Before I begin, let me give you some background... I am not some hip hop kid come to slate Madonna... I am a Madonna fan, or was, that is to be decided... Growing up in the 80's, like many little girls, I used to want to be Madonna, imitating her through dress ups, theme parties, and spending a great deal of my youth dancing around the house with mum singing her songs... As I got older, hit high school, and found boys to be a much better pass time then dancing around the house she released Erotica, and her Sex book, which peaked my interest in her again, by the time I was 15 I was dancing in gay clubs with Michelle and Madonna was the queen of the scene, and I loved her... Eventually I immersed myself in other music scenes and she was left behind, until 'Confessions on a dance floor', and she was back in my life... I really enjoyed Confessions, for what it was, I loved it for dancing at gay clubs, and for working out at gym, it got a lot of play in my car and on my ipod...
When I first started hearing about Hard Candy, before it had a name, all I knew was that it was supposed to be a departure from Madonnas sound and urban/hip hop, which scared me... I had exceedingly low expectations and visions of her rapping like on 'American Life', for a whole album... Lucky for all of us, that isn't the case! I don't think its too far removed from her usual sound - just enough for it to be wrong, it does seem like she is trying for an urban/dance fusion, which blatantly doesn't work, and maybe at times she wants it to be a little edgy, and changes it up, but that doesn't seem to work either, it just comes off as confused...
The intro is possibly the worst intro ever, Candy Store, made me want to turn the album off within the first 30 seconds, never a good sign, a song about candy, done a million times before and probably done a lot better... And onto '4 Minutes', the video to '4 minutes' scarred me for life, I was eating my breakfast one morning and it came on tv, the last thing I want to see when I am eating my breakfast is a 49 year old grinding her c*nt in my face... This set the tone for the song which I found pretty overbearing, but for a couple seconds at a time I really don't mind the beat... There are a couple of tracks which will probably be big on the dance scene 'Give it 2 me' & 'Dance 2night' (begging to be remixed)... 'Shes not me' feels like a really bad version from a different perspective of 'Thief of hearts' - which is a much better song... The only songs I actually liked were 'Miles away' which feels like the only honest, not contrived song on the whole album and manages to tap into some emotion, and 'Incredible' which somehow even with the confused fusion still manages to make me smile... 'Devil wouldn't recognise you' comes through with a dope beat but still falls below the line for me...
Overall the album comes off all over the place and contrived, not very memorable... Maybe its time for Madonna to accept what she does best and just do that... Minus the grinding and sexuality saturation, age with class lady, sexy doesn't always equal sex...
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