I have a not so strange confession to make. I am completely in love with Madonna’s new album M.D.N.A. Maybe because it’s been four years since Our Lady of the Dancefloor has graced us with her musical prescence (that was Hard Candy). Or maybe because I am Gaga’ed out that this album really nails it for me. The truth of the matter is that despite what anyone says, Madonna is still relevant and still matters. (All due respect to Elton John & David Furnish but when it comes to Madge, I must politely ask you, to shut the fuck up.)

     Already over a month has gone by and since the album’s release everyone has been quick to write it off as Madonna’s musical failure and dismiss the album accordingly. I disagree with this point of view. Call it personal bias, but there are a few reasons why M.D.N.A definitely deserves our undying love as a musical listening generation.

      Despite what people say or care to admit, Madonna still has her finger on the pulse on music. Listeners forget that Madonna collaborated with William Orbit shortly before Molly became a club fixture (remember Ray of Light anyone?). She had tapped into the electronic dance music scene long before it was ever fashionable to do so, and pulled it off with amazing success. In my honest opinion M.D.N.A is a careful succession from not only Ray of Light, but Confessions On a Dancefloor. She’s pinpointed some pretty amazing musical moments over the course of her albums.  

     She is the innovator, not the follower. Lady Gaga has her to thank for her career. Keeping in mind that I am a Lady Gaga fan (massive respect for anyone who can fine the humor in the infamous Oil C-untry tweet gets massive love from me), it’s easy to see what parts of Madge’s career she apes in her music as well as in her music videos. (“Alejandro” was a video mashup of “Express Yourself”, “Justify My Love” and “Like a Prayer”) No one needs to look as far as the musical stomp of “Born This Way” to really see what’s going on musically with Gaga. She makes no secret that Madonna’s influenced her, and rightfully so. Lady Gaga is a condensed version of Madonna. What took Madge the span over a few decades to do, Gaga has rolled up into just the time-span of a few years.

      Further education should point to watching Truth Or Dare, the 1990 documentary that encapsuled her  Blonde Ambition tour. Long before reality television had invaded our homes and lives, she had opened herself up to a camera crew to peel away the layers and reveal herself on and off the stage. It was a very unscripted look into a pop star that at the time that had no limits.

     I didn’t get to see Truth Or Dare until summer of 1994. I have to admit that the documentary did make me realize a few things when it came to writing. One of these was that sometimes baring your soul and channeling it through the expression of your art brings out the best results. And truthfully back then, when my writing was only for me and maybe…oh one or two people, I thought that having the connection to my writing brought out some of my best work (at the time). Long before I realized Irvine Welsh and Stephen King would become my writing influences, Madonna  was an inspiration and inadvertently an influence in my writing. She possessed an edginess and rawness in her music that not only made for great conversation amongst my friends, but she also did something that very few musicians rarely do – she created a dialogue.

     I firmly believe that creating a dialogue is important. In fact one of the reasons why I write is just that, to create a dialogue that asks questions, and makes a reader think for themselves. There are not enough people that do this nowadays. Drowned World, my first novel is a testament and a curtsey to that. It was my goal to create a dialogue where people would talk about the issues that were prevalent in the first novel, and it was successful in that respect. Madonna has always had a penchant for creating a dialogue about the things that are on her mind at the time, and there have been a lot of them. She’s had an unflinching look at sex, at homophobia, at racism and at abuse. People may not have always embraced her views, however it’s gotten people talking, and that’s what’s most important.

     We’ve also all had our Madonna moments at one point or another. One that I personally remember was in grade 12 high school. Our vocal jazz ensemble had been given “I’ll Remember” to work on. I remember at graduation looking squarely into the crowd and given the line “Outside…I was a child who could not mend a broken wing” to sing, it couldn’t have summed up a better moment of my life. For three years I was that child. It took until Grade 12 to finally put it all together, and to realize I was leaving high school and not coming back. “I’ll Remember” was in a lot of ways one of the songs that I saw close the door on the part of my life that I did not want to revisit. In addition to Oasis, that song signposted that I was about to write the next chapter of my life and in a funny, subtle way reassured me that it does get better.

      Back to Drowned World, if it wasn’t for the album Ray of Light and “Substitute for Love”, it might have been a very different novel altogether. She inspired me to write, to be explicitly honest to myself and to those people reading me for the first time. It’s a pretty fair trade, don’t you think?

     So every morning I’ll continue to don my headphones and listen to “Gang Bang” and “I’m Addicted” until my Ipod decides to be temperamental and die on me just before I make it into work. Because in fairness M.D.N.A. definitely deserves a second spin…and a third…and a fourth.

    (And Madonna if you are reading this, I love you no matter what. Marry me ha ha.)