Shiny & New Turns 2: #1 "Get Together" - Madonna

“Do you believe that we can change the future? / Do you believe I can make you feel better?”

In 2005, Madonna was past it. In the general view of the public, the glory days of her career were long behind her and she had simply become too serious for her own good. How could the same woman who would make your heart flutter as she sang "Only when I'm dancing can I feel this free" record the angry, dark "American Life", or the minimalistic, barely penetrable "X-Static Process" in 2003? Of course, the eponymous album was critically acclaimed despite being the lowest selling LP of her career (it still made number one) yet she wasn't the same Madonna. And then she decided to try on a purple leotard. Confessions on a Dance Floor all but erased the memory of the experiments with French philosophical electro of two years before, and was directly inspired by the thumping bass lines, infectious samples and euphoric vocals of her early career. "Hung Up", over twenty years into the woman's career, became the biggest selling single in her recording history, and Confessions went to number one in twenty two countries.

I wasn't even a Madonna fan in 2005. I knew of her, as any listener of music does. I'd received Ray of Light as a present when I was eight years old, listened to it a couple of times and put it at the back of my collection. I'd bought the "Die Another Day" single in 2002 on account of it being the finest James Bond theme, no discussion, but it wasn't until I was sixteen or seventeen when I had my "Eureka!" moment and realised just how enormous her back catalogue of fantastic, challenging, exciting, moving, beautiful, clever music was. I’m not ashamed to admit that in the past three years, Madonna has been the single most important influence on my music tastes. I’ve discovered countless new artists, many quite unlike Madonna, simply through associations. One of the most recent examples would be Meshell Ndegeocello, an African-American lesbian singer-songwriter who happened to feature on a Bedtime Stories track in 1994 – I now have her entire back catalogue and count her amongst my favourite women in music. So you get it right? In my iTunes solar system, Madonna is the Sun. But Bjork is Jupiter, duh.


“Get Together” was the very first song I purchased from iTunes, the very first Madonna song I went out of my way to find, and the very first Madonna song I listened to on loop. Over and over again. Still today, nothing can put me in a mood quite like “Get Together” – it is essentially three minutes of melancholy euphoria, that dichotomic staple of very good pop music, that very few artists manage to master. In a bold nod to her very first album, the bass line is lifted directly from 1982’s “Holiday”, which possibly explains the rush of joy experienced through listening. Ask most Madonna fans what the happiest song she has is, and they will probably answer “Holiday”. The synths are overwhelming and enveloping – it is a breath taking experience I can only liken to the sensation of walking to the edge of a skyscraper and placing your hands on the ledge, or standing at the front of a boat and seeing a horizon of sea and nothing beyond it. The listening experience is infinite and potent.

That endless optimism is a feeling I have only begun to experience in the past couple of years, since beginning my very first long-term relationship. My affection, my adoration, my heated, impossible to quench yearning (you can go get the sick bucket) knows no bounds. It feels like it can go on forever, with no end in sight. There is no wall, there is no limit, there is no frontier. I’ve never known it before. It is a feeling I feel lucky to have, and is what keeps me on my toes. When I watch Madonna perform “Get Together” on the Confessions Tour and burst into a euphoric dance floor spin in the emotional climax of the song, I feel a rush of pure, uncontrollable, immeasurable love for the other person I proudly write this blog with.

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So here ends the usage of first person pronouns. Our twenty songs are up, and like we said at the start of this list; they are twenty songs which hold, to use a cliché which has been in use since the dawn of Dolly Parton, a special place in our hearts. They may or may not be the finest work by that artist, and they may or may not be our favourite song by that artist, but they are the most special piece by that artist who is/are special to the two of us. We have enjoyed writing this blog for the past twenty four months more than we ever thought we would, and we want to do it for a good while longer. Thank you for reading.

P.S. Thank you to Richard Croft for giving us the inspiration of charting a series of songs which hold significance to us. If you haven’t already, his blog, tracking a whopping one thousand and one songs through his listening life, is a must-read. Start at the end and make your way through!