“Words are useless, especially sentences”: Bill’s Top 10 Madonna Albums

In my life, there are few events I’ve ever been as excited about as I have been for The Celebration Tour. The tour was originally scheduled to begin in Vancouver, BC, and make Seattle its second stop. That would’ve given this Madonna fan and scholar an early glimpse at her only retrospective tour, a journey through forty years of Madonna’s career, a gift to fans and a reminder to everyone else that she has always been an unstoppable force in popular culture. But a sudden illness forced her to postpone the American leg of the tour. Hoping to immerse myself in the concert and avoid spoilers from the thousands of videos posted to social media from previous stops, I’ve been focused calligraphing a shirt with my favorite lyrics with the persistence of a Buddhist monk creating a sand mandala, revisiting her studio albums, and, revealing one at a time to friends via social media, creating my list of the Top 10 Madonna albums. Here’s the list (and my increasingly long reflections…because with each album, there’s just more and more to say).

Number Ten: American Life

Madonna took on the system, or really all the systems — government , Hollywood, families, relationships, gender dynamics — by bringing social critique to the dance floor and serving up a mix of lovely, innovative, and…