Love or hate her (there’s rarely anything in-between), Madonna always seemed to be one step ahead.
She was a master at trolling underground styles and appropriating them for mainstream makeovers, in the same way that David Bowie kept redefining cool in the ‘70s by repackaging outrageousness as exquisitely crafted pop, rock and ersatz soul.
But the days of Madonna bending the mainstream to her enormous will apparently are over. Her latest album, “Hard Candy” (Warner Bros.), in stores Tuesday, finds her working with established collaborators in an effort to keep up with trends, instead of starting them.
Mega-star collaborations always look promising in theory, but rarely live up to expectations. The same can be said for Madonna hooking up with four of the biggest names in pop on “Hard Candy”: Timbaland, the Neptunes, Justin Timberlake and Kanye West.
Timbaland and the Neptunes split the production roughly in half, with Timberlake supplying backing vocals and melodies and West interjecting a rap cameo. In the past, Madonna made her name by working with unknowns (or at least lesser-knowns) hungry to make a name for themselves: Jellybean Benitez, Patrick Leonard, William Orbit, Mirwais, Stuart Price. She cowrote and coproduced with them, as she turned underground dance music and button-pushing themes into hits.
But when “American Life,” her 2003 foray into more topical singer-songwriter material, flopped, Madonna pulled back. Her 2006 album, “Confessions on a Dance Floor,” was explicitly designed to reassure her old fans as it retreated to her ‘80s disco roots. “Hard Candy” casts even a wider safety net, working with the biggest hitmakers of recent years as Madonna strives to regain her place atop the pop charts.
The result: Madonna’s ability to provoke has evaporated. In its place are a series of lushly produced midtempo pop songs that try to fit in with what’s already hot on commercial radio. There’s a nagging feeling that we’ve heard all this before, in part because her collaborators have dominated the charts in recent years. There are at least three explicit references to past Timberlake hits: “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You” sounds like a close cousin to Timberlake’s “What Goes Around Comes Around”; the flamenco guitar on “Spanish Lessons” could’ve been lifted from Timberlake’s “Like I Love You”; and the minimalist groove of “Candy Shop” is most incestuous of all, with the Neptunes clipping the minimalist vibe of Timberlake’s “SexyBack” and fusing it with 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop.”
Pop’s never been about raging originality, but “Hard Candy” sounds like the least original Madonna album yet. It’s not just the predictable lyrics about sex, dancing and more sex (lots of songs about doing “it” till dawn). On the contrary, those of us who listen to Madonna for the tunes can be thankful that the self-help bromides and political pronouncements that clogged up some of her recent albums are long gone.
The real problem is that Madonna sounds downright modest. In the past she was first among equals. But by deferring to her collaborators (it’s telling that she takes no coproduction credits), she sounds like just another pop mouthpiece, a producer’s play thing.
Only on “She’s Not Me” does the old provocateur resurface. In a thinly veiled swipe at her upstart competitors (are you listening, Britney?), Madonna declares, “She doesn’t have my name/She’ll never have what I have.” The Neptunes’ syncopated guitar and rubbery bass line, accented by hand-claps and whistle (plus a comically wheezy cameo by Pharrell Williams), augment but do not overwhelm the most important ingredient in Madonna’s arsenal: Her personality. Unfortunately, that personality goes AWOL on the rest of “Hard Candy.”
She was a master at trolling underground styles and appropriating them for mainstream makeovers, in the same way that David Bowie kept redefining cool in the ‘70s by repackaging outrageousness as exquisitely crafted pop, rock and ersatz soul.
But the days of Madonna bending the mainstream to her enormous will apparently are over. Her latest album, “Hard Candy” (Warner Bros.), in stores Tuesday, finds her working with established collaborators in an effort to keep up with trends, instead of starting them.
Mega-star collaborations always look promising in theory, but rarely live up to expectations. The same can be said for Madonna hooking up with four of the biggest names in pop on “Hard Candy”: Timbaland, the Neptunes, Justin Timberlake and Kanye West.
Timbaland and the Neptunes split the production roughly in half, with Timberlake supplying backing vocals and melodies and West interjecting a rap cameo. In the past, Madonna made her name by working with unknowns (or at least lesser-knowns) hungry to make a name for themselves: Jellybean Benitez, Patrick Leonard, William Orbit, Mirwais, Stuart Price. She cowrote and coproduced with them, as she turned underground dance music and button-pushing themes into hits.
But when “American Life,” her 2003 foray into more topical singer-songwriter material, flopped, Madonna pulled back. Her 2006 album, “Confessions on a Dance Floor,” was explicitly designed to reassure her old fans as it retreated to her ‘80s disco roots. “Hard Candy” casts even a wider safety net, working with the biggest hitmakers of recent years as Madonna strives to regain her place atop the pop charts.
The result: Madonna’s ability to provoke has evaporated. In its place are a series of lushly produced midtempo pop songs that try to fit in with what’s already hot on commercial radio. There’s a nagging feeling that we’ve heard all this before, in part because her collaborators have dominated the charts in recent years. There are at least three explicit references to past Timberlake hits: “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You” sounds like a close cousin to Timberlake’s “What Goes Around Comes Around”; the flamenco guitar on “Spanish Lessons” could’ve been lifted from Timberlake’s “Like I Love You”; and the minimalist groove of “Candy Shop” is most incestuous of all, with the Neptunes clipping the minimalist vibe of Timberlake’s “SexyBack” and fusing it with 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop.”
Pop’s never been about raging originality, but “Hard Candy” sounds like the least original Madonna album yet. It’s not just the predictable lyrics about sex, dancing and more sex (lots of songs about doing “it” till dawn). On the contrary, those of us who listen to Madonna for the tunes can be thankful that the self-help bromides and political pronouncements that clogged up some of her recent albums are long gone.
The real problem is that Madonna sounds downright modest. In the past she was first among equals. But by deferring to her collaborators (it’s telling that she takes no coproduction credits), she sounds like just another pop mouthpiece, a producer’s play thing.
Only on “She’s Not Me” does the old provocateur resurface. In a thinly veiled swipe at her upstart competitors (are you listening, Britney?), Madonna declares, “She doesn’t have my name/She’ll never have what I have.” The Neptunes’ syncopated guitar and rubbery bass line, accented by hand-claps and whistle (plus a comically wheezy cameo by Pharrell Williams), augment but do not overwhelm the most important ingredient in Madonna’s arsenal: Her personality. Unfortunately, that personality goes AWOL on the rest of “Hard Candy.”
Source: chicagotribune.com
No comments:
Post a Comment