Welcome to the fourth installment of my Madonna series! For Part 1: An Introduction, click here. For Part 2: Tracks 1-4, click here. For Part 3: Tracks 5-8, click here.
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Madonna
even felt comfortable enough with her new knowledge that she managed to call
out others in a state of denial in “
Frozen.” “You only see what your eyes want
to see,” she sings at the beginning of the song. Another lyric, “Give yourself
to me; / you hold the key,” is a throwback to “
Open Your Heart” (
True Blue), which finds Madonna saying
that “I hold the lock and you hold the key.” This exhortation to be a more
receptive person is, in fact, a common theme in Madonna’s music, from “
Stay” (
Like a Virgin) to “
I’d Rather Be YourLover” (
Bedtime Stories) before
Ray of Light and from “
Get Together” (
Confessions on a Dance Floor) to
“
Masterpiece” (
MDNA) afterward. It is
this more recent track that is easiest to connect with “Frozen,” when Madonna
laments the pain that comes with “be[ing] in love with a masterpiece” who is
the “look, but please don’t touch me-type,” which lines up with her declaration
of frustration with a partner who is “frozen when your heart’s not open.”
Heartbreak,
in fact, abounds on
Ray of Light.
After “Frozen” comes “
The Power of Good-Bye,” an end-of-relationship anthem
that finds Madonna declaring her freedom from another lover who is distant and
closed off. She absorbs lessons from this decision, noting that “Freedom comes
when you learn to let go; / creation comes when you learn to say no.” But this
is not exactly a revelation, since Madonna explored similar themes in “
Till Death Do Us Part” (
Like a Prayer)
nine years earlier. In that song, she realizes that her husband will not change,
which is the catalyst for her leaving the relationship and letting go as she
would again in “The Power of Good-Bye.” Sadly, this is a pattern for the
singer, who would come to similar conclusions in “
Miles Away” (
Hard Candy) after another decade passed:
“I can’t pretend to be someone else,” she insists, and then continues on to say
that “When no one’s around and I have you here, / I begin to see the
picture--it becomes so clear.” Even the affluent among us must endure life
lessons, if these examples are any indication.
There
is a moment on
Ray of Light where
Madonna achieves clarity, however, after the tumult of “Frozen” and “The Power
of Good-Bye.” In “
To Have and Not to Hold,” she comes to the conclusion that
she is responsible for her troubles: “Like a moth to a flame, / only I am to
blame” since she “go[es] straight to you.” But that does not mean she has let
go of her frustrations. Rather, she spends most of the song lamenting the
situation. Similar tactics were used on
Erotica,
both in “
Waiting” and “
Words.” In “Words,” she sings, “I don’t wanna hear your
words; / they always attack,” hurting her the same way the paramour of “To
Have” has eyes that “go right through.” Moreover, she opens “Waiting” with the
very sentiment that permeates “To Have” by saying, “Well, I know from
experience that if you have to ask for something more than once or twice, it
wasn’t yours in the first place,” which declaration is echoed in the chorus of
“To Have,’ where she sings, “I’ve been told / you’re to have, not to hold.”
Later,
Madonna would revisit this theme in her disco-drenched tune “
Hung Up” (
Confessions on a Dance Floor), where she
insists that she “can’t keep waiting for you; / I know that you’re still
hesitating.” But a more powerful connection to “To Have” is found in “
X-StaticProcess” (
American Life). “Process”
hinges on the singer’s frustration with an aloof, too-perfect Other, who makes
her feel that “I’m not myself and I don’t know how.” This recalls her
contention in “To Have” that no one, including herself, will be able to “break
my fall.”
There
is a brief respite from the sadness on the back end of
Ray of Light, delivered in the form of “
Little Star,” an ode to the
infant Lourdes. A glittery, lightweight tune that is no less heartfelt for its
sheen, “Little Star” immediately brings to mind “
Cherish” (
Like a Prayer). While that earlier tune focuses on romance, it also
addresses the importance of love with the line “Cherish is the word I use to
remind me of your love,” while Madonna instructs Lourdes to “never forget where
you come from: from love” in “Little Star.” And although “Little Star” is more
of a lullaby, it still has an influence on “
Easy Ride” (
American Life), a song about what Madonna wants for herself and her
offspring: to “breathe the air and feel the sun on my children’s face.”
After
“Little Star,” though, we realize why Madonna is so adamant about her daughter
knowing that she is safe, beyond the obvious fact of maternal love. The final
track on
Ray of Light is, it turns
out, a meditation on the early death of Madonna’s own mother. “
Mer Girl”
therefore negates the warm, fuzzy feeling the listener gets from “Little Star.”
But Madonna had explored this territory earlier in her career, notably in
“
Promise to Try” (
Like a Prayer).
“Can’t kiss her goodbye,” she sings at the end of the song, “but I promise to
try.” In “Mer Girl,” however, she admits that “I’m still running today.” And,
like many people do with their childhood traumas, Madonna continued trying to
process this. “
Mother and Father” (
American
Life) was her next attempt, when she pulled together pieces of “
Oh Father”
(
Like a Prayer), “Promise to Try,”
and “Mer Girl” to create a fuller picture of what she had experienced,
admitting that she was “a victim of a kind of rage,” which goes a long way
toward explaining the images of decay and fear that crop up in “Mer Girl.” The
track, however, is a fitting close to an album that starts with an examination
of Madonna’s external life and then moves inward to explore her personal
demons. This is her attempt at fulfilling a prophecy she made
in an interview
with Maureen Orth in 1992: “I will never be hurt again, I will be in charge of
my life, in charge of my destiny. I will make things work. I will not feel this
pain in my heart.”
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For Part 5: The Conclusion, come back on Thursday!
