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"Illuminati"
Song

"Illuminati" is a song recorded by American singer and songwriter Madonna for her thirteenth studio album Rebel Heart (2015). It was written by Madonna Ciccone, Toby Gad, Maureen McDonald, Larry Griffin Jr., Mike Dean, Kanye West, Tommy Brown, Ernest Brown[a] and Jacques Webster[a]. The song was produced by Madonna, West, Dean and Symbolyc One, with co-production by Charlie Heat and additional production by Travis Scott. The song's demo was leaked to the internet in December 2014, with twelve other tracks from the album. Its final version was released on December 20, 2014, with five other tracks on iTunes store as "an early Christmas gift" to avoid further leaks. The song's demo version features dance synths and acoustic guitars; after showing the song to West, he felt connected to the song and changed it to a darker sound. The song was conceived after Madonna was accused of being a member of the Illuminati; she wanted to write a song about who they really are and what they are not.

"Illuminati" is a dance-pop song with brittle hits, blips and a buzz-saw break as its main instrumentation. Its sound was compared to that of West's album Yeezus (2013). The song's lyrics discuss Illuminati conspiracy theories; it names celebrities who had also been accused of being part of the group, and religious imagery. Madonna sings, "It's like everybody in this party's, shining like Illuminati". The song received favorable reviews from music critics, who commended West involvement with the track, and its ambitious sound and lyrics, while some chose it as one of the album's highlights. It charted in some European territories and on the Billboard's Dance/Electronic Digital Songs. Madonna performed the song with dancers strapped to tall, flexible poles as part of her Rebel Heart Tour (2015–16); it was considered one of the show's main highlights.

Background and release

Kanye West connected with "Illuminati" and co-wrote and co-produced the track.

While recording for her thirteenth studio album, Madonna enlisted several collaborators; MoZella, Symbolyc One and Toby Gad were announced as new collaborators on the album in April 2014. Madonna posted a photograph of the trio working with her in a recording studio on her Instagram account.[1] She said on the photograph, "Having an Iconic Moment in the studio with Toby-Mozilla and S1. My throat hurts from singing, laughing and crying."[2] Gad worked with Madonna on fourteen songs, all of which appeared on the album. According to Gad, "The first week she was quite intimidating. It was like a test phase. You have to criticize, but you can't really offend. But she also likes honest, harsh critics to say things as they are. It worked out really well and she got sweeter and sweeter."[3]

American recording artist Kanye West also contributed to three tracks on the album; Madonna called him "the black Madonna" and said, "We're comrades in the envelope-pushing genre".[4] Madonna said, "It's a little bit of a bullfight, but we take turns. He knows that he's walking into a room with a person with a strong point of view, and I do, too. I listen to what he has to say, take it in, and he listens to what I say and takes it in. We didn't agree on everything, but he has good ideas."[5] She told Rolling Stone that of the songs she played him, West connected the most with "Illuminati" and that, "[h]e loved the melody, and he was actually jumping up and down on the soundboard. He literally stood on top of the mixing board—we were worried he was going to hit his head on the ceiling, but he didn't. He ended up being very excited about that track, and then he added his spin to it, musically, and I love it. To me, he elevated the lyrics with the music. It's like a siren, alerting people."[6] In December 2014, thirteen demos of tracks for the album, including "Illuminati", were leaked to the Internet.[7][8] To avoid further leaks, Madonna released six completed tracks, including the final version of "Illuminati" with the addition of West's writing and production, with the pre-order for the album on the iTunes Store on December 20, 2014, as an "early Christmas gift".[9]

Composition and lyrics

The song's lyrics are about Illuminati conspiracy theories.

"Illuminati" was written by Madonna Ciccone, Toby Gad, Maureen McDonald, Larry Griffin Jr., Mike Dean, Kanye West, Tommy Brown, Ernest Brown[a] and Jacques Webster[a]. The song was produced by Madonna, West, Dean and Symbolyc One, with co-production by Charlie Heat and additional production by Travis Scott. Gad played guitar on the track and Dean laid keyboards and programmed the drums. The track was engineered and mixed by Demacio "Demo" Castellon and Noah Goldstein.[10] "Illuminati" is a dance-pop song;[11][12] its demo version, written around March–April 2014,[6] featured "staid dance synths and cheesy acoustic guitars", according to Saeed Saaed from The National.[13] The album version features "brittle hits, blips and a buzz-saw break",[14] which many critics considered reminiscent to West's "dark and claustrophobic sounds" of his sixth studio album Yeezus (2013).[13][15][16]

The song's lyrics are about Illuminati conspiracy theories; Madonna sings and raps about supposed illuminati luminaries including Jay Z, Beyoncé, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Barack Obama, LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey. The song also mentions pentagrams and the "Google of the United States".[15][17] According to Amy Pettifer, Madonna " ... reckons it's the beautiful freaks of the club that hold the power, not these celebrity cyphers; she's interested in the sweat-slicked celestial bodies, 'shining like illuminati' ".[14] In an interview with Rolling Stone, Madonna said she was often accused of being a member of the Illuminati and she wanted to record a song about what she believed the Illuminati to be.[6] She said:

People are always using the word Illuminati but they're always referencing it in an incorrect way. People often accuse me of being a member of the Illuminati and I think in today's pop culture the Illuminati is perceived as a group of powerful, successful people who are working behind the scenes to control the universe. Not people with consciousness, not people who are enlightened. So people were accusing me of being a member of the Illuminati, and I kept going, wait—so first I had to figure out what that meant ... I know who the real Illuminati are, and I know where that word comes from. The real Illuminati were a group of scientists, artists, philosophers, writers, who came about in what is referred to as the Age of Enlightenment, after the Dark Ages, when there was no writing and no art and no creativity and no spirituality, and life was really at a standstill. And right after that, everything flourished. So we had people like Shakespeare and Leonardo Da Vinci and Michaelangelo and Isaac Newton, and all these great minds and great thinkers, and they were called Illuminati ... It had nothing to do with money and power. Of course they were powerful, because they influenced people. But their goal was to inspire and enlighten. So when people refer to me as a member of the Illuminati, I always want to say thank you. Thank you for putting me in that category.[6]

Critical reception

The song received generally favorable reviews from music critics. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called it "a sleek, spooky collaboration with Kanye West",[18] while Caryn Ganz of Rolling Stone said the collaboration "gel[s] perfectly".[19] Ben Kelly of Attitude said, "West’s production makes a real moment" and "Her anti-Vogue rap of suspected Illuminati members is probably the only time Rihanna and Queen Elizabeth will feature side by side".[20] Gavin Haynes of NME described it as "classy, 'Vogue'-referencing".[21] Randall Roberts of Los Angeles Times called it "one of the record’s highlights," saying, "[s]he raps during [the song] and doesn’t sound totally ridiculous". He also said the track balances "club frenzy and revelatory lyricism".[22] Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine said, "West gives 'Illuminati' the Yeezus treatment ... her rapped verses about the titular secret society are clean and tight enough to make you forget about 'American Life' ".[23] Kevin Ritchie of Now called it one of "the most ambitious and interesting lyrically".[24] Lindsay Zoladz of New York Daily News wrote that the song is "just goofy enough to work".[25]

Amy Pettifer of The Quietus said the song is "scuzzy and repetitive with a danceable hook—but her voice is at its thinnest and the dynamics a little lacking. Despite all this, it does contain the great lyric, 'It's time to dance and turn this dark into something', which could be the album's epigram."[14] Lee DeVito of Metro Times called it "a bit repetitive" but said it is probably his favorite track on the album.[15] Saeed Saeed of The National said he favored the album's version over its demo, and that, "[t]hankfully, Kanye West rescued it by throwing out the lameness and added the dark and claustrophobic sounds of his seminal 2013 album Yeezus".[13] Bernard Zuel from The Sydney Morning Herald said it is "colder and harder sounding, in the way of West's own recent work. There's some edge to it but not much menace that would really thrust it into compelling."[26] For Kitty Empire of The Guardian said "Rebel Heart's key collaboration with Kanye West finds two of pop's biggest egomaniacs starring in a wiggly club banger that doubles as a take-down of the internet's most nutzoid meme".[27] Mark Lore of Paste called it "dark and creepy, and it's one of the best tracks on Rebel Heart".[28]

Annie Zaleski of The A.V. Club said, "while her distortion-smudged, guitar-marred Kanye West collaboration 'Illuminati' is pleasingly confrontational, the song’s lyrical progression is a distracted mess ... The result? All of these shiny party people resemble the Illuminati."[29] Jim Farber of The New York Daily News said West "gave her a dark needling rhythm that sounds like something left over from his last album. Its industrial grind clashes badly with Madonna’s soft vocal."[30] Andrew Unterberger of Spin said the song "wastes a potentially explosive, blacklit Kanye beat on a muddled, hashtagging lyric that isn’t even as conspiracy-baiting as it thinks it is".[31] New Zealand Herald's Lydia Jenkin was more critical, writing that it "sounds like a trying-too-hard version of Lady Gaga meets M.I.A. ".[32] Similarly, Evan Sawdey of PopMatters said the song "reek[s] of desperation, wanting so badly to shock and offend listeners that [it] fail[s] to resolve as satisfying song first and foremost".[33]

Live performance

"Illuminati" performance during the Rebel Heart Tour, December 2015.

"Illuminati" was part of the setlist of Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour (2015–16).[34] After the acoustic performance of "Rebel Heart", Madonna leaves the stage for a costume change; her dancers perform "Illuminati" while perched on rubber poles that bend with the wind.[35] Jordan Zivitz of Montreal Gazette praised the performance, writing that the dancers "nearly stole the show in their employer’s absence during another costume change, set to Illuminati's woozy thump".[35] George Varga of The San Diego Union Tribune said the audience "cheered with notably more enthusiasm" during the performance.[36]

In the New York magazine review of the tour, Lindsay Zolatz commended the dancers, especially during "Illuminati", writing that it was the "most impressive" part of the show, with "some guys in top hats flying through the air on wobbly stilts that had the whole audience gasping".[37] Kitty Empire of The Guardian said, "Madonna’s interludes are as good as the main event", and that the performance of "Illuminati" "finds seven dancers strapped to the top of tall, flexible poles, swaying precipitously".[38] The Hollywood Reporter's Ashley Lee said, "Madonna's dancers served impressive spectacles that left the crowd gasping in awe, as they leaned wildly into the audience from atop ten-foot stilts. It's arguable that her changeover dance sequences and stunts are more entertaining than other performers' entire sets."[39]

Credits

Personnel adapted from Madonna's official website.[10]

Charts

Chart (2014–15) Peak
position
Finland Download (Latauslista)[40] 20
France (SNEP)[41] 92
Hungary (Single Top 40)[42] 19
Sweden (DigiListan)[43] 29
US Dance/Electronic Digital Songs (Billboard)[44] 16

Notes

  • ^[a] While Ernest Brown and Jacques Webster are not credited as songwriters of "Illuminati" in the album liner notes, they are listed as songwriters by BMI.[45]

References

  1. ^ Wass, Mike (April 17, 2014). "Madonna List Of New Album Collaborators Grows To Include MoZella, S1 And Toby Gad". Idolator. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
  2. ^ Levine, Nick (April 18, 2014). "Madonna working with Miley Cyrus 'Wrecking Ball' writer MoZella". Digital Spy. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 27, 2014.
  3. ^ Pareles, Jon (March 5, 2015). "Madonna on 'Rebel Heart,' Her Fall and More". The New York Times. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
  4. ^ Farber, Jim (March 7, 2015). "Exclusive: Madonna talks new album 'Rebel Heart,' Kanye West, nostalgia — and continuing to push the envelope". New York Daily News. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
  5. ^ Kathy Ehrich, Dowd (April 6, 2015). "Madonna on Collaborating with Kanye West: 'It's a Little Bit of a Bullfight'". People. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
  6. ^ a b c d Ganz, Caryn (December 21, 2014). "'Rebel Heart': Madonna Reveals the Story Behind Six Surprise Songs". Rolling Stone. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
  7. ^ Lynch, Joe (December 17, 2014). "Madonna Dismisses New Album Leak As 'Unfinished Demos Stolen Long Ago'". Billboard. Retrieved December 19, 2014.
  8. ^ Book, Ryan (December 17, 2014). "Madonna's New Album, Reportedly Titled 'Unapologetic Bitch,' Leaks to The Internet; Nicki Minaj Reportedly Featured on Title Track". Music Times. Retrieved December 30, 2015.
  9. ^ "Madonna Responds to 'Rebel Heart' Leak by Releasing Six Songs". Rolling Stone. December 20, 2014. Retrieved December 20, 2014.
  10. ^ a b "Rebel Heart – Credits". Madonna.com. Archived from the original on June 21, 2015. Retrieved June 21, 2015.
  11. ^ McCormick, Neil (March 9, 2015). "Madonna, Rebel Heart, review: 'she's in the game again'". The Telegraph. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  12. ^ Geffen, Sasha (March 26, 2015). "Madonna – Rebel Heart". Consequence of Sound. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  13. ^ a b c Saeed, Saeed (March 2, 2015). "Track-by-track review: Rebel Heart - Madonna". The National. Retrieved October 13, 2015.
  14. ^ a b c Pettifer, Amy (February 25, 2015). "Madonna's Rebel Heart: A Track By Track Review". The Quietus. Retrieved July 28, 2015.
  15. ^ a b c DeVito, Lee (December 21, 2014). "Here's a track-by-track review of Madonna's campy 'Rebel Heart' preview". Metro Times. Retrieved December 30, 2015.
  16. ^ Cox, Jamieson (December 22, 2015). "Madonna's Next Album Is Shaping Up to Be Her Best in a Decade". Time. Retrieved July 27, 2015.
  17. ^ Miller, Ross (December 20, 2014). "Listen to Madonna rap every illuminati buzzword in one of her six new songs". The Verge. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  18. ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (March 10, 2015). "Rebel Heart — Madonna". AllMusic. Retrieved July 27, 2015.
  19. ^ Ganz, Caryn (February 25, 2015). "Madonna gets down with Kanye, Avicii and more on a supercatchy, sexed-up album". Rolling Stone. Retrieved July 27, 2015.
  20. ^ Kelly, Ben (February 24, 2015). "Attitude reviews Madonna's Rebel Heart". Attitude Magazine. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
  21. ^ Haynes, Gavin (March 4, 2015). "Madonna – 'Rebel Heart'". NME. Archived from the original on March 14, 2015. Retrieved July 27, 2015. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  22. ^ Roberts, Randall (March 9, 2015). "Madonna channels defiance and devotion on confident 'Rebel Heart'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
  23. ^ Cinquemani, Sal (February 26, 2015). "Madonna: Rebel Heart". Slant Magazine. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
  24. ^ Ritchie, Kevin (March 11, 2015). "MADONNA - Now Toronto Magazine -". Now. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  25. ^ Zoladz, Lindsay (March 10, 2015). "Madonna Sounds Current — and Empty — on Rebel Heart". New York Daily News. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  26. ^ Zuel, Bernard (December 22, 2014). "Madonna's Rebel Heart early review: Something old, something new, something borrowed". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved July 26, 2015.
  27. ^ Empire, Kitty (March 8, 2015). "Madonna: Rebel Heart review – bring on the basqued polemicist". The Guardian. Retrieved December 30, 2015.
  28. ^ Lore, Mark (March 11, 2015). "Madonna: Rebel Heart Review". Paste. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  29. ^ Zaleski, Annie (March 10, 2015). "Rebel Heart > Madonna". The A.V. Club. Retrieved July 27, 2015.
  30. ^ Farber, Jim (December 20, 2014). "Madonna songs leaked: 'Rebel Heart' tracks are best when pop star favors classic over trendy". Daily News. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  31. ^ Unterberger, Andrew (March 10, 2015). "Review: Madonna Becomes the Heel of Pop on the Admirably Shameless 'Rebel Heart'". Spin. Retrieved March 10, 2015.
  32. ^ Jenkin, Lydia (March 5, 2015). "Album review: Madonna, Rebel Heart". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved March 6, 2015.
  33. ^ Sawdey, Evan (March 9, 2015). "Madonna: Rebel Heart". PopMatters. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
  34. ^ Sheffield, Rob (September 18, 2015). "Bitch, She's Madonna: NYC Stop Showcases Genius of Rebel Heart Tour". Rolling Stone. Retrieved September 18, 2015.
  35. ^ a b Zivitz, Jordan (September 10, 2015). "Concert review: Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour starts beating at the Bell Centre". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
  36. ^ Varga, George (October 30, 2015). "Madonna dips and rises, and surprises". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  37. ^ Zolatz, Lindsay (September 19, 2015). "Concert Review: On the Rebel Heart Tour, Madonna's Still Asking, 'Who's That Girl?'". New York. Retrieved September 19, 2015.
  38. ^ Empire, Kitty (December 2, 2015). "Madonna review – mistress of sex, sacrilege and stairs". The Guardian. Retrieved December 4, 2015.
  39. ^ Lee, Ashley (September 19, 2015). "Madonna Expertly Touts Irreverence, Cultural Immersion on Rebel Heart Tour at MSG: Concert Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved September 19, 2015.
  40. ^ "Madonna: Illuminati" (in Finnish). Musiikkituottajat. Retrieved January 3, 2015.
  41. ^ "Madonna – Illuminati" (in French). Les classement single. Retrieved February 8, 2015.
  42. ^ "Archívum – Slágerlisták – MAHASZ" (in Hungarian). Single (track) Top 40 lista. Magyar Hanglemezkiadók Szövetsége. Retrieved December 29, 2014.
  43. ^ "Swedish Digital Chart" (in Swedish). DigiListan. December 28, 2014. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
  44. ^ "Madonna – Chart History". Billboard Dance/Electronic Digital Songs for Madonna. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  45. ^ "BMI Work # 18685357, Illuminati". Broadcast Music Incorporated. Retrieved June 30, 2016.

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