The Hit Parade Issue Number Sixteen - by Joey Sarajevo
Two Hit Parades and a column in a week – Jesus Christ, even I’m pinching myself at this latest splurge of rejection-induced creativity. Maybe I should obsess over women for six months and then find out that they don’t fancy me more often. In any case, now that idle daydreams about big, brown melting eyes are creepy stalker material rather than expressions of endearing romanticism, I guess it’s time to turn my attentions back music-wards for a while in an attempt to keep myself from dwelling on it.
And whaddaya know? Madonna’s back, topping charts on both sides of the Atlantic with her latest ‘reinvention’. Perfick! (Sorry, that whole brown, melting eyes thing had got me thinking about Catherine Zeta Jones in 'The Darling Buds of May').
She’s an interesting one, our Madge, if only for the questions her two-decade spanning career with its Escher-defying tangle of snakes and ladders raises about just why she’s been able to last as long as she has. The scare quotes around ‘reinvention’ in the last paragraph are there for a reason; for all her much-touted finger-on-the-pulse changes of direction, a large part of her appeal has been one long sprint to stay in the same place.
Believe me, there is a reason for this. Just trust me
Madonna has never re-invented herself in the way, say David Bowie managed throughout the seventies – discarding and in some cases killing off old personas with joyous abandon and a reckless disregard for the whims and wants of his fanbase. Bowie could get away with that, because he was a musical genius who really could (at that stage) be any kind of pop star he wanted and write the killer tunes to match. Nor has she had the range of other artists of similar commercial stature – Michael Jackson never reinvented himself per se, but he didn’t really need to because in his heyday he could do pretty much any kind of song he wanted better than pretty much anyone else, at least in terms of mainstream pop.
Both artists had help from others (Ronson, Eno, er… Eddie Van Halen?) of course, but they nevertheless set the agenda for their careers in a way Madge never has; her most successful collaborators – from Jellybean through Nile Rodgers to William Orbit and (latterly) Stuart Price – have occupied the same rough territory in pop music: the casual dancefloor. Madonna reached her final musical niche pretty early on in her career, and has spent the best part of twenty years making sure everyone else damn well knows it – no-one has ever got so much career out of changing so little, at least not outside of the nostalgia circuit.
The root cause of Madonna’s success has been less to reinvent than to remarket herself; her key genius has been in her ability to find someone to take care of the music whilst she takes care of the image. Arguably, only the Clash and Public Enemy have ever had a stronger sense of pop music as a totality of sound and vision that she has, and they were never able to chop and change styles so ruthlessly and effectively. Madonna might not give two shits about exploring musical frontiers, but she knows how to use those that do to keep her in daft red laces for her wrists for the next two decades at least.
Good luck to her. If last week’s Hit Parade was all about how it has to sound good, then this one can inaugurate my second rule – it has to look good too (that’s good as in ‘right’, by the way, not as in ‘underwear model’). If that seems contradictory, well that’s rock ‘n’ roll, motherfuckers. What, you want David friggin’ Gray and the rest of them ‘it’s all about the music, man’ bastards instead of some throwaway, good-looking dancefloor fun, do you?
Told you
‘Course not.
Anyway, on with this week’s Top Ten:
10. Tom Novy Ft Michael Marshall: Your Body (Data) - Haven’t actually heard it; so no pithy comment from me. Sorry to disappoint.
9. Craig David: Don't Love You No More (Warner Bros) - We all know someone like poor old Craig; a perfectly sweet and well-meaning individual who you nevertheless want to gouge in the eyes because they’re just so deeply, deeply aggravating.
8. Arctic Monkeys: I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor (Domino Recordings) - Thanks, guys – but I’m afraid I actually resemble an anorexic, alcoholic and badly-dressed Ronald McDonald frantically shitting hot lead and bits of kidney.
7. Liberty X: A Night To Remember (EMI Virgin / Unique) - Like Friday, huh? Actually, I’ve decided to just assume she was flattered and pretend nothing ever happened, except when writing sarcastic bullshit for low-yield websites.
6. Gorillaz: Dirty Harry (Parlophone) - We all know someone like Damon Albarn; a smug, self-centered prick who you nevertheless are forced to admire because they really can do things you can’t even aspire to equaling.
5. Girls Aloud: Biology (Polydor) - With the Black Eyed Peas and Liberty X also still ‘gracing’ the Top Ten, the whole experience of writing this column is becoming like watching an England World Cup qualifier – a load of overrated toss and some genuine class operating at well below par to an ultimately frustrating end which somehow manages to keep me coming back for more, sucker that I am.
4. Simon Webbe: No Worries (Innocent) - I wish I could share the sentiment, but in fact I’m pretty neurotic.
3. Black Eyed Peas: My Humps (A&M) - “What you gonna do with all that junk?” Inject the lot into my arms and legs until the veins collapse and then finish myself off with a spike to the eyeball reflecting, as I turn grey and drift into an opiated coma, that whatever hell I end up in will seem like heaven compared to what listening to this FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT has put me through.
2. Westlife: You Raise Me Up (S) - “Where’s the tower? Where’s the gun? Where’s the tower? Where’s the gun?”
1. Madonna: Hung Up (Warner Bros) - Finally, a decent single manages more than a week at the top! Oh, momentous day! Perhaps the woeful efforts of those at 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and (probably) 10 have something to do with this, mind.
This Week Straw Donkeys Have Been Listening To:
Joey Sarajevo:Crying by Roy Orbison; for the same reasons as last time.