They’ve called her everything from a creative cretin to a media whore (if not a literal one). So there must be scores of folks who consider it the greatest desecration to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yet that Monday its arbiters will usher into its heady ranks Miss “How-Dare-She” herself: Madonna.
On her first try yet.
Foes will insist that Madonna’s fast-track entry has only to do with sales. Or with notoriety. Or with corporate conflicts of interest (especially since the hall has nearly as many as a New Jersey politician).
They’ll say Madonna’s anointment has to do with anything but the one element that actually most helped grease her way in: the music.
The fantastic range of distractions that surround that music - some ridiculous, some delightful - have obscured this all along.
But if you push aside the headlines, the pictures, the fashion, the scandals and the gossip, and give a fair listen to the 11 full studio albums Madonna has produced in the last 25 years, you may be surprised by what you hear.
The catalogue speaks eloquently of her achievements - from watershed innovations to savvy tweaks of genre to the basic pursuit of a great hook and an irresistible groove. Sometimes Madonna’s greatest accomplishments have even come down to the thing she has been most loudly ridiculed for: her singing.
No, she’s not Aretha Franklin. She’s not even close to Cyndi Lauper, the singer who, it was predicted, would leave Madonna in the dust by the next album when they both began in 1983. But Madonna has a quality that makes her vocals a key part of her songs’ overall swirl of delight.
She has had this from the start, even when her voice was a mere yap of a thing. In her earliest single, the club-magnet “Everybody,” she had an insistence in her delivery - a kind of zeal - as well as an exuberance in her tone, that made up for any lack of cri de coeur.
The next single, “Burnin’ Up,” went further. Its tight riff was fired by a punky fervor. Better, the song’s blaring guitar work now serves as a swift rebuke to those who get too literal about the “rock” part of this Hall of Fame thing. But then, Madonna would hardly need to blare six-stringed instruments all day long - or renounce her dance music or theater roots - to prove she’s got what we like to call “the rock ‘n’ roll spirit.” She is, after all, from Detroit.
Her first two singles were just the proverbial peak of the iceberg. Her full debut (”Madonna”) crammed in so many winning songs, of such rhythmic thrust, you could fill a whole night at a dance club and please its most finicky denizens by playing nothing but its remixes. “Holiday,” also on that starry debut, remains one of this decade’s most electrifying dance hits, while the singles “Lucky Star” and “Borderline” gave Madonna a hold on pure pop.
Tags: , hall of fame, hof, madonna, Madonna's music catalogue shows why she's a true Hall o, Music
