Reinvention. Let’s get it out of the way, straight off the bat. Because if there’s one word that’s perma-linked to Madonna it’s the reinvention tag. Whereas us non-Queens Of Pop simply change and evolve as we grow older and are gifted more life wisdom, Madonna reinvents, remakes and remoulds herself in ever more inventive and surprising ways. The reason her multiple morphings are given more significance than civilians (or even other A-grade celebrities) is because over the past 25+ years on the famously fickle, eat-its-own-young planet pop she has loomed so largely and loudly on our cultural landscape.
Put it this way: imagine a world without Madonna. Try. Just for a nanosecond. You can’t manage it, can you? Because, basically, it can’t be done. She’s like The Queen or McDonalds. She’s so knitted into the fabric of our collective consciousness it’s impossible not to be aware of her and have some kind of take on her life and what it means. So when Andie MacDowell in Four Weddings And A Funeral says, “Less than Madonna, more than Princess Di” in response to how many notches are on her bedpost, we get the reference to Madonna’s rep as a sexual omnivore. Or in Pulp Fiction, when two characters debate over whether Madonna had a pot belly in the video for 'Lucky Star', we start thinking immediately, “Did she?”
That’s because she’s become a cultural shorthand for all sorts of things, all of which makes reviewing her music - the thing that remains the one job-description constant in a prodigiously pie-fingering career - something of a challenge. You have to cut through all the coverage, comment and criticism to excavate the artist like a CSI stripping back layers in order to reach to the real picture.
And so to Madonna’s music and her typically much-hyped new album, Hard Candy. If you actually close your eyes and try as best you can to empty your brain of all the circus Madonna stuff, you come to a startling conclusion: if this didn’t have Madonna’s name over the shop door would the album even have been made at all? Because, in all honesty – and Miss Madonna is big on confessional candour – it simply isn’t good enough.
The Pharrell Williams-produced opener, 'Candy Shop', sets the album’s low-bar standard. Full of forced smutty double entendres (“Come on in to my store, I got candy galore” - Really, Madonna? Really?) and embarrassing Simon Says simple lyrics – “I got Turkish delight”, is, quite frankly, unforgivable and could have come from the mouths of one of her toddlers – it never seems to achieve lift-off; it limply labours on, looping in on itself until it climaxes with a pointless micro-rap from Williams that utterly lacks the hypnotic charm of his Neptunes work.
Next up is debut single and transatlantic mega-hit, '4 Minutes', a crash-bang-wallop of a marching beat ruined by its own overblown production – care of collaborator du jour Timbaland, who fails to cast his edgy magic over the five tracks he stewards – so much so that Her Madgesty winds up sounding like a guest artist on her own track. The real guest performer, the inexplicably popular Justin Timberlake (bringing sexy back? I’ll be the judge of that, ta), barely warrants a mention his vocal is so minnowed and muffled by the big-noise bells and whistles drowning all nuance out. And don’t even get me started on Timbaland repeatedly intoning “Mad-DON-nuh!” like some village idiot. What’s that all about? Does he think we might forget who she is? Mind you, judging by the track you’d never know she was even there.
Ironically, for someone so adept at team selection throughout her career, the album’s major flaw is Madonna’s choice of collaborator. Well, strictly-speaking it’s not the choice, but rather the quantity on the pay roll. There’s simply too many. Instead of showcasing the crème de la crème of contemporary talent, it smacks of too many cooks so the album lacks a cohesive, convincingly coherent sound. Individually, they may be great artists but en masse they end up as a mish-mash mess competing for space at the mixing desk, which only goes to prove you can have a credit list that reads like a who’s-who of the American music industry and still not get the all-round, polished product you were after.
And herein lies the rub. After over a decade working with European talent, Madonna has reverted to the motherland to mine the home-grown musical pool in order to re-engage with the lucrative US market where she once reigned supreme but in more recent years has lost her crown to the whippersnapper likes of your Britneys and Christinas. Embracing the current American musical idiom, though, doesn’t add anything to the Madonna canon by taking her in a new, exciting direction but feels more like a cynical plan to swell the pension coffers, which is what her career has become; a careful bullet-point plan.
There’s no spontaneity, no abandon, no through-your-head-back joy, which - considering the album is supposed to be about the Dionysion delights of the dancefloor and Madonna is forever encouraging us throughout to get up off our arses and shake a tailfeather – is strange; everything comes over as so controlled and contrived. But, then again, that’s Madonna all over. Nothing can be left to chance. Life must be neatly timetabled-up and put in the Blackburry. You sense that Madonna’s working pop life will follow the same tight trajectory of album-tour-album-tour until there’s enough pay-dirt in the bank to put the kids through private school. Or until her gym-addled knees pack in. One of the two.
Admittedly, there are a few flourishes when Madonna does what she does best, namely straight-up dance-pop, and the album does - briefly - take flight. 'Give It 2 Me', despite the fact Madonna has obviously been spending far too much time in East End boozers because the underbeat is pure Chas and Dave, is a synth-soused 80s time-capsule of a track showing her at her bragging bravado’d best: “Show me a record and I’ll break it/I’ll go on and on.”
The undisputed, stand-out star turn, though, is 'She’s Not Me', a pure paean to the unadulterated impure pleasures of retro disco down to the Donna Summer 'Bad Girls' toot-toots and handclaps as Madonna bitch-slaps a rival for her man’s affections, fiercely marking her emotional territory.
Actually, if there is a theme to the album it’s territorial pissing - Madonna laying down the gauntlet to the next generation of pop princesses and reminding them she’s still top dog. Even the artwork is in-yer-face combative. Legs akimbo and staring dead-eyed down the barrel of the camera lens, she’s decked out in faux boxer drag ready to take on all-comers. She may like the metaphor, but it’s one of the most depressing images of postmodernism’s prima image-maker ever taken. Über-photographer Steven Klein has managed to make her look like a trailer-trash desperado, all crotch-shot neediness and cold-hearted chaviness. Aren’t you supposed to spread the legs when you’re a popstrel in the ascendancy, not when you’re reached the dizzy star summits? Should someone of her stellar status be clinging to pole position so nakedly, even?
Despite the boxing-ring chic, the problem with Hard Candy is it lacks the pugilist’s sucker-punch. Hailed by the critics as a resoundingly successful return to early-career form, its identity is too confused to ever be one of Madonna’s classic albums. I’m a lifelong Madge fan, but being part of her congregation means your patience reserves are often pushed to exasperation point when she goes off on one her misguided ‘artistic’ journeys – via the Sex book, any acting bar Desperately Seeking Susan, her role as prim children’s author – and this feels like one of those times when, no matter how much you want the end-product to be blinding, it’s too patchily disappointing to pass muster.
Ultimately, Hard Candy is like one of those boxes of chocolate you get at Christmas. Some of the flavours hit the sweet-spot and you can’t get enough of them and others make you gag and you have to palm them off on your Nan when she comes round, which speaking as a fan is a bit of a missed-opportunity shame.
Hard Candy, by Madonna
Label: Warner
Released: 28 April 2008
ASIN: B0015D3Z4O
Make up your own mind about Madonna's Hard Candy and buy it online now. Also, check out the video below for Madonna's '4 Minutes', featuring Timbaland and Justin Timberlake.