“Baby I’m A Star”
Prince, Madonna, and the
Production of Celebrity
The Production of Celebrity
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By the 1980s, the “star-making machinery
behind the popular song” had grown to
unprecedented proportions.
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Profitability was dependent on a limited number of
multiplatinum recordings.
The coordination of publicity surrounding the
release of such recordings was crucial.
The 1980s saw the rise of a new breed of music
superstar, adept at manipulating the mass media
and stimulating public fascination with their
personal characteristics as well as with their music.
Madonna
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From the late 1980s through the 1990s,
Madonna’s popularity was second only to
Michael Jackson’s.
Between 1984 and 1994, Madonna
scored twenty-eight Top 10 singles,
eleven of which reached the top spot on
the charts.
Madonna
Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone was
born into an Italian American family in
Rochester, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.
 She moved to New York City in 1977,
worked as a photographic model, studied
dance, and became a presence at
Manhattan discotheques such as
Danceteria, where DJ Mark Kamins played
her demo tapes.
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Madonna
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In 1983, Madonna’s breakthrough single
“Holiday” (Number Sixteen pop, Number
Twenty-five R&B) established certain
elements of a distinctive studio sound,
rooted in the synth-pop dance music of
the early 1980s.
Madonna
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In 1984, her second album, Like a Virgin, shot
to top of the album charts.
Produced by Nile Rodgers, who was involved
with the writing and production of a number of
disco-era hits, including Chic’s “Good Times”
Eventually sold more than ten million copies
The album spawned a series of hit singles:
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“Like a Virgin” (Number One for six weeks in 1984
and early 1985)
“Material Girl” (Number Two in 1985)
“Angel” and “Dress You Up” (both Number Five in
1985)
Madonna
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Madonna began early in her career to
exert an unusual degree of control over
both her music and the creation and
promulgation of her media image
– Wrote or co-wrote many of the songs on her
early albums
– Played an active role in the production
process
Madonna
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During the second half of the 1980s,
Madonna began to write and record
songs with deeper—and more
controversial—content:
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“Papa Don’t Preach” (1986)
“Open Your Heart” (1986)
“Express Yourself” (1989)
“Like a Prayer” (1989)
Madonna
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The controversy-and-commercialism ante
was upped even further in 1992:
– The publication of Sex, a 128-page coffee
table book featuring photographs of
Madonna and other celebrities nude and in
S&M outfits
– The synchronized release of the album
Erotica, which peaked at Number Two on
the Billboard album chart and produced five
major hit singles
Listening: “Like a Virgin”
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Written by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly;
performed by Madonna; recorded in
1984
Number One pop and Number Nine R&B
This is not a song about a virgin in any
narrowly technical sense; rather, it is
about the feeling that someone who has
grown pessimistic about love gets from a
new relationship.
Listening: “Like a Virgin”
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The form of “Like a Virgin” is straightforward:
– After a four-bar instrumental introduction
that establishes the dance groove, there is
an eight-bar verse, which we call A¹ (I made
it through the wilderness . . .)
– A ten-bar version of the verse with
somewhat different harmonies, which we
call A² (I was beat, incomplete . . .)
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A chorus featuring the hook of the song, which we
call B (Like a virgin . . .)
The only additional structural element is an eightbar interlude near the middle of the arrangement.
Listening: “Like a Virgin”
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Outline of the form:
– A¹A²B
– A¹A²B
– Eight-bar interlude
– A²BBB (etc., with a gradual fade out)
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The timbre, texture, and rhythmic
momentum of “Like a Virgin” are more
important to the listener’s experience than
the song’s structure.
Listening: “Like a Virgin”
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The studio mix—overseen by Madonna’s longtime
collaborator Shep Pettibone—is clean, with clear stereo
separation, heavy reliance on synthesized sound
textures, and the singer’s voice strongly foregrounded
over the instruments.
Synthesizers are indispensable to the overall effect of
this recording
Her vocal style in “Like a Virgin” reflects her ironic
manipulation of long-standing stereotypes about
females:
Soft, intimate breathiness associated with Hollywood sex
symbols like Marilyn Monroe
Throaty, tougher sound of 1960s singers like Ronnie Spector,
the lead singer on the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”
Prince
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Over the course of his career, Prince has sold
almost forty million recordings.
Between 1982 and 1992, Prince (a.k.a. the
Artist) placed nine albums in the Top 10,
reaching the top of the charts with three of
them (Purple Rain in 1984, Around the World
in a Day in 1985, and Batman in 1989).
Prince is one of the most talented musicians
ever to achieve mass commercial success in
the field of popular music.
Prince Rogers Nelson
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Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota
His parents, who migrated from Louisiana to
the North, identified themselves as African
Americans while acknowledging a mixed-race
heritage including Italian and Native American
ancestry.
Growing up in a middle-class Minneapolis
neighborhood exposed him to a wide range of
music
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His early influences included everything from James
Brown and Santana to Joni Mitchell.
When he was seven, his parents separated.
Prince
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Remarkable productivity and astounding
recent return to the charts
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, when
most superstars released an album every
two or three years, Prince’s output
averaged over an album a year.
During the 1980s, he composed,
performed, and recorded more than
seventy-five songs each year.
Prince
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In stylistic terms, Prince’s recorded
output has encompassed a wide range of
musical inspirations:
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Funk
Guitar-based rock ’n’ roll
Urban folk music
New wave
Psychedelic rock
Purple Rain (1984)
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Perhaps the best example of Prince’s skill at
manipulating the boundary between the public
and the private are the film and soundtrack
album Purple Rain (1984).
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Established him as a pop superstar
Purple Rain was the bestselling album of 1984,
bumping Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A.
out of the top position on Billboard’s pop
album chart
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Number One position for twenty-four weeks
Produced five hit singles, including “When Doves
Cry,” “Let’s Go Crazy,” and “Purple Rain”
Purple Rain
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The film did reasonably well at the box office,
although it did not succeed in establishing
Prince as a matinee idol.
The film and the album were cross-promoted
by Warner Entertainment.
The single of “When Doves Cry” was released
a few weeks before Purple Rain appeared in
theaters and helped boost the film’s popularity,
which in turn helped several other songs on
the soundtrack reach the Top 40.
Purple Rain
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The plot and characters of Purple Rain draw
heavily on the details of Prince’s life, both
personal and professional.
It is not easy to draw boundaries between the
fictional character (the Kid), the celebrity
persona (Prince), and the private individual
(Prince Rogers Nelson).
The character of the Kid seems consonant with
the accounts offered by Prince’s family and
professional associates.
Listening: “When Doves Cry”
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An unusual pop recording in a number of regards
– The album track runs almost six minutes.
– Prince wrote the song, produced the recording,
sang all of the vocal parts, and played all of the
instruments.
– The lyrics of “When Doves Cry” do not conform to
the usual formulas of romantic pop song.
Crosses the boundaries of established pop genres
– Fusing a funk rhythm with the lead guitar sound of
heavy metal, the digitally synthesized and sampled
textures of postdisco dance music, and the
aesthetic focus and control of progressive rock and
the singer-songwriter tradition.
Listening: “When Doves Cry”
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Prince’s composition avoids the tendency
to establish a clear distinction between a
verse and a chorus.
– The song does use the verse-and-chorus form,
but the melody and supporting harmonies are
almost identical in the two sections, making
the distinction between them much less fixed.
– The musical intensity of “When Doves Cry”
rises and falls continuously, creating a
complex succession of peaks and valleys.
Listening: “When Doves Cry”
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The arrangement of “When Doves Cry” can be divided
into two major sections:
Section One
– About three and a half minutes in length
– A presentation of the song
– Alternation of verse (A) and chorus (B)
Section Two
– Consists of a series of eight-bar phrases
– The background texture is subtly varied, while
instrumental solos, sung phrases, and other vocal
effects are sometimes juxtaposed or layered on top
of one another, and sometimes alternated one after
the other.
Listening: “When Doves Cry”
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The overall effect of this recording
A weaving, made up of patches of subtly shifting textural
effects and tone colors
Held together by the strong threads of a funk-derived dance
groove
Strung on a formal loom made up of eight-bar sections
This is a recording that rewards repeated listening, not
least because one musician has created every sound
you hear throughout.
In its rich layering of instrumental textures and vocal
personalities, “When Doves Cry” imparted to the public
image of Prince a complexity and psychological depth
not typical of mass-media celebrities.
It established his reputation as one of the most
creative and influential musicians of the 1980s.