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CD REVIEW: MADONNA, MDNA

By Simon Gage

SHE'S a busy old 50-something, that Madonna. When she’s not bringing up four children, organising African countries, making movies and winning Golden Globes she’s putting together her 12th studio album and it certainly doesn’t suffer from her other commitments.

Working with William Orbit, the producer of Ray Of Light, she has turned in an album of edgy clubby numbers that stand up to the likes of pretenders such as Lady Gaga. It might all sound a little electronic but there’s no doubting this is a smasher.

VERDICT: 4/5

(Polydor)

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Us Rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars

At age 53, all Madonna wants to do is dance. That, and take down her ex-hubby Guy Ritchie!

The icon's eight year marriage to the Sherlock Holmes director, 43, ended bitterly in 2008. One year later, she opened up to Rolling Stone about their relationship, which she admitted was "challenging." (In fact, had their marriage not come to an end, the singer said she might have "thrown [herself] off a building.")

Currently, Madonna is happily dating dancer Brahim Zaibat, 24. She and Ritchie share custody of their sons, Rocco, 11, and David Banda, 6, whom they adopted from Malawi.

As for her 12th studio CD? It's an intense set of pumping synth-pop ("I'm Addicted") and electronic dubstep (the fierce "Gang Bang"). But the real sting comes from the tracks' barbs, not beats.

PHOTOS: See Madge's craziest outfits ever

"Didn't have a prenup," she bemoans in "I Don't Give A." And on the blistering "Love Spent," she cracks, "Would you have married me if I were poor?"

Seems like M got the last word. (Interscope, out Monday, 3/26)

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MUSIC Editor Kathy McCabe gives her verdict on Madonna's new record MDNA, which is out today.

You have to wonder why Madonna didn't insist on a strip search.

You just can't trust anyone these days.

MDNA is the many shades of Madonna finally brought together on one album.

Opening track Girl Gone Wild reaffirms her mission to be a dancefloor diva who is one step ahead of the pack.

While her pop princess peers have been riding the 90s Euro house bandwagon for the past three years, Her Madgesty takes a defiant detour into darker, edgier and harder territory. Less wave your hands in the air and more get down and get dirty.

You can hear it most strongly on the underground hardcore of Gang Bang which finds Madonna shooting her lover dead and heading straight to hell. It sounds like The Kills if they went electronic and you'll be hearing the lyrical hook ``Drive bitch!'' everywhere for the rest of the year.

Those who grew up with poptastic Madonna need not fear _ she has not forsaken you.

Like any song with ``radio'' in its title, you can expect to hear Turn Up The Radio all over the airwaves. Co-written with French electronic DJ and producer Martin Solveig, it is one of the bigger pop songs on the album and follows a similar template to his smash hit Hello.

Superstar features her daughter Lourdes on backing vocals, I'm A Sinner sounds like Donna Summer doing a less bombastic version of Bollywood while Falling Free is a heart-striing ballad with stripped-back strings and simple synths and the album's bravest vocal performance.

One of the standout tracks is Beautiful Killer, which is earmakred for the deluxe version only.

Inspired by French film star Alain Delon, the songs sounds like it was plucked from a Cafe Del Mar compilation circa mid 1990s.

Fans should get the deluxe version which includes other bonus tracks including Best friend, B-Day Song and I F...ed Up which are some of her stronger songs.

Why they didn't make the ``standard'' version is a mystery unless you are one of those cynical types who suspect her record label may be trying to get a few more bucks out of her fans.

MDNA is out on March 23.

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Album Review: Madonna finds beauty in the beat on 'MDNA'

Can the Material Girl still shock and surprise?

By Melinda Newman Friday, Mar 23, 2012 1:47 AM

For all her success, there’s always seemed to be something remote about Madonna, as if she’s behind glass. So it comes as a bit of a shock at first that tucked within “MDNA’s” often sterile beats, she shows the most emotion that we’ve heard from her. Talk about confessions on a dancefloor...

Madonna’s 12th studio album, out March 26, touches on two of her favorite go-tos: religion and dance, but she’s added scorned spouse to the mix. “MDNA” is triptych into her psyche and there’s a lot going on in that platinum head of hers, most of it set to throbbing beats per minute.

Above all, “MDNA” is a dance album and Madonna enlisted a platoon of producers, including William Orbit, Martin Solveig, and Benny Benassi, to keep the the thumping at a maximum.

The album opens with current single, “Girl Gone Wild.” Madonna has a confession to make: as badly as she wants to be good, she just can’t help herself.

And there’s plenty here to confess to, including murder. On “Gang Bang,” “MDNA’s” most compelling tracks, Madonna sings in a low whispery register, detailing that she’s shot her lover dead in the head and, furthermore, she has no regrets. We hear the shells hitting the floor and the echoes of a police radio juxtaposed against a hypnotic, lulling beat. It’s violent and explicit and it’s what Madonna used to represent: a sense of danger.

In the song, she goes after ex-husband Guy Ritchie (presumably), but she’s not done with him yet. On “I Don’t Give A” featuring Nicki Minaj, Madonna sings in a robotic, autotuned voice, lamenting that she “tried to be a good girl/I tried to be your wife/diminished myself/swallowed my life” and “in the end it was a failure.” Despite her swearing she’ll be “OK,” as she repeats “I’m a fool” over and over at the end, the music swelling in dramatic, operatic fashion, it’s clear she may have moved on, but she’s far from healed.

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Her anger switches to sadness on “Best Friend,” a skipping, electro-dance track where she realizes “It was inevitable it would end” and that “every man who walks through that door” will be compared to her ex.

There’s real vitriol in tracks like “Gang Bang” and “I Don’t Give A,” but Madonna effortlessly segues into two of the most uncynical songs she’s ever recorded: “Turn Up The Radio” is a sweet, Bangles-like, slab of ear pop candy that recalls her earliest singles, “Holiday” and “Borderline.” That same sweetness pervades clapfest, “Superstar,” on which she unabashedly compares her beloved to Abraham Lincoln, James Dean and John Travolta, backed by an infectious “oh la la” chorus. “I’m Addicted,” with its bouncing synth line, is, at its heart, a fun ‘70s pop tune.

She abandons the dance stance for “Masterpiece,” from “W.E.,” and for “Falling Free,” a string-laden, mid-tempo ballad that features Madonna singing beautifully, if mannered, throughout on the tender track about letting go.

There’s an adventurousness to Madonna here, which makes the need for guest stars like Nicki Minaj, M.I.A. and LMFAO, featured on the two versions of “Give Me All Your Luvin” on the deluxe set, all the more confusing. She doesn’t need them to give her any extra cachet. She’s Madonna.

Not all the songs work(especially on the 19-song deluxe version). “B-Day Song” featuring M.I.A. is a completely disposable track, if a catchy one. “I’m A Sinner” opens with a promising Phil Spector/girl group production before yielding to horns and a gentle bounce that don’t follow through on the strong start. “Beautiful Killer” boasts some of her worst lyrics: “Like a samurai you can handle the heat” or “can’t really talk with the gun in my mouth/maybe that’s what you’ve been dreaming about.” SImilarly, "I Fucked Up," where, against a slight, militant beat, she takes the blame for destroying "the perfect dream," but the lyrics take a weird, awkward turn when she lists everything they could have done, but now never will.

“MDNA” is far from a perfect album and it's not likely to make any fan forget her classic hits, but it far surpasses Madonna’s last studio album, 2008’s “Hard Candy.” With her career passing the 30-year mark, “MDNA” is an effort by a truly iconic artist who seems, in many ways, to be letting us see her for the first time.

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Guest groovyguy

Madonna – MDNA

By Jennifer Gannon on Friday, 23 March 2012

It’s okay, we can all rest easy. The embarrassment of Hard Candy is well and truly over. No more hiding behind your hands, cringing and wishing Pharrell and Timberland would just leave the Candy Shop FOREVER. Soon those horrific memories of the farty beats of ‘4 Minutes’ and the utterly transparent marketing creation of ‘Urban Madonna’ (for the kidz) will be completely erased. Lessons have been learned, the most important one being: Madonna does not need to take advice from Justin Timberlake…she is not Jennifer Lopez.

If her last record seemed like a strangely craven, lazy attempt to cling to the zeitgeist instead of sourcing from the underground or shining a light on the undiscovered, then MDNA is all about making up for lost time. Opening with Madonna uttering the oath ‘Oh my God I am heartily sorry for having offending thee’ it’s as if she is apologising to the dance kids, the hardcore bitches and more importantly her massive gay fanbase that she bewildered with her flirtation with the vocally homophobic and sexist side of music.

As apologies go, our first taste seemed mealy mouthed and disappointingly nicey-nicey of Madge, skipping through the fun time froth of ‘Give Me All Your Lovin’’ with her new crazy, cool pals MIA & Nicki Minaj, she then gave us the Madonna-by-numbers soft-porn raunch of ‘Girl Gone Wild’. Had she turned into a faded facsimile of herself? Whither the darkness, the depth, the strength, and the deep vein of gleeful, mischievous insanity that ran through the core of all her best work? Thankfully, Madge was holding out on us, storing up all her brutally bonkers moments to be unleashed as one crazed whole, she’s not the Queen of Pop for nothing…

The excitement begins (for everyone but Guy Ritchie) on the reverse Nancy Sinatra revenge trip ‘Gang Bang’. Here she is cast as a demented assassin inflicting terror on her disappointing lover over a thumping, bleeping backbeat that descends into a chaotic climax with a frenzied singer bellowing ‘Die Bitch!’ as screeches and gunshots echo all around. It’s ‘Erotica’ turned nasty on steroids. Nice to see her mellowing a bit.

‘I’m Addicted’ is the bratty, drug fuelled twin of Mirwais’ ‘Impressive Instant’, the vital connecting link from Stuart Price’s glitzy disco of Confessions to the beat bleeding fierceness of Benny Bennassi. Along with the psychotic ‘I Don’t Give A’ it may well be MDNA’s linchpin. As it metallically whirs into life it rapidly sweeps you into the eye of the frantic, electro-hurricane, spiralling ever more blissfully out of control that by the time it gets to the air punching, drug chanting finale you’re just about ready for the comedown.

But Madge hasn’t got time for comedowns. She’s too busy charging through her own musical history, pulling apart the perfection created before, boiling it down to its very essence. MDNA is a concentration of the past to create something familiar yet original. Thus we get the breezy, pure hearted old-school bubble gum charm of ‘Superstar’ and ‘Turn Up The Radio’ distilling the girlish summery sweetness of ‘Cherish’ and ‘True Blue’ (a genre that her tough girl imitators have so far failed to capture) and the ‘Beautiful Stranger’ retro kick of ‘I’m A Sinner’. The latter touches on Madge’s ever enduring obsession with all things Catholic (and incidentally has the looniest and most unintentionally hilarious outro of any upbeat pop song ever) as she gives a ‘shout out’ to all her favourite saints from Mary to the arrow strewn St. Sebastian over a slappy ’60s drum beat. It’s an unforgettable lesson in religion.

One trip to the past that fails to yield the new rewards expected is Madonna’s relationship with William Orbit. Whilst he puts his familiar stamp on the aforementioned ‘I’m a Sinner’ and the oddly moving ode to Mr. Ritchie ‘Love Spent’, he cannot recapture the intense magic forged on Ray Of Light to make closing ballads ‘Masterpiece’ and ‘Falling Free’ memorable or original. They feel tacked on and at odds with the sweaty fiesta feel of the album. Indeed with the deluxe edition crammed full of gems such as the ‘Where’s the Party’ effervescence of ‘B Day’ and the brutally honest ‘I Fucked Up’ they could have easily been substituted.

Ultimately what MDNA offers is the ideal that pop doesn’t always have to be the newest, craziest thing to be effective; it doesn’t have to deny the past to be relevant. Fluidity is in pop’s bloodstream, uniting the old with the new to create a vision of the future, remade, and re-modelled with its own unique strand of musical DNA. Thank heavens it’s a concept that Madonna once again understands.

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http://bostonherald.com/entertainment/music/general/view/20220323madonna_follows_her_own_beat_on_mdna

Madonna follows her own beat on ‘MDNA’

Jed Gottlieb By Jed Gottlieb

Friday, March 23, 2012 - Updated 3 hours ago

Madonna “MDNA”( Interscope): B

In “Sunset Boulevard,” Joe Gillis tells forgotten film star Norma Desmond, “You’re a woman of 50, now grow up. There’s nothing tragic about being 50, not unless you’re trying to be 25.”

Madonna is 53. On her first album in four years — out Monday — she tries to be 25 (thankfully, she doesn’t know how to) and tries harder to court 25-year-old ears. It won’t work.

Young pop tarts bludgeon you with a big hook and repetitive production (think Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” or Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass”).

Madonna wants a hit as badly as any fresh face, but she’s too artistic to stick to the blunt formula that delivers today’s chart toppers.

Instead of teaming up with the same five Holly-wood hit-makers every new-millennium star uses, Madonna’s key collaborators were British producer William Orbit (who worked on “Ray of Light”) and French DJs Benny Benas-si and Martin Solveig. Compared with the catalogs of the typical wannabes, the sound they’ve crafted is cooler, less aggressive and with layers of ’90s synths and hypnotic beats — “I’m Addicted” skips the instant gratification of Top 40 for a long, classic Depeche Mode throb.

The result is almost a “Ray of Light” sequel, which fits with “I Don’t Give A” lyrics: “I tried to be your wife/Diminished myself and swallowed my light.” Yes, this is a divorce album — her breakup with Guy Ritchie sneaks into every other song.

When not talking about divorce, Madonna is (once again) kicking Catholic guilt with her thigh-high leather boots. “Girl Gone Wild” begins with a whispery confession about conflicting drives to be both good and bad; “I’m a Sinner” celebrates vice with baby-doll cooing and mid-tempo electronica.

The songs are tame compared to the please-let-this-be-considered-blasphemy of Lady Gaga and Minaj, but they’re refreshingly introspective — reflecting on religion’s role in your life and a failed marriage aren’t kid stuff.

There’s nothing tragic about making a ruminative dance record for -Ciroc sippers in a -Parisian discotheque — it’s actually a lot of fun at points. But young Americans raised on Perry won’t buy it.

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A new review from The Telegraph... and.. well... this time is the opposite... very negative... This UK paper is just awwwwww. Another reductive woman! Yapping about her disdain for Madonna and hardly talking about the tracks. Clearly this is 'talking' at Madonna and not about the album.

Madonna, MDNA, CD review

Madonna looks exhausted and unhappy and MDNA leaves Helen Brown feeling the same.

2 out of 5 stars

Carried into the Indianapolis stadium wearing a big gold head dress and 120 fake eyelashes last month for her super bowl performance, Madonna was clearly channelling Cleopatra – a great queen, who knew when to quit. But instead of doing the decent thing and handing Her Madge-ness an asp before she embarked on her unworthy new single, pretty young handmaidens Nicky Minaj and MIA attempted to rouse the crowd in a last-ditch cheerleading chant of “L! U! V! Madonna!” In this little corner of her former empire, we stayed in our seats: Give Me All Your Luvin’ peaked at number 37 in the British chart, making it her worst performing single since Everybody back in 1982.

So what’s the problem? Madonna still looks and sounds (scarily) like the girl we wanted to party with back in the Eighties when she successfully sold us the sexy, rule-breaking street smartness of her Desperately Seeking Susan persona. What she lacked in vocal depth, she made up for in attitude.

When she morphed from the girlish party crasher to the motivational speaker of the Nineties, women and gay men did what she told them and expressed themselves, because she appeared (at least in three-minute blasts) to have the personal, sexual and financial control we sought.

I found her “mature” output from 1994’s Bedtime Stories to 2003’s American Life less interesting, but loved the neon exhilaration of 2005’s retro-disco Confessions on a Dancefloor. Winking at her past while working out in her leotard and leg warmers, I could believe Madonna was having fun again.

But who wants to party with Madonna today? She looks exhausted and unhappy and MDNA leaves me feeling the same. It’s not that a woman of 50 has no right to be on the dance floor. I’m all for that. But a woman who’s putting so much visibly desperate energy into looking and sounding like a teenager is missing the point of pop, of parties … of life.

The horribly cliched lyrics to these unoriginal disco’n’dubstep numbers hint at the more alarming idea that Madonna still thinks like a teenager. Hearing that her idea of romance is giving a lover the password to her phone makes me wonder if she’s botoxed her brain. When she brags of her multitasking capabilities – “Make a film/ Write a song/ Got to get my stockings on/ Meet the press/ Buy the dress/ All of this to impress” – I want to ask her who and why? She told Graham Norton she did it “to pay the rent”, but I’m pretty sure her mortgage is covered and I reckon she can afford to take a break until she’s found a fresher sound.

Because, to misquote Shakespeare on Cleopatra, age may not have been allowed to wither her, but Madonna’s infinite varieties have certainly staled.

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DrownedMadonna.com ‏ @DrownedMadonna

Q mag. says MDNA is everything you would want from a #Madonna album and that it's her best album since Ray Of Light. 4/5 stars. @guyoseary

http://www.facebook.com/drownedmadonna

Q Magazine Review of Madonna's MDNA.

In the new issue there's a full page review basically saying MDNA is everything you would want from a Madonna album and that it's her best collection of songs since Ray of Light. They list I'm Addicted, Gang Bang, I'm A Sinner, Turn Up The Radio, Falling Free and Some Girls as highlights. 4/5 stars.

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Guest LeJazzHot!

DrownedMadonna.com ‏ @DrownedMadonna

Q mag. says MDNA is everything you would want from a #Madonna album and that it's her best album since Ray Of Light. 4/5 stars. @guyoseary

Holla, love that! :dramatic:

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Funny how bad reviews concentrate on her persona and her harshest critics ( always about the cheekbones, not acting her age blah blah) are the same people who had a nervous breakdown a month prior their 25th b-day : women and gays. Madonna's message is You can always be a better version of yourself. You can come from nothing and make it big if you work hard. You can always change your chance so lazy people or the ones who feel entitled will always see her as a threat. But there's no better message than hers, a message of hope, dignity and real equality. Madonna is not only an overachiever but an overcomer as well.

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Funny how bad reviews concentrate on her persona and her harshest critics ( always about the cheekbones, not acting her age blah blah) are the same people who had a nervous breakdown a month prior their 25th b-day : women and gays. Madonna's message is You can always be a better version of yourself. You can come from nothing and make it big if you work hard. You can always change your chance so lazy people or the ones who feel entitled will always see her as a threat. But there's no better message than hers, a message of hope, dignity and real equality. Madonna is not only an overachiever but an overcomer as well.

GLORY! Hallelujah! PREACH! :clap:

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DrownedMadonna.com ‏ @DrownedMadonna

Q mag. says MDNA is everything you would want from a #Madonna album and that it's her best album since Ray Of Light. 4/5 stars. @guyoseary

http://www.facebook.com/drownedmadonna

Q Magazine Review of Madonna's MDNA.

In the new issue there's a full page review basically saying MDNA is everything you would want from a Madonna album and that it's her best collection of songs since Ray of Light. They list I'm Addicted, Gang Bang, I'm A Sinner, Turn Up The Radio, Falling Free and Some Girls as highlights. 4/5 stars.

Thats big from Q.

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helen brown...its rather sad and disheartening to see woman tear another woman down for not acting her age...why not say to bruce springsteen and the rolling stones to call it in and get a real job?...helen should retire once she's 40 and never leave her house, cuz she is putting the woman's movement back decades

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DrownedMadonna.com ‏ @DrownedMadonna

Q mag. says MDNA is everything you would want from a #Madonna album and that it's her best album since Ray Of Light. 4/5 stars. @guyoseary

http://www.facebook.com/drownedmadonna

Q Magazine Review of Madonna's MDNA.

In the new issue there's a full page review basically saying MDNA is everything you would want from a Madonna album and that it's her best collection of songs since Ray of Light. They list I'm Addicted, Gang Bang, I'm A Sinner, Turn Up The Radio, Falling Free and Some Girls as highlights. 4/5 stars.

They got it right! :clap:

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some BITCH from New York Magazine....just gave this dreadful review...

http://www.vulture.com/2012/03/music-review-madonna-MDNA.html?mid=twitter_nymag

Gawker's review of the New York Magazine

But this is New York Magazine, the self-sustaining fantasyland of design porn, real estate fellatio, and food fetishism, so of course instead of such proof we get firsthand examples of the author's friends and references to current pop songs and vague-to-the-point-of-meaningless meditations on the "global and abstract... situational anxiety" that allegedly haunts this generation as it has no other, and how things sure have changed since Elizabeth Wurtzel was partying in Soho.

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Another old fart who likes her to "act her age", meh.

Judging from some of the negative reviews it's literally astounding just how ageist society is at large. Once you pass the age of 30 you should crawl into a barn and die like a wounded cow? What total bullshit! What the fuck is all of this socially constructed being 'age appropriate' bullshit? Total nonsense preached by fucking idiots. Rant over...phew!

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i couldnt even read that last bad review cuz it was so much babble about fuckin nothing....ITS FUCKIN POP MUSIC GUYS! come on...ageist and sexiest...and yes there will be those people that will hate loathe rip apart every single thing she does!!!

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