eMusic Review 0
Thirty years after her first single, Madonna has to jump hurdles just to stay in the game. Having completed her Warner Bros. contract, she needs to make her new business partners, Live Nation and Interscope Records, happy by motivating old fans to keep coming to her shows while at the same time winning the young audience that turns the wheels of social media. She must also remain relevant in a world where Lady Gaga has usurped her club queen/gay icon/Third-Wave feminist/cultural provocateur throne.
So it’s no surprise that MDNA hedges its bets, enlisting 25 co-writers and four production teams, and if it fails to match the sales numbers of 2008′s hip-hop-y Hard Candy, which generated chart-topping single “4 Minutes,” or 2005′s Confessions on a Dancefloor, which sold 10 million globally, its garish Eurodance grooves still position it firmly in the international mainstream of the moment. It sounds like a party — one that’s already selling tickets to her upcoming world tour.
But what’s often forgotten is that Madonna is also a serious artist driven to examine herself in public. It’s no surprise that the least convincing song on any Madonna album is the one in which she professes not to care what… read more »



