Madonna - the grande dame of pop isn’t done just yet.
Pop music is for young girls, but Madonna dooing well not so far from her 50th birthday.
Madonna works on her new album - “Hard Candy”. The 11th studio set of her career - and her last for Warner Bros. Records, the longtime label that she’s leaving for a wide-ranging deal with concert promoter Live Nation - “Hard Candy” is a heady, frisky sugar rush of urban dance-pop come-ons in which Madge finally gets into the hip-hop groove.
“See which flavor you like/And I’ll have it for you,” she coos in album opener, “Candy Shop,” a hooky song driven by a twitchy, syncopated drum pattern. “Come on into my store/I’ve got candy galore.” Advertising herself as “your one-stop candy store,” she purrs: “Sticky and sweet/My sugar is raw.”
That track is followed by the album’s first single, the surprise hit “4 Minutes,” where Justin Timberlake’s impersonation of Michael Jackson circa Off the Wall nearly obliterates Madonna’s presence.
Sound of “Hard Candy” represents a welcome new twist for Madonna: It’s dance-pop pressed through a hip-hop filter with the help of several urban-music studio heavies - namely Pharrell Williams, Timbaland and Nate “Danja” Hills.
It’s not Hip-Hop career, it’s still a successful move from one of the great all-time music shape-shifters.
It works best when Madonna isn’t trying to act like she’s down with the hip-hop kids, which just sounds weird. In “Heartbeat,” for instance, over a stuttering beat accented by a cowbell, we find Madonna quasi-rapping the line “see my booty get down” over and over as Pharrell eggs her on: “A little lower, baby.” Awk-ward!
More cowbell, less of Madonna’s booty raps, please. (She should leave that to the pros, as with Kanye West, who cameos on “Beat Goes On.”)
“Give It 2 Me” is also super-sexualized banger in which Madonna demands “it” over lurching synth stabs and a rump-shaking rhythm. Maybe 50 is the new 25?
Best songs: “4 Minutes”, “Incredible”, “Give It 2 Me”.
