Development
"I thought she had a lot of style, and she crossed over a lot of boundaries because everyone in the rock clubs played her – the black clubs, the gays, the straight – and very few records have that appeal. However, she was unhappy with the whole damn thing, so I went in and sweetened up a lot of music for her, adding some guitars to 'Lucky Star', some voices, some magic. I just wanted to do the best job I could do for her. When we would playback 'Holiday' or 'Lucky Star', you could see that she was overwhelmed by how great it all sounded. You wanted to help her, you know? As much as she could be a bitch, when you were in groove with her, it was very cool, very creative."
—John "Jellybean" Benitez talking about Madonna and the album.For the album, Madonna opted not to work with either Kamins or Bray, but chose Reggie Lucas, a Warner Bros. producer. Bray decided to push her in the musical direction of pop, and recorded the song "Burning Up" with her. However, Madonna still did not have enough material to warrant a full album. The songs available were, "Lucky Star", a new version of "Ain't No Big Deal", "Think of Me" and "I Know It". Lucas brought another two songs to the project, "Physical Attraction" and "Borderline". As he recorded the tracks he deviated considerably from the original versions of the demos. One such altered song was "Lucky Star". The song was written by Madonna for Kamins, who previously promised to play the track at Danceteria. However, the track was instead used by Madonna for the album, which she planned to call Lucky Star. She believed that "Lucky Star", along with "Borderline", were the perfect foundation for her album.
Problems arose between her and Lucas during the recording of the songs. Madonna was unhappy with the way the final versions turned out. According to her, Lucas used too many instruments and did not consider her ideas for the songs. This led to a dispute between the two and, after finishing the album, Lucas left the project without tailoring the songs to Madonna's specifications; hence she called John "Jellybean" Benitez, a DJ at Funhouse disco, to remix the available tracks. In the meantime, due to a conflict of interest, Bray had sold "Ain't No Big Deal" to an act on another label, rendering it unavailable for Madonna's project. It was Benitez who discovered a new song, written by Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens of the pop group Pure Energy. The song, titled "Holiday", had been turned down by Phyllis Hyman and Mary Wilson, formerly of The Supremes. Jellybean and Madonna sent the demo to their friend, Fred Zarr so he could embellish the arrangement and program the song with his synthesizer magic. After vocals were recorded by Madonna, Benitez spent four days trying to enhance the commercial appeal of the track before the April 1983 deadline. Just before it was completed, Madonna and Benitez met Fred Zarr at Sigma Sound in Manhattan, where Zarr added the now familiar piano solo towards the end of the track.
Read more about this topic: Madonna (album)
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Good schools are schools for the development of the whole child. They seek to help children develop to their maximum their social powers and their intellectual powers, their emotional capacities, their physical powers.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
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“And then ... he flung open the door of my compartment, and ushered in “Ma young and lovely lady!” I muttered to myself with some bitterness. “And this is, of course, the opening scene of Vol. I. She is the Heroine. And I am one of those subordinate characters that only turn up when needed for the development of her destiny, and whose final appearance is outside the church, waiting to greet the Happy Pair!””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)