"Everybody" is a song by American singer-songwriter Madonna from her self-titled debut album. It was released on October 6, 1982^[1] by Sire Records as her debut single. Madonna had recorded a demo of the song with Steve Bray. She urged DJ Mark Kamins, who played at her dance club, to play it. He was impressed by the song and took her to Sire Records, who signed her for a two song deal. However, after the recording of the two singles were over, Sire executive Michael Rosenblatt was not impressed with the production of the other song and decided to release only "Everybody".

Musically incorporating R&B infused beats, the song portrayed the image of Madonna as a black artist, since her picture did not appear on the single cover. However this misconception was cleared later when Madonna convinced Sire executives to allow her to shoot a music video for the song. The low-budget music video directed by Ed Steinberg portrayed Madonna and her friends singing and dancing in a club to the song. The video helped to promote the song and Madonna as an artist further.

Critically the song did not receive any acclaim and failed to enter the official Billboard Hot 100 chart, but charted on its dance charts. The song helped Madonna achieve her first photograph in a dance magazine and getting nominated for the song's sales. She has performed the song in a number of live appearances. It was performed as the final song for The Girlie Show World Tour and was one of the songs performed by Madonna at the 2006 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The song was included in a remixed form on Madonna's 1987 remix album, You Can Dance, and on the deluxe edition of her 2009 compilation album, Celebration.

Background and release[link]

In 1982, the 23 year old Madonna was living in New York and trying to set up her music career.^[3] She was joined by her Detroit boyfriend Steve Bray who became the drummer of her band, the Breakfast Club which played generally hard-rock music. However after that, they abandoned playing songs in the hard-rock genre and got signed by a music management company called Gotham Records with the plan of pursuing a new musical direction.^[4] They decided to pursue the funk genre but the record company was not happy with their musical abilities. Hence they were dropped. Madonna and Bray left the band also.^[3] Meanwhile, Madonna had written and developed some songs on her own. She carried rough tapes of three of the songs, namely "Everybody", "Ain't No Big Deal" and "Burning Up". At that time she frequented the Danceteria nightclub in New York. It was there that Madonna convinced the DJ Mark Kamins to play "Everybody".^[3] The song received positive reaction from the crowd. Kamins decided that he should get Madonna a record deal on the understanding that he would get to produce the single.^[3] He took her to his boss Chris Blackwell, who owned Island Records, but he refused Madonna.^[5] This led to an approach to Sire Records in 1982. Michael Rosenblatt, who worked at the artists and repertoire department of Sire, commented that,

"Madonna is great. She will do anything to be a star, and that's exactly what I look for in an artist: total co-operation... With Madonna I knew I had someone hot and co-operative, so I planned to build her career with singles, rather than just put an album right away and run the risk of disaster."^[6]

Rosenblatt offered Madonna $5,000 in advance plus $10,000 in royalties for each song she wrote.^[7] Madonna was ultimately signed for two 12 inch singles by the President of Sire, Seymour Stein, who was impressed by her singing,^[6] after listening to "Everybody" at a hospital in Lenox Hill where he was admitted.^[7] The 12 inch version of "Everybody" was produced by Mark Kamins at Bob Blank's Blank Tapes Studio in NYC. Kamins was romantically involved with Madonna at that time. He took over the production work from Steve Bray.^[7] The new recording ran 5:56 on one side and 9:23 for the dub version on the flipside. Madonna and Kamins had to record the single at their own cost.^[8] Arthur Baker, friend of Mark Kamins, guided him through the role of a music producer and provided him with studio musician Fred Zarr who performed his keyboard wizardry on the track. Zarr became one of the common musical threads on the album by eventually performing on every track. ^[9] Due to the restrained budget, the recording was a hefty affair as Madonna could not understand Kamins' directions and Kamins himself faced problems directing. Hence the A-side "Ain't No Big Deal" did not become as successful as everyone expected.^[10] Rosenblatt wanted to release "Everybody" with "Ain't No Big Deal" on the other side, but later changed his mind and put "Everybody" on both sides of the vinyl record after hearing the recorded version of "Ain't No Big Deal".^[7] The single was commercially released in October, 1982.

Composition[link]

	"Everybody" (1982) noicon Madonna singing the chorus of "Everybody" as a synthesized R&B infused beat plays in the background.
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"Everybody" starts with a heavily synthesized and spoken introduction with Madonna taking a loud intake of breath.^[11] Madonna displayed her bubblegum pop voice in the song, which was doubletracked.^[11] The song is written in the key of A minor with the melody of the song beginning in G♭ and rising to the second scale degree on the syllable 'bo' of 'everybody', thus highlighting the chorus which follows in the chord progression of G–A–B–A.^[12] "Everybody" incorporated R&B infused beats. Sire Records marketed the soulful nature of the dance song for the black audience^[10] and Madonna was promoted as an African-American artist, thereby fitting the record into a radio playlist where the song might chart. In New York, the song was played on 92 KTU which had an African-American audience.^[13] For the cover of the single, Sire Records portrayed a hip-hop collage of downtown New York, rather than a portrait shot of Madonna, further perpetuating the notion that Madonna was African-American.^[10]

Reception[link]

Critical response[link]

Author Rikky Rooksby, in his book The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna, noted that the song closed the Madonna album on a flat note. He called the music artificial, repetitive and uninspired.^[11] Don Shewey from Rolling Stone commented that "At first, it ["Everybody"] doesn't sound like much at all. Then you notice its one distinguishing feature, a girlish hiccup that the singer uses over and over until it's irritating as hell. Finally, you get hooked, and you start looking forward to that silly little catch in her voice."^[15] Bill Lamb from About.com commented in general that the songs from the album had "irresistible" pop hooks.^[16] Author J. Randy Taraborrelli in his biography on Madonna commented that the song was a rhythmic call to party.^[17] Author Santiago Fouz-Hernández in his book Madonna's Drowned Worlds, complimented the chorus of the song, saying that "Everybody" and "Music" are the two Madonna singles which define her artistic crescendo.^[12]

Commercial performance[link]

The 12-inch single of "Everybody" failed to break into the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.^[18] It peaked at seven on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart on December 25, 1982.^[17][19] However the song moved quickly up the dance charts,^[7] and was Madonna's first single to chart on the Billboard Hot Dance/Club Play Chart, peaking at number three.^[20] Since its release, the single has sold around 250,000 copies.^[4] The song helped Madonna achieve a first magazine cover photograph. In the December issue of Dance Music Report magazine, Madonna and another band Jekyll and Hyde were nominated for awards in the sales category of a reader's poll. It was Madonna's picture that appeared on the cover.^[21]

Music video[link]

Sire Records had marketed the "Everybody" single as if Madonna was a black artist. This misconception was cleared by the release of the music video for the song.^[13] Regarding the importance of shooting a music video for the song, Madonna commented that, "If I didn't have a video, I don't think all the kids in the Midwest would know about me. It takes the place of touring. Everybody sees them everywhere. That really has a lot to do with the success of my album."^[22] She invited Sire Records executives, including Stein and Rosenblatt, to the New York nightclub Danceteria. She performed "Everybody" on the dancefloor, wearing a top hat and tails.^[13] On the night of the performance, Madonna's friend Haoui Montag introduced her to the 300 strong audience. Cheered by them, Madonna and her dancers performed their choreographed dance moves, later described as a 'disco act backed by avant-garde dancers.'^[23] Seeing the performance, they also realised that Madonna appeared visually stunning. They ordered an in-house video of "Everybody" to be sent to the clubs around the country which used dance videos.^[13]

Rosenblatt contacted Ed Steinberg, who ran the Rock America video company and asked him if he could spare a few hours to make a music video for "Everybody" with Madonna on stage at her next performance in Danceteria.^[24] The idea was to play the video as promotion across the United States so that people will come to recognize an image of Madonna and her performance. Rosenblatt offered Steinberg $1,000 for the in-house production video, when artists like Duran Duran and Michael Jackson were spending six figure sums on videos.^[24] They finally agreed on $1,500. With the low-budget,^[25] the video was directed by Steinberg.^[26] Steinberg suggested shooting the video on location at the Paradise Garage, a downtown gay disco, instead of filming a live performance. Madonna's friend Debi Mazar did the makeup and joined her other backup dancers, namely Erika Belle and Bags Rilez. Mazar brought a few of her friends to act as a disco crowd in the video, including African-American graffiti artist Michael Stewart.^[24] Steinberg was impressed by Madonna's professionalism on the set and he helped to send copies of the tape to nightclubs across America which used dance music videos for their entertainment. This promotion helped the song to grow from being a dance hit in New York to a nationwide hit.^[21]

The video starts with Madonna and her two backup dancers dancing in a club while lights blink in the background.^[27] The shots continue while interspersing close-up shots of Madonna dancing while wearing a coat and junk jewelry.^[27] Author Douglas Kellner in his book Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern noted that already with her first video, Madonna was deploying fashion, sexuality and the construction of an individual image to present herself both as an alluring sex object and as a transgressor of established norms.^[28] The band Fab Five Freddy reminisce that with the video Madonna "is attracting those who were more street, more savvy, more flavorful."^[21]

Live performances[link]

Madonna has performed "Everybody" during 1985's The Virgin Tour and as the concert finale on 1993's The Girlie Show World Tour. In The Virgin Tour Madonna wore a blue see-through crop-top which revealed her black bra, a purple skirt, lacy leggings and a brightly patterned jacket. She also wore crucifixes in her hair, and on her ears and neck.^[29] As the performance of "Into the Groove" ended, Madonna took the microphone and danced around the stage while singing "Everybody". The performance was included in the home video release titled Live – The Virgin Tour.^[30] Madonna sampled "Everybody"'s line, "Dance and sing, get up and do your thing" during the opening bars of "Express Yourself" for the Blond Ambition World Tour.^[31][32] In the Girlie Show, "Everybody" was performed as the closing song of the tour. Madonna wore pale shorts and a simple yellow and green V-necked shirt, which she hitched up into a bra revealing top.^[33] The performance started off after "Justify My Love". The beginning contained the chorus from "Everybody Is a Star" originally by Sly & The Family Stone. As the song progressed, musical excerpts of "Dance to the Music", "After the Dance" and "It Takes Two" were included.^[34] Jon Pareles from The New York Times complimented the performance, saying "the show's finale is downright wholesome, with the troupe in denim and white tops, inviting the audience to dance to 'Everybody'. It's just a good-time song-and-dance revue, not a provocation."^[35]

Madonna played the song during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival while promoting her tenth studio album Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005).^[36] She performed the song wearing a tank top and high boots, with a silver glitter band around her hair.^[37] It was also performed at London's Koko Club. Madonna was dressed in an all-purple ensemble of jacket, velvet pedal pushers and knee-high boots. Before performing "Everybody", she announced that, "I feel like I'm really out of shape right now, I don't like falling off horses, so I'm going to do one more song."^[38] On November 22, 2008, Madonna performed "Everybody" as the audience request song at Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall venue as part of her Sticky & Sweet Tour.^[39]

Track listing and formats[link]

• Notes: UK 7" and 12" versions included a remix by Rusty Egan and Steve Short at Trident Studios Reduction Suite, which was only ever released in the UK.^[43]

Credits and personnel[link]

• Madonna – vocals, writer
• Mark Kamins – producer
• Butch Jones – synthesizer
• Reggie Lucas – guitars, drum programming
• Fred Zarr – synthesizer, electric and acoustic piano
• Dean Gant – electric and acoustic piano
• Bobby Malach – tenor saxophone
• Ed Walsh – synthesizer
• Gwen Guthrie – background vocals
• Brenda White – background vocals
• Chrissy Faith – background vocals

Credits adapted from the album liner notes.^[2]

Charts[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Madonna "Everybody" lyrics MTV
• Madonna "Everybody" music video Yahoo!

Look up everybody in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Everybody may refer to:

In albums:

• Everybody (Ingrid Michaelson album), or the title song
• Everybody (The Sea and Cake album)
• Everybody (Gods Child album)
• Everybody, an album by Hear'Say, or the title song (see below)

In songs:

• "Everybody" (Hear'Say song)
• "Everybody" (Keith Urban song)
• "Everybody" (Madonna song)
• "Everybody" (Rudenko song)
• "Everybody" (Stabilo song)
• "Everybody" (Tanel Padar and Dave Benton song)
• "Everybody" (Turtles4 song)
• "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)", a song by the Backstreet Boys
• "Everybody", a song by Britney Spears from Blackout
• "Everybody", a song by DJ BoBo
• "Everybody", a song by Martin Solveig
• "Everybody", a song by Tommy Roe

See also[link]

• All pages beginning with "Everybody"
• Everyone (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Madonna (Italian: My Lady) may refer to:

Entertainer[link]

• Madonna (entertainer), an American singer-songwriter and producer
  • Madonna (album), the singer's self-titled first album
  • Madonna (video compilation), a music video collection

Religious figure[link]

• Madonna, an appellation of Mary (mother of Jesus), a religious figure in Christianity and Islam
• Madonna (art), pictorial or sculptured representations of Mary, Mother of Jesus

Other uses in entertainment[link]

• "Lady Madonna", a 1968 song by The Beatles
• Madonna (...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead album)
• Madonna (EP), by South Korean band Secret
  • "Madonna" (song), a song from the Secret EP
• Madonna (1999 film), (Bogorodica), a 1999 Croatian film
• The Fallen Madonna, a painting featured in the British comedy 'Allo 'Allo!
• Madonna (studio), a Japanese adult video (AV) company based in Tokyo

Other[link]

• Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital, a hospital mural in Lincoln, Nebraska, US.

See also[link]

• Madona

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This page or section lists people with the surname Madonna. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.

Three singers-a trio-singing a song while accompanied on a lute played by one of the singers. Das Konzert [The Concert] (c. 1490, Lorenzo Costa).

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing. A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs. The lyrics (words) of songs are typically of a poetic, rhyming nature, though they may be religious verses or free prose.

A song may be for a solo singer, a duet, trio, or larger ensemble involving more voices. Songs with more than one voice to a part are considered choral works. Songs can be broadly divided into many different forms, depending on the criteria used. One division is between "art songs", "pop songs", and "folk songs". Other common methods of classification are by purpose (sacred vs secular), by style (dance, ballad, Lied, etc.), or by time of origin (Renaissance, Contemporary, etc.).

A song is a piece of music for accompanied or unaccompanied voice or voices or, "the act or art of singing," but the term is generally not used for large vocal forms including opera and oratorio.^[1] However, the term is, "often found in various figurative and transferred sense (e.g. for the lyrical second subject of a sonata...)."^[1] The noun "song" has the same etymological root as the verb "to sing" and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the word to mean "that which is sung" or "a musical composition suggestive of song." The OED also defines the word to mean "a poem" or "the musical phrases uttered by some birds, whales, and insects, typically forming a recognizable and repeated sequence and used chiefly for territorial defence or for attracting mates." ^[2]

Cultural types[link]

Art songs[link]

Art songs are songs created for performance in their own right, usually with piano accompaniment, although they can also have other types of accompaniment such as an orchestra or string quartet, and are always notated. Generally they have an identified author and composer and require voice training for acceptable performance. German-speaking communities use the term art song ("Kunstlied") to distinguish so-called "serious" compositions from folk song ("Volkslied"). The lyrics are often written by a poet or lyricist and the music separately by a composer. Art songs may be more formally complicated than popular or folk songs, though many early Lieder by the likes of Franz Schubert are in simple strophic form. They are often important to national identity.

Art songs feature in many European cultures, including but not limited to: Russian (romancy), German (Lieder), Italian (canzoni), French (mélodies), Scandinavian (sånger), Portuguese (canções), Spanish (canciones). There are also highly regarded British and American art songs in the English language. Cultures outside of Europe that have a classical music tradition, such as India, may or may not feature art songs. The accompaniment of European art songs is considered as an important part of the composition.

The art song of the period in which they originally flowered is often a duet in which the vocalist and accompanist share in interpretive importance. The pieces were most often written to be performed in a home or salon setting, although today the works enjoy popularity as concert pieces. The emergence of poetry during this era was much of what inspired the creation of these pieces by Brahms, Schumann, Schubert and other composers. These composers set poems in their native language. Many works were inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine. Another method would be to write new music for each stanza to create a unique form; this was through-composed form known in German as durchkomponiert. A combination of both of these techniques in a single setting was called a modified strophic form. Often romantic art songs sharing similar elements were grouped as a song cycle.^[3]

Folk songs[link]

Folk songs are songs of often anonymous origin (or are public domain) that are transmitted orally. They are frequently a major aspect of national or cultural identity. Art songs often approach the status of folk songs when people forget who the author was. Folk songs are also frequently transmitted non-orally (that is, as sheet music), especially in the modern era. Folk songs exist in almost every culture.

Popular songs[link]

Modern popular songs are typically distributed as recordings and are played on the radio, though all other mass media that have audio capabilities are involved. Their relative popularity is inferred from commercially significant sales of recordings, ratings of stations and networks that play them, and ticket sales for concerts by the recording artists. A popular song can become a modern folk song when members of the public who learn to sing it from the recorded version teach their version to others. Popular songs may be called pop songs for short, although pop songs or pop music may instead be considered a more commercially popular genre of popular music as a whole.

See also[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Song

• Air (music)
• Animal song: bird song, whale song, zoomusicology
• Aria
• Ballad
• Canticle
• Category:Musical forms
• Hymn
• Instrumental
• Lied
• Madrigal (music)
• Song structure (popular music)
• Vocal music
• Theme song
• Poem and song
• Singing

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Marcello Sorce Keller (1984), "The Problem of Classification in Folksong Research: a Short History", Folklore, XCV, no. 1, 100- 104.