MADONNA DUSTS OFF HER DANCING SHOES

If you have ever shaken your funky thing on the dance floor or created a scene in clubland, chances are you are a big fan of Madonna Louise Ciccone. Sure, Madonna had a string of magnificent pop singles in the 1980s, but it was during the following three decades that the Queen of Pop dominated the club/dance scene. She was, without doubt, the Governess of Groove.

Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones, a box of six beautiful rainbow coloured vinyl LPs, collects those nightlife triumphs.

The "50 Number Ones" of the title are peaks on Billboard’s Dance Chart, not the more familiar Pop Chart. The Billboard Dance Club Songs Chart, to give it its full name, began in the mid-1970s and unlike its older sibling, is not based on sales but is instead compiled from lists submitted by specially selected DJs. It is sweatily entwined with the actual dance/club scene in a way that is both more grass roots—these are the songs people responded enthusiastically to in the land of the mirror ball—and less commercially (read factually) based.

In the end, I’m not sure the source matters. Because what we get is a rich, beat-driven collection that proves how important Madonna was as a dance artist, one who never abandoned her pop sensibilities. The results is a collection where often the hits have subtle alterations and where the overall survey leans towards a particular expression of Madonna’s art, one where slower tunes don’t really get a mention.

The allusion to the hits 'sounding different' is because many of these tracks are remixes, video edits, or some other alternate version. For locked-in fans, this offers moments of great excitement and fun in a 'new light through old windows' kind of way, though it might be a little perplexing for the more casual Madonna follower. The latter may be better served by the Celebration set of 2009, which compiles the greatest hits.

So where does Finally Enough Love begin? Like any proper rainbow, with a vibrant red LP.

The first nine songs are from the 1980s where the original 7" single mixes dominate. The result is an LP that certainly does sound like Madonna’s greatest hits ("Material Girl", "Like a Virgin", "Holiday") though the DON’T SLOW DOWN law means that 1986’s "Papa Don’t Preach" is sidelined. Orange is next, beginning with the last hit of the 80s, "Express Yourself". The 1990s open with "Keep It Together" which, interestingly, is a new mix "reworked… to include the unique intro and outro from the 12" remix of the song". There were thirteen dance hits in the 1990s, including "Don’t Cry For Me Argentina", and they take us deep into side two of the yellow LP.

The first decade of the new millennium produced no less than eighteen hits, amply demonstrating how vital a force Madonna was in her third decade of music-making. We dance on the rainbow beams from yellow through green to the blue fifth LP, discovering "Me Against The Music" (a collaboration with Brittney Spears) and the Deepsky remix of Madonna’s Bond song "Die Another Day".

The final colour band in the rainbow is traditionally violet, but we will rename it royal purple, as a final ten tracks complete Madonnas dance/club journey in 2020 with "I Don’t Search I Find", the song providing the title of this release. Madonna was Queen of the Dance for four decades, and this quality six album box will have you prancing around until you collapse on the couch, exhausted yet marvelling at the astonishing output of this most important artist. You might also wonder when her record company will re-issue the four LP vinyl set of Celebration, which would complement Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones admirably.

© Bruce Jenkins—July 2023