The Early Years: Give It to Me

This is appalling.
As a Madonna fan and collector of her music, it is unfortunate that we are likely to buy this trash!
This is basically revamped recordings that Madonna did in the very early '80s. BUT, she was the backing vocalist.

So, what to do...? 'Otto' has cashed in, removed his god-awful voice from most of the tracks and used Madonnas' as the main vocal! Clever man, and these tracks have been repackaged in many forms overs the last few years, so they must be selling!

There are really only about 3 actual songs on here,Cosmic Climb, Wild Dancing and We are the Gods, the rest have been (would like to use the term 'cleverly' but i wont) clipped together to form other tracks.

Even as Madonna collector, i have NOT bought this 'version'.
Buy it at your own risk of massive disappointment...


A mistake   August 5, 2000
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

The origins of this album is from when Madonna was a backing singer in a European band. When Madonna made it big this album was released. Nearly every year new versions of this album is released but the content is still practically the same. Madonna her self has been known to be against this album as all it does is try and get on the band wagon of Madonnas fame.


This is not Madonna, it's Otto Von Wernherr throughout   July 28, 2000
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Not one of Madonna's famous albums, Give It To Me's collaborator is Otto Von Wernherr, who also worked on the 'In the Beginning' album (not to be confused with the 'In The Beginning' album which used to be called Pre-Madonna). The album features repeatitive lines spoken or sung by Madonna (sometimes lifted straight from other songs from the In The Beginning album) set to more dancey music. Give It To Me is a strange though funky enough track. In it, Madonna sings, 'I'll give you', then Von Wernherr says something desirable (power, fame, money, sex, caviar, cognac, champagne, etc) and then Madonna sings 'you better !' and then this is repeated with some other desirable. This is one song where Von Wernherr's deep melodramatic voice compliments Madonna's early voice. Perhaps it is the early electronica music that does it - something makes this song work where most of the Von Wernherr songs didn't. A decent start to the album. Shake is so similar, it's hard to tell them apart, apart from an upwards change in tempo. Madonna sings 'You better' then the backer sings 'shake !', set to a dance theme. Some of the effects include a samba whistle and a 'ooh-ooh' lifted from Cosmic Climb (In the Beginning album). Not a bad song, but a little too similar to the previous tracks. Get Down again uses almost same dance music in the background, but this time Madonna sings 'Come!' then the backer sings 'get down !'. There are again lifted vocals portions from Cosmic Climb, resulting in a disjointed song which would probably work if it hadn't been done before in the album. Time To Dance starts off very suddenly without any real intro, and sounds similar to the previous songs, but it has a more rock feel due to the guitars used. Instead of lifting from Cosmic Climb, Von Wernherr lifts from We Are The Gods (In the Beginning album) and the result is better, if a little dijointed again. The music has a nice warmth that sets it apart from the clones just preceding it. Wild Dancing is an energetic song, which is mostly sung by Madonna to the background of a drummer, with occasional twirls from an electric keyboard (shock, horror !). It's alright, but hardly makes for 'wild' dancing. Let's Go Dancing is again a similar song to the others, more reliant on the drumbeat. Von Wernherr says 'Let's go' and Madonna adds 'dancing, dancing'. Very repetitive and boring. Cosmic is basically the same as Cosmic Climb from the In the Beginning album. Otto Von Wernherr has a larger spoken part in this song, but he is less annoying, as his dreary voice suits the mood of the song. Madonna is capable as ever, asking if you've got time to make this cosmic climb. Seems like she did and Otto didn't, in the end, doesn't it ? One of the more listenable songs on the album, and you might recognise this song as being the source of many of the effects in the other songs. On The Street again has a more rock accompaniment, mixed with the basic dance theme and Madonna's voice jarringly repeated over again. This album had potential as an alternative angle on Madonna's music. But Von Wernherr, though showing some nice touches with the music, fails to gain any breadth and ends up repeating the same themes over and over again. On their own, each of the songs isn't so very bad. But listened to as a whole, you get the impression that Von Wernherr wrote one song and basically cloned it, getting eight songs for the same price. Pity the album doesn't cost as little as one of those songs. If I had to chose four original songs from the album, they would be Give It To Me, Time To Dance, Wild Dancing and Cosmic. Listen to them and ignore the rest and you shouldn't feel too cheated - but the 'let's dance' theme does wear thin after a while.


What a disappointment!   March 3, 2000
I thought that when I bought this CD it would contain lots of excellent early stuff by Madonna, but this was so disppointing. There is no proper singing on this CD, and each track sounds practically the same - if fact it is probably the same track remixed ten times! Save your money and don't buy this!