MADONNA – "Into The Groove"

*applause*

“I’m wai-ting,” she coos at us at the beginning, as though we’ve been slow to catch up. Bearing in mind that there is a lot of Madonna – or lots of Madonnas – to get through on Popular, at this early stage here is a Madonna we all could love with her immense earrings, unshaven armpits, Elvis lips, wonderfully imperfect roots and an endearing underlying gangly awkwardness. At this point we are still able to trace Madonna back to the late days of disco, even to post-punk and No Wave, and certainly to New Pop (“Holiday” would have been unimaginable without The Lexicon Of Love). If “Like A Virgin” and “Material Girl” – yet more productions from the latter days of Chic – had already shown warning glimpses of stubborn ego, then Desperately Seeking Susan and “Into The Groove” signalled a temporary switchback. Watching Madonna interacting with and against Rosanna Arquette, effectively playing herself, you feel that for one of the rare times in her career she is genuinely happy and significantly free.

“Into The Groove” was co-written, produced and mostly played by Steve Bray, and it remains a marvel of metapop in that, although it can clearly be enjoyed and savoured on a high-grade dancefloor level – that Man Parrish electro stutter throughout, the triple salvos of emphasis in the chorus (“GET,” “BOY,” “YOUR”) – it is also one of the most sublime commentaries on the joy of music in itself, the way in which it can simultaneously absorb the body and free the soul. “Only when I’m dancing can I feel this free” might be the key pop lyric line of its era, and here, coupled with its immediate successor, “At night I lock the doors where no one else can see,” indicates the importance of music as a shelter of refuge from a belittling cold rationalist world – Travolta with his irritating family and crappy paint job who only truly exists when he is dancing. However, Madonna is also wise enough to realise that the shelter can easily become a barrier if one isn’t careful. “I’m tired of dancing here all by myself/Tonight I wanna dance with SOMEONE ELSE!”

So “Into The Groove” also represents a refractory move back into the world, approaching it, signalling that the singer’s central love of music, if expressed with the right articulacy and honesty, can reach out and be touched by whoever needs to touch her – “Live out your fantasy here with me” – and the final confident and ecstatic affirmation of “Now I know you’re mine!” shows that life has been reclaimed. This is one of the highest and noblest things that music, or any art form, can do, or at least act as a catalyst towards. In that locked room, through those grooves, she finds herself, and by transmitting her feelings outwards, she enables her Other to unlock that Rochester door and find her.

How phenomenally “Into The Groove” succeeded in this aim can quickly be demonstrated by Ciccone Youth’s “Into The Groove(y)” single from the following year; initially one feels that Sonic Youth are applying the AMM treatment, i.e. painting abstract noises atop the song (in their early mid-sixties days, AMM had the habit of playing contemporary hits such as “Barbara Ann” or “Lightning Strikes” at ear-splitting volume and then attempting to drown them out with their own strategems), turning it into a de Kooning canvas with a touch of Tackhead (those dentist’s drill drum samples at the beginning and end) – but then, via Mike Watt’s lovingly nerdy lead vocal, we realise it is a homage of love, and there is an electrifying and affecting moment halfway through the second chorus when Madonna’s original record, playing in perfect tandem with the band, suddenly comes into the picture to act as harmony with Watt’s lead, and we imagine him, in his locked bedroom, thrashing away at his starter guitar and singing along with the record, trying to keep up, putting the record to the very test which it celebrates. So the Ciccone Youth record closes the circle by confirming the original’s affirmation – and Madonna herself seems to have approved of it.

In the end, of course, “Into The Groove” signalled the triumph of Madonna’s will; boosted by Live Aid, she repeated the Frankie feat of keeping herself off number one as the revived “Holiday” swept back up to number two – and with “Crazy For You” still in the lower reaches of the Top 20, she was the first female artist to have three singles in the charts simultaneously since Ruby Murray thirty years previously. There was the uncomfortable moment at the climax of her Live Aid performance where she suddenly exclaims: “Sing it to the world – NOW I KNOW YOU’RE MINE!” and there was the palpable feeling that she did not mean that metaphorically. But that mindset(list) can be explored another time. For now, celebrate “Into The Groove” for its uncomplicated, elemental and superbly effective celebration of what music is capable of generating in a human being.

That’s a really interesting idea – How would we feel about this record if it wasn’t by Madonna? The much-vaunted charisma always largely eludes me – I sense hard work and opportunism, but never much of an enticing or intriguing personality. Which isn’t something that I’d ever say about, say, Elvis or Michael Jackson, and Madonna is clearly in that order of stardom.

And yet, ‘Into The Groove’ would certainly be lesser without her, although a tremendous disco single. I certainly loved this when I was 12, and haven’t gone off it at any point. The pull of the dancefloor and the release of dancing are evoked as well here as anywhere.

To Tom’s ‘she was already massive..’ point I’d just add that m. simply hadn’t put a foot wrong musically, video-wise, or any other wise since ‘Holiday’. In effect, she’d be immaculate for at least another year or two until some first wobbles around Who’s that girl? and the You can dance remix album. It was an incredible hot streak, one that still genuinely inspires.

Anyhow, as for this track, have loved it to death so almost can’t hear it now. I guess 9 does feel about right: ITG has to fall below Wuthering Heights/Whole lotta love-level blow-my-mind genius-ness, but it’s close.
I recently discovered thanks to youtube a track that evidently provided a good bit of ITG’s musical template: YMO’s 1000 Knives, e.g. here (esp., say, beginning 2 minutes in). Evidently that confirms Tom’s point that on one level ITG could have been any disco dolly’s record. But Madonna, the hardest working woman in show business at this point (and probably still), got it and deserved it all. Great stuff.

10. Absolute 10. Everything good and fun about pop music in the ’80s is summed up on this single, pretty much. “Borderline” has a little more resonance for me personally, but I’ll take this one whenever it’s offered.

and congrats on the halfway mark, Tom.

@#15. What’s better and unbunnyable? Ultimately Lucky Star is for me the more complete package…. a ripper of a song, and then one of the ultimate videos. *Here* was someone who was *really* ready for her close-up. The whole thing was aerobic but also intimate; danceable but intense and almost psychotically transfixingly sexy. It was like discovering a new energy source.

And, on a strictly personal level, the moment when the piano comes in at the end of the original mix of Holiday is a more perfect dancefloor memory for me than ITG’s grand final bridge. But….obviously these are very fine hairs I’m splitting here – all of these records are enormously pleasurable stepping-stones in as fine a pop career as we’ll ever see.

Madonna on everyhit:

Your query has produced more than 50 results… displaying the first 50. Please be more specific.

In any event, I’d been really conflicted by “Lucky Star” (which I now like quite well) since Madonna was appropriating punkette regalia for girly-girl purposes, it seemed, and she was being really sexy, but I didn’t think she had the right to the regalia if she was just going to attract the world without also upending it. Oh yeah, and she was being really sexy.

With this one, I was on more familiar ground, ’cause it was a good dance track but it also scared me. Predatory indeed. I did not believe I could prove my love to her, if it came down to that.

I had to walk into a club and see a whole bunch of twenty-year olds dancing to this track to really grasp what a good song it was. I can’t explain that moment, since I’ve walked into clubs and seen people dancing to songs plenty of times, why this particular moment delivered this one. Was a strange, futuristic club where an indie woman’s band with two basses was booked, and someone somehow got me onto the guest list, and I didn’t quite get what this band was doing in this club, but walking into the room full of dancers, all this steel above them, and “Into The Groove” seemed to fit and create everything, the steel and the motion.

I’d loved “Everybody” early; it was a terrific New York song. I once saw a girl in a body-building competition doing her routine to it, “Dance and sing, get up and do your thing.” It’s still my favorite Madonna song, but it really was an everybody song, in that some unknown singer other than the unknown Madonna (1982) could have pulled it off too. Same is true of my second favorite (and unbunnied) Madonna, “Justify My Love” (though only Madonna could have taken that track to number two). Whereas I agree with Billy that “Into The Groove” would be lesser without her. But what she brings to it is insistence and even chill. I generally prefer lots of the ’80s freestyle and girl twirl one shots/three shots to Madonna – Shannon and Judy Torres and all, for their heat.

(By the way, when I did my album of the ’80s list in March ’90, Stacey Q’s Hard Machine was number two. I had Madonna’s You Can Dance at number six: a compilation, dance remixes.)

It’s much of a muchness, with the Madonna songs I prefer being liable to change from hour to hour, but I’d say that on a par or higher are: “Deeper And Deeper”, “Bad Girl”, “Die Another Day”, “Justify My Love”, “Like A Prayer”, “Open Your Heart”…maybe “Take A Bow”, “Secret Garden”, “In This Life”, “Dress You Up”, “Burning Up” omg I love this bad bitch so much.

Lex, you only brushed the bunny once there.

It is a compelling record – song seems the wrong word for it somehow – one that, like the red shoes, forces you to dance.
As mentioned in previous threads I was working on a summer camp near Toledo, Ohio at the time this was a hit (on both sides of the atlantic) and it was interesting to see how some of my American co-workers – many of whom were dyed-in-the-wool ROCK fans – responded so positively to this – largely because the whole package of image and sound was so compelling – the post-punk attitude and look may well have sugared the pill of what was effectively the disco revival. Her success in the US Pop charts (rather than just in the dance charts) also seemed to allow them to afford her legitimacy.
I don’t think any other woman in Pop has maintained such a high profile AND artistically successful career as Madonna. We are halfway through Tom’s project and she is still as likely to produce a number 1 now as she was then. She has managed to do so by removing from the foreground most of the qualities that were previously associated with women performers – vulnerable/confessional lyrics rooted in a stable/authentic musical identity. Even songs which did appear confessional were less authentic than they may have first appeared.
Being based in dance music allows her the opportunity to change style in a way that seems innovative yet not as fractured as say Dylan or Bowie changing from one genre to another.
For me Madonna embodies the triumph of the will – summed up in her phrase Blonde Ambition – rather than channeling some essential outpouring of her soul. The imperative mode of the lyrics to Into the Groove reflect the commanding role which has assured her continuing success. It’s easy to submit to that will and let yourself go – even if I can’t warm to her as much as I can to other performers.

Brilliant record to reach the halfway stage.
I stumbled across Popular on a search engine just before Christmas last year and am very glad for that.
Have fun those of you attending this weekend.

and you can dance
for inspiration

yes, congrats tom! what a fantastic project, you’ve helped me to discover most of these songs all over again.

madonna here regains the Dancing Queen momentum of her early work after several “gimmick” singles (“like a virgin” and “material girl”, though these are still brilliant pop songs) meant to quantify her personality for the public. once we knew who she was and what we could expect from her, she went on a run of classic singles unmatched by anyone save perhaps the Rolling Stones in ’65-’66 (the opposite gender side of the same psychosexual coin). a quick shout-out in particular to “crazy for you”, certainly one of the best ballads of the period (which could also be said of another Madonna song from the following year [not sure if the bunny would let me live to tell about mentioning it!]).

i agree with tom that this is the highest [9] possible. not really sure what keeps it from a top mark but there are certainly better Madonna singles (hello “Borderline”), so everyone wins!

have fun this weekend, gang! if i wasn’t on the other side of the pond i’d be right there with you.

No 73 watch: 3 weeks into this record’s number run at the top the first house record to become a hit Colonel Abrams “Trapped”* entered the charts. It then all went a bit quiet pop chart wise on the house front until the more obviously house stuff one of which I can’t mention over a year later. But definitely the first slight tremor in what would become a cutural and musical earthquake…

* 24 years later its easy to forget this was classed as house at the time but it most defintely was and for many people its use in connection with this record was the first time they’d heard it

PS I agree with you Tim at 29 I wonder if it was purely about the music would Madonna be held in anywhere near the same esteem. Surely its more a case of a massively strong will making the most out of a pretty unremarkable “talent”…

@24,31. Relatedly, ITG was definitely the tipping point for other bands with Madonna. Almost immediately, at least where I was (NZ and Australia), all sorts of bands from metal to indie to bluegrass started dropping in covers of ITG into their sets, always getting a massive response when they did so. ITG’s really elastic under re-instrumentation and the different lyrical currents that others have nicely remarked upon that are wound ecstatically tight in the original, have the power to surprise (still) when given some space.

@30. I know what you’re saying about Mad. as a triumph of the will etc.. It does seem that there have always been, as it were, genetic superiors to her at every turn: better singers, better dancers, better looking popettes, more musically educated, whatever etc.. I do always think of her in connection with the swimming scenes in _Gattaca_ (go here if you’re interested) for this reason. Her genetic superiors see her surge past them, and demand to know how it’s so much as possible that she’s beating them, etc.. She didn’t save anything for the trip back. The over-achievement relative to her evident gifts makes her very inspiring to many (including me of course), but the skeptical note you sound and #29 sounds has been there from the beginning too, and does make some sense.

‘Manifesto’ is the word I’ve been looking for all the years I’ve been thinking about this record, and I’d like to give it a 10

… but every time I look it out I start out all enthusiasm, then I play it once or twice and I think ‘is that it?’. ‘A tremendous disco record’, ‘a sustained hook with no flab whatsoever’, ‘Only when I’m dancing can I feel this free’ – I want all those wonderful things to be true and in my head they are. But I’m not feeling it. The concept is perfect – in truth I’m probably too much in love with the idea to be able to spot it if there was – it just falls a little flat in the simple yet crucial area of being fun to listen to. Only a little, there’s nothing much wrong here that a good remix couldn’t sort out, or a stronger voice. But that’s the problem. In theory it’s an overwhelming experience impossible to derail – but it’s just … good.

This was her “coronation” song wasn’t it? The record that an upcoming act builds towards, then – boom – they’re on top of the pile and seem to hit some pop-cultural sweet spot and be the center of the universe for a moment (though she managed it for quite a while).

This one almost seems too easy and light though somehow, I don’t know if that’s a flaw really but some of her other singles have more sustained pleasures for me. Still dead good but not quite truly brilliant.

And I still can’t hear it without thinking of her drying her armpits.

And when she appealed to the girlies (songs, image, dance beats), lads (sexy image) and critics/trendies (what she symbolised etc)she could hardly go wrong could she

but it was clever marketing and positioning that helped made prety workmanlike product so massive not the spark of magic that a Michael Jackson or a Prince brought to pop. Madonna could be seen as the Kevin Keegan of pop making it to the very top through sheer hard work and making the best of what they had…

#30 re ‘Trapped’ interesting I’ve never thought of it as a House record really, probably just because it’s not straight 4/4 and for it’s similarity to the likes of ‘Axel F’ instrumentally. Great track in any case.

Trivial factoids: Later in ’85 a medley of Madonna hits by Mirage entered the top 100. ‘Into The Groove’ has been sampled by Norman Cook’s Mighty Dub Katz on ‘Only When I’m Dancing Do I Feel This Disco’ and Dannii Minogue’s lazy yet likeable ‘Don’t Wanna Lose This Feeling’. Curiously Madge has been less resistant to people sampling her as she’s been to licensing her songs for compilations.

I sympathise with Izzy a little re bunny excess. Sometimes I doubt whether it even exists to be honest…

Re 41 Or possibly she’s just rubbish at acting.

Lots of intriguing comment here; I hope you don’t all burn up your Madonna thoughts in one thread, but somehow I doubt it.

Madonna’s albums were another of my brother’s departments, but I liked some of the tracks on those first two, especially “Burning Up”. It was to be a while before I really appreciated her in my own right. Re-listening to this, I can remember what triggered the switch: it was when she lost the squeaky cuteness in her voice, which I always found off-putting. Squeaky cuteness didn’t bother me in other performers’ songs, though, so perhaps it was the overtones of predatory squeaky cuteness that were, um, unsettling. As in the cover of Like a Virgin. Not for nothing did we and our friends call her “Madoona”. (Doona in Australian English = duvet (UK)/comforter (US). We were teenage boys, after all.)

Plenty of other things about Madonna marked her out as a performer worth attention, of course, including her playful shifts in persona in 1984-85. But “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl” (the first being her first Australian number one, for five weeks from 10 December 1984) both appealed to me more than “Into the Groove”, and personally still feel like the biggest early-Madonna landmarks.

Madonna owned the Australian charts for eight weeks in mid-1985, first for the double A-side of this and “Angel”, then for “Crazy for You”. This is certainly the highlight of that trio, but it just wasn’t for me, and these days I can only hear it as ’80s nostalgia rather than as a rediscovery… plus I’ve got to agree with the doubters that the production sounds a bit too ’80s-thin from this distance. So all your 9s and 10s will have to cancel out my 6.

(…7…6… I’m wavering. Not that it matters, it’s still got an awe-inspiring average mark up there.)

Re:45 ITG on the Immaculate Collection album is a Shep Pettibone remix. The original demo recording taken from Desperately Seeking Susan soundtrack doesn’t appear in any vinyl format apparently.

Further to my last comment above the similarities between “Trapped” and the stuff from later is far easier to see between it and the next big house hit “Love Can’t Turn Around” than the more stripped down and radical sound of “Jack Your Body”, “This Brutal House/Lets Get Brutal” or “Jack the Groove”.

I’d struggle to think of an artist whose number one singles tell a more interesting story than Madonna’s do so I’m glad we’ve reached this point (as well as the halfway stage of course). Many of the posts above sum up the appeal of this song perfectly so I’ll just add that I’d give it a 10 as well although I think ‘Lucky Star’ edges it as my favourite Madonna overall – the production is just that bit more sprightly.