![]() ![]() Erotica is Madonna’s show (the music leaves no room for audience participation), and her production teases and then denies with the grim control of a dominatrix.Īgainst maraca beats and a shimmying horn riff, Erotica introduces Madonna as “Mistress Dita,” whose husky invocations of “do as I say” promise a smorgasbord of sexual experimentation, like the one portrayed in the video for Justify My Love. Madonna, along with co-producers Andre Betts and Shep Pettibone, tamps down every opportunity to let loose - moments ripe for a crescendo, a soaring instrumental break, a chance for the listener to dance along, are over the instant they are heard. Its cold, remote sound systematically undoes every one of the singer’s intimate promises.Ĭlinical enough on its own terms when compared with the lushness and romanticism of Madonna’s past grooves, Erotica is stunningly reined in even when it achieves disco greatness, it’s never heady. It succeeds in a way the innocent post-punk diva of Madonna and the thoughtful songwriter of Like a Prayer could not have imagined. The production choices suggest not a celebration of the physical but a critique of commercial representations of sex - whether Paul Verhoeven’s, Bruce Weber’s or Madonna’s - that by definition should not be mistaken for the real thing. Moving claustrophobically within the schematic confines of dominance and submission, Erotica plays out its fantasies with astringent aloofness, unhumid and uninviting. She may have intended to rattle America with hot talk about oral gratification and role switching, but sensuality is the last thing on the album’s mind. ![]() Erotica is a post-AIDS album about romance - it doesn’t so much evoke sex as provide a fetishistic abstraction of it. ![]() Chilly, deliberate, relentlessly posturing. It took Madonna ten years, but she finally made the record everyone has accused her of making all along. On November 26 1992, Rolling Stone magazine published their review of Madonna’s Erotica album, written by Arion Berger: ![]()
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