This week saw us ask you who you who you considered to be the reigning Queen of Pop. For many, that title belonged to none other than Madonna!
By constantly reinventing herself, she has tackled numerous musical genres and has amazed the masses by being equally comfortable singing Pop-by-the-numbers tunes or fearlessly riding a Hip-Hop beat.
Today we will travel back to a time when her Madgesty was experimenting with R&B, cue this week’s From The Vault – ‘Human Nature’.
The final single from her underrated sixth album, 1994’s‘Bedtime Stories’, the G-Funk tinged cut is an open-letter to the press after the backlash she had suffered following the ‘Erotica’ era (especially the Sex book). She adopts an unapologetic attitude and explains that she shouldn’t be stoned for exploring her fantasies, for expressing herself – urging the listener to do the same.
‘Nature’s accompanying visual is even more notorious than the song. Deemed by many as avant-garde, the latex-heavy video depicts a corn-rowed material girl as a bondage queen, backed by a group of dancers, executing intricate choreography and acrobatics. What sets it apart from other clips is its remarkable art direction and cinematography as well as its simplicity, once again proving that less can indeed be more.
No matter which blonde currently rules the world charts and no matter what her naysayers think of her, Madonna should forever be respected, if not for her impressive back catalogue, amazing videos and critically-acclaimed tours; at least for universally raising the bar for Pop acts, especially female acts, and making it the norm to constantly want to push social or cultural barriers release after release.
