[MUSIC] Madonna, "Open Your Heart"
Sep. 29th, 2005 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldBumtschak's mashups, "Only when I open your heart." That song, combining Madonna's 1987 single "Open Your Heart" with Depeche Mode's 1998 "Only When I Lose Myself", sounded catchy enough at first even if it wasn't one of Bumtschak's best mixed, with Gahan's voice electronically shifted into a soprano evocative of Madonna's. What made me especially dubious about the entire exercise was the way in which Madonna's assertive, even aggressive lyrics didn't fit thematically at all with Depeche Mode's more resigned and passive words: "Well, I’ve got something to say/It’s only when I lose myself in someone else."
This prompted me to go back to Madonna's original, to see hear "Open Your Heart" and get a sense of how the original worked. I was surprised to realize how effective the song actually was, with its propulsive beat and Madonna's throaty vocals. The lyrics work especially well, with the more passive acceptance of the protagonist's neglect by her desire in the first verse shifting to aggressive pursuit by the second, and with an enjoyably singalongish chorus. I can imagine a different arrangement of "Open Your Heart" as a torch song of some kind, but the original's quite good enough. Who says that popular culture is sterile?
This prompted me to go back to Madonna's original, to see hear "Open Your Heart" and get a sense of how the original worked. I was surprised to realize how effective the song actually was, with its propulsive beat and Madonna's throaty vocals. The lyrics work especially well, with the more passive acceptance of the protagonist's neglect by her desire in the first verse shifting to aggressive pursuit by the second, and with an enjoyably singalongish chorus. I can imagine a different arrangement of "Open Your Heart" as a torch song of some kind, but the original's quite good enough. Who says that popular culture is sterile?
