Andrew Sullivan, rock critic, on Madonna's new album.

"Her new album is the best she has ever done" is the new pink.

whatever

Barney Sumner just punched himself in the face because he only wishes he wrote that line.

That said, the new record is probably Madonna's most infectious start to finish record since her first, though with the exception of the "dork" lyric the words are largely lazy and banal self-empowerment tripe, full of mangled half-metaphors.

So, basically, Sullivan only about half OTM.

I can't stop enjoying the shameless superficiality, joyous rhythms, and '80s disco uplift of Madonna, Like a Virgin, and True Blue. Maybe if Confessions on a Dancefloor had a lot of more of these qualities and a lot less Kaballah/new age nonsense, it would be as good as those albums. The admittedly fabulous "Hung Up" and the "New York"/"dork" rhyme do not by themselves a classic pop album make.

thank god he left some wiggle room for weird al yankovic.

Somehow manages to fit the tediousness of a bad 12" extended mix into a radio edit. Gold into shit.

This would be true if she didn't keep emphasizing her lyrics (as in Confessions on a Dance Floor). Her very own, built-in "pretension to seriousness" is always fair game.

"That's why I called it Confessions on a Dance Floor," Madonna explains. "Most people equate dance music with being fluffy and superficial; it's just about having fun. That's fine, but I can't write 12 songs about nothing. My feelings or point of view inevitably sneaks in."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-10-27-madonna_x.htm?POE=LIFISVA

That said, I like the record a lot. And Nine Inch Nails, for that matter. This boils down to the lyrics vs. music debate, which is to say (I guess like Alfred's "Star Wars" mention) that the words don't matter ass long as the special effects are cool.

Now, she has morphed into a thick, hairy, masculinized
SKANKER-BIATCH, and her 'new songs', really really
suck.

She used to be a cute feminine virgin, gosh how I miss
the Madonna of yesteryear, BEFORE her estrogen levels
plummeted and her testosterone levels exploded.

Not figuring into his equation: serious people who like to dance to dance music.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y109/fez_/atariface.gif

She co-wrote "Live To Tell' with co-producer Patrick Leonard (still her best collaborator).

what the fuck? what a freak.

Was the album recorded in New York? If otherwise, then... Oh well, nevermind :)

Anyway, I consider this her best work in ages. Not her best work ever - that will be the perfect pop album that was "Like a Prayer", but certainly her best dance oriented effort. While the previous two albums found her a bit on the sideline of the electro revival, using a somewhat too eccentric producer, the new album finds her in the excact same musical landscape as Kylie Minogue or Annie, only better because she is such a great songwriter.

I was a bit sceptical upon hearing the way too sample-dependent "Hung Up"-single, but I absolutely love this new album, and luckily the samples (they do occur!) are less obvious in the other tracks. Certainly better than I expected!

If you listen to "This Used To Be My Playground", co-written with Shep Pettibone, you clearly hear similarities in the way of building the tune with "Live To Tell" and the "Like a Prayer"-ballads, proving she has certainly had an important hand in the songwriting herself (and not only the lyrics, which were obviously her own, at least from "Papa Don't Preach" onwards)

Other than that, I agree that Patrick Leonard is her best songwriting collaborator, but at the same time, her possibly most boring producer. It worked greatly with the slower songs on "Like a Prayer", her least dance oriented album, but Leonard has never had a good hand with more dance oriented material. So, back in 1998, Leonard writing and William Orbit producing was a match made in heaven kind of.

To me, the new album sounds way more 80s than the latter two mentioned above.

That being said, to me, the 80s the way I loved them (analogue synths and "fake" drum machine sounds) ended around the release of "Like a Virgin" anyway :)

This is just not an image I want in my head.

Not bloody likely. But it is a good album.