These videos were never released to the public to buy, but I will be reviewing them here. If you look hard enough on the internet, you may be able to download them. Try the amazing Wherelifebegins and Madonna's Ashram for starters. If you can't find them there, you'll find them in lesser quality at Launch.com.
Videos
- Everybody*
- Angel
- Crazy For You*
- True Blue*
- Live To Tell*
- Who's That Girl*
- Dear Jessie*
- Erotica*
- Deeper and Deeper*
- I'll Remember*
- I Want You
- You Must Love Me*
The very first Madonna single Everybody was a smash hit in the New York underground dance clubs like Danceteria and Roxy. It was fitting therefore that the video for this song was shot in Danceteria, catching the vibe of this exciting period in music. We first see a silhouette of Madonna and two backing dancers against a flashing backdrop of white lightbulbs. Madonna appears from the darkness, with light brown hair and dressed boyishly in baggy beige trousers, a brown leather sleeveless jacket and dark chequed shirt - in fact she could quite easily have been mistaken for a boy had it not been for the red lipstick and large ear-rings; this reflects Madonna's tomboyish attitude at this time (she caught the attention of Danceteria DJ Mark Kamins who first gave Everybody its break in the club by turning up dressed in boys' pyjamas!). As she sings into a spotlight, people dance on the floor below under multicoloured flashing lights and she does a smooth side-to-side dance which again highlights just how good a dancer Madonna was even at this stage. She adds interest to this later in the song by twirling as well as moving from side to side. In the instrumental break in the middle of the song, the two dancers line up behind Madonna and they do this curious and quirky conga-like dance before moving into a foot-swivelling-head-reclining set of moves. Towards the end of the song, Madonna flirts with the camera and then does mainly hand movements in the dance. You really get a sense of nostalgia when you watch this video, you feel like it was so long ago and a different Madonna to the one we know today, and as such this is a very special video (especially seen now in this day and age of multimillion-dollar promotion right from day one, in contrast to back then), unsophisticated though it may be.
The video to Angel from the 'Like A Virgin' album is not actually a new video but a mixture of clips from 'Lucky Star' (with some colourful though dated special effects), 'Borderline', 'Burning Up' and 'Like A Virgin' with some images of hangliding in the background at times. Unfortunately this collage doesn't really add much to the song, which explains why it's never been released to buy.
Crazy For You was Madonna's first film soundtrack song, and was written for 'Vision Quest'. In the video, Madonna is a singer in a smoky club, and footage of her singing is interspersed with scenes from the film showing the two main characters falling in love. This is not a very strong video for what was, at the time at least, a massive leap forward for Madonna in singing, but at least the clips from the film make sense in context of the song.
True Blue was of course the title track to Madonna's 1986 album, and the song was in Fifties doo-wop style, so the video was made in a similar way, hearkening back to this era of fun. The set is fittingly blue, there are three females backing performers whose bottoms are zoomed in on at several points in the song, and a platinum-haired Madonna is dressed in a blue chequed frock over the top of black skin tight dance leggings and leotard...not very promising! Handkerchiefs, a white Fifties style Cadillac, a white park bench, a white lamp-post and a Diner bar compliment a lot of head-shaking and teenage angst from the girls as they gossip about Madonna's true love. While this is a very good imitation of the style of videos of the period, for Madonna it's a supremely cheesy video to a very, very soppy song...Madonna just about rescues it from total death by fondue by a few extremely competent-looking ballet moves against a sunset backdrop.
Live To Tell was a giant leap forward for Madonna in both singing and songwriting and ventured into a seriousness of subject matter which must have been quite startling for critics sharpening their blades in expectation of frothy bubblegum pop. To ram the message home that she was a songwriter and not just a pretty popsicle, Madonna appars in this video looking not very glamorous at all - in fact almost dowdy in a housewife-ish dark floral dress. There is no pretty image to make up for any lack of quality in the song - the message is quite clear; this is a serious artistic song which has nothing to detract from it. The scene is set in darkness with Madonna illuminated in the distance sitting with her back to us. The camera moves around her as it draws closer and we see the dress in all its drab glory! The scene shifts to images from the film the song is a soundtrack for - - which includes a lot of a certain young Mr Madonna, Sean Penn. Despite her frumpy dress in this video, the scenes involving Madonna just lit with a spotlight with a chair in the darkness in a gentle breeze and shot from swooping angles as well as her hypnotic green eyes are very powerful images and shows just how a soundtrack song should be done. Even the often dark and dramatic images from the film compliment perfectly the theme of the song...this is a superb video for its simplicity and power.
The next soundtrack song Madonna made was Who's That Girl for the film of the same name. In it, Madonna is dressed again very boyishly in a grey suit and grey hat and comes to a group of kids around a fountain in a city suburb park (somewhere like Harlem?) and joins with them as they mouth "who's that girl?". At various points in the video, we see images or 'visions' in this case of Madonna in her guise as the protagonist of the film - a messy platinum-haired, red-lipped, dark-caterpillar-eyebrowed, leather-jacket-wearing, fishnet-tight-showing, red-tutu-flashing sassy madwoman getting into all kinds of trouble!!! When the scene returns to tomboy Madonna in the video in her more demure dress sense, you can hardly believe this is the same person. The kids take Madonna to an uninhabited mansion full of curiosities, including a mystical gypsy woman who shows Madonna a picture on a card of her film character cartoon-ified before vanishing before a suprised Madonna. The cartoon version of Madonna comes to life and causes a commotion and dances before Madonna shakes off her hat and coat, giving them to the kids and dancing with them right at the end in a charming finale. Not a great video by any means, but a nice little substory and one that kids in particular would enjoy.
Another one the kids are bound to love is Dear Jessie. After all, this lullaby was written by Madonna and collaborator Patrick Leonard for his young daughter Jessie, and the video is a cartoon revolving a little girl who dreams of various cutesy cartoon characters like pink elephants, mermaids and leprachauns. Madonna doesn't appear in person in the video - the only real person is the little girl herself - but she does appear as a Tinkerbell-like cartoon fairy. This charming video has a nice touch with the orchestra instruments playing the music appearing in the cartoon itself in animated fashion. Wonderful - but forget about this as a Madonna video or you'll be disappointed...it's just a beautiful little cartoon!
Now one definitely not for the kiddies! As the title track to the 1992 album, Erotica should have been released to buy on the 93:99 Video Collection, but because of its highly sexual subject matter and scenes, it was left off to preserve the PG rating of that collection. This is a shame since it's a very innovative video, shot entirely in black and white to give it more of an artistic appearance. Madonna is in her alter-ego guise of Dita, a sexy 1930s masked and gold-toothed dominatrix with a riding crop. There are lots of semi- and, at times, fully-naked people in the S&M club which is the setting location for the video and Madonna doesn't exclude herself from this; we get to see her topless and also her bare backside! Shot as a companion to her steamy book SEX, this video was actually formed from a much larger 'film' of SEX which includes scenes where Madonna dances nude with supermodel Naomi Campbell and a man (you see a brief glimpse of this in this video), swims naked in a pool and writhes similarly nude on a beach. It may all seem like simply a sex-fest but it's very well-made and is definitely one of the more interesting videos that Madonna has ever made.
Another extremely fascinating video is Deeper & Deeper. Although it might appear at first glance to be just like 'Everybody', with people dancing in a club, there is actually a whole lot more than that - for one thing it's shot in a film-fashion...Madonna doesn't appear to sing at all in the video. You first see Madonna driving along in Los Angeles towards Hollywood in a convertible, and she sports a rather severe looking short haircut and has shaved off her eyebrows. She is wearing a cocktail dress with a feather boa to compliment and in the car are a whole bunch of helium-filled balloons. The video is shot in a mixture of black & white and colour footage which gives striking contrast. Madonna arrives at this club where she ties up her balloons at the bar, meets people she knows and starts dancing to the music, going up to the DJ, etc - there is also a large Seventies theme to everyone's dress so maybe it is set during this decade. So far, so good. However, there is another plot running parallel to this. We see the strikingly demonic looking actor Christopher Walken in black & white always in a backroom, chanting and using his scary starey eyes to good effect; there are lots of candles and spaced-out-looking people around...is this some kind of cult (maybe this makes sense of "I fall deeper and deeper the further I go...), with the party just as a front? If so, then Walken is definitely the charismatic man in charge because all the people around him defer to him and he is the centre of attention. If this is isn't about cults, it's certainly about the drug-fuelled hippy culture of the Seventies. In the flamenco section of the music, we see Madonna posing like a model for a photoshoot and then the scene shifts to Madonna and a group of girlfriends eating bananas while watching a long-haired hunk pose in just his underpants...very suggestive! It's a very confusing video towards the end especially since you see Madonna meeting up with Walken and seemingly being in love with him, you also see her in a blond Afro wig (like in the version performed in the Girlie Show concert) having a huge pillow fight with her girlfriends and right at the end, Madonna is roused from her spell with Walken by the sound of a man popping her balloons with his cigar. She looks suddenly very worried and runs to the bar, unties the remaining balloons and tries to leave - is she trying to escape the cult? Well if she is, it doesn't look like she's successful because right at the end, she runs into Walken outside, who looks like he's been expecting her and cuts the balloons free with some scissors and they float away in a final shot, perhaps representing the last chance to get out of this situation being lost. This is a very thoughtful and powerful video and one which is definitely among her deeper ones (no pun intended!).
If you've ever seen the very beautiful video to 'Rain', you'll get a very strong sense of deja-vu when you watch the video to I'll Remember. It's the soundtrack to the film 'With Honors' and as such has footage from the film interspersed with Madonna in a recording studio, sporting a short dark haircut, singing into a microphone - you see? She looks quite striking with this haircut as it accentuates her cheekbones and her huge green eyes, and she is dressed beautifully in a long cocktail dress and a gigantic jewelled torque. Otherwise, there's not much to say about this video - it's beautiful, but not as beautiful as 'Rain' and it has little else to offer than what you see at first glance.
I Want You is another very artistic video shot in black & white. Madonna looks gorgeous, with a stylish haircut but that isn't the point. If you like there to be lots of action or dancing, you'll probably be bored by this video. However, there is much atmosphere to be soaked up if your mind is open. The video is set entirely in the bedroom of an expensive-looking apartment, with Madonna dressed only in a slip waiting in obvious despair and torment next to the phone, sometimes on the bed, sometimes looking into the mirror - but always with a tortured look on her face. She looks as if she's getting ready to go out, but the phonecall she is expecting doesn't come. There are lots of artistic shots in the video, like that of a false eyelash gently sinking in a glass of water and one of Madonna from behind sitting on the bed so you can see her feet and her toes hanging down under it. Towards the end, the phone rings and Madonna dashes over to it, but has a change of heart as she reaches for the phone. Instead of answering it, she merely replaces the receiver to cut off the caller and then leaves the phone off-hook. She's had enough of waiting. You go girl, he wasn't any good for you anyway!
You Must Love Me is a beautiful Oscar-winning song from Madonna's film 'Evita' and this video is quite simply made from footage from the film mixed with shots of Madonna (dressed in black with beyond-the-shoulder-length blond hair) singing in a gently-lit and airy room with just a pianist and a cellist as backup. The choice of images from the film is very fitting to the song, and it's a very well made, albeit simple, video.
Comment
Madonna's collection of videos that were never released to the public to buy (although they were of course released to view when the singles were released) are a mixed bunch. A few, like 'Deeper & Deeper', 'Erotica', 'Live To Tell' and 'I Want You' are powerful pieces of cinematography - and their status as unreleased videos is criminal. Others, like 'You Must Love Me', 'I'll Remember', 'Crazy For You' and 'Who's That Girl' are simply soundtrack videos. Unfortunately, a couple - like 'True Blue' and 'Angel' - are embarrassingly bad. But all are worth seeing at least once. Good luck in hunting them down!
� Josh Deb Barman 2002