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Guest groovyguy

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You sure? i thought they did, i thought they gave it a 7 or something. Maybe i'm thinking of something else.

Their pop blogger reviewed it so I think it came out on that page, not an official review though

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Guest groovyguy

http://www.updt.me/go?item=madonna-review-mdna-has-a-great-beat-and-you-can-pay-alimony-to-it&t=fb

Madonna Review: 'MDNA' Has a Great Beat and You Can Pay Alimony To It

Published: March 26, 2012 @ 5:41 pm

If Madonna were a corporation instead of calling all her own shots, then whichever VP was in charge of picking her singles would be in a serious woodshed right now.

Despite its Super Bowl ubiquity and star cameos, “Give Me All Your Luvin’” didn’t set her fan base on fire. But that was nothing compared to the unpopularity of “Girl Gone Wild,” which debuted outside of the Billboard 100 and, as of this writing, sits at No. 127 on the iTunes chart.

“Girl Gone Wild” may be the worst single she’s ever released -- and maybe as bad as anything anyone else could or will release this year -- but it’s no bellwether. Because who could have guessed from that ghastly teaser that “MDNA” would turn out to be Madonna's best album since the Material Matron was still in her 30s?

Granted, getting through the entire 17-track deluxe edition requires an imperviousness to joltingly vapid rhymes, and not just on numbers that take inspiration from Joe Francis. But if you can put on your lyric blinders, “MDNA” is mostly good, unpretentious, highly danceable fun that makes willful middle-aged regression seem like a perfectly sound idea.

Initial reports may have left you unclear whether it’s a disco record or a divorce album, so rest assured that it’s both, although not necessarily in equal measure. She saves the confessionals for the latter stretch of “"MDNA",” and even then puts a dance-floor thump on a couple of them, so the transition from “Lucky Star” updates to complaining about how Guy Ritchie took her money isn’t quite as jarring as it could be.

The divorce stuff does provide a vestige of Madonna’s “mature” middle period, which began with “Oh Father” in 1989 and ended when the “American Life” album bombed in 2003. But she doesn’t overdo the serious stuff here. Listening to her sing “Bang bang, shot you dead, shot my lover in the head… Die, bitch!,” you know you’re not hearing the same Madonna who was self-importantly covering “Imagine” in the early 2000s.

In spirit, if not genre, “MDMA” continues along the same lines as 2008’s “Hard Candy,” which unabashedly harked back to her earliest, most carefree early days. If that last album didn’t turn out to be the return to chart domination that was intended, it may have been because its combination of ‘80s synth fluff and ‘00s hip-hop didn’t quite gel, and because the literally sticky sexual innuendos seemed over-the-top. In contrast, the dirty stuff is way toned down here, and she’s paired herself with producers who do nothing if not make contemporary dance music feel effortless.

The list of songs that would have left a far more anticipatory taste in listeners’ mouths than the two already out there runs at least five potential singles deep, starting with the nearly sublime electro-pop of “I’m Addicted,” “Turn Up Your Radio,” “Superstar,” and “Some Girls,” a declaration of superiority that features the producer super-team of William Orbit (her primary electronic collaborator since “Ray of Light”) and Robyn’s brilliant aide de camp, Klas Ahlund.

The most winning number, “I’m a Sinner,” also co-produced by Orbit, sounds like a vintage Monkees number successfully transplanted to the cheery future shock of Eurodisco. Giving in to the infectiousness of this track also means giving in to more of Madonna’s habitual Catholic-baiting, which is a small price to pay for such pop perfection.

(Seriously, though, Madonna, we get it. You know the Act of Contrition just well enough to misquote it in the not-so-taboo-shattering opening of “Girl Gone Wild,” and you can think of three saints to invoke on top of Jesus and Mary in “Sinner.” Even Catholic League watchdog William Donahue is surely asleep at the switch at this point.)

On her last album, Madonna took time out from the froth to devote just one song to her presumably already-rocky relationship with her husband: “Incredible,” which included the line, “I’m missing my best friend.” This time around, she actually titles one song “Best Friend,” and as a statement of how presumably lonely it is at the top without Ritchie around, it’s unusually vulnerable. That goes double for “I Fucked Up,” which couldn’t be a more tender ballad, or commercial one, if not for one obviously risible element.

But other numbers are pointedly devoted to the idea that it’s her ex who effed up – and who deserves a painful death (if “Gang Bang” is also aimed at Ritchie, anyway). The Material Girl apparently wants us all to know that he was the real materialist in the family.

“Would you have married me if I were poor?” she asks her ex-BFF in “Love Spent.” “If I was your treasury, you’d have found time to treasure me…/Frankly if my name was Benjamin/We wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in…/I want you to take me like you took your money.”

The more defiant “I Don’t Give A” has her doing a “Subterranean Homesick”-style fast blues talk that boasts about multi-tasking and self-realization: “You were so mad at me/Who’s got custody/Lawyers suck it up/Didn’t have a pre-nup.../Gotta sign a contract, gotta get my money back.../I tried to be a good girl/I tried to be your wife/Diminished myself/And I swallowed my light.”

These are the money moments -- literally and figuratively -- as far as quotability. Better to bring out those pained, pointed couplets than the ones like “We’ve gotta have fun if that’s all that we do/Gotta shake off the system and break all the rules” that pepper the happier tunes.

At least Madonna doesn’t have the worst lines on the album; those come via Nicki Minaj’s raps on “Give Me All Your Luvin’” and “I Don’t Give A.” If there’s anything that you will come to dread on repeat listens, it is the sound of Minaj declaring “I’m Conan,” or “I ain’t a businesswoman, I’m a business, woman! And I’m known for giving bitches the business, woman!,” or “There’s only one queen, and that’s Madonna -- bitch!”

On the other hand, the other M.I.A.-aided tune, “B-Day," is great fun, a simple exercise in Madonna doing garage-rock. That number (and certainly not the “Give Me All Your Luvin’” remix that tiredly drags LMFAO out as yet another celebrity endorser) is the best reason to pay a few extra bucks for the handful of extra tracks.

So spend the extra $3 or so and get the full-length version. Madonna will thank you, and, if she’s telling the truth about her divorce, so will the Guy Ritchie alimony fund.

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Guest groovyguy

http://www.fanboycomics.net/fbc-approved/lethally-blonde/770-mdna-madonnas-new-record-explodes-like-tnt

MDNA: Madonna's New Record Explodes Like TNT!

By Michael Fitzgerald Troy

I feel like sinnin'. Must be the Tanqueray. Damn, I picked the wrong life to quit drinkin'. Madonna's new record MDNA drops this week, and I'm spinning, baby, out of control. Madonna came up in the clubs with music that double dog dared you not to dance to it, and MDNA is a face slapping reminder of that.

You know how to whistle, baby. Just put your lips together...and blow. And now, I offer you a blow-by-blow of the tracks off of Madonna's killer new dance album, MDNA. (You gotta love that title!)

"Girl Gone Wild" is a thrashing dance song and controversial new video with a little boy-on-boy action. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

If you're gonna act like a b*tch, you're gonna die like a b*tch, you're gonna die like a b*tch! Or, so says the angry lyrics to "Gang Bang." We in for a ride, girlfriends.

I need to dance. It puts me in a trance and fits me like a glove. I'm addicted to "I'm Addicted."

"Turn up the Radio?" No problem. A love anthem to the uplifting power of music. Music raises your spiritual vibration and takes you where you want to go. And, this song is a place I want to visit often. Don't ask me where I wanna go. You gotta turn up the radio.

"Some Girls" celebrates the harder side of Sears with an ode to not the girl next door. Some girls have a filthy mouth. Hey, naughty girls need love, too!

"Superstar" is one of my favorite cuts with a super sweet and catchy melody reminiscent of an '80s synth pollination of "Cherish" and "Lucky Star."

"I Don't Give A" is catchy and deep, when Madonna sings about tweeting in an elevator. Throw in Nicki Minaj and it's a party, y'all. Timeless.

"I'm a Sinner" wears gorgeous 69's false eyelashes. I like it that way. Where are my platform, patent, white go-go boots?

"Love Spent" opens with the banjo and I feel fine.

"Masterpiece" speaks for itself.

"Beautiful Killer" is a beautiful surprise with violin rubs that would put "Papa Don't Preach" to shame.

"I F*cked Up" is uncharacteristically vulnerable of her highness and beautiful, despite its gasp-inducing 4-letter title.

"Bday Song" and "Best Friend" round out a more than solid effort by Madonna and her posse, including transcendental genius producer William Orbit.

A lifelong Madonna fan and self appointed co-president of the West Hollywood Chapter of the Madonna fan club (Hi, Matthew!), I am happy to report I am pleased as Hawaiian Punch. I was known as "that Madonna freak" in school. Gee, that would make a smokin' tattoo.

I truth or dare you not to love it. You "Madonna Freaks" can get MDNA here www.itunes.com.

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Guest groovyguy

http://boyculture.typepad.com/boy_culture/2012/03/i-want-so-badly-to-be-good-a-track-by-track-review-of-mdna-by-madonna.html

I Want So Badly To Be Good: A Track-By-Track Review Of MDNA By Madonna

Until recently, I feared that Madonna was beginning to phone it in after so many years of musical supremacy. For every sign that she was still driving things (she seemed fully present during Sticky & Sweet even if Hard Candy felt like a pretty good album nonetheless made to fill out a contract), there would be other signs that she might be more interested in backing away from music.

Who could blame her? Radio programmers have made it clear she's old news to them and a chunk of her fanbase is so jaded it seems to pre-reject anything she comes up with.

Now, after her longest-ever time between studio albums, Madonna is back and she's convincingly engaged on MDNA, which I hear as arguably (with myself, mostly) her best effort since Ray of Light.

Some of Madonna's critics like to call her "desperate," the ultimate insult. But I think her desperation is what makes this album rock, what makes it push into new territory while still serving as a massive reinforcement of her 30-year-old brand and what, more simply, helps to make all of her new songs work as well as they do.

She has a desperation, but it's a helpful desperation—to be taken seriously, to have and to cause fun, to make people squirm, to provoke thought. In other words, Madonna still has not lost the artistic neediness that defines all creators and that almost invariably evaporates after so many creative cycles. She's still hungry, still wants it. In fact, she wants it back.

MDNA has neither the introductory boldness of Madonna nor does it forge an entirely new sonic path as did Ray of Light, but it radiates knowledge of self and wisdom alongside an equal dose of unabashed hedonism. It's a huge gamble at her age, but one that pays off for both Madonna and any open-minded, open-hearted listener still in awe of the reparative power of dance. Overall rating: 8.7/10

TRACK BY TRACK...

"Girl Gone Wild" opens the album with a sarcastic act of contrition that sounds more defiant than despondent and with an ensuing song perfect for a divorcée in her dirty thirties (or 53 in Madonna years). It also kicks off a dizzying series of self-referential lyrics and themes (especially those religious Screen shot 2012-03-26 at 2.50.16 PMones) by managing to sound almost identical to "Sorry" and "Celebration" in patches. The lyric "girls, they just wanna have some fun" has led some listeners to note a hat tip to Cyndi Lauper, but interestingly, Lauper changed the original dirty meaning of Robert Hazard's song to make her version a neo-feminist anthem while Madonna returns it to the brothel. Why this intoxicatingly reckless song is so controversial among fans (and some critics, one of whom calls it "no-fun professionalism") is beyond me—it's not classically Madonna in its feel and is probably the song most eager to please Top 40 programmers (a losing cause—they've had little L-U-V for Madonna for a decade), but it's as good a club banger as she's ever produced, on par with "Deeper and Deeper" even if it suffers for having come 20 years later. Madonna, or the character "Madonna", throbs with recently unrepressed des-i-i-i-i-ire and at least for me, that feeling slams right into the listener like brass balls on a businessman's desk eternally passing energy back and forth. Forgive me or don't, I love this song unrepentingly. 10/10

"Gang Bang" starts with a Ray of Light-esque flourish before immediately plunging into a relentless bassline one can almost imagine Madonna heard and improvised an entire song to. This is a plus in that it sounds spontaneous and exciting. It's a minus in that it's not going to win any awards for its sheer poetry. No matter. Giddy in its function as a techno-rant, the song uncoils with an intentionally humorous, dark intensity reminiscent of a Quentin Tarantino flick—hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, especially if the bitch has access to a firearm. What should be a self-indulgent mess winds up being a far more convincing and fresher take on a previous song like "Runaway Lover." The singer's contempt is visceral, made all the spookier by the gravely delivery and that long, eerie denouement filled with gleeful proclamations of hellbound violence. "Get up again, over and over?" Hell, no! Instead, "I wanna see him die/Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over." (If the ending is too much for ya, try Tracy Young's remix.) Speaking of Cyndi Lauper, Madonna sounds a fuck of a lot like her on this. This wild track is the best revenge song ever, reminding me of 1000 Fires by Traci Lords and sounding like a song Divine should have sung. 10/10

After two songs devoted to abandon, rebellion, reactive retribution, "I'm Addicted" is an undisguised love song awash in a synth sensory overload. The beginning could be Yaz. So far, Madonna's never been more electronic, not even on Ray of Light, her best work and yet a far more self-consciously restrained piece. If MDNA is a play on MDMA, this is her ode to giving in to unnatural pleasure. Flashes of "I Feel Love" (already more exactly echoed on "Future Lovers"). As tired as I've grown of hearing Madonna describe each new album post-American Life as being a return to the dance floor, when she states, "I need to dance," it reminds me of, "You can dance," except this time it's a need not an option. There's also a definite "Hung Up" (aka ABBA's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" vein going through this. Chants of "MDNA" (which she sings in a way I can't recall her ever singing before) make this one a good candidate for tour opener. 9/10

Calming down, the album gets its first sweet treat in the form of "Turn Up the Radio", which has all the sugar of "Don't Stop" but an anthemic quality that demands it be made into a serious single with serious promotion. Song of the summer status awaits this brilliant yet simple confection. 10/10

Unexpectedly, "Give Me All Your Luvin'" doesn't feel out of place on the album, Super Bowl advert that it is. It actually makes so much more sense in the context of the album than it did as a first (and therefore implicitly best) single. I still like Madonna's ode to the '60s surfer sound, a far more Go-Go's or Toni Basil vibe than I'd ever thought she'd embrace and a continuation of the positivity begun by "Turn Up the Radio". I like Nicki Minaj on this, but it's distressing that she appears on two tracks as does M.I.A.; one-offs would've been better. The salute to Madonna's canon is loud and clear here with "every record sounds the same," familiar from the shadier "Hollywood." 7/10

"Some Girls" perfects the braggadocio that left such a sour taste in my mouth with "Candy Shop", brassily laundry-listing the types of girls Madonna is not ("Fake tits and a nasty mood"?...hmmm) and asserting that, "I'm better than you ever dreamed of." The music is electrifying, sounds unlike any past Madonna songs and more than makes up for the pile of lyrics clichés that distracts, though never to the point of ruination, throughout. As for past works referenced, you don't get much more blatant than "like a virgin, sweet and clean" or "some girls are second best" (as in, don't go for them, baby). 8/10

The first song that for me feels a bit boring and in my opinion the main album's only filler is "Superstar", which features smoking novitiate Lola on backing vocals (making it sort of like an adolescent "Little Star"), a nonetheless pleasing and convincing romp that, like other songs before it (for example, the horrendous "Super Pop" and the long-forgotten "White Heat") uses real-life men as shorthand to communicate: Marlon Brando, Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, Al Capone, Julius Caesar, Bruce Lee, John Travolta, James Dean. The prettiness of this song calls to mind an inferior version of "Cherish" or "True Blue" or "Angel," the latter of which is explicitly called out with "you're my angel." 6.5/10

"I Don't Give A" feels like this album's "Nobody Knows Me", an initially off-putting song with a quickly addictive rap feel and nakedly personal lyrics about all the hard parts of being not only a single working mom but Madonna, all made better with a fiercely brandished shell. "I'm gonna be okay/I don't care what the people say," Madonna sings, and we don't doubt that at the very least, she is going to do what she'd going to do regardless of judgment. "I tried to be your wife/diminished myself/and I swallowed my light" = who says she's lost her ability to write good lyrics? Nicki Minaj's rap fits seamlessly into a song that Madonna is already practically rapping herself. I'd swear "I Don't Give A" is Madonna's second, and far more successful, stab at "American Life". The orchestral finale makes her life sound like The motherfucking Omen! 8/10

"I'm a Sinner" soars, lyrically both light and engaging: "Like the sun, like the light, like a flame/Like a storm, I burn through everything/Like a bomb in the night, like a train/Thundering through the hills, let it rain." Lovely, as is Madonna's girlish vocal and the retro feel. Like "Girl Gone Wild", this tune plays on notions of sin and redemption. But unlike that brazen song, "I'm a Sinner" is about sweetly shrugging and accepting one's transgressive urges rather than shoving them down any throat that comes near. Her listing of Mary, Jesus and quite a few saints reminds me of a religious stab at "Superstar". More than a guilty pleasure, "I'm a Sinner" is an argument that guilt is pleasurable. 8/10

"Love Spent" is one of the album's most special moments, an immediate addition to the very best Madonna's ever written or sung. It opens with a banjo and strings, like a lovely affair between "Don't Tell Me" and "Papa Don't Preach". Leave it to half-billionaire Maddy (I never warmed up to "Madge") to write a love song about money, but even if you'll never have Mo's mo'-money-mo-problems problems, many couples can relate to fights rooted in finances. "You had all of me, you wanted more/Would you have married me if I were poor?" she comes right out and asks in the beginning, sounding as vulnerable as she's ever sounded. But for my money, the best lyric on the album goes: "Hold me like your money/Tell me that you want me/Spend your love on me." This kind of need—and the failure of the love behind it—clearly led to the acting out and anger from previous songs. Is it not true that this album is presented in reverse chronological order? (Another "Hung Up" echo pops up here just before the bridge, and "You played with my heart/Til death do we part" could link this to her last great divorce song, "Till Death Do Us Part" from Like a Prayer. If only she hadn't tossed in that groaner about not being named Benjamin, this would be an 11/10. 10/10

When W.E. was released, fans got a taste of "Masterpiece". While the film wasn't one, the song comes close, a lilting, mid-tempo ballad featuring beautiful vocals and an earnest sense of love and loss, or if not loss, at least the fear of it—"because, after all, nothing's indestructible." (A better title for this album would've been Indestructible.) 9/10

As comfortably warm as "Masterpiece" is, it suffers being sandwiched between "Love Spent" and "Falling Free", the latter of which sounds like Simon & Garfunkel and showcases Madonna's too-often underrated (sometimes by Madonna herself) voice. Picture her alone on a stage at a mic singing this—it's gorgeous and intelligently, perceptively written from the perspective of someone older, wiser and making a new go of it: "When I move a certain way/I feel an ache I'd kept at bay/A hairline break that's taking hold/A metal that I thought was gold." It resonates with the world-weariness of "Drowned World/Substitute for Love", when Madonna was first "feeling so old." I don't remember becoming emotional over a Madonna song until this one. Flawless and mature, a powerful end to the album proper, an album characterized by raw emotion. 10/10

Alain-delon-1The bonus tracks begin with "Beautiful Killer" (another good alternate title for the album or even her lazily nameless tour), but it's a head-scratcher as to why Madonna didn't want this on the regular album. It's not only an earworm (with a faint echo of "Die Another Day" in her delivery) but stylistically unique from the many club-friendly tracks that pave its way. A rollicking pop-rock song devoted to Alain Delon that manages to use Madonna's whisper to great effect in a way we're not used to experiencing. (In other words, it's not a heartless Dita this time but a teasing partner.) 10/10

"I Fucked Up" sounded like it might be painful to sit through based on its title alone, but it's a pretty, self-effacing admission of wrongdoing by a woman who notoriously has "absolutely no regrets." Here, she's not only at fault but spectacularly so—"nobody does it [fucks up] better than myself." I can't remember enjoying Madonna's cast-offs from an album this much, so I can only surmise that she doesn't place these bonus cuts in the same class as "Hey, You," "Super Pop" and the like, but instead intentionally put amazing songs on the special edition to ensure fans would not take a pass and stick with the basic. 9/10

I may be in the minority, but I think "B-Day Song" is unfairly maligned. I think it's a far more charming take on the sound explored out of nowhere on "Give Me All Your Luvin'", love that Madonna has a song about her birthday being a positive thing knowing that critics would likely be trashing her for her age in reviews and find the chorus irresistible. There's also a definite Pre-Madonna song to this welcome bit of girlish whimsy. 8/10

"Best Friend" is yet another relationship post-mortem, but still manages to bring new observations to the table (before getting up and dancing on it), namely themes about male/female power-sharing. Here, as in some other spots, I find myself enjoying the song overall and accepting the lyrics yet still feeling like she could have worked on her wording a bit more to tighten things up and avoid awkward moments like: "You made me laugh, you had a clever wit/I miss the good times, I don't miss all of it." Still, the "filler" on this record is so much better than the filler on Hard Candy. I will also say again that the album might be superior to Confessions On a Dance Floor because it's so much more diverse (like Music) while still holding together as a complete thought. 7/10

The "Give Me All Your Luvin'" Party Rock Remix is annoying and unnecessary; does it really count? Okay: 5/10

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http://boyculture.typepad.com/boy_culture/2012/03/i-want-so-badly-to-be-good-a-track-by-track-review-of-mdna-by-madonna.html

I Want So Badly To Be Good: A Track-By-Track Review Of MDNA By Madonna

Until recently, I feared that Madonna was beginning to phone it in after so many years of musical supremacy. For every sign that she was still driving things (she seemed fully present during Sticky & Sweet even if Hard Candy felt like a pretty good album nonetheless made to fill out a contract), there would be other signs that she might be more interested in backing away from music.

Who could blame her? Radio programmers have made it clear she's old news to them and a chunk of her fanbase is so jaded it seems to pre-reject anything she comes up with.

Now, after her longest-ever time between studio albums, Madonna is back and she's convincingly engaged on MDNA, which I hear as arguably (with myself, mostly) her best effort since Ray of Light.

Some of Madonna's critics like to call her "desperate," the ultimate insult. But I think her desperation is what makes this album rock, what makes it push into new territory while still serving as a massive reinforcement of her 30-year-old brand and what, more simply, helps to make all of her new songs work as well as they do.

She has a desperation, but it's a helpful desperation—to be taken seriously, to have and to cause fun, to make people squirm, to provoke thought. In other words, Madonna still has not lost the artistic neediness that defines all creators and that almost invariably evaporates after so many creative cycles. She's still hungry, still wants it. In fact, she wants it back.

MDNA has neither the introductory boldness of Madonna nor does it forge an entirely new sonic path as did Ray of Light, but it radiates knowledge of self and wisdom alongside an equal dose of unabashed hedonism. It's a huge gamble at her age, but one that pays off for both Madonna and any open-minded, open-hearted listener still in awe of the reparative power of dance. Overall rating: 8.7/10

TRACK BY TRACK...

"Girl Gone Wild" opens the album with a sarcastic act of contrition that sounds more defiant than despondent and with an ensuing song perfect for a divorcée in her dirty thirties (or 53 in Madonna years). It also kicks off a dizzying series of self-referential lyrics and themes (especially those religious Screen shot 2012-03-26 at 2.50.16 PMones) by managing to sound almost identical to "Sorry" and "Celebration" in patches. The lyric "girls, they just wanna have some fun" has led some listeners to note a hat tip to Cyndi Lauper, but interestingly, Lauper changed the original dirty meaning of Robert Hazard's song to make her version a neo-feminist anthem while Madonna returns it to the brothel. Why this intoxicatingly reckless song is so controversial among fans (and some critics, one of whom calls it "no-fun professionalism") is beyond me—it's not classically Madonna in its feel and is probably the song most eager to please Top 40 programmers (a losing cause—they've had little L-U-V for Madonna for a decade), but it's as good a club banger as she's ever produced, on par with "Deeper and Deeper" even if it suffers for having come 20 years later. Madonna, or the character "Madonna", throbs with recently unrepressed des-i-i-i-i-ire and at least for me, that feeling slams right into the listener like brass balls on a businessman's desk eternally passing energy back and forth. Forgive me or don't, I love this song unrepentingly. 10/10

"Gang Bang" starts with a Ray of Light-esque flourish before immediately plunging into a relentless bassline one can almost imagine Madonna heard and improvised an entire song to. This is a plus in that it sounds spontaneous and exciting. It's a minus in that it's not going to win any awards for its sheer poetry. No matter. Giddy in its function as a techno-rant, the song uncoils with an intentionally humorous, dark intensity reminiscent of a Quentin Tarantino flick—hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, especially if the bitch has access to a firearm. What should be a self-indulgent mess winds up being a far more convincing and fresher take on a previous song like "Runaway Lover." The singer's contempt is visceral, made all the spookier by the gravely delivery and that long, eerie denouement filled with gleeful proclamations of hellbound violence. "Get up again, over and over?" Hell, no! Instead, "I wanna see him die/Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over." (If the ending is too much for ya, try Tracy Young's remix.) Speaking of Cyndi Lauper, Madonna sounds a fuck of a lot like her on this. This wild track is the best revenge song ever, reminding me of 1000 Fires by Traci Lords and sounding like a song Divine should have sung. 10/10

After two songs devoted to abandon, rebellion, reactive retribution, "I'm Addicted" is an undisguised love song awash in a synth sensory overload. The beginning could be Yaz. So far, Madonna's never been more electronic, not even on Ray of Light, her best work and yet a far more self-consciously restrained piece. If MDNA is a play on MDMA, this is her ode to giving in to unnatural pleasure. Flashes of "I Feel Love" (already more exactly echoed on "Future Lovers"). As tired as I've grown of hearing Madonna describe each new album post-American Life as being a return to the dance floor, when she states, "I need to dance," it reminds me of, "You can dance," except this time it's a need not an option. There's also a definite "Hung Up" (aka ABBA's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" vein going through this. Chants of "MDNA" (which she sings in a way I can't recall her ever singing before) make this one a good candidate for tour opener. 9/10

Calming down, the album gets its first sweet treat in the form of "Turn Up the Radio", which has all the sugar of "Don't Stop" but an anthemic quality that demands it be made into a serious single with serious promotion. Song of the summer status awaits this brilliant yet simple confection. 10/10

Unexpectedly, "Give Me All Your Luvin'" doesn't feel out of place on the album, Super Bowl advert that it is. It actually makes so much more sense in the context of the album than it did as a first (and therefore implicitly best) single. I still like Madonna's ode to the '60s surfer sound, a far more Go-Go's or Toni Basil vibe than I'd ever thought she'd embrace and a continuation of the positivity begun by "Turn Up the Radio". I like Nicki Minaj on this, but it's distressing that she appears on two tracks as does M.I.A.; one-offs would've been better. The salute to Madonna's canon is loud and clear here with "every record sounds the same," familiar from the shadier "Hollywood." 7/10

"Some Girls" perfects the braggadocio that left such a sour taste in my mouth with "Candy Shop", brassily laundry-listing the types of girls Madonna is not ("Fake tits and a nasty mood"?...hmmm) and asserting that, "I'm better than you ever dreamed of." The music is electrifying, sounds unlike any past Madonna songs and more than makes up for the pile of lyrics clichés that distracts, though never to the point of ruination, throughout. As for past works referenced, you don't get much more blatant than "like a virgin, sweet and clean" or "some girls are second best" (as in, don't go for them, baby). 8/10

The first song that for me feels a bit boring and in my opinion the main album's only filler is "Superstar", which features smoking novitiate Lola on backing vocals (making it sort of like an adolescent "Little Star"), a nonetheless pleasing and convincing romp that, like other songs before it (for example, the horrendous "Super Pop" and the long-forgotten "White Heat") uses real-life men as shorthand to communicate: Marlon Brando, Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, Al Capone, Julius Caesar, Bruce Lee, John Travolta, James Dean. The prettiness of this song calls to mind an inferior version of "Cherish" or "True Blue" or "Angel," the latter of which is explicitly called out with "you're my angel." 6.5/10

"I Don't Give A" feels like this album's "Nobody Knows Me", an initially off-putting song with a quickly addictive rap feel and nakedly personal lyrics about all the hard parts of being not only a single working mom but Madonna, all made better with a fiercely brandished shell. "I'm gonna be okay/I don't care what the people say," Madonna sings, and we don't doubt that at the very least, she is going to do what she'd going to do regardless of judgment. "I tried to be your wife/diminished myself/and I swallowed my light" = who says she's lost her ability to write good lyrics? Nicki Minaj's rap fits seamlessly into a song that Madonna is already practically rapping herself. I'd swear "I Don't Give A" is Madonna's second, and far more successful, stab at "American Life". The orchestral finale makes her life sound like The motherfucking Omen! 8/10

"I'm a Sinner" soars, lyrically both light and engaging: "Like the sun, like the light, like a flame/Like a storm, I burn through everything/Like a bomb in the night, like a train/Thundering through the hills, let it rain." Lovely, as is Madonna's girlish vocal and the retro feel. Like "Girl Gone Wild", this tune plays on notions of sin and redemption. But unlike that brazen song, "I'm a Sinner" is about sweetly shrugging and accepting one's transgressive urges rather than shoving them down any throat that comes near. Her listing of Mary, Jesus and quite a few saints reminds me of a religious stab at "Superstar". More than a guilty pleasure, "I'm a Sinner" is an argument that guilt is pleasurable. 8/10

"Love Spent" is one of the album's most special moments, an immediate addition to the very best Madonna's ever written or sung. It opens with a banjo and strings, like a lovely affair between "Don't Tell Me" and "Papa Don't Preach". Leave it to half-billionaire Maddy (I never warmed up to "Madge") to write a love song about money, but even if you'll never have Mo's mo'-money-mo-problems problems, many couples can relate to fights rooted in finances. "You had all of me, you wanted more/Would you have married me if I were poor?" she comes right out and asks in the beginning, sounding as vulnerable as she's ever sounded. But for my money, the best lyric on the album goes: "Hold me like your money/Tell me that you want me/Spend your love on me." This kind of need—and the failure of the love behind it—clearly led to the acting out and anger from previous songs. Is it not true that this album is presented in reverse chronological order? (Another "Hung Up" echo pops up here just before the bridge, and "You played with my heart/Til death do we part" could link this to her last great divorce song, "Till Death Do Us Part" from Like a Prayer. If only she hadn't tossed in that groaner about not being named Benjamin, this would be an 11/10. 10/10

When W.E. was released, fans got a taste of "Masterpiece". While the film wasn't one, the song comes close, a lilting, mid-tempo ballad featuring beautiful vocals and an earnest sense of love and loss, or if not loss, at least the fear of it—"because, after all, nothing's indestructible." (A better title for this album would've been Indestructible.) 9/10

As comfortably warm as "Masterpiece" is, it suffers being sandwiched between "Love Spent" and "Falling Free", the latter of which sounds like Simon & Garfunkel and showcases Madonna's too-often underrated (sometimes by Madonna herself) voice. Picture her alone on a stage at a mic singing this—it's gorgeous and intelligently, perceptively written from the perspective of someone older, wiser and making a new go of it: "When I move a certain way/I feel an ache I'd kept at bay/A hairline break that's taking hold/A metal that I thought was gold." It resonates with the world-weariness of "Drowned World/Substitute for Love", when Madonna was first "feeling so old." I don't remember becoming emotional over a Madonna song until this one. Flawless and mature, a powerful end to the album proper, an album characterized by raw emotion. 10/10

Alain-delon-1The bonus tracks begin with "Beautiful Killer" (another good alternate title for the album or even her lazily nameless tour), but it's a head-scratcher as to why Madonna didn't want this on the regular album. It's not only an earworm (with a faint echo of "Die Another Day" in her delivery) but stylistically unique from the many club-friendly tracks that pave its way. A rollicking pop-rock song devoted to Alain Delon that manages to use Madonna's whisper to great effect in a way we're not used to experiencing. (In other words, it's not a heartless Dita this time but a teasing partner.) 10/10

"I Fucked Up" sounded like it might be painful to sit through based on its title alone, but it's a pretty, self-effacing admission of wrongdoing by a woman who notoriously has "absolutely no regrets." Here, she's not only at fault but spectacularly so—"nobody does it [fucks up] better than myself." I can't remember enjoying Madonna's cast-offs from an album this much, so I can only surmise that she doesn't place these bonus cuts in the same class as "Hey, You," "Super Pop" and the like, but instead intentionally put amazing songs on the special edition to ensure fans would not take a pass and stick with the basic. 9/10

I may be in the minority, but I think "B-Day Song" is unfairly maligned. I think it's a far more charming take on the sound explored out of nowhere on "Give Me All Your Luvin'", love that Madonna has a song about her birthday being a positive thing knowing that critics would likely be trashing her for her age in reviews and find the chorus irresistible. There's also a definite Pre-Madonna song to this welcome bit of girlish whimsy. 8/10

"Best Friend" is yet another relationship post-mortem, but still manages to bring new observations to the table (before getting up and dancing on it), namely themes about male/female power-sharing. Here, as in some other spots, I find myself enjoying the song overall and accepting the lyrics yet still feeling like she could have worked on her wording a bit more to tighten things up and avoid awkward moments like: "You made me laugh, you had a clever wit/I miss the good times, I don't miss all of it." Still, the "filler" on this record is so much better than the filler on Hard Candy. I will also say again that the album might be superior to Confessions On a Dance Floor because it's so much more diverse (like Music) while still holding together as a complete thought. 7/10

The "Give Me All Your Luvin'" Party Rock Remix is annoying and unnecessary; does it really count? Okay: 5/10

Great review Groovyguy. :thumbsup: Sums up most of my feelings for the album although I can't make up my mind on Superstar, some days I think its great, if cheesy, pop and then other times not so much. When I make up my mind I'll try my own review.

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http://boyculture.typepad.com/boy_culture/2012/03/i-want-so-badly-to-be-good-a-track-by-track-review-of-mdna-by-madonna.html

I Want So Badly To Be Good: A Track-By-Track Review Of MDNA By Madonna

Until recently, I feared that Madonna was beginning to phone it in after so many years of musical supremacy. For every sign that she was still driving things (she seemed fully present during Sticky & Sweet even if Hard Candy felt like a pretty good album nonetheless made to fill out a contract), there would be other signs that she might be more interested in backing away from music.

Who could blame her? Radio programmers have made it clear she's old news to them and a chunk of her fanbase is so jaded it seems to pre-reject anything she comes up with.

Now, after her longest-ever time between studio albums, Madonna is back and she's convincingly engaged on MDNA, which I hear as arguably (with myself, mostly) her best effort since Ray of Light.

Some of Madonna's critics like to call her "desperate," the ultimate insult. But I think her desperation is what makes this album rock, what makes it push into new territory while still serving as a massive reinforcement of her 30-year-old brand and what, more simply, helps to make all of her new songs work as well as they do.

She has a desperation, but it's a helpful desperation—to be taken seriously, to have and to cause fun, to make people squirm, to provoke thought. In other words, Madonna still has not lost the artistic neediness that defines all creators and that almost invariably evaporates after so many creative cycles. She's still hungry, still wants it. In fact, she wants it back.

MDNA has neither the introductory boldness of Madonna nor does it forge an entirely new sonic path as did Ray of Light, but it radiates knowledge of self and wisdom alongside an equal dose of unabashed hedonism. It's a huge gamble at her age, but one that pays off for both Madonna and any open-minded, open-hearted listener still in awe of the reparative power of dance. Overall rating: 8.7/10

TRACK BY TRACK...

"Girl Gone Wild" opens the album with a sarcastic act of contrition that sounds more defiant than despondent and with an ensuing song perfect for a divorcée in her dirty thirties (or 53 in Madonna years). It also kicks off a dizzying series of self-referential lyrics and themes (especially those religious Screen shot 2012-03-26 at 2.50.16 PMones) by managing to sound almost identical to "Sorry" and "Celebration" in patches. The lyric "girls, they just wanna have some fun" has led some listeners to note a hat tip to Cyndi Lauper, but interestingly, Lauper changed the original dirty meaning of Robert Hazard's song to make her version a neo-feminist anthem while Madonna returns it to the brothel. Why this intoxicatingly reckless song is so controversial among fans (and some critics, one of whom calls it "no-fun professionalism") is beyond me—it's not classically Madonna in its feel and is probably the song most eager to please Top 40 programmers (a losing cause—they've had little L-U-V for Madonna for a decade), but it's as good a club banger as she's ever produced, on par with "Deeper and Deeper" even if it suffers for having come 20 years later. Madonna, or the character "Madonna", throbs with recently unrepressed des-i-i-i-i-ire and at least for me, that feeling slams right into the listener like brass balls on a businessman's desk eternally passing energy back and forth. Forgive me or don't, I love this song unrepentingly. 10/10

"Gang Bang" starts with a Ray of Light-esque flourish before immediately plunging into a relentless bassline one can almost imagine Madonna heard and improvised an entire song to. This is a plus in that it sounds spontaneous and exciting. It's a minus in that it's not going to win any awards for its sheer poetry. No matter. Giddy in its function as a techno-rant, the song uncoils with an intentionally humorous, dark intensity reminiscent of a Quentin Tarantino flick—hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, especially if the bitch has access to a firearm. What should be a self-indulgent mess winds up being a far more convincing and fresher take on a previous song like "Runaway Lover." The singer's contempt is visceral, made all the spookier by the gravely delivery and that long, eerie denouement filled with gleeful proclamations of hellbound violence. "Get up again, over and over?" Hell, no! Instead, "I wanna see him die/Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over." (If the ending is too much for ya, try Tracy Young's remix.) Speaking of Cyndi Lauper, Madonna sounds a fuck of a lot like her on this. This wild track is the best revenge song ever, reminding me of 1000 Fires by Traci Lords and sounding like a song Divine should have sung. 10/10

After two songs devoted to abandon, rebellion, reactive retribution, "I'm Addicted" is an undisguised love song awash in a synth sensory overload. The beginning could be Yaz. So far, Madonna's never been more electronic, not even on Ray of Light, her best work and yet a far more self-consciously restrained piece. If MDNA is a play on MDMA, this is her ode to giving in to unnatural pleasure. Flashes of "I Feel Love" (already more exactly echoed on "Future Lovers"). As tired as I've grown of hearing Madonna describe each new album post-American Life as being a return to the dance floor, when she states, "I need to dance," it reminds me of, "You can dance," except this time it's a need not an option. There's also a definite "Hung Up" (aka ABBA's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" vein going through this. Chants of "MDNA" (which she sings in a way I can't recall her ever singing before) make this one a good candidate for tour opener. 9/10

Calming down, the album gets its first sweet treat in the form of "Turn Up the Radio", which has all the sugar of "Don't Stop" but an anthemic quality that demands it be made into a serious single with serious promotion. Song of the summer status awaits this brilliant yet simple confection. 10/10

Unexpectedly, "Give Me All Your Luvin'" doesn't feel out of place on the album, Super Bowl advert that it is. It actually makes so much more sense in the context of the album than it did as a first (and therefore implicitly best) single. I still like Madonna's ode to the '60s surfer sound, a far more Go-Go's or Toni Basil vibe than I'd ever thought she'd embrace and a continuation of the positivity begun by "Turn Up the Radio". I like Nicki Minaj on this, but it's distressing that she appears on two tracks as does M.I.A.; one-offs would've been better. The salute to Madonna's canon is loud and clear here with "every record sounds the same," familiar from the shadier "Hollywood." 7/10

"Some Girls" perfects the braggadocio that left such a sour taste in my mouth with "Candy Shop", brassily laundry-listing the types of girls Madonna is not ("Fake tits and a nasty mood"?...hmmm) and asserting that, "I'm better than you ever dreamed of." The music is electrifying, sounds unlike any past Madonna songs and more than makes up for the pile of lyrics clichés that distracts, though never to the point of ruination, throughout. As for past works referenced, you don't get much more blatant than "like a virgin, sweet and clean" or "some girls are second best" (as in, don't go for them, baby). 8/10

The first song that for me feels a bit boring and in my opinion the main album's only filler is "Superstar", which features smoking novitiate Lola on backing vocals (making it sort of like an adolescent "Little Star"), a nonetheless pleasing and convincing romp that, like other songs before it (for example, the horrendous "Super Pop" and the long-forgotten "White Heat") uses real-life men as shorthand to communicate: Marlon Brando, Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, Al Capone, Julius Caesar, Bruce Lee, John Travolta, James Dean. The prettiness of this song calls to mind an inferior version of "Cherish" or "True Blue" or "Angel," the latter of which is explicitly called out with "you're my angel." 6.5/10

"I Don't Give A" feels like this album's "Nobody Knows Me", an initially off-putting song with a quickly addictive rap feel and nakedly personal lyrics about all the hard parts of being not only a single working mom but Madonna, all made better with a fiercely brandished shell. "I'm gonna be okay/I don't care what the people say," Madonna sings, and we don't doubt that at the very least, she is going to do what she'd going to do regardless of judgment. "I tried to be your wife/diminished myself/and I swallowed my light" = who says she's lost her ability to write good lyrics? Nicki Minaj's rap fits seamlessly into a song that Madonna is already practically rapping herself. I'd swear "I Don't Give A" is Madonna's second, and far more successful, stab at "American Life". The orchestral finale makes her life sound like The motherfucking Omen! 8/10

"I'm a Sinner" soars, lyrically both light and engaging: "Like the sun, like the light, like a flame/Like a storm, I burn through everything/Like a bomb in the night, like a train/Thundering through the hills, let it rain." Lovely, as is Madonna's girlish vocal and the retro feel. Like "Girl Gone Wild", this tune plays on notions of sin and redemption. But unlike that brazen song, "I'm a Sinner" is about sweetly shrugging and accepting one's transgressive urges rather than shoving them down any throat that comes near. Her listing of Mary, Jesus and quite a few saints reminds me of a religious stab at "Superstar". More than a guilty pleasure, "I'm a Sinner" is an argument that guilt is pleasurable. 8/10

"Love Spent" is one of the album's most special moments, an immediate addition to the very best Madonna's ever written or sung. It opens with a banjo and strings, like a lovely affair between "Don't Tell Me" and "Papa Don't Preach". Leave it to half-billionaire Maddy (I never warmed up to "Madge") to write a love song about money, but even if you'll never have Mo's mo'-money-mo-problems problems, many couples can relate to fights rooted in finances. "You had all of me, you wanted more/Would you have married me if I were poor?" she comes right out and asks in the beginning, sounding as vulnerable as she's ever sounded. But for my money, the best lyric on the album goes: "Hold me like your money/Tell me that you want me/Spend your love on me." This kind of need—and the failure of the love behind it—clearly led to the acting out and anger from previous songs. Is it not true that this album is presented in reverse chronological order? (Another "Hung Up" echo pops up here just before the bridge, and "You played with my heart/Til death do we part" could link this to her last great divorce song, "Till Death Do Us Part" from Like a Prayer. If only she hadn't tossed in that groaner about not being named Benjamin, this would be an 11/10. 10/10

When W.E. was released, fans got a taste of "Masterpiece". While the film wasn't one, the song comes close, a lilting, mid-tempo ballad featuring beautiful vocals and an earnest sense of love and loss, or if not loss, at least the fear of it—"because, after all, nothing's indestructible." (A better title for this album would've been Indestructible.) 9/10

As comfortably warm as "Masterpiece" is, it suffers being sandwiched between "Love Spent" and "Falling Free", the latter of which sounds like Simon & Garfunkel and showcases Madonna's too-often underrated (sometimes by Madonna herself) voice. Picture her alone on a stage at a mic singing this—it's gorgeous and intelligently, perceptively written from the perspective of someone older, wiser and making a new go of it: "When I move a certain way/I feel an ache I'd kept at bay/A hairline break that's taking hold/A metal that I thought was gold." It resonates with the world-weariness of "Drowned World/Substitute for Love", when Madonna was first "feeling so old." I don't remember becoming emotional over a Madonna song until this one. Flawless and mature, a powerful end to the album proper, an album characterized by raw emotion. 10/10

Alain-delon-1The bonus tracks begin with "Beautiful Killer" (another good alternate title for the album or even her lazily nameless tour), but it's a head-scratcher as to why Madonna didn't want this on the regular album. It's not only an earworm (with a faint echo of "Die Another Day" in her delivery) but stylistically unique from the many club-friendly tracks that pave its way. A rollicking pop-rock song devoted to Alain Delon that manages to use Madonna's whisper to great effect in a way we're not used to experiencing. (In other words, it's not a heartless Dita this time but a teasing partner.) 10/10

"I Fucked Up" sounded like it might be painful to sit through based on its title alone, but it's a pretty, self-effacing admission of wrongdoing by a woman who notoriously has "absolutely no regrets." Here, she's not only at fault but spectacularly so—"nobody does it [fucks up] better than myself." I can't remember enjoying Madonna's cast-offs from an album this much, so I can only surmise that she doesn't place these bonus cuts in the same class as "Hey, You," "Super Pop" and the like, but instead intentionally put amazing songs on the special edition to ensure fans would not take a pass and stick with the basic. 9/10

I may be in the minority, but I think "B-Day Song" is unfairly maligned. I think it's a far more charming take on the sound explored out of nowhere on "Give Me All Your Luvin'", love that Madonna has a song about her birthday being a positive thing knowing that critics would likely be trashing her for her age in reviews and find the chorus irresistible. There's also a definite Pre-Madonna song to this welcome bit of girlish whimsy. 8/10

"Best Friend" is yet another relationship post-mortem, but still manages to bring new observations to the table (before getting up and dancing on it), namely themes about male/female power-sharing. Here, as in some other spots, I find myself enjoying the song overall and accepting the lyrics yet still feeling like she could have worked on her wording a bit more to tighten things up and avoid awkward moments like: "You made me laugh, you had a clever wit/I miss the good times, I don't miss all of it." Still, the "filler" on this record is so much better than the filler on Hard Candy. I will also say again that the album might be superior to Confessions On a Dance Floor because it's so much more diverse (like Music) while still holding together as a complete thought. 7/10

The "Give Me All Your Luvin'" Party Rock Remix is annoying and unnecessary; does it really count? Okay: 5/10

Great Review! :thumbsup:

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Mad Madonna still a ray of light

By ISAAC GUZMAN

★★★★

Hell hath no fury like Madonna scorned.

In the four years since she recorded her last studio album, Madonna blew up her marriage to Guy Ritchie, made a tedious film about two supposedly glamorous Nazi sympathizers and allowed herself to be upstaged by M.I.A.’s middle finger in front of 111 million people. Distracted by ventures into clothing lines, fitness centers and international adoption, she drifted from her roots as a pop diva with a knack for popularizing cutting-edge electronic music.

Rage, however, seems to have focused the Material Girl on what she does best. With “MDNA,” she’s made her best record since 1998’s “Ray of Light.” It’s a collection of club tracks and confessionals that drops white-hot disco bombs with laser-guided precision.

Working with “Ray of Light” producer William Orbit, Italian electro producer Benny Benassi and French DJ Martin Solveig, she serves up a succession of intoxicating grooves that stand up to anything Lady Gaga and Beyoncé have sent up the charts.

Where Madge manages, at 53, to actually outpace her far younger peers is her willingness to lay bare the raw, jarring emotions of the past few years. Her break with Ritchie has inspired surprisingly catchy observations of hearts imploding — Sean Penn and Warren Beatty never worked her into such a lather.

“I Don’t Give A” and “I F – - ked Up” (available as a bonus track on the deluxe edition) capture two facets of the horror of being newly divorced. The first rails against the process — “You were so mad at me, who’s got custody? The lawyers suck it up, didn’t have a prenup” — but pledges that she’ll survive and move on. The second expresses the guilt and remorse of a woman who accepts her own role in the split: “I f — ked up, I made a mistake. Nobody does it better than myself.”

Yet even at her darkest, Madonna keeps intact her legendary instincts for a killer hook. “Gang Bang” is a straight-up hater’s anthem. “I thought it was you, and I loved you the most,” she chants, “but I was just keeping my enemies close.” As the Orbit-produced bass track grinds through the mix like a tank tread, she merrily pronounces herself a proud assassin: “Bang bang, shot you dead, shot my lover in the head.” It’s an exquisite kiss-off that’s equal parts meditation on spite and rump-busting dance-floor workout.

While most of the album wades through the debris field of her failed marriage, there are glimpses of brighter times. “Girl Gone Wild” leans on Benassi’s thumping house production for a party track that could have easily been a single from her 2000 album “Music.” Then there are the breath-like keyboards on LMFAO’s remix of “Give Me All Your Luvin’ ” (another deluxe-edition cut) that sound like they were lifted straight from one of the Material Girl’s “Express Yourself” sessions.

Managing to find substance in fury and freedom in tears, “MDNA” is an uplifting testament to resilience. Better still, it’s evidence that Madonna has finally returned from her sojourn as a would-be Renaissance woman and to deliver an album with the guts and groove of her finest work.

:dramatic::bow:

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From what I read since yesterday, no one in their reviews (positive or negative to the album) referred to the wrong input of the songs. I mean the album starts as a club banger and in the middle starts the confessional part that makes the album boring somewhere in the end. All of the tracks from I'm A Sinner, which I swear is so similar to Beautiful Stranger, till Best Friend are not like the previous tracks, they are like mild ballads all together. They seem to fit for another album of Madonna and have nothing to do there in MDNA. I listen only the first 9 tracks of the album, the rest are so random and so not for this album I believe.

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From what I read since yesterday, no one in their reviews (positive or negative to the album) referred to the wrong input of the songs. I mean the album starts as a club banger and in the middle starts the confessional part that makes the album boring somewhere in the end. All of the tracks from I'm A Sinner, which I swear is so similar to Beautiful Stranger, till Best Friend are not like the previous tracks, they are like mild ballads all together. They seem to fit for another album of Madonna and have nothing to do there in MDNA. I listen only the first 9 tracks of the album, the rest are so random and so not for this album I believe.

I hated it and said it once, they put all the ballads (predictable) at the end of the album again. The first half of the album got the best and dancey songs.

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I hated it and said it once, they put all the ballads (predictable) at the end of the album again. The first half of the album got the best and dancey songs.

You see? I'm not the only one. :p My sister who heard the album said the same thing. Half dancefloor filler, half ballad infused. meh

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Guest Not4Pussies

so what, you guys wanted Falling Free to open the album?

i actually think Gang Bang should have opened followed by GGW

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Guest Xanthium

But the only ballads on the album are Masterpiece and Falling Free. I don't know why people think Love Spent is a ballad. And even if you did, that's only 3 "ballads", not half the album.

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I like the opening of the album till the middle. The rest is full of ballads. Not even a dance song in between of them. It's boring to listen to 6 ballad/mild songs all together that's what I mean. And some of them are not good songs for my taste

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Guest Not4Pussies

I like the opening of the album till the middle. The rest is full of ballads. Not even a dance song in between of them. It's boring to listen to 6 ballad/mild songs all together that's what I mean. And some of them are not good songs for my taste

that's why there's iTunes or Spotify. you can arrange the tracklist as you please, no?

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Guest Xanthium

I like the opening of the album till the middle. The rest is full of ballads. Not even a dance song in between of them. It's boring to listen to 6 ballad/mild songs all together that's what I mean. And some of them are not good songs for my taste

I just don't see how you consider I Don't Give A and I'm A Sinner to be mild songs. I mean to each their own of course. I'm just trying to understand your point of view. I guess I can see how you'd consider Superstar and Love Spent to be mild songs (in comparison to the earlier dance songs) but I wouldn't consider them to be ballads.

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that's why there's iTunes or Spotify. you can arrange the tracklist as you please, no?

I usually buy physical albums, so from what I heard thousands of times the last 4 days, I still consider the tracklist so wrong from the 8th track onwards. :)

I just don't see how you consider I Don't Give A and I'm A Sinner to be mild songs. I mean to each their own of course. I'm just trying to understand your point of view. I guess I can see how you'd consider Superstar and Love Spent to be mild songs (in comparison to the earlier dance songs) but I wouldn't consider them to be ballads.

It starts with a bang and then slows down a bit. It hasn't the variety that I expected. That's all

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Guest Xanthium

It starts with a bang and then slows down a bit. It hasn't the variety that I expected. That's all

Well I do agree with that, that it changes gears with Superstar. If you like the songs and not the order, I recommend switching up the track list to your liking. I did it immediately and am VERY pleased with the album now. I got rid of GGW, GMAYL, and Superstar entirely and added I Fucked Up, Beautiful Killer, and Best Friend. But if you don't like the entire second half, I guess the rearranging won't work :( Well at least you'll have a killer dance EP :thumbsup: You can call it The MDNA Monster :D

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Guest Xanthium

Isn't the point of an album to start one way and finish another? Sort of like a journey?

Yeah I agree. Albums should always be a journey even if they're eclectic. I don't mind if an album starts out real hard and then slowly changes into something slower. It think the only thing that would drive me insane is if the sequencing was like "dance song-ballad-dance song-ballad-dance song-ballad etc". That kind of discordancy would irk the shit out of me. I'm really big on things flowing nicely.

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Yeah I agree. Albums should always be a journey even if they're eclectic. I don't mind if an album starts out real hard and then slowly changes into something slower. It think the only thing that would drive me insane is if the sequencing was like "dance song-ballad-dance song-ballad-dance song-ballad etc". That kind of discordancy would irk the shit out of me. I'm really big on things flowing nicely.

Gang Bang should have opened the album. Superstar should be left off any version of the album and never see the light of day.

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Guest Xanthium

Gang Bang should have opened the album. Superstar should be left off any version of the album and never see the light of day.

TESTIFY!

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Yeah I agree. Albums should always be a journey even if they're eclectic. I don't mind if an album starts out real hard and then slowly changes into something slower. It think the only thing that would drive me insane is if the sequencing was like "dance song-ballad-dance song-ballad-dance song-ballad etc". That kind of discordancy would irk the shit out of me. I'm really big on things flowing nicely.

All of Madonna's albums start out with the big poppy tracks first and then get more emotional and 'deep' towards the end dating back to Erotica really. Bedtime Stories, ROL, COADF even HARD CANDY. Even American Life now that I think about it.

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robert christgau gives an a-, so it has to be good :)

http://social.entertainment.msn.com/music/blogs/expert-witness-blogpost.aspx?post=07d35c45-3d75-4910-aca3-87c842bbe30c&vv=1300

Madonna: MDNA (Interscope)

Forget the four "Deluxe" extras, not one of which except maybe the pretty little "I F***ed Up" improves on the updated '90s arena-dance power tracks of the first 43 minutes, although they top the deadly-dreamy closer "Falling Free" as well as the penultimate "Masterpiece," which begins "If you were the Mona Lisa . . . ." Granted, I could mock "Ooh la la you're my superstar/Ooh la la that's what you are" just as easily. But lyrics have never been where she showed off her gorgeous brains, and anyway, the 10-track mix I propose as an alternative goes out on a real song called "Love Spent": "Hold me like your money/Tell me that you want me/Spend your love on me/Spend your love on me." Nikki Minaj shines bright, but she's no more crucial structurally than the cheerleaders who garnish "I'm Addicted" at its close and embellish "Give Me All Your Luvin'" throughout. Play loud. She's smart and she's proud. A MINUS

the last time she got an a was on music.

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