"Borderline" Madonna and John "Jelly Bean" Benitez (Sire 1983) - will there ever again be such a perfect gem of a record? * With its faux faux glitzy production it's the song of innocence lost and deception…"something in your eyes is making such a fool of me"…baby (implied) Everyone knows that song if not as a tinny sound in their ears then, more likely, a distinct and real actual event in their life. Don't listen to the B side: Physical attraction - EVER!

Anyways - it set me back a fiver at a record fair in Dublin a while ago. "Are you interested in more Madonna stuff?" asked my man. "No this is the only good thing she ever did" says I (a thin, white lie as "Holiday", "Justify my love", "Ray of Light", "Erotic", "Hung Up" and quite a few others ain't half bad) Too late! Already he pulls out a gigantic poster.

Immediately I realize that he has mistaken both the intensity and the nature of my interest. I remember getting a loan of a Madonna documentary a few years back. It was bizarre. A parade of very, very worried New Yorkers. Those whom she had lived with, played with, worked with and so on. My God they still hadn't recovered! Each and every one of them was touched with a very faint mark…A tiny blue eye shadow pencil dot of disappointment hovering over them. And They all said something like:

"I thought she loved me…" "I thought she was gay…" "I thought she was my friend" "I thought she was in our ska band…" "I thought she was a real punk…" "I thought… I thought… I thought"

But hey fuck it maybe; possibly, just one of them looked in any way genuine as a human being (I seem to recall a black fella - sound engineer – possibly) Lets fact it which of them in the glittery underwear hell of the New York nineteen eighty something – who didn't think that they "had her" on mission? To use and abuse in some way on their knicker twisting burst up, up and out of it –to belly button level at least. They thought that they were on the user friendly end of the power trip. And she beat them at their own game! Ya wake up one morning and La Ciccone has fled…She's had you!

Borderline is my favourite Madonna tune but the very, very last tiny bit of it is possibly my favourite record fade out… EVER. You know it –The bit where she she switches to "la da de da de da la da de da" – listen again if the DJ spins it all the way through (they never do – fuckers…). The scary thing about it is that her voice beautifully deepens and widens from the affecting but tinny tone of the rest of the record. It's almost as if forty-something Maddser has taken control over the twenty-something Maddser.

But that's it! Madonna is like poor old Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse five. She has come unglued in time.She exists now, then and in the future. She slips on through easily.
So that's how she did it! Shit they never had a chance!! She has had her entire life over and back to continuously play the game again and again – to win again and again…Each time she plays better and better and she each time she wins better and better.

Something in her eyes is making such a fool of you. Just try to understand…understand. You've given all you can. But she's got the best…of you now…

* Probably! by Krossie

Labels: Guest Blogger, Krossie, Madonna, Music