Madonna albums discography
American singer Madonna has released 13 studio albums, three soundtrack albums, five live albums, six compilation albums, and 34 other limited releases. In 1982, Madonna signed a recording contract with Sire Records, a label owned by Warner Bros. Records. The first release under the label was her self-titled debut album, "Madonna" (1983). It peaked at number eight on the "Billboard" 200 and was certified five times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). She followed the debut album with the sophomore release, "Like a Virgin" (1984). The album topped the chart in several countries and was certified diamond by the RIAA. "True Blue" was released as her third studio album in 1986 and sold over 25 million copies worldwide, while becoming her second chart topper in US. In 1987, she released two albums that reached platinum status in the United States: the "Who's That Girl soundtrack" and her first remix compilation, "You Can Dance". Madonna's fourth studio album, "Like a Prayer" (1989), became her third number-one album on the "Billboard" 200, achieving quadruple platinum in US.
Confessions on a Dance Floor
"Confessions on a Dance Floor" is a full-on dance, electronic and disco record, which is structured like a nightly set composed by a DJ. The music starts out light and happy, and as it progresses, it becomes intense, with the lyrics dealing more about personal feelings, hence "Confessions". According to Madonna, "[t]his is the direction of my record. That's what we intended, to make a record that you can play at a party or in your car, where you don't have to skip past a ballad. It's nonstop." Madonna used samples and references of music by other disco artists. In the album's first song, "Hung Up", she sampled ABBA's 1979 hit "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)", for which she wrote a personal letter to songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, who gave Madonna permission to use the track. References of other disco-influenced acts, including Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, and Daft Punk, were also used on the album, as were the disco hits of Parisian DJ Cerrone. The album has a song called "Forbidden Love", which is different from the same titled song from Madonna's sixth studio album "Bedtime Stories". Regarding sampling herself and her own song names, Madonna commented:
"I did all of that on purpose, [...] I mean, if I'm going to plagiarize somebody, it might as well be me, right? I feel like I've earned the right to rip myself off. 'Talent borrows, genius steals,' [...] "Let's see how many other clichés I can throw in there. That's exactly it. I was only hinting early on, but then I tell it like it is. It's like, now that I have your attention, I have a few things to tell you."
A pulsating rhythm is present in the song "Isaac", which is regarded as the only song close to a ballad on the album. However, the song was criticised heavily by a group of Israeli rabbis who commented that Madonna was committing a blasphemy with their religion. They said that the song was about sixteenth century Kabbalah scholar Yitzhak Luria. In reality, the song was named after the featured vocalist Yitzhak Sinwani, who sang portions of the Yemenite Hebrew poem "Im Nin'alu" in the track. Initially Madonna toyed with the idea of calling the song as "Fear of Flying" since the idea behind the composition was to let go. However, at the end she decided to just call it "Isaac" after the English version of Sinwani's name. Regarding the song's development and the condemnation of the Rabbis, Madonna said:
"You do appreciate the absurdity of a group of rabbis in Israel claiming that I'm being blasphemous about someone when they haven't heard the record, right? And then, everyone in the media runs with it as if it's the truth. And that's a little weird. But what's even weirder is that the song is not about Isaac Lurier, as the rabbis claim. It's named after Yitzhak Sinwani, who's singing in Yemenite on the track. I couldn't think of a title for the song. So I called it "Isaac" [the English translation of "Yitzhak"]. It's interesting how their minds work, those naughty rabbis. [...] He's saying, "If all of the doors of all of the generous peoples' homes are closed to you, the gates of heaven will always be open." The words are about 1,000 years old. [...] [Yitzhak] is an old friend of mine. He's never made a record. He comes from generations of beautiful singers. Stuart and I asked him to come into the studio one day. We said, "We're just going to record you. We don't know what we're going to do with it." He's flawless. One take, no bad notes. He doesn't even need a microphone. We took one of the songs he did and I said to Stuart, "Let's sample these bits. We'll create a chorus and then I'll write lyrics around it." That's how we constructed it."
The lyrics of the songs on the album incorporate bits of Madonna's musical history and are written in the form of confessions. "Hung Up" contains lyrics from Madonna's 1989 duet with Prince called "Love Song", from the "Like a Prayer" album. "How High" refers to two songs from Madonna's eighth studio album "Music", namely "Nobody's Perfect" and "I Deserve It". The lyrics of "Push" thank the person who challenged her to expand her limits and also incorporate elements of The Police's song "Every Breath You Take". Other tracks like "Sorry" include the title word in ten different languages. "I Love New York" depicts Madonna praising the city that made her the person she is. Elsewhere, Madonna sings about success and fame ("Let It Will Be") and the crossroads of past, present and future ("Like It or Not").