Revisited: Influential albums in my life

Why I am still a fan of Madonna? The answer is certainly two-fold: tradition/inertia, and true admiration of her work. Lately I’ve felt quite alienated from her, in part due to her blatant eurocentrism and anglophilia. She seems to have found something in England which, in my view, has blocked her from taking more from other cultures. I understand the whole “my children are my priority” discourse, and her family rethorics, however, she seems to have utterly forgotten, doesn’t seem to care for her former loyal fan-base outside of Anglo-America and Western Europe, her confort zones. It would have been so nice of her to have done a date or two of her shows outside those areas, it would have been so fresh and encouraging to have seen her rock and shake Latin America, Australia, Asia.... but then she and her business entourage certainly must have their reasons to not have done it. Businesswise perhaps it wasn’t that much a good business for either her and the promoters, or perhaps there are other reasons beyond the comprehension of us mortals. Although, recent visits by major tours by the Rolling Stones or U2 lead me to believe someone is certainly making lots of $$$, not otherwise. Her tour documentary “I’m going to tell you a secret” was interesting, but comparing to her merchadising tactics for the Confessions on a Dance Floor album are rather confusing, I guess that no matter how much she values Kabbalah and the teaching of how much fortune is enough, Warner Bros. Records can’t allow itself to be so spiritual and romantic and has got to stay afloat, thus releasing singles in multiple formats, making new album editions with great buzz but skimpy new content, and all else. Anyways, all this was meant to be an introduction for one of my fave albums, American Life (2003).

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The year AL came out was, for me, a most difficult year, a time of confusion, pain, misunderstandings, illness and a year-round depression. 2003 was a also a time of war. I had to become keen on the study of power and ideology just to try to grasp a bit of what was going on then. The positive of that time is that I learned to speak Catalan, something which overtime has become my parallel career. While I can’t be bothered with some of its “message” tracks like Hollywood or I’m So Stupid, I felt quite a strong connection to others, like “Nobody Knows Me” and “Mother and Father”. There are true pop gems in there, which is shame few people bothered to notice, like “Love Profusion” and “Nothing Fails”. Whenever those songs come up, I remember the intense heat of the spring of 2003, and how demanding was it for me to just come out of bed at times. Also, it’s funny, I relate American Life to the Catalan language quite a bit. Back then I used to translate the album lyrics, or reformulate them to fit that tongue, and I used to sing them to myself. I remembered that it was rather excruciating, but I felt I had succesfully adapted the rap in the title track in Catalan! Because of all the uncertainties of that year I created a parallel world, a place in which there would not be any pain, it included the aforementioned translation and myself. So, I guess that even with all the criticism I may express about Madge, her albums manage to resonate greatly in my life experiences, due to the fact that I make them my own.