Madonna's Erotica is by far my favorite Madonna Album. I was only ten years old when it was released in 1992. Like many things, I've come to understand it more and more the older I get.
Madonna was widely condemned in the media for having pushed the limits of sexuality too far with her first album to have a "Parental Advisory" sticker slapped on the cover. She was no longer considered acceptably suggestive, but vulgar and raunchy. She has never been as explicit as she was during this phase of her music. Which is probably why it's my favorite of all her persona's.
The album was released nearly simultaneously with Madonna's first publication, Sex. Sex is the most successful coffee table book ever released [selling all 1.5 million copies published in the first three days!] and features strong adult content and softcore pornographic photographs depicting simulations of sexual acts, including sadomasochism and analingus. She wrote the book as a character named Mistress Dita, inspired by 1930s film actress Dita Parlo. She told Larry King in 1999, "I didn't write a book about sex. I wrote a book that—I mean I published a book that basically was sort of a—an ironic tongue-in-cheek, sticking-my-tongue-out-at-society photo essay..."
Interestingly enough, Madonna was inspired for both the album and the book by Andy Warhol. She even pays homage to Edie Sedgwick in the Deeper and Deeper music video.
Despite all the criticism, the album is double platinum, and has sold over five million copies. So, it seems, as always, that Madonna had the last laugh.
Download these: Erotica, Deeper and Deeper, Where Life Begins, In This Life.
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