Madonna | Music

[Deleted]

Now I'm onto Music, Madonna's 8th studio album released September 19th, 2000.

Not sure where I'd rank this among my favorites of hers (it's too difficult for me after Ray of Light and Confessions on a Dance Floor), however I really enjoy this album. I don't skip one song.

It reminds-me of my first year in University and coming out.



Singles:

1. Music
2. Don't Tell Me
3. What It Feels Like For A Girl

[Juanca]

Also Amazing was released as a 4th single in some countries, and Impressive Instant (love it!) reached #1 on the dance chart for 2 weeks.
Oh! And Madonna released her second Spanish version of a song ever: Lo que siente una mujer (WIFLFAG) although it was practically a flop
Another interesting thing is that for the first time the official video of one of her songs had the music of a remix which only kept the chorus of the original song (again WIFLFAG)

[God]

Possibly my favorite Madonna album. I remember seeing it in stores back when it was released and choosing not to buy it because it didn't include "American Pie", LMAO. Awful decision. I wouldn't listen to Music in its entirety for another nine years, when I finally gave her discography a much-deserved listen.

"Impressive Instant", "Nobody's Perfect" and "Paradise (Not for Me)" are some of her best songs. The only song I could do without is William Orbit's "Runaway Lover" -- not that I'm ever too pressed to skip over it; it has its moments here and there. Even "Beautiful Stranger" retread "Amazing" manages to maintain its own unique identity alongside Orbit's familiar production. It's not her most cohesive album by any means, but it's easily the most accessible of her later work.

Oh and "Don't Tell Me" is genius.

[Juanca]

Good thing is that the version sold in Peru and all South America did include American Pie of course I was gonna buy it regardless but it was still good to have AP as part of the CD

[Agent Yoncé]

I was disappointed 'WIFLFAG''s video mix wasn't on the album. This is an ok body of work. Not my favorite & definitely not her greatest.

[Deleted]

I bought this for "Don't Tell Me". In fact this was my first Madonna album.

To this day the fact that 'Amazing' wasn't a single is a CRIME.

[halo19]

Pretty good release. I say after RoL it's harder for me to decide my order and this album was out when I was in 8th grade. I think I like it more than Like a Prayer but not as much as RoL, Erotica or Madonna. So I guess it ranks 4th for me.

[grandelf]

Not her best, but no longer her weakest of the last 15 years to me thanks to last year's MDNA. "Impressive Instant" is pure perfection, that song is to die for, "Paradise (Not For Me)" is also great but otherwise it's all about the live versions of the Drowned World Tour.

"What It Feels Like For A Girl" is quite weak, I don't get how this was considered as a worthy single release (and originally it was meant to be the 2nd single!), fortunately all the remixes are quite great. It even ended up on GHV2...

[Deleted]

I was slightly disappointed by this album when it was first released, but she's released a few way worse albums since. I like it, but it's not one of my favorite Madonna albums.

[bat1990]

This is the first Madonna album I ever listened to all the way through. My aunt owned the album so my sister and I would borrow it often to listen to and dance around. We really loved "Music," "Impressive Instant," and "Don't Tell Me." Not all of it holds up well (Nobody's Perfect, Amazing) but it serves as a nice bridge between the sounds of Ray of Light and American Life.

[#LisaRinna]

The title-track is so overrated! 'Don't Tell Me' is a much better song.

[MiniMusic]

Just bought this album today. My top tracks after a few listens:

1. Music
2. Impressive Instant
3. Runaway Lover
4. Amazing
5. Don't Tell Me

"I Deserve It" and "Nobody's Perfect" are my least favorites.

[Ling-Ling]

I've grown to appreciate this album so much more over the years. My biggest complaint on it's original release was how hodge podge it was. It just didn't gel at all for me. Strangely enough, it does now. Is it my familiarity of the songs? Who knows. But it works as an album for me now.

The only song I don't care for is "Nobody's Perfect." And I wish "Amazing" had seen the light of day as a single in the US.

[🇯🇲 lucy88 🇯🇲]

Great follow up to ROL and love the cowboy theme! My fave tracks are Amazing, Impressive Instant, Don't Tell Me, Nobody's Perfect, Gone, Runaway Lover, WIFLFAG,

[harvie]

One of my favorite Madonna albums. The title track is a classic and Don't Tell Me is one of my favorite Madonna singles.
Impressive Instant is awesume.
I Deserve It is one of my all time favorite M album tracks. I Just love the lryics and the chorus is hypnotic!

[🇯🇲 lucy88 🇯🇲]

Hey Mr. DJ, It's the 20th Anniversary of Madonna's 'Music': See What We Wrote About It In 2000

www.google.com/amp/s/www.billboard.com/amp/articles/columns/pop/9451212/madonna-music-album

As the high priestess of pop, Madonna has administered the holy sacrament of Putting a Record on to Dance With Your Baby since 1983. Today, we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of a key piece of 21st century dancefloor canon: her eighth album, Music.

Coming two years after the brooding, mature Ray of Light, Music was a conscious effort to lighten up. "Life would be such a drag if it was deep and probing all the time," Madonna told Billboard of Music in the Aug. 5, 2000 issue. "I didn't feel the need to be so introspective…. I felt like dancing. And that's reflected in these songs."

That much is clear from the catchphrase-loaded lead single/title track, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 just two days prior to the album's Sept. 18, 2000 release. A thumping electro-funk party-starter crafted with then-new collaborator Mirwais, "Music" became her 12th No. 1 and first since "Take a Bow," staying there for four consecutive weeks. It was followed by "Don't Tell Me," a No. 4 hit whose unusual stop-time tempo and country-synth flavor predated similar fare by Avicii by 13 years, and the No. 23-peaking "What It Feels Like for a Girl," a feminist anthem with an explosive, MTV-banned music video. (Even beyond the singles, Music is one of her sharpest sets, with the mesmerizing trance raver "Runaway Lover," the playfully robotic "Impressive Instant" and the stark, barren "Paradise (Not for Me)" equaling if not surpassing the creative peaks of the hits.)

Moving 420,000 units in its first week and going on to sell 2.9 million in the U.S. to date according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data (a division of Billboard's parent company), the Billboard 200-topping album was yet another win for the Queen of Pop. But its colossal success wasn't exactly a surefire thing. In terms of top 40 fare at the dawn of the new millennium, dance-pop was hardly dominant: you were more likely to hear teen-pop, hip-hop-flavored R&B or, well, Santana on the radio in 2000.

In the Sept. 2, 2000 issue of Billboard, a former top 40 radio programmer talked about the "stigma" attached to dance music in America, arguing very few purveyors of the genre "connect with the pop side." And while the Sept. 16, 2000 issue of Billboard noted the Music album was one of Warner Music's focal points for that fall, label support only goes so far; after all, that same article noted that another of Warner's fall priorities was the girl group All Saints… and their William Orbit-produced single "Pure Shores" was lost at sea in the U.S., failing to even scratch the Hot 100

Club dominance for "Music" was a no-brainer (the July 22, 2000 issue of Billboard went as far as to predict it would top Dance Club Songs "without question"), but few predicted this song would take back her to the top spot on the Hot 100, where she'd been absent from since 1995. Even Madge herself admitted to having nerves about the album in her 2000 interview with Billboard, admitting, "I can't lie; I care about whether or not this record sells a little or a lot."

So why did "Music" soar? More than the appeal of a bedazzled cowboy hat or the power of an Ali G music video cameo, a clever retail strategy was a big part of the equation. In the Sept. 9, 2000 issue of Billboard, Hot 100 Spotlight columnist Silvio Pietroluongo (currently Billboard's senior vp, Charts & Data Development) described Warner's decision to stagger the release of "Music" in various formats over two weeks (maxi-CD and vinyl one week, cassette and CD the next) as "a move that could be considered either unusual or genius."

It turned out to be the latter: in the Sept. 16, 2000 issue (which opened with a massive four-page spread celebrating the song's ascent to the top spot), Billboard described "a phenomenal week at retail" that helped push "Music" to No. 1, and gave M her best one-week sales total of the Nielsen SoundScan era for a single at the time. The hour-long maxi-CD, in particular, was key to the single's success. Boasting a slew of remixes from cutting-edge DJs and producers selected by Madonna, the maxi-CD helped double down on her dance audience, accounting for a whopping 60,500 of the 62,500 units that constituted the song's first week total. ("I'm finding it quite difficult to think of another maxi-CD that has scanned that many units in a week," Pietroluongo noted at the time).


One of those remixes came from a young Tracy Young, fresh off playing M's 2000 wedding to Guy Ritchie (incidentally, her remix of Madonna's Madame X track "I Rise" made her the first woman to win a Grammy for best remixed recording, non-classical just this year). Speaking to Billboard in the Sept. 22, 2000, issue, Young zeroed in on the real secret to Music's success, beyond release dates and remixes: Madonna herself. "I could go on and on about Madonna," Young said. "She's a risk-taker, she believes in musical expression, and she's a woman operating in a man's world. Throughout it all, she has remained her own being and has proved that anything is possible."


Twenty years later, "Music" still stands as Madonna's last record to top the Hot 100 -- as Madonna herself pointed out in a no-prisoners speech at Billboard's 2016 Women In Music event, radio is far from friendly to women north of 40. But if the song does end up being the final No. 1 in an incalculably influential career whose reverberations are still being felt in pop culture, well, you could do a lot worse than to go out on a high this deliriously danceable and endearingly goofy. Whether you're a rebel or a card-carrying member of the bourgeoise, "Music" still makes the people come together.