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Post by Ampage on Apr 4, 2008 20:07:40 GMT -5
That song is a jacked up mess. Can't imagine what the rest of the cd must be like.
Sorry.
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Post by rocknroller on Apr 4, 2008 20:22:42 GMT -5
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Post by Matheus on Apr 5, 2008 21:24:35 GMT -5
That song is a jacked up mess. Can't imagine what the rest of the cd must be like. Sorry. What are you apologizing for? |
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Post by Matheus on Apr 16, 2008 1:19:22 GMT -5
 Rolling Stone Reviews Madonna's Hard Candy. **** stars. 4 Minutes, **** stars. Not ironic. Dominance isn't just a fetish for Madonna, it's her religion. It's no accident that she opened each show on 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor tour by clenching a riding crop in her hand, jerking a gagged male dancer around by a leather leash. And she never puts down the whip: Since 1986's True Blue, Madonna has claimed writing or production credits on every one of her songs, even when she worked with dance-music artists such as William Orbit, Mirwais Ahmadzaï and Stuart Price. So itís surprising that her eleventh studio album — her final one for longtime label Warner Bros. — is an act of submission. For Hard Candy, Madonna's midlife meditation on her own relevance, she lets top-shelf producers make her their plaything. A songwriting team of American chart royalty helps Madonna revisit her roots as an urban-disco queen. Madonna isn't even the star on the first single, "4 Minutes": Timbaland and Nate "Danja" Hills provide a clanging whopper of a beat, and her vocal bobs alongside Justin Timberlake's, fighting not to drown in the brassy funk of a marching band. Timberlake is the album's melody doctor, and he steals from his own broody "What Goes Around . . . Comes Around" on Madonna's "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You." Madonna co-wrote but didn't co-produce the Timberlake-Timbaland team's five songs, which smack more of their creators' stamps than her own. The songs are solid, but slightly anonymous, as though they could be stripped down and peddled to other singers. The creative tension between Madonna and the Neptunes' Pharrell Williams crackles. Williams bangs on paint cans to generate the beat on the innuendo-laden opener, "Candy Shop", and pumps up the thumpy self-empowerment anthem "Give It 2 Me" with clubby synths that trumpet one of Madonna's favorite life-dance-sex metaphors: "Don't stop me now, don't need to catch my breath/I can go on and on." "Heartbeat" pulses like "Lucky Star," and the soulful "Beat Goes On" (which features an uninspired Kanye West cameo) is one of a handful of tracks with bells and whistles — the classic disco "toot-toot, beep-beep" — traceable to two of Madonna's touchstones: Chic, whose Nile Rodgers helped steer her early career, and Donna Summer. Like Confessions, Hard Candy celebrates dance as salvation, but even the euphorically groovy "Heartbeat" and "Dance 2night" strike wistful notes. Although the uptempo set features no ballads, the dominant lyrical themes — regret, yearning, distrust — are far from upbeat. Morphing from a syncopated shuffle into a lathery, orgasmic hysteria, Pharrell's "Incredible" is a challenging song about longing for a relationship's idyllic beginning. There's a melancholy pining in Timbaland-Timberlake's lush "Miles Away," which implies that all is not peachy in the house of Richie. "You always have the biggest heart when we're 6,000 miles apart," Madonna sings. International pop megastars — they're just like us! The album's weakest moment is its most emotionally vapid. Madonna dips into Español for the painfully literal "Spanish Lesson." She has said the music was inspired by a Baltimore dance called the Percolator but seems more indebted to Timberlakeís fast-strummed "Like I Love You." Fortunately, there's also the bass-popping retro-boogie "She's Not Me," where Madonna imagines her lovers feeling buyers' remorse for being seduced by a copycat who "doesn't have my name." The offender who's "reading my books and stealing my looks and lingerie" could be any young pop starlet. But it also seems like an oddly timed barb at Madonna's now-fallen successor, Britney Spears, who has teamed up with many of the guys on Hard Candy — Pharrell, Danja and (ahem) Timberlake — and Madonna herself. Madonna can still scoff at wanna-be's half her age because she's stayed so flexible with her sound. (She's performed a similar feat with her body, devoting herself to a yoga regimen that's made her impossibly elastic — name another near-fifty-year-old who can still rock a hot crotch shot on her album cover.) Even when she wrestles with Pharrell's abrupt stylistic changes or lets herself get absorbed in a Timberlake melody, Madonna still finds her way back on top. The atmospheric closing track, "Voices," poses the question "Who is the master, who is the slave?" before its operatic wind-down ends in a dramatic bell toll. The answer to both questions is still Madonna. |
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Post by Matheus on Apr 16, 2008 1:22:46 GMT -5
From Attitude Magazine
5 stars
1. Candy Shop
M: Ok, this was leaked and divided people.
L: The lyrics are ridiculous! I love it!
M: Some journos will probably slate it, but it's a statement and sounds much better in the context of the album. It's like an entree. It's her saying "so what if I'm 50. I still like to fuck - so fuck you!"
L: The whole album says I like to fuck, dirty bitch...!
M: The bass is bigger, but it's essentially the same as what was leaked.
L: You can so see the gays dancing to this. They are SO sticky and sweet.
2. 4 Minutes
M: This is out know so everyone knows it. We're running out of time to stop global warming.
L: I'm not sure if it's global warming. It's kind of about us saving ourselves., looking after ourselves.
M: I hope people actually pay attention. This kind of track is the point of Madonna.
L: Ok, now we're super excited because we're going into unknown territory...
3. Give It To Me
M: This is the next single. It starts bouncily, like a circus song, like the intro to The Girlie Show and becomes this ridiculously catchy sing-song.
L: It's almost like Sugababes Push The Button.
M: Really fun and playful. It's her ultimate theme song.
L: It's SO not what you expect, it's almost comedy but it's fantastic. It'll have some amazing remixes. I love the techno at the end. I can see stroke lights!
4. Heartbeat
M: Some reviewers have said this is the big 80s pop songbut I'm not sure. It's a great album track.
L: It's calmer. It won't give you a heart attack at 8 in the morning on the way to work like Hung Up would.
M: A cool, solid song with a sweet, catchy hook...
L:...and a "See my booty get down" interlude where Pharrell goes "Woof woof"!
M: Is it? People need to woof more on pop records.
5. Miles Away
L: Oh. My. God. I LOVE this one. It's amaaaaaaaazing. Power of Goodbye...
K: ...meets Nothing Fails meets Love Profusion. It's ethereal, whimsical, guitar-heavy, mid tempo...about not being able to express yourself when you're together. It's sad and sweet and lovely.
L: Absolutely genius. Got to be huge. It’s got the great hand-clapping bit in the middle but it’s not a stomper.
M: Sort of delicate... picks you up and wafts you away on a pillow of windswept tears. (laughter) ’Were always at our best when we’re miles away’.
L: So far away...
M: So far away...
L: Let’s cry now. You would not be able to not clap along to this in a concert. Unexpectedly warming…
M: …which is a very Madonna thing to do. It sounds resigned. It makes you want to have a boyfriend so you can reject him so you can sing this song. (Cackle).
6. She's Not Me
L: J’adore this! I’m better than the competition. It’s so drag.
M: Is this the campest thing she’s ever done? ’She’s started dressing like me, talking like me and freakin’ me out. She started reading my books and stealing my looks and lingerie, what’s that about?’.
L: (Laughs) I want to dance to this now.
M: It reminds me of Thief of Hearts.
L: Disco funk. And there’s football whistles.
M: And double hand claps.
L: Any song where she repeats a word three times - like ’she was stealing, stealing, stealing’ gets me.
7. Incredible
M: This is the first one we don't really love.
L: It's not an instant melody but it could be a grower. Need to hear it again.
8. Beat Goes On
L: This is unrecognisable from the leak! It’s one of the highlights. Total 80s disco. Xylophones, full on synths. Sort of thing you’d hear at Horse Meat Disco, an ’everybody get up and dance’ record.
M: Very 80s but not in a modern electro pop way. You think you’re listening to a Shalamar record and then Kanye West comes in.
L: It’s got a Taana Gardner feel to it.
M: It’s the point where she turns on the fun turbo boosters. This is the Candy. It’s too too good...
L: LOVE. IT. Especially Pharrell’s Beep, beeps.
M: It’s gonna be played in every disco in the world for 12 - 200 year olds. Could be an instant classic.
9. Dance Tonight
M: Starts off slow and almost sulkily. She's growling.
L: Justin says "Madonna, I'm gonna take you to the club." You're expecting something calmer and then it gears up into this big 80s groove.
M: "You don't have to be beautiful, rich or famous!"
L: Really sexy, really retro, really funk. It's another "you can do this too" track.
M: It's a love in.
L: The whole album's a love in. Any song that has the lyrics "til the break of dawn" gets my vote.
M: The kind of thing you wanna put on at 4am when it's only your best friends and your boyfriend still at the party. It reminded me of If you Wanna Have Some Fun on the Spice Girls third album, which always reminded me of Stephen Bray.
L: We both absolutely loved this, right? One of the best on the album, definitely.
10. Spanish Lesson
L: Not our favourite.
M: It's an album track where she explains some Spanish words and phrases.
11. Devil Wouldn't Recognise You
M: She told me this was a good song.
L: ...and she was right. Very Cry Me A River.
M: But more epic, cinematic. It's like Bad Girl 2. There's sirens, there's rain. Very dark. Like an episode of ER. I can imagine Christopher Walken back with a devil's tail.
L: Amazing Timbaland production. Brilliant track.
12. Voices
L: The last track. Her traditional philsophy one.
M: It starts with Justin saying "Who is the master and who is the slave?". She asks "are you walking the dog, or is the dog walking you?"
L: Ends with the strings, the orchestra, and a ship bell. It's really dark and mysterious.
M: It's produced by Danja. Really sweeping, big way to end the album.
L: Almost Massive Attack-y. Great way to finish.
VERDICT
M: Love it!
L: Wipes the wall with the competition!
M: Someone at the top of their game showing off...full of meaty disco tracks.
L: Full of 'em! It's not brainless vocoder pop and it's not Nelly Furtado...
M: ...like people thought it would be. The title totally makes sense. It's got a real optimism about it like True Blue has but with a mix of some of the drama of Like A Prayer. It's the kind of album that people who prefer early Madonna will love.
L: Feels like the earlier records with a nod to the latter.
M: It hangs together like a real collection. It's proper full-on melodramatic pop. You will not be able to sit down listening to this record. Singles?
L: Give It To Me, Miles Away, Beat Goes On, Dance Tonight. It's like a greatest hits album. Pop record of the year, for sure.
M: How many points?
L: Hmm, 4 and a half, 4 and three quarters or Five?
M: Fuck it. Five!
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Post by Matheus on Apr 24, 2008 16:22:11 GMT -5
 ‘CANDY’: Madonna’s CD looks at — surprise — sex The pop queen looks at sex as commodity and liberating force. By Ann Powers, Times Pop Music Critic April 24, 2008 Madonna "Hard Candy" (Warner Bros. Records) * * * Before "Hard Candy," her 11th studio album, due out Tuesday, Madonna had never before opened her legs for an album cover. Two decades ago, her patchouli-scented belly adorned the sleeve of the intimate "Like a Prayer," and in 2005 she showed a bit of derriere for the disco-nostalgic "Confessions on a Dance Floor." She’s played with self-exposure in her scandalous 1992 book, "Sex," and in plenty of videos. But now the mistress of organized fantasy has put out, front and center. Taken by her frequent collaborator Steven Klein (whose spread-eagle shots of Madge have appeared in magazines, including this month’s "Interview," and art galleries), the photograph shows its subject sitting back like a fighter in a corner. She’s corset-clad, wrestling belt around her waist, binding her hands with black tape. Her tongue registers more strongly than her half-closed eyes; her hair is styled in an androgynous pompadour. The background looks like cracked peppermint. She is Venus and Mars, the embodiment of sex as war. "Hard Candy" is a coldly effective show of prowess that should yield several hit singles beyond the irresistible, nonsensical "4 Minutes," which has already topped charts internationally and inspired a viral video from upstart Miley Cyrus. Madonna’s pugilistic mood extended to her choice of collaborators -- the album’s 12 cuts unfold as a battle between rival production teams the Neptunes and Timbaland-Timberlake, who established their reps (in part) by updating Madonna’s style to suit Britney Spears and Nelly Furtado, and now have a field day trying similar tricks at the source. As a lesson in the contemporary deployment of female allure -- and a survey of Madonna’s career as an exhibitionist -- "Hard Candy" is powerful, precise and coldly revelatory. As an exploration of female sexuality at midlife, it’s depressing. Throughout her career, Madonna has explored the two poles of sex -- its transformation into a product and its potential to become the opposite, a liberating force beyond laws. "Hard Candy" comes down firmly on the side of the marketplace. It opens with "Candy Shop," a Neptunes track that pops along on a conga beat and some double-time heavy breathing -- and where better to situate our predatory guide (go ahead, call her a "cougar," everyone else does) than in a store full of tempting treats? It’s never a great idea to overanalyze Madonna lyrics, but any grade-schooler’s mom might wonder at the song’s reference to Turkish Delight, the stuff the White Witch uses to entrance the young Edmund in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." Right away, Madonna tinges her sweetness with menace and the will to win. This ambivalence about desire extends throughout the disc, along with the distinct message that, when it comes to hotness, there’s no extra room at the top. There are a few contemplative moments, notably the Tim-team produced ballads "Miles Away" and "Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You," which set their meditations about troubled long-term relationships against thick layers of instrumentation and effects. Yet for all their gossip-causing intimations about a marriage possibly gone a bit dry, Madonna seems oddly less involved on these tracks than she does on the album’s more memorable, up-tempo muscle-flexors. Among her co-writers, Neptunes member Pharrell Williams is best at helping her express her views of scarce happiness in a highly competitive world. His nervous energy and flair for the perverse add heat to songs that, on other Madonna outings, might have been dreamier -- even utopian. The pretty, freestyle swirl of "Heartbeat" ultimately turns on a narcissistic image: Madge the dancer as "the only one the light shines on." "Incredible," one of several songs in which she mourns for tenderness lost, starts out wistful but then turns frantic, as her longing turns into a craving for a hookup. "She’s Not Me," the album’s midpoint centerpiece, mixes a Rick James bass line and melody with the hand-clap beats of Prince’s "Kiss," but it turns those excited expressions of male desire into a tale of women battling over a man. "She doesn’t have my name," says Madonna of her replacement -- an interesting choice, given the sacred connotations of her famous moniker. Yet Madonna doesn’t take this comparison further; she misses the chance to suggest that sexual connection might be a matter of soulfulness as well as long legs and perfect hair. Instead, she offers a warning: Watch out for admirers who try to pimp your style. These assertions of ownership counter the problem Madonna caused herself by choosing her producers this time out: They can’t help but reference their work with younger female artists, since it followed Madonna’s lead in the first place. It’s incontestable, however, that artists like Furtado, Spears and Gwen Stefani wouldn’t even own a map if not for their spiritual mother’s years of intrepid journeying. Perhaps "Hard Candy" is simply one last roar before Madonna mellows into the autumn of her years, reflecting upon all she’s accomplished and throwing down wisdom instead of a gauntlet. But even if she gets this latest fight out of her system, Madonna already might be done with nostalgia. Her last album, the house music-warmed "Confessions," was as sweet as "Hard Candy" is lip-puckering. Madonna knows better than anyone that looking backward is dangerous for pop stars, especially women. It can lead them into the most vicious competition of all -- with their younger selves. Given this compulsion to keep moving, "Voices," the ballad that closes "Hard Candy," feels genuinely heartfelt. Intoning lyrics about dominance and submission over a Timbaland slinky movie-soundtrack groove, Madonna revisits the sexual underworld where she first daringly ventured more than a decade ago. She drags Timberlake along, which had to be fun for her -- imagine that alpha male under a whip! But the song’s hard questions about commerce and control seem meant for the diva herself. And who can blame her for getting a bit wistful, invoking the now somewhat dated language of master and servant? At least in that black leather underworld, it’s always clear who’s on top. |
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Post by Matheus on Apr 28, 2008 16:00:44 GMT -5
Material Woman, Restoring Her Brand
WHEN in doubt, take Madonna at face value. Since the beginning of her career she has telegraphed her intentions and labeled herself more efficiently than any observer. She has titled albums “Music,” “Erotica” and, in 2005, “Confessions on a Dance Floor” for a collection that mingled personal and Biblical reflections with club grooves. Flaunting her ever-changing image, she named one tour “Who’s That Girl?,” another “Re-Invention.”
She’s just as blunt on her 11th studio album, “Hard Candy” (Warner Brothers), due for release this week. There’s no question that this album aims to please — and it does. “See which flavor you like and I’ll have it for you,” she promises as the album starts with “Candy Shop,” and she follows through: “Come on into my store/I got candy galore.”
That’s a come-on, of course, but it’s also a statement of purpose. “Hard Candy” is devoted to the instant gratification of a musical sweet tooth — it’s candy, not tofu — and, equally important, to the continuing commercial potency of “my store.”
Madonna turns 50 this summer. The onetime club-hopping Boy Toy is now a married mother of three who’s making a midlife job change. She’s leaving behind her career-long major-label contract for a deal with the concert promotion giant Live Nation that will keep her on the road and making albums over the next decade.
“Hard Candy” is Madonna’s last album of new material for Warner Brothers Records, which says she has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide (via the Sire label and later her own Maverick) since her career began in 1982. It doesn’t burn bridges with her major label — just the opposite. It’s the kind of album a record company longs for in the current embattled market: a set of catchy, easily digestible, mass-appeal songs by a star who’s not taking chances.
Madonna sets aside her avant-pop and do-gooder impulses on “Hard Candy.” Instead of introducing little-known dance-world producers into the mainstream, she is working with thoroughly established hit makers. Instead of arty provocations, she’s polishing the basics of verse-chorus-verse. And instead of another full-scale reinvention, she’s looking back, deliberately echoing the sound of her early years, with a ProTools face-lift.
When she’s not urging a listener to dance or “undress me,” Madonna uses “Hard Candy” to renew her brand and defy skeptics, yet again. Sometimes she gets defensive, and her best defense, as always, is a sleek dance beat. “Hard Candy,” despite some filler, has plenty of them.
Alongside whatever she has offered her audience through the years — sex, glamour, dancing, defiance, blasphemy, spirituality — Madonna has never pretended to be anything but diligent. She’s disciplined, hard-working and determined to sell. For Madonna as a pop archetype, the truest pleasure isn’t momentary physical ecstasy or divine rapture but success. She labeled that impulse too in an early tour: “Blonde Ambition.”
Presenting herself not only as an object of desire but as a material girl with her eye on the profits was one of the many smart moves she made from the beginning. By flaunting her control and her triumphs, Madonna gave fans a stake in her long-term prospects, something that loyalists should be able to appreciate as her sex appeal inevitably fades — although Madonna is still svelte, toned and dressing in lingerie as often as she pleases. On another of the new album’s little manifestoes, “Give It 2 Me,” she insists, “Don’t need to catch my breath/I can go on and on and on.”
Madonna’s financial future is by no means precarious now that she’s on her own. In a so-called “360 deal” reportedly worth as much as $120 million, Live Nation will handle her entire output, encompassing albums, ticket sales, licensing and merchandising. “I’ll be your one-stop candy shop/Everything that I got,” she sings, appropriately.
Well, not everything. Madonna was getting mighty serious on her 21st-century albums “American Life” and “Confessions on a Dance Floor.” It’s something that happens to songwriters in their 40s. Their perspective changes as they settle into home life, raise families and start worrying about the news. During last year’s “Confessions” tour, Madonna melded her longtime hobby of Christianity baiting with her newer charitable cause. She sang “Live to Tell” from a crucifix with disco-ball mirrors, wearing a crown of thorns, while video images of suffering Africans were shown. Last year at the Live Earth concert she introduced a would-be environmental anthem, “Hey You,” that tried and failed to be her equivalent of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The song came and went, raising some corporate donations, but does not appear on the new album.
For “Hard Candy” Madonna is more compartmentalized. The album arrives quite separately from, although simultaneous with, a documentary Madonna worked on and narrates: “I Am Because We Are,” about orphans and AIDS in Malawi, where she adopted her son David. Meanwhile the closest the album gets to social consciousness is “4 Minutes,” which has a clock ticking and Justin Timberlake singing, “We only got four minutes to save the world!” in his best Michael Jackson imitation. But the rest of the song’s lyrics just make those four minutes sound like they’re time for a quickie, or perhaps the length of a pop hit.
More than ever, 21st-century pop performers live by the popularity of one four-minute song at a time, to be quickly exploited as a single before listeners move on. Madonna clearly intends to stay competitive, and her talents suit an era when staccato, electronic pop makes perfect ring tones.
The lyrics on “Hard Candy” keep things simple and poppy, and the music stays almost skeletal, the better to reveal its hooks. As on “Confessions,” the sound reaches back to Madonna’s early 1980s days as a New York City club regular. Now, cannily, she combines those pumping synthesizer chords with hip-hop’s digital stutters and a precise, computerized veneer. Madonna wrote the songs on “Hard Candy” with Justin Timberlake and with Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes, and the producer Timbaland adds his touches; Kanye West drops by to rap on “Beat Goes On.” They’re all established hit makers, as well as some of the most clever hook-makers alive.
Choosing those collaborators is a change of strategy for Madonna, who apparently isn’t visiting clubs quite as often. In past albums she used her cool-hunting radar to seek out lesser-known figures — Jellybean Benitez and Patrick Leonard in the 1980s, Mirwais Ahmadzaï and Stuart David Price (a k a Jacques Lu Cont) in the 2000s — who could ride her pop instincts into the mainstream. Mr. Williams, Mr. Timberlake and Timbaland don’t need discovering. They’re pop-chart regulars who have, separately, collaborated with Nelly Furtado, Ashlee Simpson and the Pussycat Dolls, all of whom owe more than a little to Madonna.
Madonna might be singing to all her wannabes through the decades in “She’s Not Me,” a branding statement — “She doesn’t have my name” — couched as a warning to a lover. It’s about a girl who tries to steal a man by copying everything from the singer’s perfume to her reading list. As if to remind the guy that he and the singer have a shared past, the track reaches way back to revive disco — scrubbing guitar, canned hand claps, brief touches of (synthetic) strings — while Madonna sings, “She’ll never have what I have/It won’t be the same.”
Which is true. No one since Madonna (including the Neptunes’ client Britney Spears, whom Madonna once smooched as an equal) has come close to achieving the same alchemy of flirtation, pop proficiency, concert spectacle and self-guided tenacity. But she still has to watch her back.
Although choosing familiar producers is a defensive move, Madonna rarely sounds like a producer’s puppet. In most of the songs the collaborators apply their timing and technology to spiff up the Madonna brand: the spirit of the bangle-wearing MTV fixture of the 1980s.
The sound of “Hard Candy” is partly the sound of an era when New York dance clubs were an experiment in improbable social interactions — gays, socialites, breakdancers, artists — that became a pipeline to pop radio. Pulling such mixed audiences onto the dance floor was a good pretest for wider pop appeal. Like Moby on his new album, “Last Night,” Madonna can’t help looking back fondly on her younger days.
Yet along with the nostalgia that won’t alienate older fans — and who else can afford golden-circle tickets for arena tours? — “Hard Candy” also taps into exactly the sounds that current hip-hop reclaims from the disco era: electro keyboard riffs, filtered voices and bits of Latin percussion. “Hard Candy” has echoes of songs like Rick James’s “Super Freak” (in “Give It 2 Me”) and Madonna’s own “Everybody” (in “Heartbeat,” where she sings, “It may be old to you but to me it feels new”).
The most structurally unconventional song on “Hard Candy” is “Incredible.” Madonna sings, once again, about happy memories — “I wanna go back to then/gotta figure out how gotta remember when” — in a production that’s close to what Mr. Williams does in his other Neptunes songs: voices interrupting one another and switching in and out of double time, sudden key changes and style shifts from electro to rock to stark percussion, from declaiming to crooning to chanting as new bits of melody keep appearing. And right at the peak of the song Madonna sings the word “incredible” to the same hook as “material” in “Material Girl” — a happy memory in four indelible notes. Soon she adds, “Don’t want this thing to end.”
And for the moment it shouldn’t. “Hard Candy” is a retrenchment, but it’s a typically savvy one. The dance floor — not the pulpit, not the art gallery — is Madonna’s truest home, and it’s a good place to shake off pretensions and excesses. Her grand statement on “Hard Candy” is nothing more than that she’s still around and can still deliver neat, calculated pop songs. Madonna has had more profound moments — ”Like a Prayer,” “Ray of Light” — but not every pop star is cut out for full-time profundity. This time around, concocting new ditties that will have her arena audiences singing along, she was smart to stay shallow.
Source: Jon Pareles, NY Times
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Post by Matheus on Apr 28, 2008 16:01:14 GMT -5
Madonna's 'Hard Candy' is dandy
Imagine this: A new Madonna album comprised entirely of brisk, hard dance anthems, all boldly updating the blissful hits of her club-driven youth.
Now imagine that none of those songs (save the advance single) has anything to do with world politics, spiritual growth, starving African children or any lingering mother issues. Instead they present a wall-to-wall call to the dance floor, fired by ecstatic, innovative, and propulsive beats, paired to tunes that will make you swoon.
That's what Madonna's last album - 2005's "Confession On The Dance Floor" - promised to be, but hardly was. We still had Kabbalah references, finger-wagging "issue" songs and lots of cuts that weren't nearly as danceable or catchy as advertized.
Anyone disappointed by that album should take a lick of "Hard Candy," out Tuesday. It's everything "Confessions" professed to be - and more: a disc that gorges on catchy choruses, nagging beats and insouciant vocals. It may be the best album of Madonna's career. Certainly it's the most consistent (not counting "greatest hits" cheats).
Plenty of people will carp that Madonna had to haul in some of the heaviest hitters she has ever collaborated with to pull this off - including Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, and Pharrell. "Hard Candy" represents only the third time in Madonna's long career when she has relied on top, proven talent as conspirators, rather than bringing in newbies she can nurture and/or control.
The last time she did this was her ultimate career low, in 1994, following the hideously reviewed "Sex" book. She bounced back with "Bedtime Stories," produced by can't-miss guys like Babyface.
It's hard to say why Madonna felt she needed to bring in such headline-making help this time, unless it has to do with facing the Big Five-Oh - she hits it Aug. 16. Or the fact that "Hard Candy" marks the end of her contract with the only label she has ever known (Warner Brothers). Either way, Madonna has given the company the richest possible parting gift.
Where to begin?
The first single - the smash "4 Minutes" - is probably the least engrossing track on the CD. It's the only one that goes for the political, rather than the personal, though it does so in such a vague way, you can barely tell. Of course, it's as much a Timberlake song as a Madonna turn but that's the only track where the star attraction threatens to piggyback on another person's turf.
That was the worry for "Hard Candy." Fans feared it would find Madonna vampirically sucking the blood of the latest urban gods to gain back her youth. But the point turns out to be moot. In fact, Pharrell and Timbaland have never sounded this frothy, and that clearly comes from Madonna's talent for zip.
Take "Heartbeat." Madonna co-wrote the cut with Pharrell, and although it benefits greatly from the hook of his trademark orgasmic moans, Maddy's vocal has an R&B sheen that cinches it.
The title track kicks off the CD and sets its exuberant tone. It's got tribal/urban beats, cunning lyrical innuendos, and a chorus with the R&B-jazz twist of a Kool and the Gang hit from the '70s.
In "Miles Away" Madonna recycles a neat trick from the past: She uses abrupt guitar strums as an acoustic contrast to the synthetic clack of the beat. Vocally, she hasn't sounded as ravishing as she does here since "Evita."
"Incredible" has real bubble gum snap. "Beat Goes On" makes sure it does.
I could go on raving about the tracks, but I won't. I want to go back and listen to them.
Rating: 5/5
Source: Jim Farber, NY Daily News
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Post by Matheus on Apr 28, 2008 16:02:25 GMT -5
Review: Madonna's new 'Hard Candy' CD
Fear not, Madonna fans. The Material Girl still controls her material on her new album, "Hard Candy" (Warner Bros.)
On her previous 10 studio albums, control was never questioned because Madonna had it. She co-wrote and co-produced everything she did. She always called the shots.
But throughout "Hard Candy" - filled with the work of superstar producer Timbaland and his collaborator, Justin Timberlake, as well as hit-making production team The Neptunes - the issue is front and center. It's no longer a question of whether she can play nice with others, but how much she's willing to compromise to guarantee another hit.
The first single, "4 Minutes," finds Madonna overwhelmed by Timbaland's production and Timberlake's vocals. It's a good song, but it's not really hers. She could be one of any number of singers in Timbaland's stable, from Nelly Furtado on down.
Rest assured, that doesn't happen again. Even on other songs from the Timbaland-Timberlake team - especially "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You," which sounds like a remake of Timberlake's "Cry Me a River," complete with water sound effects, or "Miles Away," which could be "Like I Love You II" - she remains the focus.
Her work with The Neptunes fares far better, as their collaboration seems to push them all to be better. After all, head Neptune Pharrell Williams and Madonna share a love of the stripped-down, freestyle dance vibe that first swept her to the top of the pop charts on a wave of synthesizer banks, black rubber bracelets and mesh shirts.
"Give It 2 Me," both lyrically and musically, could have easily sat next to "Lucky Star" and "Burning Up" on her debut. The same goes for the discofied dance-floor-filler "Beat Goes On," which features verses from Kanye West that still can't wrest the spotlight from Madonna working the groove.
For so much of "Hard Candy," Madonna mines familiar territory expertly, so that by the time she reaches the dramatic closer, "Voices," and asks "Who is the master? Who is the slave?" the answer is clear once again.
She may still have to fight to remain queen of the pop-culture castle, but despite a few bumps, she is still clearly the master of her domain.
HARD CANDY. Madonna indulges in some sweet, radio-friendly dance-pop. In stores Tuesday.
Rating: B+
Source: Glenn Gamboa, NY Newsday
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Post by skovrecky on Apr 28, 2008 16:20:49 GMT -5
From Pitchfork and I what I believe a pretty accurate review of the record:
Madonna is coming home: Having spent a decade working with producers drawn from European club culture, Hard Candy is her link-up with the American men who've come to define global pop. Five songs with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, six with Pharrell Williams, one with Williams and Kanye West. The best, this line-up announces, need to work with the best. But lead single "4 Minutes" doesn't sound like the best working with the best: It sounds complacent, like a pop supergroup high-fivin' each other.
The "4 Minutes" marching band rhythm-riff may be Timbaland's strongest idea on the album but the performers seem happy to let it do the work. He keeps shouting for "Mad-DON-nuh!" but she's a guest on her own track, singing from the margins of what might as well be a Timberlake outtake. Timbaland's productions are the weaker links on this frustratingly ordinary album. Partly he's a victim of his own ubiquity-- we know his tricks by now: the interlocking rhythmic hooks on his upbeat tracks, the bubbling claustrophobia on his ballads. "Devil Wouldn't Recognise You" is the third time-- at least-- that he's written "Cry Me a River", right down to the moody rainstorm breakdown and thunderclaps. But his less-typical productions don't all work well here either: "Dance 2Night" aspires to 80s funk slickness but lumbers where it should cruise.
The 1980s, specifically Madonna's 80s, haunt Hard Candy: It's been touted as a return to the spirit and sound of her earliest work, but her voice and delivery have changed too much for the comparison to hold. Her vocal training and singing lessons in the 90s broadened her range but she's never sounded as hungry since, and her phrasing on Hard Candy is frequently dreadful-- words so evenly spaced and emphasized that it sounds like she's reading aloud to a class. Or teaching you the choruses: You won't get "Miles Away" out of your head in a hurry but that's less to do with its quality than the didactic way she delivers it. Her biggest misstep is "Heartbeat"-- lyrics deliberately reminiscent of "Into the Groove" but sung so detached you might as well be at a Madonna Studies lecture.
The record's better tracks are, unsurprisingly, those where Madonna sounds more engaged. Second single "Give It to Me" has her delivering an imperious lesson on success and survival-- "Show me a record and I'll break it/ I can go on and on"-- over Hard Candy's most urgent tune, hard-pushing electro-ska whose keyboards break up trying to keep pace. Closing track "Voices" is gorgeously gothic orchestral synth-pop that she seems to relax and revel in. Centerpiece "She's Not Me" is a stirring piece of turf-defense, prowling between Chic-era disco and modern pop-house as Madonna slaps down a rival. It's taut and cold, easily Hard Candy's most emotionally compelling moment.
"She's Not Me" smoothly lays out Madonna's credentials: Twenty-five years at the top of the game. She doesn't reinvent pop; she defines it. Her strengths have always been her authority, and her smart sense of who to work with and when. So even if it's a summary of where pop's at rather than where it's going, Hard Candy should still be excellent. After all, if you're not going to do your best work for Madonna, who are you going to do it for? But after listening, the question's still open-- nobody involved in Hard Candy is anywhere near their creative peak.
-Tom Ewing, April 28, 2008
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Post by skovrecky on Apr 28, 2008 16:23:43 GMT -5
Also, what's with the Chic love-fest here lately with bands? I know that Nigel Rogers helped her out big time in her early career, but Jesus, do we really need a Chic revival? Are bands even fucking trying to do anything new anymore?!
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Post by KooL on Apr 28, 2008 17:27:48 GMT -5
I don't understand how this record is getting glowing reviews considering the fact that it is probably her worst to date. I just read allmusicguide's review, pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about the record..
2 stars out of 5.
All through her career, it has been impossible to divorce Madonna's music from her image, as they feed off each other to the point where it's hard to tell which came first, the concept or the songs. Glancing at the aggressively ugly cover to Hard Candy - its blistering pinks and assaultive leather suggesting a cheap bottom barrel porno - it's hard not to wish that this is the one time Madge broke from tradition, offering music that wasn't quite as garish as her graphics. That is not the case. Hard Candy is all brutal hard edges and blaring primary colors, a relentlessly mercenary collection of cold beats and chilly innuendo. Sex has always been a driving force for Madonna, but she's never been as ruthlessly pornographic as she is here, not even when she cut Erotica as a companion to her softcore coffeetable book Sex back in 1992. For all of its carnality Erotica was coy, belonging to the classic burlesque teasing tradition, but Hard Candy is utterly modern, a steely sex album for the age of Cialisis. This new millennium is also an era where Top 40 has pretty much ceased to exist and a pop artist as sharp as Madonna knows this, so she has abandoned the idea of a big crossover hit - the kind that Erotica courted with such gorgeous, shimmering adult contemporary ballads as "Rain" and "Bad Girl" - and pitches Hard Candy directly toward her core audience of club-conscious, fashion-forward trend-setters.
This is a smart play, as this is the audience that's always consisted of Madonna loyalists, and it's also is a savvy way to negotiate the explosion of niches in 2008, but there problems in her execution. Madonna relies on the Neptunes and the pair of Timbaland and Justin Timberlake for most of her modern makeover - a good idea in theory as they are some of the biggest hitmakers of the decade, but the productions they've constructed here sound a couple years old at best and at worst feel like they're dressing Madonna in Nelly Furtado's promiscuous hand-me-downs. Sometimes this can result in reasonably appealing grooves - "Candy Shop" captures Pharrell Williams' flair for slim, sleek grooves, "Dance 2night" conjures Timberlake's Off the Wall obsession nicely and the icy heartbreak of "Miles Away" is a worthy successor to "What Goes Around Comes Around" - but this also points out the album's main flaw: the track comes before the song. Madonna's greatness has always hinged on how she channeled dance trends into pop songs, placing equal emphasis on sound and melody, which provided a neat way to sneak underground club trends into the mainstream. Here, she cedes melodic hooks to rhythmic hooks - witness the clanging, cluttered "4 Minutes" where she's drowned out by Timbaland's farting four-note synth - which might not have been so bad if the tracks were fresher and if the whole enterprise didn't feel quite so joylessly mechanical. Madonna doesn't even sound desperate to sit atop of current trends; rather, she's following them because she's expected to do so. There's a palpable sense of disinterest here, as if she just handed the reigns over to Pharrell and TimbaLake, trusting them to polish up this piece of stale candy. Maybe she's not into the music, maybe she's just running out this last album for Warner before she moves onto the greener pastures of Live Nation -- either way, Hard Candy is as a rare thing: a lifeless Madonna album.
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Post by Matheus on Apr 29, 2008 0:26:59 GMT -5
Hard Candy
My Thoughts
If you feel it
It must be real just
Say the word and
I'ma give you what you want
She proclaims, "get stupid," and so she does. She's gonna give them what they want.
As a thoughtful Madonna fan who prefers the ethereal girl over the material girl, I really wanted to dislike this album. Back in the day, I played the song Hollywood around my ex who was moving to California as a sort of shot in the face. He didn't get it, needless to say, as he just cared about the fun part. She's singing about Hollywood, and he could have cared less about what exactly she was singing about. If you knew him, you'd understand that he should have been embarassed. In most reviews I've read about Madonna albums since Kabbalah has become the focus of most criticisms of the pop superstar, there is a longing for Madonna to "get stupid." Kind of like my ex.
Here we are, the newest Madonna album, and she's pretty retarded. It's calculated. It's fake. It's nothing more than a facade. Typically we see Madonna mass-marketing herself with a multitude of the same thing. She's pimping yoga and her new life via children and junk for Ray of Light and we get The Next Best Thing. She's pimping out Hard Candy and we get I Am Because We Are, a documentary about starving, AIDS afflicted people/children in Africa. What's the deal?
She's a married woman, has three children, and she's out singing about dumb shit. Madonna has always sung about dumb shit at times. Like a Virgin, anyone? She should be putting out a movie where she's a skanky 50 year-old going through a mid-life crisis and fucking a dude half her age while a couple of black dudes film it as a reality show for YouTube. She would obviously look good doing it, and it would make sense. We can't forget the children's book about how to find the fountain of youth. We get this, though, Madonna's Hard Candy, and a documentary about hungry kids featuring Bill Clinton and Desmond Tutu. No children's book in sight.
The album is a hell of a lot of fun though. It's different. I can't say that I love it as much as Ray of Light, Erotica, Like a Prayer, or Confessions, but it has an appeal. The appeal is the attitude, and at times my love/love relationship with Madonna is solely about that. Fuck you, I'm doing what I want.
Get stupid.
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Post by rocknroller on Apr 29, 2008 10:45:12 GMT -5
"Like A Virgin" is my favorite Madonna song. It's what caused me to be a part of madonnamania in the 80's.
I'll be picking up the new album today depending if the local walmart is selling it. I don't know...those legs spread and all on the cover, Walmart may not sell it to impressionable youngsters. You find that a lot in this small christian town walmart that I shop at. Because theres really nothing else except a Beall's to shop in. I have to drive 30 miles to Austin for the malls. Kind of exasperating. But it's quiet and relatively crime free.
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Post by skovrecky on Apr 29, 2008 11:38:39 GMT -5
What, you don't shop at Waterloo?!? WTF, man?!
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