Madonna - Erotica 25

I got my copy of Madonna’s Erotica when I was 14 and building my collection of her CDs. The blue-and-white album cover sports the queen of pop with her gap-toothed mouth gaped and wide eyes shut, as though on cloud 9, and the parental guidance sticker trying to sanitize the whole thing, which was all the more reason why I should get the controversial record - for I wasn’t supposed to. (I’m pretty sure I got Lady Chatterley's Lover for the same reason – to prove I was in the possession of a rebel heart.)

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Erotica – I wasn’t aware of this cultural watershed until earlier this week when I was looking at videos from the then 34-year-old Madonna’s Erotica era which have many comments with “Erotica 25” embedded in them. In 1992 her album’s thunder was stolen by her book Sex, which was launched just one month on its stiletto heels.

Can you blame the public when the book has Isabella Rossellini AND Naomi Campbell living their fantasies in it? In Sex her Madgesty reinvented herself as Mistress Dita, a tip of her black velvet top hat to German silent-screen siren Dita Parlo. Erotica opens with the lyrics “Erotica, romance/ My name is Dita/ I'll be your mistress tonight/ I'd like to put you in a trance”, making it clear that Mistress Dita is also in charge here, whip in latex-gloved hand, sadistic mask firmly in place.

Time can weave its magic – it can untie Erotica and Sex from the knots that Mistress Dita naughtily put together to bond them (pun intended) and give music lovers enough distance to judge the album on its own merits.

Erotica is now widely considered Madonna’s best album – it’s got jazz (“Fever”), dance (“Deeper and Deeper”), ballad (“Bad Girls”), pop (“Rain”), and poetry (“Secret Garden”) – the queen was experimenting with love and lust, and through her exploration of her sexuality in ALL its 50 shades of grey, she was at her most forward with her music, which is why Erotica is the 90s’ I Want You. After all Mistress Dita was trying to whip some sense into us (besides some frenzy of course), that it’s all about trying, whether it's sex, or making music, or just about anything else worth doing.

Little Nonni promised to try - she did and people would never mistake her for her mother, whom she was named after, again.