The most shocking thing about Madonna and Sam Smith’s much-trailed collaborative single may be that it apparently took seven people to write – among them Smith and Madonna, a chunk of the team behind Smith’s 2022 chart-topper Unholy, and blue-chip songwriter-for-hire Ryan Tedder. There’s almost nothing to its two and a half minutes: a Bollywood-ish string motif, a two-note melody and a beat that, when it really kicks in, recalls the kind of hard-edged house music that proliferated in 90s New York gay clubs. Ironically, the atmosphere it conjures isn’t a million miles removed from that of Junior Vasquez’s 1996 single If Madonna Calls, the self-styled “bitch track” that led to a breakdown in relations between the Sound Factory’s resident DJ and the singer.
“Vulgar will make you dance, don’t need a chorus,” sing Smith and Madonna in unison, a line that’s hard not to respond to with a shrugging, “Well, if you say so, but one might have helped.”
