  
Bedtime Stories Something to GHV2: Greatest
1994 Remember Hits Volume 2
1996 2001
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VIDEO by Michael Haussman
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"Take A
Bow" is the pinnacle of the mid-90's Madonna, the softer, toned-down
Madonna who sang love ballads
and collaborated with Babyface to create the biggest
chart hit of her career.
The song, which has a slight Asian feel, was co-written and
co-produced by Babyface, and featured
him on back-up vocals. Its ascent to the
top
of the Hot 100 was slow but steady, topping out at #1 in
its eleventh week and
maintaining the position for an additional seven weeks. "Take A Bow"
also had an
incredible run on the airplay chart, showing continuous growth
for sixteen consecutive
weeks, eventually spending more than two months at the top
of that chart. In addition,
the song also had a thirty-five week run on the Adult
Contemporary chart, where it
topped out at #1 for nine weeks. "Take A
Bow" even found its way onto the R&B chart,
hitting the top 40 and spending a few weeks amongst the top
20 on the R&B sales
chart. The overall
chart presence of "Take A Bow" was so
fervent that the single
appeared on some Billboard chart in every month from December 1994
to January
1996!
Oddly, the only chart on
which the performance of "Take A Bow" was
not incredible
was on the sales chart.
The song managed to hit #4 and has been certified gold for
500,000 units shipped, but
those numbers pale in comparison to "Vogue", which has
been certified double platinum, despite spending only three
weeks at the top, or her
platinum singles like "Music," "Justify My Love,"
and "Like A Prayer" which also spent
far less time in the #1 slot. For this reason, many fans argue about
whether or not
"Take A
Bow" can be classified as Madonna's most successful single. Factoring in
sales, social impact, and memorability,
many consider singles such as "Vogue" and
"Like A Prayer," or
even 80's hits such as "Like A Virgin" and
"Material Girl" to be
overall bigger hits.
Nonetheless, the chart performance of "Take A
Bow" far exceeds
that of any other Madonna single and the song is, without question,
one of her most
important.
Like the song, the video for
"Take A Bow" is one of the most well-crafted
creations
of Madonna's career.
Directed by Michael Haussman, the video features
Madonna as
Madonna with Babyface,
who co-wrote and co-produced
"Take A Bow", at the
1995 American Music Awards.
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a beautiful yet somewhat desperate woman who is abused
by her macho, bull-fighting,
Spanish
lover. The storyline of Madonna and her
matador-lover was so compelling
that it inspired a sequel---the storyline to the video was
continued in the video for
"You'll See" (1996), which even used footage from the
"Take A Bow" video. Also, in 1995,
MTV aired an exclusive, behind-the-scenes interview with Madonna recorded during
the making of the "Take A Bow" video. It has been rumored that Madonna made the
Latin-influenced clip as a last-effort to prove to producers of the Evita film that she could play a convincing Latina character.
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