Madonna-Frozen
- 00:05:21
- YouTube
Madonna-Frozen
"Frozen" is a pop song by Madonna from her 1998 album Ray of Light, written and produced by Madonna, Patrick Leonard and William Orbit. The song was released as a single in February 1998. "Frozen" was a radical change for Madonna. The darker electronic undertones, eastern strings arranged by Craig Armstrong, a touch of Middle Eastern percussion in the opening and her new vocal range were all previously unexplored territory for her. However, the song was a huge success and is praised as being one of her best songs. Its success worldwide also marks it as one of Madonna's biggest hits ever. The song was mainly composed in A flat major. "Frozen" also marked the beginning of a series of remixes which were done during the Ray of Light era. For the first time Madonna was working with Victor Calderone, who went on to remix most of her follow-up singles. His club-mix of "Frozen" is a favorite of most fans. The same goes for the remix done by the Stereo MCs. Their remix was used by Madonna on her 2001 Drowned World Tour. Madonna also performed "Frozen" on her 2004 Re-Invention Tour. In 2003, Madonna fans were asked to vote for their Top 20 Madonna singles of all-time by Q-Magazine. "Frozen" was allocated the #10 spot. On November 18, 2005, a Belgian judge seated in Mons ruled that the opening four-bar theme to "Frozen" was plagiarized from the song "Ma vie fout le camp"[1], composed by Salvatore Acquaviva of Mouscron. The judge subsequently ordered the withdrawal from sales of all remaining discs, and forbade any further playing of the song on Belgian TV and radio. "Frozen" was a huge success worldwide. It topped the charts in a few countries, including the United Kingdom, Italy and Finland, but it peaked at #2 in mostly the rest of the world, being held off from the top position in the majority of them by Céline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On". It peaked at #2 in the United States, being held off the top spot by K-Ci and JoJo's "All My Life". In the UK, despite sporadically high sales of singles such as "You'll See" (#5 in 1995) and "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" (#3 in 1997), "Frozen" was seen as the "big comeback" for Madonna, and became her first ever single to debut at number-one, selling 508,296 copies. It was Madonna's first UK chart-topper since "Vogue" in 1990. "Frozen" spent eleven weeks at #2 in the European Singles Chart. Madonna traveled to the Indian Well Valley of the Mojave Desert in California to shoot the music video for "Frozen" from January 7-10, 1998. It was directed by Chris Cunningham, and was inspired by the movies The English Patient and The Sheltering Sky. The video won an MTV Video Music Award for "Best Special Effects" in 1998. The cinematography was done by Darius Khondji, who also shot Madonna's 1993 music video "Fever", and the 1996 film Evita. The video premiered on February 12, 1998 in Europe and on MTV four days later. There were also two remix videos of "Frozen" released that same year by Dan-O-Rama titled "Stereo MC's Mix" and "Calderone Club Mix".
YouTube | December 7, 2008
