Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stones hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversial list. I'm Britney Spanis and.
I'm Rob Sheffield and we're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and talk about what makes them so great.
So today we have a song by an artist we have a lot to say about and we love and recently both saw live Madonna. Into the Groove by Madonna. This is one of three songs by Madonna on the list. In the previous list, only Like a Prayer had made the list before. I was at number three hundred in the earlier versions. And in this list we have Into the Groove at one six ' one. We have Vogue on the list, and we.
Have Like a Prayer.
And today we're going to talk about Into the Groove, though, which is a song from the Desperately Seeking Susan soundtrack, great film. I don't even know where to begin with this. I feel like we've been talking about Madonna even before this. We're talking about Madonna constantly. I guess I want to know, like, do you remember hearing the song for the first time? Was it in the movie? Was it on the rat What was your experience with Into the Groove.
On the radio before it was on the movie. It was a song that was in the movie, which was brilliant.
Yeah, the greatest.
Film of the eighties in the Madonna cinematography department, except Maybe Who's That Girl, which is also a brilliant eighties Madonna movie. Into the Groove had a really different, lean, mean, electric sound. It was very stripped down, it was very low fi. It just sounded very punk rock. It was very aggressive, just you know, a girl in a beat box and everything about it. Even by the standards that Madonna had already created as a pop star, this song
was absolute, absolutely electric, absolutely irresistible. Into the Groove is really confrontational musically, vocally, in every way and completely impossible to avoid. One of the best videos of the era of videos where it's clips from a hit movie. And you know, there were so many of those, so many of those that made bad movies look fun. You know, so many people went to see Flash Dance because the maniac video was so much fun. Yeah, Flash Dance is
no fun. It's a terrible movie. Whereas you saw Into the Groove and you saw Madonna in that club scene, and that alone tells you everything that you want to know about what makes this movie a classic.
Yeah yeah, I mean this was the song came after Madonna's first two albums are self titled, and like a virgin. I mean, it was already like Madonna fever was taking over. There was like women were dressy as Madonna and like wanting to like be Madonna. She was already becoming like this massive, massive icon. She didn't even go on her first tour until after Into the Groove came out, until
that summer was like a virgin tour. And I mean just to even kind of like have that have that kind of like phenomenon already exist from someone who in pop history, no one has ever wanted to be a pop star more than probably Madonna. Like she is, like everyone thinks they want to be a pop star as much as Madonna did, but I feel like it's like unmatched in the level of like desiring kind of the bigness of it that Madonna had. And she was very good at being a pop star and becoming that pop star.
But I mean to think even just before this song came out, before she isn't desperately seeking Susan, which was a movie that like Diane Keaton and Mellie Griffiths wanted the role of Susan in the film, and the director gave it to Madonna because she was like, this girl seems cool like and she does it so well. I mean, it's kind of like a crazy kind of timeline to think about now, I guess in the context of who Madonna was and kind of how everything came together at that time.
Absolutely, and her huge musical energy, which at that point
she was not really given credit for. She was very widely dismissed as just someone who was just an anonymous, replaceable pop starlett Into the Groove, that was really where she put her personality front and center, not just her vocal personality, and her personality is very demanding, pushy, impossible to ignore in that song, but also her punk rock energy and very much when she started she was cross combination of different scenes in New York, the club scene,
the disco scene, the hip hop scene, and the new wave dance scene, as well as the punk rock scene. Yeah, you know was the Detroit she was from was very much punk rock, sort of ground zero and Into the Groove which was really just a stripped down punk rock in your face approach to the pop and disco that had made her famous. It really completely blew people's minds, even people who already liked Madonna.
Yeah yeah, I think also, I mean, even to this day, I feel like there's so much of her her writing is so underrated. And this is a song that she wrote with Stephen Bray. I mean, the Bridge is something there's a great quote from Stephen Bray about just like her just being on the microphone and suddenly having this like live out your fantasy here with me, like on the bridge and kind of making the song so much better by just all this music pouring out of her.
Like her, her writing abilities are something that I feel like goes so so uncredited in who she is as a pop star, especially during this time, and really comes across so much in the.
Song Absolutely Yeah. I mean. One of the things that people always overlook most about Madonna is her musicality. And it's funny that it's almost always the last thing people talk about when they talk about Madonna. Her songwriting, her musical imagination, which always came first with her and was always very explicitly first. It's the part of her act that people always took for granted and still take for granted. Yeah, but Into the Groove sounded like nobody else had, sounded like nothing else.
Yeah.
And it's also that thing of all of the kind of like the stunts and the controversy, none of those are effective without those songs being great. Like I mean, even like the like a prayer video, that video and the controversy that it made with the Catholic Church and kind of having these burning crosses. I mean, just like with that entire song would not be effective if that song wasn't absolutely perfect, Like that's a great song, you know,
like a virgin too. I mean, just like the way that she delivers that song, I mean, her kind of writhing on the VMA floor is like it doesn't work
if that song's not good. And everything that she's done since, you know, making comebacks in her forties and fifties and sixties, like it's like making new music and making new kind of risk with her music is like none of it's effective without the fact that she has like such a kind of brilliant mind and ear for you know, trying out new things and being kind of willing to see how she can sort of place herself in the context of a scene or of a time in music.
You know.
Of course, we've talked.
About Ray of Light a lot in over over the time that we've known each other, because we both love that song and album. But like that is another great example of like, there's this amazing kind of dance happy in the late nineties, and Madonna fits right in and she makes it work for herself and reinvents it and like makes an album that comes to define the entire era of music, you know, and continues to do that
over the course of her career. So it's always kind of crazy when when people sort of downgrade how kind of brilliantly musical she is in all those ways, because none of those things will be effective without a great.
Song, absolutely, And it's something that, you know, because if she was so controversial about every aspect of her pop stardom, people tended to overlook how committed she was to music. People assumed that that part of it she had no
interest in. Yeah, Shockingly, Rolling Stone magazine was not a huge fan of Madonna when she showed up, And I always remember a great line that one of Rolling Stone's top music journalists at the time had to say about her was maybe she'll move on to movies though anywhere we'll do. That was a great line, right, great line. So many people sincerely believe that about Madonna, even people who really loved her music, assumed that she was just
in it to be a famous person. She'd move on to movies, she'd move on to TV, she'd move on to anything. And it turned out not just music, but dance music was a lifelong passion for her.
Yeah, And the funniest thing is that some of her greatest songs were just on the soundtracks for her movies, Like thinking about Vogue being on the soundtrack to Dick.
Tracy, unbelievable, unbelievable.
Vogue, groundbreaking song in so many ways. Again on the list, like that song is on the Dick Tracy soundtrack. It was insane thing in the entire world of all the movies.
Unbelievable, unbelievable.
And I mean with into the Groove, I was reading a little bit about the history of the song and how she originally co wrote it with Stephen Bray for another artist, and it was with the producer of Everybody was going to buy the song and give it to his fifteen year old proge and then Madonna took it back,
which is like kind of peak Madonna. She had a great quote that I was reading about from a biographer and like the early two thousands where she was just like saying that I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, that's okay, which is a very peak Madonna quotable.
She was so scary. Oh my gosh, she was really scary, and she would say shit like that. I always remember something she said about how she wanted to look the way Ronnie Specter sounded yeah, and I was like, Wow, what a thing to say. Yeah, she would just you know, she always thought. She was always a scholar of pop history. She was always somebody who knew all different types of music and was willing to steal from all different types of music. It came out in even the simplest songs
that she did. Yeah, and you know, like you said, Into the Groove a very simple song in many ways.
Yeah, Yeah, I feel like Into the Groove is sort of the I mean, maybe her first great dance record before and kind of set the precedent for the rest of her her career of kind of really kind of reinventing and continuing to really hone in on her own skills as like a great singer of amazing club tracks, an amazing dance t but they.
Both all her, and it's funny to think of the decades in between those songs, yeah, and that they're both
distinctly her specific musical and vocal personality. Madonna was the type of eighties artist that people expected to fade away very quickly, and for her staying power as an artist, it's well to think that hung Up was her, you know, thirty years after into the Groove, and yet this was, you know, clearly the same artist, with the same sense of fun, the same sense of mischief, and that kind of continuity over the years is surprising, but it's it's very Madonna.
Yeah, Like even with everything being so different over the course of her career, like it's still she's able to reinvent herself with kind of that still like ethos and
personality of who she is and every single thing. Like she's able to really be so good at reinventing herself while still like making sure it's like no one else can really do this the way that I'm Madonna can do this one of the Madonna songs that you feel well should have or could have made the cut, or do you think this is the perfect three songs that made the list.
With Madonna, it's funny how many of her great songs were hits, but also how many great ones she left stranded on her albums. Promised to dry on Like a Prayer, I see Like a Prayer is just a perfect album. And it's why when you think of the songs that become hits and the songs that don't. You mentioned The Immaculate Collection, which is one of the most famous greatest hits albums of all time perfect name Yes, coming at
the end of the eighties for her. It's funny you look at that album and it leaves out so many of her huge hits from the eighties. It skips Who's That Girl, which was an actual number one hit from eighty seven. It's really wild to think of Madonna in that period with someone who who could leave a number one hit off her greatest hits album, Angel, which is one of my very favorites, and Dress You Up, another one of my favorites. Those are both left off the
Immaculate Collection. Angel is a I mean it was a hit.
It a hit.
She had so many radio hits in that era, and yet that one kind of falls by the wayside. But I think that's just an unbelievably perfect song.
Yeah.
I mean we both went to the Celebration tour as it came through. I went to the Brooklyn show. Did you go to Massis Square Garden?
Yeah?
Yeah, I mean even in the time since I went to that show. In early December, Ariana Grande drops a song that is sampling and referencing Vogue. You know, it's like so funny that that's like just something that's kind of part of the cycle constantly. And of course that song was a few years ago. Beyonce did a Break My Soul remix with Vague. You know, it's like every every artist is kind of referencing or nodding to Madonna constantly, which is just like being able to see her in concert,
I was like, oh, yes, like this is truly. She has such a blueprint for everything.
For everything, and such a huge emotional appetite. It's funny that there are so many hits, you know, we're talking about the hits that aren't just famous, but so many of her really emotional sentimental, intense sort of ballads are ones that often get lost in the shuffle again just out of a sheer quantity of hits. But this used to be My Playground was such a beautiful song and for so many artists would be like a classic that they would you know, model the rest of their career on.
And from Madonna, it was like just another smash hit that was from a soundtrack that she moved on from very quickly. Yeah, but she just left so many great songs like that all over every phase of her career.
Yeah.
Well, maybe let's talk a little bit about Desperately Seeking Season because we haven't talked about it enough, Which is that I watched the film for the first time a few years ago, just like again like the trajrectory of like what is happening in those first few years of Madonna's career. It's just like so funny to look back on and like piece that timeline together and be like how did this happen? And like how kind of like cosmic and amazing that it was that this all kind
of happened at once. But I mean, she's like perfect as this like bohemian drifter in the film, and with Rosanna Archett. I think it's just like such a perfect movie for her to kind of have out the.
Gate with this. Yes, and it's so funny that it's a movie that's so saturated and hipster dumb in a way that is so true to who Madonna is because she really comes from that downtown scene. But it's also really funny that, you know, it's the world's biggest pop star at the time, which nobody expected when she was actually making the movie. And she's in this movie and there's bit parts for Richard Hell as the dead guy
she wakes up in bed with. You know, Arta Lindsay is in the song, and Magnuson is in the song. All these people who are really obscure New York bohemia nightlife figures in the early eighties are in this movie. The writing is so funny, way above like what people were expecting. This wasn't a star vehicle. This movie is always shocking how brilliant it is in every detail, on every level.
I know, I love Rosanna Arcuat being like, let me make a second after Hours, but this time with Madonna.
Who can forget the Rolling Stone cover with Madonna and Rosanna Arquette from the moment when they were equivalently roughly on the same level to co star in a movie like this, And it's wild that in the movie, Rosanna Arquette is so brilliant, so funny playing this really bored, frustrated, annoyed person in this really horrible marriage. And there's this great scene where Madonna is invading her house and reading
her diary. She says, it's got to be a code, because nobody's life could really be this boring.
Yeah, she's so like, she's so charming and fun and like it's such like a perfect kind of I know all of these like multi hyphen it things of Madonna, Like she really is like able to capture so much of that in this movie where she's essentially playing herself. Yes, it is essentially playing this like heightened Madonna who's not a pop star, who in this universe Madonna also still exists because she puts on the jukebox and into the groove plays.
Yes, I you watch this scary New York from the eighties, and it's really scary eighties New York. But it's wild that there's this scene where Madonna's like, let's go to the goth club and it's this totally improvised last minute scene. They were like, wait a minute, we have this movie coming out of comedy starring Madonna, and we don't have a scene where she's actually in a club dancing. We need to stick that in. And so, you know, those were just the people who are hanging out in the club,
the goth guid doing the cobweb gathering dance. You know, he alone is such a goth icon who inspired so many goth kids over the years, just by being himself dancing in the corner of this Madonna video and it keeps cutting to him, and all the people on the dance floor are stars in that scene. And Madonna's just
so brash, so brazen, even her dancing. Honestly, Like, who goes into a public restroom in New York and does not imagine what if I just turned on the hand dryer and just dried my underarms in this public restroom. What if people stare at me? Who cares? I'm Madonna, I'm this cool. I can get away with this. Yeah, at least once a year I walk into a restroom and I think maybe this is the day I'll do it. Who could be that fearless and brazen.
We're all striving to recreate Madonna's New York God.
We all are. Yes.
Well, when we get back, we will be joined by Susi x Spasido to talk more Madonna. And we're back with Susi x Spasito, a multi hyphenate of Madonna proportion. She's a writer, editor, singer, DJ icon, legend, star.
Genius, queen of the universe, and huge hero to both Brittany and me.
Oh my gosh, I really appreciate the fanfare, as you both know, I'm huge fans of yours.
And we're very excited to talk about Madonna, who is someone that we all have a lot of feelings and opinions and favorite Madonnas. So, Susie, can you tell us a little bit of your Madonna history, your personal history with listening to Madonna.
Well, listen, it starts with my father.
He is a very loud Cuban American man born in Jersey City, New Jersey, and he happened to be.
In New York City at the right place, at the right time.
He told me that he met Madonna in nineteen eighty two at the Palladium.
Wow in Manhattan. Oh Yeah, because she used to hang out.
I mean, she was part of the downtown scene, and my dad was kind of a club kid.
You know, he would go to punk shows, you go to dance Aityria.
He just has all these ridiculous stories. But my favorite thing about his stories is he told me how much Madonna absolutely loved Latino men. And I think, you know, talking about Into the Groove, which was inspired by a Latino.
I think it's very fitting that I'm on this podcast.
Clearly Madonna made a huge impression on my dad, on my family.
You know, I grew up listening to her.
My dad bought every single album of hers as it came out, and so I yeah, she's left an indelible mark on my psyche. Yeah.
And with Into the Groove, you talked about the origin of it, which I think it's I was reading about the story and it's like such like a I love a good, like horny like origin story for a song, which is like she was like seeing her neighbor dance across the hall or something, and she said she finished the song by the time they went on their last date.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just like a perfect kind of Madonna eighties story. Origin of like how she wrote this even before it found its home and desperately seeking Susan and like where it was meant to be. But I love a very kind of like peak Madonna horny origin story for a song.
Yeah, I just I love how I feel like desperately Seeking Susan.
I don't think it would have been the movie that it was without her without that song.
I think that song really breathed life into it.
And where does Into the Groove land for you? In like your sort of Madonna rankings of her music.
It's a forever classic. I feel like I don't know I have.
It's like I have moods, and Madonna has a song for every mood that I'm in and when I'm tearing it up at karaoke, like Into the Groove is definitely one of my one of my favorite like karaoke picks, either either I sing it or somebody else.
Does you know it's a little.
High for me range wise, but yeah, it's like, you know, it's the song that it was her biggest song. It was the song she really made a splash with. I think what's so wild to me is that she this was like in nineteen eighty five, but she was. She was like a downtown girl.
You know. She would kick it with the no Wave people. That's how downtown she was, you know. So for her to do a song like Into the Groove, I mean she had range. Yeah. For me, I would definitely rank it up high.
But I also, you know, I love the artie Madonna as well, the really moody, like you know, low range singer. When she gets into like her goss, when she gets into her little goth vibes, or like her moody trip hop Nellie Hooper vibes, I feel.
Like those rank higher than probably the rest of the general public for me. But Into the Groove you can't go wrong.
Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask you, as a goth punk girl, how the gothness of the club scene in Desperately Seeking Susan, which people saw because of the MTV video and all the cobweb dancing in the video. Was that a goth moment for you as a formative Madonna fan.
Yes.
I remember watching that movie with my dad and he's like, look at this, look at this.
I was there, I was in this club, you know, and at that time I was like, yeah, yeah, Dad, whatever, probably making stuff up, but no I came to I mean, it was definitely embedded in my mind, like, Okay, I want to do that one day, And sure enough I moved to New York at seventeen and looked for the same thing. The only problem is it was two thousand and seven and it was very recession core and everyone was wearing neon, so it was a little different.
Be the gos Madonna you want to see in the world, yes, exactly. You mentioned about singing her in karaoke, and I think, especially as our queen vocalist, like I want to talk about Madonna's voice a little bit because I think there's it's so fascinating, like how there was so much critique of it and so much of like the idea, and there was even periods where she talked about the fact that she didn't think that she was the greatest singer. But I actually, like, I love so much of her
vocal performance on this song in particular. But there is she has that sort of kind of like higher register songs that make them sometimes pretty difficult to try to tackle karaoke. But there is that on the bridge where she kind of goes lower and does that like kind of deep throated, like very throaty, like kind of yes song and I love I Love like a throatier Madonna song.
I want to know a little bit about your sort of analysis of Madonna's singing and how do you kind of see her as a vocalist in the pop canon.
I think she was a powerhouse in her own right.
I feel like one of the things that gave her the cool that she needed to succeed is her being, you know, like a downtown scene kid who had a little edge, who could push the boundaries a bit, especially like lyrically.
And I think both she and Janet what they did in the eighties.
When it came to really like being empowered and like their sexuality and being like you know, encouraging of young women to just talk about these things openly, to really like be in tune with your body.
They're both like incredible dancers.
And I feel like Madonna, you know, she didn't give herself enough credit for being the singer she is. Like like I said earlier, she really has She has a huge range for a singer. This was kind of it was her her time to really like show it off,
want it. It's like the eleventh hour. She had to, she had to write this song and stats so she could go on this day with this hot quarry can guy across the hall and come back like I don't know, she sings it like she wants it, you know, and I resuspect that so much.
There's so much urgency in her music. I feel like the best Madonna songs have so much like like Borderline is a big one for me. I think that's probably that's probably like my my favorite of the of the eighties era of Madonna and that song there's like so much urgency in it, like and also just like this like kind of like kind of I don't know, raw anger almost and like it's like keep on pushing my love over the borderline. Like it's just like but it's
also still such like euphour extol. I think like that's why the Right of Light album and like a lot of for he work with William Orbit works so well. That's why you know, these kind of all these dance records with her work so well, because there's like this like real urgency that she's willing to give because sometimes you just you gotta be urgent to get to the dance floor, and you got to be urgent to win over your hot neighbor you know well. Thank you so
much Susie for joining us today. Love talking Madonna, really appreciate you.
Could not be more love talking about Madonna.
Listening to you to talk about Madonna is absolutely a joy and education.
Thank you, Rob, Thank you Brittany. Always a fun time with you. And yeah, until next time, Thanks.
So much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling Stone and iHeartMedia. Written hosted by Me, Britney.
Spanos and Rob Sheffield.
Executive produced by Jason Fine, Alex Dale, and Christian Horde, and produced by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision by Eric Zeiler. Thanks for watching and thanks for listening.