Fifteen Years...."Quicker Than A Ray of Light"

Tomorrow, March 2nd, 2013, marks fifteen years since I first heard Madonna’s Ray of Light, a day before its official U.S. release. I do not know if any words can convey how highly anticipated this album was by her fans, nor how much excitement it generated in those early years of internet buzz. In 2012, I honored its fourteenth anniversary with a commemorative post, featuring my memories of that especially bright spot in Madonna’s career as well as YouTube clips of alternate, extended, and instrumental versions of the tracks that comprised her most celebrated record. This year, I thought I would once again employ the services of YouTube to provide further insight into “The Ray of Light Era” and Madonna’s creative process. For those who can relate to my nostalgia, as well as those who have never seen these TV appearances before, here are some of my favorite Madonna interviews, performances, and awards ceremonies from February 1998 through February 1999. That this represents only a portion of the ROL press tour speaks to just how busy Madonna kept herself during the twelve months that would redefine her music career and elevate her legend.

The weekend before the release of Ray of Light, MTV broadcast a slew of videos and vintage TV specials, along with this episode of UltraSound. It featured not only an interview on the set of Madonna's "Frozen" music video but also a fascinating, truly unprecedented look at Madonna in the recording studio.

Shortly after the release of Ray of Light, Madonna made her second of three memorable appearances on her BFF's The Rosie O'Donnell Show. It was the only time she ever performed on the show, but it's Madonna and Rosie's hilarious yoga session that makes this one my favorite episode! 

 

Madonna sat down with Oprah Winfrey for the second time in May 1998 in one of her most relaxed and entertaining interviews. It was the only time she performed on Oprah, delivering the first-ever televised performance of "Ray of Light" and, to date, the ONLY live performance of "Little Star". 

Madonna made her only appearance at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards in 1998. I'm not sure if she was there because Rosie O'Donnell was hosting, because she was now a Mom, or because she was honoring the "tween" market that was digging her new material. I have to admit, that day, I was sorely jealous of the generation born after me: I SO wished Madonna made this appearance when I was still young enough to be a Nickelodeon viewer! 

A classic interview taken on the set of Madonna's iconic "Ray of Light" video, which marked her first collaboration with friend and Swedish film genius Jonas Akerlund. Akerlund would go on to direct her "Music" and "American Life" videos as well as the Grammy-nominated backstage documentary I'm Going To Tell You A Secret and the Grammy-winning The Confessions Tour: Live From London. 

A short but sweet and especially memorable pre-taped message that was broadcast to celebrate Tony Bennett's fifty years in show business during a live-by-request TV concert the legendary crooner performed in 1998. Bennett, a vocal and avowed Madonna fan, had been begging Madonna to record a duet for years. Fingers crossed that that dream collaboration comes true one day!

Click to hear Madonna's message to Tony!

In September 1998, once again, Madonna stole the show at The MTV Video Music Awards. The show opened with what remains her ONLY televised performance of "Shanti/Ashtangi" and ended with superfan Geri Halliwell (making her first post-Spice Girls appearance in the U.S.) handing Madonna the trophy for Video of the Year. Excerpted here are the opening performance of "Shanti" and "Ray of Light", with the latter song featuring Lenny Kravitz and many of the dancers featured in the video. I was quite thrilled to find that two pre-show segments now live on in YouTube Land: a hilarious promo with Ben Stiller and Guy Oseary, and one of Madonna's last sit-down interviews with Kurt Loder. The interview is especially memorable because Madonna reveals that she doesn't know who Jennifer Love Hewett is....which made it particularly awkward when Hewett presented Madonna with an award later that night! 

Madonna made a splash at another awards ceremony shortly after the VMAs, when she gave her only live performance in America of "The Power of Good-Bye" and scooped up a handful of trophies at The 1998 VH1 Fashion & Music Awards. Madonna was being honored for her ever-changing appearance, including a lifetime achievement award from Donatella Versace for her immortal stylishness. So it should come as no surprise that Madonna wore three different outfits over the course of the night. Nor should it come as a surprise that her briefly infamous Hindi-inspired apparel was spoofed when Joan Allen portrayed Madonna the following weekend on Saturday Night Live. 

Madonna gave her only UK performance of "The Power Of Good-Bye" on this 1998 appearance on Top of the Pops--quite a stark contrast to her TOTP debut singing "Holiday" in 1984! It was one of the last times she ever performed the song live, having scrapped plans to sing it the following December at The 1998 Billboard Music Awards and seemingly barring it from every subsequent tour. Fingers crossed it finds its way into a future setlist, as it remains one of Madonna's most gorgeous and affecting ballads. 

(For those of us in the U.S. blocked from seeing the above performance, here's another live rendition from Fall '98!)

Madonna finally appeared on Larry King Live in January 1999, spending an hour discussing her life and career. The interview got off to an odd start, with King applauding Madonna for being so brave as to release her first album minus a last name (?), but despite a string of familiar questions the rapport between King and The Queen is warm, funny, and ultimately revealing. (Much to my disappointment, it appears only the first half of this interview is on YouTube.)

Had Madonna ever attended The Grammys prior to 1999? She had been nominated for eight Grammys, including Record of the Year for "Like A Prayer" and "Best Long Form Music Video" for her Blond Ambition Tour LaserDisc, the latter being her lone Grammy win for the first sixteen years of her career. I know she didn't show up in 1996 when Bedtime Stories was her first-ever album to be nominated for "Best Pop Vocal Album". But in 1999 Ray of Light would win the award in that category, the first and thus far only Madonna LP to do so. It was also the first and thus far only Madonna album ever to be nominated for "Album of the Year", which it lost to Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.  The single "Ray of Light" was Madonna's second of three (thus far) to be nominated for "Record of the Year". It lost in that category, but won the first-ever trophy for "Best Dance Recording", as well as giving Madonna her only win for "Best Short Form Music Video", a category in which she has been nominated four times. That year also marked the first time she ever performed at the Grammys and the last time she ever performed under the direction of her brother, Christopher Ciccone. As outlined in his infamous tell-all Life With My Sister Madonna, Christopher Ciccone had been Madonna's closest and most frequent collaborator from her New York days through directing The Girlie Show, which he acclaimed in his book as the respective peak in both of their careers. After The Girlie Show, however, his collaboration seems to have been limited to directing her only live performance of "Bedtime Story", at The 1995 Brit Awards, and her only live performance of "Nothing Really Matters", at The 1999 Grammy Awards. One hopes that their collaborations won't end there. In addition to that performance and Madonna's triumphant win of the "Best Pop Vocal Album" Grammy, you'll also find a snippet of Madonna's backstage flirtation with Ricky Martin. It came about shortly after Martin's performance that night of "La Copa De La Vida" preceded a Grammy win and instant superstardom. It lead to the collaboration "Cuidado Con Mi Corazon", a Madonna-William Orbit song written as a solo for Madonna but re-worked into a memorable Madonna-Martin duet for Ricky Martin's mega-successful 1999 album Ricky Martin. The final YouTube gem pairs coverage from both Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight of Madonna's post-Grammy high. It's Madonna at her giddiest and least reserved, truly as happy as she's ever been on camera. For those of us who had been on the journey with her from the album's release to the Grammys' redemption, it was euphoria as infectious as it was thoroughly deserved.

Origins of My Love: Happy Madonna Day 2012!

I remember the first time that I ever saw Madonna vogue. It wasn’t 1989, when she performed “Express Yourself” at the VMAs, nor was it in 1990, when “Vogue” was all over MTV. I was intrigued by Madonna in the 80s, and fell in love with her as Breathless Mahoney in 1990, but my obsession with Diana Ross blotted out all other singers for several years. It wasn’t until 1991, a few months before I film my own tribute, that I saw a segment of Madonna and Oliver Crumes Jr. vogue-ing in the iconic David Fincher music video. It was the morning after the American Music Awards, and someone on the news showed a clip. My mind was immediately blown: it was electrifying, the most incredible dancing I had ever seen, and I simply could not fathom anything being cooler. 

I was with my Mom when she rented The Immaculate Collection on video for me. She told the bespectacled, curly-haired teenager behind the video store counter that I wanted to learn how to vogue. I can still hear his one word response: “Ouch”. When my Mom subsequently asked if there was anything on the videotape that would be too racy for a nine year old, he said that the only objectionable bit was a moment where one of Madonna’s dancers put his head under her skirt for several seconds. Yes folks, it’s true: my Mom subsequently had to screen the “Vogue” video and VMA performance before I could watch. But perhaps the totally life-changing impact of The Immaculate Collection videotape was underlined by the fact it was, literally, “Mom-approved”.

I have written before about the role that Madonna played in my life during middle school, and how this forever deepened my already great love of her as both an artist and a human being. My junior high experience began in Fall 1994 with the release of Madonna's Bedtime Stories and the broadcast of the FOX TV movie Madonna: Innocence Lost, and it ended in Spring 1996 with the completion of Evita and the announcement of Madonna's pregnancy. This paper was written at the beginning of that era, around the time when "Secret" and that terrific Kurt Loder special No Bull:The Making of "Take A Bow" were getting heavy rotation on MTV. I wrote this short composition as an assignment for a class called "General Music". It was meant to provide a few biographical details about a particular musical artist, which we would read to the class before one of the artist's songs would be played. I think we had to analyze the structure of the song, or something technical like that, but I only remember writing the intro: it was the first of many essays about the greatness of Madonna. 

As would be the case with many of my subsequent compositions about Madonna, up to this day, it occasionally reads more like a press release than a school assignment....and I'm okay with that. Most of the details came from the coffee table book Madonna by Marie Cahill, the first book I ever bought about her and still my 2nd favorite after Matthew Rettenmund's peerless Encylopedia Madonnica. The only other Madonna book I may have had at that time was Christopher Andersen's bestselling 1991 biography, and my only other sources would have been information I'd picked up from TV broadcasts and a hilariously dated 1991 videotape that I believe was, like the Andersen bio, titled Madonna: Unauthorized!. I mention this because, in the seventh grade, I had yet to learn about in-text citations. I also made a few grammatical mistakes, but I'm leaving in all of the typos so as to maintain the purity of my thirteen year old voice. 

My writing has changed a great deal since I wrote this, but my love for Madonna remains the same. To celebrate both her birthday AND twenty-five years since the release of the film, song, soundtrack album, and world tour by the name of Who's That Girl, here is the first time I ever wrote about Madonna. 

                                 MADONNA

Madonna. Almost everyone pictures something in his or her minds after hearing that word. Some may see a young woman in an ivory white, lace two piece on-stage belting out tunes like her hit single Into the Groove, or her classics Material Girl and Like A Virgin. Others may picture a  with a long black dress puffing a cigar on Late Show with David Letterman. Though some are positive and some are negative, many people immediately see a snapshot of the world famous superstar upon hearing her name. Madonna’s career had been speculated by critics to be a failure in the long run. Yet since 1983, when these comments were made about her first album, called Madonna, the singer has released 8 more albums, done special benefit concerts, done 4 tours, starred in 12 motion pictures (One of which was MADE before her success), and become both an international superstar and a legendary culture icon.

            Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone was born on August 16^th, 1958. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she was the first child in what would become a family of six children. At the tender age of 7, Madonna suffered the tragedy of losing her mother, also named Madonna, to breast cancer. Their father went through depression during this period after the loss, and since he couldn’t balance a full time job and family life, for a short time he was forced to send the children to live with family, a choice he didn’t want to make. Luckily, the family was brought back together, but when they returned, the housekeeper was, surprisingly, their stepmother, and the couple later had two more children. Throughout her life, Madonna says she has had difficulty dealing with her mother passing away. She also quotes that her 1989 single Oh Father was an “attempt to embrace and accept” the loss of her mother.

            The song I have chosen to play, Who’s That Girl?, is from the film of the same name, starring Madonna and Griffin Dunne. Though the film has Madonna in the lead role and a mild resemblance to the classic Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant comedy Bringing Up Baby, the film was crucified by critics and was a bomb at the box office. Madonna did not need to worry about that very much, though. The film was originally going to be called Slammer, but Madonna was having a challenging time coming up with a title song to go with this. Lucky for Madonna, the title became Who’s That Girl?, and the song was a hit. In fact, Madonna’s second tour became The Who’s That Girl Tour. The international tour made up to $500,000 for each show. It has been said that Madonna attempted to make the show entertaining to everyone,  since stadiums where shows take place can separate the audience from he or she who is on stage, by, as Marie Cahill calls it, “making the show visually exciting”. Now, you can hear the song sung that in 1987 was sung to audiences throughout the world. 

Happy Birthday Madonna & Happy Madonna Day To You All! XO

Vogue Boy : Year One

One year and 1.5 million views later, I’m still in a state of astonishment when I force myself to fully appreciate that one of the most-viewed videos of my childhood has become a tiny but permanent little piece of the internet. In the original form, remixed videos, excerpted stills, or that wildly popular .GIF file that keeps getting reposted on Tumblr, The Vogue Boy just keeps on dancing. 

The truth is I don’t have much interest in viral videos myself. "Vogue Boy" was purely my ABBA-esque attempt to steal the spotlight through a means that no one is inclined to take seriously and then to deliver pop art that people would have to take seriously. I thought that I could launch a screenwriting career with a viral video in much the same way that ABBA thought they could be taken seriously by winning the EuroVision song contest. It took the string of stellar singles that followed “Waterloo” for ABBA to reach their goal. That's why I remain optimistic my video will one day be recalled as the unexpected start of a career defined by deliciously clever works of FUN.

The Oomph Girl Herself: Miss Ann Sheridan

I appropriated that name “Vogue Boy” not as a nod to Madonna's  “Material Girl”, but rather as an homage to The Oomph Girl, Ann Sheridan. (I thought that referring to my inner child as The Oomph Boy made me sound a bit TOO precocious!) Otherwise, I might have coined “The Vogue Kid”, because I hate to ascribe a gender to my identity. In fact, I can’t say I haven’t been tempted to start a rumor that I’m really an androgynous female, as on an unconscious level that is how I have always thought of myself. Better judgment prevailed, for the significance that that video ended up having to many gay male viewers in particular warmed my heart and truly changed my life.

I’m forever grateful to the hundreds of people who left comments on my Vimeo and Facebook pages. In the year since, whenever I need to lift my spirits, I just scroll through and try to convince myself that the words they are writing were actually written to and about me. It was also a unique and massive thrill to be not only discovered but posted about by so many bloggers. I was featured on some of my favorite blogs, such as Boy Culture, GangsterSaysRelax, Wicked Gay Blog, and Andrew Sullivan's The Dish, as well as DListed, The Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Towleroad, DallasVoice, HyperVocal, The Daily What, The Bulge Report, The Kiss 102.5 FM Blog, MostWatchedVideos, Jezebel, PudWhacker's Madonna Scrapbook, PureJuice, A.V. Club, Good Culture, and PerezHilton. The video was broadcast on the syndicated series The Daily Buzz, and an excerpt of it was shown on Anderson Cooper 360 and in Jessica Frech's 2012 music video, "Dance."

DJ Paul V gave me the opportunity to contribute my growing-up story to his incredible project The Born This Way Blog and Megan Johnson interviewed me about the video for her blog The Assistant. Perhaps the most exciting outcome of all was the clip's use in video projects and art exhibitions, the first of which was Gerald Hubert's "Beauty's Where You Find It" at The POParazzi Gallery in Roanoke, VA in Summer 2011. The video will be given its first UK presentation as part of "Mistaken Identities", an exhibition by Marcus Keating and The New Happiness that is being presented at Modern Art Oxford from June 8-10th, 2012 as part of Oxford Pride. "Vogue Boy" inspired the song "Video Boy" by Swedish artist Cristian Dinamarca and the single artwork for the song "Ecstasy" by Japanese artist Masculin. 

Since the video was downloadable for many months, numerous people uploaded it to YouTube. The video was viewed tens of thousands of times on various YouTube channels before Warner Music Group pulled most of them--including a fabulous tribute by a Japanese fan that paired my video alongside Madonna's original. However, they left up an assortment of fan videos made by people who put their own spin on my home movie. Now, enjoy this trio of my favorites. They are all brilliant, and they all make me feel more special than I can put into words. In the event the people who made them should ever read this post: THANK YOU for the smile that you put on my face by making this clip into amazing new works of art.

Now, out of respect to those who made the original version of this video a viral hit, allow me to link you back via one of my favorite Madonna quotes:

"Ain't nothin' like the REAL thing." 

;)