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Music Review:
Hard Candy, Madonna
HARD CANDY
1. Candy Shop
2. 4 Minutes (featuring Justin Timberlake and Timbaland)
3. Give It 2 Me
4. Heartbeat
5. Miles Away
6. She's Not Me
7. Incredible
8. Beat Goes On (featuring Kanye West)
9. Dance 2night
10. Spanish Lesson
11. Devil Wouldn't Recognize You
12. Voices
YOU WANTED TO KNOW
I don’t think there’s ever been a point in my life where a Madonna song didn’t mark a significant moment. I remember listening to “Cherish” during the first summer in our new home. As I fretted over starting a new school, my sister played the song over and over again (on cassette, no less) until I equated “I will always cherish you” with the waning sunset on the horizon as butterflies danced in my stomach. Later, it was “Deeper and Deeper” to mark my first foray into the dance world, as well as novelty wigs, platform shoes, and bananas as phallic symbols. “Take A Bow” came at a time when my adolescent incarnation yearned to know what love was like, and would later reappear on loop when I nursed my first broken heart. I vaguely recall hearing “Crazy For You” the first time I stayed out past curfew. “Bad Girl” was always on stand-by on the days I was feeling the most confused. “The Power of Good-bye” marked my high school graduation, and “Hung Up” commemorated my baby steps into the post-grad world. When I was feeling reminiscent, it was the whole True Blue album on CD. “Die Another Day” appeared on our first ever Reader’s Poll back in 2002. And so it goes.
Now that I’m in my late twenties and Madonna is nearing fifty, it’s fitting that we’re reunited with Hard Candy, the pop queen’s eleventh studio album. We’ve both matured and steered our lives in different directions, but we’ve never lost sight of the music that moves us.
Hard Candy is a strong album, probably the most innovative thing Madonna’s done in years. It’s the album that solidifies her standing as the reigning contemporary dance queen, beating many artists ten, twenty years her junior. But what’s a girl like me to do when she doesn’t particularly like dance music? Fortunately, the answer is simple: Listen to Hard Candy.
Decidedly experimental, Madonna steps out of her normal dance and pop boundaries to incorporate funk and R&B to her repertoire. This is all in thanks to Pharrell Williams and Timbaland, who serve as producers throughout the album. "It’s an R&B/pop/dance record, but it’s still Madonna,” Justin Timberlake, Timbaland’s partner-in-crime, recently noted in an interview. “A couple of times I pushed her in a direction where it took a minute before we saw eye to eye. Her approach was, 'Well, I just haven’t done that' and I was like, 'Yeah, that’s why you should do it'.” You know when Justin Timberlake is right about something, it’s time for all of us to hide in our bomb shelters.
But jabs at Justin Timberlake’s intellectual aptitude aside, Hard Candy is a step in the right direction for Madonna. Her first single, “4 Minutes,” is a rousing, stomping mess that somehow comes together in the end. With just the right amount of infectiousness, the single manages to bring out the best in her, but not without noting that Timberlake’s usually strapping vocals are paired down about fifty decibels in order to blend in with Madonna’s passable range.
The rest of the album keeps in theme with the vibrancy and energy of the first single. But the novelty starts to wear off when you realize that there are about 158 songs about a) dancing; b) the dance floor; and c) dancing on the aforementioned dance floor. (I know that there are only thirteen songs on the album, but when they’re all about showing your stuff on the dance floor as a euphemism for sex, it’ll start feeling like 158.) For the sake of brevity, let’s just assume that unless otherwise noted, the theme of the song is about dancing.
Hard Candy is a cohesive powerhouse of slick production and grandstanding posturing, but at times it feels like Madonna is being pulled in two different directions. The trademark syncopated beats and heavy bass that make the Neptunes so unique are pervasive here. Contrasted with Timbaland’s grand inventions of random sounds and tripping melodies, Hard Candy often feels like it suffers from schizophrenia. “She’s Not Me,” a Williams production, has a club-ready vibe chock full of staccato claps laid over a simplistic tune, but sadly suffers from a sense of inanity. Let’s face it, Madonna doesn’t seem overly concerned about lyrics (remember “American Life” and her soy latte rap?) but in “She’s Not Me,” that indifference seems to have turned into a full-blown case of apathy. “She started dressing like me and talking like me,” she sings about her ex-beau’s new squeeze. “It freaked me out. She started calling you up in the middle of the night. What’s that about?” I could ask the same thing of Williams’ misplaced eleventh hour interlude, where he fascinatingly sings like he’s about to cry and stalk someone at the same time. “She started dyeing her hair and wearing the same perfume as me. She started reading my books, and stealing my looks and lingerie,” Madonna later says as we’re treated to random sounds of whistles. “She’s Not Me” is clearly not a favourite of mine.
In fact, there are very few songs produced by the Neptunes that truly shine on this album. The nominal “Hard Candy” is bursting with coy references to sex set against a synthesized backdrop, and fares a little better than the other song by the same name. A light dance track, “Incredible” is rhythmically interesting with varying tempo shifts and can be summed up with one line from the song: “’Cause life is beautiful!” But after tuning in and out on the first listen, I was a little dumbfounded when that sentiment suddenly and seamlessly transitioned into “sex with you is incredible.” You know what isn’t incredible? This song, which is about three minutes too long.
“Spanish Lesson” is set against a wailing flamenco guitar on acid, and it’s an interesting song were it not for the lyrics, which take the song’s title a little too literally. “Yo te quiero means I love you, mucho gusto means I’m welcome to you,” Madonna sings, showing off her linguistic prowess. And then, in a totally nonsensical segue way, she must say something about dancing: “If you do your homework, maybe I will give you more. When you do your homework, get up on the dance floor.”
“Miles Away,” on the other hand, is a guitar-heavy, beat-driven dance ballad that is at times both melancholy and bittersweet. With Timbaland taking the reigns on this track, “Miles Away” is one of the better songs on Hard Candy. Singing about long-distance love (and not, say, long-distance dancing, for once), Madonna is in fine form. The lyrics are deceptively simplistic (“You always love me more…miles away. I hear it in your voice…we're miles away. You're not afraid to tell me…miles away. I guess we're at our best when we're miles away”), and yet, oddly enough, begin to sound like sage advice after thirty seconds. Similarly, Timbaland’s “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You” is another impressive song, infused with an R&B vibe, tinkling piano and rain backdrop reminiscent of Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me A River.” As the song progresses, the opus comes into full force as Timbaland seemingly throws in every trick he’s got – and it’s exquisite. “It's like over and over, you're pushing me right down to the floor,” Madonna begs at one point. “I still played right into it. Who am I to criticize? Somehow I'll get through it,” she poignantly says, finally showing some depth, before launching into the chorus. “Even the devil wouldn’t recognize you…but I do.” Madonna has always worked best when stripped away from pretensions and her misguided need to recapture her youth.
Other tracks on Hard Candy, like “Heartbeat” and “Beat Goes On” (which features Kanye West – I guess Madonna has finally figured out that she should leave the rapping to someone who actually knows how) are polished, club-ready productions that should do well on the dance charts, even though Williams’ random “hey!”s and “girl!”s may feel a bit trite. “Dance 2Night,” a retro funk duet with Justin Timberlake, is a redux of “4 Minutes” but with less magic, which is evident when they throw in lines like, “Let’s groove ourselves to the world.” I wonder how Britney Spears feels about that.
“Give It 2 Me,” the newly released second single, is an energetic effort with overproduced riffs on every other verse. The bridge slightly veers off into trance territory when Madonna says, “Get stupid” about fifty times, obviously channeling Gwen Stefani. Still, “Give It 2 Me” is a decent song worth a listen.
Despite the evident criticisms that have surfaced while listening to Hard Candy, the album manages to be likeable in an in-your-face sort of way; it’s the kind of record that can only be heard on full blast. In a career spanning over twenty-five years and a multitude of reinventions, Madonna has found her footing with Hard Candy, and it sounds so good. ¤ C.Ho.
HARD CANDY:
(out of 5)