Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 11, 1990 TAG: 9005110160
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL MACCAMBRIDGE COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: AUSTIN, TEX. LENGTH: Long
Diana Ross, although she sold millions of records, was an unmistakable product of Barry Gordy's Motown machine. Aretha Franklin, although she was rock 'n' roll's most powerful female vocalist, was much more a singer than a star, working exclusively within the realm of R&B and gospel. Joni Mitchell, while one of the first women to produce a concept album recognized as such, assiduously avoided the star-making machinery.
So it's still hard to believe that the first woman in rock history to become an honest-to-goodness out-and-out superstar began her career so unpromisingly. Madonna Louise Ciccone hit the pop music world in 1983 with a fluffy, frothy album of synth-laden dance music so lightweight it practically needed a ballast to stay on the turntable. Out of those modest beginnings, of brazen videos, belly buttons and Boy Toy belt buckles, has emerged the reigning queen of pop music.
Last Friday in Houston, she opened the American segment of her Blond Ambition Tour, which debuted with four dates in Texas before moving directly to the media hot spots of Los Angeles and New York (the closest to tour will come to the Roanoke Valley is a two-night stop at the Capital Centre near Washington on June 8th and 9th). It's Madonna's first tour in nearly three years and it comes at a time when her star is again ascendant. The follow-up to 1989's critical and commercial smash album "Like A Prayer," called "I'm Breathless," will be released later this month. She has a staring role in what almost certainly will be the year's top-grossing film, "Dick Tracy," co-starring and directed by Warren Beatty and set for a June release.
The spotlight began to blaze last week, as she embarked on the first megatour of the decade. She described the concept of the Blond Ambition Tour in the May issue of "Vanity Fair" as equal parts Busby Berkeley musical, "Cabaret," "A Clockwork Orange" and Fredericks of Hollywood. Like 1987's impressive "Who's That Girl," this one figures to be a thoroughly theatrical production, heavy on dancing and special effects.
Included in the set were many of songs that made up an amazing string of 16 consecutive Top 5 singles (surpassed only by Elvis) that Madonna has amassed. Looking back, the Madonna catalog is full of gems: "Material Girl," "Like a Virgin," "Papa Don't Preach," "True Blue," "Live to Tell," "Like a Prayer" and "Express Yourself" were all among the best singles of their respective years.
This is a compelling body of work, but Madonna's greatest cultural contribution might come from her updated view of feminism. The degree to which she's helped bury the women-are-smart-or-pretty stereotype is incalculable.
That view of the artist - as distinct from the icon - has been slow to develop. But one of the key factors to her rise is that she has been almost continuously underestimated. Mick Jagger described her first two albums as characterized by "a central dumbness;" an early critic said her voice sounded like "Minnie Mouse on helium;" in 1985, Time magazine, even while putting her on its cover, viewed her personality as nothing more than "an outrageous blend of Little Orphan Annie, Margaret Thatcher and Mae West."
Detractors saw her shedding one skin after another to assume new personas, from Lucky Star to Virgin to Boy Toy to Monroe. When asked about repeated comparisons to the fallen movie idol, she set the record straight: "The difference is that Marilyn Monroe was a victim and I'm not."
This was never more clear than in 1985, when she survived her first trial by media fire. In that summer - a time of Springsteenian stadium show frenzy, the grandiose rock-for-hunger megashow Live Aid and the infamous "Playboy" and "Penthouse" dueling nude Madonna photo sessions - she began to prove her mettle.
When the scandal broke over the old photos, Madonna responded directly. Rather than claim innocence or regret over her past action, she simply said that if she knew then what she knew now, she probably wouldn't have done the sessions (or the blood-and-breasts B-movie "A Certain Sacrifice," which surfaced at about the same time). The pictures - arty, tame stuff by the standards of the magazines in which they ran - were less remarkable than her reaction, which carried nary a trace of the sanctimonious rhetoric that seemed to accompany all sides of the similar revelations that dethroned Miss America Vanessa Williams.
Performing at the Live Aid show, her first live appearance since the scandal, she was playful but pointed. Wearing a pair of jackets over a white peasant blouse on the blazing hot day, she said at one point, "I ain't taking s--- off today. Somebody might hold it against me 10 years from now."
With the success of 1984's "Like a Virgin," she began a body of work that dealt with the dark intersection in which Catholicism and sexuality meet. It produced an original artistic vision and, eventually, critical respect.
She would enrage many with the suggestive "Like a Virgin," and alienate a different set of the public with "True Blue's" first single "Papa Don't Preach," in which a woman decides to keep an unborn baby. In 1989, the provocative love song "Like a Prayer" was accompanied by a controversial video, full of religious imagery, in which Madonna made love to a black saint.
It was a continuation of a body of video work that revolutionized the music industry. In 1984, when "Borderline" became her first Top 10 single, Madonna's videos shone in a visual medium that was stagnating.
Her frequently black-and-white, consistently fashionable video clips set the pace for the industry by tying in the music with the performance on a much less conscious, linear level. Rather than merely performing for the camera or telling an entirely different story altogether, Madonna created clips that borrowed from elements of her songs to create an evocative pastiche of images that went beyond what the song could provide by itself.
She'll never have the greatest voice, or the most thought-provoking songs. But through cunning, intelligence, talent and sheer will, she has earned an indelible place in pop music. On her way to creating an image of the New Woman of the '90s, she has become rock 'n' roll's greatest female star.
Where does she go from here? Madonna has never held much back. While she is keenly aware of her image, she's also an artist with a constant need to express herself. Her career has been successful because her self-expression has consistently hit a resonant chord with the public. In her new tour, she'll put that impressive run of artistic triumphs on the line again.
by CNB