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Madonna as Songwriter


Shane

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Madonna is not only my favorite vocalist, but one of my go to songwriters as well. As we know, she is heavily involved in the composition of her music as well as writing her lyrics. She has been called an underrated songwriter by more than one of her collaborators. What are some of your favorite traits of M the songwriter?

Some of my examples:

- love her bridges/middle 8's or whatever you want to call them. I stated a whole thread on these.

- love how she sometimes starts a song with the chorus such as Rain and Sorry

- love her ability to set a scene, such as the dark night of Devil Wouldn't Recognize You

- I love when she slightly alters the words in the second chorus, such as I'll Remember and The Power of Goodbye

- I love how she can fuse together two ideas that almost seem like separate songs into one such as Love Spent

- I love the recurring theme of saying goodbye in her lyrics

- I love how she has used her music to explore the pain of losing her mother so early; some of the best songs she has written have come from her grief

- I love how her verses are never overshadowed by her brilliant choruses, because they are so strong in and of themselves

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Madonna is not only my favorite vocalist, but one of my go to songwriters as well. As we know, she is heavily involved in the composition of her music as well as writing her lyrics. She has been called an underrated songwriter by more than one of her collaborators. What are some of your favorite traits of M the songwriter?

Some of my examples:

- love her bridges/middle 8's or whatever you want to call them. I stated a whole thread on these.

- love how she sometimes starts a song with the chorus such as Rain and Sorry

- love her ability to set a scene, such as the dark night of Devil Wouldn't Recognize You

- I love when she slightly alters the words in the second chorus, such as I'll Remember and The Power of Goodbye

- I love how she can fuse together two ideas that almost seem like separate songs into one such as Love Spent

- I love the recurring theme of saying goodbye in her lyrics

- I love how she has used her music to explore the pain of losing her mother so early; some of the best songs she has written have come from her grief

- I love how her verses are never overshadowed by her brilliant choruses, because they are so strong in and of themselves

great idea for a thread love u SomeofShane

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I love all her 'running' songs, about coming to terms and finding your way in this world:

Live To Tell: if I ran away I'd never have the strength to get very far...

Promise to Try: Little girl, don't run away so fast

Oh Father: Why am I running away

Mer Girl: I ran and I ran, I was looking for me

I Deserve It: Not running from the past

Devil Pray: Yeah we can run and we can hide but we won't find the answers

Ghosttown: Everyone ran away, but we're gonna stay here

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Sublime songwriter! I really get irked when people say "oh she's a good pop songwriter" or "she can write a hook" etc. She is a fantastic writer period!

Her writing at it's best is as good as PJ' Harvey's, Bjork's, Joni and Tori's. She mostly gets overlooked in that respect however because of her pop sensibility. Sheer snobbery.

Very few artists could be as hilariously ironic as she is in "Where Life Begins" or as scarily tortured in "Mer Girl"

Madonna's intellect far surpasses any other pop star and the best way really to overcome anyone's criticisms of her being just an old floozy with no talent is to get them to just listen to the work. Most of them are too basic to get it but still.

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What i find really interesting is she will always resist any attempts to get an understanding of how much she contributes.

The media have long been obsessed with this, and go to great lengths to discredit her as nothing more than a performer who forces her name into credits. I certainly don't believe this to be true. but i do also believe her collaborations never follow a particular formula or pattern.

i think sometimes she will bring a whole song to the table - written on her guitar, or maybe just an unfinished melody or lyric idea that she will finish of with a co-writer.

other times i think she writes a song (melody & lyrics) to a piece of music written by a co-writer. Other times, i think she just adds a chunk of a song to a track a co-writer has brought to the table.

At her laziest i do think she just contributes a few sentences to a track to shape it into something she's happy with - and this justifies her presence on the credits (see open your heart, papa dont preach, justify my love, heartbeat, turn up the radio).

I think it balances out over the fullness of time, her generosity with credits compared to her hunger for them.

Give it 2 Me for example was a timbaland track on its inception, yet the released version only credits pharrell - indicates that the actual song minus the production is hers.

Broken - listen to the acoustic demo and it isnt largely different in melody or lyrics to the oakenfeld produced version - yet Paul gets a 50/50 split credit.

Drowned world she gave 2 writing credits to Anita Kerr & rod mckuen for what most people would describe as a standard sample, not for anything that materially altered the song lyrics or melody.

With Shep Pettibone and Steve Bray she has done a couple of song trade offs over the years. Steve Bray got to keep credits on Aint No Big Deal, in return for sole credits on Everybody - though it seems clear both had a hand in writing each track. Shep Pettibone was never credited for Secret on its original release, just as, if my memory serves me correctly, madonna was never credited for Love Wont Wait when it was initially released - yet over the years both have been added.

There is also the rumour that she was the writer of Physical Attraction but for some reason those credits went to Reggie Lucas - a rumour i would LOVE to be true.

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