Switched on Pop - Listening 2 Madonna: Who's That Girl?

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Madonna is the world's biggest female pop star. She's influenced everyone from Beyoncé to Britney Spears; is the most successful solo artist in Hot 100 chart history; and is the best-selling female recording artist of all time. Her career – which has spanned over forty years – has seen her continually reinventing herself and her sound over fourteen studio albums, from her early years in the New York City underground dance scene, to collaborating with artists like Maluma, Sam Smith, and the Weeknd. Throughout all this, though, she has also managed to remain an enigma. Much has been said about Madonna, but through her work, a holy trinity of themes has emerged. And through these themes – gender exploration, multiculturalism, and spirituality – we can unpack one of the most iconic catalogs in pop music. This week on Switched On Pop, we're Listening 2 Madonna, and releasing three special episodes focused on the Material Girl, going Deeper and Deeper to understand the Queen of Pop. On this episode, we take a look at how Madonna conveys gender in her work, from "Like A Virgin" to "What It Feels Like For A Girl." Songs discussed: Madonna – "Vogue" Madonna – "Borderline" Madonna – "Like A Virgin" Madonna – "Material Girl" Deniece Williams – "Let's Hear It For The Boy" Madonna – "True Blue" Madonna – "Live to Tell" Madonna – "Papa Don't Preach" Madonna – "Express Yourself" Madonna – "Justify My Love" Madonna – "Deeper and Deeper" Madonna – "Waiting" Madonna – "Bad Girl" Madonna – "What It Feels Like For A Girl" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I am producer

Rietta Cruz. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, question for you. Who is Madonna to you? Madonna, not the Virgin Mary, the pop star, one of the most iconic musicians of the last four decades now. Countless hits across every decade, just had major world tour, major global sex symbol. Yeah, I don't know. Madonna is a mononym. There's only a handful of them in pop music. It's like Prince Cher Madonna. Don't knock Beyonce.

Let's move on. You're totally right, Charlie. She's multifaceted. You know, like you said, global sex symbol, pop superstar, a songwriter, a producer, an actress, a businesswoman, and an activist. She is also the biggest female pop star in the world. Wait, really? By what measure? I got you.

She's the most successful solo artist in Hot 100 chart history. Whoa. Yeah, it's crazy. Second only to the Beatles. Wow. She's the best-selling female recording artist of all time. We got 300 million units worldwide. And in the first decade of her career, we're only talking 10 years.

She generated $1.2 billion in sales. Wow. Cash machine. So you can imagine she's also extremely influential. She's cited as an influence by Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears. Basically, any pop star of the current generation owes their career to Madonna. And her sound is as influential today as it was in the 80s. Take Ariana Grande's hit from earlier this year, yes and, and its similarity.

to Madonna's classic Vogue. I did not have Vogue on my 2024 bingo card. I am so glad that it has come back through this interpolation. And that's part of the beauty of Madonna. She is able to come back again and again and keep her throne as the queen of pop. I feel like Madonna had eras before there was a word for eras. Constant reinvention, new sounds, new images,

and this career that spans so many decades. Yeah, she has 14 studio albums, countless singles, and this reinvention makes her something of an enigma. Yeah, you asked me at the top, who is Madonna, and it's like an impossible question to answer, I feel like. Well, you're in luck,

because this week we're going to be listening to Madonna, and I thought I'd give you and switched on pop listeners a course in musical Madonnaology. Madonnaology? Literally. There is a field of academic studies called Madonna studies. It's crazy. She has been written about. She's been discussed so much. And if I was still enrolled in academia, this is the PhD that I would pursue. Okay, so you've got three episodes. We're dropping them Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It's part of this special listening to Madonna series. What are we talking about? Well, you know, Madonna is perhaps my favorite artist of all time.

I grew up listening to her music. And I could go on and on about Madonna's impact as an artist, the things she's done to further women's rights, LGBTQ rights, all of that. But that's not what we're here for. In my studies of Madonnaology, I've come to realize Madonna has her own musical, holy trinity, gender exploration, globalization. Amen. And we're going to start today with the first.

her exploration of gender. Now, Madonna's been named as an almost sacred feminist icon. And when you think of Madonna's impact, one of the biggest things she's responsible for is shaping what it means to be a female artist in pop music. And with a career, as long as hers, the way she communicates gender changes definitively over time. I see Madonna's career as having three phases.

A juvenile satiristic girlhood, an empowered young adulthood, and a subversive, pensive womanhood. Okay, let's go through it. One, juvenile girlhood. And where to start, other than her first album, the self-titled Madonna and her first top 10 hit, Borderline. Borderline!

Such a smash even today. One of her best songs, and it's the song that catapulted Madonna to stardom. It is a track that expresses Madonna's confusion and frustration with her lover. She is not happy in this relationship. She is looking for freedom. Something is amiss.

Right. And we already have an interesting juxtaposition here because we have these lyrics that are sad and frustrating and lamenting about feeling caged in over these bubbly, lighthearted synthesizers that underscore the romance here. Yeah. Ooh.

I kind of never realized how dark about it. song this was. So frequently, I just don't pay attention to the lyrics. Oh, gosh. The whole song continues in this theme. And though it doesn't directly communicate anything about gender in direct terms, you know, we don't really have pronouns here. It's very internal. But Madonna's dialogue with her lover has a little subtle shift in here that is important. So I'm going to play you the last verse of Borderline. Wait a minute. So she wants to be set free, but now she's like, when you're gone, I want to be together. So there's some deep internal conflict of where she wants to be in this relationship.

Exactly. Again, that juxtaposition, she contains multitudes. But I feel like there's way more to borderline, which is just the whole concept that she's introducing is that she's somebody who's like, she's going to cross boundaries. She's going to keep pushing up to the borderline. And Madonna is going to cross that borderline. I feel like over and over and over again in her career. but all things, especially gender and sexuality.

Exactly. And the structure of the song is also interesting. It's over five minutes long and has an extremely long chorus to end the song. But in that final chorus, she has a breakthrough that symbolizes her crossing that borderline. So pay attention to that lyric, you just keep on pushing my love over the borderline. In the very next line to close out the song, she switches that perspective and subtly, subverts the lyrics from a statement to a direction. So she's not saying you keep pushing me.

She's instead saying keep pushing me. I want you to keep pushing me over the borderline. Okay, this is great. I also love how through the entire thing, she's saying pushing over the borderline. We have this baseline underneath, which is pushing the music forward at all moments, the bum, bum, bum, bum.

it's constantly anticipating the downbeat and syncopating these little offbeat moments as well so that you are kind of always trying to find your footing and it's always pushing forward at the same time. So there's this great resonance between the music and the lyrics and it's so clear that it sets up the rest of her career and crossing all these boundaries. Exactly. And that lyrical subversion that I mentioned represents Madonna's intentions throughout her career, a distinct desire to shift the power away from outside forces and towards herself and make her more powerful. She continues this theme even more explicitly on her second album, Like a Virgin. I have a question. You talk about she wants to shift the power dynamic.

And I feel like we're hearing something in early Madonna where her celebrity persona is named after the mother Mary. It is her given name as well, but she adopts the mononym Madonna, and she's being presented as like a virgin, leaning in to that caricature. And yet, I don't believe she's an author of this work yet. Do you detect agency in her music? Absolutely. I think Madonna communicates agency in these early years of her career through her delivery of these lyrics and these songs, despite them in the case of like a virgin, being written by two men, Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, and produced by your bestie. Not Rogers.

You can always hear his funk guitar. It's amazing. He just succeeds in every decade. And this delivery is where I want to focus here. Let's look at how she sings like a virgin. I feel like she's performing exactly what you set up, this sort of juvenile girlhood. That's obviously what this song is also trying to present. we hear a sort of restrained vocal.

It's very head voice, little nasally, some breathiness. It's a little coy, a lot of vibrato. It's not like a power belting kind of vocal. But yeah, I think she's performing exactly that juvenile girlhood identity. Right. It's very wafish and listening to it. It's kind of like a caricature a little bit. Like it feels to me how like Betty Boob sings.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, where it's this like hyper feminine representation. You know, it's how like you would imagine a man would imagine a cutesy woman singing a song. Totally. I mean, Madonna at this point of her life is like a child of New York City dance club. So there's no part of her, which is this sort of true versional ingenue. She is like already a woman in the world. She's playing a part. And she plays the part on this song very well. You know, the title and the lyrics suggests that the song is, of course, about virginity,

a concept that historically is used to subjugate women with regards to masculine demand and sexuality. But much like on borderline, Madonna subtly puts the power in her own hands here, even in the title. She's not saying, I'm a virgin. She's saying, I'm like a virgin. switching the power dynamic, making virginity, not a state of being, but rather a state of mind. Wow, I have never heard the song in this context. I'm realizing now that she completely changes her vocal timbre in the pre-chorus, shifting the entire power dynamic from, as you described, this sort of wayfish way of singing.

And then she's like, you make me feel. It becomes bold and brash, and she's like owning it before sort of flipping back into that more lighthearted voice. when, you know, she gets in the chorus like a virgin, and then this very winky, hey, moment, which I'm realizing now is not saying, hey, it's, she's imitating another sound. I'm sorry, I'm being very coy. It's exactly how you put it.

It's like she's slipping the power dynamic and the expectation of the song. The hay is my favorite part of the song because of that, you know, she's down low and then it's playful, you know. It's like, hey! I can't even do it. It's out of my. It's out of my range.

But it's done in a way that feels like naturalistic. It is obviously supposed to sound like orgasmic. It's a very creative little moment. And I'm sure lots of people were clutching their pearls the first time they heard it. Oh, absolutely. This was something deeply controversial for the time. People were extremely upset when Madonna put out like a virgin. And this is the beginning of when Madonna started to gain ire from conservative groups who tore her up.

throughout her career for promoting sexual promiscuity. And she leaned into it, too, because around this time is when she had her MTV VMA performance, where she performed like a virgin in a wedding dress and a belt buckle that's spelled boy toy while riding around on the floor. This is just so set up for controversy. You have a person named after like the second holiest figure in the Christian faith, and in a time when Christian faith is a much more predominant part of American culture,

like I'm just pulling up a random Gallup poll here about church membership amongst U.S. adults. And in 1984, 71% in 2020, it's down to 47%. Wow. It's a totally different cultural moment. And so she is just setting this whole thing up with an incredible amount of shock factor. Exactly. And I'm going to pull up a quote myself from Out Magazine. that says, like a virgin, defined Madonna as the seminal 1980s pop star,

as she symbolically entered the culture war debates of the 1980s, and helped change a generation of young girls into sexually expressive adults, alerting them to the dated ideologies of religion. Okay, so we've established that she's someone who's going to push through borders, that she is not abstinent. How else is she upsetting everyone in the 1980s in this caricature of, juvenile girlhood. Well, we can't talk about gender in Madonna without, of course, talking about the most overt representation of gender in her catalog. Material Girl. Is there a better song

that represents the 1980s? This song is basically capitalism rocks. Get on board, baby. Communism, you're over. Consumerism is king here on Material Girl. And she opens up the Like a Virgin album with this song. And more. Much like, like a virgin, she did not write it. It's perhaps the most reductive representation of femininity in her catalog. No. I know. And it's written by two dudes, Peter Brown and Robert Rans, while also being produced once again by Nile Rogers.

And yet I feel like you're about to give me a spin on how it is actually subtly subverting the expectations of consumerism and female identity. Wow. Now you're catching on. because with perhaps a lesser performer than Madonna, this song could fall flat on its face. It could lean into this narrative that trivializes Madonna, trivializes girlhood. Other songs of the time with similar themes

didn't really age the best. Like I'm thinking of Denise Williams, let's hear it for the boy, which is stylistically similar, came out the same year, written by two men, produced by another man, and now is kind of cringe.

Because every time he pulls me, Okay, kind of cringe is generous. It's also basically a exact copy of the baseline for borderline. So, yeah, we can move on. Madonna's impact fell all the way back in 1984. From the very beginning. Going back to Material Girl, though, Madonna understands the narrative that she is given and plays into the responsibility that she has with, pardon my pun, the material.

The delivery is. so robotic. Like, it's almost craftworky. We are living a non-material world. It's very new wave. It's not actually particularly poppy. It almost sounds like she is reading instructions. I find the delivery to be very tongue-in-cheek. She's forced into this role. And, like we've established, is subverting what it means to be given this narrative. This is not, like, Reagan and Thatcher of being, we are living in a material world and we are material girls. Yay, but rather like we are living in a material world and I'm a material girl. I'll play by the rules and win it in my own way.

Exactly. And I love the outro of this song because it continues these themes. It ends with a droll, monotone chorus, even more droll than her delivery on these lyrics because it's men singing the final lines of the song. Rope-Bat dance. Talk about craftwork. Yeah. And who's in charge here?

She's in charge. Right. And it even extends to the video, you know, where she's paying homage to Marilyn Monroe's performance of Diamonds are a girl's best friend from gentlemen prefer blondes, an iconic scene. But it's her in this beautiful dress with the Marilyn Monroe haircut, backed by a chorus of men as they cater to her every whim. It's like, if I have to play by these rules, I'm going to. going to win. With all that being said, though, we're really analyzing material girl and synthesizing

what we want to get out of it. But it has a reputation, you know, much like Bruce Springsteen's born in the USA, where people listen to it, and they don't really get the full narrative at hand. Right. Again, to go back to 1980s Consumer America, this is not the celebration that you think it is. Born in the USA is not the patriotic song that you think it is. Material Girl is definitely mocking our consumerist culture. And Madonna does not like Material Girl. There's a quote from her where she says, I didn't write that song, you know, and the video was about how the girl rejected diamonds and money, but God forbid irony should be understood. So when I'm 90, I'll still be the material girl. She's more than that to me. Totally. And for the record, Material Girl is probably my least

favorite Madonna single of all time. But that being said, I do respect it because it feels satiristic. This song, despite opening up the Like a Virgin album, was released after Like a Virgin the single. So at this point in her career, we already know Madonna's ability to play with gendered expectations. So it's hard not to see Material Girl as a playful romp. It's like kind of a bit. Totally. Okay, so we have crossing borders playing with expectations of sexuality and femininity. This is the juvenile girlhood era of Madonna. Where does she go next? So we're going to move from juvenile girlhood into empowered young adulthood with her 1986 album True Blue. Now, True Blue features Madonna's first full image overhaul. It's the introduction of a new era. And for her, a new era in her femininity. She cuts her hair, adopts a more masculine presentation. Now we see her wearing t-shirts and videos at a time when her popularity is making her the most popular female artist of the 1980s. And the album captures a multifaceted experience of femininity more so than like a virgin from more saccharine presentations, like when she embodies 1960s girl groups on the title track True Blue,

to stately more mature showcases of her interiority, like on the ballot, live to tell. Now at this point in Madonna's career, we've come to recognize Madonna as a pop icon with a strong focus on female sexuality. And on an album with many curveballs, one of the most impactful is the opener. Papa don't preach. So here in the chorus, we're seeing empowerment. You know, she's pleading to a paternal figure. Papa, I need help, but also is saying, I've made up my mind. I'm keeping my baby as this is a song about teenage pregnancy. Also leaning into, of course, her character Madonna, who's like a virgin, part of a larger continuous narrative.

And much like a virgin before it, this track got a lot of flack once again from conservative groups because it is a pro-choice song about reproductive rights. The chorus says this explicitly as we heard, but we get this narrative right from the beginning. It's one of Madonna's first songs where she exercises her talent as a storyteller and conveys this, again, through her vocal delivery. We have a very different vocal technique here than she is used on her previous singles. Oh gosh, it's like pleading. It's shaky. It's confrontational, but it's a confrontational. But it's a confrontational. where it's like I'm really nervous about saying these important words to this authority figure in my life. Such a drastic shift from the Betty Boopism of Material Girl.

No kidding. Now we're so much lower. We're more measured. And yeah, it makes it feel more real. It takes Madonna out of this like fun girlhood universe that she's created and places her more effectively in reality. I don't think it's a mistake. this song opens up the record. Yeah, you frame this as an era shift, an identity shift,

and to lead into this album is to hear a whole new Madonna. Right, and it's one that's vulnerable. There's vocal choices on this song specifically that I really like. She has this moment where she sings the word please, and her voice cracks in a way that's particularly revealing and kind of shatters the veneer of Madonna's vocal prowess. Oh my gosh. That please, please, please.

It's raspy. It's like she's just finished crying. It's so performative, but I don't mean that in a negative way. It's like I feel like actor Madonna is showing here. Oh, absolutely. I find it very guttural, you know, and it immerses us further in this narrative. It shows a vulnerability. and frankly a maturity in the song's narrative and performance

that contradicts this kind of fun persona that Madonna has built up thus far and it feels part of the reason why this song is so impactful. It shows Madonna to be someone who once again contains multitudes. She's making choices, she's confronting power figures, how else does she change in this new era? So after True Blue, Madonna releases Like a Prayer. We're going to talk about the title track.

later this week. Okay. But the track on this record I want to focus on here is express yourself. The moment where we see Madonna in this empowered young adult stage become kind of a shepherd or, again, religious figure when it comes to femininity. Oh, hell yeah. Iconic, classic, essential. We can't live without this recording.

Legendary. This song rocks. It's one of my favorites. It's fun. and it directly addresses women right from the get-go and empowers them. You know, Madonna's already at this moment feeling empowered in herself, in her femininity, in her artistry, and now she's directing it at the masses. You know, it's no mistake that she opens up this song with, come on, girls.

It also, to once again bring it back to Material Girl, express yourself uses its verses to directly contradict that song's previous. narrative. It's as if Madonna was like, oh, you guys didn't understand material girl. I'm going to lay it all out here and express yourself directed towards you. Yep, we don't need diamonds. We don't need material things. All of the metals will tarnish. Cars are not useful. We just need our hands to lift each other up and be powerful, regardless of structural inequality and all of the sort of neoliberal values that may be expressed in this song, but we're still in the 1980s, so we're going to excuse that and acknowledge this is a significant shift. Right. You don't need money.

you don't need monetary things. You just need to feel like a queen. And previously, you know, we listened to Like a Virgin. She subverts this narrative of subjugating women. On this song, she subjugates men. Take the bridge, for example. She says, and when you're gone, he might regret it, thinking about the love he once had, tried to carry on, but he just won't get it. He'll be back on his knees. Oh my gosh, this is an inversion of borderline. Even I didn't clock that, Charlie. Right? That's the exact inversion of that same narrative. She's painting this picture of the sad sack man emasculated on his knees begging to this woman. Please take me back.

Total shift in power dynamic. Yeah, it's a role reversal. And to set the scene a little bit, Madonna releases express yourself in 1989. At the time, we are in the early years of the third wave of feminism, which is a movement that focused specifically on sex positivity, among other themes, aiming to empower women. Now, what's interesting is that Madonna has gone on record to say that she is not a feminist, but rather a quote unquote humanist. Her relationship of feminism is extremely confusing, but it's really undeniable that Madonna is extremely impactful in this world of feminism,

Especially at this time, working within the context of songs like Express Yourself, where we're highlighting and lifting up women listeners coming out of the conservative Reagan era. So at this point, we've established Madonna as someone that continues to push the narrative and doesn't back down from a fight. So in the 90s, Madonna undergoes a massive image shift. And we're going to get to that right after the break. Attention Spotify. has arrived the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Caroline Herrera,

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Madonna decides, I no longer want to be the fun girl's girl. the previous eras. We're at this point a long time away in her career from like a virgin. So here she takes notes from people like Lenny Kravitz and the UK genre of trip hop for a radical transformation evident on her single, justify my love. It is getting hot in here. This is, I'm feeling a little flush right now. Now we're in this Madonna era of subversive womanhood. Yeah. I mean, we can hear that. Absolutely. This is. no longer, I'm like a virgin. Hey. Right, right. This is some bedroom talk. This is a confident

adulthood. Gone is the feminine shine that we saw as recent as Papa Don't Preach. You know, here she's delivering spoken word. Her vocal range got lower and lower the more time that passed. And now we're at this point where she's in a whisper tone, whispering sweet nothings over this really dark beat. Low vocal whisper, yes, sweet nothings. I don't know. This is confident seduction. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

I mean, I see it to be somewhere in between. You know, it's the delivery that's very seductive. But she's also saying things like, I just want to be your lover. I want to have your baby kiss me. So, Justify My Love ushers in this new era of Madonna. And in 1992, she releases erotica. an album that was released in tandem with the sex book, the title that really says it all.

Yeah. I think that this is where our generational difference might mark a moment because I recall that was the biggest talk of the town on television for weeks, months. It was like the biggest thing that had happened in decades. It's like I think the 90s were basically the sex book and the Clinton sex scandal. That basically defines the. 90s. Forget the fall of the Berlin Wall, et cetera, et cetera. That was the 90s. Right, right. A sex-forward 90s. But erotica as an album has an impact that lasted past the 90s. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

said that few women artists before or since erotica have been so outspoken about their fantasies and desires. And without erotica, I see it as the next few generations of artists cease to exist. You know, you don't have the sexuality of Britney Spears. You don't even have the directness of Charlie X-E-X or Kim Petrus. All of that really ceases to exist. And when it comes to the music itself, it is dripping in that fantasy and desire. We have songs like deeper and deeper and waiting that further this empowered narrative. So those two songs, you know, and most of erotica, paint Madonna in a certain light. But as we've come to learn, Madonna contains multitudes. And on other tracks on the record, Madonna grapples with her

own complicated reputation, revealing a more vulnerable Madonna, like on the song, Bad Girl. So, you know, Charlie, you said Madonna at this time was all over the news. Everybody was talking about her. And she had this narrative of being a bad girl, you know, on this record, she directly addresses that. This song offers the other side of the coin of being that bad girl. She communicates feelings of hopelessness and this idea of coping with drugs and alcohol to hide her sadness. The song opens with a direct address of these themes. Wow. Something's missing and I don't know why. I always feel the need to hide my feelings.

Part of this message in erotica is like desire and representing. her adult womanhood is just as much about being vulnerable and honest about who she is and all that she has been made to be by other people, how she's had to react to it or cope. Right. And if you listen to the lyrics of the chorus, it's frankly a very sad song. She says, bad girl, drunk by six, kissing someone else's lips, smoke too many cigarettes today. I'm not happy when I act this way. It's heavy. The majority of the song sits in this lament, and she does this musical thing in the chorus where until the end of the song, the chorus doesn't really see a conclusion.

The way she sings, I'm not happy, kind of leaves us waiting for something that never comes, much like Madonna. It repeats like that until about three minutes in where we finally get a melodic conclusion as it soars and yearns for something. grander. She's yearning for a different way of living and it feels very self-loathing, you know, like at this point in her career, we've seen Madonna construct this larger-than-life narrative about what it means to be a woman. But here we really start to see her reckon with the implications of that. It's almost as if like everything that we've heard so far has been this caricature that she has put on and now we are finally getting to see what's really going on inside and what it has done for her. Not to

deny those other aspects of her identity. But this is distinctly different from what we've heard in the past. Right. And as Madonna's sound progresses and she continues to age, she continues to look backwards and reflect and revisits this narrative of self-loathing, mature, vulnerable womanhood, most prominently on the 2000 album music and the song, what it feels like for a girl. Now, if this was in Madonna's early years, I think it'd be easy to think this would be a lighthearted, fun song about like going to the mall, shopping with your girlfriends, material girl too, right? But as soon as you press play, you're met with something different. Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short or shirts and throw a boy to look like a girl

is degrading because you think they're being a good. Okay. So that's a monologue from the movie The Cement Garden. And we hear Charlotte Gainsbourg here talk about the double standards between men and women. Madonna made this song after hearing this monologue and put it at the front of the song to set the tone. It's quite sad. And is over this like ambient lofi instrumental that like feels very insular sonically. I mean, I think this is really questioning the entire prison, which is the binary of gender.

And so much of what we've seen in Madonna. earlier, I feel like we hear in a new light the way that she decides to change her presentation to flip from feminine to masculine. Right. And as the song progresses, it begins to spell a narrative about these double standards that women like Madonna face daily. It's like this has unzipped material girl to show what was really going on as she was singing that song decades prior. Right. It's a song about being a girl, but from this forlorn.

perspective. It's not material girl. It's not like a virgin. It's not even express yourself. It's something upsetting, frankly. And it was written because Madonna was contending with the idea that men are threatened by powerful and intelligent women. She's quoted in interview magazine around this time saying that her generation has been encouraged to grab life by the balls. But she also realized that smart, sassy girls who accomplish a lot and have their own cash and are independent are really frightening to men. And Madonna says, I felt like, why didn't somebody tell me? Why didn't somebody warn me?

And that's what the song is about, swallowing that bitter pill. Like, there's no path. You're damned if you do. You're damned if you don't. It's a total catch-22. It's very revealing and, again, vulnerable with a songwriting that also is very paired back for Madonna at this time. It evokes, I think, the songwriting of Borderline,

where she's communicating things directly in a way that isn't particularly uptoos. There's a simple rhyming scheme. The chorus just repeats the same question over and over again. Do you know what it feels like for a girl? It beckons the listener to contend and really sit and ponder that very question. Kind of like she's been doing from the very beginning. She's constantly asking us, what does it mean to be a girl? What does it feel like to be a girl?

Right. And I always saw the song as like a lament, right? She's grown up her whole life in the public eye and kind of reaching for something outside of her grasp. Like she's been contending her entire career with what it feels like to be a girl. Okay, so we've gone from juvenile girlhood to empowered young adulthood. And now we're in this subversive womanhood era. There really has been a significant transformation in her presentation of gender. and identity. Exactly. To know Madonna is to understand the way she represents sexuality and femininity

in her work. There's a lot of talk about her being a feminist icon. You know, we said at the beginning she's been called almost sacred in that regard. But to fully understand her and her work, you need to know the way she explores gender, the way she explores the world, and the way she explores spirituality, which we will get to in the next two episodes later this week. Switched on Pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brandon McFarland. Illustrations are by Iris Gottlieb, where a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine, and you can subscribe at NYMag slash pod. Find this on social media at Switched on Pop and tell us what your favorite Madonna song is.

would love to know. And we won't be back again on Tuesday, but instead we'll be back again two days from now on Wednesday with another episode of listening to Madonna. And until then, thanks for listening.