Madonna: The Complete Guide to Her Music

by Rikky Rooksby

The indispensable consumer's guide to the music of Madonna. An album by album, track by track examination of every song released by Madonna, from the first single "Everybody" to "Music" and the present day. Includes sections on Madonna's soundtrack and compilation albums.

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1998

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because I am an avid fan of Madonna and because I was given this book by a very close friend, but had I known what I was getting myself into beforehand, I may not have bothered. I will start with what I like about the book, only because my list of likes is much shorter than my list of dislikes. Something that I like about the book is that it is a relatively organized catalog of the first twenty years of the Queen of Pop's career, covering from her self-titled debut album in 1983 to 2003's album American Life. That is, of course, seemingly a pretty handy item for any Madge fan. Something else that I like about the book is that the book's author, Rikky Rooksby, is clearly intelligent, as he often uses words (especially words related to music such as chromatic, tremolo, and so forth) of which I had to look up the meanings. Musically, Rooksby knows what he is talking about. That, however, leads me pretty directly into my dislikes. Rooksby's musical intelligence seems to prevent him from enjoying music in terms of melody, rhythm, beat, and lyrics. Instead, he focuses on aspects of production and composition (especially composition) that he construes as flaws, and his intelligence also leads to a superiority complex, as he often talks down to the reader and uses a very sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek tone that only manages to be witty half of the time, if even that. It is a major turn-off for me as a reader because humor is not funny to me when it is outrageously sarcastic and clearly demonstrative of self-importance. I am also not sure why Rooksby even wrote this book, as he does not seem to be a fan of Madonna and does not even seem to appreciate her as an artist. I am tempted to believe that he was tasked to write the book, something that I could understand if he were writing for a newspaper or a magazine, but to write a book like this that will obviously be picked up almost exclusively by fans and to use the tone that he does does not make any logical sense to me. He often, for example, says that Madonna is not capable of unifying pop music and dance music and that her attempts to do so almost always fail. He cites many tracks as being too long (a point of criticism that becomes old and tiresome before long) and also often contrasts Madonna from other artists. He, for example, says that "Promise to Try" (a masterpiece of a heartbreakingly emotional ballad found on her 1989 album) would have been better had Tori Amos written it, an irrelevant and useless opinion. Very rarely does he praise a record; he is almost always negatively critical, citing reasons such as the track being too long (as I previously stated), Madonna's voice not being strong enough for the song, the song not going anywhere and being boring, and so forth. While I do usually appreciate people who are willing to state their honest opinions, I, as I said, do not understand the purpose of writing a book like this when you are clearly not a fan. A book like this should be written by a fan for fans, since, as I said, it's probably going to be mostly fans who pick up the book. No fan wants to pick up a book like this and read about song after song and album after album being so harshly bashed. I, for example, would not bother to write a track-by-track analysis/review of a musician whom I don't like; there would simply be no constructive purpose of doing that. The book was also poorly (if at all) edited, as there are many typos, factual inaccuracies (such as incorrect years of releases), and errors such as referring to The Immaculate Collection (Madonna's 1990 collection of greatest hits) as The Immaculate Conception. There are also many inclusions of quotations by Madonna commenting on specific songs and albums, but there is nowhere in the book for the reader to find a list of sources that were used. Not only does this bother me as an English professor, it also bothers me as a Madonna fan, wanting to know where I could go for more information and/or insight. I strongly hesitate to give this book two stars, but it gets the second one due to Rooksby's impressive musical knowledge and because of its relatively good organization; aside from that, however, this is not a book that I would recommend to anyone, especially not a fellow Madonna fan.