LISTENING 2 MADONNA: Who’s That Girl
How Madonna's musical "holy trinity" - gender, globalization, spirituality - transformed pop
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"What does Madonna mean to you?" It's a deceptively complex question that producer Reanna Cruz poses to start our special three-part series on pop music's most successful female artist. For some, she's the virgin/vamp provocateur who defined '80s pop. For others, she's the boundary-pushing sonic experimentalist of the '90s. Or maybe you know her as the self-reflective artist of the 2000s.
Even her name carries layers of meaning - Madonna, the mononym that puts her in rarefied company with Prince and Cher, is both her given name and a loaded religious reference. By carrying the name of Christianity's most revered feminine figure, the Virgin Mary (often called the Madonna), she sets up a bawdy contrast that she'll spend her career exploring.
This tension appears immediately in her earliest hits; here's an artist named after the ultimate symbol of feminine purity using that very name to push cultural boundaries around sexuality and power. It's no accident that her second album was called Like a Virgin. That "like a" creates crucial distance from the religious Madonna while playing with the very expectations her name evokes.
This week, Cruz guides us through what they call "Madonna's musical holy trinity," three fundamental elements that shaped Madonna's revolutionary approach to pop: gender, globalization, and spirituality. For the first part of our three part series we're diving into how Madonna used music to reshape pop's presentation of gender across multiple phases of musical maturation.
Phase 1: Juvenile Girlhood
From her very first hit, Madonna was already crossing boundaries - literally. "Borderline" might sound like a bubbly '80s love song, but listen to that restless bassline constantly pushing against the beat, creating a forward momentum that mirrors the narrator's desire to break free. This musical border-crossing would become Madonna's signature move.
Take "Like a Virgin." On the surface, it's the ultimate innocent pop song. But Madonna's vocal performance tells a different story. She shifts between "Betty Boopism" in the verses (that exaggerated, breathy head voice) to a more knowing chest voice in the pre-chorus that sets up her unforgettable chorus: “Hey! Like a virgin, touched for the very first time.” That infamous "hey!" isn't just a hook, it's a wink to listeners who get the joke. Even "Material Girl," often mistaken for a celebration of '80s excess, subverts expectations through Madonna's Kraftwerk-like robotic delivery. The bright, dance-friendly Nile Rodgers production creates an intentional tension with lyrics that are more critique than celebration.
Phase 2: Empowered Young Adulthood
By 1986's True Blue, Madonna was ready to shed the "girl" persona both visually and vocally. "Papa Don't Preach" introduced a completely new Madonna: gone was the coy head voice, replaced by a lower, more measured delivery that cracked with real emotion. When her voice breaks on the word "please," it's a vulnerability that paradoxically shows her strength. She's pleading but has already "made up my mind."
This new musical maturity reached its apex with "Express Yourself," which inverted the material girl narrative Madonna had previously critiqued. The song's production builds from its commanding opening "come on girls" through multiple layers of instrumentation, each section amplifying its message of empowerment. Most tellingly, the bridge presents a complete reversal of "Borderline's" power dynamic. Instead of the narrator being pushed to emotional limits, now it's the man who "might regret it" and end up "back on his knees." Released in 1989 during the early years of third-wave feminism, "Express Yourself" showcases Madonna's ability to channel cultural movements into mainstream pop through specific musical choices.
Phase 3: Subversive Womanhood
The '90s brought Madonna's most dramatic reinvention yet. "Justify My Love" announced this new era through its rejection of pop convention, replacing traditional verse-chorus structure with spoken word delivery over a dark, hypnotic beat. Her vocal approach shifted from the assertive belting of "Express Yourself" to a seductive whisper, marking a new phase of confident adult sexuality in pop music.
The Erotica album deepened this experimentation while revealing new vulnerability beneath its provocative surface. "Bad Girl" in particular showcases the complexity of Madonna's evolved sound. The song's chorus intentionally avoids melodic resolution until its final moments, musically expressing the narrator's inability to find satisfaction or escape self-destructive patterns. The lyrics "Bad girl, drunk by six, kissing someone else's lips" present a darker take on the sexual freedom Madonna had previously celebrated, while the production's minor-key sophistication marks a departure from her early pop sound.
This evolution culminated in 2000's "What It Feels Like for a Girl," which uses minimalist production and ambient textures to create what might be Madonna's most introspective moment. Opening with a spoken word sample about gender's double standards, the track strips away the glossy production of her earlier work in favor of lo-fi electronic elements that center her questioning lyrics. The chorus's simple repetition of "Do you know what it feels like for a girl?" gains power through its stark musical setting, transforming what could have been a "Material Girl" style pop song into a meditation on gender constraints. It's a "bitter pill," the realization that for all of Madonna's boundary-pushing, some limitations remain frustratingly fixed.
Madonna Changed Pop’s Gender Politics
What makes Madonna's exploration of gender so powerful is how each phase built on the last, creating an ever more sophisticated musical language for expressing femininity in pop. She moved from coding subversive messages into bright dance-pop, to crafting anthems of explicit empowerment, to ultimately deconstructing pop's entire approach to gender through experimental production and structure. Through it all, specific musical choices - strategic vocal timbre, sophisticated chord progressions, innovative production techniques - added layers of meaning to her cultural commentary.
Join us Wednesday as we explore the second part of Madonna's musical trinity: her revolutionary approach to global sounds and culture. The material girl's world was about to get a lot bigger.
Listening 2 Madonna is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere you get podcasts