all about Madonna

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One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. And the pill Madonna wants you to associate with her 12th studio album, MDNA — the imaginary, Ecstasy-like drug that Beverly Hills, 90210 adorably called “Euphoria” — will make you feel just that… until it doesn’t. The comedown is a teeth-gnashing, serotonin-sloughing, damn-the-daylight free-fall. It sucks. So does going through an ugly public divorce, seeing your efforts to build schools in Africa go to shit, and watching pop stars half your age strip-mine your career for inspiration.
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“I’m gonna be O.K./I don’t care what people say,” Madonna sings on her new album, “MDNA.” That may be the least necessary assurance in pop-music history.

For nearly 30 years it has been a fact of popular culture that Madonna perseveres, calculates, reconfigures, strives and endures. Her gift for writing catchy tunes that suit her unvirtuosic voice, matched to lyrics that often straddle the clichéd and the universal, has been strong enough to carry her through hits and flops, artistic moments and easy gimmicks. Four years after her last album, Madonna, at 53, remains superstar enough to have been handed this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. That high-tech, hollow performance started the promotional cycle for her latest release.
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So, not unlike Born This Way, MDNA is a bit all over the place with moments of brilliance often stood right next to a hugely underwhelming counterpart. Where Gaga’s crazy got the better of her, it’s Madonna’s conservatism that drags her latest record down to the status of a ragtag collection. Sure, everyone will be able to pick out a favourite track but if the Queen of Pop can’t stick to a singular vision for her album then who else is going to? DrownedInSound 6/10

It’s almost impossible to approach MDNA without some degree of cynicism, but it’s equally difficult to imagine anyone being more cynical about this music than Madonna herself. Unlike previous late-period records in which she had the luxury to indulge in creative tangents and not get too hung up on scoring several hits, MDNA is a record that comes with major commercial expectations. The “this has to work” factor is high, and it’s hard to shake the impression that she has some measure of contempt for the contemporary pop audience. We all know that Madonna is an extremely intelligent woman– even if she’s never been known for penning great lyrics, it’s easier to take the mesmerizingly dumb lyrics of tracks like “Superstar” and “B-Day Song” as spiteful trolling rather than vapid pandering. It doesn’t really matter whether or not this drivel is insulting to Madonna’s audience– the most loyal fans seem to embrace being submissive to her domineering persona– but it is disheartening when one of the most influential pop artists of the 20th century is tossing out the world’s umpteen-millionth “Mickey” retread as a lead single. She’s the one who deserves better. Pitchfork 4.5/10

MDNA is quite simply the refreshing return to the wheel most Madonna fans have been craving now since 2006’s Confessions on a Dancefloor. She deftly juggles the production variances between her three co-collaborators Benny Bassi, William Orbit, and Martin Solveig in a way that maintains osmosis most other artists only dream of achieving. What’s also interesting about MDNA is not that it is a significantly good album, but that it doesn’t really even need to be, which is why it comes as a pleasant surprise. Madonna has amassed enough of a body of work that if her music career ended with Hard Candy, she would still be the most culturally significant female pop icon around. What MDNA does is establish the resurgence of Madonna being the coolest bitch in the room, not because of what she’s done, but because of what she’s doing. Popmatters 8/10

Even with some uneven, flawed offerings, the album as a whole is what Madonna does best: pop music that goes down easy and delivers occasional stabs of her biting insight. That insight can fired off at what has to be her ex-husband Guy Ritchie in the previously-mentioned “I Don’t Give A,” it can be aimed at herself as in “I’m a Sinner” or it can be directed at more abstract target. “Superstar” has a message for fans who both expect and give too much of their idols. There isn’t so much of a statement from Madonna so as to seem preachy; thirty years in the music business has given her something that sets her apart from the rest of the crowd: the experience needed to know just how much sugar to wash the medicine down with. 411mania 7.5/10

“MDNA” expands on the best elements of Madonna’s last CD, 2008’s “Hard Candy,” her most easily embraced disc since her very first. For “Candy,” the singer abandoned her least attractive feature — her self-importance. Finally, Madonna stopped marring her albums with songs meant to educate us about starving children, world politics or (gag) spiritual growth. Instead, she gave fans what they wanted all along: pitched dance anthems that doubled as smart pop songs. New York Daily News 5/5

On her 2008 album, “Hard Candy,” Madonna let her A-list producers steer. Timbaland and the Neptunes were hired to give her some club-banging hits, but all they really did was bury her personality. It continued a decade-long string of relatively uneventful Madonna releases, as Rihanna, Katy Perry, Beyonce and Lady Gaga surpassed her on the charts.
“MDNA” (Interscope), her first studio album since then, is a different story. It finds Madonna once again in charge and apparently motivated, cowriting and coproducing every track – and this time, the cocredits aren’t just cosmetic. It’s her best album since “Ray of Light” in 1998, an album that balanced introspection and pop dazzle in collaboration with U.K. electronic artist William Orbit. Not coincidentally, Orbit returns for the first time in a decade to play a key role on the new album. Chicago tribune 3/4

The flirty “I’m a Sinner” name-checks so many saints that Madonna practically gives the come-on to the entire Catholic church, and “Falling Free” is one of her better ballads – just voice, strings and a credible sense of vulnerability. It’s a glimpse of a fascinating possible future, of a grownup Madonna at ease with herself, trusting her talent over passing trends. It makes you crave her next album, not this one. The Observer 3/5

And, God help us all, because MDNA (you see what she did there?) is the album on which Madonna, 53, has discovered drugs. Or at least, the tired old love-is-the-drug metaphor (“It’s like MDMA!”, she squeaks on the heavy handed “I’m Addicted”). The rest of MDNA is dominated by bog-standard club-friendly electronic dance-pop, courtesy of producers William Orbit (Ray of Light, Music), Martin Solveig and the Demolition Crew. The Independent 2/5

3.5 out of 4 stars

Just in case you had imagined that age had mellowed her — or, worse, rendered her safely irrelevant — Madonna opens her 12th studio album with one of the cannier provocations of her career. As synthesized strings hum in the background, she begins to recite the Act of Contrition, a traditional Catholic prayer for the forgiveness of sins. But rather than end the prayer with the usual promise to do penance and amend her life, Madonna simply declares, “I want so badly to be good.”
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Grade: A

Madonna is at a crossroads.
The windup for her 12th studio album, “MDNA” (Interscope), was huge, drawing more than 114 million viewers for the most-watched Super Bowl Halftime Show in history, where she rolled out the album’s first single “Give Me All Your Luvin’.” However, radio didn’t really embrace the giddy, cheerleader-driven pop song, which stalled at No. 10 after its initial burst of sales, even after it was augmented with current A-listers Nicki Minaj, M.I.A. and LMFAO. That welcome re-raised the question that has dogged Madonna for the past decade or so: Can she still be a pop star?
Part of what makes “MDNA” so extraordinary is that the answer seems unclear — even to Madonna. On half of “MDNA,” Madonna, surrounded by such state-of-the-art collaborators as hot producer Martin Solveig, sounds like she is readying her last stand as the Queen of Pop, marshaling upbeat dance numbers, well-crafted enough to match anything today’s crop of pop princesses — Rihanna, Katy Perry and, of course, Lady Gaga — could muster. On the other half of “MDNA,” though, Madonna, with her “Ray of Light” producer William Orbit, sounds like she could easily leave pop behind to create dark, challenging EDM and work on her far-more-lucrative concert tours.
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Madonna is judged to a higher standard than the common or garden songbird. When you’ve sold 300 million records, racked up enough hits to omit Deeper and Deeper from your two-CD greatest hits set, and generally become the sort of pop culture colossus who can publish a book featuring a photo of yourself hang-gliding naked, well, people just expect more.
Which is why the opening song on her 12th studio album is so disheartening. It’s a fairly charmless genero-banger called Girls Gone Wild on which this 53-year-old mother-of-four trills: “You got me in the zone / DJ play my favourite song.”
MDNA picks up as soon as it finishes, but it’s never the most innovative or sonically adventurous Madonna LP. Featuring production from French DJ Martin Solveig, house maestro Benny Benassi and Madge veteran William Orbit, it sounds contemporary(ish) rather than cutting edge. Nor is it a cohesive artistic statement like 1998′s Ray of Light. At times, Madonna seems to be using her lyrics to teach her kids the meaning of the word cliché. If she’s not “a fish out of water”, she’s “a bat out of hell” or “a moth to a flame”… Got it now, Rocco?
However, there’s no denying MDNA delivers thrills. In true Ciccone fashion, club pop pounders like Some Girls, Love Spent and Turn Up the Radio seem to push a bit harder than the competition – that last one’s got a drop like an open manhole. MDNA also has something the last two Madge albums lacked: ballads, both of which are quite lovely.
Best of all, several moments prompt a welcome sigh: “God, only Madonna”. Gang Bang is a preposterous piece of pop schlock featuring gangster film sound effects and the old girl gunning – quite literally – for revenge. I Don’t Give A has Madge rapping and ribbing herself in the process: “Ride my horse, break some bones / Take it down a semitone.” I’m Addicted climaxes with a pulse-quickening “M-D-N-A” chant; when they’re old enough, it’ll define ‘iconoclastic’ to her brood.
The result? It’s got its faults, but MDNA isn’t just a good pop album, it’s a good Madonna album too.

BBC

In 1993, when asked by a Mexican journalist what she feared most, Madonna admitted plainly, “Dying.” Looking at her body of work, it’s embarrassingly obvious now, and it’s funny to think she’s best known as the queen of sex and not, in fact, the queen of death. Beating the clock, moving fast, accomplishing things because time is scare and life is short are themes that have permeated almost every aspect of Madonna’s life and career. Her mother, also named Madonna, died at the age of 30, and her namesake spent the next 25 years believing she would meet the same fate. When Madonna became famous at the height of the AIDS crisis, her friends began succumbing to the disease one after the other, which turned the singer into an activist, but also ostensibly became an impetus behind her near-pathological drive to leave her mark on the world.
In the past three years, two of the three biggest pop superstars of the ’80s have died tragically. But unlike Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, Madonna wasn’t thrust into the spotlight by way of an enterprising family or the kind of prodigious talent that, with or without its owner’s consent, begs to be hoisted up and exalted by the masses. That Madonna was forced to compensate for her perceived lack of natural “talent” with, in addition to unbridled creativity, supreme self-control and focus is probably what’s helped keep her from succumbing to the demons that have plagued many of her contemporaries. It’s also, perhaps, the thing that makes her a somewhat unsympathetic character, an attractive target for ridicule among even those who claim to love her.
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Thanks to jpasc24

Madonna opens up to reveal inner pain and turmoil on her new album, but the dance groove never slows.
Vulnerability isn’t likely the first trait that comes to mind when you think of Madonna. The woman who titled her last studio album Hard Candy (2008) is contemporary pop’s most durable alpha female, coolly courting fascination and controversy on her own terms.
Yet in some of her most beguiling songs, Madonna has opened her heart and let her defenses down a bit. Think of the pregnant teenager in Papa Don’t Preach, begging for support even as she declares her resolve. Or the giddy lover pledging eternal devotion in Cherish.
Then imagine that those gals had lived a few more years, maybe married and divorced, and you’ll have an inkling of the emotional wallop waiting in Madonna’s most personal effort to date, MDNA, out Monday.
The album opens with single Girl Gone Wild, a breathless ode to dance-floor hedonism. “Girls, they just wanna have some fun,” Madonna chirps over a thumping club groove. Several tunes share an almost defiant buoyancy; I’m Addicted and Turn Up the Radio celebrate romantic surrender, but there’s a sense that what’s being sought more is escape.
The standard and deluxe explicit versions of MDNA offer an early hint that we’re headed for darker terrain. The second track, the pulsing, sardonic Gang Bang, describes not an orgy but a revenge fantasy, in which a woman shoots and kills a wayward and possibly abusive partner. Chanting profanely, Madonna could either be mocking a persecutor or turning the tables on him.
Anger isn’t this album’s defining quality, though. The songs that seem to allude to Madonna’s ex, Guy Ritchie, are charged with sadness and self-doubt. Love Spent is the most stinging: “Would you have married me if I were poor?” she asks, after a bluegrass-tinged intro segues into a radiant electro-pop arrangement.
Spent is one of numerous tracks co-written and co-produced by Madonna’s Ray of Light and Beautiful Stranger collaborator William Orbit, whose sonic savvy is just as keen here. I’m A Sinner has a groovy ebullience reminiscent of the latter hit, even as the lyrics again evoke a woman racing past pain. On the gorgeously ethereal Falling Free, Madonna sings of finding both grace and alienation in love.
But MDNA is no self-pity party. There’s wry humor and unabashed yearning; check out the semi-confessional multi-tasker’s lament I Don’t Give A, co-written and featuring a rap by Nicki Minaj. And Madonna emerges, as always, a survivor.
“Nothing’s indestructible,” she admits on the Latin-kissed Masterpiece, but still vows, “I will not renounce all hope.” And why should she, of all people?

3.5 out of 4 stars