Over the course of forty-plus years at the top of pop, Madonna has journeyed through all manner of distinctive eras. From Like A Virgin’s faux-demure bride to the ripped aerobics instructor of Confessions on A Dancefloor, to Madame X’s pantomime pirate (complete with eye patch) she’s an artist who specialises in the art of reinvention.
Today we’re celebrating one of her most iconic eras to date as it’s the 35th birthday of her fourth album, Like a Prayer. To mark the occasion we’ve taken it upon ourselves to tackle the tough task of ranking all of Madonna’s albums – sticking to her 14 studio albums, and excluding soundtracks, remix records, and greatest hits compilations like The Immaculate Collection.
14. MDNA (2012)
Let’s just get this out the way: MDNA’s title – a play on words that merges Madonna’s name with ecstasy – is just not very good, and tries far too hard to conjure up an aura of rebellion and naughtiness. But that’s not the reason why this album unfortunately takes last place, the awful name aside.
Written following Madonna’s divorce from Guy Ritchie, MDNA often has immense amounts of fun with conjuring up fictional revenge narratives – complete with a dramatic dubstep breakdown, Gang Bang relentlessly takes the piss out of her director ex’s love of making a gangster film. Though it’s barely distinguishable from the pulsing brand of dance-pop also peddled by Katy Perry and Kesha during that same era, Girl Gone Wild is a strong standalone single. For the most part though, this album is just too fragile sounding; even when the chorus hooks are looming and huge, they still sound strangely brittle and impersonal.
13. Rebel Heart (2015)
To this day, I cannot listen to Living For Love – the sprawling opener to Rebel Hearts – without picturing poor Madonna and her malfunctioning Armarni cape tumbling down a set of stairs at the BRITS. Though the gasp that echoed through The O2 that night still lives on in my mind rent free, what sticks even more is how seamlessly she dusted herself off and immediately recovered the performance. As much as she is sometimes mocked, misunderstood and maligned more recently – with certain criticisms also coming served up with a dollop of ageism – few other artists have the staying power of Madonna. You may not love everything she’s put out over the course of more than thirty years, but you cannot deny: none of it is boring. Even when she shoots and misses, every last second is underpinned by curiosity, and a desire to do something new.
Far too bulky at nineteen tracks long, Rebel Heart takes on the hefty challenge of appraising What Madonna Means Today? – the answer comes in the form of overwrought ballads like Joan of Arc (“each time they take a photograph/I lose a part I can’t get back”) jarring alongside the cartoonish trap of Illuminati. But the most outlandish moments are worth sticking around for: S.E.X is cheeky and camp, and the infuriatingly hooky Bitch I’m Madonna, featuring Nicki Minaj, and produced by the late SOPHIE – one of the most fascinating architects of left-field contemporary pop – is ridiculously fun hyper-pop gold.
12. Hard Candy (2008)
Having conquered the dancefloor with Confessions on a Dancefloor in 2005, Madonna set about enlisting some of the most influential engineers of US pop to shape its successor Hard Candy. Along with Timbaland and Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo’s production duo the Neptunes, she also collaborated with Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, and Danja on her most star-filled album. It’s quite the supergroup – and a lot of strong characters to find space for. For perhaps the first time, Madonna often winds up feeling like a guest dropping by on her own record; Give It 2 Me could just as easily be an N.E.R.D track. On Hard Candy’s biggest hit 4 Minutes, there’s barely room for this album’s lead star between Timbaland’s relentless vinyl-scratching and power-horns, and Timberlake bellowing: “MA-DON-NAAAAAA” every few seconds. However catchy it may be, Miles Away is also a lesser version of Timbaland’s Nelly Furtado collab All Good Things (Come to an End). If only more of the record captured the spirit harnessed on She’s Not Me instead – a funk guitar laden, low-key pop bop, and the closest Hard Candy gets to unearthing greater emotional depth.
11. American Life (2003)
While previous record Music mostly skirted around all-American cowboy iconography in favour of riding on sheer vibes, its successor is a full-blown concept record that takes on the myth of the American Dream atop bizarre, bloopy production and stuttering vocals. “I’d like to express my extreme point of view/I’m not a Christian and I’m not a Jew,” she sings, somewhat clunkily, on the title track, “I’m just livin’ out the American Dream, and I just realised that nothin’ is what it seems.”
Hammering the point home even further that this a Serious Political Album, the sleeve features Madonna in the vague guise of Che Guevara. Far better is Hollywood, a twanging hunk of folk-pop that takes aim at the destruction and greed of fame, and even Madonna’s own film star ambitions. “They like the smell of it in Hollywood/How could it hurt you when it looks so good?” she asks. And the uber-divisive Bond theme Die Another Day – which set out to bring a bit of techno influence to proceedings – is probably the most opinion-splitting of all.
10. Madame X (2019)
From the absolutely unhinged sample of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker on Dark Ballet to the Carry On-esque exchange of dialogue at the end of Bitch I’m Loca, Madame X has to be Madonna’s weirdest album. On paper, it sounds like a complete nightmare – and in certain places, to be frank, it is one. The less said about Killers Who Are Partying (sample lyric: “I will be gay, if the gay are burned/I’ll be Africa, if Africa is shut down”) the better. But it’s not all bad; the snappy I Don’t Search I Find comes with a ballroom strut that recalls Shep Pettibone’s disco-infused production on Vogue; on the accordion-laden Crazy, there are self referential quips galore: “I bend my knees for you like a prayer,” she sings. After a patchy couple of Noughties records, this is undoubtedly her best record since Confessions…
9. Bedtime Stories (1994)
Certain detractors have always tried hard to depict Madonna as ‘too much’ of something – and by the early Nineties, she was constantly under fire for her provocative pop. A few years earlier, Pepsi famously pulled out of sponsoring her Blonde Ambition tour after Like A Prayer and its sexy take on Catholic iconography attracted the ire of the Vatican. Then came Erotica: a daring and plain sexy album which came accompanied by the explicit photobook SEX. Another predictable bout of pearl-clutching followed. Even Madonna grew weary of the outrage cycle, and decided her next album would head in another direction. “Sex is such a taboo subject and it’s such a distraction that I’d rather not even offer it up,” she told Los Angeles Times.
So instead, she made Bedtime Stories, retreating from animalistic lust to the romance of mellow R&B, as well as the influence of trip-hop acts like Massive Attack. Taking on her critics headlong atop slinking new jack swing, Human Nature is one of her greatest songs: “I’m not your bitch, don’t hang your shit on me,” she deadpans. Closing track Take A Bow has rich and glimmering orchestral production, courtesy of Babyface. Other moments are more uneven. The Björk-featuring title-track feels flat and oddly sterile, while the record’s hypnotic, intimate sound sometimes blurs into one amorphous blob. Bedtime Stories’ warm sound shows a different side to Madonna, but with Janet Jackson, Toni Braxton, and Brandy all mining similar sounds in arguably more interesting ways around that time, it was never going to come out on top.
8. Madonna (1983)
Underpinned by cartoonish and plastic-y synth sounds, Madonna’s disco-infused debut feels wrenched straight out of Danceteria: the now-legendary New York club she frequented as an aspiring pop star. An epicentre for the city’s new wave scene, and the go-to destination for punters spilling out of CBGB to continue their nights out, its staff room was almost as star-studded as the dancefloor: Sade worked behind the bar, LL Cool J was an elevator attendant, and Keith Haring was a bus boy alongside Beastie Boys. And in 1982, it hosted the first ever Madonna gig; the 24-year-old dancer performed her future debut album cut Everybody.
The self-titled album contains all of the hallmarks of Eighties synth-pop, but still sounds futuristic in the process; Carly Rae Jepsen’s Cut to the Feeling feels indebted to the spacey shimmers that open Lucky Star, while Borderline still felt like the freshest thing on earth as Honey Dijon played it to close out Homobloc in 2022. Holiday might be simple, but it sure as hell is effective, too. Drawing on live band sounds and new wave, Burning Up is a less refined but intensely fun stepping stone to later tongue-in-cheek Madonna songs like Material Girl and Like A Virgin. “Unlike the others, I’d do anything,” she sings sweetly. “I’m not the same, I have no shame.”
7. Like a Virgin (1984)
For her second album, Madonna pivoted away from the clubbier strains of her debut Madonna, and set out to give a middle finger to the patronising suits ruling the roost at her major label. “Warner Bros. Records is a hierarchy of old men and it’s a chauvinist environment to be working in because I’m treated like this sexy little girl,” she says in 2001’s Madonna: An Intimate Biography, recalling her frustration at women in the industry having to work infinity harder in order to ‘prove themselves’.
Determined to do things her way, she enlisted Nile Rodgers to produce Like A Virgin, and invited Stephen Bray – her former bandmate in new wave band The Breakfast Club – to collaborate once more. From here, she began pursuing a more provocative sound and image that played on the religious connotations of her name. On the sleeve, she wore an elaborate wedding dress with a metal belt buckle reading ‘Boy Toy’ – and Material Girl and the title track both played heavily with trying on exaggerated personas that satirise stereotypes around womanhood.
“I liked them both because they were ironic and provocative at the same time but also unlike me,” she later told Rolling Stone. “I am not a materialistic person, and I certainly wasn’t a virgin, and, by the way, how can you be like a virgin? I liked the play on words; I thought they were clever. They’re so geeky, they’re cool. I never realised they would become my signature songs, especially the second one.”
These two hits undoubtedly created an icon, but elsewhere, Madonna was still finding her feet with the schmaltzy Love Don’t Live Here Any More, and Angel’s early flirtations with twisting religious iconography.
6. True Blue (1986)
By far the most polished of Madonna’s first three records, True Blue strikes a flawless balance between the irresistible tang of sugary pop, and capturing a more diverse set of her artistic touchstones. Icy power-ballad Live to Tell, which articulates the fear of carrying the weight of somebody else’s deceit through life, remains one of her greatest slow-burners, and though it was an exceedingly bold choice as a lead single, the risk paid off. While her vocals on Madonna and Like A Virgin had a high-pitched, saccharine timbre, True Blue unlocked more personality, and greater emotional depth.
It’s no more apparent than on the thumping Papa Don’t Preach, sung from the viewpoint of a pregnant teenager who refuses to have an abortion. Her first track to take on overtly socio-political subject matter, Madonna’s vocal is charged with determination. It’s genuinely refreshing to hear a pro-choice song that makes motherhood sound just as rebellious. Elsewhere, the slap-bass laden White Heat borrows Clint Eastwood’s famous quote from Sudden Impact (“go ahead and make my day”) while Open Your Heart seems to be partly addressed to Madonna’s critics.“I’ve had to work much harder than this/For something I want, don’t try to resist me,” she urges.
5. Confessions on a Dancefloor (2005)
Madonna has always had a sizable LGBTQ+ following, and with Confessions on a Dancefloor she fully embraces the pulse of a queer club. I mean, for crying out loud, the entire thing opens by sampling ABBA’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight). What in the name of a flannel-clad carabiner could possibly be gayer than that?
It turns out ABBA are fairly picky about granting permission for samples – other than the Fugees, few other artists have managed to convince them, and Madonna had to write a personal letter to clinch the deal. Praise the pop gods that it worked out; the result is one of her finest dance tracks ever. As the immediately recognisable hook steadily grows from muffled beginnings before kicking in with an artful sweep of high-pass filter, it’s the sonic equivalent of a basement club’s door flinging open, and surging right onto the dancefloor.
Produced by Stuart Price, Confessions… is deliberately structured like a DJ set; a concept that has been borrowed more recently by everyone from Beyoncé (RENAISSANCE) to Lady Gaga (Chromatica). Madonna’s finest Noughties output by a mile, it set the benchmark for everything that followed. Alongside other early examples like Daft Punk’s One More Time, Kylie’s Love At First Sight, and Spiller’s Sophie Ellis-Bextor link-up Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)" this influential record also spearheaded an entire 2000s nu-disco revival.
4. Music (2000)
By the turn of the Millenium, Madonna had completely nailed the art of shape-shifting, having morphed from Like A Prayer’s glistening rosary beads to Ray of Light’s mystical and witchy spin through the universe. Meanwhile, a new young generation of teen stars were breaking through in pop, and Madonna’s Eighties image of the powerful, ambitious woman was fading in favour of exaggerated and sexualised innocence: think Britney Spears’ school girl persona in the ...Baby One More Time video, or the purity and virginity allegories in Christina Aguilera’s Genie in a Bottle.
Though Madonna, by this time 42, sometimes paid tribute to this next wave while promoting Music – she became obsessed with wearing rhinestone Britney Spears t-shirts; “I slept in them, as well,” she once told Elle – Music’s campy cowboy visuals and twisted, unpolished pop felt worlds apart from the rest of the pack. Most importantly, it felt like she was having fun letting loose.
“Hey Mr DJ, put a record on… I wanna dance with my baby,” husks a voice in the opening moments of Music, and one of Madonna’s most brilliantly strange, boundary-pushing records follows. A master of stealing from French house music, and morphing warped, heavily manipulated vocals into yet another instrument, Mirwais produces all the standouts on this album, and his production here is some of the most creative and futuristic of Madonna’s entire career.
Rather than tapping into some rich vein of commentary around US national identity, Madonna uses her cowboy schtick as shorthand for her own artistic authenticity, thumbs defiantly jabbed into jean pockets. In the video for Don’t Tell Me – a Tom Waits-ish demo she transformed into a twanging country-pop hit – she struts on a treadmill and line-dances against a gaudy green screen, cooly delivering lines that hint at aspects her own career: “please don’t tell me to stop”. In Music, she roars around in a car with a custom number plate reading: “Muff Daddy”. Say no more – it’s silly, absurd Madonna at her very best.
3. Erotica (1992)
Thanks to the exceedingly sexy coffee table book that accompanied it, Erotica arrived to a whole flaming trash-heap of outrage. Following the release of SEX, which contains numerous nude photos of Madonna and her collaborators simulating sex acts, BDSM, and… er, hitchhiking, entire US states attacked Madonna for producing a morally bereft piece of hardcore pornography. Erotica soon became embroiled in the outrage, too. “Of course, some of us actually like the opposite sex; some of us believe it is possible to have great sex without whips, third parties or domestic pets,” grouched a New York Times critic, unhappy with the record’s often subversive portrayals of getting it on.
It’s vital to remember, though, that both Erotica and SEX came out at a time when certain kinds of sex – specifically queer sex – were steeped in debilitating amounts of shame and fear. By 1995 in the USA, one in nine gay men had been diagnosed with HIV or AIDs; one in fifteen of them had died. An entire generation was in the process of being obliterated, and a number of Madonna’s friends – including the artist Keith Haring, and her former ballet tutor Christopher Flynn – had died of AIDs by the time she began making Erotica. While many other artists shied away from even breathing the name of the crisis, Madonna made a point of talking about safe sex constantly; Like a Prayer, for instance, came with a card insert titled “The Facts About AIDS”. Madonna originally wanted SEX’s protective packaging to be shaped like a condom.
Though Erotica is often very playful – Where Life Begins’ ode to “eating out” is sleazy, whispered lounge-pop at its finest – a fear of intimacy and the weight of shame haunts the entire record. Though it pretends to be a record about no-strings-attached lust, it’s really about searching for love within it. By putting forward a vision of sexual exploration that often feels cold, detached, and uneasy Madonna flawlessly captured the emotional disconnect of searching out an intimacy that has suddenly become deadly.
2. Like a Prayer (1989)
From the moment the distinctive organs and eerie choral refrains of Like A Prayer’s title-track kick in, the altar-like stage is set for one of Madonna’s most provocative pop statements. Pulling heavily from the symbolism of her Catholic upbringing, spiritual surrender is often entangled with sexual liberation and a slightly kinky confessional. “I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace, To confess my sins, to do penance, to amend my life,” she husks on the glam-guitar laden closer Act of Contrition, not sounding all that serious about the endeavour. While her previous three records certainly didn’t shy away from controversy, Like A Prayer took Madonna’s eye for outrage and honed it into one of her most distinctive, fully-realised eras.
It’s not quite all smouldering incense and suggestive kneeling-on-prayer mats, though the actual Vatican taking it upon themselves to condemn Madonna for blasphemy was certainly a highlight of the era. The bright, bouncy Cherish bridges the gap between here and the loved-up True Blue, while Express Yourself taps into strutting empowerment. But these flashes of joy only heighten the darkness elsewhere; like on Oh Father, where Madonna reckons with the emotional distance between her and her father following her mother’s death, and attempts to forgive him for finding love again. “When I look back, I’ll be able to say/You didn’t mean to be cruel,” she says, “somebody hurt you too.”
Despite its sugary pop sound, Til Death Do Us Part is painfully sad: “I’m not your friend, I’m just your little wife”. A real stepping stone of a record, Like A Prayer flung open the doors to the increasing experimentation that followed, and ushered in a whole new chapter for Madonna.
1. Ray of Light (1998)
Madonna doesn’t let vulnerability take over her music very often; most of the time, she shrouds her experiences in heaps of playful metaphor (Material Girl), deploys razor sharp wit as a form of defence against her detractors (Human Nature), or makes a bee-line for the dancefloor (virtually every song she’s ever released). But when the so-called Queen of Pop does let her steely guard down, she’s completely flawless.
Look no further than Ray of Light; Madonna’s strangest, most unguarded album. Released two years after the birth of her first child, Lourdes, its ambient, techno-influenced sound is the experimental foundation for musings on motherhood, spirituality, and the overwhelming realisation that we are all but tiny, insignificant particles floating around in an infinite universe trying to carve out a meaningful existence.
“Nothing really matters,” Madonna reasons with a joyful shrug, “love is all we need.” On the juggernaut electronica masterpiece Frozen – a steadily heightening collision of cold drum machines and sweeping, theatrical neo-classical flourishes – she appraises a familiar face through new, enlightened eyes. “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.”
Now we’re somewhat anaesthetised to things like Gwyneth Paltrow and her infamous vagina candles, Madonna’s embrace of mystical spirituality admittedly triggers a touch of cynicism, but she’s so open-hearted on Ray of Light that it’s difficult to keep up for long. As well as featuring the most personal songwriting of her career, her collaborations with William Orbit resulted in some of the most beautiful, and soaring pop production of the decade.
