Video Premiere: Madonna - Turn Up The Radio

Cover: Madonna - Turn Up The Radio

Sneak Peek: Madonna - Turn Up The Music

News: Madonna singing Born This Way

Flares: Madonna - MDNA

Most pop stars reach a point where they accept the slow march of time, but not Madonna. Time is Madonna's enemy -- an enemy to be battled or, better still, one to be ignored. She soldiers on, turning tougher, harder, colder with each passing album, winding up with a record as flinty as MDNA, the 2012 record that is her first release since departing Warner for Interscope. That's hardly the only notable shift in Madonna's life since the 2008 release of Hard Candy. Since then, she has divorced film director Guy Ritchie and has seen her '80s persona co-opted and perverted by Lady Gaga, events so cataclysmic she can't help but address them on MDNA. Madonna hits the divorce dead-on, muttering about "pre-nups" when she's not fiercely boasting of shooting her lover in the head, and she's not exactly shy about reasserting her dominion over dance and pop, going so far as to draft Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. as maid servants paying their respect to the queen. Whatever part of MDNA that isn't devoted to divorce is dedicated to proving that Madonna remains the preeminent pop star, working harder than anybody to stay just on the edge of the vanguard. All this exertion leads to an excessively lean album: there's not an ounce of fat on MDNA, it's all overly defined muscle, every element working with designated purpose. Such steely precision means there's no warmth on MDNA, not even when Madonna directly confesses emotions she's previously avoided, but the cool calculations here are preferable to the electronic mess of Hard Candy, not least because there's a focus that flows all the way down to the pop hooks, which are as strong and hard as those on Confessions on a Dance Floor even if they're not quite so prominent as they were on that 2005 retro-masterwork. MDNA does echo the Euro-disco vibe of Confessions -- "Love Spent" consciously reworks the ABBA-sampling "Hung Up" -- yet as a whole it feels chillier, possibly due to that defensive undercurrent that pervades the album. Even if she's only measuring it in terms of pretenders to her throne, Madonna is aware of time passing yet she's compelled to fight it, to stay on top, to not slow down, to not waste a second of life, to keep working because the meaning of life is work, not pleasure. Naturally, all that labor can pay off, whether it's through the malevolent pulse of "Gang Bang" or the clever "Beautiful Stranger" rewrite "I'm a Sinner," but, ironically for all of Madonna's exhausting exertion elsewhere, these are the songs that benefit from her finely honed skills as a pop craftsman, illustrating that no matter how she combats it, she can't escape her age and may indeed be better off just embracing it.


Based On Critics - 33/50
Based on Public - 50/50
Based on Hype - 40/50
Based on Pop Flares - 35/50
Overall:

Video Premiere: Madonna - Girl Gone Wild

Exclusive Album Leak: Madonna - MDNA (Deluxe) [iTunes Plus]

MDNA (a pseudo-blend abbreviation of "Madonna") is the upcoming twelfth studio album by American recording artist Madonna, set to be released on March 26, 2012. It will be released by her media company Boy Toy, Inc., Live Nation Entertainment (her debut release as part of her 360 deal) and Interscope Records. The first single from the album, "Give Me All Your Luvin'" (featuring Nicki Minaj and M.I.A.) was released on February 3, 2012.


*The album is much better than the singles released. Take a listen, you may like it.


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First Review: Madonna - MDNA

We have a special treat here. The first track by track review of the album, MDNA.


1. Girl Gone Wild
A lean, sleek, electro stomper kicks proceedings off the way Madonna means to continue – with the machine tooled precision of 21st century techno-pop, balancing the twin requirements of radio friendly hooks and dance floor drive. “Girls they just wanna have some fun,” suggests our fearless leader.


Now where have we heard that idea before? This not particularly original notion is the album’s central manifesto: innocent amusement over introspection.


2. Gang Bang
Despite an unfortunate title that younger fans would be advised not to google, this is not (thankfully) some brutal sex romp. Rather, the title is a misguided attempt to distinguish itself from Sixties pop classic Bang Bang, from which Madonna borrows the central image of murdering a paramour: “Bang bang, shot you dead / Shot my lover in the head”. Sparse and atmospheric, with a stripped back electrobeat and low, drawling vocal, buoyed by bursts of sub-bass and developing into a solid techno groove, its one of the album’s odder and most interesting tracks, only sullied by Madonna’s dedication to leaving no lyrical cliché unturned. She is a fish out of water, a bat out of hell, apparently.


3. I’m Addicted
Arpeggiated synth sequences build into fizzing swells and stabs, bleeping and swooshing all the way. Very effective digital pop that will sound fantastic loud and hard on the dance floor but, like so many songs on Madonna’s 12th studio album, lyrics appear to have been added as an afterthought. Does anyone really need another song about being addicted to love, comparing the rush of hormones with narcotics? The vocal cuts and stutters, so that Madonna repeatedly declares herself to be a dick, dick.


4. Turn Up The Radio
Even in the age of the internet, it is still the radio that holds romance for our 54-year-old pop queen. Lush, shimmery keyboards frame a slow start, with Madonna seeking space from the crowd (or rather, in an effort to use every cliché available, “the maddening crowd”), before a nice, wonky synth launches a solid pop belter. Madonna finds herself “sucked like a moth to the flame” but the slamming dance floor outro should distract from lyrical banality.


5. Give Me All Your Luvin’
Is the spelling meant to distinguish it in search engines from ZZ Tops’ Gimme All Your Lovin’? Madonna’s serial appropriation of perennially overused ideas might almost be passed off as some kind of pop parlour game.


The first single is the lightest, frothiest track on the album, deliberately dinky and cute, built on a burbling eighties synth and glam slam drum pattern. Its prime purpose appears to involve Niki Minaj and MIA represent all next generation female pop stars by swearing allegiance to the Queen with the chant of “L-U-V Madonna!”


6. Some Girls
Let’s give Madonna the benefit of the doubt and assume she didn’t know the Rolling Stones already have a song called Some Girls. Anyway, you’d never find Mick and Keith shaking their stuff to a mid-tempo groove with a deep electro bass line and stabbing synths. Producer William Orbit plays tricks with Madonna’s vocals, from intimate to echoed, tinny to seductive, but the intention is apparently not to portray Madonna as some kind of every woman: “Some girls are not like me / I’d never wanna be like some girls” she rather tartly declares.


7. Superstar
Sweet and summery, with a shimmering ambience built up from a ringing guitar loop and echoing tom tom pattern that might have been constructed from Beatle drum fills. The poppy melody and “ooh la la, you’re a superstar” singalong chorus houses a lyric so clumsy its obtuseness almost sounds deliberate: “You can have the password to my phone / I’ll give you a massage when you get home”. For someone determined to keep up with the kids, Madonna’s retro references for ideal men may leave the youngsters baffled: Brando, Travolta, James Dean, Bruce Lee and Abe Lincoln (cause you fight for what’s right”).


8. I Don’t Give A
There is real energy to this Martin Solveig production. Madonna delivers a raised middle finger to the world in general, and ex-husband Guy Ritchie in particular: “I tried to be a good girl / I tried to be your wife / I diminished myself / And I swallowed my light / I tried to become all / That you expect of me / And if I was a failure / I don’t give a …” (I’ve been trying to think of an obscenity that rhymes with “me”, but maybe I am missing the point). The ending twists into a big, autotune choral coda with the drama of a techno Carmina Burana. An album highlight, though Niki Minaj’s explosive rap rather shows up Madonna’s more static delivery.


9. I’m A Sinner
With Orbit back at the controls, this is reminiscent of the uplifting thrill of Ray of Light. Constructed on a drum loop, it pulses along with a fluid almost Sixties keyboard, building to a big, declarative chugging gospel techno ride, with Madonna exultantly declaring that, like St Augustine, she wants to be saved, but not quite yet. A breakdown into a recitation of Saints (Christopher, Sebastian and Anthony all get a name check) is effective, and it ends with “ooh ooh”s cheekily reminiscent of Sympathy For The Devil. Fun.


10. Love Spent
Gypsy string loop and brief, treated Spaghetti Western banjo flourishes introduce an almost organic feel to a very synthetic, stylised album. A pop song about love and money (topics the Material Girl frequently conflates) it weaves elegant electro patterns and builds to a big, throbbing chorus.


11. Masterpiece
Sweet, gentle love song with a Spanish guitar loop, a light beat and flowing melody, filled out by synthetic strings. The theme song for her critically panned film W.E., she may have been thinking of Prince Edward when she wrote “honestly, it can’t be fun / To always be the chosen one”, but the message applies just as much to Madonna herself. For most of this album she seems determined to demonstrate that a 50-year-old mother of four can still cut it with the kids at the club. Yet, perversely, she sounds most at ease when she calms down a bit and acts her age.


12. Falling Free
The first five tracks of MDNA are all produced by hit techno teams and the results are digitally sparkling, catchy and contemporary. The second half of the album is presided over by William Orbit, and while not as immediately hook laden, there is more sonic depth and invention. But only on the album closer is there a suggestion of a musical life beyond the hit parade. With a cascading, beatless melody and poetic, free form lyrics, Madonna’s pure, dreamy vocal has her declaring herself “free to fail.” It is a song about letting go, by a woman who, most the time, seems to be holding on very tightly indeed. Although out of character with the rest of this youth-focused electro dance pop confection, it suggests that Madonna may actually have musical and emotional places to explore when she eventually tires of setting the pop pace.

MDNA is released on Interscope on March 26.

Sneak Peek: Madonna - I'm Addicted

Artist Of The Month: Madonna

Madonna is 2012's first Artist Of The Month. Madonna is going to release her twelfth studio album this month,MDNA. Below is everything you need to know about the album.

In December 2010 Madonna posted a message on her Facebook page exclaiming: "Its official! I need to move. I need to sweat. I need to make new music! Music I can dance to. I'm on the lookout for the maddest, sickest, most badass people to collaborate with. I'm just saying [...]." On July 4, 2011, Madonna's manager Guy Oseary, announced that Madonna entered the studio to begin the recording sessions for her twelfth studio album. On December 15, 2011, Madonna announced that the album will be released in the spring of 2012 and it will be her debut release from her 360 deal with Live Nation Entertainment which was signed in 2007. Through this contract, Madonna and Live Nation signed a three-album deal with Interscope Records, who will market and distribute the album. In the 2011 year-end readers poll by Billboard, it was voted as the most anticipated album of 2012.

In an interview with Channel V Australia, Martin Solveig commented on Madonna's involvement in the production of the album: "She is as involved as you can be in the recording process. This was a very good and big surprise for me! I was assuming that she would spend only an hour or two in the studio per day and come and see where we were and say, "Ok I like this, I don't like that. I'll sing this. Bye!" And absolutely not... I mean we co-produced the track and it’s not just written on the credits "co-produced by Martin Solveig and Madonna", we literally co-produced the tracks. I mean, at some point she wanted to choose the sound of a snare drum or a synth and that kind of stuff. She was really in the session!"

The album's title was announced by Madonna during an interview on The Graham Norton Show on January 11, 2012. When asked about the title's meaning at the W.E. film premiere, she said: "Madonna... I just liked the play on words... It's a triple entendre." Album producer, Martin Solveig revealed that it was M.I.A. who suggested the album title to Madonna, noting “We were having a lot of fun with the initials. M.I.A. said, ‘You should call your album ‘MDNA’ because it would be a good abbreviation and spelling of your name.’ Then we realized that there were actually many different possibilities of understanding for those initials — the most important being the DNA of Madonna." The title of the album was condemned by Lucy Dawe, a spokesperson for the anti-drugs campaign group Cannabis Skunk Sense. She told The Sun newspaper that Madonna's choice of album title was "an ill advised decision" as to her, it made reference to MDMA, the name of the class-A drug "Ecstacy". Solveig continued in his explanation "There is of course no intention of making the promotion of drugs. Except for the harmless and pure exciting drugs: like music."

The album's artwork was shot by Mert and Marcus and directed by Giovanni Bianco. It was unveiled through the Madonna's official Facebook page on January 31, 2012. According to Jocelyn Vena of MTV, in the artwork, the singer "cocks her head up, her curly hair pulled back. She's wearing lots of mascara, bright red lipstick, a choker and a silky bright pink top. The photo has some kind of broken mirror filter over it, giving it a funky, dance-queen vibe." Vena also commented that Madonna is "truly expressing herself in the glamorous, deconstructed photograph full of bouncing colors." The deluxe artwork, as noted by Nadine Cheung of Pop Crush, "features a close-up shot of the singer, complimented by rainbow hues." Robbie Daw of Idolator compared the artwork to the one of True Blue (1986).

"Give Me All Your Luvin'" was released as the first single from the album on February 3, 2012. According to Billboard: "Within a few hours, it was among one of the top 10 trending topics worldwide on Twitter." Jim Farber from the New York Daily News considered that the song is "a pure snap of bubble gum, closer to an early single like 'Burning Up' than any of her more recent club hits. Only the rap cameos from the quite camp Nicki Minaj, and the less so M.I.A., tell us what decade we're in."

On February 10, 2012, Madonna confirmed to Ryan Seacrest that "Girl Gone Wild" would serve as the album's second single. She announced after the pre-rehearsals of her world tour, she would shoot a video. The video will be directed by Mert and Marcus. On February 26, 2012, Vevo's Facebook page announced that a lyric video would be released for the second single, "Girl Gone Wild," on Monday February 27, 2012 at 9am PST and Noon EST.

Song: Madonna - Girls Gone Wild