Madonna - Hard Candy (3/5)

Since there's a new Madonna album just around the corner (and a Madonna Super Bowl Half Time Show only hours away), I thought maybe I'd revisit her last album, "Hard Candy," partly because I haven't heard the whole thing in over 3 years, shortly after I wrote the review below, and partly because I'm looking to migrate some of my various ramblings from all over the Internet in the past to to this blog.  I listened to it again last night, just to see where we're starting from with this new release, and then I remembered that I had reviewed it here.

Nothing has really changed from what follows, except that I probably like it even less than I did 3 and a half years ago.   And some sort of temporary insanity caused me to rate it 4 stars.  I'm scaling that back to 3.  At the most.  I'm being very generous. She was definitely phoning it in for the last full-length album of her career-long tenure at Warner Bros.  It's as garish and uninspired as its cover.

Everything I wrote after the track-by-track review still holds true. Even moreso, when considering songs like "Celebration," "Revolver," and "Masterpiece" that have been released since this album.

New Madonna Video - Give Me All Your Luvin'

I might have something to say about this at a later date if I ever figure out wtf is supposed to be happening here.  She looks good, though.

I like the song, though.  Not her best.  And nowhere near one of her best lead singles.  But it's fun and extremely catchy.  The quality is miles ahead of the nonsensical and even-more-pandering "4 Minutes."  A friend on facebook described the video (or song?) as Madonna continuing to struggle for relevancy.  On the contrary, I think she's finally given up on trying to stay relevant. Hard Candy, the new songs from her last GH album, and this seem to show her just going with what works more than anything else. Gone are the days of the thought-provoking, button-pushing Madonna or the one that had her pulse on the barely underground trends and sacrifcing them on the altar of Pop as the backdrop to a new Re-Invention. I like the song well enough. It's catchy and fun. Lightweight to be sure, but then that's what made her golden in the 80's.  She's just trying to stay afloat in a sea of mediocrity. I'm fine with it. I can still enjoy it to some extent, but she's not the balls-out hero to me she used to be. You could say she is still trying to stay relevant by being just as irrelevant as everything else out there.  And she finally seems to have given up on giving a shit about music videos, like everyone else did 5 to 10 years ago.