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The Financial Times

Madonna: MDNA

By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney

Like the synthetic drug to which its title alludes, Madonna’s new album MDNA has been carefully constructed. This adds to the sense of disappointment. It opens in unrestrained dance-pop mode, positioning the queen of pop, 53, in competition with younger princess-rivals such as Rihanna. At the halfway point the dismissively titled “Some Girls” reunites her with Ray of Light producer William Orbit, in a pointed reminder of the singer’s seniority (Ray of Light, released in 1998, was the first album she made as a mother; it sold 20m copies). The point is emphasised two tracks later when rapper Nicki Minaj pops up to announce: “There’s only one queen and that’s Madonna.” Regal status duly restated, her Madgesty ends back in Ray of Light’s grown-up mode with four Orbit-produced songs, culminating with the ambient swooshes of “Falling Free”, the soothing bath at the end of a busy day of court intrigues. The sequencing is artful – but oh dear, the songs and lyrics are lacklustre. “Girl Gone Wild” is Rihanna-by-numbers while “Gang Bang” borrows its violent imagery and dubstep breakdown from Britney Spears. The Orbit-produced numbers are dull, the work of a producer past his prime. With the exception of the techno-pop adrenaline rush of “I’m Addicted”, MDNA doesn’t have the desired effect.

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Sunday Herald

Madonna: MDNA (Polydor)

What's this? Madonna praying for forgiveness for having offended God at the start of her 12th studio album? Surely not, because within seconds she's rhyming "hypnotic" with "erotic" on Girl Gone Wild and lining up songs called Gang Bang, I'm A Sinner and, on the deluxe explicit edition, I F***** Up. At the age of 53, the Material Girl knows she's competing head-to-head with Rihanna and Lady Gaga in a racier pop world (although the very thought of this is like granny slipping you the tongue during a Christmas kiss). MDNA is a better pop album than predecessor Hard Candy, but there's no future classic here: only a proliferation of simplistic hooks, lyrics that swing from awful to inane and banging production from William Orbit and others that's often so hard-edged it bullies rather than seduces you onto the dancefloor. This is not necessarily a sound old-school fans will warm to, although closing ballad Falling Free suggests Madonna still has more to give if only she'd leave the next generation to get on with its own thing.

Alan Morrison

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Scotland on Sunday

Album of the week: Madonna, MDNA

Madonna shows no sign of relinquishing her crown

By COLIN SOMERVILLE

Published on Saturday 24 March 2012 18:12

MADONNA may be in her mid-fifties, but there is no sign of her relinquishing the Queen of Pop title she has worked so hard to earn.

Every song on her latest album is a terse reminder of past glories, while collaborations with Euro production whizzes Marco Benassi and Martin Solveig stick a token musical toe in the contemporary mix.

But that only works in patches. It’s hard to take the more mature lady romanticising about turning up the radio on her formulaic tune of the same name, or the tacky Gang Bang, which makes a bit of a hash of updating Sonny & Cher.

When she gets it right, though, as on Superstar, you can forgive all the fumbling efforts to appear relevant. I’m A Sinner, meanwhile, is a finger-clicking celebration of her fondness for walking on the wild side – evidently Madonna no longer feels the need to battle her Catholic conscience, purring: “I’m a sinner, I like it that way” in the confessional style.

Love Spent is lyrically agile, while I Don’t Give A… raps and rasps with youthful zeal. Daughter Lourdes turns up singing backing vocals, but this is mommy dearest’s record, laying down the law to Gaga and her ilk, and making it clear there is no abdication on the horizon.

Rating: ***

Download this: Beautiful Killer, I’m A Sinner

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The Observer

Madonna: MDNA – review

3 out of 5

Gareth Grundy

The Observer, Sunday 25 March 2012

Sometimes Madonna doesn't receive enough credit. I don't mean for winding up the government of Malawi so thoroughly it recently declared itself "fed up" with her charity work. Or declaring that she occasionally "finds it a struggle" to balance life as a one-woman corporation with raising four kids, which will at least give many other single mums a good laugh.

Then there's the release of her 12th album, MDNA, which arrives shortly after her new range of footwear but before the launch of her new perfume. (Does an album from the original Material Girl now exist only to help flog other, more lucrative objects on which she's slapped her brand name?)

She hasn't got where she is these past three decades by sheer willpower alone. There's still an expectant buzz around Madonna's music, new as well as old. Were she a veteran rock musician she'd be judged by a different standard. The ups, downs and extracurricular activities of the likes of Dylan, McCartney or Neil Young all feed into their mythologies. Pop is more ruthless: you're only good as your last single.

But if you'd only heard the singles from MDNA you'd mistakenly think it was as much of a dud as its predecessor, 2008's Hard Candy. "Girl Gone Wild" and "Give Me All Your Luvin'" are clumsy rave-pop, a style so effective at erasing Madonna's personality that during "I'm Addicted" she's reduced to chanting the album title in a bid to be heard above the clattering drums. Even this is just a feeble bid for the youth vote: "MDNA" sounds a bit like MDMA, aka ecstasy, but only if your ears need a good clean.

Yet the more relaxed, less stentorian tracks sparkle. "Turn Up the Radio" is the kind of giddy, live-for-the-moment tune that made everyone fall for her in the first place. Think "Into the Groove" or "Open Your Heart", at least in spirit. And the final stretch, all of it co-produced by her most longstanding and sympathetic collaborator, William Orbit, sounds as if it's been borrowed from an entirely different and much better project.

The flirty "I'm a Sinner" name-checks so many saints that Madonna practically gives the come-on to the entire Catholic church, and "Falling Free" is one of her better ballads – just voice, strings and a credible sense of vulnerability. It's a glimpse of a fascinating possible future, of a grownup Madonna at ease with herself, trusting her talent over passing trends. It makes you crave her next album, not this one.

Edited by SuGaR BuLLeT
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The Financial Times

Madonna: MDNA

By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney

Like the synthetic drug to which its title alludes, Madonna’s new album MDNA has been carefully constructed. This adds to the sense of disappointment. It opens in unrestrained dance-pop mode, positioning the queen of pop, 53, in competition with younger princess-rivals such as Rihanna. At the halfway point the dismissively titled “Some Girls” reunites her with Ray of Light producer William Orbit, in a pointed reminder of the singer’s seniority (Ray of Light, released in 1998, was the first album she made as a mother; it sold 20m copies). The point is emphasised two tracks later when rapper Nicki Minaj pops up to announce: “There’s only one queen and that’s Madonna.” Regal status duly restated, her Madgesty ends back in Ray of Light’s grown-up mode with four Orbit-produced songs, culminating with the ambient swooshes of “Falling Free”, the soothing bath at the end of a busy day of court intrigues. The sequencing is artful – but oh dear, the songs and lyrics are lacklustre. “Girl Gone Wild” is Rihanna-by-numbers while “Gang Bang” borrows its violent imagery and dubstep breakdown from Britney Spears. The Orbit-produced numbers are dull, the work of a producer past his prime. With the exception of the techno-pop adrenaline rush of “I’m Addicted”, MDNA doesn’t have the desired effect.

My only question...why is The Financial Times reviewing a Madonna album?? :blink:

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I'm so sick and tired of these critics that focus on Madonna's age! Why can't they simply review the *music* without dwelling on the fact that Madonna is 53?

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Guest HaveASit

Ok, apparently the whole world stopped to listen and jugde MDNA. Financial Times? :lmao: Later who knows? Discovery channel?

Bitch is more relevant than never. :boxing:

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The Observer, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent - the only publications that have given MDNA middling to negative reviews. :lmao: I guess the UK took her sudden departure pretty personally. They were sucking her dick right up until 2008.

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Guest LeJazzHot!

The Observer, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent - the only publications that have given MDNA middling to negative reviews. :lmao: I guess the UK took her sudden departure pretty personally. They were sucking her dick right up until 2008.

Well the Independent did give her 4 out of 5 stars (and is counted on Metacritic), some other prick from that publication just wanted speak his mind I guess

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Daily Star

MADONNA - MDNA: ALBUM REVIEW

26th March 2012

By John Earls

HER best album since Ray Of Light, Madge is always at her best when people try to write her off.

Full-on hardcore club mayhem, from lunatic murder fantasies (Gang Bang) to sweet love songs (Superstar) MDNA will leave fans in ecstasy. 8/10

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Guest Coked Up Baby Boy

The Observer, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent - the only publications that have given MDNA middling to negative reviews. :lmao: I guess the UK took her sudden departure pretty personally. They were sucking her dick right up until 2008.

In a country where STEPS has a #1 tour, what do you expect? *shlep*

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The review from Pitchfork:

Pitchfork

4.5/10

Madonna's 12th studio album is the product of both a merger and a divorce, but as much as the singer attempts to milk the latter event for pathos over the course of its 16 tracks, the tone is mostly set by corporate dealmaking. MDNA is the star's first record as part of a $120 million deal with concert promotion juggernaut Live Nation and a separate three-album pact with Interscope, and like a lot of new records by artists of her stature, it's essentially a mechanism to promote a world tour that will inevitably drastically out-earn the profits from her new music. These sort of records don't need to be cynical or uninspired on an artistic level, but this one feels particularly hollow, the dead-eyed result of obligations, deadlines, and hedged bets.

Madonna has made her share of bad music in the past, but for the most part, her failures have come from taking artistic chances that didn't pay off, as on her experiments with hip-hop on American Life and Hard Candy. Large chunks of MDNA are shockingly banal, coming across not so much as bad pop songs per se, but as drably competent tunes better suited to D-list Madonna wannabes. The worst of these numbers were produced by French DJ Martin Solveig, whose anonymous, unimaginative arrangements for "Turn Up the Radio", "Give Me All Your Luvin'", "I Don't Give A", and "B-Day Song" are paired with excessively bland lyrics. The latter track, a collaboration with M.I.A., is horrifically regressive, the sound of two of pop's great feminist provocateurs joining forces for what amounts to a tacky children's song about birthday parties spiced up with a couple of tired double entendres. (Sorry ladies, Rihanna beat you to that frosting-licking line.)

Madonna's tracks with house duo the Benassi Bros. and William Orbit, the principle architect of her 1998 album Ray of Light, are much better, if not up to par with previous career highlights. "I'm Addicted", a dynamic electro throbber by the Benassis, is the big keeper here, and their work on "Girl Gone Wild" yields a reasonably strong single that rises to the challenge of competing with Ke$ha, Britney Spears, and Katy Perry on pop radio. The Orbit collaborations mainly call back to their work together on Ray, the record that essentially established the aesthetics of the singer's past decade of music. "I'm a Sinner" is a serviceable rewrite of their Ray-era soundtrack hit "Beautiful Stranger", and "Falling Free" plays to her strengths as a singer of ballads, though it lacks the generous hooks of, say, "Take a Bow" or "Live to Tell".

The most interesting of the Orbit productions is "Gang Bang", a campy revenge fantasy that essentially uses her filmmaker ex-husband Guy Ritchie's sub-Tarantino aesthetic as a weapon against him. The title suggests porn, but it's really a nod to mobsters, particularly as her over-the-top, Ana Matronic-esque monologue turns especially violent and bloody. It's the album's boldest, most experimental track, and it's marred only by a just-off vocal performance that renders her very familiar voice a bit anonymous, and a half-hearted attempt at a dubstep bass drop. (Next time just hire Skrillex, okay?)

Madonna reckons with her divorce from Ritchie elsewhere on the record, but her attempts to address lingering bitterness and affection for her ex are so remote that the songs have all the soul of a carefully edited press release. "Love Spent", an Orbit production with brittle electro-acoustic accompaniment, at least approaches the topic from an interesting angle, focusing on the tension and power dynamic of a relationship in which one half of the couple drastically out-earns the other. The song picks up steam as it goes along, but it ultimately comes out like a tepid, ponderous rework of her 2005 smash "Hung Up". "I Don't Give A" starts off strong with her spitting out the lines, "Wake up, ex-wife/ This is your life," in a robotic rap, but she is upstaged by guest Nicki Minaj, who turns in an entertaining performance that is nevertheless below the standards of her usual features.

It's almost impossible to approach MDNA without some degree of cynicism, but it's equally difficult to imagine anyone being more cynical about this music than Madonna herself. Unlike previous late-period records in which she had the luxury to indulge in creative tangents and not get too hung up on scoring several hits, MDNA is a record that comes with major commercial expectations. The "this has to work" factor is high, and it's hard to shake the impression that she has some measure of contempt for the contemporary pop audience. We all know that Madonna is an extremely intelligent woman-- even if she's never been known for penning great lyrics, it's easier to take the mesmerizingly dumb lyrics of tracks like "Superstar" and "B-Day Song" as spiteful trolling rather than vapid pandering. It doesn't really matter whether or not this drivel is insulting to Madonna's audience-- the most loyal fans seem to embrace being submissive to her domineering persona-- but it is disheartening when one of the most influential pop artists of the 20th century is tossing out the world's umpteen-millionth "Mickey" retread as a lead single. She's the one who deserves better.

http://www.pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16426-mdna/

Before someone gets upset and plans my funeral again I'm not posting this because it is negative but because I know people were waiting for it.

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In a country where STEPS has a #1 tour, what do you expect? *shlep*

Tragic I know :) British hacks have always been evil though so you tend to ignore or not read the trash that hits our newstands

MDNA uk number one on iTunes so some of us still have a bit of class :)

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The new reviews are about her age AGAIN??? Yeah, we got it, she's 53!!!!! Damn :doh:

Exactly! It's so annoying the way these critics focus on her age!! Ageism is such an evil,unfair thing.

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Well the Independent did give her 4 out of 5 stars (and is counted on Metacritic), some other prick from that publication just wanted speak his mind I guess

Oh god. UK publications seem to be full of pricks. Honestly why reviewed an album TWICE ? Morons .

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I expected worse from Pitchfork tbh. And to be fair to them, though they're music snobs, they've almost always recognised Madonna's legendary influence and strength in pop music. I guess they just don't like her new stuff.

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I expected worse from Pitchfork tbh. And to be fair to them, though they're music snobs, they've almost always recognised Madonna's legendary influence and strength in pop music. I guess they just don't like her new stuff.

I expected worse as well. a 4 for music snobs seems fair, lol. do they have any reviews from COADF or american life & ray of light up?

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MDNA got a 50% from LA Times. I'm not going to post it because it is shit.

MDNA's metacritic score is gonna get dragged to below 70.

I can't believe it's gonna get a similar score like Hard Candy :lmao:

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Madonna's 'MDNA' is potent stuff

PAT HEALY

Metro BOSTON

Published: March 25, 2012 5:09 p.m.

Last modified: March 25, 2012 5:14 p.m.

B

Madonna is a bitch out of order, a bat out of hell and a fish out of water. At least that's what she compares herself to in the song "Gang Bang," off her brand new album, "MDNA." The album officially comes out tomorrow, though it leaked online late last week. Madge's claim about being broken, angry and alienated is a succinct self-analysis.

It's been four years since her last album of new material, the longest gap of her nearly 30-year career, which would explain the fish-out-of-water feeling.

As far as the bitch out of order and the bat out of hell, her venomous personal lyrics on this album make it difficult to distinguish Madonna, the pop legend from Madonna, the mortal whose eight-year marriage to director Guy Ritchie ended in a bitter divorce.

"I tried to be a good girl, I tried to be your wife," she sings on "I Don't Give A."

This confessional intimacy makes it difficult to criticize Madonna for imitation, which she does indulge in a bit on "MDNA." To that charge, the material girl is just as much of a smart shopper as she's always been, using the baddest guest stars (including Nicki Minaj and M.I.A.) and the best producers (including Martin Solveig) to bring her sound into now. If she can't define the times, she's certainly not going to be behind them. And really, anybody she's borrowing from wouldn't be making music if it weren't for her. The racecar basslines and Skrillex-style monster breakdown would seem forced if not done properly. But it's Madonna, and even if she is a fish out of water, she can always get into the groove.

Add it up

The chemical makeup of the deluxe edition of 'MDNA'

Approximate number of times the words "girl" or "girls" are used: 63

Approximate number of times the word "bitch" is used: 13

Approximate number of songs that are most likely about Guy Ritchie: 6.5

Number of previous Madonna hits referenced by title: 3

Number of Nicki Minaj guest appearances: 2

Number of songs with spoken prayers: 2

Number of songs where a banjo is clearly audible: 1

http://www.metro.us/newyork/entertainment/article/1134078--madonna-s-mdna-is-potent-stuff

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Guest groovyguy

http://top40.about.com/od/madonna/fr/Madonna-MDNA.htm

Madonna - MDNA

'MDNA' Is a Madonna Album

About.com Rating 4 Star Rating

By Bill Lamb

or good and bad, MDNA is a classic Madonna album. This means there are real peaks of musical brilliance here, but the overall collection is uneven enough that you are unlikely to listen to MDNA all the way through often. A few tracks, including the lead single "Give Me All Your Luvin'" will leave you scratching your head after hearing the best music here. As always, Madonna knows how to make us all want to dance, and a key element that places a number of songs here among Madonna's best work is the exposed emotion and life experience. Madonna allows us to hear her beating heart battered by a recent divorce but standing strong and looking to the future.

Divorce, Pain and Moving Forward On the Dance Floor

In 2008 Madonna divorced her second husband, film director Guy Ritchie, after eight years of marriage. The turmoil in the relationship animated much of Madonna's 2008 album Hard Candy. Now it is the residual anger and pain that lie at the heart of MDNA and its bracing dance music. Fortunately, for listeners, Madonna doesn't wallow in her misery. Instead, she delivers both wit and wisdom earned in her lifetime of 53 years. "Gang Bang" is a full throttle camp revenge fantasy that is likely to be a late night club and party favorite. "I Don't Give A" finds Madonna musically flipping off any would be critics of her life, including the ex husband. However, Madonna does take responsibility as well in songs like the bonus track "I F**ked Up" owning mistakes but not asking for pity. The latter proves once again that when Madonna places herself at her most vulnerable in songs she also radiates a warmth that is powerfully engaging.

Madonna + William Orbit = Magic

William Orbit co-produced nearly all of the tracks on Madonna's masterful 1998 album Ray Of Light. He also worked on tracks for her 2000 album Music. On MDNA the pair reunite for six of the songs, half of the standard version of the album. It is on the William Orbit productions that MDNA hits its peaks. "I'm a Sinner," which manages to sound both personal and universal in its lyrical sweep, is clearly a musical descendant of their Grammy Award winning "Beautiful Stranger." With its rock and roll heart and country influenced litany of saints dressed up for the dance floor, "I'm a Sinner" will make you want to dance. On the song "Love Spent," Madonna discusses the role of money in the downfall of her marriage backed by a musical contrast between banjo and sweeping electronic washes of sound that ultimately adds up to a refreshing, contemporary, radio friendly pop sound. Their collaboration on "Masterpiece," a Golden Globe winning song created for the film W.E., is simply one of the most beautiful ballads of Madonna's career. There is an artistic synergy between William Orbit and Madonna that has resulted in some of the most brilliant moments in Madonna's musical history and they continue here on MDNA.

Top Tracks On 'MDNA'

"Gang Bang"

"I'm Addicted"

"I'm a Sinner"

"Love Spent"

"Masterpiece"

An Album Worth Hearing and Individual Songs That Are Brilliant

MDNA is rewarding to hear all the way through, and it is one of the best pop albums released so far in 2012. However, as with all of Madonna's previous collections, fans are likely to pick and choose among the best tracks here to add to an extensive legacy of great pop and dance music. When matched to her overall career, "I'm Addicted," with its high octane tribute to love as a drug, and the inevitable comparisons to the drug MDMA, the rocking dance beats of "I'm a Sinner," and sheer beauty of falling in love with a "Masterpiece" rank among Madonna's best. Unfortunately, the cheerleader pop of "Give Me All Your Luvin'" and aimless froth of "Turn Up the Radio" are among the most disposable of Madonna's creations with lyrics that sound like they were scribbled out in an effort to pad the album with a few extra songs. As a fan, there is plenty of top notch Madonna music here to make MDNA a worthy purchase. At the age of 53, Madonna remains creatively relevant with important stories to tell while always knowing how to make us dance.

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Guest HaveASit

Has NME already given the score?

The album will probably end with 62-65. :thumbsdown:

Edited by Matheus
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Guest groovyguy

Brimming with pumping electro-pop confections, Madonna's newly arrived 12th studio album, MDNA, evokes an inescapable club ambiance, even as it compellingly reminds us why the music legend still reigns as the enduring Queen of Pop. In short, the album is a dancefloor slave/party animal's dream record fueled by a channel-surfing of moods and emotions running the gamut from rage and longing to danger and desire. At a tidy 50 minutes, the 12-track CD deserves repeated listens. It's so tantalizingly good that there's hardly a dull moment.

Like the expert manipulator she's always been, Madonna lures you into the groove and you can't help but obey and play along - even when the lyrics occasionally dip into violent connotations, sly innuendos and sexual deviance. To wit, provocative song titles like "Gang Bang," "I'm A Sinner" and flirty album opener "Girl Gone Wild" immediately arrest your attention. But upon giving them a couple spins, you are positively drawn into this perennial Material Girl's uber-sexy world, where a kind of tongue-in-cheek brilliance is offset by the usual risqué sensibilities and slick production work from the likes of collaborators William Orbit and Benny Benassi.

Madonna's signature dalliance between tough and tender, fun and fierce, plays out on cuts like snappy lead single "Give Me All Your Luvin" (featuring cheerleaders M.I.A and Nicki Minaj) and the brazen "I Don't Give A .," where Minaj reprises her one-of-a-kind rude-gal sass. But the real winners here are the slow-burning instant classics "Masterpiece" and "Falling Free," two elegant slices of nostalgia and glamour that transport you back to Madge's golden Ray of Light era.

Given her penchant for crafting timeless records that leave a lasting dent in the cultural psyche ("Like A Virgin," "Papa Don't Preach," etc.), it's no surprise really that the pop superstar has managed to strike gold again with MDNA, which is certainly a worthy entry into the esteemed Madonna canon. What's more, you simply have to take your hat off to a woman who continues to defy the rules and expectations by proving her staying power and relevance in a youth-obsessed industry now dominated by a tireless string of Gagas and Rihannas.

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Guest groovyguy

Madonna Grabs Back Pop Crown With Shock Disco

By Mark Beech on March 25, 2012

Madonna sets herself some tough challenges on her 12th studio album, “MDNA.” She wants to attack her former husband, keep up the tempo, look relevant and sweep away all those preening young pretenders to her crown.

“There’s only one queen, and that’s Madonna,” she has one of those pop princesses, Nicki Minaj, declare on one song.

“MDNA” tries hard, often too hard, and is soaked in slick production. After 30 years in the business, Madonna Louise Ciccone should know she doesn’t need the lavish studio effects of newer stars such as Lady Gaga, Britney Spears or Rihanna.

It’s a better record than was suggested by the first single, “Give Me All Your Luvin’.” That cheerleader number was previewed to 111 million viewers on Feb. 5 at the most-watched Super Bowl Halftime Show in history -- then stalled at No. 10 in the charts. Not content with that piece of disposable pop recalling Toni Basil, Madonna’s lightweight follow-up single “Girl Gone Wild” references Cyndi Lauper’s 1980s disco line “girls, just wanna have fun.”

The first four tracks sound like castoffs from Madonna’s dance-crazed “Hard Candy” from 2008, “Confessions on a Dance Floor” from 2005 and accompanying live releases.

The twist this time is her renewed desire to provoke. While she says “MDNA” is an abbreviation for “Madonna DNA,” it also references the drug MDMA on “I’m Addicted.”

Lover Shot

“Gang Bang” -- another misguided title -- has her wanting to shoot a lover and ends “I wanna see him die, over and over and over and over.”

It’s like a Guy Ritchie movie. Her divorce from the U.K. director looms over the record. “Would you have married me if I were poor?” she asks on “Love Spent,” adding “I guess if I was your treasury, you’d have found the time to treasure me.”

In “I Don’t Give A,” Madonna declares “I tried to be your wife, I diminished myself” and “you were so mad at me, who’s got custody? Lawyers, suck it up. Didn’t have a pre-nup.”

As ever, Madonna’s words and singing rarely match her catchy tunes and attitude. She’s happier recalling past glories. “MDNA” opens by quoting from the excellent “Like a Prayer” (1989). The final four tracks reunite her with William Orbit, who produced her glacial “Ray of Light” in 1998.

With Orbit at the helm, the boasting ends. We hear the confessional side of the woman behind the Madonna brand. There’s the acoustic “Masterpiece,” a Golden Globe-winning love song from the film “W.E.” The ballad “Falling Free” is better, all tender strings and a vulnerable voice shorn of bombast.

Madonna, 53, is preparing for another world tour. (The last raised $408 million, the most by a solo artist, according to its promoter Live Nation (LYV) Entertainment Inc.) She has fame and fortune aplenty, of course, yet signs off with the wistful hope that she can “turn around a love again.”

Rating: ***.

What the Stars Mean:

***** Exceptional

**** Excellent

*** Good

** Average

* Poor

(No stars) Worthless

“MDNA” is released today on Interscope/Live Nation, priced about $10 in the U.S. There’s a deluxe edition for $16, adding five tracks. Download fees vary across services.

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