S-E-X
Oopss I didn’t know I couldn’t talk about SEX!
Madonna – Human Nature 1994
SEX not only is the book that marks the beginning of Madonna as a book-author, way before the English Roses, but it’s a true milestone in her career, the tangible proof she was brave enough to dare and risk it all at the climax of her career, to push people’s buttons, to make people think about themes they would rather prefer keep under a carpet.
SEX is by far the most notorious book ever published in the last 20 years and its Mylar wrapping and spiral-bound metal cover has indeed helped it becoming a legendary item so I’m happy that I personally own six copies of this book (in detail: 2 sealed US copies, 1 opened US copy, 1 open UK copy,
2 opened Italian copies).
All the world media criticised Madonna for making it and many tried to pass the book as flop release.
Sex was such a flop that it sold a record 150,000 copies on its first day of release in the United States and over 100,000 copies in Europe in two days, for a total of Worldwide sales of 1.5 million copies!
It entered the New York Times Bestseller List at #1 and even hit the #1 spot on the Washington Post non-fiction bestseller list on November 1st 1992.
Each and every year Sex is America’s most sought after out-of-print title, according to BookFinder’s annual report.
The graphic coffee-table book, featuring – in the words of BookFinder, “photos of the Material Girl, without the material” – has been one of the most popular out-of-print titles in the US for years and a collector’s item since it was first published in 1992.
Bookfinder also predicted that “since Madonna is never one to do something twice, and the fact that the once highly controversial book is less edgy than it once was leads us to guess that Sex will remain out of print”. And this is likely to happen despite the silly rumours circulating sometime ago about a possibile cheap reprint.
As for the artistic credits, photographs are by Steven Meisel, book design by Fabien Baron, and texts were of course written by Madonna herself.
A promo cd with a unique version of the song Erotica, here titled “Erotic“, with Madonna as Dita reciting more sultry and allusive lyrics than the Album version, was included in the book within a small Mylar bag similar to the main book wrapping.
