If you'd had free rein on all of her single releases..

Vicky the Vole

Vicky the Vole

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... how would you have done it? (Maximum 6 a year, or 7 at a push!) There's not much I'd have changed until later, but I'd have done something like:

1983
Everybody
Burning Up
Holiday

1984
Borderline
Lucky Star
Like A Virgin

1985
Material Girl
Dress You Up
Angel
Into The Groove
Crazy For You
Gambler
Love Don't Live Here Anymore

1986
Live To Tell
Papa Don't Preach
True Blue
Where's The Party
La Isla Bonita

1987
Open Your Heart
Who's That Girl
Causing A Commotion
Spotlight

1988
The Look Of Love

1989
Like A Prayer
Express Yourself
Pray For Spanish Eyes
Cherish
Dear Jessie

1990
Oh Father
Till Death Do Us Part
Vogue
Back In Business
Now I'm Following You
Hanky Panky
Justify My Love

1991
Rescue Me

1992
This Used To Be My Playground
Erotica
Deeper And Deeper

1993
Bad Girl
Rain
Thief Of Hearts

1994
I'll Remember
Secret
Take A Bow

1995
Human Nature
Sanctuary
You'll See
I Want You

1996
One More Chance
Something To Remember
You Must Love Me
Don't Cry For Me Argentina

1997
Don't Cry For Me Argentina (Miami Mix)
Another Suitcase In Another Hall
Buenos Aires

1998
Frozen
Ray Of Light
The Power Of Good-bye
Nothing Really Matters

1999
Sky Fits Heaven
Swim
Beautiful Stranger

2000
American Pie
Time Stood Still
Music
Impressive Instant

2001
What It Feels Like For a Girl
Gone
Don'tTell Me
Paradise (Not For Me)

2002
Die Another Day

2003
American Life
Hollywood
Nothing Fails
Love Profusion
Me Against The Music

2005
Hung Up

2006
Sorry
Let It Will Be
Jump
Get Together

2008
Give It 2 Me
Miles Away
4 Minutes
She's Not You

2009
Celebration
Revolver

2012
Masterpiece
Beautiful Killer
Girl Gone Wild
I'm Addicted
I F***ed Up

2015
Ghosttown
Living For Love
Joan Of Arc
Rebel Heart
Addicted

2016
Wash All Over Me

2019
Medellin
God Control
I Rise
Dark Ballet
I Don't Search I Find
 
I haven’t thought about it enough but I do feel she by and large has always got her singles choices correct.
 
Given her success it’s difficult to challenge her choices along the way but I’d have a go at some edits. Especially down the later years.

Madonna
Nothing - even the timing of the re-releases, and the label’s patience knowing they were on to something special, was a perfect intro

Like A Virgin
Not a huge fan of the two main singles but they were the right choice. Adding ITG and CFY officially would have made this a very different album but it was nice that they were mostly saved for TIC as it made it more special

True Blue
Launching with Live To Tell was brave but spot on. Those 5 singles were all massive, I could have done without True Blue but the magic here was that all 5 singles were so different

Like A Prayer
A difficult album to mine for singles so they got it right really

Erotica
I always wanted Waiting to be a single, particularly as I didn’t care massively for Bad Girl, but in hindsight it would have flopped. Why’s It So Hard was the potential other single. I would have released Rain before Bad Girl anyway.

Bedtime Stories
I would have liked I’ll Remember on the album. I think if Take A Bow was the opening single the album would have opened much bigger. But who would have known etc. The choices were spot on though. Sanctuary is spectacular, but not a a single

Ray Of Light
I definitely wouldn’t have released SFL, that almost stopped the album dead. TPOG should have been the 3rd single, NRM the 4th and finally Sky Fits Heaven.

Music
Remove American Pie from canon entirely and replace with Beautiful Stranger. Impressive Instant should have been the 3rd single, maybe Gone for a 4th.

American Live
She absolutely should have opened with Nothing Fails. Followed by Nobody Knows Me and then Love Profusion/American Life double A. Die Another Day can stay.

Confessions
I hate Sorry but it was the right choice. The singles were all correct here.

Hard Candy
3rd single should have been She’s Not Me but I think either way it was tiring at this point.

Celebration
Re-record both singles and release something better!
 
That it’s a good point, Beautiful Stranger would’ve fit quite nicely into Music, I wonder why they didn’t.

Mind you American Pie is alright too, but bonus tracks are usually bad for the flow, I’d rather they’d just found a slot for it
 
Diddy said:
That it’s a good point, Beautiful Stranger would’ve fit quite nicely into Music, I wonder why they didn’t.
Click to expand...
They certainly tried with "Amazing". Imagining Music with "Beautiful Stranger" in its place is almost too much. :disco:
 
You can’t fault most of the early releases but it upsets me Burning Up was never given a proper chance to (re)shine.
 
I think both American Pie and Beautiful Stranger (instead of Amazing) fit in Music.

And Music is probably the only album where I would have released more; Impressive Instant (again instead of Amazing which got some airplay here).

As for the rest, I think she got it all right. I hate to read that SFL shouldn’t have been released; I think it was a perfect end of summer single and it did surprisingly well (in my opinion).

I would have wanted Sky Fits Heaven and Skin, and Waiting and Words to be released too, but not at the expense of the other singles.
 
Oh wait, I forgot the most obvious one: it’s truly a crime that Paradise (Not for Me) never got the single treatment. It should have remixes and another video as to not seem as a NRM copy.
 
RaspberrySwirl said:
Oh wait, I forgot the most obvious one: it’s truly a crime that Paradise (Not for Me) never got the single treatment. It should have remixes and another video as to not seem as a NRM copy.
Click to expand...

It had promo mixes, didn’t it?

And the video from the DWT interlude (which is stun gorge), of course.
 
And Like a Prayer was not a difficult album to mine for singles- every single thing on that album could have been a hit, with the exception of Promise to Try and, arguably, Love Song. Though I’m glad it wasn’t, Til Death Do Us Part would have had a wonderful video.
 
And I hate this “let’s add all the soundtrack singles”- they were separate for a reason. Don’t tag them on for no reason.
 
American Life is the album that she got it wrong for me- but with that song on it, you can see why she went with it first. The campaign should have opened with Nothing Fails and be followed by Hollywood, Love Profusion and Nobody Knows Me.
 
Sheena said:
And I hate this “let’s add all the soundtrack singles”- they were separate for a reason. Don’t tag them on for no reason.
Click to expand...

But they create a mess of being scattered all over when you try to organize lists and shit in your brain. :bad:
 
You have to remember that in the 80s/90s, Greatest Hits were such a thing that such singles being collected there made a lot of financial sense too...
 
RaspberrySwirl said:
I’ve either forgotten or missed them. :o

I’m a huge fan of that Hebrew duet version she did on Confessions tour.
Click to expand...

It's my third favourite Madonna song ever. It's just wonderful. I do wonder if it should have been a standalone single before Music, as part of the promo for Mirwais' (really good) Disco Science album, where it originally appeared.
 
RaspberrySwirl said:
Oh wait, I forgot the most obvious one: it’s truly a crime that Paradise (Not for Me) never got the single treatment. It should have remixes and another video as to not seem as a NRM copy.
Click to expand...

I’d have preferred that to the remix of WIFLFAG, couldn’t they have just used the album version? Guy Ritchie ruined everything
 
I loved the WIFLFAG video remix. It was the only was a song like this would have the chance to do well as a pop song, no?
 
It would have made sense to leave the soundtrack songs as stand alone singles. Then she could have cashed in later by releasing an album with them all on.
 
RaspberrySwirl said:
I loved the WIFLFAG video remix. It was the only was a song like this would have the chance to do well as a pop song, no?
Click to expand...

But it wasn't actually used as the single version. The radio (in both the UK and US at least), used an edit of the album version.
 
OT: I'm listening to Something to Remember this morning. It really is DELIGHTFUL from start to finish.

I planned it out so perfectly
So you'd never leave a girl like me

:(
 
Music is the only album that springs to mind for me in terms of missed opportunities (From Hard Candy onwards I truly couldn't care less).

I'd have gone something like

Music
Don't Tell Me
Impressive Instant
Runaway Lover
I Deserve It
 
VoR said:
Music is the only album that springs to mind for me in terms of missed opportunities (From Hard Candy onwards I truly couldn't care less).

I'd have gone something like

Music
Don't Tell Me
Impressive Instant
Runaway Lover
I Deserve It
Click to expand...

I think the first three, absolutely. Impressive Instant was a missed opportunity for sure, but Warner didn't want to release it and promoed Amazing. Apparently, she didn't want that at all and called their bluff, saying she would refuse to make a video for it. It ended in stalemate and Amazing never got past promo stage. This was all fourth single, though, rather than third.

Runaway Lover was maligned at the time for being too much like a Ray of Light offcast and I Deserve It suffered a bit of "oh it's a bit sickly and literal" ("this GUY was meant for me") in reviews too.

I'd have gone

Music
Don't Tell Me
Impressive Instant
What It Feels Like For A Girl

And probably left it there- particularly if "Paradise (Not For Me)" had been standalone from Mirwais' album.
 
I too listened to Something to Remember this morning, mostly because of all the You’ll See chat from yesterday. It’s a really slick collection even though the different in sound quality between the 90’s and 80’s is a bit jarring
 
RaspberrySwirl said:
I too listened to Something to Remember this morning, mostly because of all the You’ll See chat from yesterday. It’s a really slick collection even though the different in sound quality between the 90’s and 80’s is a bit jarring
Click to expand...

The difference in vocals too! I still find it hilarious that she mimed to 1984 vocals in the video for Love Don’t Live Here Anymore when she sounded nothing like that by that point!

I’ve moved onto Evita (2- disc version obviously :disco:)
 
IT SEEMS CRAZY
But you MUST believe
There's nothing CALCULATED
Nothing PLANNED
 
Joan of Arc would sit nicely on Something to remember. I really think it's up there with her best.

Pray for Spanish eyes should have been on there too.
 
I'd have shifted Nothing Really Matters to be the 3rd single in place of Drowned World. The Power Of Goodbye is a stronger song, but I think it also really worked as a chilly winter radio staple, and I'm not sure it would have hit the same in the summer.

Then Swim as the fifth single. Sky Fits Heaven and Skin are better, but not radio friendly.

American Pie simply wouldn't have been allowed to happen.
 
I agree- The Power of Goodbye is far more suited than winter to summer, but I wonder if ANY song would have done well past the third single (Nothing Really Matters certainly didn't) in the US, and I don't think they would have wasted what was one of the obvious three standout songs on the album.

The US not releasing there (for fairly obvious reasons) screwed things a bit as well- they moved straight onto it as the third single, but there was a big gap between it and Ray of Light, if I remember. The video for The Power of Goodbye was all over European MTV (I lived in France at the time) waaayyyy before its release. I think in some places it wasn't a really big hit until early 1999- it was EVERYWHERE in Austria/ Germany for the early part of that year (I moved there from France!. I do realise this is all rather CWEJBOOKOFSTATS, but...)
 
FASCINATING FACT:

A quick Wikipedia read on those singles has just thrown up this which I never knew til now- The Power of Goodbye was the only one of the Ray of Light singles that didn't make #1 anywhere. In the era when Spain would put anything she put out (including being the only country to send Drowned World to number one), it only peaked at #2 there. Nothing Really Matters managed it in Hungary and, yes, Spain.
 
Is there a free archive of all the Billboard magasines? :o

Love that the one you linked to has mutliple pages about Walter Afanasieff (where is he now?) and Sweden.
 
RaspberrySwirl said:
Is there a free archive of all the Billboard magasines? :o

Love that the one you linked to has mutliple pages about Walter Afanasieff (where is he now?) and Sweden.
Click to expand...

No idea how complete it is, but I managed to change the date in the URL easily enough and get two more editions before and after that one.

And then lost an hour :D
 
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