The 5 Best Madonna Ballads
Madonna is the best dance-pop singer ever. However, Madonna still produced some of the best pop ballads to grace the Billboard Hot 100. Here’s a look at her five best slow songs.
5. ‘Live to Tell’
“Live to Tell” has a certain mystery that few Madonna ballads possess. The song’s theme of internality was the first moment in Madonna’s career where it felt like she might have hidden depths. Many emotional Madonna projects owe a depth of gratitude to “Live to Tell,” such as “Take a Bow,” “Don’t Tell Me,” and Ray of Light.
Perhaps the best part of “Live to Tell” is its signature synthesizer riff. It’s one of the Material Girl‘s best musical moments. While the song itself is innocuous, the “Like a Virgin” singer courted controversy by performing the song while feigning crucifixion.
4. ‘Crazy for You’
The best songs portray a love that sounds almost desperate. Madonna sings “Crazy for You” like she’s never wanted anything more than her lover. It’s a moment of pop transcendence. The tune should have been in one of the great Hollywood romances, but instead, it appeared on the soundtrack of the forgotten wrestling movie Vision Quest. The tune was so popular that the film was released under the alternate title Crazy for You.
Sometimes, Madonna was current. Other times, she was retro. With “Crazy for You,” she was something else: timeless. Fittingly, it became her first ballad to top the Billboard Hot 100.
3. ‘True Blue’
1950s doo-wop is one of the best dead trends in music. Madonna did her best to revive it with her song “True Blue.” While “True Blue” was the title track of one of Madonna’s albums, it’s been overshadowed by other tunes from the same record, such as “Papa Don’t Preach,” “La Isla Bonita,” and “Open Your Heart.”
“True Blue” is the best track on the record. The Queen of Pop managed to combine 1950s pop with 1980s synthesizers and it worked beautifully. The track captured the highs of love and the lows of loneliness within a bittersweet pop package.
2. ‘Rain’
Madonna was controversial for most of her career, but she took things to a new level with her BDSM-themed record Erotica. While that album includes provocative moments like “Erotica,” “Deeper and Deeper,” and “By Bye Baby,” it also features the moving ballad “Rain,” which shows off the beauty of Madonna’s vocals like no other song.
Many artists have written great tunes about rain. The Beatles’ “Rain,” Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain,” and the Eurythmics’ “Here Comes the Rain Again” are just a few examples. Madonna managed to write and perform a track comparable to those other classics.
1. ‘Frozen’
Ironically, no Madonna hit will melt your heart like “Frozen.” In “Frozen, Madonna sings of the all-too-human desire to get someone else to open up to you. It’s not clear if she gets her wish. That’s part of what makes “Frozen” so haunting.
Madonna’s early hits were fun, but they didn’t have the emotional complexity of “Frozen.” “Frozen” probably isn’t her best tune for the dancefloor. It is her best tune if you want to be moved. If one Madonna song deserves to survive for another century or two, it’s “Frozen,” which still sounds futuristic over 25 years later.
