Readers of That Grape Juice know what avid music lovers we are – especially of hits past.
So, just as our retrospective features ‘From the Vault’ and ‘TGJ Replay’ allow us the chance to re-spin the gems and jams of yesterday of one artist, our newest feature Chart Rewind – a variation of our current Retro Rewind assay – accedes salutes to an entire era of music history.
This week in 1995 Queen of Pop, Madonna, reascended to the Billboard Hot 100 throne with ‘Take A Bow’ – the second single from her most R&B-leaning album to date, ‘Bedtime Stories.’ Written and produced by Madge and Babyface, ‘Bow’ – thanks in great part to its cinematic accompanying visual – rose to the top of the Hot 100 this week 22 years ago, snatching the title from TLC‘s ‘Creep.’
Coming as her last #1 of the 90s, the song went on to reign for an impressive 7 weeks and, to date, remains the longest running chart-topper of her career. Tuck in below to see who joined Madge in the top 25 this week in 1995:
Hot 100 This Week In 1995
Hot 100 This Week
Click here to see the full ‘chart check’ from this week.
One of the few Madonna songs I like. her vocal was underrated. She literally told babyface she wanted a song like Whitney (not possible) but he delivered her a great song.
Its in my top 5 faves from Madonna I still remember the first time that I heard it in Jamaica in my cousins room fast forward a few year and I buy waiting to exhale sound track and not only is this on it Barry white and Tlc gear songs are on it we don’t get good quality records like this any more
Her ballads are so underrated, I mean, Crazy For You, Live to Tell, Oh Father, Spanish Eyes, Promise To Try, This Used To Be My Playground, Bad Girl, Rain, I’ll Remember, You’ll See, You Must Love Me uff…she has so many beautiful songs, Bedtime Stories is also one of her best albums, Inside of Me is my favorite from that album, this woman has definitely the best discography in Pop music.
Can you please stop playing and just tell us what your favorite Madonna album is once and for all? 🙂
Definitely Ray of Light, that’s not only her best but also one of the best albums ever made in the history of music.
her underrated beautiful bedtime stories
Wow yes this is one of the REAL Retro Rewinds. Like I´ve said before, 90s and 80s were much more diverse and with bigger quality than what the 00s already were.
Sheryl Crow was killing it in the mid 90s too. I love her voice. “if it makes you happy” is such a classic song to me. Her case is like Jewel´ s imo. Both great songwriters with beautiful and appealling enough songs and voices from a time when quality was needed to make it.
Take a Bow was so gorgeously composed (courtesy of Babyface) and Madonna gave her best vocal performance on this track. Because she is primarily known as a Pop/Dance artist, people often overlook that she actually gave us one of the best R&B albums of the 90s with Bedtime Stories. After she nearly committed near-career s****** with the Erotica album (an underrated gem, btw) and its subsequent era, the softer approach she took with Stories was a welcome change. It was sensual, warm, inviting and vulnerable. I’m sure play this album every two weeks, lol.
22 years ago! I feel so old now. This was such an amazing song.
Take A Bow Is One Of My Favorite Madonna Songs. The Video Was Epic As Well. For Some Reason, I Can See TLC Singin’ This. Tboz Would Sing the Low Parts & Chilli Would Sing The High Parts.
Wow! I can hear them as well now that you mentioned it. It prob was written for TLC song. I also can hear them singing Baby One More Time to the T.
Baby one more time was originally for tlc around there fanmail era but they passed on it as well as rainy days for 3d
“Take a bow the night is over this masquerade is getting older, lights are low the curtains down, there’s no one here (Babyface in the background: there’s no one here, there’s no one in the crowd)”.
One of my favourite songs of ALL TIME! The orchestral arrangement, the quiet storm feel, the allegory and symbolism of a break-up and the end of a play written in the poetry of the lyrics, the signature opening keyboard melody which makes you instantly recognize the song, the easy vocals that were clearly tailored for Madonna’s voice, the lyrics, and don’t even get me started on the fantastic music video…it’s 22 years old but I don’t think this song will ever fall victim to time. Kenneth Edmonds is an underrated GENIUS. Madonna informed him that she wanted a Whitney-like song, like “Exhale (shoop, shoop)” which was also written by Babyface. But because Babyface is a genius, he said “NO, do YOU” and together they created this masterpiece. Long live the ’90s, long live the real Queen and long live Rhythm ‘n Blues. I will never delete this song from my phone. This was THE break-up song waaay before Adele (good lord I’m so old), and I think this was the song that got Madonna more Black fans (without forcing herself on us). People and the media have always discredited this woman, but no matter what they try the quality of her discography will never be tarnished.
Eh. “Take a Bow” came almost a year before “Exhale (Shoop Shoop).” If anything, this is more like Toni Braxton’s “You Mean the World to Me.”