Madonna returns with her 11th studio album ‘Hard Candy’ riding the crest of a wave that was formed courtesy of her previous album ‘Confessions On A Dancefloor’. Once again Madge uses her industry muscle to assemble the musical crème de la crème of producers and collaborators for her latest outing.
Forsaking the deep seated Eurocentric flavour of her previous release this time round she has gone distinctly urban, there’s a host of tracks with input from the likes of Timbaland (expect trademark “wiki wiki” noises all over the shop), Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams (Neptunes et al). The first single was an impressive opening gambit with the exception of the video with Madge still so keen to try and convince the world that she is not nearly fifty.
The rest of the material carries on in the same vein and if this was a debut by some young upstart then I might be a little bit more forgiving. However for a Madonna album this is a case of trying incredibly hard and only managing to come away with limited success. Yes, there are some pretty decent moments and as is the case with her more recent output she has a more pronounced self-awareness lyrically (although how she sees herself is almost certainly not the world sees her).
The finer moments include ‘She’s Not Me’ with her narrative addressing the presence of being superseded by a younger model (but one who will never be her). Then there is ‘Miles Away’ which simply works on its own merits as a purely decent pop tune. Sadly these moments are offset by such dire ones as ‘Spanish Lesson’ that is a sub Timberlake affair with the driven acoustic riff he used with much better effect on his own work.
In all honesty, the reason this album doesn’t shine quite as brightly as its predecessors could be factored down to the collaborators themselves. Some of the contributions seem a little like things they considered using on their own albums but perhaps didn’t consider worthy. As a result they have been farmed out for use on this album.
Madonna can still teach many of the new pretenders to the throne a thing or two and she’s not one to be written off just yet (as if that could be done anyway, she’s one of those comeback queens who will be standing in the smouldering rubble when the rest of us are dead). Let’s consider this a minor career blip, wait for the album to hit mid price or at very least try it before you buy it.
