Oh, mercy, mercy me...I'm late again [Blogger's aside: note that although it may be Friday, this week's post was due last Friday...]....
My introduction to this week's tune, excitingly enough, was when the soundtrack it appeared on was released in my Camelot Music days back in 1985, and we opened it for instore play. Madonna's career had just started, and we had no idea at the time that she would become the phenomenon she has. If memory serves, the song struck me immediately as being a hell of a pop song, and time has done nothing to change that feeling....
Being perfectly honest, my prep this week was more than half-assed. Madonna's Wikipedia entry is quite long so I just perused it because a) I'm not going to cover such a successful and varied career in a paragraph, and b) outside of this week's song and two others ("Live to Tell" and "This Used to Be My Playground"--oddly enough, all were featured in movies) and her role in A League of Their Own her career hasn't interested me that much (don't get me wrong--I appreciate how talented she is, I just don't appreciate her talent). All that being said, what I did peruse leads me to believe very few people have worked harder to make the most of their talent than the Michigan born and bred Madonna. She lost her mother at the age of five to breast cancer, was a cheerleader and straight A student in high school, won a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan, dropped out to move to New York City without a dime to her name, joined several different bands, trekked from music label to music label to sell her music until she found one, and parlayed all of that into seven Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, numerous acting roles, numerous financially and critically successful world tours, and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in her first year of eligibility (among numerous other accolades). She is also an exceptional businesswoman (estimated worth of $850 million) and donates of her time and money generously to multiple causes. Madonna has also done more for the LGBTQ community than any other celebrity I can think of. For her career, Madonna has released fourteen studio albums (with nine #1's) and ninety-four singles (with twelve number ones). Needless to say, an American icon.
Fun Fact: In my humble opinion, Madonna has the distinction of releasing the second worst cover version ever. First, hands down, was Club Nouveau's version of Bill Withers' achingly beautiful "Lean on Me" (which somehow won a Grammy, leading me to believe that at one time numerous Grammy voters were tone deaf). Madonna's second is for her rendition of Don McLean's cultural anthem "American Pie"--in two words, either abysmally awful or brutally bad (could probably come up with a few more alliterative descriptions from the last twenty-four letters of the alphabet if I had the time).
"Crazy for You" was the first single from the soundtrack to the movie Vision Quest. The single went to number one (Madonna's second at the time), while the album hit #11.
As my regular readers (all three of you) know, emaycee is a big fan of a) pop singles, and b) female vocalists--and "Crazy for You" is two for two, batting a thousand, on those two (which probably isn't an apt metaphor seeing as how it's featured in a movie about a high school wrestler). Early in her career many people didn't believe Madonna could pull off a torchy love ballad (figuring her to be little more than a pop singer) but pull it off she did, indeed, capturing all the desire and enchantment that love can often bring. The music is solid--corraling all the nervousness and excitement of a new love, and it's catchy as all hell from beginning to end and makes the most of Madonna's vocals. The tune also has two of those special moments that make a great song even better. First is the "ah-oh's" surrounding the chorus, and the second is toward the end of the song when Madonna speaks in an ultra-sultry voice and says "Crazy for you, baby"--both of which I wait for enjoyably with every listen. No one's going to confuse this week's tune with any of the all-time great rock and roll songs, but for a pop ballad it's as good as it gets, and in the end, a wonderful love song.
Lyric Sheet: "Trying hard to control my heart/I walk over to where you are/Eye to eye, we need no words at all..."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump
Peace,
emaycee
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