It was more than 16 years ago when Madonna first boogied so convincingly into the music scene, her image offering something highly atypical, yet remarkably marketable: in-your-face female sexuality, amplified to the max - a risky move for a woman at the time. This lucky star generated Material Girl imitators and something of a sexual revolution in music: The masses were crazy for her and her "Like a Virgin" antics. She has since proved herself worthy of the attention, and she has no intention of disappearing.
Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone is now the blissful mother of two children and eight albums of original material. She has calmed down in recent years, probably due to age, motherhood and yoga. Her newest album, "Music," reflects this maturity and is a respectable, though far from stellar, addition to her growing discography.
"Music," is an appropriately titled album. The music stands out as attention-seizing, catchy and impressively tight. The exquisite musical quality of "Music" undoubtedly has something to do with Madonna's co-producers. William Orbit (who co-produced her previous album, "Ray of Light") again has joined forces with Madonna for three tracks. Mirwais, a French dance sensation, also collaborated with her on five tracks. Their influence has helped to craft a musically sound album.
Madonna mostly extrapolates from the electronica-influenced style of her last album - "Music" is not much of a departure from "Ray of Light," although there are a cartload of different but not entirely innovative effects used on the album. There are some very interesting moments and diverse sounds such as guitar splicing combined with a vibrant string arrangement in the more creative "Don't Tell Me." Also, the haunting atmosphere of "Paradise (Not for Me)" combined with Madonna's melancholy vocals makes one of the finest tracks on the album.
Sadly, several tracks use effects less than effectively. The excessive vocal splicing in "Impressive Instant" and the voice synthesizer used in several songs detract from the potentially beautiful sound. Regardless of these flaws, each song has a distinctly different musical landscape (although "Amazing" should be renamed "Beautiful Stranger, Part II"), an attribute missing from most recent pop releases.
Despite its fresh, appealing sounds, the album is plagued with ridiculously bad lyrics. In the past, Madonna has performed some incredible songs that actually purvey a message through interesting, relevant lyrics - "Express Yourself," "Material Girl" and "Like a Prayer" are merely a few in her emotionally rich musical catalog. This time around, Madonna still sings with a passion, but what is she singing? The meaningless lyrics in almost every song need to undergo hours of revision. In "Impressive Instant," the listener is subjected to a synthesized voice claiming, "I like to singy singy singy like a bird on wingy wingy wingy." Then the listener has to hear all about a random "this guy" in the redundant "I Deserve It." "Nobody's Perfect" contains some of the worst lyrics I've heard: "Cool I'm not when I am lonely" Thank you for that insight into your life, Madonna. Now we know that you're not perfect, either.
Listen to "What it Feels Like for a Girl" and you'll be infected by a whining feminist manifesto (about as feminist as pop music can get, which is not very). It's so sad that "good girls never show [strength]." I guess we need to work on that instead of wearing our "tight blue jeans, skin shown in patches."
The music is great; the lyrics are greatly lacking. That's the general pattern for the album. Gems such as "Don't Tell Me," "Paradise (Not for Me)" and the already overplayed but catchy single "Music" make the album musically solid. The other tracks just don't make the grade, and certainly don't live up to Madonna's usual mix of expressive lyrics and original sounds.
Madonna still reigns the queen of pop; she delivers dance music with great beats and lots of fun and manages to always remain one step ahead of the game in the process. I just hope she works a little harder next time to keep the crown.
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