Every Madonna Studio Album, Ranked from Worst to Best (Part 1)

The first of three posts reviewing every LP in the Material Girl's discography.

Regardless of what you may think of her “divisive” public persona, Madonna has more than earned her title as the Queen of Pop.

Since bursting onto the pop music scene in the early 1980s, she has:

• Sold over 300 million albums globally

• Amassed 12 No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100

• Won 7 Grammys and 20 MTV Video Music Awards

• Grossed about $1.4 billion in total tour ticket sales worldwide

• Become the only woman to gross $100 million on tour six times

Along the way, she’s pushed boundaries like few ever have. From “too hot for TV” music video bans to one of the most whispered-about coffee table books of all time, Madonna’s courted controversy at every turn—though that’s not necessarily what she’d call it.

“People say I’m controversial,” she said in 2016. “But I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around.”

In a career that’s spanned more than four decades and several dozen conversation-shaping moments, one fact is undeniable: her music speaks for itself. Fizzy pop, soaring ballads, humid club bangers—her discography has it all and then some.

In this post, I break it down album by album.

Like other discography ranking articles, “best” and “worst” are all relative to the other studio LPs in an artist’s oeuvre. Every time I undertake one of these projects, my expectations are always left at least somewhat upended. Madonna’s catalog was no exception. Get ready for some surprises.

Before diving in, a quick reminder to subscribe if you haven’t already. If you’re enjoying this and any other content from this newsletter, consider telling one or several contacts about it. It’s the best way to help grow the thriving Music Stack community.

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Onwards:

15. I'm Breathless (Music from and Inspired by the Film Dick Tracy) (1990)

Let’s start with Madonna’s most notable swing and miss: her soundtrack for that weird Dick Tracy movie Warren Beatty and Al Pacino were in.

I’ll give her this: This album's concept was a bold choice at the height of her pop stardom following Like a Prayer. The jazz and big band arrangements are period-appropriate but don’t fit with her voice as naturally as someone like Lady Gaga, who has pulled off this particular aesthetic much better (check out her two collab LPs with Tony Bennett if you’re not familiar).

It’s not to say that Madonna can’t belt out a ballad with the best of them, but this record never hits any American Songbook kind of stride. To add to the messiness, the production also feels rushed and thin in spots, which may have been an attempt to recreate a vintage texture. A handful of tracks sounded unfinished as a result.

All that said, we have this movie tie-in to thank for “Vogue,” the only standout song from this record. If recent sampling has taught us anything, this track is still incredible more than 30 years later. Everything about it, right down to the iconic music video, has aged like the finest of wine. A lot of pop music from that era sounds dated and hokey now, but this one is definitely worth your time if you’re somehow unfamiliar with it. Don’t forget to strike a pose while you listen.

14. Bedtime Stories (1994)

As I was going back through Madonna’s catalog and, in some cases, relistening to records I hadn’t heard in more than a decade, a word I rarely associated with her work was “boring.” One exception to that rule, however, was Bedtime Stories.

There are a few bright spots, including “Human Nature,” which sees Madonna try her hand at a whispery boom-bap track and makes me wish she’d done an out-and-out East Coast rap record at some point in the 90s. The production from Dave Hall is guaranteed to have you nodding your head, no matter how many times you’ve heard it.

But, for most of the rest of the album, the excitement isn’t there. I have to imagine Madonna tamped down the overt sexuality to try and showcase other dimensions of her artistry. But the trade-off doesn’t benefit the music. Too often, the sanded-down R&B production (Babyface’s fingerprints, for better and worse, are all over the arrangements) descends into syrupy adult contemporary cliches.

If that’s your jam, all the more power to you. It isn’t (and has never been) mine.

13. MDNA (2012)

Throughout her career, Madonna’s bread and butter has been club records. Beginning with new wave, synth-pop, and disco, she’s successfully navigated changing trends and consumer tastes to keep her name in DJ playlists for over four decades. By the time MDNA was released in 2012, pop was fully ensconced in the EDM craze, and Madonna decided to throw her hat into that ring.

She worked with a murderer’s row of production talent (a theme we’ll revisit multiple times in this discography ranking), including electronic music veterans like Benny Benassi (”Girl Gone Wild”), Martin Solveig (the excellent “Turn Up the Radio”), and Orbit. The only two names that show up as featured vocalists are Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., both of whom I like as solo acts, but, especially on “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” grate on my nerves more than anything else.

Overall, the one-word description for MDNA I couldn’t shake was “relentless.” The glossy production comes at you fast and furious, but after more than 70 minutes, it feels like it’s hitting you over the head with the same bag of tricks again and again. It has its selling points, but it’s not an album I’m likely to return to often, if at all.

12. Hard Candy (2008)

Every discography ranking project I’ve undertaken for this newsletter unfolds the same way initially. I listen to every album, some for the first time, and I always go through the artist’s catalog chronologically. That way, it’s easier to see the sonic evolution over the years and pinpoint watershed moments in their career.

I bring my methodology up because Hard Candy represented one of those moments in Madonna’s career arc. For the first time, it felt like she was a passenger on her own album and wasn’t steering every part of the creation process. I say this because this collection of songs sounds very of its moment instead of carrying the timeless quality so often associated with her work.

Again, that assertion doesn’t make these tracks bad per se. I actually still like cuts such as “4 Minutes” and “Dance 2night” a lot. They’re bops. But, in the grand scheme of late-2000s pop, they also play like FutureSex/LoveSounds retreads for producers Timbaland and Danja. Similarly, “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You” is such a shameless Justin Timberlake rip-off that I hope he got a royalty check out of it (he’s featured a couple of times on the album, so it seems likely).

I was torn about where to slot this album on this list. I can’t deny the craftsmanship. It’s slick and cool and, overall, a decent hang. Due to its calculating nature, I also can’t lie and say this LP didn’t leave me at least slightly cold.

11. American Life (2003)

Here it is—Madonna’s 9/11 album.

It’s not necessarily an overt lyrical response to that tragic event. But, like Steven Spileberg’s Munich, American Life grapples with the fallout from that day and the ensuing war of terror by rejecting American materialism and, to a degree, the self-aggrandizing exceptionalism that comes with it. The notion that the woman who sang “Material Girl” with such zeal would take some of the stands she does here is a fascinating about-face.

"I have lots of 'material' things and I've had lots of beliefs about things and what's important, and I look back at the 20 years behind me and I realized that a lot of things that I'd valued weren't important," she concluded at the time. In questioning those priorities, she shares ideological ground with an album like American Idiot, another mainstream hit that quickly burst some Bush-era bubbles.

Production-wise, this LP is an interesting bird, too. It veers between compelling and confusing, sometimes in the same song. The blending of acoustic and electronic elements is clearly influenced by artists like Massive Attack, a creative throughline she’s publicly acknowledged. When the downbeat instrumentals match the frustrated energy of her lyrics, the atmosphere can get downright eerie.

And yet, American Life is also a bit bloated and self-indulgent. Madonna was clearly working through some fear and paranoia and, by that token, threw some half-baked ideas at the wall to see what stuck with her audience. The experiment yielded more positives than negatives.

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Which of these Madonna records is overrated or underrated? Sound off in the comments.