It Took Seconds

Three minutes and forty-seven seconds: “Unlike the others I’ll do anything / I’m not the same, I have no shame” - very difficult to hear “Burning Up” as the semi-anonymous art-disco track it might once have been, especially as Madonna’s voice is so distinctive (and this was her best era for singing - thin, full of character, and so hungry). But even aside from her future this is a great, great pop record - she’s fierce of course, but her co-star is that guitar, jabbing and scrawling all over the track, and somehow enhancing its sense of space. This is a song for empty lofts, bare walls, unpaid bills and a beatbox. One of my five or six favourite things by her.

What would your 3’47” track be?