The material girl has abandoned the pulpit for the dancefloor, writes Jon Pareles.
When in doubt, take Madonna at face value. Since the beginning of her career, she has telegraphed her intentions and labelled herself more efficiently than any observer. She has titled albums Music, Erotica and, in 2005, Confessions On A Dance Floor for a collection that mingled personal and biblical reflections with club grooves. Flaunting her ever-changing image, she named one tour Who's That Girl?, another Re-Invention.
She's just as blunt on her 11th studio album, Hard Candy (Warner Brothers), which is released today. There's no question that this album aims to please - and it does. "See which flavour you like and I'll have it for you," she promises in Candy Shop, and she follows through: "Come on into my store/I got candy galore."
That's a come-on, of course, but it's also a statement of purpose. Hard Candy is devoted to the instant gratification of a musical sweet tooth and, equally important, to the continuing commercial potency of "my store".
Madonna turns 50 in August. The one-time club-hopping Boy Toy is now a married mother of three who's making a midlife job change. She's leaving behind her career-long major-label contract for a deal with the concert promotion giant Live Nation that will keep her on the road and making albums over the next decade.
Hard Candy is Madonna's last album of new material for Warner Brothers Records, which says she has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide (via the Sire label and later her own Maverick) since her career began in 1982. It doesn't burn bridges with her major label. It's the kind of album a record company longs for in this embattled market: a set of catchy, easily digestible, mass-appeal songs by a star who's not taking chances.
Madonna sets aside her avant-pop and do-gooder impulses on Hard Candy. Instead of introducing little-known dance-world producers into the mainstream, she is working with established hit makers. Instead of arty provocations, she's polishing the basics of verse-chorus-verse. And instead of another full-scale reinvention, she's looking back, deliberately echoing the sound of her early years, with a ProTools facelift.
When she's not urging a listener to dance or "undress me", Madonna uses Hard Candy to renew her brand and defy sceptics, yet again. Sometimes she gets defensive, and her best defence is a sleek dance beat. Hard Candy, despite some filler, has plenty of them.
Alongside whatever she has offered her audience through the years - sex, glamour, dancing, defiance, blasphemy, spirituality - Madonna has never pretended to be anything but diligent. She's disciplined, hard-working and determined to sell. For Madonna as a pop archetype, the truest pleasure isn't momentary physical ecstasy or divine rapture but success. She labelled that impulse too in an early tour: Blond Ambition.
Presenting herself not only as an object of desire but as a material girl with her eye on the profits was one of the many smart moves she made from the beginning. By flaunting her control and her triumphs, Madonna gave fans a stake in her long-term prospects.
Madonna's financial future is by no means precarious now that she's on her own. In a so-called "360 deal" reportedly worth as much as $US120 million ($127 million), Live Nation will handle her output, encompassing albums, ticket sales, licensing and merchandising. "I'll be your one-stop candy shop/Everything that I got," she sings, appropriately.
Well, not everything. Madonna was getting mighty serious on her 21st-century albums American Life and Confessions On A Dance Floor. During last year's Confessions tour, Madonna melded her longtime hobby of Christianity baiting with her newer charitable cause. She sang Live To Tell from a crucifix with disco-ball mirrors, wearing a crown of thorns, while video images of suffering Africans were shown. Last year at the Live Earth concert she introduced a would-be environmental anthem, Hey You, that tried and failed to be her equivalent of John Lennon's Imagine. The song came and went, raising some corporate donations, but does not appear on the new album.
The closest Hard Candy gets to social consciousness is 4 Minutes, which has a clock ticking and Justin Timberlake singing, "We only got four minutes to save the world!" in his best Michael Jackson imitation. But the rest of the song's lyrics just make those four minutes sound like they're time for a quickie, or perhaps the length of a pop hit.
More than ever, 21st-century pop performers live by the popularity of one four-minute song at a time, to be quickly exploited as a single before listeners move on. Madonna clearly intends to stay competitive, and her talents suit an era when staccato, electronic pop makes perfect ring tones.
Madonna wrote the songs on Hard Candy with Timberlake and with Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes. The producer, Timbaland, adds his touches; Kanye West drops by to rap on Beat Goes On. They're all established hit makers, as well as some of the most clever hook-makers alive.
Choosing those collaborators is a change of strategy for Madonna. In past albums she used her cool-hunting radar to seek out lesser-known figures - Jellybean Benitez and Patrick Leonard in the 1980s, Mirwais Ahmadzai and Stuart David Price (aka Jacques Lu Cont) in the 2000s - who could ride her pop instincts into the mainstream.
The sound of Hard Candy is partly the sound of an era when New York dance clubs were an experiment in improbable social interactions - gays, socialites, breakdancers, artists - that became a pipeline to pop radio. Like Moby on his new album, Last Night, Madonna can't help looking back fondly on her younger days.
She has had more profound moments - Like A Prayer, Ray Of Light - but not every pop star is cut out for full-time profundity. This time, concocting new ditties that will have her audiences singing along, she was smart to stay shallow.
Give It 2 Me
Give It 2 Me
Hard Candy
Hard Candy
4 Minutes
4 Minutes
Live Earth 
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