Hard Candy

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

New Madonna alBUM!

Out today!

Timbaland and suchlike!

I didn't like it much (after yo-yoing on it a bit). But what do you think?

Comments

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Hasn't she retired yet?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It's about half good-to-great, half APPALLINGLY BAD. '4 Minutes' and 'Give It 2 Me' are awesome, totally banging. 'She's Not Me' is funny once you realise she's taking the piss. The closing two tracks are great and really redeem the album, because until I got to them I was kind of wringing my hands over the album. 'Candy Shop' might be the worst album opener of Madonna's entire career, though, and a lot of the lyrics are beyond awful...clunky and trite.

The music is all standard early-00s, nothing which makes me go WHOA and quite a bit which makes me go ZZZ, but mostly passable. I still hate Pharrell.

Also, given that this follows hot on the heels of Mariah's triumph and Janet's way-more-than-adequate effort, it does feel as though Madonna is letting the aging-diva side down somewhat. Though I assume Madge will at least be better at picking the singles - Mariah releasing 'Bye Bye' instead of, oh, I dunno, ANYTHING ELSE on E=MC2 and Janet still failing to release '2nite' or 'Luv' are total head-spinners.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

now I've read it, your review is basically otm, esp re her awful listen-children phrasing these days (though I don't think the singing lessons are to blame at all, it's been a gradual process since American Life - her voice is pretty good on Ray Of Light and Music!)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think PARENTHOOD is probably as much to blame actually! The listen-children phrasing is fairly new.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

have you heard the Mariah and Janet albums yet btw? I assume you have given that you've heard, like, Lykke Li and Santogold.

[datura800.livejournal.com]

'Candy Shop' is a dazzlingly mediocre opening, but after that I think the album picks up and never drops the ball. I LOVE that it's filled with nods to her very early period, from the 80s disco that's everywhere through the attempt to make her vocals sound raw again (which I agree doesn't always work) to touches like her singing 'incredible!' in the middle of that song in the EXACT same way she sings 'material!' in the middle of 'Material Girl'. I also love that it's an unabashed balls-out POP record - 'Confessions...', for all of its trumped up 'non-stop dance party' claims, was just 'American Life' with catchier tunes. Here the messages are kept to a minimum.

'Devil....' is the other frustrating point of the record. She actually wrote that song about 5 years ago for an abandoned musical, and it's obviously a great song. But she's allowed Timbaland and Timberlake to over-produce it to hell and make it sound like 'WGACA' when it deserves FAR better.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

yeah Confessions was really not very pop, in that it was ~all~ about the groove, and with only a couple of exclusions this was at the expense of structure and songiness - which is why it's a total triumph obv.

[datura800.livejournal.com]

oh I wouldn't agree with that at all - I've heard acoustic covers of 'Hung Up', 'Get Together' and 'Forbidden Love' which if anything underlined what great songs they are, regardless of the production.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

yeah those are the exceptions, pretty much! though I would have picked 'Jump' rather than 'Forbidden Love' which I get mildly grumpy about, b/c could Madonna really not have come up with a generic title which she's ALREADY USED TEN YEARS BEFORE for one of my favourite 90s Madonna ballads? it fucks up last.fm totally. er yeah anyway.

the ones I like off Hard Candy are really growing on me - 'Give It 2 Me' is amazing, what I love about that and 'She's Not Me' is that Madonna sounds so defiantly old on them. cuz that's the jibe I've most seen aimed at her in the past few years, and it's a) nasty (blah blah female roles in society blah) b) inaccurate. on these two tracks she's going "yeah bitches I'm OLD, wtf are you gonna do about it?" and 'Give It 2 Me' is as audacious a statement of immortality as you're gonna get from anyone.

'Beat Goes On' is pretty slamming too, though I think I like Kanye more than Madge. "vampire at full moon now"!

do you have the og mix of 'Devil...'? Because I can definitely hear what you're saying - it does sound like an attempt to rewrite 'Cry Me A River' AGAIN but you can also hear that it doesn't quite fit the mould, it's more to do with the sellotaped-on piano line etc. thankfully they held off on the strings.

sadly the bad songs are getting WORSE - 'Dance 2night' is so unbelievably dull and wtf is that 'Miles Away' shit. 'Spanish Lesson' makes me want to listen to 'La Isla Bonita' just to cleanse my brain.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Agree on the old thing - when I got the Madonna assignment for P4K the first thing I decided was that I was under no circumstances going to mention her age.

[datura800.livejournal.com]

I think 'Miles Away' is one of the best things she's done in YEARS. As is 'Dance 2Nite'! I could take or leave 'Spanish Lesson' though.

And I personally wouldn't say those Confessions songs are the exceptions in terms of being songs rather than rhythmic tracks, but it's not that important really.

[koganbot]

(take two)

For me the alb's a pleasant surprise, since on Confessions everything got lost in the whoosh, and basically since 1993 or so her singing's been all mannered and "Good." I'd call this workmanlike rather than inspired but once we get beyond the opening stinker this plays right through for me. Don't know how often I'll spin it (Ashlee et al. being 100x more interesting, among other things), but I'll smile when I do. (However, I wish there were a moment of hit-single beauty such as "Secret" or "Frozen." I agree with Tom that she sounds like a guest on "4 Minutes," and not even a particularly engaged one, but the track itself is such a hard wallop that this almost doesn't matter.)

'Cry Me A River' rewrites

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Bubba Sparxxx ft. Kiley Dean - Nowhere
Rihanna - Rehab
Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around...Comes Around

and in the same vein (though not the ~actual same song~, timba pushed the boat out here) we have Furtado's 'Say It Right', some Kiley Dean tracks and pretty much the entirety of Brandy's Afrodisiac album which ~INVENTED~ the bloody template and which only I seem to rep for.