Who wasn't, babe?

• 3:18:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:34Yasi Salek?

  We were getting viruses on our parents' computer, on our computer, left and right. So to counter the illegal downloads of the album, Madonna's associates created a number of false MP3 files of similar length and size. And apparently, some of them had a message from Madonna just saying, what the fuck do you think you're doing?

• 3:18:52Speaker 02

  It was, if I remember correctly, there would be like a little snippet of the song you thought you were downloading at first.

• 3:18:59Yasi Salek?

  And she said, you thought, bitch.

• 3:19:00Speaker 02

  Interrupt it.

• 3:19:01Yasi Salek?

  Wait, that's really funny.

• 3:19:02Speaker 02

  And say, what the fuck do you think you're doing? I definitely downloaded a few of them.

• 3:19:06Yasi Salek?

  She got your ass?

• 3:19:07Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah. But I was like, the album's not out yet. I want to hear it.

• 3:19:10Yasi Salek?

  I want to hear it. What's very funny is then a hacker was like, oh, you thought, bitch, and hacked her entire website and put a message on the main page that said, this is what the fuck I think I'm doing, and put download links for each song.

• 3:19:26Speaker 02

  I love the internet.

• 3:19:28Yasi Salek?

  Sometimes the internet does funny things. Anyways, the website was closed for 15 hours after that attack because they were like, oh, no. It's interesting that this album actually did hit number one.

• 3:19:37Speaker 02

  It is interesting.

• 3:19:39Yasi Salek?

  But I also, it's, we're in the wild, there's like a wild west of charting that happens post.

• 3:19:45Speaker 02

  Starts to happen at this, at this.

• 3:19:48Yasi Salek?

  Because we're in between, we're kind of like starting to get post CD. All the people are obviously still using CDs, but there's so much illegal downloading.

• 3:19:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:19:55Yasi Salek?

  And we're pre-streaming.

• 3:19:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:19:58Yasi Salek?

  I'll tell you what the critics said. They didn't like it.

• 3:20:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:20:01Yasi Salek?

  Um, Ben Ratliff for Rolling Stone said, Madonna Chaconia has done it again. The 44 year old guitar player from London via Detroit, it's funny they called her a guitar player, has taken the pulse, I know, has taken the pulse of the nation, if not the whole women's wear daily reading world. Again, fuck you.

• 3:20:16Speaker 02

  Fuck off, man. That is so fucking rude.

• 3:20:20Yasi Salek?

  It's sexist, it's ageist.

• 3:20:23Speaker 02

  You, that is like.

• 3:20:24Yasi Salek?

  I hate it.

• 3:20:25Speaker 02

  Me, you deserve me too.

• 3:20:29Yasi Salek?

  Put him on a list. Um, he said, American Life, her 10th album, isn't much as a work of music. Diluted Eurotechno from her producer Murway, built around acoustic, I know he's wrong. Acoustic guitar vamps that are either her own or about on her level, but is a certain marker in popular culture. Three albums into her journey of yoga and self-discovery, Madonna is ready to apply what she's learned to the outside world. Specifically, materialism isn't good for us.

• 3:20:52Speaker 02

  He thought he ate.

• 3:20:54Yasi Salek?

  And he did not. He did not. He left a lot of crumbs, all of his crumbs all over his lap. He should be embarrassed. There's food all over his face.

• 3:21:01Speaker 02

  He thought he read her good, but this is pathetic.

• 3:21:04Yasi Salek?

  I, I wonder if when albums like this are reevaluated, like the critics feel bad, you know?

• 3:21:11Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I, I feel like, and we were saying this before, it's like, it's like you're intentionally not hearing what's happening here because you've already got an idea about who Madonna is and how shallow it is. And how like, and how, how dare she make commentary on issues of society? Like, it's like she's not a member of society. Like, it's, it's just like a, it's, it's like just a weird underlying assumption that they're writing from.

• 3:21:39Yasi Salek?

  It's very interesting. I mean, Ray of Light had, had an interesting critical moment where Rob Sheffield reviewed it poorly and then came back, like, not that far away and was like, actually, I was wrong. I sat and listened to it more, which I was like, that's really cool, you know? And it feels like these are very knee jerk reactions. Although, again, like, this is a, this is a highbrow. I don't know how to say it. Like, this is a elevated album to understand.

• 3:22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree.

• 3:22:06Yasi Salek?

  I mean, you're a music critic, so you should, but what do I know? This one's a bit longer, but I'll just read a few quotes. It's John Peralos for the New York Times. Despite the flag imagery and military-style stencil letters of its cover, American Life is actually an album about the midlife crisis of a disillusioned star. The album is one of Madonna's confessional works, part of the lines stretching back through Ray of Light and Like a Prayer, but it inadvertently reveals the perspective of someone who believes, as Madonna sings, that everybody comes to Hollywood. It uses a similar mixture of acoustic guitar picking, ticking drum machines, and swooping, buzzing synthesizer lines as music. The guitar signals the sincerity of a singer-songwriter, while all the gizmos add the retro catchiness of the synth-pop music now being revived under the name electro clash. Electro clash mentioned.

• 3:22:48Yasi Salek?

  This is the one that mentions, talks about the songs that manage to find sentiments other people might share within Madonna's overwhelming self-absorption. And it really made me think that there's been this, and I think I referenced it in another one of these episodes, but there's been this clip circulating of Kristen Stewart doing an interview where she talks about how, when she's like writing about whatever her own, she's writing a script or something about things that she was thinking about, and she's like, "People call you selfish." And she's like, "I'm so sorry for wanting to have a self."

• 3:23:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:20Yasi Salek?

  And I'm like, "This is how I feel." I'm like, "She's self-absorbed, sorry that she..."

• 3:23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:25Yasi Salek?

  "...has a self." Like, what is she meant, she's an artist, what is she meant to write about?

• 3:23:28Speaker 02

  And all of the things that-

• 3:23:30Yasi Salek?

  Like, you want her to pander to like, to act as if she's lower-middle-class?

• 3:23:35Speaker 02

  Or something like that.

• 3:23:36Yasi Salek?

  Like, what do you want her to do?

• 3:23:37Speaker 02

  Or be selfless on her own album? Like, it makes no sense.

• 3:23:40Yasi Salek?

  It makes no sense.

• 3:23:41Speaker 02

  And, I mean, even all the critiques that he says, it's just like, they don't land because it just feels like you're not, you're not, again, it's like Hollywood, everyone goes to Hollywood, that's a critique, Hollywood is not a place.

• 3:23:55Yasi Salek?

  Yes, it's a metaphor.

• 3:23:57Speaker 02

  It's a metaphor, so it's like, and you're just intentionally missing the point.

• 3:24:02Yasi Salek?

  I feel like there, these are bad faith readings a little bit.

• 3:24:04Speaker 02

  I agree, that's what I'm trying to say, it's bad faith.

• 3:24:06Yasi Salek?

  Let's talk about the album, though, let's get it right.

• 3:24:08Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:24:09Yasi Salek?

  Let's, let's, let's reset the record straight. Even though I think this album has already been reappraised, I hope, properly. Hollywood, babe.

• 3:24:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, amazing.

• 3:24:19Yasi Salek?

  Push the button, don't push the button.

• 3:24:22Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 3:24:23Yasi Salek?

  Trip the station, change the channel. God-tier banger.

• 3:24:25Speaker 02

  God-tier banger. So, just like, just nails it.

• 3:24:29Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 3:24:30Speaker 02

  So good.

• 3:24:31Yasi Salek?

  It's so fun. She said about this, it was about her wanting to shout from the rooftops that we've all been living in a dream. "I've been living in a dream, you're all living in a dream, we have to wake up to reality."

• 3:24:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:24:41Yasi Salek?

  I think that the musical part of the song is so cool to me, like- I didn't know this until I listened to one of the Inside the Groove podcast, but that there's Bird song throughout the background. And then she has that Bird lyric, which I think is so cool. Yeah, and Miri Way plays acoustic guitar. There's some electronic guitar buried in the mix that makes it have a little bit of an eastern sound, right? Kind of a callback to Ray of Light a little bit. The vocals are super compressed. What do you, how do you feel about those super compressed vocals?

• 3:25:09Speaker 02

  I love it because it sounds, I just, I feel like it's got this like, this high level of artifice around it, like you're saying, like all the layers. But again, this like, like-

• 3:25:20Yasi Salek?

  Which so does Hollywood, right? So it's so perfect.

• 3:25:22Speaker 02

  That's what I mean.

• 3:25:23Yasi Salek?

  It's perfectly like within the song.

• 3:25:24Speaker 02

  And the birds chirping in the background are like the perfect, it's like the Wizard of Oz.

• 3:25:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the nature is like-

• 3:25:28Speaker 02

  You're in the studio, but there's birds chirping. You know, it's like this, it's like this whole idea of like creating a fake world and hearing things through compression. Like, I mean, this is like a bigger idea than probably what she was talking about, but I think it's like this idea of compressing big ideas into small things.

• 3:25:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, flattening things.

• 3:25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's so Hollywood in and of itself. And I just, I think it's like, it's great. It's like such a cool way to interpret it. I love it.

• 3:25:56Yasi Salek?

  And even if you don't want to use your big brain, it's just a fucking bop.

• 3:25:59Speaker 02

  It's a fucking bop. Yeah, like, everybody comes to Hollywood, it's just like, what a refrain.

• 3:26:12Yasi Salek?

  Throughout this album, I think a lot about Celebrity Skin by Hole. And this is one of the songs, which I don't think musically sounds like Celebrity Skin, but like thematically-

• 3:26:21Speaker 02

  Right, could be there.

• 3:26:22Yasi Salek?

  Fits into like, you know?

• 3:26:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:26:23Yasi Salek?

  This one later in, in the year is remixed with Into the Groove and performed with Missy Elliott under the title Into the Hollywood Groove as a Gap campaign.

• 3:26:34Speaker 02

  Gap campaign.

• 3:26:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:26:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:26:36Yasi Salek?

  This one also failed to enter the Billboard 100 in the United States.

• 3:26:40Speaker 02

  Insane.

• 3:26:40Yasi Salek?

  First time since burning up that a Madonna single did not reach the Hot winner. That part to me usually creates, because this is absolutely a jam.

• 3:26:47Speaker 02

  I could see that like, sound wise, like, you know, all the things that we just talked about, like the super compressed vocal, the like guitar picking and stuff, it didn't.

• 3:26:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we also haven't really talked about how much rap music has overtaken the pop charts.

• 3:27:01Speaker 02

  That's another thing.

• 3:27:03Yasi Salek?

  And that's kind of important, like, by 2003, the Hot 100 is like 50 Cent in the Club, the Ignition remix by R. Kelly, even Beyonce's Crazy in Love.

• 3:27:15Speaker 02

  Right, so it's just, it's just a different world.

• 3:27:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and then there's, there are like some, you know, there's some Mashbox 20 on, well, that's my guys, but yeah, Chingy, Aaliyah, like.

• 3:27:27Speaker 02

  The video is amazing of this.

• 3:27:28Yasi Salek?

  Oh yeah, this is the Jean Baptiste Mundino, this is the one that, that they pay homage.

• 3:27:36Speaker 02

  To Guy Borden.

• 3:27:37Yasi Salek?

  Guy Borden, and then Guy Borden's son said, "You will not pay homage, you will pay my money" for paying homage, and they did end up settling, settling, but it's so gorgeous.

• 3:27:48Speaker 02

  It's so gorgeous. Every look she does in it is like so great and cool, and the way it's shot, it feels like perfect to the song, like all that we just talked about, like that compressed world, I just think it's, it's, it's like, this is a perfect

• 3:28:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:28:02Speaker 02

  single release.

• 3:28:03Yasi Salek?

  The whole thing, yeah, the artwork of the single release is really cool.

• 3:28:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:28:07Yasi Salek?

  Also feels like it's half-pixelated.

• 3:28:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:28:09Yasi Salek?

  Which is like exactly where, you know, it's like.

• 3:28:11Speaker 02

  Compression, like this, like this idea of like, like.

• 3:28:15Yasi Salek?

  Reality versus, you know, fake, and it's, her makeup looks crazy. I love, I'm so stupid. I love it.

• 3:28:22Speaker 02

  Such a great song.

• 3:28:23Yasi Salek?

  This is the one that we were talking about, that I was like, I, just the vocal delivery to me, it reminds me of Courtney Love a little bit, I feel like it could be, it could have been in a bizarro world a whole song.

• 3:28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and just the cool way that they use the vocoder effects on her, her voice, that make it sound punk rock.

• 3:28:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's what I'm hearing.

• 3:28:39Speaker 02

  We haven't really heard that use of vocoder that much, and it's like, in that way, it just makes it, it's a, this really distorted, super stretched out, like crazy, sounds actually bad, right?

• 3:28:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:28:53Speaker 02

  Like, on purpose.

• 3:28:54Yasi Salek?

  But in a punk way, yeah, exactly.

• 3:28:55Speaker 02

  Totally, like, and it's like, cool, like, nobody would, it was so lossy and bad that people would like, no, you'd never use that, but it actually sounds so fucking cool on this song.

• 3:29:04Yasi Salek?

  Everybody's looking for something, everybody's stupid.

• 3:29:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I love that you called the song that, it's such a good.

• 3:29:17Speaker 02

  Just to go back to like all the critical responses to this record, the fact that she has a song in here called "I'm So Stupid", it's just like, it should have been a clue to like thinking about how, what's she trying to say here? You know, just like, instead of being like, "It's not about her Pilates classes", she doesn't do Pilates, guys. Like, that's not really what this is about.

• 3:29:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Come on. Take a moment to extend some of the same, like, thought power you would extend to a Radiohead album here.

• 3:29:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, completely.

• 3:29:47Yasi Salek?

  You know, okay, "Love Profusion", that's the fourth single.

• 3:29:51Speaker 02

  Again, I don't have anything negative to say about it. I love it.

• 3:29:58Yasi Salek?

  The song is dedicated to Guy Ritchie. I don't want to say anything negative, but I will say of the couple of love songs on here, it's not my favorite one.

• 3:30:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can hear that. I love the, I think I love the remix of it. There's like a head cleaner rock remix of it that makes it feel a little less twee, maybe?

• 3:30:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:30:22Yasi Salek?

  It's a nice song.

• 3:30:23Speaker 02

  It's a nice song.

• 3:30:24Yasi Salek?

  I don't have any beef with this song.

• 3:30:24Speaker 02

  And it was kind of perfect that they ended up using it for the Estee Lauder commercial.

• 3:30:28Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:30:28Speaker 02

  So like...

• 3:30:29Yasi Salek?

  Which is, looks like the music video shot by Luc Besson with her.

• 3:30:33Speaker 02

  Interesting integration from a marketing perspective here. I thought just like, it's just kind of the idea of that video and this song, and then it becoming a fragrance commercial thing, and then Carolyn Murphy.

• 3:30:45Yasi Salek?

  That's very early 2000s where we're completely losing the line between art and commerce. Like, it's all becoming kind of, everything is like an integrated marketing moment.

• 3:30:56Speaker 02

  Right, completely. Or beginning to be.

• 3:30:58Yasi Salek?

  Beginning to be, yes. The beginnings of that and the internet.

• 3:31:01Speaker 02

  I mean, you had to have the level of clout that she had to be able to pull this level of it off, but now it feels, it's much more common, obviously. Every little clothes she's wearing in that video too are so like... And she loves those dresses.

• 3:31:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:17Yasi Salek?

  She loves those dresses.

• 3:31:26Yasi Salek?

  "Nobody Knows Me" is the next song.

• 3:31:29Speaker 02

  I love this song.

• 3:31:29Yasi Salek?

  Me too. I love it. I love the idea that she's putting forth, which is like also so kind of like what you were saying about the last line of the rap. "Nothing is as it seems." It's such a simple

• 3:31:41Speaker 02

  Idea.

• 3:31:41Yasi Salek?

  Idea, but it's such a profound one. It's like the inverse of that idea. "Nothing is as it seems." And also, "nobody knows me because I'm not as I seem to other people."

• 3:31:50Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 3:31:50Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 3:31:50Speaker 02

  I love that. I love the production on it. It just bangs. It's like

• 3:31:56Speaker 02

  It's like, it's very good. I love it.

• 3:32:05Yasi Salek?

  I saw in the Genius lyric annotations that someone said the lines "won't let a stranger give me a social disease" are referring to like the xenophobia that rose up after 9/11. I don't know if that's true, but I hope it is.

• 3:32:19Speaker 02

  It makes kind of sense.

• 3:32:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it makes sense.

• 3:32:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:32:21Yasi Salek?

  It's no good when

• 3:32:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I'm not gonna, like, it's very defiant in that way.

• 3:32:25Yasi Salek?

  And the best lyrics here are like, "it's no good when you're misunderstood, when you're misunderstood, but why should I care what the world thinks of me?" Which is like, she already knew

• 3:32:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:32:35Yasi Salek?

  The misunderstandings were about to be raining down from the sky.

• 3:32:46Yasi Salek?

  "Nothing Fails." That's also the third, that's the third single.

• 3:32:50Speaker 02

  I mean, I listened to this song.

• 3:32:52Yasi Salek?

  It's really beautiful.

• 3:32:53Speaker 02

  I listened to this on repeat quite a lot. I loved it.

• 3:32:55Yasi Salek?

  Really beautiful. It actually began as a song that Guy Sigsworth wrote for his wife.

• 3:33:04Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 3:33:05Yasi Salek?

  He had asked the singer Jim Griffiths to collaborate with him, and during their first session, they wrote this song called "Silly Thing," inspired by Sigsworth's wife. He said, "I never write love songs, but I was moved to write one for her. Never had a problematic relationship with her. There's not been a lot of drama. But I wanted to write something naive and honest." The demo, which was reminiscent of an offbeat folk song, was later played for Madonna, who loved it and changed parts to the song, including the title.

• 3:33:36Yasi Salek?

  Jem Griffiths, the singer of the demo, said, "When I actually heard the Madonna song, I was so shocked because it was the first time, I believe, my career was actually gonna happen. And to hear Madonna singing, I was like, 'Oh, my God, so bizarre. My mom keeps calling me whenever it's on. She'll go to shops in the UK and hold the phone up to the thing, and I'm like, 'They're gonna arrest you.'"

• 3:34:05Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was interesting, just to point out, the biggest lyrical change she made is like, I think it's the second verse. The original version is, "You could take all this, take it away, and I'd still have it all, because I've got my standing stone. I'm not alone, no longer scared if I fall." Madonna changed it to, "You could take all this, take it all away, I'd still have it all, because I've climbed the tree of life, and that is why I'm no longer scared if I fall." The "Tree of Life" is a Kabbalah reference.

• 3:34:31Speaker 02

  Yes. We haven't talked that much about Kabbalah, but...

• 3:34:34Yasi Salek?

  No, but here it is.

• 3:34:35Speaker 02

  Here it is.

• 3:34:36Yasi Salek?

  Here it is lyrically popping up.

• 3:34:38Speaker 02

  "And when I got lost in space, I can return to this place."

• 3:34:40Yasi Salek?

  Because you're the one.

• 3:34:41Speaker 02

  Because you're the one.

• 3:34:42Yasi Salek?

  It's a really beautiful song.

• 3:34:43Speaker 02

  It's a really beautiful song.

• 3:34:45Yasi Salek?

  "Intervention" also a beautiful song, but isn't my favorite in the triptych of gorgeous songs I'm gonna hear. Mine is "Ecstatic Process."

• 3:34:51Speaker 02

  I love "Ecstatic Process."

• 3:34:53Yasi Salek?

  Written with Stuart Price. I feel like this song should have been a single.

• 3:34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:34:56Yasi Salek?

  I love it so much. It's heartbreaking. The vocals are so beautiful. I love how they get like more and more childlike as the song goes on. And by the end, it's like so girlish.

• 3:35:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:35:07Yasi Salek?

  It's just a...

• 3:35:09Speaker 02

  Just a great song.

• 3:35:10Yasi Salek?

  It's just a great fucking song. It's, the lyrics are kind of heartbreaking, like I said, like, "I'm not myself when you go quiet. I'm not myself when you're around."

• 3:35:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:35:20Yasi Salek?

  It's like, ooh.

• 3:35:22Speaker 02

  Not myself at all.

• 3:35:22Yasi Salek?

  Who are you talking about?

• 3:35:31Yasi Salek?

  Mother and Father is.

• 3:35:35Speaker 02

  Core Madonna.

• 3:35:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's Madonna.

• 3:35:37Speaker 02

  Madonna, mother.

• 3:35:38Yasi Salek?

  But I will say, I do like, I do love that she's so self-aware in it, where she's like, really talking about, I need to give this up. I need to let it go, you know? And that's the kind of like, first time in all her preoccupation with the loss of her mother that appears on most of the albums, that she's like, okay, I need to get past this.

• 3:36:00Speaker 02

  Which I think is like, very Kabbalah-coded, right? I think that's like, very much like what they're about. I'm not, I'm not doing Kabbalah personally. I'm not one of the fans who started doing Kabbalah, although I do know a few of them, but.

• 3:36:12Yasi Salek?

  Really, that's a lot, but.

• 3:36:14Speaker 02

  But I, but I think the idea of taking responsibility for your actions and not wallowing in your trauma or in the past, and like, that's definitely what she's trying to say here. And so it's kind of like, you're right, it's a kind of like a reappraisal of the story of her mother and.

• 3:36:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and her wounding and why it made her the way she is, quote unquote, you know? Yeah, I think it's, there was a time I had a mother and it was nice.

• 3:36:43Speaker 02

  I really love the, this song really made a lot of sense, more sense to me when she sings it.

• 3:36:49Yasi Salek?

  Live.

• 3:36:50Speaker 02

  It live in the, in the, on the Reinvention Tour. I mean, it's also very sentimental because they're really showing her father in the audience during it. So it's like, it's very moving and like she does, like the way she ends it is like, really with this like really powerful vocals, it's really moving.

• 3:37:05Yasi Salek?

  Um, Die Another Day, we already talked about, and then it ends with the song Easy Ride.

• 3:37:09Speaker 02

  Again, the themes of it are again, so Madonna, I want to work for it. I don't want to be handed things.

• 3:37:15Yasi Salek?

  I don't want it to be easy.

• 3:37:16Speaker 02

  These are the things that, this is the things that make life meaningful and make like, things important to you, and make things valuable, is that like, you have to toil.

• 3:37:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:26Speaker 02

  To achieve them and.

• 3:37:28Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:37:29Speaker 02

  I think that's, yeah, I think that's like, you know, that's the lesson of Madonna.

• 3:37:33Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:37:33Speaker 02

  You know, on a certain level.

• 3:37:34Yasi Salek?

  But interestingly, being able to simply receive.

• 3:37:40Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 3:37:40Yasi Salek?

  Is, is like such a thing that it goes totally up against ambition, because ambition is very like. Thrusting into the world, again masculine.

• 3:37:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:37:50Yasi Salek?

  Receiving is feminine, you know? So I'm just interested in that, I'm like, oh, there's, this is like, this is the scratchy bit that you're working through still, you know? And each album seems to have that last song that's like, this is the scratchy bit you're working through, you know? Uh, I think, and this song was written by, with Monty Pittman.

• 3:38:06Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a beautiful song.

• 3:38:07Yasi Salek?

  It's a beautiful song.

• 3:38:08Speaker 02

  It's a really beautiful song.

• 3:38:09Yasi Salek?

  Gorgeous ender, this album, "Justice for American Life."

• 3:38:13Speaker 02

  "Justice for American Life," absolutely incredible record, just like top to bottom. Really innovative, still sounds.

• 3:38:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, pretty modern.

• 3:38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty modern.

• 3:38:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:38:24Speaker 02

  And like, still sounds like nothing else.

• 3:38:26Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 3:38:27Speaker 02

  Like, I, I can't think of anything else that sounds like this.

• 3:38:29Yasi Salek?

  Especially like, songs like "Ecstatic Process," or like, those are so, it's very interesting, unique.

• 3:38:35Speaker 02

  And for her, like, really different, you know?

• 3:38:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:38:38Speaker 02

  Like, even very different than, you can hear some of the, like, genesis points of it on music, but really, this is like, uh, taking it to a whole other place.

• 3:38:47Yasi Salek?

  I agree. Should we talk briefly about "Ecstatic Process," the art installation with Stephen Klein?

• 3:38:53Speaker 02

  Absolutely should, yeah.

• 3:38:53Yasi Salek?

  Um, so that's in May of 2003. It originated as a W Magazine spread in which she said, "Okay, I'll do it, but I don't want it to be about fashion." And so they decided to make a performance piece, documented in photos. Um, Stephen Klein used 15 cameras over 10 hours.

• 3:39:11Speaker 02

  The most like iconic thing, there's like, a lot of iconic things in this shoot. It's like, really incredible shoot, I think. Um, and kind of plays with a lot of the themes of her, um, just like how she dresses, like corsets and.

• 3:39:26Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 3:39:26Speaker 02

  You know, like, like, all, all those kinds of things and ballet shoes and like dancer stuff, but like. But like, kind of really distorts them and fucks them up in a certain way. Like, that feels almost like she's in an insane asylum.

• 3:39:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she's on this like filthy mattress, she's like a.

• 3:39:41Speaker 02

  Right, there's like a coyote.

• 3:39:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:39:43Speaker 02

  There's like, all this, like, kind of, kind of like, it has a very menacing.

• 3:39:46Yasi Salek?

  Sinister, totally.

• 3:39:47Speaker 02

  Dark edge to it, which I think is like a cool, was just a very cool reinterpretation.

• 3:39:53Yasi Salek?

  Beaded face veil.

• 3:39:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, the makeup is a mess, the hair is a mess, like, it's just kind of like this, it's kind of like a, it's very like rough. And feeling like interpretation of like her, so it's a kind of a lens of that. I love especially the sort of like Christian Lacroix, the mask.

• 3:40:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:40:12Speaker 02

  And the veil and like that, you know, there's just like, it's so just like.

• 3:40:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's striking.

• 3:40:18Speaker 02

  It's very striking and like, and again menacing in an interesting way.

• 3:40:24Yasi Salek?

  When she's sitting in and watching the wedding dress on fire, but in, in the veil and it's like.

• 3:40:29Speaker 02

  And the way that they shot the video stuff was like very herky jerky.

• 3:40:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:40:33Speaker 02

  And like, you know, weird and she's doing these like putting her legs behind her head and all these kind of like.

• 3:40:37Yasi Salek?

  Contortionist stuff.

• 3:40:38Speaker 02

  Contortion stuff and it feels like, yeah, like a really patient, like struggling like.

• 3:40:43Yasi Salek?

  Full of mental asylum, you're right. You kind of, you nailed it. If, if people in the mental asylum were.

• 3:40:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:40:48Yasi Salek?

  Exiled, long, reevgoesh.

• 3:40:50Speaker 02

  And Christian Lacroix.

• 3:40:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. But it's very cool. So it did become a 44 page spread in W, but also became a full on.

• 3:40:57Speaker 02

  A show, right.

• 3:40:58Yasi Salek?

  Show at Dyche, I think.

• 3:40:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it was Dyche.

• 3:41:01Yasi Salek?

  And then in August of that year, she went on the VMAs. She performed Hollywood.

• 3:41:10Speaker 02

  Well, she, yep.

• 3:41:12Yasi Salek?

  This is the second, maybe most iconic. Madonna has had three iconic VMA moments. One being more of a cultural moment with the Courtney Love, obviously her very first.

• 3:41:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:41:24Yasi Salek?

  Like a virgin cake moment, which then is echoed here by Brittany and Christina. Joining her, actually they come out first and they come out of the wedding cake in the like a virgin outfits. And it was Jamie King's, her choreographer's suggestion that she kiss each of them. She was like, it's a marriage and at the end you kiss. According to Madonna, they were meant to be chaste kisses and they were during rehearsal, but at the actual awards, quote, Brittany opened her mouth. I'm a showgirl. We learn to roll with the punches. If someone comes at you with their lips slightly parted, you have to kiss them. So this was made into a huge deal. Also the camera person really like snapped that day by.

• 3:42:07Speaker 02

  Fully snapped.

• 3:42:09Yasi Salek?

  I gotta get Justin Timberlake's reaction. He had just broken up with Brittany, right? Like very famously. And then like, it's that kiss and then his like horrified or like bummed out react. It became a whole fucking mess.

• 3:42:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was a fucking mess. I mean.

• 3:42:24Yasi Salek?

  Nobody even remembers that Missy Elliott was there.

• 3:42:26Speaker 02

  It was.

• 3:42:27Yasi Salek?

  But she was, she would also perform with them.

• 3:42:29Speaker 02

  It was, it was like such a, I mean, again, it's like, she loves to put her, thrust herself in the middle. I think the summary, what she said, like, if someone comes at you with their lips being slightly parted, I'm gonna go for it.

• 3:42:40Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:42:40Speaker 02

  Like, I mean, she's gonna go for it. She's like, here are the two, here are the two teen.

• 3:42:46Yasi Salek?

  They're 21 and 22. Is that right? Britney Spears was 21 years old.

• 3:42:49Speaker 02

  So they're, here they are, the, the girls that she keeps being, getting compared to.

• 3:42:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:53Speaker 02

  And she's like, I'm gonna fuck this shit up. And she did.

• 3:42:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:56Speaker 02

  And like, people went fucking crazy about it.

• 3:42:58Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was really funny, Oprah, like, later asked her, like, if she was making a sexual statement with that, and she said, I made those statements years ago.

• 3:43:05Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 3:43:06Yasi Salek?

  Just like.

• 3:43:07Speaker 02

  She was just kinda like, fuck off, guys.

• 3:43:09Yasi Salek?

  It's not untrue.

• 3:43:10Speaker 02

  And totally, and it's just kinda like, get over it, like, whatever.

• 3:43:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, are we still, this is still a thing we have to talk about? Okay, the next thing that happens, again, not a lot to talk about here, I don't think, but it's the remixed and revisited album.

• 3:43:25Speaker 02

  But I wanna say one thing about that, back to that, just, it's kinda interesting, like, I think just about her, and like, about reappraisals. Like, I think, like, there's a big theme of reappraisals, right? Cause I think, like, erotica reappraisal, American life reappraisal. I think the VMA thing becomes a reappraisal too, because I think, you know, at the time, it seemed so controversial, she seems like old, and she's like lesbian kissing, and it's like, like, everyone's like, kind of, the response to it was like, as if she was some kind of predator, like, you know, creepy predator.

• 3:43:57Yasi Salek?

  Using this, like, young, innocent pop star to further her own, like, press cycle or whatever.

• 3:44:03Speaker 02

  But in the end, you sort of see, like, it has like a, it has a through line, and it makes sense, and it like, and those girls lit, completely looked up to her. And like, you know, I think it was like, they were, they were thrilled to be on that stage with her, singing her songs. Like, it was like, you know, it wasn't like she went on and sang Jeannie in a Bottle.

• 3:44:24Yasi Salek?

  Do you have any sense of like, why you think that the, her entire career is kind of defined by? Being reevaluated upward, like it has happened ever since erotica on. It seems that like in in real time, it's not understood or accepted. And with the with hindsight, it's completely reevaluated and placed way higher.

• 3:44:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:44:49Yasi Salek?

  And it does happen multiple times.

• 3:44:51Speaker 02

  Well, because I mean, I think it's really simply just because she is unafraid to break a taboo. Right. And just like, and I think, you know, she she just is fearless about that and doesn't. It doesn't even face her. I would imagine like the way she says this comment here about, you know, I'm a showgirl. We learn to roll with the punches. I feel like, you know, there's some intention behind a lot of it. But at the same time, I also feel like it's just an instinctual thing that she's just gonna like go for it. And, you know, even her response to the way the sex book was received, being sort of surprised by it. I think is sort of a maybe a comment on how she kind of perceives that stuff. Like she thinks people will take it at face value and understand it.

• 3:45:32Speaker 02

  But she doesn't realize like in a on a certain level, maybe didn't realize like how much of like she was stirring the pot.

• 3:45:39Yasi Salek?

  Right. And how much the taboo would blind people to the actual work.

• 3:45:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that and then at a certain point, people become ready, more receptive to the idea that like, oh, well, you know.

• 3:45:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, also now, now that we've like broken 75 different taboos every which way to Sunday.

• 3:45:57Speaker 02

  I mean, I think that's kind of an interesting. She's an interesting artist in that in that whole era that she's in because of that. Like, I think, you know, all of the artists that she quoted in her career. Meryl Monroe, Marlene Dietrichs, they also broke taboos on a certain level. But kept a certain level of decorum also that was like this kind of like studio code.

• 3:46:18Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:46:18Speaker 02

  Of behavior that like she didn't.

• 3:46:21Yasi Salek?

  She went further. Yeah.

• 3:46:22Speaker 02

  She didn't have to even think about that kind of shit and like and didn't and wanted to. And if you had given those to her, she would have been like, yeah, fuck it, there we go. Like, yeah, get ready, like, don't tell me no, like, you know, I there was a quote from her. Something to the effect of like, what's the most powerful word? What's the most motivating word to you? And it was like the word no.

• 3:46:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:46:42Speaker 02

  And so I do, I think there's like an element of that. It's like you're like, you're like, don't go there. And she's like, okay, watch me.

• 3:46:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:46:49Speaker 02

  So.

• 3:46:50Yasi Salek?

  And then, yes, over time.

• 3:46:51Speaker 02

  And then over time.

• 3:46:52Yasi Salek?

  People, the taboo is removed and people can see how valuable the word is.

• 3:46:56Speaker 02

  So.

• 3:46:57Yasi Salek?

  That makes sense. Um, okay. Do you have anything to say about remixed and revisited? Cause I don't, but.

• 3:47:01Speaker 02

  I think that some of the best remixes on the album cycle are in here to me.

• 3:47:08Yasi Salek?

  You mentioned the Love Profusion Head Cleaner Rock Mix.

• 3:47:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like that one a lot. And the American Life Rock Mix, I think is really cool also. That that's the one they performed in the, in the, on the tour.

• 3:47:18Yasi Salek?

  There's also the Like a Virgin Hollywood Medley featuring Britney Spears.

• 3:47:22Speaker 02

  And then the.

• 3:47:23Yasi Salek?

  Into the Hollywood groove.

• 3:47:25Speaker 02

  With, with Missy Elliott, which is, you know, was cool. It was like, cool. And, and your honesty, which actually I do love your honesty. I think that's, um.

• 3:47:34Yasi Salek?

  It's really good. It's, it's an outtake from Bedtime Stories.

• 3:47:36Speaker 02

  From Bedtime Stories, yeah.

• 3:47:37Yasi Salek?

  And I do, I do too. It is again, kind of buried, just like, what's our other favorite song? Rescue Me?

• 3:47:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:47:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. It's just like, kind of buried in it as an afterthought, but it actually is a great tune. And, um, I love, actually really, really love that song.

• 3:47:51Yasi Salek?

  It is really good. You're so right. And it just kind of like, again, kind of lost its time because it was an outtake from one album and then thrown on this. And all right, well, let's bring, let's land the plane. Let's bring it home.

• 3:48:02Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:48:03Yasi Salek?

  We're gonna do that with 2004's Reinvention Tour.

• 3:48:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:48:07Yasi Salek?

  May 24th, 2004 to September 14th, 2004. Once again, Jamie King is at the helm. Stuart Price is the musical director. Donna DeLore comes back, but Nikki does not. Um, she wanted to focus on her career. Sayadah Garrett comes back.

• 3:48:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Sayadah Garrett, legendary, uh, background vocalist.

• 3:48:27Yasi Salek?

  Right, worked with Michael Jackson.

• 3:48:29Speaker 02

  For years. I mean, I saw this tour also.

• 3:48:34Speaker 02

  I loved, I mean, I, the beast within the opening that tour is just like, and I hope I didn't cut you off, but

• 3:48:43Speaker 02

  I just like so amazing. I think the It's clips from the, it's clips from the, um, from the ecstatic process thing with Stephen Klein.

• 3:48:52Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:48:53Speaker 02

  Especially the red Lacroix thing that she's wearing and then there's like masks that she wears. That's like a, kind of like a hound.

• 3:48:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:49:00Speaker 02

  Nose, like, you know, and she's like on the ground doing this thing. And then there's like, it's very like cuddy with these. Yeah. And it's like cuddy with these like, uh, images of, or, you know, video of a coyote. So it's like this real. And then there's a lot of like, uh, Kabbalah or Jewish or Hebrew kind of text around it too. Yeah. So Justify My Love, the Beast Within mix had this like interpretation of the book of, uh, St. John with the apocalypse, what is it called? The Book of Revelations.

• 3:49:33Yasi Salek?

  Book of Revelations, sure. Oh, that's kind of like, that's the cool one.

• 3:49:36Speaker 02

  So it's the end of the world.

• 3:49:38Yasi Salek?

  The goth part of the Bible.

• 3:49:40Speaker 02

  The, you know, prophecy of the apocalypse. And, um, I think it's not the exact text of that book, or maybe it is from some version of the Bible. I don't know, but it's, I think it was some interpretation.

• 3:49:51Yasi Salek?

  Our clergy members and the band's fan audience.

• 3:49:54Speaker 02

  But it's very cool. And they really did a really cool job of amplifying it. And at the beginning of the, I'm going to tell you a secret movie. There's like this little section of her and Stuart Price, like working out the, like what it should sound like. And it's, it's, it's.

• 3:50:09Yasi Salek?

  She's wearing a Von Dutch hat.

• 3:50:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the whole, it's like, yes, right. Oh, there's nothing I love more, just as a side note, than Madonna. In like a tracksuit or like post, like warm up clothes with like wet hair.

• 3:50:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:50:24Speaker 02

  And like a hat. It's just like, it's so hot.

• 3:50:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. With an A shirt.

• 3:50:28Speaker 02

  It will never get over, it will never get old to me. Anyway, the opening of that tour, like the whole stadium vibrates because of the bass is like insanely low on that like track. It's very cool and very like, we're like cool opening.

• 3:50:43Yasi Salek?

  I, I didn't go, but, um, I have not, once again, say I have not seen Madonna live. It's a tragedy and a travesty. Um, but we watched this gorgeous documentary by Jonas Sockerland. That's kind of like Truth or Dare part two, basically. And you definitely get the gist of this tour being, I mean, you said it. It's like, it's the reinvention tour and it's called that because she performs a lot of her greatest songs from throughout her career, but like kind of.

• 3:51:16Speaker 02

  Reinterpreted, yeah.

• 3:51:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, reinterpreted.

• 3:51:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think it was also a little bit of a reinvention after everything we just talked about with, you know, American life and how much controversy there was around it and like how much flack she got.

• 3:51:29Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:51:29Speaker 02

  For it. And I think there was like a just generalized feeling of like, why is she so political? Why is she so like, you know, all the sort of criticisms of it? I think this was a way of being like, I'm still fucking Madonna.

• 3:51:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:51:42Speaker 02

  And I have like.

• 3:51:43Yasi Salek?

  Don't you fucking forget it.

• 3:51:44Speaker 02

  Don't you fucking forget it.

• 3:51:45Yasi Salek?

  And then she kept it still very political.

• 3:51:47Speaker 02

  Right. So she was like, I'm doing both. Like, watch me.

• 3:51:50Yasi Salek?

  I'm not just going back to like the Madonna you want that just sings material girl on holiday, you know?

• 3:51:55Speaker 02

  She was like, I've got it all.

• 3:51:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:51:56Speaker 02

  Like, I've got the catalog and like, I'm gonna fucking clobber you with this.

• 3:52:00Yasi Salek?

  The visuals are very cool on this. Like, the, the dancers she chose are very interesting. She's got the break dancer, the skateboarder.

• 3:52:09Speaker 02

  She really, she like kind of diversified, more so even than I think Drowned World, but started to have more of that, like, you know, male and female dancers and like just kind of.

• 3:52:19Yasi Salek?

  And the dancers for Drowned World were styled very punk, right? They had mohawks and she even made Nikki get a mohawk, poor lady.

• 3:52:27Yasi Salek?

  But yeah, here they're all, they're also very cool, doing very cool stuff. The costumes are awesome.

• 3:52:33Speaker 02

  Awesome. Costumes are amazing on this.

• 3:52:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:52:36Speaker 02

  Ariana tore it with the, I especially love the kilts at the end of the.

• 3:52:40Yasi Salek?

  Love those, where they're all in the, as you said, the guy Richie moment, yeah.

• 3:52:45Speaker 02

  She was glazing her husband. There's paying tribute to her new life as a British countryside.

• 3:52:52Yasi Salek?

  Lady, yeah. There's, there's like a part at the end where they go to Israel.

• 3:52:57Speaker 02

  At the end of the movie.

• 3:52:58Yasi Salek?

  At the end of the movie, yeah, yeah.

• 3:52:59Speaker 02

  Which is so weird. I don't like, I don't.

• 3:53:02Yasi Salek?

  It's a strange, I mean, I guess it's 2004, so it's hard to.

• 3:53:05Speaker 02

  It was in the middle of the war, I think, and just like everything that was going on at that time. So I guess it was. It felt very, you know, risky or date somewhat dangerous because that was kind of like the

• 3:53:17Yasi Salek?

  The documentary is a little clunkier than Two Third Air. Like, it's still really fun to watch and it's got really incredible footage.

• 3:53:23Speaker 02

  Footage. Couple of great lines where she's like, if two facts tell you it's not good, then you better be worried about it.

• 3:53:31Speaker 02

  So like, there was some really good stuff.

• 3:53:33Yasi Salek?

  And also the Guy Ritchie, the Guy Ritchie part where he's like on the street interviewing people is kind of funny.

• 3:53:39Speaker 02

  Kind of funny, but Cal's a kind of cringe. The Guy Ritchie glazing is a little like.

• 3:53:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a little.

• 3:53:43Speaker 02

  It's a little.

• 3:53:44Yasi Salek?

  But then you got all the cute footage of Lourdes and Rocco.

• 3:53:47Speaker 02

  Adorable. Speaking French and like, so sweet.

• 3:53:51Yasi Salek?

  I would have loved to hear this Don't Tell Me containing elements of Bittersweet Symphony from the setlist.

• 3:53:56Speaker 02

  Oh, I know. There were a couple of things that were cut from the setlist that were, that would have been cool to hear.

• 3:54:01Yasi Salek?

  From the movie.

• 3:54:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I mean, yeah, because I don't remember now from.

• 3:54:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because we didn't, they didn't include every song in the movie. Um, but yeah, it's, this tour is great. She reminded them, I'm Madonna, Benj, don't you ever fucking forget it. Looked amazing, sang amazing.

• 3:54:18Speaker 02

  She looked amazing. Like, her.

• 3:54:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, her shoes looks just peak gorgeous.

• 3:54:24Speaker 02

  Hair.

• 3:54:25Yasi Salek?

  This is the tour that she does the, um, really crazy yoga posture.

• 3:54:29Speaker 02

  For Vogue.

• 3:54:30Yasi Salek?

  She does like a, a forward, um, like, like the, the raising the legs over, but then back over.

• 3:54:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:54:37Yasi Salek?

  Right? The head stand, a handstand.

• 3:54:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:54:39Yasi Salek?

  With her legs folded over. Fucking cool.

• 3:54:41Speaker 02

  Fucking cool.

• 3:54:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this is a, this, this tour movie is worth definitely watching. There's so much cool shit in it.

• 3:54:47Speaker 02

  They did, the screens were really cool on this. The stage was very simple in essence, like relatively speaking.

• 3:54:53Yasi Salek?

  But there was many parts, moving parts to it.

• 3:54:56Speaker 02

  The screens all had these like, it was like all these multiple planes of screens. And so they did this really cool play of like dimensionality with, with screens. It was very innovative in that way. And then it had this conveyor belt across the front. That was like a way, like a moving.

• 3:55:10Yasi Salek?

  And the part where she has to like, go against it. I was like, please don't twist your ankle, ma'am.

• 3:55:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:55:15Yasi Salek?

  And this is, I couldn't do that. And Iggy Pop is in this documentary, so that's a fun moment. He opened for her, I think on a Europe, UK leg or something.

• 3:55:23Speaker 02

  Amazing. He's so nervous when he's like meeting her. It's so funny and cute.

• 3:55:29Yasi Salek?

  And then she, she, she closes out this tour on holiday. So we're, we're so back.

• 3:55:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're so back.

• 3:55:35Yasi Salek?

  Um, and this is where we are going to wrap this. Episode up. We will be back next week for

• 3:55:49Yasi Salek?

  the fourth and final, at least part of the arc of Madonna's career, picking up with what happens after 2004. Yeah, I believe it's, I believe it's an album you might have heard of that is getting a lot of attention right now. Confessions on a Dance Floor. So come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplain. Thank you, Paul, for being here.

• 3:56:10Speaker 02

  Thank you. It was so much fun.

• 3:56:19Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain. Our guest today was Paul Hammond. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Jacob Cornet. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Dalback and me, Yossi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavain and graciously recorded by Carlos Delagarza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy, Sarah Nataff. And today, I'm back. It's Diet Coke. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 3:57:07Yasi Salek?

  Just thinking about the, I was just thinking about the HIIT yoga class and getting really sad.