It was 25 years ago today that my mother brought home Madonna’s brand new ‘Erotica’ album. I had been a massive fan ever since seeing ‘Truth Or Dare’ the year before and to me Madonna was (and is) the coolest person in the world. There was a huge hype building up to the release of ‘Erotica’, Dutch magazines were already writing articles speculating that Madonna would be taking it further than we’d ever thought. I still remember seeing the Vanity Fair photoshoot and thinking…..well this is going to be something else!
I remember the Dutch news even dedicating an entire segment in their morning news to the ‘extremely risky’ new song and video by Madonna (‘Erotica’) and showing a few seconds of it. I was hooked instantly. The vibe, that song, the darkness, the mystery, the look….I loved it all.
So when my mother went shopping and brought home ‘Erotica’, happy 11 year old me instantly put the disc in my CD player and listenend. Upon hearing the first seconds of the first song I though my copy was bad….the static noise was intentional though. I listened to the entire album and fell in love with each and every song, it became my favorite Madonna album. Upon visiting my dad a short while later, he told me he had a surprise for me. He grabbed a large package and told me to open it. When I unwrapped it, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that it was Madonna’s infamous brand new and talked about book ‘SEX’. I needed a knife to open it and my father helped me to open the packaging. When I flipped through the pages, I noticed that my dad was shocked. Turned out he had no clue what the book was about, he went to the book store and asked for ‘that new Madonna book’, paid 65 Dutch guilders (around 30 EUR) and went home.
However in the days that followed everyone I knew wanted to see ‘that’ book. In class I had to ‘defend’ my Madonna fandom, to my classmates she went too far and was a ‘slut’. It became a ‘thing’ for people to hate on Madonna and I was the only one defending her. I even performed the song ‘Erotica’ in front of my entire school (nothing erotic…don’t worry), but it was still ‘lame’ to like her. I didn’t care and wasn’t afraid to show my love for her. I wasn’t cool anymore and was suddenly called stupid for sticking up for my favorite singer and music album.
25 years later here I still am, still defending her almost daily to many people….that hasn’t changed! What has changed though is that that same album that was labelled a flop 25 years ago, is now being called a ‘masterpiece’, ‘important work’ and ‘so ahead of its time’. Did it really take 25 years for people to finally ‘get it’?
Guess I wasn’t so stupid after all.
Kimberly van Pinxteren
