Madonna
Erotica

THE REVIEW

When Erotica was released in '92, it disappointed fans but delighted critics who could finally slam her definitively… there was mainly talk about Madonna's new look, bordering on pornography, the simultaneous scandalous book Sex, and the fact that neither the single nor the album had the pop and radio strength of its predecessors. More than ten years later, all this seems less "founded"… now accustomed (perhaps) to much greater transgressions and exhibitionism, what Madonna proposed to us now appears as a glossy, Hollywood-like eroticism, a kind of "refined" homage to a black-and-white erotism of the past.

And the music? With this album, Madonna abandons the idea of an album as a collection of potential hits, with a varied sound to reach the largest possible number of listeners, and for the first time decides to create an album with a well-defined sonic project, organic. Thanks to producers Shep Pettibone and Andre Betts, she invents a sharp, "cold" groove, a sort of dance dominated by syncopated bass lines, tainted with electronics and hip-hop rhythms (at not yet suspicious times)… and the result is exactly what the title of the album suggests, a hypnotic and alluring sound (Erotica, Waiting). The biggest limitation of Madonna remains, of course, her voice, but this time she manages to dodge the obstacle by indulging in lower registers or singing ironically in falsetto, often replacing singing with "spoken" parts that contribute to making the result even more sensual ("Secret Garden", "Where Life Begins"); all, however, in contrast with the album's lyrics which are not as erotic as one might think but rather focused on themes such as loneliness, death, and racism… in short, the sex addressed in Erotica is not joyful but appears almost as a diversion, an escape, a desperate necessity. To break this sultry atmosphere, there are still musically more frivolous moments, reminiscent of her previous works, such as "Deeper And Deeper" (the ancestor of the current Hung Up), "Thief Of Hearts", "Rain", and "Bad Girl".

In conclusion, Erotica, though not perfect (like all the works of Ciccone), is an interesting album, which was not appreciated because it was really ahead of its time and above all transforms Madonna from a "hit machine" to a more mature artist, interested in albums in their entirety and the experimentation of ever-new sounds.