MLVC — Selected Tracks
On Repeat
The songs I go back to again, and again — and again.
playlist · tracks · No skips
Prelude
A personal selection
Not every great Madonna song was sent out as a single. Some of her most revealing work lives deeper inside the records — the album tracks that never had a video or a chart run, but that tell you most about the people who made them.
These are mine: the tracks I return to, over and over — mostly deep cuts, and now and then a single that still gets under my skin. No particular order of importance, just the songs that never leave the rotation.
01 — The Rotation
Playlist tracks, no skips
01
Erotica · 1992
Erotica
The first word on the record, whispered like a dare.
“Erotica” opens the record and introduces its guide: Madonna’s alter ego, Dita, speaking low over a crackling, sample-heavy groove built with Shep Pettibone and Anthony Shimkin. Kool and the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie” sits underneath; the voice sits almost too close. It was a single, and a big one — but it never sounds as if it is trying to please anyone. Heard now, away from the uproar around the Sex book, it is a hypnotic, controlled piece of house music about trust, power and surrender: an invitation and a warning at the same time.
On the record
Erotica, 1992
Track 1 of 14
Written by
Madonna | Shep Pettibone | Anthony Shimkin
Best heard
Lights off, volume low.
02
Bedtime Stories · 1994
Bedtime Story
A lullaby for switching off the mind — written by Björk.
Madonna met Björk through Nellee Hooper, and the Icelandic singer — with Hooper and Marius De Vries — sent over a demo called “Let’s Get Unconscious”. Madonna and Hooper turned it into something closer to a club record: ambient, acid-tinged and quietly hypnotic, a song about the joy of letting go of reason and language altogether. It sounded like nothing else on Bedtime Stories, and in hindsight it pointed straight towards Ray of Light. Mark Romanek’s surreal video, inspired by Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, now sits in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
On the record
Bedtime Stories, 1994
Track 10 of 11
Written by
Björk | Nellee Hooper | Marius De Vries
Best heard
Eyes closed, just before sleep.
03
Ray of Light · 1998
Mer Girl
The last thing on Ray of Light — and the most unguarded.
Ray of Light ends not with a dance track but with this: a slow, spectral piece in which Madonna walks through a dream of running from home and finding herself at her mother’s grave. William Orbit’s production is all drift and shadow. It is perhaps the most unguarded recording she has ever released — and the bravest way to close a record about rebirth.
On the record
Ray of Light, 1998
Track 13 of 13
Written by
Madonna | William Orbit
Best heard
Alone, headphones on, nothing after it.
Coda
Taken together, these tracks show a different Madonna from the one on the radio: more private, more exposed, and often more daring.
The rotation is never finished. Press play, and come back for more.