Madonna Should Have Stopped There: Lou Waxman on a Perfect Debut

August 25, 2026

Hot takes. Like an asshole everybody’s got one. Hot takes. Every asshole has got one. Greatest debut albums of all time. The Doors self-titled. Led Zeppelin self-titled. The Cars self-titled. Lou has another one to consider. Madonna’s self-titled. It deserves a place in the Pantheon. It is that good. Lou does not think that is a hot take. Hot take. Madonna should have stopped there. Every album afterwards chased the excellence that is that first album. She never came close to approaching it in terms of a complete album. Her next best album is The Immaculate Collection. A comp of singles. She peaked out of the gate.

Hot take. In Desperately Seeking Susan from 1985 Madonna does a better rock star turn on celluloid than Prince in Purple Rain. “Into the Groove” is better than anything on Purple Rain. Madonna’s look is far more influential than Prince’s. Prince’s frills are just a reheated Jimi Hendrix fashion-wise. Hot take. Prince is overrated. There Lou said it. Feels good. When you get down to it, Lou likes himself some Rick James better than he likes Prince. Give Lou “Superfreak” over anything that Prince ever did. Sure, Prince played all the instruments and was a complete musical genius but his guitar solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is public masturbation. Prince was supposed to be honoring George Harrison for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and instead he overshadowed him. Dick move. He could not bring himself to share the stage and provide accompaniment. He had to jerk off all over the place. That puts his guitar solo in the class of wankfest. Like with Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen and all the other 1980s guitar wanks.

Hot take! The Dave Chappelle skit on Rick James is far funnier than the one on Prince. Cocaine is a hell of a drug. I’m Rick James, bitch! Rick James is quotable in a way that Prince never was. That is because Rick James knew how to quote. It is the key to his best work. “Superfreak” is a quote of Chic’s “Le Freak”. Hot take. In music, plagiarism is good. Hot take. In all the arts, plagiarism is good. The most interesting art utilizes appropriation. For example, the greatest era of rap is from 1986-1990 when the sample was king before copyright laws destroyed it at its most creative and innovative. Academia is not a creative art, which is why plagiarism is a crime in academicendeavor. Academic writing is only done to pad a resume or get a grade. There is no thought of readership or a general audience. The only people who read this stuff are potential employers and professors, who are also the potential employers. You shouldnot plagiarize on one’s resume. That is frowned upon.

Lou was listening to an old Michael Rappaport appearance on the Bill Simmons podcast and they were discussing stickmen. Simmons made the argument that Prince was the greatest vertically challenged stickman of all time. Hot take! That is not true. Mickey Rooney was. Go look it up. Ava Gardner. Enough said. Go look it up. Elizabeth Taylor. Look it up if you dare. Mickey Rooney was married eight times. But Lou,Mickey Rooney’s love life is much too sloppy to be that of a great stickman. The key to a great stickman is discretion and class. Exhibit A. Derek Jeter. Mickey Rooney was a mess. One of his wives, Barbara Ann Thompson, was murdered in her bed by her lover, Milos Milos, who was found dead beside her. It was ruled a murder-suicide, but it was committed with Rooney’s gun. Not a good look. The worst thing Derek Jeter ever did was give someone a gift basket. Allegedly. Point taken. This is a bad take, more than a hot one.

Another bad take. Mickey Rooney inspires a lot of bad takes. Could it be argued that Rooney’s depiction of Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was a progressive catalyst for the depiction of Asians in Hollywood because it was so racist. It was so vile and reprehensible that the eventual backlash actually taught Hollywood a lesson and shamed them into more rounded Asian characters while at the same time radicalizing the Asian community within that industry and outside of it. A form of it’s so bad it’s good in a way. This is a Fox News take as much as anything.

In any case, Prince was much more important as a star makerthan a starfucker. The Bangles, Sheena Easton, Vanity, The Mary Jane Girls, Appolonia. Only Phil Spector did it better. But Rick James made Eddie Murphy a rock star. Is “Party All the Time” the greatest song ever done by a stand-up comedian? It could be argued that Eddie Murphy did it the best with a serious, play it straight song, but of course “Party All the Time”is great because of the unintentional comedy.

Adam Sandler’s “The Hannukah Song”. Denis Leary’s “Asshole”. Steve Martin’s “King Tut”. The Blues Brothers deserve mention because they did the challenging task of creating something extremely funny while also playing it straight. Ackroyd and Belushi’s musical taste is exquisite. But they are disqualified as not being stand-ups. Hot take! The greatest song by a stand-up comedian is Sam Kinison’s “Wild Thing”. Sexist, misogynistic, crude, lewd. Guilty as charged, but no song by a comedian so accurately captured the spirit of its time for better and, in this case, for worse. “Wild Thing” is a comedy song that works as a rock song. It could be argued that Kinison’s “Wild Thing” was the pinnacle of 1980s hair metal, the height of its hubris before grunge destroyed it in the early 1990s. Everything that was good and bad about hair metal is represented in Kinison’s “Wild Thing” and its excesses are why hair metal had to die. And should have died. This is what Nero’s fiddling sounds like. This is a Jimmy Kimmel-type take.

Listen to Madonna’s debut album again and think what if that album was like the Sex Pistol’s Never Mind the Bollocks. A oneand done statement. A standalone. If that were the case, the album, like Bollocks, would be recognized as art and part of an art movement. Madonna should never have left behind the Downtown New York art and music scene of the early 1980s. She belonged in Danceteria and Club 57 more than MTV and Hollywood. Everything she did afterward is chasing a moment in time when she was as unknown, fresh, and original as the musical styles she fucked with. It would be a better world if Madonna’s career were like that of Lydia Lunch in the underground instead of inspiring the mainstream corporate machines of Britney Spears, Beyonce, and Taylor Swift.