If I could melt/open your heart...

"I hold the lock and you hold the key"
"Open Your Heart", True Blue (1986)

"Give yourself to me / You hold the key"
"Frozen", Ray of Light (1998)

Fans of utmost devotion we are, the incomparable, multi-multi-faceted career of the Queen of Pop continues to fascinate and intrigue us. Many a time we find ourselves making our way through her back catologue, and struggling to connect the girl who sung of her "Borderline"-related issues with the woman who had a hand in fashioning the masterpiece that is 1998's Ray of Light. Indeed, either of those two characters with the dance floor mistress of "Hung Up". Like all human beings, Madonna has changed dramatically but has provided us with a creative platform and outlet through which to observe her personal evolution. Two very different songs from two very different eras, "Open Your Heart" and "Frozen" show almost opposing sides to her personality and musical output, but are connected in more ways than are instantly noticeable.

"Open Your Heart" was lifted from 1986's True Blue, to this date the best selling Madonna album and possibly the finest example of her imperial era. One of those songs everybody knows, even if they're not entirely sure who sung it, the basic theme is of unlocking someone's affection and love. The mood is upbeat, hopeful, almost joyful - and those synths are shiver-inducing. The video is one of her most iconic, and the song itself has provided for two instantly recognisable performances; first an opener to the Who's That Girl World Tour, secondly as the follow-up to the Blond Ambition Tour's "Express Yourself" opener. The clear desperation of the lyrics is overshadowed by the sheer power and determination of the vocals and music, qualities which form definite components of Madonna's personality.

Twelve years later, Madonna was a very different person. So it would seem. Now a mother, now long since in the business of producing throwaway pop number ones, she preceded the release of her finest body of work with the lead single, "Frozen". It was truly like nothing she had ever done before; a composition of beautifully sinister strings arranged by Craig Armstrong ("Unfinished Sympathy"), heart-wrenching vocals and lyrics speaking of breaking down barriers, frustration with resistance and... unlocking affection and love. Where have we heard that before? "Frozen" is high-brow pop music at it's finest, an incredibly mature but widely accessible piece of work reeking of genuine tragedy, unsettling determination and spine-tingling beauty. As wonderful as "Open Your Heart" is, surely it's miles behind "Frozen"?

The way we see it is, while they come from two very different voices they are from the same person (Ed – this is deep). A pair of songs which provide reference points for a person's life at two different periods of time yet in terms of purposes, moods and face-value, completely different. Madonna herself has certainly acknowledged the connection; on the Drowned World Tour, a snippet of the instantly recognisable "Open Your Heart" synth riff is played at the end of a most dramatic performance of "Frozen", which in a tour focused so heavily on 'new' Madonna provided a tantalising connection to the 'old' Madonna which must have been craved so terribly by the audience. In 2009, an incredible trance/dance performance of “Frozen” on the Sticky & Sweet Tour featured actual lyrics from “Open Your Heart”, albeit horrendously auto-tuned. The two tracks are also connected through the involvement of, in this writer’s opinion her finest, most prolific and fruitful collaborator, Patrick Leonard as the producer of “Open Your Heart” and co-writer of “Frozen”.

This entire piece of writing may be an entirely self-indulgent excuse to geek out over music, but this is the kind of thing we love. With an artist like Madonna, whose image is based on constantly evolving and changing as an artist, whose back catalogue is about as diverse and eclectic as you are going to get from a mainstream pop artist, the connections and throwbacks to older parts of her career are rare. We just can’t help but get a buzz from the thought that in 1998 when she was confidently sitting on her proverbial high horse with the Kabbalah, the new outlook on life, the mysticism and maturity, she still felt a tug to the reckless, raucous bombshell of her 1986 self.