Pitchfork's 200 Best Albums of The 80's : Madonna rules

[WarrenThanksYouAll 15,920]

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/

She's the artist with most entries (3) after Prince (4). 

#115 Like A Virgin 

#78 Like A Prayer 

#16 Madonna 

[Shego 36,847]

The True Blue sabotage. LAP is better than selftitled, period.

[Guest]

Not Madonna being significantly higher than LAP. They better reevaluate their flop opinions  

[SeekingThrill 10,035]

Like A Prayer should have had the highest spot.

True Blue deserved to be there, more than Like A Virgin.

[SeekingThrill 10,035]

The B-52’s - Wild Planet

ABBA - The Visitors

Cyndi Lauper - She’s So Unusual

Tina Turner - Private Dancer

Duran Duran - Rio

Neneh Cherry - Raw Like Sushi

David Bowie - Let’s Dance

Pet Shop Boys - Actually

Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel of Love

Fleetwood Mac - Tango in the Night

Tears for Fears - Songs From the Big Chair

Depeche Mode - Music for the Masses

Grace Jones - Nightclubbing

Kate Bush - The Sensual World

U2 - The Joshua Tree

Sinéad O’Connor - The Lion and the Cobra

Sade - Stronger Than Pride

Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden

Sade - Diamond Life

The Cure - Disintegration

Kate Bush - Hounds of Love

[SeekingThrill 10,035]

LIKE A VIRGIN

Like a Virgin caught Madonna in a transitional moment. She was only a year removed from the effervescent electro-pop of her debut, and singles like “Dress You Up” and “Angel” revisited that sound with a little more polish from producer Nile Rodgers. Her voice was still developing, so she sold ballads like her cover of “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” with raw emotion rather than vocal power. And the soulful “Shoo-Bee-Doo” hinted at the genre exercises that would pepper every Madonna album from here on out. She was an unfinished product, but the rough edges were charming rather than sloppy.

Like a Virgin would be a worthy sophomore album if it stopped there, but it’s special because it also boasts the two songs that made Madonna a brilliant and purposeful provocateur, equally adept with irony and melody. “Material Girl” is a bratty celebration of rich boys and fancy toys that doubles as a send-up of Reagan-era materialism, complete with nasal spoiled-princess affectation and dumb-hunk backing vocals. And the indelible title track laid down the blueprint for the virgin-whore dichotomy she’d spend the next three decades exploring; she dominated water-cooler conversations the morning after the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, where she took the stage solo and gyrated all over her wedding veil. Madonna knew how to get people to listen from the very beginning. Like a Virgin proved she could get them talking, too. –Jamieson Cox

 

LIKE A PRAYER

By the end of the 1980s, Madonna had positioned herself as one of most important pop icons of the decade—if not the century—through an irreproachable string of hit records. And with her fourth studio album, the brash and bold Like a Prayer, she reshaped the role of “pop star” once again. The clip for the title track, which features a field of burning crosses and sexualized imagery of Catholic saints, pissed off Pepsi enough to drop her as a sponsor, and the Catholic church itself all but officially boycotted her record-breaking Blond Ambition Tour the following year. But Like a Prayer is much more than tabloid blasphemy: “Till Death Do Us Part” and the Prince co-written “Love Song” are surprisingly emotional accounts of her divorce from actor Sean Penn, while the heartrending “Oh Father,” chronicling her experience with paternal neglect, reveals more about Madonna’s interior life than any of her previous songs. Balanced between extremely public and shockingly intimate, Like a Prayer is the record where Madonna not only earned her crown as the Queen of Pop, but rightfully established herself as the Mother of Reinvention. –Cameron Cook

 

MADONNA

After the New York City disco rush of the 1970s died, a hustling Madonna pushed her demos around downtown hangouts until she heard the word “yes.” A dancer and Dunkin Donuts employee with her eyes set on global domination, she got a deal with Sire Records and wasn’t going to let anyone tell her what to do. What on earth was she wearing? Why did she sound like Minnie Mouse? And wasn’t dancing over? Never mind: If Madonna said it, Madonna got it.

She kicked off a new disco revolution and wrote most of the club tracks on this self-titled debut herself. The cover bears witness to the gaze of an unstoppable future superstar, and with the triple-punch opening of “Lucky Star,” “Borderline,” and “Burning Up,” she set the shimmying pace for a decade dripping in synths, drum machines, and sex. The ’80s music industry may be renowned for excess in both time and money, but Madonna benefits from sounding rushed, coming over like a heady stint on a lit-up dancefloor and setting a benchmark for the decade’s chart pop. More than that, as a forthright statement by a 24-year-old woman singing about her own experience of relationships, it opened doors for swathes of big-haired female stars. –Eve Barlow

 

[Brightflower 19,304]

No True Blue? And on what planet is her debut better than two of the most iconic albums of her career? Cancelled.