Songoftheday 7/14/17 - Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another...
from the album The Immaculate Collection (1990)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13
Today's song of the day comes from Madonna, who had finished the 80's with her starring turn in the live-action movie version of Dick Tracy, which also landed her two big hits from the soundtrack, "Hanky Panky" and the #1 classic "Vogue". As one of the biggest stars of pop music of the past decade, and by far the top female pop artist of the 80's, Madonna recapped the most successful period of her career on radio with The Immaculate Collection, a greatest hits set that originally was notable for being recorded in the soon-doomed Q Sound format, which was supposed to enhance the spacial positioning of the recording but ended up not being very effective for music but rather lingered on for the gaming world. Two new recordings were on the Collection, and released as singles. The first was a slow, seductive booty-call track co-written with Lenny Kravitz (and Ingrid Chavez, after a lawsuit proved her contribution to the writing). The lyrics, which Madonna cooed half-spoken over the "Funky Drummer" beat and prominent loud synth-bass, were random romantic musings, like "I wanna run naked in a rainstorm", but they weren't as provocative as the music video that would emerge from the song. Banned by MTV and released as a VHS video single (a big rare thing in those days before anyone would imagine anything like YouTube), the clip for "Justify My Love" was Madonna's personal soft-porn, placing her in a hotel with models of different genders and clothing options writhing all over each other. To her fanbase (especially the gays), it was a triumphant expression of sexuality in the age of AIDS and the Reagan-Bush stiff-shirt brigade...
"Justify My Love" became Madonna's ninth #1 pop hit in the U.S. in January of 1991. The song also crossed over to Billboard's R&B chart at #42. The remixes on the 12" vinyl and CD single helped it top the Dance Club Play chart as well. Internationally, the single went to #1 in Canada and Finland, and reached the top ten in the UK (#2), Italy (#2), Spain (#3), Norway (#3), Switzerland (#3), Australia (#4), the Netherlands (#4), New Zealand (#5), Sweden (#8), Austria (#9), and Germany (#10).
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Here's the remix by electronica star William Orbit that helped it top the dance chart...
and here's Madonna singing "Justify My Love" during her Girlie Show tour in 1993...
lastly, she used a specially created video from Tom Munro to project while she changed during the MDNA tour...
Up tomorrow: A Former-edition soul star has acquaintances of wavering trust.
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