Let me say first and foremost that I love the song "Ghost Town" by Madonna. I recently heard it on the stereo system while waiting impatiently for a flat white to be served up at a Second Cup near Bloor and Spadina, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the World. I knew it was Madonna immediately, but, amazingly, had not heard it or anything else from her latest album, Rebel Heart. Then again, I have spent most of the year on the move: Looking for a job, interviewing for a job, waiting to get a job, starting a job, learning a job, etc., etc., etc. So no small wonder that I missed this musical gem.
I won't say this is what Madonna is known for doing best, the lush, heartbreaking ballad. Nonetheless, I personally think it is the sort of song she is excels at doing, this sort of moody, melodious ballad that touches and unsettles you. Like "Bad Girl" or "What It Feels Like for a Girl." It's the sort of thing she doesn't get enough credit for, the type of song in which she turns pop into art, for a brief, wondrous moment.
Oh, she gets more respect for her fierce "Bitch, I'm Madonna" attitude-filled videos and songs, but I've followed Madge for over 30 years now, enjoyed her music even before "Borderline" and "Lucky Star" opened all those doors and windows years ago, used to dream about being her friend, tolerated the undeserved hype around her appearance in Desperately Seeking Susan, still hear "Like a Virgin" in my head on a regular basis while strolling around in neoclassical settings on sun-dappled days (which happens more often than you might realize), and have even been known to compare her singing to that of Agnetha Fältskog (the plaintive-voiced goddess to whom I devote all my prayers) in, for example, "You'll See" or "Ghost Town," no small praise that . . . and I think she deserves major props for this aspect of her art.
And yet . . . this video do sucketh, in my humble opinion. Nuclear holocaust is so 1983, for pity's sake. And a cameo by Terence Howard? Puh-leez. He's the actor I like least in Empire, so much so that I was really hoping he (or rather his character) would die at the end of season 1.
I don't mean to unduly criticize Madonna. My opinion is that most music videos bite the proverbial big one nowadays. There may have been a very brief golden age (or at least a bronze or iron age) of music video in the early '80s and since then, with rare exception, it's been women gyrating exotically or rubbing themselves erotically, guys looking earnest and sensitive when they are neither, and overwrought versions of cannibalized pop cultural touchstones that I don't give a rat's patoot about anyway. Mad Max meets a bunch of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars references, not to forget Game of Thrones and whatever else TV show I don't pay any attention to. Just add video hoes and super fly gangstas.
I blame myself in part for not caring anymore. I mean, if it doesn't happen on an Australian or South African soap opera these days, or maybe Empire or Nashville, I can't be arsed to know.
But more than anything, I blame Madonna.
Sister Christian, you got us into this iconographical mess sometime around the time of "Like a Prayer" and "Express Yourself." It's about damned time that you got us out of it. Get Guy Ritchie on the phone stat. He needs some inspiration himself after The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Just don't mention Swept Away, and y'all will be fine.
