About Stefan Halley
Location: Malmo, Sweden
Occupation: Editor-in-Chief
Bio: Stefan has been writing reviews for seven years and started Pop Syndicate out of need to voice his mis-guided opinion.
Posts: 719
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Hard Candy is one difficult treat to swallow
And the hits keep on rolling. Janet Jackson’s release was less than stellar. Mariah Carey proved that her last album wasn’t a fluke and now Madonna is the latest pop diva to put out something new with mixed results. After the failures that were American Life and Confessions on the Dancefloor, Hard Candy runs the gamut from sugary sweet to puss cringing sour.
She steps away from using obscure producers goes more mainstream. Following the lead of Britney Spears, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake, the Material Girl teams up with The Neptunes and Timbaland to bring fresh life to her music and her back on track. Because you can’t release a power pop CD these days without him, Justin Timberlake appears on five tracks. Does her decision get her back on the road to recovery? Sort of. For every hit like “4 Minutes” there is a huge disaster like the over produced ballad “Incredible”.
Hard Candy opens with the overly sweet “Candy Shop” where she works in every possible candy metaphor she could think of. It’s not a great start to the album and feels very shallow and more than a bit hollow lyrically. “Give It To Me” is tapped to be the second release off the CD and it’s standard dance floor beats are mixed with thinly veiled sexual metaphors. “Heartbeat” is a better mix of syncopated beats and dance floor goodness.
This might be the first album that doesn’t sound 100% like Madonna. Working such superstar producers keeps Madonna’s ego in check and allows other to guide her some. Sadly, they aren’t guiding her to new levels of greatness. Maybe The Neptunes and Timbalake are creatively spent and need to take some time off to discover new sounds or maybe Madonna wouldn’t let them take as much control as they would have liked.
“Dance 2night” is a surprise disco funk influenced track late in the album that feels like an honest to God Madonna song. But that’s followed by the horrible “Spanish Lesson”. I’ve listened to the CD four times and I haven’t been able to make it through that song once. It’s one of Madonna’s worst songs ever.
Hard Candy is another made for the dance floor release. Even the big ballad track “The Devil Wouldn’t Recoginze You” is ready to hit the floor. What happened to Madonna trying to do music where her voice is the main attraction and not how well you can dance to it? Maybe in her 25 years of music, she feels that she can’t hack it any more unless there is a vast quantity of sounds assisting her. Then she ends the album with “Voices” and you remember the reason why you like Madonna.
Here’s to hoping that on her 12th album that she’ll simplify her sound, get rid of the mega producers and go back to doing what she does best, lyrically strong songs that captures her musical abilities. Hard Candy isn’t horrible but it isn’t the return that Madonna hopes it will be.
