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Various Professional Reviews for Rebel Heart
Topic Started: Feb 22 2015, 03:35 PM (1,515 Views)
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Rock Star From Mars

Here is a review of "Loving For Love"

This person gave the song four out of five stars (there's a graphic on the page showing 4 / 5 stars by the Madonna review).

Madonna Living For Love
  • by Amy Davidson
    This week's new singles reviewed: Madonna, George Ezra, Nick Jonas

    Madonna: 'Living For Love'

    Oh, break-up songs. The stuff that sympathetically patters around in the background as you shamelessly succumb to the stereotypical routine of too much alcohol, bad (delicious) food and mortifying drunk dials.

    Except for Madge, who's having none of your wallowing thank you very much. "Took me to heaven and let me fall down/ Now that it's over I'm gonna carry on" she sings over throbbing percussion and a rousing melody eagerly nudged along by elated synths and Diplo's soaring production. We knew there was a reason for all the hype...
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More professional reviews of Rebel Heart -

Madonna, Rebel Heart, review: 'she’s in the game again'
  • Rebel Heart pairs classic songwriting and contemporary adventure in Madonna's least desperate album in years, says Neil McCormick
'Rebel Heart' review: Madonna's album bares her soul in a way she never has before
  • by Jim Farber
    NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, February 27, 2015, 2:00 AM

    Imagine a world where Madonna hates being photographed, where she considers quitting her career and admits to suffering haunting demands that she “act like the other girls.”

    It’s the same world where pigs fly and figure skaters crowd the deepest recesses of hell.

    Yet, somehow, that’s the world occupying significant parts of Madonna’s revelatory new album, “Rebel Heart.”

    More credibly than any previous work, Madonna’s latest pulls back the curtain on her life, letting us see her hurt and yearning.

    It also finds her licking her wounds over a breakup with a far less powerful boy toy — presumably the decades-her-junior dancer Brahim Zaibat, who she saw for three years, ending in 2013.

    Maddy has said that she chose the album’s title to express two sides of her character: the defiant warrior and the aching lover.

    While a decent portion of harder, bitchier odes do turn up, the album as a whole presents the softest, most sincere portrait of the star we’ve ever had. In the process, “Rebel Heart” coheres, offering a swift rebuke to whoever prematurely dribbled out its tracks in a dizzying variety of leaks.

    It also marks a clear move away from Madonna’s last two works — “Hard Candy” and “MDNA.” Both soared on energetic pop, creating two of the most enjoyable, catchiest albums of her career. “Rebel Heart” goes for something more substantial and — dare I say? — mature.

    Along the way, the long, 19-song album offers its share of groaners, missteps and songs more indebted to trendy production than solid craft. But its best moments boast some of the most finely structured pop melodies of Madonna’s 32-year career.

    .... All this isn’t to say Madonna doesn’t chirp, sneer and bray in places. In “Holy Water,” she’s in late-period Joan Crawford mode, putting down all comers with an unseemly pride. Then, in “b***h I’m Madonna,” she nicks a slogan from someone far beneath her, referencing Ms. Spears’ old “It’s Britney, b***h” line.

    Madonna’s harder side finds a focus in “Unapologetic b***h,” where she plays a spurned sugar mama. She revels in banishing an entitled young stud back to his impoverished past, a mirror, most likely, of the breakup with Zaibat.

    The same scenario reels through two other songs: “HeartBreakCity” and “Living for Love,” though in the latter, the loss becomes a spur to celebrate a love that may yet come.

    The music in “Living for Love” implicitly references the past, but in other passages Madonna invokes it directly. The lyrics to “Veni Vidi Vici” offer a virtual career retrospective.

    The title track brings an even broader life assessment — looking back at her attempts to fit in as a youth, as well as her years of acting out with provocative gestures for their own sake.

    Never before has Madonna copped to the latter motivation in a song. In the end, she accepts the consequences, and embraces the bravery, of her character fully enough to create her own answer to “My Way.”

    The beauty of the song’s melody helps ease its self-involvement. As a lyricist, Madonna has always had trouble making her personal songs universal.

    .... On the other hand, her persona has such cultural resonance at this point, it has become part of all pop fans. Her name is a metaphor for strength and endurance. That makes her potent enough to admit where she’s weak in “Joan Of Arc.” Here, she says that each critique drives her to private tears. In “Wash All Over Me,” she ponders either running from, or accepting the end of, her career.
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She's singing about her ex boyfriend on this album, they say. Doesn't that make her Taylor Swift?

Track-by-track review: Rebel Heart - Madonna

Excerpts
  • Fortunately, in the final analysis, the music wins. Rebel Heart is a fine collection of sturdy pop tunes in which Madonna finally allows herself to look back and sometimes pilfer from her peak periods of the late 80s and early 2000s. Aside from a couple of clunkers, there is plenty for Madonna’s hard-core fan base, the casual listener and aspiring producers to enjoy here.

    Unapologetic B***h
    Where Madonna genuinely grieved on her last two albums over the end of her marriage to the British film director Guy Ritchie, her latest ex, Brahim Zaibat, doesn’t receive that courtesy on Rebel Heart. Over a peppy reggae track, Madonna gives him a smackdown. Producer Diplo channels his former work with the mercurial Sri Lankan artist and former Madonna collaborator M.I.A. by adding a smattering of air horns and military drum beats.

    lluminati

    When the demo version of the track was released this year, it rang alarm bells. While Madonna’s voice has never been her strongest asset, she was paired with some staid dance synths and cheesy acoustic guitars. Thankfully, Kanye West rescued it by throwing out the lameness and added the dark and claustrophobic sounds of his seminal 2013 album Yeezus.

    B***h, I’m Madonna (featuring Nicki Minaj)
    Another production triumph that is nearly derailed by some awful, ego-swelling lyrics. Diplo and the British beat-maker Sophie conjure up a deliciously slithering beat that is a bona fide dance-floor filler. Minaj also rises to the task and delivers another blisteringly bonkers rap.

    Hold Tight
    Discussions of Rebel Heart being too long are legitimate. Hold Tight is the first of a few tracks that should have been cut. Its atmospheric keyboards are sleep-inducing, with Madonna mumbling something about holding on and being strong.

    Joan of Arc

    A Madonna track harping on about the unforgiving media was always going to sound a bit rich. The anaemic production here doesn’t help as she laments: “Each time they write a hateful word/Dragging my soul into the dirt, I wanna die”. Yeah, I am sure Madonna’s verbal-bullying victim Lady Gaga would agree.

    Body Shop

    There is a hodgepodge of sounds here, with warm synths, plucked banjos and hollow drums as Madge metaphorically riffs on the open roads and repairing her heart. It’s uninspiring but probably a great commercial jingle if you can afford it.

    Holy Water

    Another throwback and the most scandalous Madonna track this decade. The brooding bass-filled verse gives way to a poptastic chorus that uses hedonistic sound effects harking back to her 1990 Justify My Love. It is safe to say the lyrical content deserves the parental advisory sticker.
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Julia Griggs
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NME review/crybaby fans

ETA (3/5/15 10:45 p.m.): I never wanted to change any fans' mind. But I don't know whether to SMH or laugh at their derrangement.
Edited by Julia Griggs, Mar 5 2015, 10:45 PM.
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Edit:
You can retweet this story from here (NME review)

and from here (about fans complaining about the NME review)
---------------------
Julia Griggs
Mar 4 2015, 12:06 PM
From that review:
  • By Gavin Haynes , March 4, 2015
    Super-producers including Kanye and Diplo can't save Madge's unconvincing 13th album

    Release Date: March 9, 2015
    Producer: Madonna, Diplo, Ryan Tedder, Dahi, Michael Diamonds, Avicii, Mike Dean, Kanye West, Toby Gad, Billboard

    Three years after 2012’s EDM-driven ‘MDNA’ album, ‘Rebel Heart’ finds 56-year-old Madonna still trying to pass herself off as a teenager. It’s a disconnect that has become increasingly grating.

    Rather than the return to ’80s underground New York promised by lead single ‘Living For Love’, this 13th album is a scattergun attempt to hit all the bases of modern pop. Instead of having one producer at the helm, as ‘MNDA’ did with William Orbit, Madonna hired the biggest chart-humping names she could find.

    Avicii co-writes three tracks: ‘HeartBreakCity’, ‘Devil Pray’ – reminiscent of Lady Gaga’s crazed 2013 dance tune ‘Aura’ – and the ballad ‘Wash All Over Me’.

    Kanye produces three: the classy, ‘Vogue’-referencing ‘Illuminati’, ‘Holy Water’ and ‘Wash All Over Me’.

    Diplo drives four: ‘b***h I’m Madonna’, ‘Unapologetic b***h’, ‘Living For Love’, ‘Hold Tight’. Drake associates Dahi and Michael ‘Blood’ Diamonds take two: ‘Devil Pray’ and ‘Body Shop’. Chance The Rapper (trendy) and Nicki Minaj (bankable) rap on ‘Iconic’ and ‘b***h I’m Madonna’ respectively.

    .... The punchy ‘HeartBreakCity’ – a song Lorde would dismiss as too juvenile an interpretation of a break-up – illustrates that however on-point her musical instincts, this persona just isn’t believable any more.

    ... Twee ballad ’Body Shop’ hinges on a similarly tortuous lyrical conceit (“My transmission’s blown… You can keep it in overnight/You can do whatever you like”).

    Ultimately, ‘Rebel Heart’ feels like a wasted opportunity. Trite self-empowerment anthem ‘Iconic’ informs us that there’s only two letters difference between Icon and I Can’t. Sadly, there are also two letters between class and ass.
Regarding this part:
  • Rather than the return to ’80s underground New York promised by lead single ‘Living For Love’, this 13th album is a scattergun attempt to hit all the bases of modern pop. Instead of having one producer at the helm, as ‘MNDA’ did with William Orbit, Madonna hired the biggest chart-humping names she could find.
I was just saying that a few days ago on another thread. I've said before she hired way too many producers for this thing, and the fact that she did so, and that she has 452 songs on one album seemed like a shot gun approach to ensure that at least one of the songs will become a hit.

She doesn't know what is popular anymore, so she goes into over-drive and includes every current genre on the album.

Also, if she had confidence, she would have stuck with 8 or 9 solid songs, not 435 million of them. To put that many songs on one album screams insecurity or doubt, IMO.

The lyrics to Body Shop do sound very moronic.

((There are more reviews in a post below this one))
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I've come across a few new reviews today.

In the two or three I've seen today, they will say one or two songs on the Rebel Heart album are pretty good, but they seem to feel that the album is a dud, that most songs are terrible. Here are the reviews.

(You can retweet this first story from here Here)

Album review: Madonna, Rebel Heart

  • by Lydia Jenkin / New Zealand Herald
    March 5, 2015

    ....An ageless star who could keep dancing and singing and churning out records forever - whether anyone is still listening or not.

    But despite that veneer, Madonna has grown older - and so have her fans - so to keep pretending she's the same artist she was 20 years ago, or to keep trying to sound like she's still in her 20s doesn't really work.

    And that confusion about her identity and who she is as a musician in 2015, means instead of presenting an empowering statement, Rebel Heart is a bit of a mess.

    It doesn't really sound like the Madonna of old, it doesn't sound like Madonna reinvented, it mostly sounds like a whole bunch of other people writing music for someone much younger, with Madonna contributing some pretty thin, overly-processed guest vocals.

    It's over-produced to an uncomfortable extreme, and is such a hodge-podge of ideas that just about every track sounds gimmicky.

    There is some half decent pop songwriting underneath all the extraneous faff. Living For Love is a great single, and makes some sense with its uplifting, heartfelt, Madonna-like pop strength.

    And Ghosttown feels like it could've been a decent 80s-tinged hit, but the chorus buries her vocals in a lot of fuzz, and it loses momentum.

    Unapologetic b***h is an interesting electro-reggae cut co-written with Diplo, but Madge's voice sounds out of place, and overly thin in the context of the track. And that's just the first of many moments where her identity as a musician seems lost.

    Illuminati sounds like a trying-too-hard version of Lady Gaga meets MIA, and Iconic could definitely be accused of trying to emulate the success of Katy Perry's Dark Horse. It's not an awful track, but it doesn't really feel fresh, nor does it feel classic.

    b***h I'm Madonna featuring Nicki Minaj is just awful though, while Joan of Arc feels awfully pedestrian, and there's so little substance to Hold Tight, it seems wrong to call it a song.

    HeartBreakCity is one of the few remaining tracks here that sounds like something Madonna should be releasing at this point in her career - it sounds invested, it sounds dramatic, and it sounds true to her past artistry.

    The rest of it, sadly, just sounds confused.

    (2.5 out of five stars)
I especially like this comment:
  • An ageless star who could keep dancing and singing and churning out records forever - whether anyone is still listening or not.
That is a point I've brought up before, but that journalist put it better than I ever did.

Madonna's fans keep saying she's relevant. But how so? Just because she keeps making new material doesn't necessarily mean she's relevant or that what she's producing is any good.

Other bands (some who are older than she is, such as the Rolling Stones) just get on stage and sing their oldies. They don't try so hard to appeal to 15 year old kids.

She, however, does - she tries to get 15 or 20 year old kids to take an interest in her. Maybe that's because of the genre she has chosen, pop /dance music. Or maybe it's her ego.

Madonna: Rebel Heart | Album Review
  • Irish Times, by Lauren Murphy

    .... If you’re the cynical sort, you’d ascribe the kerfuffle to genius marketing. In any case, the indisputable pop icon is back with a tentative bang after 2012’s dodgy MDNA – an album with plenty of big names attached, but few memorable pop hits.

    Madonna is never one to shun progress, and several songs on Rebel Heart see her use the “club banger” strategy first deployed on 2005’s Confessions on a Dancefloor, with help from producers including Aviici, Diplo and Kanye West. Living for Love and Illuminati both zig-zag untidily around Auto-Tune and heavy-handed electropop, while Unapologetic b***h’s scattered reggae stomp is supplemented by synthesisers.

    ...There are several missteps: Mike Tyson’s spoken word turn on Iconic is tokenistic, while her checklist of “sins” on Devil Pray (“We can sniff glue, and we can do E, and we can drop acid”) seems provocative for the sake of it. Overall, though . . . is it safe to say it? All right, then: it’s good to have her back.
Madonna: Rebel Heart review – braggadocio v self-examination on an album of two halves The Guardian
  • Half of Madonna’s 13th album seems concerned with proving she can keep up with the kids. The other half is mature, reflective – and far more affecting

    by Alexis Petridis

    ...Rebel Heart is that long because it is essentially two separate albums. One is wistful and thick with reflections on failed love affairs and intimations of self-doubt. Most shockingly, it occasionally touches on the hitherto-unmentionable notion that Madonna’s career might draw to a conclusion at some point: “In a world that’s changing, I’m a stranger in a strange land,” she sings over wafty electronics and a battery of percussion on the gorgeous Wash All Over Me, “if this is the end then let it come.” The other offers dirty talk and defiant I’m-still-here snarls set to EDM-inspired productions, frequently the handiwork of Diplo.

    There’s obviously no reason why an album can’t contain both. But on Rebel Heart, the two don’t quite gel, perhaps because you get the sneaking feeling that the former might represent the music Madonna wants to make, while the latter is the music she feels obliged to make, in order to compete with whoever the big new female pop star is: listening to a track called S.E.X., you’re struck by the sense of a woman dutifully going through the motions.

    ...There’s an ease and unaffectedness about the title track – a stark depiction of the cost of fame, clear-eyed and devoid of self pity – that’s noticeably absent when Madonna starts carrying on like a rapper on Best Night, informing us that “it gon’ be like this – we gon’ be gangstas tonight” etc.

    ....And, if nothing else, you have to admire the sheer brass cojones of a woman who tells interviewers she never deliberately tries to be provocative – “I wasn’t sitting there in my laboratory of shit-stirring going, ‘This is gonna f-ck with people’” – while promoting an album that contains a song on which Madonna compares her vaginal mucus to holy water, and suggests that Jesus might have enjoyed giving her cunnilingus: “On your knees and genuflect, Jesus loves my p***y best.”

    Elsewhere, however, things go awry. b***h I’m Madonna is a fantastic title in search of a song.

    In lieu of one, producer Diplo comes up with a kind of hybrid of EDM and happy hardcore and throws Nicki Minaj at her most hyperactive into the mix; the result genuinely sets your teeth on edge.

    There are moments when Madonna appears to be frantically chasing after other artists or trends.

    The hook of Inside Out is perilously close to that of Rihanna’s Diamonds, while Devil Pray – a bit of anti-drug sermonising that offers the deeply improbable image of Madonna indulging in solvent abuse – is a pretty transparent attempt by Avicii to come up with something along the lines of his hit Wake Me Up.

    Veni Vidi Vici, meanwhile, starts out a fascinating memoir of Madonna’s early days in New York, before disappointingly devolving into a plonking list of her hits:
    “I justified my love, I made you say a little prayer/ They had me crucified you know I had to take it there.” Mercifully, this grinds to a halt before it can start exploring the less celebrated areas of her oeuvre: “I did Evita too and also Hanky Panky/ And in Sex there was a photograph of me having a wanky.”
Madonna: Rebel Heart — review
  • The tone swings wildly from poor-me break-up songs to hard-edged bangers

    ...The Madonna who snarls “Get off my pole” over sleazy electro-pop in “Holy Water”, channelling both her own hit “Vogue” and the preposterous erotic thriller Showgirls, is vastly preferable to the Madonna maundering about being “scarred and bruised” in dull ballad “Hold Tight”. We want the cape and the attitude: more rebel, less heart. Leave vulnerability to the little people.

    (3 out of 5 stars)
Billboard RH Review
  • by Joe Levy

    Oppositions are the animating tension of Rebel Heart: Biting breakup songs like "Heartbreak City" rub up against some of the most absurdly lubricious sex songs of her absurdly lubricious career, like the Kanye West-co-produced "Holy Water," where she compares her bodily fluids to the song's title, then proclaims, "Yeezus loves my p***y best."

    Declarations of invincibility like "Unapologetic b***h" are undone by laments over the price of fame and the way that even hearts of steel can break. Her decades-long love affair with house continues alongside her decades-long love affair with singer-songwriter confessions. Religious devotion and earthly love are cross-wired in the Avicii-helmed power ballad "Messiah." And songs with spare, inventive beats battle for dominance against expertly realized maximalist pop.

    There's one other tension of note: Her determination to outgrow the past and shed her skin (as she puts it on the title track) tangles with her own back catalog. Three different songs refer to old hits, with "Veni Vidi Vici" stringing together titles like a bad Oscar medley: "I opened up my heart, I learned the power of goodbye/I saw a ray of light, music saved my life."

    If anyone is entitled to honor herself with her own drag show, it's her. Still, these backward glances are odd, and perhaps tip the hand that Madonna albums are now launching pads for Madonna tours, where the old songs can come out and play (indeed, on March 2, she announced a 35-city global run).
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This guy seems to like her album.

He thinks she does not sound desperate on this one but did on her last two or three albums. This conflicts with other reviews I've posted, where other reviewers think she sounds desperate on Rebel Heart.

Madonna shows vulnerability behind 'Rebel Heart'
by Greg Kot

Here are some excerpts (some of his negative observations)
  • The album sags from an excess of songs and multiple personalities.

    The 19 tracks on the deluxe version cram together Diplo's airhorn-blast ravers, wispier confessionals and a handful of daring outliers. Surprisingly, the keeper moments are the most inward-looking. That coincides with Madonna's increasing acuity as a ballad singer; the squeaky-voiced pop diva has developed a warmer tone as she's matured.

    ...The electro-pop ballads "Ghosttown" and "HeartBreakCity" simmer in melancholy as Madonna reflects on a broken relationship (she ended a three-year fling with dancer Brahim Zaibat in 2013). "Joan of Arc" suggests that the steely air of self-confidence that has carried the singer through decades of stirring things up may be just a shield for deeper insecurities.

    In addressing character flaws and missteps with unprecedented candor, she suggests how a onetime provocateur can mature and still remain interesting, if not remain at the center of pop culture as she once was.

    She hedges her bets on the dance cuts. The coldly remote "S.E.X." should be subtitled "Y.A.W.N.," "Holy Water" conflates religion and erotica for the 3,243rd time in Madonna's career, and the reggae-tinged "Unapologetic B …" and the pumped up "B… I'm Madonna" come off as half-hearted attempts to keep up with the younger competition on the pop charts, including Nicki Minaj, who raps on the latter track.

    How much better would this album have been without those missteps and a few more tracks that venture outside of Madonna's comfort zone?...
Madonna: Rebel Heart album review - "Some truly great pop songs"

The negative bit:
  • Where Rebel Heart does stumble, though, is when Madonna is revisits two of her favourite themes: religion and sex.

    It's most explicitly touched upon in the Kanye West-produced 'Holy Water', where orgasmic gasps form part of the chorus as Madonna demands "Kiss it better, kiss it better/ Don't it taste like holy water?"

    It's frustrating because the production is sharp and offers some of the most interesting moments on the album, but the overtly sexual lyrics (which includes "Yeezus loves my pVssy best") feel like forced shock value. Are they gasps of disgust, or are they gasps of pleasure? Of course, shocking the audience is Madonna's business, but here it feels more crass than clever.

    .... So yes, Madonna's 13th studio outing can feel like a confused bag sonically as she continues to experiment with a host of modern music's finest. But ultimately, when she's wearing her heart on her sleeve, Rebel Heart is some of her most captivating work in years.
Why Madge is on a high (even after THAT fall): No stumbles in Queen of Pop's latest album Rebel Heart, writes Adrian Thrills
  • (4 out of 5 stars)

    Rebel Heart is Madonna’s best album since 2005’s Confessions On A Dancefloor, probably because she is at her most relaxed and natural.

    Playing to her strengths while using modern tricks, it is an eclectic mix of dance, pop, reggae and balladry.

    It is also an upgrade on 2008’s Hard Candy, where she struggled to keep pace with trends, and 2012’s cold, machine-tooled MDNA.

    .... Looking at the long list of credits, you could be excused for thinking Rebel Heart was designed by committee. There are collaborations with Swedish producer Avicii, U.S. DJ Diplo, rappers Kanye West, Nas and Nicki Minaj — even a spoken-word cameo from Mike Tyson.

    ... As pop’s original rude girl, Madonna still presses the ‘outrage’ button, although now it veers more towards the silly than the shocking.

    Body Shop relies on car-related innuendo involving engines and gaskets, while deluxe edition bonus track S.E.X. is similarly vulgar.
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Greg Kot usually is a very uncompromising critic, even though he also seems to have a very outdated sense of political correctness - women & minorities = always good/white men = usually sneer worthy.
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Madonna's 'Rebel Heart' is defiant to a fault (album review)
  • by Troy L Smith
    March 9, 2015

    CLEVELAND, Ohio - Madonna has spent much of her career shaping trends.

    She competed with Michael Jackson, Prince and Bruce Springsteen to be the voice of the 1980s. Her 1990s music laid the blueprint for everyone from Rihanna to Lady Gaga.

    Even Madonna's more recent albums, from "American Life" to "Confessions on a Dance Floor," had some bite to them (Thanks to wise production choices). But her latest effort, "Rebel Heart," finds Madonna trying to play catch up rather than set trends.

    Like 2012's "MDNA," "Rebel Heart" is driven by generic party-pop. Still, had Madonna simply stuck to that formula, we'd probably have a more listenable album on our hands. Instead, the same defiant nature that made her a mega star gets in the way.

    "Rebel Heart" gets off to an okay start. "Living for Love" works its way to a danceable chorus driven by Diplo's pulsating beat, while "Devil Pray" utilizes the same religious themes Madonna has been capitalizing on for decades.

    .... But Madonna has a hard time sticking to the script. I guess that's what makes her Madonna.

    "Unapologetic B****" is a boring reggae-infused that strives for attitude. Yet, it sounds like something Lily Allen wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.

    Then there's the Kanye West-produced "Illuminati," a baffling electronic track that's surely supposed to have some deep meaning. But the real theme is as mysterious as Madonna's voice is annoying.

    ... Perhaps, the album's most interesting song is "Holy Water," which finds Madonna copying what Lady Gaga was doing seven years ago (which is sort of like Madonna copying herself).
Be still, the unseemly beating of Madonna’s ‘Rebel Heart’
  • by Chris Richards
    March 9, 2015

    .. And it hurts! Back in 1989, this conquering pop queen was rallying for confidence, freedom and excellence with such ease: “Don’t go for second best, baby!” Now, her music sounds so tentative, so trapped, so shabby.

    Ageism is a cruel and formidable force in popland, but Madonna’s desire to live forever young isn’t exactly the problem, here. It’s the fact that she takes pains to sound so juvenile. The lyrics on “Rebel Heart” feel almost violently resistant to wisdom, as if espousing even the slightest air of sophistication might remind the planet that Madonna is now 56 years old.

    So instead, we get the lumpy neo-reggae of “Unapologetic B----,” in which she sasses a boy-toy: “See you trying to call me, but I blocked you on my phone.”

    Over the bratty dubstep of “B----, I’m Madonna,” she brags of partying so hard that “the neighbor’s p----- and says he’s gonna call the five-o.”

    And on “Devil Pray” — a song that doesn’t have the word “b----” in the title — she rattles off a menu of intoxicants: “We can do drugs, and we can smoke weed, and we can drink whiskey / Yeah, we can get high, and we can get stoned / And we can sniff glue, and we can do E, and we can drop acid. . . .”

    Which one will best help us forget that this is happening?

    As she did on her last album, 2012’s almost-as-bad “MDNA,” Madonna has called on a hodgepodge of hitmakers to help produce these tunes. And this time the list includes Diplo, Avicii, Kanye West and Ariel ­Rechtshaid, all names skimmed off the top of today’s pop marquee. Accordingly, “Rebel Heart” sounds dispassionate and incurious about the world it’s trying so hard to participate in.

    But when things go especially awry, they do so in perversely interesting ways. Like when boxing legend Mike Tyson shows up to play the hype-man on “Iconic.” Or when rap great Nas materializes for “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” a duet in which Madonna raps the autobiographical highlights from her Wikipedia page. For an album so lacking in personality, these quirks go a long way.

    Overall, the spackle holding “Rebel Heart” together is the fact that Madonna is still intent on making dance music — perhaps for a dance floor that now exists only in her imagination.

    Or maybe it’s stadium filler. When she hits the road later this year, we’ll be reminded that Madonna has only two living peers: Bruce Springsteen and Prince. The trio rose to ubiquity in the ’80s, exploiting the black magic of MTV to cement the enduring ideal of pop-star-as-character.
Music Review: Madonna's 'Rebel Heart' Is Lovely

  • Mar 9, 2015, 9:30 AM ET
    By MELINDA NEWMAN Associated Press

    Madonna's 13th studio album, "Rebel Heart," beats with romance and rebellion. At 19 tracks, it's an overstuffed triptych through the iconic performer's life, careening between uplifting dance tracks, like the percolating "Living for Love" — her 44th No. 1 on Billboard's Dance Club Songs chart — and corrosively bitter tunes such as the Avicii-produced "HeartBreakCity."

    ....While the majority of the material falls solidly in the positive, some of the tunes undoubtedly meant to sound fierce and liberating just feel tired, like the electro-clash braggadocio of "b***h I'm Madonna," featuring Nicki Minaj, and the tedious X-rated bump-and-grind of the Kanye West-produced "Holy Water."
This guy says the total opposite of one of the guys above:

Review Madonna channels defiance and devotion on confident 'Rebel Heart'


  • “Rebel Heart” is a far better album than “MDNA” -- cleaner, crisper, more sober, less a flimsy attempt at drawing fickle youth ears and more a sturdy rhythmic platform to showcase some of the most striking tracks she’s made in 15 years (specifically, since “Music,” her last great album).
Madonna's 'Rebel Heart': What The Critics Are Saying
  • March 9, 2015
    by By Erin Strecker

    Madonna dropped Rebel Heart, her thirteenth(!) studio album, in most of the world over the weekend. We already gave it three-and-a-half out of five stars, but what is the rest of the critical world saying about it?

    So far, the review aggregator Metacritic has tracked an average score of 68 out of 100, or, as they say, notching "generally favorable reviews," based on the 15 critics noted so far. Highlights from just a few are below.

    .. Entertainment Weekly had two writers hash it out in a back-and-forth. Kyle Anderson wrote, "I have faith that she'll reveal herself with repeated listens. (Weirdly, for an album mostly designed to move people in a club, it's actually a pretty fascinating headphone trip.)

    This may be damning it with faint praise, but this is Madonna's best outing since 2000's Music, and that earns Rebel Heart a solid B." EW's Adam Markovitz concluded, "I love that she's as frustrating and ambitious as ever--still difficult, complicated, and hard to pin down. But that's how I'd describe this album, too. If Like a Virgin is her A game, and something rocky but rewarding like Bedtime Stories is B level, then this gets a C+."
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This reviewer (first review, from Atlantic) tries to like her album, but he ends end up spotting a lot of problems with it.

He says that her songwriting chops are not up to what they used to be - they never really existed to start with.

Her big hit songs of the 80s were written by other people (eg, Into the Groove, Like A Virgin, Material Girl, Open Your Heart, etc).

Madonna the Tireless - Atlantic

Excerpts:
  • Rebel Heart is a slog, but at least it's trying to be interesting.

    by Spencer Kornhaber
    Mar 10, 2015

    ...But as heard on the record's 19-song deluxe edition (and the deluxe edition is the only thing that matters in the streaming era), the wannabe attention-grabbing elements mostly blur together, just textures of a mass slog of Madonna-ness.

    Sometimes her melodies are good—the plaintive "Joan of Arc" stands out—but most strike the ear as sing-songy and too familiar, especially on the album's many interchangeable ballads.

    The only two true jams are the stunning, trippy “Devil Pray,” whose main hook is a slowed-down demonic voice in a hypnotic loop, and “Unapologetic b***h,” an electro-reggae kissoff where the polysyllabic title pushes Madonna to try something different in the chorus.

    So her songwriting chops aren't what they once were—who can expect otherwise, 13 albums in?

    It doesn’t help that Madonna takes pains to remind people of far better Madonna songs. “Holy Water” samples “Vogue,” and it’s easily the catchiest moment of the album. “Veni Vidi Vici” mentions most of her hits up through “Music,” and “Joan of Arc” has her confessing the problems that her sustained fame has brought her. The glance backwards through time is on-theme for an album this omnivorous, but also gives ammunition to those who say she's out of ideas.

    The same could be said for the fact that she recycles her old Erotica themes with less sophistication than ever. It was 23 years ago that "Where Life Begins" made the case for "eating out"; now, "Holy Water" just switches the oral-sex euphemism from food to worship.

    On "Veni Vidi Vici," she mentions her provocative past by saying sex in a faux-saucy whisper, sounding like a schoolkid scandalized by the word rather than as the adult who helped make it okay to sing about the subject.

    Appropriately, then, “Body Shop” features cartoonish sitar strumming and children's yelps as Madonna makes cars carnal, though she forgets the pretense of metaphor halfway though: "You take the wheel / I'll sit on top."

    Madonna, though, doesn't have to evolve or become more clever at this point. She doesn't have to do anything.

    When Mike Tyson rants on "Iconic" that "I'm somebody you'll never forget," it's actually a poignant reminder that Madonna could quit today and still remain a vital part of cultural history. But she hasn't quit.

    If her attempts to keep pushing boundaries don't quite work out this time, if she hasn't had a bona fide hit in eight years, that's okay. She'll keep working.
Regarding this:
  • Madonna, though, doesn't have to evolve or become more clever at this point. She doesn't have to do anything.
No, she kind of does.

Madonna wants to compete with today's 20 year old singers, and she is trying to appeal to 20 year old album buyers, so she feels that she needs to dress and act as though she is 20.

Also, journalists love to keep using the word "reinvention" in regards to her. If she is going to stop evolving, they need to stop referring to her as being into "reinvention."

She actually stopped trying to "reinvent" herself years ago.

The last big reinvention or two she had was when she went from the Debbie Harry/ Norma Jeane / Cyndi Lauper bag lady look (the Boy Toy era) to chop off all her hair to look like Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s (short blonde hair).

Then she wore her hair long and black for 1989s "Like A Prayer" album.

Everything since then has been a repeat, a cycle of the same two or three personas and looks. She copies Marilyn Monroe for one video, then Marlene Dietrich, then dressed up like a punk rocker for one tour, then back to Marilyn, then copies Jean Harlow, then does Dietrich again, and on and on.

For the past 10 or so years, other than wearing a wig or two in a couple of videos (one a short, platinum blonde Marilyn styled wig for one video, for example), she has mainly worn the same shoulder length, dishwater blonde hair style. She doesn't even try to switch up her fashions or hair styles any more and has not done so in over ten or more years!

Other than that, I guess this review of her RH album was okay.

Other reviews:

Rebel Heart is Madonna's best album in a decade

With Rebel Heart, Madonna bridges her bulletproof past and reflective present
AV Club review

Excerpt
  • Madonna is pretty prolific for a pop star. Since her rise to fame, she hasn't gone more than three years without a new album. Instead of taking breaks or snagging a Vegas residency, she's been in the studio and on the road consistently for 30 years, which is a pretty amazing feat. It's unsurprising, then, that some of those 13 studio albums really weren't great.

    Madonna's heyday, as evidenced by a couple of amazing collections, was somewhere from her 1984 release of Like a Virgin to the 1990 production of the Immaculate Collection, which is to date one of the best albums of her career. During that time period, she was an international superstar who performed on a bed once, and always oozed sex.

    Madonna for half a decade was the only name in pop music that really mattered, and she completely changed the game. Before her, most mega solo acts were men. After her, they've almost all been women.

    Madonna's second heyday was a short, two-album period from 1998 to 2000, when she released both Ray of Light and Music. Since then, she had one good album, 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor, followed by a decade of albums that were decent but not memorable.

    On Rebel Heart, Madonna has made an album that couldn't possibly be categorized as a desperate attempt to stay relevant — as her last EDM-inspired album MDNA was — because it's an album about Madonna the person instead of Madonna the idol. That personal touch is what makes Rebel Heart a good album and an enjoyable listen top to bottom, even when it gets caught up in itself.

    Madonna has stopped lying to herself.

    At 56 years old and 12 albums into what has been a star-studded career, Madonna is no longer a young pop star trying to find her place in a messy musical industry. She doesn't need to experiment with new synths and try to adjust her vocal style. Her sound is distinctive, and, really, the synths and pop beats that made her a superstar in the '80s have never gone out of style.

    There was no need for her to pretend to be younger or fresher, but she did. On her two most recent albums, 2008's Hard Candy and 2012's MDNA, Madonna didn't sound like an important voice in pop music — she sounded like everyone else. Her beats were similar to Kesha, Gaga and Katy Perry. In that mimicry, she lost herself.

    But on Rebel Heart, despite its absurd number of collaborators, such as Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, Diplo, and Avicii, Madonna returns to familiarity — songs about love and religion laden with heavy synthesizers and great dance beats. It's not a perfect album, but at least it sounds like her.
Madonna's 'Rebel Heart' bares passion, soul and sex
  • Madonna’s 13th studio album is an endurance test — both for listener and the indefatigable 56-year-old artist.

    Just the gestation of this album, from conception to release, would take the discipline of the hardiest soul. Thankfully, that’s Madonna.

    Instead of working with one main producer for musical cohesion as she’s done on her best albums, Like a Prayer (with Patrick Leonard) and Ray of Light (with William Orbit), Madonna corralled nine contemporary producers including Diplo, Kanye West, Avicii, Billboard and Blood Diamonds.

    Each track — and there are 25 of them on the Super Deluxe version — features Madonna writing with up to five songwriters apiece.

    Meantime, the demos were stolen and leaked online in December forcing Madonna to complete and rush-release the first batch of six songs. While performing the first single in England last month, she took a hard fall on stage.

    ..Given its length, there are problems. More explicitly than she’s allowed herself in past recordings like the comparatively tame Erotica, Madonna touches on familiar tropes of sex mingling with religion. S.E.X. is a silly, Fifty Shades-level laundry list of desired bedroom aids.

    The Kanye-assisted Holy Water, a catchy ode to cunnilingus, is more memorable. But Madonna goes over the top by likening her bodily secretions to the sacred (“Bless yourself and genuflect”) and closes with a groaner of a line claiming that Jesus, or “Yeezus,” loves her, uh, reservoir, best.

    If that’s a flaw to this otherwise impressive album, Madonna addresses it on the title track: “I spent some time as a narcissist/Hearing the others say, ‘Look at you, look at you’/Trying to be so provocative/I said, ‘Oh yeah, that was me.’”

    “Was?” She still is. Damn her critics and doubters. She needn’t try so hard.
Pop-Up Pop Podcast: Trying to find the pulse of Madonna’s ‘Rebel Heart’

Review: Madonna Becomes the Heel of Pop on the Admirably Shameless 'Rebel ... SPIN, 6 out of 10 stars

Excerpt
  • Not all of the record's more ostentatious moments pop in quite same way. "Illuminati" wastes a potentially explosive, blacklit Kanye beat on a muddled, hashtagging lyric that isn't even as conspiracy-baiting as it thinks it is, while the laundry list of intoxicants referenced sneeringly in the fallen-angel ballad "Devil Pray" makes the song sound like a mid-'80s PSA.

    Slow songs are a problem for Rebel Heart in general — ponderous, over-serious and exhausted with halfhearted Catholic guilt, they bog down what could otherwise be the most fun album Madonna's made in at least a decade.

    But not all the best songs are headline-grabbers, either — "Livin' for Love" achieves communal dancefloor euphoria simply by harkening back to "Vogue"-era house piano and catchphrase chorusing, while "Body Shop" is fun enough in its sllippery, Eastern-flavored production to be imminently forgivable for its groaning cars-as-sex metaphor.
This next review headline is funny, because some of these other reviewers are praising her for supposedly NOT acting her age on this album.

Review: Madonna acts her age on 'Rebel Heart'
  • BY DARRYL STERDAN, QMI AGENCY
    Madonna will try anything once. Including vulnerability, humility, sincerity and — believe it or not — acting her age.

    No fooling. After more than 30 years of pushing buttons and crossing boundaries, pop’s most predictably provocative diva tries to adopt a more subtle, mature and balanced approach on her daring 13th studio album. Even more surprising: For the most part, she succeeds impressively.

    Supposedly titled in reflection of two opposing sides of her personality — fighter and lover — Rebel Heart is in many ways the 56-year-old singer-songwriter’s most emotionally intimate and revealing album. Relatively speaking, of course. After all, this is still a Madonna record. So there’s plenty of titillation, confrontation and domination in the proceedings. No lack of double-entendre lyrics (and sound effects) that blur the line between sex and religion.
Madonna's latest is a mess
  • by Jeff Miers

    Disc review: Madonna, ‘Rebel Heart’

    rating: 2.5 stars

    Madonna’s 13th album is a mess. Sometimes it’s a fun, hot mess. Sometimes it’s almost embarrassing to behold. Which side of the fence you fall on depends how much faith you place in Madonna as a personality capable of providing a sense of continuity throughout an album that is basically a personality crisis set to music.

    ...But when Madonna employs overwrought power ballads to come clean on the costs of a long life with many loves, there is no real fun to be had. This is Madonna as adult contemporary artist. When she acts her age, she’s actually pretty dull. Take from that what you will.

    The best tunes are the most innocuous, like the pure disco raver “Living For Love,” or the shameless kowtowing to EDM’s supremacy that takes place in the “so awful you can’t look away” car crash that is “Unapologetic b***h” and its twin sister “b***h, I’m Madonna,” the latter with a typically freakish cameo from Nicki Minaj.
Meh-donna? Will 'Rebel Heart' be relevant?
  • by Jeffrey Lee Puckett
    Mar 9, 2015
    Madonna's "Rebel Heart" hasn't been getting very good reviews, with the NME wondering if Madge isn't getting tired and more than a bit desperate.

    She certainly signed a lot of checks in getting the album made. The list of top-shelf producers includes Kanye West, Ryan Tedder, Diplo and Drake veterans Dahi and Michael "Blood" Diamonds. Nicki Minaj and Chance The Rapper guest star. And hit machine Avicii co-writes three songs.

    The first single, "Living For Love," certainly isn't distinctive, but let's wait and see. Madonna became Madonna for a lot of good reasons.
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Oh, dear - even Billboard's review was more realistic than buttkissing.

All of those reviews sound bittersweet. No, she won't have to shoot a Joe Gillis, but she should she face the facts & fade slowly away from any closeup.
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These media guys are cranking out so many reviews so quickly, I can hardly keep up. Here is another one.

Madonna Sounds Current — and Empty — on Rebel Heart
  • By Lindsay Zoladz

    If the internet is our modern religion, then Madonna is its Old Testament God — the booming, all-powerful, and unapologetically prickly creator of the overshare.

    You know that whole stance of artful, defiant narcissism that’s now practiced daily by anybody with a social media profile? Madonna basically invented that.

    In the early ’80s, before she was actually famous, she’d traipse around the Lower East Side in tattered lace and jelly bracelets, insisting to anyone who’d listen that someday she’d be bigger than Jesus.

    She believed the dream enough for it to come true. In retrospect, her particular kind of personal-branding pluck seems distinctly millennial, cut through with that now-familiar combination of round-the-clock business savvy and genuine, honest-to-God self-love.

    The first time we see her onscreen in Desperately Seeking Susan, she’s lying on her back, frowning seductively at the Polaroid camera she’s holding above her — taking a selfie, decades before we had the word for it.

    ... Over the past decade, though, this relentless drive to stay fresh, agile, and young has proven more of a curse than a blessing. Madonna’s last great album, 2005’s glistening, neo-disco reverie Confessions on a Dance Floor, had an air of effortlessness about it, but most of the music she’s made since then feels unpalatably try-hard in comparison.

    Though Madonna’s always been savvy when it comes to picking collaborators and producers, her last two albums felt a little behind the curve: She made her requisite (and lukewarm) Timbaland-and-Neptunes album Hard Candy in 2008, and later tried to ride the rolling EDM wave with the similarly subpar MDNA, a brittle, faceless, post-Britney album on which she sounded like she’d finally completed her long transformation from human to cyborg (but with none of the fun that could have implied).

    These albums were, ostensibly, in conversation with what was happening on pop radio, but right beneath the surface they crackled with a palpable anxiety that someday Madonna would wake to find her bottled supply of Fountain of Youth replaced with plain old Evian.

    Rebel Heart, Madonna’s 13th album, continues in her tradition of assembling a multi-million-dollar wrecking crew of artists and producers who’ve pricked her ears in the past couple of years: This time around, she’s recruited dubstep fraternity president Diplo, Swedish EDM superstar Avicii, Yeezus mastermind Mike Dean, and DJ Dahi, who (ya bish) Madonna tapped because she loved his work on Kendrick Lamar’s “Money Trees.”

    Oh, and don’t forget indie weirdo Blood Diamonds. And rising PC Music star Sophie. And Ariel Rechtshaid. And Nas.

    And Mike Tyson? After a while, Rebel Heart’s production credits starts to feel like “Too Many Cooks.” And, as you might imagine, the sprawling, 19-track album that this motley crew has created together is not exactly the most cohesive entry in Madonna’s catalogue.

    ... But “b***h I’m Madonna” also reveals the main problem with Rebel Heart: The beats sound like they’re having more fun than Madonna. Often hampered by a dead-eyed, monotone delivery, the reliably charismatic superstar at the center of these songs feels strangely hollow, even defeated and fatigued. (The same went for her strangely listless performance of “Living for Love” at this year’s Grammys.)

    Elsewhere, though, these songs seem bored by going through the Madonna motions to empower and/or shock. The self-referential “Veni Vidi Vici” (which, also selfielike, lists off her accomplishments in the form of Madonna song-title puns: “I stared writing songs / I kinda got into a groove”) but the song doesn’t feel valedictory at all — its hook, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” comes off, rather inexplicably, as a whimper rather than a roar.

    Even worse is the deeply unsexy “S.E.X.,” which culminates in a free-association rap: “Chopsticks, underwear, bar of soap, dental chair.” Unintentionally funny, it sounds like something written to be played in Stefon’s new favorite club.

    Last month, the BBC’s Radio 1 was at the center of a mild controversy when fans (and Madonna herself) accused the station of ageism for not adding Rebel Heart’s lead single “Living for Love” to its playlist.

    Madonna is now 56, which is four years older than Cher was in 1998 when she released “Believe” and became the oldest woman to top the Billboard singles chart.

    Ageism is real, pernicious, and almost always affects women more than men, but it’s a difficult claim to take at face value coming from a woman who’s spent half of her life — and an amount equivalent to a small country’s GDP — attempting to stop time in a way that so many of us mere mortals cannot.

    In her piece in the recent essay collection Madonna & Me, the writer Lisa Carver imagines herself posing a question to our timeless queen: “Will you have this to remember? That moment in bed when you acquiesced to the loss of your youth, and found, by surprise, something so much more graceful in its place.”

    The Madonna of Rebel Heart isn’t in touch with that grace just yet.

    She’s succeeded once again in the increasingly empty goal of sounding current, but by now this feels expected — even safe — coming from Madonna. The most rebellious heart is one that can show itself, and even its age, with #nofilter.
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Why Does Madonna’s ‘Rebel Heart’ Sound Like Every Pop Star She’s Influenced?

  • By Jillian Mapes on Mar 12, 2015 2:34pm

    ...After a string of personal, pseudo-political albums in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s albums (starting with her middle-aged opus Ray of Light), Madge stacked her last three albums — 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, 2008’s Hard Candy, and 2012’s MDNA — with dance-floor frivolity of varying styles.

    The formula got less successful as the years passed — Confessions was one of Madonna’s most musically forward-thinking albums despite being a disco homage in many ways, but by MDNA, instead of an innovator obsessed with the next big sound, Madonna came across a little like Amy Poehler’s character in Mean Girls: trying way too hard to be cool. It was time for a new cycle.

    .... Each album doesn’t have to be a complete self-portrait. This is what makes Rebel Heart different.

    By the end, it starts to take the misshape of a career retrospective — something it has no business doing, considering its hit-or-miss variance from song to song, lack of cohesion, bad sex jokes (if there is one thing Madonna can’t pull off in her music, it’s humor), and Madge’s own transcendent history.

    Given this, I’m left to wonder why it is that I hear so many other pop stars in Rebel Heart. Is it Madonna’s influence, or Madonna’s trend-chasing?

    With their slight electro-reggae vibes (i.e. Diplo making his presence known) and bad attitudes, “Unapologetic b***h” and “Hold Tight” could be huge hits for Rihanna.

    “Joan of Arc” sounds like the sonically generic soul-searching of Katy Perry’s Prism, despite containing the album’s strongest, realest lyrics (Madonna discusses the toll of fame on her life).

    With its foreboding trap chorus, stupid-big EDM drops, and wildly Kanye bridge, “Iconic” would sound incredible as a Minaj track.

    “Ghosttown,” one of the album’s best and most vulnerable tracks, embraces a post-Lorde/Drake flood of spacious electronics in pop; when the bridge goes to a gospel organ, remember to note that “Like a Prayer” is part of why this sound even exists in white pop (and Madonna’s intense Catholicism one reason why religious imagery is common).

    No doubt the infectious house throwback “Living for Love” is Madonna’s “Believe,” though it would be hard to deem someone who performed at the Super Bowl three years ago in need of a big comeback like Cher was back in ’98.

    ...For all the fuss, it’s a shame Rebel Heart isn’t all it could be, all Madonna has been previously.
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Hilarious - & so spot on - Washington Post review. Sorry, fans, but this is true journalism & free speech.

Can you count how many times the butthurt whine "Did you/he listen to the album??" pops up?

Also, bringing up Tina Turner is a moot point since she doesn't have to work anymore.
Edited by Julia Griggs, Mar 13 2015, 10:53 AM.
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Madonna’s ‘Rebel Heart’ could use a bit more beat
  • by Jennifer Wong March 16 2015

    Madonna wants the world to remember that she’s Madonna. So her 13th album, Rebel Heart, released Friday, draws on all the glory of her Queen of Pop legacy but without any fresh creativity. Complete with hypersexual club beats and lyrics reflecting on her long career, Rebel Heart seems like a work unique to this great singer, but really, it is an album that, if it were authored by anyone else, would be cared about by no one.

    ...Songs such as “Devil Pray,” with cheap lines such as “And we can sniff glue and we can do E and we can drop acid,” impress nobody. On the same level, “S.E.X.” is blatantly unclever. “Oh my God, you’re so hot” leads the song into a keyword litany of dirty accessories that are so unstimulating for their thinly veiled attempts at glorious obscenity.

    Madonna’s explicit content may have worked for her in the more conservative days of “Like a Virgin,” but it is hardly pop news here. This album is fraught with religious themes typical of her work, but they are tiring ploys used to contrast the sexual references — take, for example, “Holy Water,” which describes the taste of her vaginal fluids.

    “b***h I’m Madonna” is the most obvious ride on the coattails of Madonna fame. A repeated “Who do you think you are?” reminds listeners of her greatness, but the track runs on a formulaic EDM-pop sound. She clearly co-opts the line “Cause I’m a bad b***h” from a rapper’s toolbox and hardly supports the claim with any captivating musical output.

    When she is not pandering to the mass appeal of shock for the sake of shock, Madonna is at her best when she’s honest and confrontational.

    .. For an album bookended by its best tracks, the rest is just Madonna adapting to today’s music landscape without being inventive among it. Standard EDM drops and rapper features from Nicki Minaj, Chance the Rapper and Nas make for unabashed grabs at relevancy. Rebel Heart banks on wide acceptance of the Madonna myth of greatest but lacks any new material in the 19-track work to carry it.
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I may put a copy of this in the "professional RH reviews thread"

You might want to visit this page to see (towards the bottom of the article) the images - the author took screen caps of various recent headlines about Madonna in her article to demonstrate her points. I do not feel like copying all those images in my post.

Madonna's Thirsty Press Tour Is Amazing
  • by Natasha Vargas-Cooper

    I bring this news to you as some one who formed a Madonna lip synch club in the 4th grade (personal solo: "Fever"). I believe Madonna is indeed an icon. I also believe that in a sincere but ultimately desperate quest for relevancy, Madonna is now throwing every pseudo-provocative soundbite she can in a drive to hype her new album, Rebel Heart.

    We have entered a new epoch of Madonna, rang into existence by her dirty-beat-driven declaration: "b***h, get off my pole."

    In the parlance of gay culture, which has served Madonna so well for these past three decades, this current incarnation of Madge is "Messy" Madonna.

    In the Ray of Light era, it looked as though Madonna would accomplish the seemingly impossible: aging gracefully in a youth-obsessed market while maintaining some authentic sexual persona. She was like a randy Sheryl Crow, all hard nipples and acoustic guitar, and that was nice.

    Madonna could have called it a career 10 years ago and lived lavishly on royalties and greatest hit tours. But be it greed, vanity, or, as Vice editor Mitchell Sunderland suggested, as we dumbfounded listening to Madge's new album, "that working-class Catholic girl from Michigan work ethic," she has pressed on.

    Before the Messy Madonna epoch, Madge controlled her PR machine with a puritanical strictness. Nothing would ever come out, no sordid detail or secret tryst, unless Madonna had calculated it to be deployed.

    Now, it's a mess.

    It's similar to that scene in Dark Knight Rises, before our superhero undergoes a final bout of humiliation:

    Catwoman: Come with me. Save yourself. You don't owe these people any more. You've given them everything.

    Madonna: Not everything. Not yet.


    This week, as I've forced myself to sit through multiple listens of Rebel Heart, I've noticed the accompanying insanity that is her press tour.

    Specifically, I've noticed the headlines. So here is a Children's treasury of Madonna's brand saying #bae (link) during her 13th album walkabout:

    [images]
    Posted Image

    Posted Image

    Posted Image

    Spoiler: she has never met President Obama because "he probably thinks I'm too shocking."

    Madonna is bae.
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Madonna’s just so immaterial now

Madonna Makes Clumsy Attempt At Contemporary Relavancy

Madonna’s album lacks originality

Madonna throws away pop identity, dignity on 'Rebel Heart'

Madonna’s album lacks originality
  • Posted by Lauren Darnis on Mar 19, 2015 in Life, Music | 2 comments

    My conclusion on this album is that it lacks originality; I have higher expectations for Madonna. Although it is easy to criticize music, especially popular music, she does shed light on some interesting things, so I’ll give her some credit. For starters, she’s 56, and the woman is still releasing albums.
    The first song, “Living For Love,” is a great beginning to the 19-track album. The second song, “Devil Pray,” is disappointing. It sounds like a combination of the Avicii hits “Hey Brother” and “Wake Me Up.” “Ghosttown” is the third song on the album and reminded me of Taylor Swift’s song “Wildest Dreams.”

    What feels strange is that Madonna is singing from what seems to be the perspective of a woman Taylor Swift’s age. I’m disappointed because I was expecting Madonna to give her listeners insight into how she feels about life from the perspective of an older woman.

    I understand if she is targeting a younger audience that doesn’t know her career as well, but for such a respected artist it is hard to give her the same respect for this album as she deserved for her past work.

    The next song “Unapologetic b***h” sounds like a mix between Gwen Stefani, DJ Snake, 311 and Mann, and even includes the trendy rapping stutter.

    At this point all I could do was laugh.

    I like when artists make references to current or historical events, figures, etc., but the references that Madonna makes in “Illuminati” seem way too unoriginal.

    .... At this point I’m wondering if she is only pretending to take her lyrics seriously as a way of portraying her dislike of the music trends of the 21st century. If that’s the case, she’s on point.
    “b***h, I’m Madonna” (feat. Nicki Minaj) resembles a Miley Cyrus dub-step piece with an edge of what could be a sassy Hilary Duff.
Madonna throws away pop identity, dignity on 'Rebel Heart'
  • Posted: Thursday, March 19, 2015 12:04 am
    Stephanie Roman / Staff Writer | 0 comments
    Madonna
    Rebel Heart
    Grade: D+

    It might be difficult to imagine how 56-year-old Madonna could reach a lower low than her Super Bowl halftime show supported by the laughably condemned LMFAO, but perhaps her prolonged musical career made such a case inevitable.

    Rebel Heart, Madonna’s 13th full-length album, hits that unlucky number in too many unfortunate ways.

    An artist that somehow still floats around in the wake of new female pop icons (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, etc.), Madonna’s record seeks to steal everything hot in the industry and then proceeds to butcher it. Not much about Rebel Heart evidences rebelliousness — or even a twinge of heart.

    The effort starts off with “Living for Love,” a politely blasé, repetitive and tonally undifferentiated textbook pop song. The following few tracks lack all distinctive features too, as Madonna’s monotone, unconvincing and exhausted-sounding voice merely covers up the poorly-constructed synthesizers and simulated drum kit.

    Both “B*tch I’m Madonna” and “Unapologetic B*tch” evince painful reactions — Madonna really should consider apologizing for the reggae and dubstep she scrambles into “Unapologetic B*tch,” then follow that with a second apology for the faux saxophone and police sirens overlaying “B*tch I’m Madonna,” which actually resembles flatulence more so than fantasia.

    Nicki Minaj, famed rapper and wacked-out cultural figure known for her sexually explicit lyrics and crazy regalia, drops in for a brief verse to help remind Madonna who she is on “B*tch I’m Madonna” (Nicki raps “It’s that go hard or go home zone, b*tch/ I’m Madonna, these hoes know”).

    Some critics have a tendency to compare Madonna to the “artpop” of Lady Gaga, but Minaj might be a more fitting analog, as Gaga’s “Sound of Music” tribute at the Oscars this year showcases real sensibility and talent, rather than mediocrity masked by an elaborate wardrobe.

    ... But Rebel Heart isn’t a totally desolate waste.

    Tucked away at the very end of the album are its two most palatable tracks: “Inside Out,” the first and only catchy and sing-songy pop movement, and “Wash All Over Me,” a slow, sweet ballad that reminds everybody that Madonna does still possess some capacity to sing.

    Of course, these tracks close out what seems like a monstrously long marathon of 14 songs — and if that’s not enough, the deluxe version comes with an additional five songs, four of which you’ll want to skip.

    Although the titular “Rebel Heart” merits a listen, it comes insanely far too late on the deluxe version to redeem the album.

    Madonna’s latest venture borrows too much from modern music and then unsurreptitiously blends it into an ungainly, bland paste she slathers end to end. A disjointed, directionless and ineffective pastiche of genres, the diva forgets that her wordsmithery is part of what made her a tour de force in the 1980s.

    Now, her writing’s punctuated with excess and aggrandizement, like this masterpiece from “Holy Water”: “B*tch get off my pole, b*tch get off my pole/ You can’t buy this at no luxury store.”

    The luxury store won’t take it, and someone should tell her that MTV doesn’t buy this stuff anymore, either.
Madonna Makes Clumsy Attempt At Contemporary Relavancy


  • by Marian Wyman

    Arts & ReviewMusic March 18, 2015

    Well, it is 2015 and Madonna went out and made another album. And even though Madonna is the Queen of Pop and can supposedly do no wrong, Rebel Heart is just that––wrong. Rebel Heart is the type of record whose best songs can only be described as “less unpleasant” than her cringeworthy worst. Nonetheless, it’s Madonna, so it’s worth a listen, even if only for novelty.

    To delve into the musicality of these songs seems wildly inappropriate, but for the sake of fairness, a lot of the instrumentation and effects in Rebel Heart are typical of plenty of today’s best pop artists. Madonna is alarmingly clumsy with the EDM beats and vocal effects. From the start, it is obvious why her album has been poorly received.

    “Living For Love” is the record’s first track, and its electronic groove is set from the start and drives through the rest of the song. For a while this song is promising, but it quickly falls apart as Madonna’s computerized voice mixes with a tacky, ’80s keyboard sound in the pre-chorus.

    It’s almost as if Madonna is trying to mix up her musical generations––her peak and present––but it is just too awkward. Even still, this track is one of the better ones. It has its fun moments, a cool dance breakdown, and eases its listener into what’s to come.

    “Devil Pray” is another good warm-up tune. Its use of acoustic guitar, clapping, and Madonna’s clearer vocals show a softer dimension to usual rambunctious pop. Very quickly, this track develops an edgier dance beat and becomes a launchpad for Madonna’s entire artistic intent.

    With lyrics consisting almost entirely of lists of drugs, it seems the Queen of Pop is simply trying to stay relevant and edge herself into in a new, younger scene. She seems to be fumbling for nothing, though, as the song ends up going way too long and sounds ridiculous.

    For the most part, the rest of the songs on Rebel Heart are baffling. From “Unapologetic b***h,” with its reggae vibes and really bizarre, car-honking sound effects, to “Illuminati,” with its creepy, whispered introduction.

    The underlying theme––if there is one––on this record is at best more-than-confused. There is almost undoubtedly no vision for this album, and instead it shows Madonna reaching out for young followers in any way she can.

    Perhaps that coincides with the album’s title, that the work is something rebellious and new, but it just doesn’t translate with a woman whose music was once so identifiable and loved.

    Not to be forgotten, “b***h I’m Madonna” is a classic for all the wrong reasons. Just about as outrageous as its title suggests, this track is so outlandishly overdone it almost seems like a practical joke.

    Unless you are a diehard Madonna fan, there is no need or use for this song.

    Maybe she’s singing it ironically, but by pulling in Nicki Minaj to rap a verse (the best part of the song, featuring the type of young, fresh, artist Madonna now desperately envies) Madonna shows just how badly she wants these songs to be good.

    Madonna rounds out her album with some aggressively sexual tracks: “Body Shop,” “Holy Water,” and “Inside Out.” Though these songs definitely succeed in their shock factor, they are the type of tunes that once heard, never need to be heard again. Some might call it edgy and empowering, but most would call it scarring.

    Of course, Madonna’s songs “Joan of Arc” and “HeartBreakCity” have to be included in any decent writeup of Rebel Heart purely because they make a listener feel guilty for disliking the album.

    In hilariously whiny lyrics, Madonna uses these songs as a complete departure. Though they’re compelling, and do seem to elicit real guilt, they can’t hope to save an album that was lost at the outset. If anything, they add to the confused conglomeration of songs that makes up Rebel Heart.
Madonna’s just so immaterial now
  • Waterloo Region Record
    By Michael Barclay
    Madonna
    "Rebel Heart" (Warner)

    Yes: Madonna is 56. Yes: ageism is bad, and Madonna's career still doesn't demand the same kind of respect that Mick Jagger or David Bowie's does, even though it should. That's not what we should all be upset about with all the kerfuffle surrounding her 13th album. What's really offensive here is how terrible "Rebel Heart" is, musically and lyrically. This would be embarrassing if 23-year-old Miley Cyrus made it; age has nothing to do with it.

    "Rebel Heart" starts out well enough. "Living for Love," "Devil Pray" and "Ghosttown" are decent late-period Madonna singles: the former hearkens back to the early 1990s, which puts the legend in the unusual position of chasing an imitator 30 years younger like Kiesza, who rode this sound to the top of the charts last year.

    From there, however, she transforms into "Unapologetic b***h" (followed shortly by "b***h, I'm Madonna") and various other braggadocio numbers that sound sad, not sassy.

    Then the woman who once — more than 20 years ago — published a book called "Sex" has a song called "S.E.X.," which is perhaps one of the least sexiest songs she's ever done. There are, naturally, songs called "Messiah" and "Holy Water." Apropos of nothing, Mike Tyson shows up on a track, alongside Chance the Rapper.

    on, no question — but she's always commanded it just by showing up. Here she's all crass, no brass. Considering her current pop competitors, is that her fault? Maybe. She once changed cultural conversations and helped North America shed its prudishness; now she has to shout to be heard.

    What's worse: "Rebel Heart" is interminable: 19 songs in 75 minutes, featuring a faded icon grasping at straws? It's been 10 years since her last strong single, at least 15 years since an album worth hearing all the way through, but she's always at least been somewhat interesting. It's hard to recall a time when Madonna has sunk lower than this.
Why Madonna's 'Rebel Heart' Is Her Best Album In A Decade
  • BY CHRIS AZZOPARDI

    For once, Madonna doesn't keep nostalgia at bay. In fact, during "Rebel Heart," her most sophisticated release since 2005's "Confessions on a Dance Floor," she keeps wistfulness close by. The result is tangled, tortured but shockingly authentic, as she basks in all the heyday glory that earned the Michigan dreamer her seat and, eventually, a crown. Whatever life's done to Madonna lately - the kids are growing up; Madonna's growing up - she and "Rebel Heart" are better for it.

    Witnessing the 56-year-old in self-reflection mode, a la "Ray of Light" and "American Life," is refreshing, and also, despite Madonna's refusal to actually age, befitting.

    ...Less effective are Madonna's unabashed attempts at relevancy, when the sexual provocateur essentially parodies her own cone-wearing self on "Holy Water," an exercise in excess. Have all the sex you want, Madonna. And by all means, make that pole your b***h. But album-audible moaning? Equating your bits to a Baptismal liquid? Love you, lady, but this just might be a good time to retire the fornication-fueled religious allegories.

    The even weaker, slinky bedroom-bumper "S.E.X" doesn't even bother with thinly veiled metaphors (at one point she randomly drops "raw meat" like an afterthought) as she promises to "take you to a place you will not forget," but then she doesn't. And poof. Gone.

    Most memorable about "Rebel Heart" is Madonna as a messenger of love, unity and peace - "the sorcerer down in the deep," as she puts it on the deluxe edition's penultimate powerhouse "Messiah." There's an ease about Madonna during these moments of musing, where she looks inward and sends her light outward, and the crown, though briefly, comes off.

    The ego is disbanded. For once, whether we like it or not, the icon, the diva, the high priestess of pop - she's real. "I can't be a superhero right now / Even hearts made of steel can break down," she laments on "Joan of Arc," a surprisingly direct acknowledgement of facets that have, particularly as of late, evaded the star's essence: sensitivity, candor and sincerity.
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I agree with most of this, though there were a few opinions I did not agree with:

No, B*tch, We’re Not Madonna: The Pop Queen’s Self-Delusional New Song
  • by Tim Teeman
    April 17, 2015
    Her new song, “b***h I’m Madonna,” is meant to be set against both her detractors, and used by us against our own. But it’s trite, defensive, and obnoxiously self-involved.

    Talking about yourself as an entity or brand is the first sign of self-delusion, or too many assistants making sure there are only blue M&Ms in the bowl. “Real Housewives’ tend to do it. Now, depressingly, so does Madonna, as the song “b***h I’m Madonna” amply demonstrates.

    Madonna, as fully fantastic and controversy-generating as she is, once just made mischief as Madonna. Her Madonna-ness, whether it was cavorting with crucifixes, lesbian-kissing, or publishing an over-hyped book all about sex with naughty pictures, was intrinsically hers.

    She Madonna’d all over the place without the need to tell us this was the kind of thing Madonna did.

    But, in the surest sign that her critics in this ravenous social media age have gotten to her, she has released a song, which restates over and over again that she can do as she pleases, because “b***h, I’m Madonna.” If this is to become a gay catchphrase of any kind, I will wear giant earmuffs to the bars.

    Being Madonna should be enough, and we know who she is, but Madonna herself clearly feels the need to re-emphasize her point, relevance, and importance. Maybe she tried to jump the line at Duane Reade, and an assistant didn’t recognize her or something.

    She isn’t the first pop star to refer to herself in the third person (Britney Spears did it in “Piece of Me,” for example), but Madonna should just be Madonna, not be reduced to insisting to the world who she is—all spelt out in a song. Next, she’ll be handing out business cards at American Girl.

    Perhaps she’s worried, suddenly, young people don’t know who she is, and care even less. She has a new album out, Rebel Heart, which—sensibly—she has furnished with the talent of today’s pop world. But to devote a whole song telling the teen ingrates of today who the darn hell she is, is supremely sad.

    The song and its intent sounds like a repudiation to any passing millennial and post-millennial—who weren’t around for the glory years of “Material Girl,” “Vogue,” and even “Ray of Light,” and the fury of flashbulbs that surrounded her back then—and who may be daring to question her position as the all-time Queen of Pop, a position she clearly intends to lay claim to even from beyond the grave.

    “‘b***h I’m Madonna” is the 2015 version of “Don’t you know who I am?” and tellingly—again, depressingly—she has acolyte Nicki Minaj to sing along on it, presumably because the imprimatur of Minaj gives her another way to engage with a younger audience.

    Madonna’s defensiveness, as emblemized by this embarrassingly egocentric song, is understandable. These pop-cultural times are tough for old-school famous people, even ones with an unerring knack of drinking deep from the cup of the zeitgeist as Madonna always has.

    The media cycle is fast. Where once mystique was prized, and only select interviews granted, now you have to do late-night chat shows and Instagram your toenail clippings.

    Madonna is one of the all-time great pop stars, and yet now she must get down among the mud and muck of a fragmented media universe, so fast and hungry its spits out whatever genius her supreme outrage-generator comes up with in seconds.

    The foundation of the “b***h, I’m Madonna” sentiment is understandable. Now Madonna must contend with online leaks of Rebel Heart, which she called “a living hell” in The Huffington Post. Critics could kiss her ass, she added—but then that party line hasn’t changed much in 30 years.

    The issue of Madonna’s age—a hardly-that-old 56—has become an unpleasant joke. It was crystallized most brutally by the online reaction to her being dragged backwards off the stage by her cape at the Brit Awards in London in February, which actually looked really unpleasant—and all props to her for carrying on singing.

    Madonna cleverly confronted her ageist naysayers in her stilted stand-up set on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where she joked about her attraction to younger men. But the routine itself was so tonally off she had to nudge the audience to laugh over what was supposed to be funny.

    And, of course, there was the fuss over her tongue-assaulting Drake at Coachella.

    These brushfires Madonna either stoked or extinguished with the innate sass that makes her fantastic. She has always been excellent at staring her detractors down in whatever era they have come after her. She was so ahead of various sexual and cultural curves, she created the curves. When there’s a new album to promote, Madonna is the first to oil the wheels of the outrage bus. She’s the best mechanic in the music business for it.

    But the assertion of ‘b***h I’m Madonna’ suggests a frustration she is not getting the respect she deserves. The lyrics sound like a riot of an evening night out: there is to be lots of drinking and kissing—hurrah—even bottle service.

    It sounds like a fun time, unapologetically licentious. It’s either “go hard or go home,” we learn. “We do it like this, you’re gonna love this, you can’t touch this,” Madonna sings. “Who you do think you are?” alternates with “I’m a bad b***h.”

    And then, occasionally, at the end of a line: “b***h, I’m Madonna.” To which one can only reply, “Good for you,” and “Yes we know—so what?”

    “b***h I’m Madonna” treads the same nobody-gets-me-like-me path as Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” with its jaded musings on “haters gonna hate,” which itself became a catchphrase for people warding off criticism of any kind or tone, hateful or not.

    Madonna’s collaborator Diplo told The Huffington Post that the song is intended to address Madonna’s detractors who say she’s been in the business for a long time.

    And it’s meant to be for us: “Anyone who maintains his or her cool in the face of boundless criticism is, in effect, a Madonna.”

    Or, as Diplo puts it, “We made this record about, ‘f**k it, b***h, we’re all Madonna.’”

    Are we really? For one, Madonna has not faced “boundless criticism.” A few ageist morons, who like to make jokes about creaking bones and say “Who does she think she is?,” hardly warrants “boundless criticism.”

    Given she has faced down the Catholic Church in the past, one somehow doubts that Madonna is that freaked out by rude Internet nerds. And for all the criticism she has received, there have been many fans buying her music, and celebrating her virtuosity, and boundary-breaking inventiveness.

    But even if she has been criticized, what line in the sand does “b***h I’m Madonna” mark? That just because she is Madonna means an automatic erasure of any criticism—that she is inured from it just because she’s a really big star?

    And if we are all to be Madonna, and if we are all asked questions we don’t really like, our default position should be—what?—“Well, I’m me, and I felt like it, so there.”

    The world run to “b***h I’m Madonna” rules is going to be conflict-strewn at every level, and obnoxiously selfish too; everyone dashing about doing as they please without regard for others, but that’s OK, because “b***h, We’re Madonna.”

    Far from being empowering or assertive, or even funny, “b***h I’m Madonna” speaks to a generation so totally self-involved and in love with themselves that they believe this inoculates themselves from any kind of inquiry, criticism, or questioning.

    From being a star that, through her music, questioned the status quo—questioned religion and sexuality, asserted women’s sexuality challengingly into the mainstream—now Madonna has formed her own glacial, self-referential and celebratory kingdom of Madonna. “b***h I’m Madonna” doesn’t sound fun or powerful, just sealed-up and airless.

    If “b***h I’m Madonna” is for all of us, as Diplo says, then a more sad, depressing, individualistic, selfish catchphrase for our times one cannot imagine. It says: I don’t care to engage with you, answer you, think about what you might be saying, hear another opinion, or open up my view of the world.

    Instead, “b***h I’m Madonna” is like the worst, most obnoxious kind of drunken person: not to be argued with, always in the right, their own island of me, me, me. Follow its dictum to the letter and we shall march around the world, our own one-person armies—mini, self-interested, self-glorifying dictators, convinced of our divine right to be right.

    So no b***h, I’m not Madonna, and I’m glad it took “b***h I’m Madonna” to make me realize that.
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Ray Of Fright
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
'Instead, “b***h I’m Madonna” is like the worst, most obnoxious kind of drunken person: not to be argued with, always in the right, their own island of me, me, me. Follow its dictum to the letter and we shall march around the world, our own one-person armies—mini, self-interested, self-glorifying dictators, convinced of our divine right to be right.'

...pretty accurate so far...
Edited by oceanlover998, Apr 17 2015, 01:26 PM.
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The first half of this is a review of Madonna's RH album, and the second half is about her mis-use of social media.

Here is the first half.
I Wish Madonna Had Never Discovered Instagram
  • by DJ Louie XIV on Jan 7 2015 9 min

    I wish Madonna had never discovered Instagram. I wished this long before she used the app last weekend to post photos of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr., a rubber cord wrapped tightly around each of their faces in the style of her newest album cover, Rebel Heart.

    I wished this before she used it to refer to her (white) son Rocco as a “dis nigga” in a caption last year. I even wished this before the two- and three- and four-selfies-a-day from her bathtub or the grams flaunting her burgeoning bff-dom with nursling DJs Disclosure.

    These controversial images of Mandela and MLK were posted on Madonna’s Instagram account

    Mostly, I’ve wished this as an adoring Madonna fan who became transfixed by her power when I stumbled onto a Truth or Dare rerun late one night as a closeted 13-year-old.

    The 1991 documentary captured Madonna at the summit of her fame, having just released her most lauded and successful album, Like a Prayer, and music video, “Vogue.”

    The film had her captivating audiences on stage during the Blonde Ambition Tour—the gold standard of all major pop arena extravaganzas since—and toying with Warren Beatty and Antonio Banderas. She was brash, cocksure and utterly in control.

    Watching Madonna operate at her pinnacle was intoxicating. Since that night I’ve ridden with her, even through the middling albums, fluid accents and dated Timbaland collabos that have characterized her output during much of my adult life. In fact, it wasn’t until the past couple weeks when 25+ demos from her forthcoming 13th album, Rebel Heart, leaked onto the internet that I was finally and fully jerked out of my reverie.

    No artist deserves to have their work assessed before they’re ready for a referendum.

    But listening to Madonna’s new tracks—including six which she shrewdly pushed to iTunes following the leak—felt disheartening.

    Like much of 2012’s MDNA and its predecessor Hard Candy, this music felt lifeless and pandering, lacking the spark that saw her releasing relevant and poignant music into her third decade in the industry.

    The new tunes, along with her recent myriad Instagram faux pas, demanded a step back and critical reconsideration of Madonna’s current place in the pop music lexicon.

    2005's Confessions on a Dancefloor and 2015's Rebel Heart

    In retrospect, Madonna hit her artistic peak later than she did her commercial one. While Like a Prayer, “Vogue” and Truth or Dare were decidedly her market apex, her greatest aesthetic feat came seven years later with Ray of Light.

    Here, M’s audacious experiments with electronica—trip-hop, drum & bass, ambient music, among others—served as the backdrop for her most raw, dynamic and seamlessly rendered lyrics and themes.

    She tackled her discovery of yoga and Hinduism and candidly addressed motherhood and aging. Her vocals felt unprocessed, textured and restrained. More than ever before, her gaze focused squarely inward rather than seeking approval from the public or top-40 radio, then dominated by the bubblegum bop of the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys.

    Most importantly the music and themes in Ray of Light appeared to strike a clear path forward for a female pop star in her 40s and 50s, a paradigm previously unexplored. It felt bold. It suggested she could remain relevant on her own terms. In return, she received the highest critical acclaim of her career and her first Grammy nomination for Album of the Year.

    Indeed through 2005’s disco-house revival Confessions on a Dance Floor, Madonna maintained a level of hit-making, discernment and integrity that was fumbled far earlier by most of her 80s and 90s pop peers. “Hung Up,” the lead single from Confessions, is undoubtedly one of her quintessential singles, quite a feat when your oeuvre stretches back a quarter century and includes “Like a Prayer,” “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Material Girl” and “Like a Virgin.”

    Confessions, though, spelled the end of the two most important components in Madonna’s success, things which had crested with Ray of Light and had roots even in her earliest work. For one thing, from Confessions backward Madonna achieved the crucial trick of planting her feet firmly ahead of the curve.

    The warm house throbs on Confessions, crafted by then little-known collaborator Stuart Price, jump-started the next decade of pop music where dance and house music offspring—what we came to deem EDM—would wholly dominate the mainstream landscape. Like all of M’s most successful work, it saw her cannily culling from the obscure and repacking it for the mainstream.

    Secondly, Confessions felt like the last time when Madonna’s music and lyrics felt united and inspired by one another. “Jump” illustrated how she used dance to escape her fear of passing time.

    “Isaac” explored her study of Kabbalah, and “Sorry” alluded to the problems in her long-term marriage to Guy Ritchie. These actually felt like, well, confessions on a dancefloor, an album’s worth of songs that utilized dance music as catharsis.

    Confessions existed not just as a capsule for pop music in 2005 but, like many great albums, as an artist’s personal statement of truth. It was the last time we’ve gotten such a clear declaration from Madonna.

    Some of the more lascivious highlights from Madonna’s Instagram feed

    By contrast, Madonna’s latest leaked material reveals how little she appears to be singing about anything terribly specific to her current life as a 56-year-old, recently divorced mother of four.

    Nowadays her music, with a few notable exceptions, is as it was when she first appeared with her eponymous debut album at the age of 24: centered mostly around partying, sex and the sheer awesomeness of being Madonna.

    This vapid frivolity has been a theme since 2008’s Hard Candy, but it’s one that came to full fruition on MDNA’s second single, “Girl Gone Wild,” a slice of sub-Britneyan EDM. “Girls they just wanna have some fun / Get fired up like a smoking gun / On the floor ‘til the daylight comes / Girls they just wanna have some fun / I’m like a girl gone wild,” droned the chorus.

    One of the recently leaked songs, “b***h, I’m Madonna,” contains lyrics meant to convey unabandoned partying and hubris as a form of rebellion, something Madonna has addressed infinite times in the past.

    Here, she gets mired in contemporary hip-hop-appropriated slang far more worthy of Miley Cyrus or Ke$ha. “We go hard or we go home, we gon do dis all night long / we get freaky if you want… b***h, I’m Madonna,” her delivery unfavorably conjuring Amy Poehler’s “Cool Mom” character from Mean Girls.

    Perhaps more troubling than her broad content or “hip slang” lyrical choices, though, are the sounds and collaborators Madonna has chosen to employ since Confessions.

    Madonna has never been a boldly talented musician in a traditional sense—she’s not an exceptional singer, dancer or lyricist. When she succeeds, it is as a supreme cultural curator and astute artistic director.

    Her music from the past decade, however, is oddly rehashed, featuring sounds and tropes that play catch-up with pop artists 30 years her junior.

    Hard Candy’s Timbaland cuts like “4 Minutes” and “Dance 2Night,” felt like Nelly Furtado’s sloppy seconds. MDNA found her aping a novelty Martin Solveig club hit as well as her own Ray of Light-era work with far less revelatory results.

    Madonna & Diplo in 2014
    Most of the music that found its way onto the internet in December was produced by Diplo and scan as lukewarm redos of his own former successes—“Unapologetic b***h,” for instance, feels like a middling do-over of his work on Santigold’s influential 2007 debut.

    Most pressingly, working with Diplo in 2015 puts Madonna precisely where she doesn’t thrive—going hit-for-hit with every Jo-Shmo contemporary pop star, all of whom exist in her shadow and many of whom have a Diplo confection somewhere in their catalogue already. The pairing highlights how starkly Madonna’s work unthreads when she loses her singularity and, perhaps more critically, her savvy.
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