CD: Madonna, Hard Candy
Hidden away at the end of Madonna's oft-derided 1992 album Smut is a song called 'Secret Garden'. Recorded earlier she'd popped come out Lourdes, at a time when the wolves of artistic exhaustion and media overkill seemed to be snapping at her heels, it's a strikingly introspective and personal patch of work, which now has a prophetic lustre. Spell its lyrics map out antecedently uncharted emotional terrain, the musical theater backdrop prefigures the extent to which the best records Madonna was sledding to make in the advent decennium and a half - 'Ray of Light', 'Music' and 'Hung Up', to list simply trine - would outdo the expectations anyone (even pop's branding iron lady herself) had a right to have of them.
At around the saame time that she was writing this blueprint for the next phase of her calling, Timbaland and Pharrell Williams were bandmates in their impeccably named senior high ensemble Surrounded by Idiots.Presumption how laughably high a dimension of the past 10 years' finest hip hop and R&B artefacts have had single of these 2 men's room name calling on them, there is a riveting historic inevitability almost the musical theme of their irresistible forces colliding with Madonna's realty object, just in time for her 50th natal day. The big question is, canful the music these three let made together play off or even surpass Madonna's collaborations with Jellybean Benitez, William Orbit or Stuart Price? The serve turns come out to be a resounding 'yes' and 'no'.As its claim suggests, Hard Candy is a hood, nuggety confection offering plenitude for listeners to bewilder their dentition into. Just from 'Candy Buy at"s routinely lascivious gap (memoranda from 50 Cent: 'Can I have my sung back up?') to the cod-symphonic quasi-closure of 'Devil Wouldn't Recognize You', the lion's ploughshare of this record album constitutes a foil-fresh selection-box of variations on familiar themes. Even as Timbaland's hallmark dense, booming clatter kick-starts the low i '4 Minutes', it's severely to escape the signified that entirely concerned are going through the motions - effortlessly, sometimes brilliantly - merely going away through and through the motions, none the less.Whenever Hard Confect threatens to stupefy boring, something always happens to recapture your interest, but the three songs in which Madonna Louise Ciccone actually seems to fake a genuine connection with her musical helpmate leave the rest of the album in the shade. Apiece panel of this triptych involves Pharrell Tennessee Williams. This partnership got off to a badly begin with last year's grisly Be Earthly concern dirge 'Hey You', but in the course of 'She's Non Me"s blissfully heartfelt six proceedings, it really hits its stride. 'She's not me/ She doesn't have my appoint,' Madonna reminds a married person wHO dares to look elsewhere, over a thrillingly off-kilter kerfuffle of whistles, handclaps and partly muted fade-outs. 'Incredible' picks up the disco-fundamentalist baton and flies with it into an enchanted cloudscape of Mid-eighties pop cotton candy, where the dominicus simultaneously orbits around Debbie Gibson and OMD. Then 'Spanish Lessons' adopts a delightfully schoolmistressy tone which ultimately ends up organism considerably less patronising than 'La Isla Bonita'.Listening to these trey fantastic songs and so looking at the gynaecological cover shot, which - for completely the self-consciously modern trappings of Hard Candy's coming into the world (pre-portioned up into Silvikrin adverts, mobile phone perks and Japanese TV composition tunes) - leaves citizenry no selection simply to key this album as Madonna's 'latest waxing', the fulcrum of the delicate balance betwixt her populace and common soldier selves is suddenly discernible. That photo's not a 144 misestimation; it's the impression of Dorian Gray in blow.· Download: 'She's Non Me'; 'Incredible'; 'Spanish Lessons'
