FEATURE:
Where Life Begins
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna shot for Vogue in 1992/PHOTO CREDIT: Steven Meisel
Madonna’s Erotica at Thirty: Its Legacy and the Artists It Has Inspired
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ON 20th October…
one of Madonna’s most influential albums turns thirty. Many Madonna album shave reshaped Pop and inspired legions of artists, but there is something unusual about Erotica. It is an album that has this huge legacy and importance without it being widely acclaimed. Although retrospective reviews have assessed it based upon its legacy and the fact that it was misjudged in the 1990s, a lot of the reviews that came out in 1992 were scathing or dismissive. Madonna released the infamous and notorious Sex book the same day as the album, meaning Erotica was seen as a double-barrelled release of sex and eroticism designed to shock. Some see Erotica as cold or too provocative. Lacking the Pop melodies and bigger choruses of her earliest albums, the relatively lack of instant accessibility, coupled with the press Madonna was getting around the time of Erotica’s release means it has never really received the praise and credit it deserves. I am going to come onto its legacy soon, and apologies if this is a little unfocused. My final feature around the thirtieth anniversary of Erotica, I wanted to draw more on its legacy and some of the artists it has influenced. Creating this alter ego of Mistress Dita, this gave Madonna license to inhabit a character yet remain personal and focused. Whereas there is a lot of sex and personal liberation through Erotica, Madonna also gets confessional and deep. It is a very mature album where this growing and blossoming Pop queen was taking risks but also delving into themes such as the AIDS crisis and safe sex.
I want to start by returning to a SLANT review from 2007. Looking back at the album fifteen years after its release, the review talks about how relevant the album is then. I think that has only become more obvious since 2007. Many consider Erotica to be wildly uneven and lacking in depth, but it has been misjudged and underrated:
“Whatever words one chooses to label the album with—cold, artificial, self-absorbed, anonymous—Madonna embraces those qualities and makes it part of the message. “Why’s it so hard to love one another?” she asks on the reggae-hued “Why’s It So Hard?,” knowing the answer lies within the dark fact that a society that won’t even allow two people to love each other freely can’t possibly be expected to love and care for perfect strangers unconditionally. Sexually liberated, for sure, but Madonna is a liberal in every other sense of the word too, and you didn’t have to hear her shout, “Vote for Clinton!” as she was being whisked past the cameras at the album release party to know that. It could be argued that Madonna lost her rebel relevance right around the time Reagan’s regime ended; the waning of her popularity certainly coincided with the arrival of Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. But looking back from the vantage point of an administration far more sinister than Reagan’s, it’s clear that Madonna, her messages, and her music are more relevant now than ever”.
I do think that Erotica has been given a rough ride. Splitting critics at a time when Madonna was the Queen of Pop and going shoulder to shoulder with legends like Michael Jackson, the negative press and backlash after Sex could have set her back or derailed her momentum. It did to an extent but, as we know, Madonna created one of her masterpieces, Ray of Light, in 1998. Madonna’s most eclectic and broad album yet in terms of its sounds, there is so much depth to an album that has been neglected by some. I want to bring in segments of an Albumism. They celebrated twenty-five years of Erotica and highlighted some of its standout songs:
“The album’s supreme standout is the second single “Deeper and Deeper,” a sublime slice of euphoric disco house that still sounds as fresh as ever, two-and-a-half decades later. An invigorating anthem of sexual awakening, the narrative of “Deeper and Deeper” can also be interpreted through the lens of a man acknowledging and revealing his homosexuality, as perhaps best evidenced in the second chorus (“Deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper / Never gonna hide it again / Sweeter and sweeter and sweeter and sweeter / Never gonna have to pretend”) and the song’s fourth and final verse (“This feeling inside / I can't explain / But my love is alive / And I'm never gonna hide it again”).
Among the three other singles officially released from Erotica, “Bad Girl” leaves the most enduring impression, and not just because of its memorable, Christopher Walken blessed video. A symphonic, drama-filled ballad about a tormented, self-destructive woman who’s wronged her lover by succumbing to temptation, the beautifully orchestrated “Bad Girl” reinforces Madonna’s penchant for crafting ballads that carry emotional weight without coming across as overwrought, a la her 1986 single “Live to Tell.” While the decidedly house-driven, percussive cover of “Fever,” originally popularized by Little Willie John in 1956 and two years later by Peggy Lee, is serviceable fare, the polished “Rain” is arguably the only banal and skippable offering among the album’s fourteen tracks.
The most painful and poignant moment appears with the somber “In This Life,” Madonna’s homage to two close confidantes who tragically lost their battles with AIDS—Martin Burgoyne, an artist and her first tour manager, and Christopher Flynn, her ballet teacher and mentor. Reminiscing about Flynn during a 2010 discussion with the film director Gus Van Sant for Interview magazine, Madonna reflected, “Growing up in Michigan, I didn’t really know what a gay man was. He was the first man—the first human being—who made me feel good about myself and special. He was the first person who told me that I was beautiful or that I had something to offer the world, and he encouraged me to believe in my dreams, to go to New York. He was such an important person in my life. He died of AIDS, but he went blind toward the end of his life. He was such a lover of art, classical music, literature, opera. You know, I grew up in the Midwest, and it was really because of him that I was exposed to so many of those things. He brought me to my first gay club—it was this club in Detroit. I always felt like I was a freak when I was growing up and that there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t fit in anywhere. But when he took me to that club, he brought me to a place where I finally felt at home.”
Just as refreshing and rewarding musically as it was for its brave social and cultural conscience, Erotica was, is, and will forever be a fearlessly fierce album that only Madonna could make. No one has ever come close to replicating it and no one ever will. In Vanity Fair’s October 1992 issue, Madonna proclaimed, “I’m out to open [people’s] minds and get them to see sexuality in another way. Their own and others.’” More than any other album in her prolific oeuvre, Erotica fulfilled her objective and struck a mighty blow to the plague of cultural and moral myopia, in America and beyond”.
I want to utilise and quote Wikipedia’s page about Erotica. They point at its legacy and influence. Alongside the way it changed Pop and elevated Madonna, they also name-check artists whose music has clearly been influenced by Erotica. I am going to drop a few songs from artists who are named. Songs that I think we can draw a line to the extraordinary Erotica:
“The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame considered Erotica one of the most revolutionary albums of all time, declaring that "...few women artists, before or since Erotica, have been so outspoken about their fantasies and desires. Madonna made it clear that shame and sexuality are mutually exclusive... In the end, Erotica embraced and espoused pleasure, and kept Madonna at the forefront of pop's sexual revolution." Slant Magazine listed Erotica at number 24 on "The 100 Best Albums of the 1990s", calling it a "dark masterpiece". Miles Raymer of Entertainment Weekly said that "in retrospect it's her strongest album — produced at the peak of her power and provocativeness... and helped elevate her from mere pop star to an era-defining icon." Bianca Gracie from Fuse TV channel called Erotica "the album that changed the pop music world forever... one of the most controversial and genre-defining albums in pop history." Samuel R. Murrian from Parade commented that the influence of Erotica "is seen in the work of virtually every current pop act".
"By 1992, Madonna was an icon—untouchable, literally and figuratively—and Erotica was the first time the artist's music took on a decidedly combative, even threatening tone, and most people didn't want to hear it. Erotica's irrefutable unsexiness probably says more about the sex=death mentality of the early '90s than any other musical document of its time. This is not Madonna at her creative zenith. This is Madonna at her most important, at her most relevant. No one else in the mainstream at that time dared to talk about sex, love, and death with such frankness and fearlessness."
—Slant Magazine's critic Sal Cinquemani on the album's impact.
J. Randy Taraborrelli documented at the time of Erotica's release, "much of society seemed to reexamining its sexuality. Gay rights issues were at the forefront of social discussions globally, as was an ever-increasing awareness of AIDS." Barry Walters from Rolling Stone noted that the album's greatest contribution is "[its] embrace of the other, which in this case means queerness, blackness, third-wave feminism, exhibitionism and kink. Madonna took what was marginalized at the worst of the AIDS epidemic, placed it in an emancipated context, and shoved it into the mainstream for all to see and hear." Brian McNair, the author of Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratization of Desire, stated that upon the album's release "academic books began to appear about the 'Madonna phenomenon', while pro- and anti-porn feminists made of her a symbol of all that was good or bad (depending on their viewpoint) about contemporary sexual culture." Daryl Deino from The Inquisitr dubbed the album as "a groundbreaking moment for feminism."
Erotica remains the most rampantly misrepresented Madonna album with the biggest backlash of her career. Taraborrelli commented that it is unfortunate that Erotica has to be historically linked to other less memorable ventures in Madonna's career at this time. However, he quipped that the album should be considered on its own merits, not only as one linked to the other two adult-oriented projects, because it has true value. When asked to name her biggest professional disappointment, Madonna answered, "The fact that my Erotica album was overlooked because of the whole thing with the Sex book. It just got lost in all that. I think there's some brilliant songs on it and people didn't give it a chance." Brian McNair observed that Madonna took a financial risk with the album and it was not until Ray of Light (1998) that her record sales recovered to pre-Erotica levels. He further asserted that "what she lost in royalty payments, however, Madonna more than made up for in iconic status and cultural influence."
Walters asserted that Erotica "set the blueprint for modern pop... Without Madonna, modern pop as we know it would be unimaginable." He noticed the album's influence on various artists such as Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Pink, Lady Gaga, and Nicki Minaj. Joe Lynch from Billboard wrote that the album "occupies a watershed place in the pop pantheon, setting the blueprint for singers to get raw while eschewing exploitation for decades to come." Similar thoughts were echoed by Jeni Wren Stottrup from The Portland Mercury, who believed that "Erotica should be recognized as one of Madonna's greatest albums". Critics also found its influence on Janet Jackson's 1997 album The Velvet Rope, with Daryl Easlea from BBC writing that Jackson's album "resembles Erotica at times, in subject manner and style”.
On 20th October, Erotica is thirty. I think that Erotica has fared better in the years since 1992. In terms of how it ranks alongside her other studio albums, there has been some acclaim. Dig! ranked it ninth earlier this year, remarking: “A provocative rallying call for the culture wars soon to consume us all, Erotica is undoubtedly the moment of glorious rebellion among the best Madonna albums. These 14 tracks (ten produced by Vogue collaborator Shep Pettibone) are a master class of 90s power-pop, with the album’s steamy title track nestling up against a house treatment of the Peggy Lee standard Fever”. Gay Times placed Erotica sixth in their rankings feature, where they said this: “She’d already challenged racial divides and discovered a career-long fetish for religious symbolism on Like A Prayer, but Erotica became one of the biggest affronts to white, Christian, middle-class America ever to appear in pop music when it dropped in 1992. Decades before artists like Rihanna and Britney Spears openly celebrated S&M and threesomes in their chart hits, Madonna became dominatrix alter-ego Mistress Dita, turning the listener into a voyeur of all things pleasurable – or ‘deviant’ in the eyes of conservatives. Sonically, the album does sound quite dated, but the lyrics and themes, including a heartbreaking song about friends lost to AIDS, were ahead of their time. She went one step further with the release of her explicit SEX book, a double-punch which had potential to destroy her career, but instead solidified her place as pop culture’s greatest icon. DM”.
Looking back to 2015, and Billboard actually named it Madonna’s fifth-best studio album: “Madonna’s sexual journey hit its peak in 1992 with Erotica, released alongside her book of erotic photos, fittingly called Sex. Madonna’s alter ego, Mistress Dita, invites you into a world of S&M and love that earned her a temporary nickname: “Queen of the obscene.” Standout tracks include her dancefloor update of “Fever,” “Deeper and Deeper,” “Rain,” “Bad Girl” and “In This Life.” The album hit its own peak at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. — Richin”. A hugely influential album, not just in terms of Madonna’s career but how it affected and resonated with Pop artists who would come through in the late-‘90s and beyond, I think that Erotica can be traced to artists fairly new today. Even Dua Lipa and Charli XCX embody elements of that album in their work today. In fact, listen to so many Pop artists of today and it is clear that they have been compelled and influenced by Erotica. It helped to redefine and shape Pop music post-1992, and it will do so for decades more. Maybe not as celebrated and renowned as albums like Ray of Light, Like a Prayer or Like a Virgin, Erotica is enormously important. I don’t think anyone can understate the importance and relevance of an album that has changed so much and is responsible for so many terrific artists (those who came along after its release). There is no denying that Erotica – which turns thirty on 20th October – was responsible for creating…
THE blueprint for Pop that followed.