Madonna
Frozen

THE REVIEW

It is rare that a singer—someone we have never taken an interest in—can excite or move us with a song. An artist for whom you have always felt profound indifference, total nonchalance. All until you find yourself at home one evening, having already done what needed to be done, feeling down without knowing what to do. So you start browsing the internet. Music, YouTube. In my case, watching funny videos: a 50-year-old woman trying to park, making a thousand maneuvers and finally scraping a nearby car. Then the vision. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot among the other suggested videos, one that has nothing to do with funny videos: I read the title, it’s the song “Frozen” by Madonna. What is it doing among the car videos? Well! I decided to watch it.

I don't know if it was a mistake or not: my eyes experienced a momentary visual shock when I saw this “chick” dressed in black in the middle of an ice desert. The intro was very pleasant: those strings impressed me. I continue watching. Black crows, a black Doberman. It's a video where all the characters are in black and the landscape is a color between aqua green, cobalt, and turquoise. I don’t quite like the chorus or the verses: at first glance, they seem too slow and boring to me. I notice she has tattoos on her hands that look like stitches: they remind me of the character Sally from the movie “Nightmare Before Christmas” that I had seen as a child. The ending comes: the strings return, this time I can distinctly hear a cello in the background: love at first sight, I love that instrument. The video concludes: she collapses to the ground after writhing several times, reminding me of the goddess Kannon for the multitude of arms. I'm struck by this video, so I decide to do some in-depth research: the video is rich in special effects, it was shot in the Mojave Desert in California (a very hot desert, made cold and gloomy by the effects) and thanks to these Madonna won a Grammy Awards.

After focusing solely on the video, I decide to read the lyrics and its translation. And I’m enchanted: the lyrics astonishingly reflect both the video and the melody. "You only see what your eyes want to see, how can life be what you want it to be? You’re frozen, when your heart’s not open" which translates to "you only see what your eyes want to see, how can life be the way you want it to be? You’re frozen when your heart is not open". Very meaningful. I am also thrilled by another line, the one sung last, when in the video she collapses to the ground: "If I could melt your heart" which translates to "if I could melt your heart". A raw and, indeed, cold text. Finally, I scrutinize the melody in its structure: it’s a pop-electronic song, the strings open and close the song and are also present in the chorus and before the end, a synthesizer is present, which with its range of sounds, covers much of the song. The strings, from the very first listen, evoked in me a deep sense of melancholy and regret. No other song, even from my favorite artists, had managed to move me so.

Still today I wonder how someone like Madonna, used to pop and dance songs, managed to conceive (even collaborating with a great electronic musician, William Orbit) such a particular and emotional piece in both music and lyrics.