An Cat Gav said:
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How dare you presume to guess what i listen too.
I bet you any amount of money that i own mote "pop" cds than you do.
here are at a few songs by madonna alone that are better than like a prayer
1. Borderline
2 like a virgin
3 Beautiful Stranger
4 Frozen
5 Ray of light
6 Hung Up
7 Into The Groove
8 Crazy for you
9 La isla Bonita
10 Express yourself
11 Justify My Love
12 Open your heart
13 Live To tell
14 Holiday
15 Deeper and deeper
16 Erotica
17 Frozen
18 Music
19 Human Behaviour
20 Music
So there you go, 20 songs better than like a prayer,
how dare you say that i dont like pop music, you dont know anything about me. I dont dare say the same about you, only judging by a few of your posts that it seems that you think that the last decade has brought the best of U2's music. I think that this says everything about your taste.
Borderline, Into The Groove, Crazy For You, Holiday, and Like A Virgin were not written by her. As almost her early catalogue, these lyrics are very poor, and the songs too comparing to 50% of her catalogue. Sure these songs became classics, but how good are they? Holiday, Into The Groove and Like A Virgin can be worthy just because of live performances, mainly Holiday that always works as a closer.
Music? Sure it has an imaginative electronic instrumental, but is it great as Like A Prayer?
And La Isla Bonita? Is it better because of the latino feeling?
Hung Up... sure it has one of her best instrumentals (and that sample works great!), but are the lyrics great? They work, but they're useless comparing to other songs...
Deeper And Deeper is almost like Vogue with different note progression and with lyrics about dealing with homossexuality (that's why the song got out of the top just when people and the critics found what the song was about).
The only songs on your list that I could claim as great as Like A Prayer are Ray Of Light, Frozen (which lyrics are not as great as the LAP ones), Express Yourself, Erotics and Justify My Love (because for their originality) and definitely Live To Tell - one of her best songs ever!
I'd add Oh Father, Swim, Nobody Knows Me, Easy Ride, Gone...
Like A Prayer represented Madonna's first effort of her maturity in songwritting. The lyrics are genial for a singer that had wrote Papa Don't Preach, Open Your Heart and Love Makes The World Go Round very recently, and not only they can deal with sex and religion, but (like some U2 songs) they can be applied to other scenes. The instrumental is one of her strongest and the song os perfect as the album opener, mixing power pop, with rock and gospel choir and church organs. Can you name other songs that in 1989 were as original like this one after what I described? Don't forget that this came from a singer that at that time was seen as a whore with a bad voice that earned money with pop songs, controversies and undressing herself.
PS: there is no Human Behaviour (that's a Bjork's song), but Human Nature.