Switched on Pop - Listening 2 Madonna: Ray of Light

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

TIME Magazine once said, “there are few figures more closely associated with religion in pop culture than Madonna.” And looking at her catalog, it’s hard to disagree. From cheeky double entendres on “Like A Prayer,” to explorations of alternative philosophies on Ray of Light, spiritual practice has always been a core aspect of Madonna’s work. And as she dips her toes in different ideologies, she eventually comes to mold her own special religion in the process. On our final episode of our week-long Listening 2 Madonna series, we take a look at the third essential part of Madonna’s holy trinity: spirituality. Songs discussed: Madonna – "Like A Prayer" Madonna – "American Life" Sister Cristina – "Like A Virgin" Ray Charles – "What I'd Say" Madonna – "Live to Tell" Madonna – "Oh Father" Madonna – "X-Static Process" Madonna – "Bedtime Story" Björk – "Hyperballad" Madonna – "Ray of Light" Madonna – "Nothing Really Matters" Madonna – "The Power of Good-bye" Madonna – "Sky Fits Heaven" Madonna – "Shanti / Ashtangi" Addison Rae – "Aquamarine" Madonna – "Vogue" Madonna – "Music" Madonna – "Isaac" Madonna – "Like It Or Not" Madonna – "Get Together" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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shopify on records. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm producer Rianna Cruz. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, I thought we'd start today by expressing our intentions. To record a podcast? That's the intention. I thought we'd get a little woo-woo.

Get a little meditative with it. You're a Jersey kid who's really fully embraced Los Angeles. Okay. My intention today is to record the final episode of our week-long listening to Madonna series. by taking a look at Madonna's hyperfixation on spirituality. My intention is to listen with open ears, even when I can be somewhat cynical about woo-woo spirituality. That's good.

Now that we've set our intentions, I'd like to start today by going big picture, both literally and metaphorically, where we take a look at the queen of pop through the woo-woo practices in her work. Okay, so to recap, Madonna is this elusive, ever-changing, multi-era artist, and you've established that there's a sort of holy trinity of ideas that unite her. We talked about gender. We talked about multiculturalism. Now we're on to spirituality.

Yes, and the spiritual connotations even extend to her name herself. She is Madonna. The holiest name. Religious practice has been a core tenant of Madonna's music throughout her entire career from her most popular songs, like obviously, like a prayer, to lesser known tracks, like American life. I'd like to express my extreme point of view. I'm not a Christian and I'm not a Jew. I'm just living out the American dream and I just realize that nothing is what it's true.

Charlie, your head is in your hands right now. I think the proper term is cringe A.F. It's just a bad song. I love American life. Hey, no knock in American life. Great track. Okay. Where are we going?

So, you know, this whole week we've talked about other themes of Madonna's work, but I think religion and spirituality is perhaps the most fundamental. Madonna was brought up and raised in a Catholic household. Her music has been the focus of spiritual leaders, both with praise and controversy. Pope John Paul II had called Madonna's blonde ambition world tour as, quote, one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity. And that's not the only person she's offended. Scholars have said Madonna is, quote, a threat to Islam. Jewish leaders have said this kind of woman wreaks an enormous sin upon the Kabbalah. And of course, conservative Christians have called her blasphemous for, in their eyes, going against the teachings of the church. And this

has been throughout Madonna's entire career. It's like she was born to be this person. Like, if you're given the name Madonna and you're born in a time when people are testing cultural norms and spiritual norms and gender norms, like, what are you going to do? You're going to play with that name and offend the Pope. Oh, boy. But conversely, though, Time Magazine said there are a few figures more closely associated with religion in pop culture than Madonna. She's explored multiple different spiritual practices throughout her catalog, credited as popularizing the cross in pop music as a figure. And her music has even been covered by religious figures themselves, like the artist, Sister Christina, a nun on Like a Virgin.

Turning it into a chaste song about being touched by the Lord metaphorically. Ha-ha. Clever. Sister Christina even gave her album with that song on it to the Pope. So there's a world in which the Pope has heard this cover of Like a Virgin, which I find very funny. Powerful. But anyway, Madonna has said,

are indisputable truths that connect all practices. And I find that very comforting and kind. And she said her spiritual journey is to be open to everything. So today, I thought we'd look at Madonna's music and how she speaks to the conventions of spirituality. And in the process, how she creates her own musical religious practice. Maybe this is finally my opportunity to join the cult of Madonna. I think so. I mean, this is the last episode of the series, Charlie. If I don't get you now, when will I get you? All right, let's get spiritual. So, you know, I'm not a theology scholar, as you can imagine, but I am a Madonna scholar.

Yeah. So today, I'm going to try my best, and I'd like to start with the most overt, controversial, and direct example of spirituality in our catalog, the incomparable, like a prayer. So like a prayer made Madonna into both a pariah and a bona fide icon when it comes to her representations of religion. It bridges boundaries by speaking to the tenets of Catholicism and a general sense of socialism. spirituality while also functioning as a secular pop song. Even through the song's convention, it crosses these borders. It bridges together the ideas of gospel with classic pop. Yeah, I mean, the intro of this song is so unconventional as a pop song. You can hear her begging to solve the mysteries of life on her knees, praying with church organ and choir in the

background. I'm actually somewhat partial to this sound. I really love church choral music and organ music. I like go out of my way to seek it out. So I like its function as spiritual music and yet the song takes an entire 180 right after this intro. And I think the song does a really good job at kind of moving through these subtle contemplative moments into these large sweeping pop choruses. Like a prayer takes religion and the idea of being spiritual and frames it with a deep reverendant. that we don't really hear in secular pop music. I mean, if we accept that the song is about spirituality, I think it was broadly interpreted as a song about sex.

Oh, absolutely. Like, let's not get a twisted. It is a song about sex. But the way she communicates it is equating any impactful experience, whether it be romantic or sexual, with the spiritual. Just look at the lyrics of the chorus. Okay, you know, I think it is short-sighted to say that this is just about sex, because I don't think that she is inviting the entire choir into her bedroom. She literally says, right? Like, let the

whole choir sing. Right. Right. And then we get this great chorus. This is where we get the word chorus. It's from the whole choir all singing together. Singing and praise about this divine experience that she's having that is somewhere on the spectrum from pleasure to devotion. I find that to be like a really cheeky double entendre. You know, it's like you can interpret it really any way you want to when she's like, I'm on my knees. I want to take you there. It's like, okay. You know, you could fill in the blanks in your head, but you could also be like it's about her Catholic upbringing and praying and all of that. It's about both at the same time. It is on that borderline. And that's what makes it so compelling and it is what makes it so controversial. You know, Madonna really puts a target on her back.

Her name, having the name of the Virgin Mary and singing this song. This is like Lil Nas X, but decades before Lilna's X made Old Town Road. Literally the blueprint. Yeah. Madonna's also smart, and I think she really plays into this because the song has this crescendo musically, where every chorus, the arrangement gets bigger and bigger, and it culminates in this massive gospel choir

for the extended outro of the song. I love how Madonna's lead vocal drops out and we just get the gospel choir. And it makes me realize that she's connected to a larger arc of history all the way back to Ray Charles, who famously combined the sacred sounds of gospel with the profane sounds of blues, making music that was in its time incredibly taboo. And he received much ire from religious figures for creating this mixture of sounds.

I feel like we're hearing some of that legacy in Like a Prayer. Yeah, and much like people coming out, Ray Charles, people had so many feelings about this, you know, like Christian groups went after her, like, crazy when the video is. on MTV, causing them to call for a boycott of not just Madonna, but Madonna's sponsorships at the time. They were like, let's boycott Pepsi, because Madonna was doing ads for Pepsi. And we should note that it wasn't just an issue of talking about sexuality and religious practice. It also had to do with race because the object of her affection in like a prayer is a black man playing a Jesus-like character. Yeah, people did not like that. But Madonna, of course,

is no stranger to this type of controversy. We talked about on the gender episode, her landing in hot water with the same conservative Christian groups for like a virgin just a few years earlier. And this is also not the last time she'll land in trouble with religious communities. One of the largest controversies of Madonna's career came through a performance of the ballad, Live to Tell, which Madonna performed on the Confessions tour.

while positioned on a giant disco ball cross, like the crucifixion, wearing a crown of thorns. Oh, my. It's kind of crazy. I was watching the video the other day, and my partner was like, it's a little much. And I was like, what do you mean? It's a little much. Like, it's Matana. Come on.

So I didn't really quite catch the lyrics there. Was that the chorus? It's like a weird song where the chorus is like these lines that repeat, where it's like a man can tell the thousand lies I've learned. my lesson well, hope I live to tell. It repeats itself, but there's no real like crescendo to the chorus. Like, it's kind of this like repeating theme throughout the song. It's really interesting. I love that such a anticlimactic song could have such a large public response. No, exactly. I mean, she performs this on every tour. I saw her perform it on the celebration tour and she was like suspended

above the crowd and there's pictures of all of her friends that passed away from AIDS around the stadium. It was really powerful. So she very clearly has a connection to this song. And when she performed it on the Confessions tour in this religious garb, she was bringing awareness to those that have died from AIDS in Africa. That's a big part of the show. Because the Confessions tour was in promotion of Confessions on a dance floor, this dance album that's very club-focused, kind of bridging together like those disparate iconographies the club and catholicism and all of that club and catholicism hold that thought we're going to get back to that okay but madonna grew up catholic catholic guilt is like a big theme throughout her catalog you know this idea of like you are always

sinning no matter what you do or what happens like i get it girl she talks about in other songs as well though, like, O Father. Where, like, a prayer had something kind of cheeky about it. This is entirely genuine. And I'm curious, are we talking about O Father, both her actual parental relationship, but also maybe her relationship to, like, the priesthood? Yeah, she keeps it ambiguous on purpose, I think, because it really could apply to any parental figure in her life.

She's had a strenuous relationship with her birth father. And obviously, the church is an internal point of contention for Madonna. It really could be applicable in a lot of ways. Later in her career, she also addresses Catholicism on ecstatic process off of American life. Jesus Christ, will you look at me? Don't know who I'm supposed to be. She's got some challenges with religion. And by the way, I have to say, this set of clips, I think, more than any, are the evidence of why we needed this podcast.

Like, her sound changes so much, but the themes do remain consistent. Exactly. I mean, that's why I wanted to talk about spirituality, because it's one of her most defining themes throughout the course of her career, but particularly in these early years. After that, we see Madonna sort of branch out from Catholic practice and explore other spiritual practices. You know, at the time she was under fire for a more sexual image. You know, we had erotica come out in 92, and we had her sex book, which we talked about on the first episode of the series.

And this move towards other practices could be motivated by the backlash at this time. You know, she needed an escape, which I can imagine would be difficult for her going through this religious trauma as a practicing Catholic. So Madonna decides, okay, like, I'm going to get a little woo-woo with it. This is the intention setting. Exactly. Let's take a look at the lead single for Madonna's 1994 record bedtime story. Sounds like somebody took a lot of ecstasy and went to the club. Such a different vibe. Such a vibe shift.

So different from what we've heard from Madonna at this point. And this song, to me, is one of the most interesting songs in Madonna's career. Very little in her catalog sounds like this track. It's this weird, ambient trip hop joint. Like, I don't know what she was smoking around this time or who she was hanging out with, but it rocks. This was a sound in that era, though. That was a big moment. Like, the second summer of love in 1989 and the sort of developing of these many waves of electronic music.

People thought this was going to be the new rock and roll. Whole sets of critics were like, hip hop isn't going to be the thing. It's going to be this burgeoning electronic music. And it makes sense that she followed in those footsteps because, she is a kidded of the club. And so she was just evolving with what DJs were playing. Yeah. And she even gets collaborators from this burgeoning sound. This track is written in part by Icelandic art pop electronic icon Bjork. Bjork. Bjork isn't jerk, not Bjork is in pork. Just got to set the record straight. And you could hear the Bjorkisms in this track right from

the get-go. Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on. So this is one of those songs. where you can hear who wrote the melody. Like Madonna did not write that melody. Bjork wrote that melody, unless Madonna was doing a great Bjork impersonation. It's kind of like when you listen to the song Diamonds, it sounds like Sia, not Rihanna. Yes.

Like this is how Bjork sings. It's these long, elongated melisma's words constructed in an unnatural way of singing them. Maybe it's like an English as a second language thing, but I also just think of it as like, this is just how Bjork sings. No, it's fascinating. Bjurk is one of my favorite artists as well.

And the first time I heard bedtime story was after I was already familiar with Bjurik, so I listened to it. And I was like, oh, this sounds exactly like her phrasing on albums like Post and songs like hyper ballad. From the top of the mountain. It's like the way she sings from the top of the mountain. Nobody talks that way. Nobody sings like Bjark. No, and that's why I love Bjork's music. You know, there's like odd phrasing, there's irregular melodies.

I remember on the show a while back, there was an episode about Siza, right? And how Siza has these like unpredictable melodies. Yeah. I feel the same way about Bjerk, you know? It's like you can't really track where the line is going to go. Wait, let's hear how she does it again on the Madonna track, though. Today's day. Today is the last day.

That is a Bjork kind of phrasing. It's a Bjorkism. A Bjorkism! I'm so glad to have that word. Yeah. And even she says it, you know, today is the last day that I'm using words. They've gone out, lost their meeting,

don't function anymore. As she does this like meandering melody that kind of makes no sense, where like the words are kind of pointless. Yeah, text painting. Whoa. For sure. I like that. So, bureaucisms aside, the lyrics have much.

Madonna testing the waters of an adventurous spirituality. The song is essentially an ode to mysticism and the pursuit of the unknown. I told you we were going to get like woo-woo, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The chorus is literally just the words, let's get unconscious. We are entering our chakra balancing, third eye activation, astral projection, all getting unconscious. Yeah, and in the lyrics, Madonna expresses. explicitly a desire to get away from the physical and tangible and move towards the implied

and the metaphysical. The song has actually been cited by scholars as an example of Sufism and Islamic mysticism. And I'm not a religious scholar, so I don't feel qualified to tell you what that means. But I do think it's a shift from external structures of religion, like the lyrics of like a prayer, to an internal spirituality. So I don't know Sufi Islam either. I kind of think of this as Madonna's Protestant Reformation. Wow. We're in 16th century, Martin Luther and other figures lead this whole revolution against the Catholic Church who's overly emphasizing ritual and the sacraments and all of the hierarchy of this physical and institutional body and a shift towards a more personal relationship with God that can happen anywhere.

I feel like there is this sort of external to internal shift that we're seeing with Madonna in this track. Charlie, you're on to something here. You're on to something. We're bold not theology scholars, but we're touching on something that I like. Okay. So where does she go next? So in Bedtime Story, we're here in this dreamlike production, you know, this nod to the metaphysical. On Madonna's next record following bedtime stories, she dives fully into these waters. So like bedtime stories are like testing, right? It's like, oh, let me meditate on like a random Monday morning, you know? Ray of Light is like, I am aligning my chakras. I'm going to yoga like I'm doing the damn thing. And she dedicates a full album to her pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. And that's the record, Ray of Light. And we're going to get to that after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions.

I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast. called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready.

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You're saying on Ray of Light, it's like she gets her full yoga certification. Yes, exactly. And even on the title track, Ray of Light, we can hear these themes of spiritual. grandeur. I'd never considered this lyric before. This is a club track and she's talking about arriving home. What a lovely contrast. Home, where we go to bed early, we snuggle up in our PJs. I mean, that makes sense though. Ray of Light is a record that was inspired by the birth of Madonna's daughter. And in Madonna's own words, it took her on a search for answers to questions that she'd never asked herself before, kind of finding this spirituality at home.

Oh, this is getting woo-woo. So woo-woo. And I mean, I lean into the woo-woo. Ray of Light is my favorite Madonna album. And over the course of its 13 tracks, Madonna explores many different practices as she tries to find answers to these new questions in her life. She explores optimistic nihilism on a song like Nothing Really Matters. Hearing some non-dualism here, nothing really matters.

Everything is empty, but everything is love. And there's this idea of karma that she's talking about. You know, everything I give you comes back to me. She's blending her various religious practices here, which kind of is at the heart of woo-oism, is the grabbing of many different spiritual practices and taking your favorite things and, you know, making it one big melting pot. Yeah, which I love about this record. She also does this on the song, The Power of Goodbye, and kind of gestures at, like, Buddhist philosophy.

We find personal freedom and letting go. Take a breath in. Take a breath out. The personal favorite track of mine is Sky Fits Heaven, where over a driving trance beat, Madonna speaks of unifying all properties across all religion, love and prophets

and this idea of fate and karma. I feel bad. I feel like I'm laughing a lot about this music because there is this contrast between the sort of acid house backing beat to this track, which is just like, club, club, party, party. Right. And then these really genuine lyrics about trying to solve, you know, unanswerable existential questions.

And that to me is also kind of funny because I think singing about vague spirituality and trying on lots of different spiritual practices, like, that is fundamentally virtue signaling to me. Mm-hmm. At the same time, it feels very genuine. and I wouldn't want to take away from anyone's read of this song. I can see how these songs be very powerful in people's lives. The barrage of hearing them back to back to back does feel like I'm at a little bit of a

quantum woo trade show of like people selling different candles and smudges and things like that. I think it has to do with the speed at which we're listening. And perhaps many of these songs do need to be heard in full in meditation with Tibetan singing bowls playing in the background. I'm not sure. Yeah, I mean, I love this album because I do think it speaks to profound truths. But also, Madonna's not immune to, like, white woman goes on spiritual enlightenment vacation syndrome. Yeah. You know, like there's the song Shanti Ashhtanghi where she dabbles in Hindu prayer.

Oh, no. Oh, shanty. Oh, no. Shanti, shanty. Aside from, like, borderline appropriative, whatever, this is, you. Yeah, very much, I went on retreat in Bali and I'm a changed person and I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. That's what it's saying to me. I hear you. But I feel like despite these missteps, a part of what makes Ray of Light so successful is when she steps away from organized religion,

you know, like moving away from the Hindu prayer and whatever and speaking to innate truths that we all can relate to. I think that's why the title track, Ray of Light, is so successful. Yeah. Because she's saying, and I feel like I just got home over and over again, and anybody can relate to the sense of home, you know? Her vocal is amazing. You really believe her. The guttural, what I feel.

And then she, like, goes to this high note that blends with the synthesizer as she's transcending this earthly plane and just becoming the music. It's awesome. I love it. It's like trans music will save your life. Yeah. That's the vibe that I get from this song. And that's why I'm obsessed with it.

It's like she's being lifted up to the heavens. I feel like we're going to this huge 90s resurgence in culture right now. But I'm not hearing enough love for this kind of music. Like Charlie X, X, X, and Carolyn Polichick have done a little bit of pure moodsy woo-woo music a little bit. But like, I want some more ray of light in my life. This is some good reference. Well, that's why I really like the new Addison Ray single, Aquamarine, because it literally sounds like, nothing really matters.

Really? This is not a Madonna bonus track off of Ray of Light. No, this is Addison Ray. TikTok star, Addison Ray. Ooh, I might be getting into the cult of Edison Ray now. I like that. Song of the Year. Let me get ahead of it.

Aquamarine by Addison Ray is Song of the Year because it sounds like a ray of light B-side. I think that's so awesome. Sorry, Brat. So going back to Madonna, you know, Madonna is essentially saying on Ray of Light, I've explored all spiritual practices, and that has sent me on the path to enlightenment. But as she moves forward with this in mind, she kind of creates her own spiritual practice in her music. The religion of Madonna.

I said in the first episode, you know, Madonna studies can be called Madonnaology, but maybe Madonnaology is her own religion. I think Madonna sees the dance floor as a place of spiritual enlightenment. And Madonna's religion is essentially the club. And these ideas of the dance floor absolving all of your sins have been present throughout her career. We can even look at Vogue as the kind of genesis for this idea. I mean, it's totally appropriate. Ballroom culture was a place of acceptance, salvation,

a temple for queer color people who weren't accepted in other places in society. And so hearing Vogue is a celebration of that culture and that place, yeah, this is spiritual music. Right. The core theme of Vogue is like, life is a place of heartache and pain and hardship, but the dance floor will fix your problems. And it's a great equalizer where you can achieve salvation through movement. And in lyric alone, Vogue to me is functionally a gospel song.

And it's true. That's what the dance floor is. You could be a better person on the dance floor. You can get away from your sins, you know, by just dancing it off. And Madonna equates music as a concept with spiritual enlightenment post vogue. Her 2000 album, appropriately named Music, also talks about this on the song, Music. Can you help me with that lyric there? music brings the people together. Music makes the bourgeoisie and a rebel?

So it's actually music mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel. Oh, mix. It's not makes. I've misheard that my entire life. No, but I also thought it was makes. I had to look the lyrics up when I was researching this song because I also thought it was music makes, which kind of makes no sense logically. But I think, like, again, we see this idea of music and

dancing being the great equalizer and bringing together these different parts of the population that are so diametrically opposed in thought. Right. She's saying the dance floor is a classless space where we are all just people. Bold. She's a big thinker. She's operating on planes of woo-woo that are beyond our comprehension. And we have this interesting idea, both on music and on vogue, that the dance floor can serve as a church.

But this idea is fully realized on her 10th studio album named Confessions on a Dance Floor. Oh, now I get it, Confessions, Catholicism. Right. Confession is a Catholic sacrament, you know, and Confessions as a record has frequent explicit references to spirituality despite being an album about the club and dancing and getting it all out on the dance floor. There's the song I, Isaac, which Madonna wrote about a Kabbalah teacher, and on it, she speaks about heaven and hell. So this song, Isaac, is named after Isaac Sinwani, who sang portions of the song in Yemenite Hebrew. The song was pretty controversial because a group of Israeli rabbis said that this song was blasphemous because they thought the song was about 16th century Kabbalah scholar, Isaac Luria. And I don't know if it's true or not.

I feel like Madonna maybe deflected, you know, where she was like, oh, no, this is about like my homie Isaac who's like on the track, you know, it's not about this religious figure. Yeah. The thing is if you're going to start dabbling in different religious practice and part of your brand is about burning bridges with your personal faith, if you start pushing the buttons of other religious people, like you're going to pretty quickly find most of the world is mad at you. There's four rays into these different practices, but confessions on a dance floor goes back to the Catholicism that has been present with her throughout the course of her career.

The album's closer, like it or not, references the creation myth. I'll be the garden, you'll be the snake. All of my fruit is yours to take. Better the devil that you know. Blasphemy, Rihanna. The creation myth? She's gone too far. Well, maybe you'll like other songs like the track.

Get Together, where we see the fully realized version of Madonna's spiritual practice, bringing together reverence for the dance floor and the idea of the club being a church. So on Get Together, she's asking existential questions. Do you believe that we can change the future? Do you believe I can make you better? She's speaking of the pursuit of knowledge, right? Like, I searched my whole life to find the secret, but all I did was open my eyes. It's positing the dance floor as a place of religious experience and equating in equal importance these existential questions of life with the space those questions are asked in. It really shows how much a forerunner she is in culture.

I mean, at the beginning of her career in the 1980s, religious practice in the United States is still relatively high. And since that time, has been in a precipitous decline while the number of people who, who identify as having no religious practice has been rising. I wonder if club attendance has as well. She's trying to navigate this cultural shift that's happening, and as this figure carrying the name of one of the holiest figures in Christianity, she is navigating some very challenging waters,

and she is trying to give us answers about what to do, perhaps when our faith is wavering, you can be accepted on the dance floor. She's giving us a space. And I'd even go so far as to say that I am an adopter of Madonnaology and the Madonna religion yelling down from the mountain these ideas of the dance floor will save you. The dance floor is salvation. I think it's really novel and shows how in tune Madonna has been with spirituality

over the course of her career. She's kind of taken all these disparate parts from these practices, you know, some good, some a little dicey, and brings them together to create her own denomination. Yeah, she's really been saying the same thing over and over and over her entire career, hasn't she? It's all been about the dance music from the very beginning. And it's always been about the taboo nature of religion from the very beginning. and it is in these later 2000s records that they unify and they find a home. And I think that's what completes Madonna's Holy Trinity that we talked about. No matter your gender, no matter your culture, no matter what your spiritual practice,

you will find home on the dance floor in the cult of Madonna. Switched on Pop is produced by Rianna Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, illustrations by Arras Gottlie, or a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and produced by Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at mymag.com slash pop. You can find this on social media at Switched on Pop. Tell us what's your favorite Madonna song?

What's your favorite Madonna era? You know, we've talked a lot about her entire career. We'd love to know what you think. And we'll be back again next Tuesday with another episode. And until then, thanks for listening.