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eu4ria

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    MADAME X album reviews

    in ARCHIVE - The MADAME X Forum

    Posted

    The Economist did a write up.

    https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/06/19/madonna-remains-scandalous-but-for-the-wrong-reason

     

    Quote

    Madonna remains scandalous, but for the wrong reason

    These days it is her refusal to stop making new music, not the music itself, that raises eyebrows

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    IN 2016 Madonna was honoured at a music industry awards ceremony. In her speech, she reflected on her 34 years in the business, her extraordinary success as the best-selling female artist of all time and her talent for shocking people. She said something that was, true to form, startling. “People say I’m controversial. But I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around.” 

    Asked to identify Madonna’s most scandalous moment, this is not the answer that most people would give. Foremost among her many provocations are the music video for “Like a Prayer” (1989), which the Vatican condemned as blasphemous, her simulation of masturbation during her Blond Ambition tour in 1990, and “Sex” (1992), an erotic photo-book chronicling her sexual adventures with both men and women. The idea that these events could be eclipsed by the mere longevity of Madonna’s career seems odd, until you remember how sexist and ageist the music industry is. In her speech she said that a woman who continues to make music even as she gets older is treated as guilty of a kind of sin. Well, here I am, Madonna seemed to say. Guilty. 

     

     
     
     

     

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    She remains unrepentant. Madonna, who turned 60 last August, is back with a new album. Released on June 14th, “Madame X” finds her in her darkest mood since “American Life” (2003). “Things have got to change,” she sings on the hypnotic “Batuka”, “there’s a storm ahead”. Enter Madonna’s alter-ego, Madame X. A spy working undercover as a teacher, nun and cha-cha-cha instructor—but who nonetheless never removes her conspicuous crystal-encrusted eye patch—Madame X is on a mission to cast off the chains of the oppressed. Who the oppressors are is never entirely certain, but they must be located in Brazil, Colombia, Portugal and Atlanta, Georgia, because it is the sounds of those places that supply the soundtrack to her quest. 

    Much of “Madame X” seems calculated to appeal to younger listeners. Her persona is on-trend: it’s cool to care about the issues, and Madame X cares. “God Control” laments the fact that nothing is being done to stop mass shootings in American high schools; “I Rise” starts with a clip from an impassioned speech by Emma González, one of the teenage survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. “Madame X” is woke—sometimes a little too woke. On “Killers Who Are Partying”, she sings about identifying with the downtrodden (“I will be gay, if the gay are burned / I will be Africa, if Africa is shut down”). On “Come Alive”, she sings “All I want is peace, peace, peace”. 

    Over the years, Madonna has hired producers to help her weave the genres du jour into her music, and sometimes those producers have gone overboard. If you didn’t already know that “Hard Candy” (2008), produced by R’n’B hitmakers Timbaland and the Neptunes, was a Madonna record, you might have thought the singer was Britney Spears. By contrast, the producers of “Madame X”—among them Mirwais and Diplo—understand how to update her sound. On “Crave”, Madonna sings over the skittering high hats and big bass of trap, smoothing the edges of this spare, flinty style of hip-hop until it becomes a wistful lullaby. On the sweaty, sultry “Medellín”, Madonna’s melancholy lyrics give new depth to reggaeton, a genre of Latin dance music as seductive as it is superficial. 

    “Madame X” is no “Erotica”—there are no controversies on this album—but that is not to say that Madonna isn’t experimenting. Since she moved to Portugal in 2017, she has been exploring the sounds of the Lusophone diaspora, as is audible on the most intriguing tracks on “Madame X”. “Batuka” riffs on batuque, a traditional dance music from Cape Verde notable for its call-and-response structure, but adds syncopated handclaps and crescendoing drums to hypnotic effect. With its sirens, whistles and chirrups, “Faz Gostoso” is a carnivalesque take on Brazilian funk on which Madonna and Anitta, a Brazilian singer, rap in Portuguese.

    All the same, this reviewer could not help longing for a glimpse of Madonna the provocateur. She is right to argue that she is taking a stand against the music industry merely by making records at her age, but she could be more ambitious. During the height of her career, in the 1980s and 1990s, Madonna presented society with a new model of femininity: the woman who was unafraid to brazenly flaunt her sexuality. She inspired a slew of imitators from Ms Spears to Miley Cyrus. Now that Madonna is 60, and still backed by millions of fans, the opportunity has arisen for her to scandalise the public once again. She could show listeners what it is like to be an older woman, one who embraces her sensuality yet is not afraid to reveal her wrinkles and talk about menopause. That would be truly surprising.

     

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