MDNA Press Reviews

[danny1999]

Great review

[Plaything]

is it just me or are the women giving her a much harder time than the men?

I noticed that too actually but was to lazy to post it.

[dollhouse]

is it just me or are the women giving her a much harder time than the men?

Two semi negative or not so glowing reviews are by a man and a woman.

[Nikki]

Two semi negative or not so glowing reviews are by a man and a woman.

I only know about the one of the stylist & this new one which are both written by females. but maybe I missed one other "ok" review by a male writer. anyway it was just an observation

[loowee]

"Hard Candy Part 2"??????

I love how both negative reviews make NO sense t all

"Girl Gone Wild is catchy AND forgettable"

"Hard Candy Part 2"

[Guest groovyguy]

"Hard Candy Part 2"??????

I love how both negative reviews make NO sense t all

"Girl Gone Wild is catchy AND forgettable"

"Hard Candy Part 2"

From the review, I sense that she'd already made up her mind about the album before listening to the album. Much like how some critics already made up their minds about her movies before actually watching them.

[dollhouse]

Two semi negative or not so glowing reviews are by a man and a woman.

None have been really negative but Neil McCormick gave her ageist remarks here is my recommend to him and all other bitches who want her sit down and act her age..

Madonna's new album MDNA: track-by-track review

Neil McCormick give's the first verdict on Madonna's forthcoming album MDNA.

11. Masterpiece

Sweet, gentle love song with a Spanish guitar loop, a light beat and flowing melody, filled out by synthetic strings. The theme song for her critically panned film W.E., she may have been thinking of Prince Edward when she wrote “honestly, it can’t be fun / To always be the chosen one”, but the message applies just as much to Madonna herself. For most of this album she seems determined to demonstrate that a 50-year-old mother of four can still cut it with the kids at the club. Yet, perversely, she sounds most at ease when she calms down a bit and acts her age.

12. Falling Free

The first five tracks of MDNA are all produced by hit techno teams and the results are digitally sparkling, catchy and contemporary. The second half of the album is presided over by William Orbit, and while not as immediately hook laden, there is more sonic depth and invention. But only on the album closer is there a suggestion of a musical life beyond the hit parade. With a cascading, beatless melody and poetic, free form lyrics, Madonna’s pure, dreamy vocal has her declaring herself “free to fail.” It is a song about letting go, by a woman who, most the time, seems to be holding on very tightly indeed. Although out of character with the rest of this youth-focused electro dance pop confection, it suggests that Madonna may actually have musical and emotional places to explore when she eventually tires of setting the pop pace.

MDNA is released on Interscope on March 26

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopmusic/9127093/Madonnas-new-album-MDNA-track-by-track-review.html

Suggestion to Neil McCormick. Available at your local grocery store almost 20 years ago:

[SoulFighter]

Astonishing reviews !

[BabyDietrich]

One bad review:

http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2012/03/08/madonnas-mdna/

Oh and look it's a woman again, how typical...

[Guest]

Oh and look it's a woman again, how typical...

These bitches are just jealous that their pussies are gonna close up shop before they ever reach 53.

[Mensch]

Oh and look it's a woman again, how typical...

It's not so bad...just not "great"...whatever, fuck the bitch! Our Queen is back! 18 err 19 days left? Less if there's leak?!

[Supernatural]

maybe she liked Hard Candy and it's a good review

but seriously the couple of less-than-gushing reviews don't have much to say so maybe they just didn't pay attention.

[Guest groovyguy]

[smirnoff_ice]

I want the the times review! Do we need to subscribe to read only a review?

[cosmic_system]

[smirnoff_ice]

Thanks a lot, much appreciated.

[Mensch]

I don't want to be like them, I just want to have some fun? Either they got these lyrics wrong or there is an album edit we don't know about. I'm sure they got it wrong. Good review nonetheless!

[cocobutter]

[Guest groovyguy]

The Times

Madonna punches out younger rivals, not least Lady Gaga, with her new album, argues Will Hodgkinson

A lot rides on Madonna’s new album. Her acting career never took off. W.E., her biopic of Wallis Simpson with the clunky parallels to Madonna’s own life, is a misguided exercise in narcissism. But on MDNA Madonna successfully returns to what she does best: hi-energy disco, as thrilling as it is unhealthy. Central to a 360-degree deal worth a reputed £40 million, the album, which features a host of producers and cameos from Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., sends out a clear message: there can only be one queen of pop.

Girl Gone Wild

Produced by Euro dance sensation Marco Benassi, this features a big thumping beat, an ultra-low electro bass, and Madonna’s voice, speeded up and put through a vocoder, carrying a pop song so cheesy it could have fallen off the last Britney Spears album. That’s not a dignified place for a 53-year-old woman to be, but this is one of those creations in which a series of unpleasant ingredients make a tasty meal. With lines like “I don’t want to be like them, I just want to have some fun,” it’s liberating in its meaninglessness.

Gang Bang

An ultra-modern musical setting gives the opportunity for Madonna to don a murderous sexpot persona. Over police sirens and an air of urban malevolence, Madonna lists, in a deadly calm voice, the horrors she will impart on a rival. These include not only shooting him/her in the head, but also going to Hell so she can shoot them all over again. Studying the Kabbalah doesn’t seem to have brought inner peace.

I’m Addicted

Here’s a return to the Madonna of old with a light piece of disco. Giorgio Morodor-style keyboard squiggles come and go, while a rave piano arrives half way through. Madonna sings about love feeling “like a drug, and I can’t get enough”. The Demolition Crew add club-friendly sounds.

Turn up the Radio

This is another dancefloor smash that will go down well at G.A.Y. “There’s a glow of light, calling you to go outside,” she sings, reviving the spirit of classics such as Ray of Light and Like a Prayer. Uplifting, escapist pop.

Give Me All Your Luvin’

As performed at the Super Bowl, with guest vocalists Nicki Minaj and M.I.A acknowledging their debt to the queen by spelling out her name in cheerleader shouts. It’s a great song until M.I.A ends her spot by saying “I don’t give a shit.” She sounds like she had second thoughts halfway through, so it comes out as “I don’t give a shirt.”

Some Girls

Not a Rolling Stones cover but another club tune, this one with odd electronic squiggles from producer William Orbit. She sings about “crying in a limousine”, presumably to reassure us that the rich and famous have problems too.

Superstar

The album’s first electric guitar before Madonna pays her lover a series of compliments. “You’re like Brando on the silver screen,” she says, which any man would like — more than “You’re like Caesar, stepping on to the throne.”

I Don’t Give A

The missing word of the title might well be “fig”, since this is the song in which Madonna comes to terms with the end of her marriage to Guy Ritchie and resulting loss of position in the British upper classes. “I tried to be a good girl, I tried to be the perfect wife,” she claims, before pretty much admitting this is a lie by saying in a robotic voice, “And if I was a failure, I don’t give a … [fig]”

I’m a Sinner

The best song on the album finds Madonna rejecting her Catholic upbringing and claiming that she’s happy to be a sinner. Once the cross goes in, however, it never comes out, and Madonna admits as much: “St Sebastian don’t you cry, let those poison arrows fly.”

Love Spent

This unremarkable disco filler is intended to pad out the album before the glorious climax. The music is boring but the words are intriguing: “You played with my heart, till death do us part, that’s what you said.” Is this an arm outstretched to Guy Ritchie?

Masterpiece

Madonna seems to be reflecting on the sadness of life’s impermanence here, as she sings about nothing being indestructible while admitting that she fell in love with someone’s work, or their masterpiece, rather than the person within. Rather schmaltzy, but with stirring strings, not unpleasant.

Falling Free

MDNA ends with a song of heartbreak that is tinged with cautious optimism. With her best, most natural vocal delivery on the album, Madonna sounds genuinely emotional — rare for her — as she describes a break-up and the bittersweet feeling of freedom its aftermath brings. A classical setting brings all the drama you want from Madonna: she may be strong, but she cries real tears. “We’re both free, free to go,” she sings, dabbing at the corner of her eye with a handkerchief.

[Guest groovyguy]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2012/03/first-listen-madonnas-new-mdna-is-an-adrenaline-rush.html

Los Angeles Times

First listen: Madonna's new 'MDNA' is an adrenaline rush

March 8, 2012

Madonna's new album, "MDNA," which comes out March 26, is her first record in four years and her first since leaving her longtime home with Warner Bros. Records.

The singer arrives untethered to offer the first of a three-release deal via LiveNation/Interscope -- and her newfound freedom isn't limited to her professional life. Since her last album, "Hard Candy" in 2008, she and husband Guy Ritchie have divorced, and the combination of events seems to have pushed her to let loose both physically and lyrically.

This isn't a review of the album -- that will come closer to the release date. But as someone who's been privy to an early copy of the record, here's a little teaser.

On first listen, "MDNA" draws from the range of the singer's styles -- some hard dance tracks, some introspective ballads -- while adding new producers into her world. These include, most notably, Frenchman Martin Solveig and the Italian producer Benny Benassi, best known Stateside for his work on Chris Brown's "Beautiful People." William Orbit, who has been one of Madonna's key point men since "Ray of Light," is a continued presence and helps pace the album's waning moments with softer textures, including the luxurious "Love Spent."

Madonna's collaborations with Solveig, of which there are six on the 16-song deluxe version, are, overall, the kind of hard house productions (made with her underappreciated producer, Mirwais Ahmadzai) that helped make her 2000 album, "Music," such a vibrant injection. One of the best bonus cuts on "MDNA," "Beautiful Killer," is supported by a '70s-era disco string section. (Solveig will be performing as one of the dance-tent headliners at Coachella in April.)

And "I Don't Give A," produced by Madonna and Solveig, is a Daft Punk-style banger in which she addresses divorce: "I tried to be a good girl, tried to be your wife/Diminished myself, and swallowed my life/I tried to become all that you expect of me/And if it was a failure, I don't give a ..." There's a dose of dubstep -- replete with deep bass-drop -- on the track, right before Nicki Minaj jumps in to reinforce Madonna's argument: "When I let a dude go that's his loss/I was cutting those checks I was his boss," she sings, before declaring, 'I'm not a businesswoman, I'm a business, woman."

The final of the bonus tracks is by far the most personal; called "Best Friend," it's a love letter to a former beau, and listening to it you can't help but draw the conclusion that its intended recipient is Ritchie. For someone who's so often "a business, woman," "Best Friend" is one of the most personal and moving songs of her career.

[Guest groovyguy]

http://www.capitalfm.com/artists/madonna/news/mdna-album-reviews/

Madonna 'MDNA' Album Reviews: Singer Is "Still A Force To Be Reckoned With"

8th March 2012, 17:40

Critics praise the Queen Of Pop's 12th studio album ahead of its release.

Madonna's new album 'MDNA' has received positive reviews from critics.

The 12-track album, which is the singer's 12th studio release, was played to journalists at Abbey Road Studios in London this week.

Released on 26th March, the album features the tracks 'Give Me All Your Luvin'' and 'Girls Gone Wild'.

Reviews for the album have been largely positive, with the Daily Telegraph saying the album is successful at "balancing the twin requirements of radio-friendly hooks and dance floor drive".

The Daily Mirror said Madonna was "still pushing the envelope" and a "force to be reckoned with" within the music industry.

Attitude gave the album four out of five stars, while The Guardian acknowledged that 'MDNA' has some "brilliantly bonkers moments".

Madonna made her live comeback at the Super Bowl in February, where she was joined by a host of guest stars including Nicki Minaj, M.I.A. and Cee Lo Green.

[Guest groovyguy]

http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/67172854.html

03/08/2012

Madonna's MDNA wins rave first reviews from music critics

Music critics have been treated to a first listen to the diva's new album MDNA and have given it a resounding thumbs up.

Journalists were invited to listen to the album at Abbey Road's Studio 2 in London last night with The Sun claiming it's a 'return to form'.

The Daily Mirror said Madonna's latest offering makes recent albums by her pop rivals Lady Gaga and Britney Spears appear 'try-hard and sloppy'.

Its critic added: 'Tracks including I F***ed UP and Best Friend (featured on the Deluxe version of MDNA) are clear odes to her failed marriage with Guy Ritchie. Whilst tracks like Gang Bang (!) leave you wondering who exactly the star wants to shoot in the head. The lyrics screech: “Bang, bang, shot you dead. Shot my lover in the head.

'One thing you need to wipe clean from your brain immediately as the album starts is the fact Madonna is 53. She sounds 25. In fact, if this album was released by a Pop Princess then it wouldn't be out of place.

'This is one girl that still knows what she's doing and she's in control.'

The Independent claimed Madge was still 'top of the pops'.

'MDNA represents a determined, no-nonsense restatement of the Madonna brand following the lacklustre Hard Candy, on which her hip-hop collaborators failed to apply their talents as rigorously as they might,' said its critic.

The Guardian describes the album as a mixture of 'terrible French accents, amazing pop raves and heartfelt ballads'.

Its review adds that MDNA is an 'album that's been trailed by weak singles, but contains brilliantly bonkers moments'.

The first single to be taken from the album was Give Me All Your Luvin' featuring Nicki Minaj and MIA.

Madge performed the track at the Super Bowl but found her return to the stage marred by rapper MIA, who decided to give the crowd the finger.

Her next single will be Girl Gone Wild.

[Guest groovyguy]

http://blog.musicomh.com/musicomh/2012/03/track-by-track-madonna-mdna.html

08 March 2012

TRACK-BY-TRACK: Madonna - MDNA

Madonna-mdna

Yesterday we repaired to London's Abbey Road Studios to waggle our ears just the once at Madonna's new album MDNA. The Queen Of Pop's first album for new label Interscope (Polydor in the UK), it sees her join forces with Italian housemeister Benny Benassi and France's Martin Solveig, and team up again with Ray Of Light and Music cohort William Orbit.

Ahead of a standard-format review nearer to MDNA's release date (26th March), Laurence Green runs through the album track by track...

Girl Gone Wild

Kicks off with a spoken word intro – already placing it in classic Madonna territory. It’s that ego-centricness of Confessions On A Dancefloor all over again, but with even louder beats. There’s the slick veneer of the commercial dance number here too, echoing recent Greatest Hits teaser single Celebration. The vocals aren’t Madonna’s best – a defining feature across the album – but when the clubland backing is so explosively loud, that’s hardly a detracting feature. There’s even a persistent energy of sorts to the vocals that, twinned with the buzz-saw synths, firmly establishes Girl Gone Wild as the sound of ‘now’. With its aping of the ‘girls just wanna have some fun’ refrain, there’s a real '80s sentiment beating at the heart of the track too.

Gang Bang

"If I see that bitch in hell I’m gonna shoot them in the head again" – Madonna’s brawling for some action here, via a filthy, almost Erotica-esque onslaught of breathy vocals. It teases and plays, proper between the covers stuff; which you’d kind of expect from a song with a title as blatantly lewd as Gang Bang. At moments it all sounds like something off Daft Punk's Tron soundtrack; hard techno, brutal, uncompromising and industrial. Gang Bang feels vital and on point in a way Madonna hasn’t sounded in years. There’s police sirens and an obliging dubstep middle-eight (there was always going to be one on the album, wasn’t there?) – Everything about Gang Bang is menacing and comes on at full-throttle, right down to Madonna’s flippant remark of "I’m going straight to hell".

I’m Addicted

The burbly techno synths continue here, again it’s all very Tron-esque. If Confessions was dancey, I’m Addicted is dancey with a capital D. The bass positively explodes outwards and it’s refreshing to see Madonna putting out something with real punch. For an artist of her age and experience, she could easily rest on her laurels, and I’m Addicted is about as far away from that as it’s possible to get. Some rave synths get whacked into the mix too, like it’s 1991 all over again – this leads into a hyper-fast outro of the "MDNA!" hook, putting the track forward as a real centrepiece model for the rest of the album.

Turn Up The Radio

This is where the real Madonna melodies of old surface, mining the kind of exuberant stuff that characterised her '80s greats – that playful spirit is well and truly back. As obvious as its airwaves-courting title might be, this is *the* big radio hit on the album, the kind stations up and down the country will lap up in the summer. There’s an incredible abundance of optimism here, a carefree abandon in thrilling degrees of magnitude. Here Madonna is the American queen triumphant, proclaiming "I wanna go fast and I’m gonna go far" in an up-and-at-em call of readiness for life and anything it chooses to throw at her.

Give Me All Your Luvin

In hindsight, and with the hype and drama of the Superbowl performance behind her, the truth is that Madonna doesn’t really need Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. on the album. In the wider scope of MDNA as a whole, they pale into the background – though to be fair to them, they’re a much better fit than Timbaland and Justin Timberlake were on Hard Candy. Clearly, the aspect of sisterhood combined has something going for it though, and it’s nice to hear Madonna so rejuvenated and youthful here, having some fun and laughs with her ‘hip’ pals.

Some Girls

The first of the five William Orbit tracks on the album, and it kicks off with yet more of the palpably massive levels of bass that mark out the record’s opening tracks. The industrial techno theme is continued too with a massive wedge of robotic treated vocals snaking out across the song. There’s a harking back to the more electronic moments of Music and American Life, everything pumping with the air of Madonna as superior, as the pinnacle of her contemporaries. As with Orbit’s Ray Of Light era productions, the track thrives on a sense of experimentalism that still remains effortlessly commercial at the same time.

Superstar

Ironically, Superstar isn’t one of the William Orbit tracks, but it sure sounds like one. It’s the album’s ‘rock’ track and stands as another prime single candidate. The melody is sublime, the kind of thing long-time Madonna fans have been waiting years for, and released here, it’s like a cleansing burst of pure radiance. Even the slightly shoe-horned in dubstep section can’t detract from the song, it’s that good.

I Don’t Give A

Here, the industrial influences meet hip-hop beats amongst a grinding cacophony of sound and borderline raps from Madonna (though thankfully it never reaches the silly, pretentious levels of the ill-fated American Life single). "I’m gonna live fast, and I’m gonna live life," she claims, with a sort of wry simplicity, as if that’s all there is to it. It’s probably one of the album’s weaker tracks, stemming chiefly from the fact that – as Hard Candy proved – Madonna just can’t do ‘urban’ (Bedtime Stories excepted). Nicki Minaj pops up again and then the track descends into a weird cod-orchestral outro. It’s regality defined, and Nicki eagerly clamours to hold up Madonna as such: "There’s only one queen, and that’s Madonna, bitch."

I’m A Sinner

That trademark psychedelic William Orbit sound is out in force here, with crunchy guitar riffs once again suggesting the Ray of Light era. There’s some lovely tinkling, celestially imbued synth bits and tribal sounds going on too. At times, it all feels a bit like Madonna’s about to don her Earth Mother makeover, and by any measure, this is definitely the album’s most religious track as she reels off names of saints.

Love Spent

The opening moments sound akin to the country n’ beats combo of Music’s Don’t Tell Me and while Love Spent takes some time to get going, it’s worth the wait. In the final choruses, everything all comes in at once, backed up by thunderclap beats – as far as firmly defined ‘album tracks’ go, this is a pretty good effort, even if it feels a little by-the-numbers at times.

Masterpiece

Yes, it might be a Madonna ballad of a certain esteemed ‘class’, and yes, it might be on the W.E. soundtrack, but that’s probably where it should have stayed. After the hi-energy pace of the rest of the album, Masterpiece feels out of place.

Falling Free

Compared to Masterpiece, Falling Free makes a far better stab at positioning itself as a ballad that fits into the wider context of MDNA. Echoey piano lines and string sections set up a lovely trippy vibe that shares more than a little in common with the likes of Drowned World/Substitute for Love. Falling Free sounds properly sumptuous; there’s a richness to its production that serves to close the album down as a real assertion of Madonna ‘the artist’. Her vocals here are excellent, both moving and tender in a way that genuinely touches at the heart. Like scented rose petals and jasmine cast loose on water, Falling Free has a rippling beauty to it that is utterly enchanting.

Beautiful Killer

The first of the bonus tracks, and of all the Martin Solveig-produced songs on MDNA, this sounds most stereotypically of his ‘style’. As is often the wont with bonus tracks, Beautiful Killer is pretty disposable, a bog standard clubland floorfiller – but the middle-eight is rather good.

I Fucked Up

A slow grind of swirly synths and guitar that feels restrained from ever becoming properly great because of that really quite cringeworthy title. It’s just one step too far on the crudeness barometer. But as with Beautiful Killer, the pace ups in the closing moments and the song improves with impressive agility. There’s also a neat reference to Sorry as Madonna recycles her "Je suis désolée" line.

B-Day Song

Featuring M.I.A., B-Day Song feels like the obvious counterpoint to Give Me All Your Luvin, with M.I.A. feeling far more at home here than she does on the album-proper. It’s bratty with a Material Girl punkiness to it but the chorus hook is predominantly more annoying than catchy, with only the choppy guitar riffs helping salvage affairs.

Best Friend

Another wary dip into a more urban soundbase, there’s some cute blippy GameBoy-style synths to play with here, but for the most part Best Friend sounds like an unfinished demo or drum machine exercise. There’s a bare boned minimalism to the track that, as with Beautiful Killer, sets it very much out as ‘just’ a bonus track.

In summary, whereas Hard Candy felt like it was grasping at fading trends, MDNA is far more Madonna just being Madonna. And that usually turns out best for everyone involved.

[ADUSTIO]

[Shane]

Still can't get over the diversity of responses to Beautiful Killer, from practically cumming to meh, feels like bonus track!

[Nessie]

Guy Oseary just posted:

[SkyHigh76]

I love that 'Gaga Who?' headline

[Guest groovyguy]

http://popdust.com/2012/03/08/madonnas-mdna-got-nicki-quoting-jay-z/

Madonna's "MDNA" Got Nicki Quoting Jay-Z

We’re not going to do another promising/horrifying rundown of the latest MDNA preview/review (this one in the Los Angeles Times), because by now we’ve essentially learned about it all: dance, debauchery, don’t-give-a-fucking. There is, however, one more thing we feel compelled to point out, just because it’s pretty cool:

There’s a dose of dubstep — replete with deep bass-drop — on the track, right before Nicki Minaj jumps in to reinforce Madonna’s argument: “When I let a dude go that’s his loss/I was cutting those checks I was his boss,” she sings, before declaring, ‘I’m not a businesswoman, I’m a business, woman.”

OMG THERE’S DUBSTEP! No. What we feel compelled to point out is that last line, a reworking of a much-quoted lyric from Jay-Z: “I’m not a businessman. I’m a business, man.” It’s one of the most popular Jay quotes according to a site we just now learned existed and well-known enough to lead off one major bio of the rapper. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of thing Nicki would be quoting, and better yet that it’s on what looks to be one of MDNA‘s better tracks.

[BabyDietrich]

Guy Oseary just posted:

Naturally!

[Butter9]

Wow Thanks a lot !