Listening Post

As you know, I consider Madonna to be little more than a pathetic joke these days -- an arrogant, faux-dignified self-parody who's amusingly raging against the dying of cultural relevancy (and turning an entire song over to Justin Timberlake only confirms this).

But she hasn't always been.

For a little while there, in the mid to late-90s, she hit the sweet spot where she wasn't an annoying bubble-gum kid anymore, but neither was she Disco Granny. Bedtime Stories and its follow-up, Ray of Light, were pure genius -- displaying a level of class, maturity and intensity I wasn't sure Madge could muster.

As far as I'm concerned, this evocative video is one of the crowning achievements of her long and admittedly impressive career. It's near-perfect in every way: the song was written by Bjork, and is the sort of thing you can practically close your eyes and languidly float away on; the video was directed by visual marksman Mark Romanek; and Madonna has seriously never sounded or looked better.

This is Bedtime Story.