The 25 Best Non-Singles by Madonna

Madonna's done it all and we've pretty much covered it all. So when we sat down to decide the best way to celebrate the anniversary of Madonna's debut album, released 30 years ago tomorrow, we elected to dig up some of the forgotten or unheralded gems scattered liberally throughout her three-decade-spanning catalogue rather than predictably rank her best albums, singles, or videos—which we've more or less done on various other lists over the years anyway. With the exception of one B-side, one compilation cut, and one remix, all of our picks can be found on a Madonna studio album—a testament to the singer's strength as an album artist, particularly in the '90s. These are songs that, in a more adventurous world, could have been hits, and in some cases where the releases were nixed last minute, almost were, their breadth and depth reflective of an artist unwilling to allow herself to be defined. And just for shits and giggles, we ranked 'em.






25.  "Love Song" from Like a Prayer
A daring and unconventional duet with Prince, 'Love Song'  is not regarded as a classic in the same way as Like A Prayer but it’s every inch as clever. Almost gone completely is the pop suss of the opening two tracks and in comes the art. That is what Love Song is, true art. It has the feel of Prince’s slightly more obtuse songs from the 80’s and yet always sounds just a tad out of whack even for his purpleness’ most odd moments. Saying that, take away the odd beeps and low key approach to it and Love Song is at heart a belting ballad. During those days Prince wasn’t about to put his name to anything run of the mill, considering at this point he and Madonna were the two biggest names in pop it couldn’t have worked out any better.  Anyone notice how madonna used same lyrics here as in hung up ?? " Time goes by so slowly for those who wait"?


24.  "Inside of Me" from Bedtime Stories

With full, round production by Nellee Hooper, "Inside of Me" on the surface sounds like a warm, intimate sauna of slack slow jack built on a foundation of Aaliyah and the Gutter Snypes samples, but radiating a sensuality that's all Madge. But like every track on her prior album, Erotica, this song's breathy hedonism masks an inner devastation: Underneath those tear-stained suggestions of sex mournfully deferred is actually a heartfelt tribute to her mother. Staring down a crossroads in her career, Madonna couldn't help but make grief sound like fornication. Henderson

23.  "Forbidden Love" from Confessions On A Dancefloor
This version of “Forbidden Love” sends the message that religious creeds, political persuasion, sexual and racial prejudice, and the violence that often accompanies the ignorance and exclusionary tactics of these agendas, have no power over love and desire. Love knows no color, no belief system, no agenda but its own, and that is to break the ego of its self-centeredness and show it the beauty of sacrificing the self’s own needs and wants for those of another greater than oneself. True love conquers all, defying all boundaries that anyone puts in its place; in the eyes of love no embrace, no kiss, no touch, no expression of desire is forbidden or taboo because love is blind to the differences in others which humans see with the clouds and dust of ignorance and hatred in their eyes and their minds. It is ironic that the cliché “Love is blind” has lasted so long, when truth be told, Love is the only thing in the world that truly sees.

22.  "Where Life Begins" from Erotica
Madonna waxes erotic on the perks and pleasures of oral sex on "Where Life Begins," the Erotica's most overtly sexual track, but also the only one to reference safe sex: "I'm glad you brought your raincoat/I think it's beginning to rain." Both "Where Life Begins" and "Waiting" draw heavily from Motown and were produced by Andre Betts, who cut his teeth as associate producer of "Justify My Love."

20.  “Swim” from Ray of Light
Here you have it: a sign that Madonna may have her feet planted in this world. Like an ethereal, patrician version of Marvin Gaye, she croons the headlines: “Children killing children while the students rape their teachers / Comets fly across the sky while the churches burn their preachers.” It’s heavy and heavy-handed, but it’s also fitting for Ray of Light’s fixation on consciousness.

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43. Madonna, “Open Your Heart.”
David Byrne once sang, “Watch out, with that attitude you might get what you want,” and it feels as if Madonna has made a career of realizing that ambition by any means possible. It’s funny to think that “Open Your Heart” could have ended up with someone other than the Material Girl. Yes, Cyndi Lauper might have spun something altogether more poignant from this unabashedly sincere and playfully metaphoric love song, but the conviction Madonna reveals throughout, as exhaustible as Patrick Leonard’s fluttering rock-dance bassline, finds her in a strikingly confessional light. As in the song’s polar opposite, 1993′s “Bye Bye Baby,” an anti-love song in which she coyly makes the man do the chasing, Madonna was and always will be credible only at her most naked. EG

28. Madonna, “Live to Tell.”
Madonna’s first and, arguably, most dramatic reinvention was scored by the spare and haunting ballad “Live to Tell,” which wasn’t just a daringly demure introduction to her third album, but also posed a challenge to pop-radio programmers keen on instant gratification: The song begins with almost a full minute of music before the singer starts to tell her tale, and includes abrupt key changes and a half-minute midsection in which nearly all of the music drops out. Of course, it worked like a charm, and “Live to Tell” launched a fruitful professional relationship between Madge and producer Patrick Leonard that would last for more than two decades, and set the stage for the fearlessly autobiographical material to come. The song features one of Madonna’s richest vocal performances, full of soul, yearning, and hurt, with lyrics that can surely resonate with anyone who’s ever endured a detention of silence—self-imposed or otherwise. SC

26. Madonna, “Into the Groove.”
Leave it to Madonna to make the campy, throwaway, opening lines of a B-side into a career-defining mission statement. She’s at her most coy as she speaks, “You can dance, for inspiration,” over the first few bars of “Into the Groove,” the theme from Desperately Seeking Susan and, somewhat inexplicably, the B-side of the considerably less brilliant “Angel.” But who cares that one of Billboard’s technicalities kept the song from charting on the Hot 100: Madonna’s never come up with a more apt assessment of how her music works best. Whenever she’s lost her way artistically, she’s headed back to the dance floor to get her head right. JK

16. Madonna, “Express Yourself.”
It was David Fincher’s music video for this smash from Like a Prayer that introduced us to Shep Pettibone’s remix, which, aside from the lethargic come-and-git-it cowbell that intermittently takes Madonna from the church steeple and straight onto the prairie, matches in its uptempo the soulful fervor of the singer’s call to arms. But MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore, and when I’m listening to this song on my iTunes, it’s the original album version I prefer, as it evokes something altogether more subversive: Fritz Lang’s robot Maria hanging out inside a Detroit dance hall, forcing men to their knees as the big-band sound rocks the house. He has it coming in both versions, but in Stephen Bray’s original Madonna comes fearlessly out of nowhere. EG

7. Madonna, “Like a Prayer.”
With an atypical structure in which the drums drop out completely during each verse and the chorus is all but abandoned halfway through the song in favor of ad libs, what’s now considered a perfect pop song seemed more fit for a church than Top 40 radio at the time. Though she’d evoked religion before, most notably with heaps of rosary beads dangling between her décolleté, it was, perhaps, inevitable that with a name like Madonna, the so-called Material Girl would more seriously explore the faith with which she was so strictly raised. But while there have been about as many interpretations of the song’s lyrics as there are remixes (she’s singing about God, she’s singing about giving a blowjob, she’s singing about giving God a blowjob), “Like a Prayer” begs for a more refined reading than a brainy conflation of spiritual and sexual ecstasy: It’s a song about love. SC