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Thread started 10/19/12 7:01am

go2theMax

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Madonna - Erotica 20th Anniversary

So tomorrow one of Madonna's best works is turning 20 y.o.. It sho'nuff deserve some appreciation. It is for sure my favorite album by her and the first that I bought on the release date, hence the first era that I really accompained thoroughly and what a great one. Great singles, great remixes, great videos. Unfortunately the controversy surrounding the SEX book overshadowed the music and some critics would just say that she want too far with thw subject and hardly paying attention to the music. Well, time proved they were wrong, as Erotica today finally gets the recogniton it deserves.

Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine called Erotica "Madonna at her most important, at her most relevant." Yahoo! Music editor John Myers stated that the album "is musically some of Madonna's best work. Representing a time where she was at the top of her craft, this album offers intelligent insight into the taboos we've been taught to be afraid to speak of. Combined with equally clever musical arrangements, this one's a must have for any Madonna fan." Writing for The New York Times in October 1992, Stephen Holden said that "Erotica differs from Madonna's previous albums is in the number of songs that have an almost dogmatic ring. In song after song she embodies a sexually self-determining woman who, though desirous of male attention, is not about to be victimized by male power games. And in the two most sexually graphic songs, she pointedly turns the table and plays the role of aggressor." Stylus Magazine said that "each dance track emits its own idiosyncratic energy; there are more unexpected textures on Erotica than on any other Madonna album [...] Erotica [was] too sophisticated for a mainstream besotted with The Bodyguard and a college-radio claque eager to praise R.E.M.'s opaque dirges for the wisdom that Madonna's club fodder showed with less fuss and with a better rhythm section." In 2010, an MTV News blog wrote, "Because the content is so obsessed with sex, the music on Erotica often gets short shrift, but it's one of the strongest albums of Madonna's career." By 1992, Madonna was an icon—untouchable, literally and figuratively—and Erotica was the first time the artist's music took on a decidedly combative, even threatening tone, and most people didn't want to hear it. Erotica's irrefutable unsexiness probably says more about the sex=death mentality of the early '90s than any other musical document of its time. This is not Madonna at her creative zenith. This is Madonna at her most important, at her most relevant. Madonna's voice might sound nasal and remote, but no one else in the mainstream at that time dared to talk about sex, love, and death with such frankness and fearlessness (Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine)

Come on board, let's appreciate this great album!! cool

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Reply #1 posted 10/19/12 7:08am

go2theMax

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ok, this one might be NSFW biggrin...so think twice before hit play

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Reply #2 posted 10/19/12 7:52am

OldFriends4Sal
e

She was a Super Star in the 1980's but the 1990's from 1991- was her 2nd period of Super Stardom

this period filled my void where my Prince left off, the creative aspect went up notches

She address a lot of things that were happening socially, this album reminds me of the social climate at the time

the album the house mixes the Girlie Show tour, the Sex book

Erotic is still a favorite song of mine, Deeper & Deeper, Bad Girl,

dammmm Erotica is so hot that at work when I clicked on the wikipedia link for the songs I got:

This Websense category is filtered: Adult Content.

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/w...onna_album)

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Reply #3 posted 10/19/12 8:49am

go2theMax

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I've been listening back 2 back this week 2 a fan-made album that consists in extended versions of each song. And I gotta tell ya it's a pretty well done job. It's like if it was 12" versions of each song and some of them (e.g. Fever) are even better than the official extended versions. It was done by some guy called Luke. I call "Ërotica (Extended Joy Version)" lol

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Reply #4 posted 10/19/12 9:04am

JoeTyler

meh

the album is too long

the dance numbers were just ripoffs of Vogue

the videos were sinister and creppy, or boring

she acted like the popstar equivalent of Sharon Stone, lol

I respect what she tried to do here (selling sex as a legitimate form of mainstream art)

but I pretty much prefer Bedtime Stories

tinkerbell
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Reply #5 posted 10/19/12 9:07am

Marrk

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I quite liked this point in her career. bought quite a few maxi singles as i recall.

she's an embarrasment now though.neutral

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Reply #6 posted 10/19/12 9:22am

robertlove

Most songs on the album aren't even about sex, it was probably the book that made people think it was about sex. Listen to Dirt Mind and Erotica is really harmless.

That said, it my second favourite album of her (LAP being the first). A lot of songs have this early 90's house vibe, which I love. The spoken word over a slow beat worked also very well.

I liked her look during this era.

I'm not a fan of all her albums, but this one i like.

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Reply #7 posted 10/19/12 9:38am

JoeTyler

in fact, my three fav songs (Rain, Waiting, Secret Garden) were hints at better things to come

I don't think Madonna was particularly happy during the early-90s (change of decade, getting older, Warren Beatty affair, AIDS, etc) ...

tinkerbell
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Reply #8 posted 10/19/12 9:50am

IstenSzek

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i just had a little bit of a shell shock when i realised this album is 20 years old now

eek

i remember, vividly, when i bought it, a few days after release.

it seems absurd to think that is 20 years ago now. freakin unbelievable. dead

anyway: great album. i have been listening to it all these 20 years and never got

real tired of it or started to dislike anything on it. it still sounds great. yes, a bit

dated, but there's 'dated' and then there's "DATED" and this aged very well since

it has such a warm weird hybrid sound of it's own that just says: Erotica.

and true love lives on lollipops and crisps
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Reply #9 posted 10/19/12 9:55am

Mintchip

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I agree about the album being too long.

I think a lot of albums from that period - Dangerous and the Love Symbol Album leap to mind - were too long; 12 + songs. It's hard to do that without filler or repetitions.

I love the Erotica video, love the look and the vibe of the whole thing.

Also, 'Deeper and Deeper' is the last time she really sang her ass off like the old days. Soon it would be Bedtime Stories (too chill to belt), and then voice lessons for Evita, which almost ruined it for me.

But a badass lady, and a badass era. "I'd like to make a book of soft core porn, and an album to go with it." Sure, lady. Rock n roll.

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Reply #10 posted 10/19/12 10:15am

go2theMax

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IstenSzek said:

i just had a little bit of a shell shock when i realised this album is 20 years old now

eek

i remember, vividly, when i bought it, a few days after release.

it seems absurd to think that is 20 years ago now. freakin unbelievable. dead

anyway: great album. i have been listening to it all these 20 years and never got

real tired of it or started to dislike anything on it. it still sounds great. yes, a bit

dated, but there's 'dated' and then there's "DATED" and this aged very well since

it has such a warm weird hybrid sound of it's own that just says: Erotica.

yeahthat

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Reply #11 posted 10/19/12 11:19am

LiveToTell86

Mintchip said:

I agree about the album being too long.

I think a lot of albums from that period - Dangerous and the Love Symbol Album leap to mind - were too long; 12 + songs. It's hard to do that without filler or repetitions.

Correct. The 80s with 40-45 minutes long albums was much better than the early 90s when everyone

felt obligated to fill a whole CD!

It's probably my least fav album of hers, others have already said my reasons, Shep was a one trick pony. Also, I hate how this got a reputation of "sex album" when most of it is simply faceless breakup songs. On every album that came after it, she's been more personal, that's something many fans seem to ignore.

On the flipside, "Rain" is absolutely gorgeous, her vocals on it are angelic, and the Andre Betts songs are cool, especially "Secret Garden".

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Reply #12 posted 10/19/12 11:27am

SoulAlive

I can never decide if this album or ROL is my favorite by her lol

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Reply #13 posted 10/19/12 11:46am

OldFriends4Sal
e

JoeTyler said:

in fact, my three fav songs (Rain, Waiting, Secret Garden) were hints at better things to come

I don't think Madonna was particularly happy during the early-90s (change of decade, getting older, Warren Beatty affair, AIDS, etc) ...

well after her True Blue divorce and the escape from the tragedy that would have been Graffiti Bridge her creative spark blew up via the Immaculate Conception Truth or Dare Justify My Love into Erotica period

I think she was happy but she allowed what was happening to fuel some wonderful periods

She did well with the change of decade,

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Reply #14 posted 10/19/12 11:48am

go2theMax

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I don't agree that it's too long, every song has life of its own and I would loooooove a special edition with 2 discs or more cool

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Reply #15 posted 10/19/12 12:39pm

Gunsnhalen

I Actually don't really like Madonna & her 80's crap lol

The only period of her i like is from Erotica to Ray Of Light, she seemed to have a vision & pushed buttons... but she did it for her own artistic vision.

Where as i feel nowaday's she just wants attention & chases trends, when at this period she was making trends.

Bad Girl is an amazing video! very cinematic.. as is Rain & Erotica.

Pistols sounded like "Fuck off," wheras The Clash sounded like "Fuck Off, but here's why.."- Thedigitialgardener

All music is shit music and no music is real- gunsnhalen

Datdonkeydick- Asherfierce

Gary Hunts Album Isn't That Good- Soulalive
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Reply #16 posted 10/19/12 12:50pm

mjscarousal

I can dig it cool This is my favorite Madonna Era

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Reply #17 posted 10/19/12 2:04pm

Mintchip

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So what do you guys prefer: words, waiting, or thief of hearts?
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Reply #18 posted 10/19/12 3:10pm

LiveToTell86

Gunsnhalen said:

Where as i feel nowaday's she just wants attention & chases trends, when at this period she was making trends.

How was Erotica making trends in terms of music? Everybody was doing that type of house/dance music by 1992. It was a sound she used three years earlier with the Express Yourself remix. She actually stuck with it for too long, that's definitely not any better than the dubstep wannabe stuff on MDNA.

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Reply #19 posted 10/19/12 4:14pm

go2theMax

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LiveToTell86 said:

Gunsnhalen said:

Where as i feel nowaday's she just wants attention & chases trends, when at this period she was making trends.

How was Erotica making trends in terms of music? Everybody was doing that type of house/dance music by 1992. It was a sound she used three years earlier with the Express Yourself remix. She actually stuck with it for too long, that's definitely not any better than the dubstep wannabe stuff on MDNA.

It wasn't just house. There's pop, some jazzy-infused hiphop (God help me with this), new jack swing, lounge. And even the house tracks, they have good lyrics and melodies. I agre that Vogue and Justify My Love influenced the sounds of Erotica, but just as much as Bedtime Story, the song, seemed to give a hint of what her next album would be like. Plus, this album was nothing like her previous ones..u gotta admit that.

[Edited 10/19/12 16:26pm]

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Reply #20 posted 10/19/12 4:33pm

go2theMax

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The Erotica Diaries
by Shep Pettibone

I remember when Madonna and I first started working together on Erotica. We were listening in my home studio to one of the first songs and I turned to her and said "It's great, but it's no Vogue." She told me that not every song could be Vogue - not every cut could emerge as the top-selling record of all time. She was right, but I pressed my case anyway: "I guess I'm always trying to out-top myself," I told her, "the next thing should be bigger than the last." Madonna just turned and looked me straight in the eye. It had been a long time since I'd been star-struck by her, but she was glowing differently now. "Shep," she began, "no matter how fierce something is, you can't ever do the same thing twice." She sat down to record the final vocals on Erotica and looked out onto the terrace and into the New York City night. "Ever," she repeated.


Diary Entry #1 July-August 1991

Posted Image

I wanted to start writing again. The last project I had worked on with Madonna was The Immaculate Collection but that was just a month and a half of working with that QSound stuff. I knew I could do something great after Vogue and Rescue Me so I just started putting tracks together with my assistant, Tony Shimkin. I wanted to have a few songs for Madonna to listen to when I went out to Chicago, were she was filming A League Of Their Own. I had no idea that she was planning to do an album at that time, but then again, neither did she. I arrived in Chicago on July 8th and gave Madonna a cassette. I told her to give it a listen and tell me what she thought. She said she'd listen to it in the car, in the trailer, wherever she could. A few days later, I heard back from her. Madonna liked all the songs - three out of three. I decided to work on a few more.

Usually, when I sit down to write, it isn't as if I have a specific person in mind for any one song. By the time I get to a certain place in the music, it begins to mold itself an identity and I think, "Hey, this person would like that." At the time, Cathy Dennis, Taylor Dayne, or Madonna were the primary inspirations for a variety of songs.

Diary Entry #2 October-November 1991

Posted Image

Madonna returned to New York and we began to work on demos in my apartment. It's cool working at home. It's convenient, cozy and there's no studio time ticking by. Plus, if you wake up in the middle of the night and have an idea, you just go upstairs, turn on the equipment, and go. Our schedule was kind of sporadic in the beginning. I'd work with her for a week and then she'd go off to work with Steve Meisel on her book (Sex) for two weeks. Occasionally, Madonna would meet with Andre Betts, her co-producer on Justify My Love. While she was away, I would spend time coming up with other tracks or work on Cathy Dennis and Taylor Dayne material. At this point, I wasn't working on any remixes - just writing. Deeper and Deeper, Erotica, Rain and Thief of Hearts made up the first batch of songs we worked on together. I did the music and she wrote the words. Sometimes I'd give her some ideas lyrically and she'd go: "Oh, that's good," or "That sucks." I remember when I gave her some ideas lyrically for Vogue and she said, very curtly, "That's what I do." Essentially, her songs are her stories. They're the things she wants to say.

I did everything upstairs in my home studio: keyboards, bass lines, and vocals. Depending on the mood I was in, I chose from an Oberheim OB8, Korg M3, or a Roland D-50. On the sampling side, the Akai S1000 was our prime workhorse. We used it to sample snake charms for Words and Kool ∓ The Gang horns for Erotica.

When it came time to record demos, we laid down a track of SMPTE on the last track of my 8-track Tascam 388 Studio 8 reel-to-reel, which has dbx. Usually we'd put the track down on tracks 1 and 2 in a stereo mix, and then bring Madonna's vocals in on 3 through 7 - a lead, a double lead, the harmonies, and the background parts. Ninety-eight percent of the time, the vocals recorded in my apartment were the keeper vocals, the ones you hear on the album. It took about two or three days to write a song from beginning to end. Still, sometimes even after they were done we'd want to change the flow of the song and ask the song a few questions: Where should the chorus hit? Should it be a double chorus? Sometimes Madonna would call me in the middle of the night and say "Shep, I think the chorus should go like this," or "I hate this verse, fix the bass line." Deeper and Deeper was one of those songs she always had a problem with. The middle of the song wasn't working. We tried different bridges and changes, but nothing worked. In the end, Madonna wanted the middle of the song to have a flamenco guitar strumming big-time. I didn't like the idea of taking a Philly house song and putting La Isla Bonita in the middle of it. But that's what she wanted, so that's what she got.

Diary Entry #3 December 1991

"I hate them." That's what she said to me when we listened to the first bunch of songs we'd recorded. I thought it sounded great because some of the songs had a New York house sound and some of them had an L.A. vibe. "If I had wanted the album to sound like that, I'd have worked with Patrick Leonard in L.A.," she told me. I got the point pretty fast. Madonna wanted Erotica to have a raw edge to it, as if it were recorded in an alley at 123rd street in Harlem. She didn't want some light glossy production to permeate her sound. I got back into my usual style of mixing, which is pretty bass oriented, analog, hit-you-over-the head kind of stuff. When you're recording songs for Madonna, the attitude is: Either make a song work, or it's not going to be on the album. That's that.

Typically, Madonna would get over to my place by one in the afternoon and we'd work until eighth or nine at night. Improvising vocals took one or two passes and by the time the third pass came around, she'd get on the mic and say "Let's go." Madonna has an incredible mind; she locks the melody into her head and memorizes the words immediately. She doesn't even have to read the words off the paper when she's singing.

The only problems were during sequencing, when we had to do something on the Mac that would take some time. Two minutes into it, Madonna would ask us: "What are you guys doing that's taking so long!" - and this was just after the first few minutes. We'd tell her to go downstairs and make some popcorn or phone calls so that we could put the song together and she'd do that for about five minutes before screaming: "Come on, guys, I'm getting bored!" I had to keep things moving as fast as possible because it's one of my jobs to keep Madonna from losing interest in what she's doing. As far as the music went, it was getting a little melancholy by that point. It definitely wasn't up-and-happy music. Maybe I inspired songs like In This Life and Bad Girl because they were written in a minor key. But Madonna's stories were getting a lot more serious and intense and she was definitely driving the creative direction of the songs into deeply personal territory.


Diary Entry #4 January-February 1992

I spent the Christmas on vacation in Jamaica and when I got back on January 2, I was like "Oh man, I am not ready for this." There were a lot of intense songs to work on for Madonna, but all I had was this reggae-ish vibe going around in my head. Jamaica had really had an impact on me. I put the vibe down on tape and played it for Madonna, who immediately took to it. Once she got all the lyrics down, the song became Why Is It So Hard.

After it was done we thought: "How about if we get a male Jamaican rapper in here to do some stuff on the record?" We found this guy, Jamaiki, who runs a Jamaican record store uptown. He was this big guy with real deep-ass voice. When we were trying to explain the song to him, he just looked at us and said, "Do you have any rum, man?" By the time Jamaiki, was laying down the tracks in my studio, he was dancing around swigging rum and spilling it everywhere. We ended up not using the track because it sounded to rough for the song, but it was a very fun day - completely different.

By this point, people had begun to realize that Madonna was recording in my penthouse. All her fans would wait outside, even though it was freezing, just to catch a glimpse of her or take a picture. One particular day, when I walked her down to her car, the lobby was filled with building residents getting the mail, hanging out at the front desk, sitting on benches. It was weird because usually the place is empty. After I walked her outside and ran across the street to get the day's newspaper, I came back to find nobody there. People were coming downstairs to the lobby just to get a look at her, even if it was out of the corners of their eyes.


Diary Entry #5 March 1992

Posted Image

Now I knew we were doing an album. We had fifteen songs demoed and she liked them all. The last song we did was for the movie, A League Of Their Own. Madonna just started singing a melody over and over again into the Shure SM57 microphone while the Mac with Vision was playing strings, organ, piano and a basic rim-shot loop. It sounded really timeless, very nostalgic. I spent all night filling in the verses and the song became This Used To Be My Playground.

The day after "Playground" was finished, Madonna went to Oregon to work on her next film Body Of Evidence, with Willem Defoe. This gave me some time to wrap up some work on some songs with Cathy Dennis and Taylor Dayne at Soundworks Studios in New York. The workload had grown quite intense since the beginning of the year and it showed no signs of letting up. Thanks to my manager Jane Brinton, we were able to coordinate all the ongoing projects without a hitch.

Diary Entry #6 May 1992

I met Madonna at Oceanway Studios in Los Angeles to complete the orchestra parts for This Used To Be My Playground.
We had to record a string arrangement - something I was excited about but had never done before. Madonna chose Jeremy Lubock to do the arrangements because he had done such a good job with her I'm Breathless Material and came highly recommended. Everything went fine until the point when the orchestra played their parts; we didn't like what we heard. Madonna and I had to change the whole arrangement, right there in the studio, with a full orchestra sitting there getting paid for taking up space - around $15,000 for three hours, $3000 for every half hour over that. And of course, Lubbock was talking to two people who didn't know a C from a B natural. The pressure was on.

I can only sing the notes I hear at the moment, so that's what I did. Madonna and I stood there over my little Mac, singing the notes, and Lubbock would go, "Oh, that's a G; Oh, that's a B" and that's how it got done. We completed the session in 2 hours and 58 minutes - two minutes away from another three grand. The last day of recording fell on Memorial day. Madonna wanted to do the lead vocals again, insisting that it would sound better. It did. I finished off some edits before going over to a party Madonna was throwing in her Hollywood mansion.

Diary Entry #8 June-July 1992

The schedule for recording at Soundworks in New York went something like this:
June 08 - Erotica
June 09 - Words, Why's It So Hard
June 10 - Why's It So Hard; Thief Of Hearts
June 11 - Thief Of Hearts; Goodbye To Innocence
June 15 - 8-track dumps w/no time-code
June 16 - Deeper And Deeper
And so on, and so on...

Posted Image

We transferred everything we had on the Tascam 8-track onto 24-track. I decided to produce the tracks 15 ips with Dolby SR because it has this warm bottom in the bass and I wanted to capture that for Erotica. Plus, I was listening to some of my old remixes, which were recorded at 15 ips, and was amazed at how much more you could feel the music. Compact discs seem to move you one step away from the music, while records put you right in the mix. So I figured that if I overemphasized that LP feeling, it would rub off on the CD, which is the primary format manufactured for American audiences today. Strangely enough, our country can't get any LP's of Erotica, while the rest of the world can.

On July 7, we did the mixing for Erotic the ode to S ∓ M that Madonna wanted to include in her book, Sex. She felt it should sound the same as Erotica (the song on the album), with just a bass line, her voice and some sensuous Middle Eastern sounds. But by then I had seen the book and had come up with an interesting idea.

"You have all these great stories in the book," I told her, "Why don't you use them in the song?" I knew that Madonna was developing a 1930s dominatrix look for Erotica, but I didn't realize how far she was willing to go before I saw Sex. It contained stories authored by her mysteriously dark alter, Dita. Madonna took the book and walked out of the room and didn't come back until about half an hour later. Suddenly she was on the mic, speaking in this very dry voice. "My name is Dita," she said, "and I'll be your mistress tonight." I knew that the original Erotica would never be the same again, and it wasn't. The chorus and bridge were changed entirely and the whole psyche of the song became sexier, more to the point. It seemed as if Dita brought out the best in her, actually serving as a vehicle for the dangerous territory she was traveling. Actually, it was the same name Madonna used when she'd stay in hotels around the world. Not anymore.

When July 10 came, I felt my thirty-something years hit me full force. It was the day of reckoning - my birthday, and yet I was stuck in the studio with Madonna, Tony Shimkin, and an animal-balloon-twisting clown to celebrate it with. It was fun for about five minutes, until Madonna said, "Shep, you gotta get back to work."

Diary Entry #9 August 15, 1992, Mo's Birthday

One of the tracks, Goodbye To Innocence, just wasn't working. There was something about the song that didn't grab Madonna, so we had to fix it. I worked overnight in my studio and came back to Soundworks with a brand new bass line that seemed to do the trick. Madonna put on headphones and got ready to lay down the vocals for Goodbye To Innocence. But instead of singing the original words, which were written last year, Madonna started toying with the lyrics, singing the words to the lounge-lizard act staple, Fever. At first we thought: "This is cool," and it was. It sounded so good that we decided to take it one step further and actually cover the tune. Too bad no one knew the words. What we needed was a copy of Fever if we were going to record it that day. So, Madonna got on the phone with Seymour Stein at Sire Records, and within an hour, we had the lyric sheets, the Peggy Lee version, and the original version of the song in our hands. I was really impressed by how quickly we got it all. That was the last track on Erotica and we finished mixing it just in time to celebrate another birthday - Madonna's.

That night, she had a birthday party on a boat circling Manhattan. Picture about 50 people dancing on a boat with disco blasting out of the portholes and you get the idea. In between dancing and celebrating, I spent the time reflecting on the album. I was confident that it was a great compilation of songs, but I was wondering how people would react to it. It was definitely a different album for her in that it was a dance/pop album, instead of a guitar-laden pop album designed just for top 40. That was a conscious decision on her part because it seemed that the more pop she went, the fewer of her albums people were buying. This time, she's giving the people what they want.


Diary Entry #10 September - October 1992

After three and a half months of working in the same studio and hearing the same songs day after day, it was a relief to have the album finished. Everything went smoothly except the last two songs, Why's It So Hard and Words, both of which we had to recall for changes. On September 12, I walked out of Soundworks with the completed master of Erotica in my hands.

A month later, I went to the Sex party. The Erotica blitz was about to hit in music, video, and book form and a variety of stars were coming out for the party. Madonna herself surveyed the scene during the midnight hour. I walked over to meet her in the DJ Booth.

There was all this wild stuff going around us: people tattooing one another, couples simulating sex - it was crazy. And when I went to talk to Madonna, who was in the middle of it all, our conversations turned to music. For all the multimedia extravaganzas that were braying for her attention, it was still the music that mattered and it was the record that we fawned over. I realized that no matter how far I've come, I still feel the same way that I always did. And then she put the handcuffs on me. NOT!

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Reply #21 posted 10/19/12 4:59pm

Gunsnhalen

go2theMax said:

The Erotica Diaries
by Shep Pettibone

I remember when Madonna and I first started working together on Erotica. We were listening in my home studio to one of the first songs and I turned to her and said "It's great, but it's no Vogue." She told me that not every song could be Vogue - not every cut could emerge as the top-selling record of all time. She was right, but I pressed my case anyway: "I guess I'm always trying to out-top myself," I told her, "the next thing should be bigger than the last." Madonna just turned and looked me straight in the eye. It had been a long time since I'd been star-struck by her, but she was glowing differently now. "Shep," she began, "no matter how fierce something is, you can't ever do the same thing twice." She sat down to record the final vocals on Erotica and looked out onto the terrace and into the New York City night. "Ever," she repeated.


Diary Entry #1 July-August 1991

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I wanted to start writing again. The last project I had worked on with Madonna was The Immaculate Collection but that was just a month and a half of working with that QSound stuff. I knew I could do something great after Vogue and Rescue Me so I just started putting tracks together with my assistant, Tony Shimkin. I wanted to have a few songs for Madonna to listen to when I went out to Chicago, were she was filming A League Of Their Own. I had no idea that she was planning to do an album at that time, but then again, neither did she. I arrived in Chicago on July 8th and gave Madonna a cassette. I told her to give it a listen and tell me what she thought. She said she'd listen to it in the car, in the trailer, wherever she could. A few days later, I heard back from her. Madonna liked all the songs - three out of three. I decided to work on a few more.

Usually, when I sit down to write, it isn't as if I have a specific person in mind for any one song. By the time I get to a certain place in the music, it begins to mold itself an identity and I think, "Hey, this person would like that." At the time, Cathy Dennis, Taylor Dayne, or Madonna were the primary inspirations for a variety of songs.

Diary Entry #2 October-November 1991

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Madonna returned to New York and we began to work on demos in my apartment. It's cool working at home. It's convenient, cozy and there's no studio time ticking by. Plus, if you wake up in the middle of the night and have an idea, you just go upstairs, turn on the equipment, and go. Our schedule was kind of sporadic in the beginning. I'd work with her for a week and then she'd go off to work with Steve Meisel on her book (Sex) for two weeks. Occasionally, Madonna would meet with Andre Betts, her co-producer on Justify My Love. While she was away, I would spend time coming up with other tracks or work on Cathy Dennis and Taylor Dayne material. At this point, I wasn't working on any remixes - just writing. Deeper and Deeper, Erotica, Rain and Thief of Hearts made up the first batch of songs we worked on together. I did the music and she wrote the words. Sometimes I'd give her some ideas lyrically and she'd go: "Oh, that's good," or "That sucks." I remember when I gave her some ideas lyrically for Vogue and she said, very curtly, "That's what I do." Essentially, her songs are her stories. They're the things she wants to say.

I did everything upstairs in my home studio: keyboards, bass lines, and vocals. Depending on the mood I was in, I chose from an Oberheim OB8, Korg M3, or a Roland D-50. On the sampling side, the Akai S1000 was our prime workhorse. We used it to sample snake charms for Words and Kool ∓ The Gang horns for Erotica.

When it came time to record demos, we laid down a track of SMPTE on the last track of my 8-track Tascam 388 Studio 8 reel-to-reel, which has dbx. Usually we'd put the track down on tracks 1 and 2 in a stereo mix, and then bring Madonna's vocals in on 3 through 7 - a lead, a double lead, the harmonies, and the background parts. Ninety-eight percent of the time, the vocals recorded in my apartment were the keeper vocals, the ones you hear on the album. It took about two or three days to write a song from beginning to end. Still, sometimes even after they were done we'd want to change the flow of the song and ask the song a few questions: Where should the chorus hit? Should it be a double chorus? Sometimes Madonna would call me in the middle of the night and say "Shep, I think the chorus should go like this," or "I hate this verse, fix the bass line." Deeper and Deeper was one of those songs she always had a problem with. The middle of the song wasn't working. We tried different bridges and changes, but nothing worked. In the end, Madonna wanted the middle of the song to have a flamenco guitar strumming big-time. I didn't like the idea of taking a Philly house song and putting La Isla Bonita in the middle of it. But that's what she wanted, so that's what she got.

Diary Entry #3 December 1991

"I hate them." That's what she said to me when we listened to the first bunch of songs we'd recorded. I thought it sounded great because some of the songs had a New York house sound and some of them had an L.A. vibe. "If I had wanted the album to sound like that, I'd have worked with Patrick Leonard in L.A.," she told me. I got the point pretty fast. Madonna wanted Erotica to have a raw edge to it, as if it were recorded in an alley at 123rd street in Harlem. She didn't want some light glossy production to permeate her sound. I got back into my usual style of mixing, which is pretty bass oriented, analog, hit-you-over-the head kind of stuff. When you're recording songs for Madonna, the attitude is: Either make a song work, or it's not going to be on the album. That's that.

Typically, Madonna would get over to my place by one in the afternoon and we'd work until eighth or nine at night. Improvising vocals took one or two passes and by the time the third pass came around, she'd get on the mic and say "Let's go." Madonna has an incredible mind; she locks the melody into her head and memorizes the words immediately. She doesn't even have to read the words off the paper when she's singing.

The only problems were during sequencing, when we had to do something on the Mac that would take some time. Two minutes into it, Madonna would ask us: "What are you guys doing that's taking so long!" - and this was just after the first few minutes. We'd tell her to go downstairs and make some popcorn or phone calls so that we could put the song together and she'd do that for about five minutes before screaming: "Come on, guys, I'm getting bored!" I had to keep things moving as fast as possible because it's one of my jobs to keep Madonna from losing interest in what she's doing. As far as the music went, it was getting a little melancholy by that point. It definitely wasn't up-and-happy music. Maybe I inspired songs like In This Life and Bad Girl because they were written in a minor key. But Madonna's stories were getting a lot more serious and intense and she was definitely driving the creative direction of the songs into deeply personal territory.


Diary Entry #4 January-February 1992

I spent the Christmas on vacation in Jamaica and when I got back on January 2, I was like "Oh man, I am not ready for this." There were a lot of intense songs to work on for Madonna, but all I had was this reggae-ish vibe going around in my head. Jamaica had really had an impact on me. I put the vibe down on tape and played it for Madonna, who immediately took to it. Once she got all the lyrics down, the song became Why Is It So Hard.

After it was done we thought: "How about if we get a male Jamaican rapper in here to do some stuff on the record?" We found this guy, Jamaiki, who runs a Jamaican record store uptown. He was this big guy with real deep-ass voice. When we were trying to explain the song to him, he just looked at us and said, "Do you have any rum, man?" By the time Jamaiki, was laying down the tracks in my studio, he was dancing around swigging rum and spilling it everywhere. We ended up not using the track because it sounded to rough for the song, but it was a very fun day - completely different.

By this point, people had begun to realize that Madonna was recording in my penthouse. All her fans would wait outside, even though it was freezing, just to catch a glimpse of her or take a picture. One particular day, when I walked her down to her car, the lobby was filled with building residents getting the mail, hanging out at the front desk, sitting on benches. It was weird because usually the place is empty. After I walked her outside and ran across the street to get the day's newspaper, I came back to find nobody there. People were coming downstairs to the lobby just to get a look at her, even if it was out of the corners of their eyes.


Diary Entry #5 March 1992

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Now I knew we were doing an album. We had fifteen songs demoed and she liked them all. The last song we did was for the movie, A League Of Their Own. Madonna just started singing a melody over and over again into the Shure SM57 microphone while the Mac with Vision was playing strings, organ, piano and a basic rim-shot loop. It sounded really timeless, very nostalgic. I spent all night filling in the verses and the song became This Used To Be My Playground.

The day after "Playground" was finished, Madonna went to Oregon to work on her next film Body Of Evidence, with Willem Defoe. This gave me some time to wrap up some work on some songs with Cathy Dennis and Taylor Dayne at Soundworks Studios in New York. The workload had grown quite intense since the beginning of the year and it showed no signs of letting up. Thanks to my manager Jane Brinton, we were able to coordinate all the ongoing projects without a hitch.

Diary Entry #6 May 1992

I met Madonna at Oceanway Studios in Los Angeles to complete the orchestra parts for This Used To Be My Playground.
We had to record a string arrangement - something I was excited about but had never done before. Madonna chose Jeremy Lubock to do the arrangements because he had done such a good job with her I'm Breathless Material and came highly recommended. Everything went fine until the point when the orchestra played their parts; we didn't like what we heard. Madonna and I had to change the whole arrangement, right there in the studio, with a full orchestra sitting there getting paid for taking up space - around $15,000 for three hours, $3000 for every half hour over that. And of course, Lubbock was talking to two people who didn't know a C from a B natural. The pressure was on.

I can only sing the notes I hear at the moment, so that's what I did. Madonna and I stood there over my little Mac, singing the notes, and Lubbock would go, "Oh, that's a G; Oh, that's a B" and that's how it got done. We completed the session in 2 hours and 58 minutes - two minutes away from another three grand. The last day of recording fell on Memorial day. Madonna wanted to do the lead vocals again, insisting that it would sound better. It did. I finished off some edits before going over to a party Madonna was throwing in her Hollywood mansion.

Diary Entry #8 June-July 1992

The schedule for recording at Soundworks in New York went something like this:
June 08 - Erotica
June 09 - Words, Why's It So Hard
June 10 - Why's It So Hard; Thief Of Hearts
June 11 - Thief Of Hearts; Goodbye To Innocence
June 15 - 8-track dumps w/no time-code
June 16 - Deeper And Deeper
And so on, and so on...

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We transferred everything we had on the Tascam 8-track onto 24-track. I decided to produce the tracks 15 ips with Dolby SR because it has this warm bottom in the bass and I wanted to capture that for Erotica. Plus, I was listening to some of my old remixes, which were recorded at 15 ips, and was amazed at how much more you could feel the music. Compact discs seem to move you one step away from the music, while records put you right in the mix. So I figured that if I overemphasized that LP feeling, it would rub off on the CD, which is the primary format manufactured for American audiences today. Strangely enough, our country can't get any LP's of Erotica, while the rest of the world can.

On July 7, we did the mixing for Erotic the ode to S ∓ M that Madonna wanted to include in her book, Sex. She felt it should sound the same as Erotica (the song on the album), with just a bass line, her voice and some sensuous Middle Eastern sounds. But by then I had seen the book and had come up with an interesting idea.

"You have all these great stories in the book," I told her, "Why don't you use them in the song?" I knew that Madonna was developing a 1930s dominatrix look for Erotica, but I didn't realize how far she was willing to go before I saw Sex. It contained stories authored by her mysteriously dark alter, Dita. Madonna took the book and walked out of the room and didn't come back until about half an hour later. Suddenly she was on the mic, speaking in this very dry voice. "My name is Dita," she said, "and I'll be your mistress tonight." I knew that the original Erotica would never be the same again, and it wasn't. The chorus and bridge were changed entirely and the whole psyche of the song became sexier, more to the point. It seemed as if Dita brought out the best in her, actually serving as a vehicle for the dangerous territory she was traveling. Actually, it was the same name Madonna used when she'd stay in hotels around the world. Not anymore.

When July 10 came, I felt my thirty-something years hit me full force. It was the day of reckoning - my birthday, and yet I was stuck in the studio with Madonna, Tony Shimkin, and an animal-balloon-twisting clown to celebrate it with. It was fun for about five minutes, until Madonna said, "Shep, you gotta get back to work."

Diary Entry #9 August 15, 1992, Mo's Birthday

One of the tracks, Goodbye To Innocence, just wasn't working. There was something about the song that didn't grab Madonna, so we had to fix it. I worked overnight in my studio and came back to Soundworks with a brand new bass line that seemed to do the trick. Madonna put on headphones and got ready to lay down the vocals for Goodbye To Innocence. But instead of singing the original words, which were written last year, Madonna started toying with the lyrics, singing the words to the lounge-lizard act staple, Fever. At first we thought: "This is cool," and it was. It sounded so good that we decided to take it one step further and actually cover the tune. Too bad no one knew the words. What we needed was a copy of Fever if we were going to record it that day. So, Madonna got on the phone with Seymour Stein at Sire Records, and within an hour, we had the lyric sheets, the Peggy Lee version, and the original version of the song in our hands. I was really impressed by how quickly we got it all. That was the last track on Erotica and we finished mixing it just in time to celebrate another birthday - Madonna's.

That night, she had a birthday party on a boat circling Manhattan. Picture about 50 people dancing on a boat with disco blasting out of the portholes and you get the idea. In between dancing and celebrating, I spent the time reflecting on the album. I was confident that it was a great compilation of songs, but I was wondering how people would react to it. It was definitely a different album for her in that it was a dance/pop album, instead of a guitar-laden pop album designed just for top 40. That was a conscious decision on her part because it seemed that the more pop she went, the fewer of her albums people were buying. This time, she's giving the people what they want.


Diary Entry #10 September - October 1992

After three and a half months of working in the same studio and hearing the same songs day after day, it was a relief to have the album finished. Everything went smoothly except the last two songs, Why's It So Hard and Words, both of which we had to recall for changes. On September 12, I walked out of Soundworks with the completed master of Erotica in my hands.

A month later, I went to the Sex party. The Erotica blitz was about to hit in music, video, and book form and a variety of stars were coming out for the party. Madonna herself surveyed the scene during the midnight hour. I walked over to meet her in the DJ Booth.

There was all this wild stuff going around us: people tattooing one another, couples simulating sex - it was crazy. And when I went to talk to Madonna, who was in the middle of it all, our conversations turned to music. For all the multimedia extravaganzas that were braying for her attention, it was still the music that mattered and it was the record that we fawned over. I realized that no matter how far I've come, I still feel the same way that I always did. And then she put the handcuffs on me. NOT!

Interesting read actually!!!! biggrin

Madonna really had a vision int he 90's! that is why i love her 90's output, i wish she had that same mind set today. Cause she does keep putting out the same sounding shit neutral

Pistols sounded like "Fuck off," wheras The Clash sounded like "Fuck Off, but here's why.."- Thedigitialgardener

All music is shit music and no music is real- gunsnhalen

Datdonkeydick- Asherfierce

Gary Hunts Album Isn't That Good- Soulalive
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Reply #22 posted 10/19/12 5:41pm

paisleypark4

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Great album, great Madonna period. Challenging period of her career. I think she just hit the 30s and was in the ...'i don tgive a fuck' mode. You can tell she may have even been a bit depressed..she was looking for an outlet for exploring and found it. Looking back on the whole thing I think it was brave and fresh....

Seems like Rihanna has been copying this era over and over again on her albums and she need to stop. Anyway:

Straight Jacket Funk Affair
Album plays and love for vinyl records.
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Reply #23 posted 10/19/12 6:50pm

HonestMan13

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Love this CD. Secret Garden was my ish!!!

When eye go 2 a Prince concert or related event it's all heart up in the house but when eye log onto this site and the miasma of bitchiness is completely overwhelming!
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Reply #24 posted 10/19/12 6:53pm

KemiVA

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I love "Bad Girl" and "Deeper And Deeper". cool

Hey...
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Reply #25 posted 10/19/12 7:33pm

aardvark15

Up there with Ray Of Light, Like A Prayer, and Music. LOOVE this album. My faves are Erotica, Fever, Deeper And Deeper, and Where Life Begins. The whole album is awesome though. Love the videos though

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Reply #26 posted 10/19/12 8:40pm

go2theMax

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Reply #27 posted 10/19/12 9:35pm

Gunsnhalen

aardvark15 said:

Up there with Ray Of Light, Like A Prayer, and Music. LOOVE this album. My faves are Erotica, Fever, Deeper And Deeper, and Where Life Begins. The whole album is awesome though. Love the videos though

Starting with Justify My Love(Vogue is overrated imo razz ) Madonna had a good period from 92-99 where she made nothing but great videos.

This is why i am so blah on her 80's period... good videos(Blah songs razz ) her 90's videos where art, and had a vision.

Bad Girl look's amazing & look's like you are watching it in a theatre.

Pistols sounded like "Fuck off," wheras The Clash sounded like "Fuck Off, but here's why.."- Thedigitialgardener

All music is shit music and no music is real- gunsnhalen

Datdonkeydick- Asherfierce

Gary Hunts Album Isn't That Good- Soulalive
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Reply #28 posted 10/19/12 9:40pm

aardvark15

Gunsnhalen said:

aardvark15 said:

Up there with Ray Of Light, Like A Prayer, and Music. LOOVE this album. My faves are Erotica, Fever, Deeper And Deeper, and Where Life Begins. The whole album is awesome though. Love the videos though

Starting with Justify My Love(Vogue is overrated imo razz ) Madonna had a good period from 92-99 where she made nothing but great videos.

This is why i am so blah on her 80's period... good videos(Blah songs razz ) her 90's videos where art, and had a vision.

Bad Girl look's amazing & look's like you are watching it in a theatre.

I'm not big on her 80's music either. Love the Like A Prayer album, Papa Don' Preach, Live To Tell, Into The Groove, Angel, Lucky Star and not much else. I do agree the Vogue video is overrated. It's good but compare it to what came out in the rest of the 90's.

BTW what do you think of the Like A PRayer and Express Yourself videos. I like those two a lot too.

[Edited 10/19/12 21:42pm]

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Reply #29 posted 10/19/12 10:23pm

Gunsnhalen

aardvark15 said:

Gunsnhalen said:

Starting with Justify My Love(Vogue is overrated imo razz ) Madonna had a good period from 92-99 where she made nothing but great videos.

This is why i am so blah on her 80's period... good videos(Blah songs razz ) her 90's videos where art, and had a vision.

Bad Girl look's amazing & look's like you are watching it in a theatre.

I'm not big on her 80's music either. Love the Like A Prayer album, Papa Don' Preach, Live To Tell, Into The Groove, Angel, Lucky Star and not much else. I do agree the Vogue video is overrated. It's good but compare it to what came out in the rest of the 90's.

BTW what do you think of the Like A PRayer and Express Yourself videos. I like those two a lot too.

[Edited 10/19/12 21:42pm]

LAP is classic! love it.. Express Yourself is good but when i first watched i was like wtf lol she's on a giant duck & shit.. and there is shirtless men.

Not what i pictured when i heard the song:P

Pistols sounded like "Fuck off," wheras The Clash sounded like "Fuck Off, but here's why.."- Thedigitialgardener

All music is shit music and no music is real- gunsnhalen

Datdonkeydick- Asherfierce

Gary Hunts Album Isn't That Good- Soulalive
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Forums > Music: Non-Prince > Madonna - Erotica 20th Anniversary