Madonna - Hard Candy

Genre pop Publisher Warner Bros. Records External Links Madonna's Website

Madonna’s latest album, Hard Candy, is tantamount to your friend’s mom who wears the Forever 21 style, belt-width skirts with knee-high boots and a cleavage bearing top, because she’s “the cool mom.” The fact the neighborhood boy who mows the lawn (Justin Timberlake) sleeps with her (supports the album) because she’s a MILF (music icon/legendary femme) just cements her delusion that she’s still thirty years old. The last thing I want to hear is a woman who is half a century old singing about pulling “boys” on the dance floor and making thinly (and sometimes not at all) veiled allusions to sex; fortunately, Hard Candy will be Madonna’s last album through Warner Bros. Records. Let’s hope it is her last in general where she tries to be trendy and hip.

“Candy Shop” is a song that once again, uses the metaphor of candy for some good lovin’. Let’s leave this track title to 50 Cent. He did it first and he did it with a better cadence to his lyrics over a more developed beat. I’d much rather hear Olivia sing “Keep goin’ till you hit the spot” than a woman who is old enough to be my mother tell me that her “sugar is raw, sticky & sweet” over Britney Spears’ discarded beats with flat backup vocals. Apparently this magical candy store, which is simultaneously Madonna herself and some sort of retail business, contains a dance floor as well, but requires heat to function. I’m confused. Thank God Pharrell comes in (as some sort of Santa Claus figure or another omniscient force that’s associated with candy) to tell me that he knows his larger world cities and he sees us.

“Give It 2 Me” employs every known cliché in modern pop history. Even the spelling of the track title (it’s a “2,” when she means “to!” EDGY!) reeks of desperation to hold onto the title of “Pop Goddess.” I imagine that the song is meant to be sexy, but the opening beat only conjures images of a fat man playing a tuba in a marching band for this lady. The fat man with a tuba meets up with a 70s disco queen employing the use of a bell. This pair then runs into Finnish DJ Darude and his seemingly omnipresent song from the 90s, “Sandstorm.” The song reaches its pinnacle when the awful techno beat gives way to Madonna looping her own voice saying “Get stupid.” It gets better. We then jump back in time with Pharrell saying “to the left, to the right” a la “Tootsie Roll.” What? No handclaps?

Unless you have the backing of ten previous record-breaking albums and a cast of A-list producers behind you, you’re not going to get anywhere with putting together almost an hour of over processed and hackneyed material. There is an issue, when the “hip and young” half of your duo has no clue what the first single of the album means (“4 Minutes”) and is at a loss for words on the Ellen Degeneres show. There is another issue when the older half is screaming “I’m relevant” at the top of her lungs for the entire duration (56:13) of an album. It makes her less so. Either put down the riding crop and age gracefully, or embrace the dominatrix persona and bring back the Madonna from your last good disc (Bedtime Stories) Remember “Human Nature?” Good times. At least she doesn’t rap about lattes on Hard Candy.