Posted February 10, 200718 yr http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/pic200/drP200/P249/P2492412U80.jpg Madonna Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine After a star reaches a certain point, it's easy to forget what they became famous for and concentrate solely on their persona. Madonna is such a star. Madonna rocketed to stardom so quickly in 1984 that it obscured most of her musical virtues. Appreciating her music became even more difficult as the decade wore on, as discussing her lifestyle became more common than discussing her music. However, one of Madonna's greatest achievements is how she manipulated the media and the public with her music, her videos, her publicity, and her sexuality. Arguably, Madonna was the first female pop star to have complete control of her music and image. Madonna moved from her native Michigan to New York in 1977, with dreams of becoming a ballet dancer. She studied with choreographer Alvin Ailey and modeled. In 1979, she became part of the Patrick Hernandez Revue, a disco outfit that had the hit "Born to Be Alive." She traveled to Paris with Hernandez; it was there that she met Dan Gilroy, who would soon become her boyfriend. Upon returning to New York, the pair formed the Breakfast Club, a pop/dance group. Madonna originally played drums for the band, but she soon became the lead singer. In 1980, she left the band and formed Emmy with her former boyfriend, drummer Stephen Bray. Soon, Bray and Madonna broke off from the group and began working on some dance/disco-oriented tracks. A demo tape of these tracks worked its way to Mark Kamins, a New York-based DJ/producer. Kamins directed the tape to Sire Records, which signed the singer in 1982. Kamins produced Madonna's first single, "Everybody," which became a club and dance hit at the end of 1982; her second single, 1983's "Physical Attraction," was another club hit. In June of 1983, she had her third club hit with the bubbly "Holiday," which was written by Jellybean Benitez. Madonna's self-titled debut album was released in September of 1983; "Holiday" became her first Top 40 hit the following month. "Borderline" became her first Top Ten hit in March of 1984, beginning a remarkable string of 17 consecutive Top Ten hits. While "Lucky Star" was climbing to number four, Madonna began working on her first starring role in a feature film, Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan. Madonna's second album, the Niles Rodgers-produced Like a Virgin, was released at the end of 1984. The title track hit number one in December, staying at the top of the charts for six weeks; it was the start of a whirlwind year for the singer. During 1985, Madonna became an international celebrity, selling millions of records on the strength of her stylish, sexy videos and forceful personality. After "Material Girl" became a number two hit in March, Madonna began her first tour, supported by the Beastie Boys. "Crazy for You" became her second number one single in May. Desperately Seeking Susan was released in July, becoming a box office hit; it also prompted a planned video release of A Certain Sacrifice, a low-budget erotic drama she filmed in 1979. A Certain Sacrifice wasn't the only embarrassing skeleton in the closet dragged into the light during the summer of 1985 — both Playboy and Penthouse published nude photos of Madonna that she posed for in 1977. Nevertheless, her popularity continued unabated, with thousands of teenage girls adopting her sexy appearance, being dubbed "Madonna wannabes." In August, she married actor Sean Penn; the couple had a rocky marriage that ended in 1989. Madonna began collaborating with Patrick Leonard at the beginning of 1986; Leonard would co-write most of her biggest hits in the '80s, including "Live to Tell," which hit number one in June of 1986. A more ambitious and accomplished record than her two previous albums, True Blue was released the following month, to both more massive commercial success (it was a number one in both the U.S. and the U.K., selling over five million copies in America alone) and critical acclaim. "Papa Don't Preach" became her fourth number one hit in the U.S. While her musical career was thriving, her film career took a savage hit with the November release of Shanghai Surprise. Starring Madonna and Sean Penn, the comedy received terrible reviews, which translated into disastrous box office returns. At the beginning of 1987, she had her fifth number one single with "Open Your Heart," the third number one from True Blue alone. The title cut from the soundtrack of her third feature film, Who's That Girl?, was another chart-topping hit, although the film itself was another box office bomb. 1988 was a relatively quiet year for Madonna as she spent the first half of the year acting in David Mamet's Speed the Plow on Broadway. In the meantime, she released the remix album You Can Dance. After withdrawing the divorce papers she filed at the beginning of 1988, she divorced Penn at the beginning of 1989. Like a Prayer, released in the spring of 1989, was her most ambitious and far-reaching album, incorporating elements of pop, rock, and dance. It was another number one hit and launched the number one title track as well as "Express Yourself," "Cherish," and "Keep It Together," three more Top Ten hits. In April 1990, she began her massive Blonde Ambition tour, which ran throughout the entire year. "Vogue" became a number one hit in May, setting the stage for her co-starring role in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy; it was her most successful film appearance since Desperately Seeking Susan. Madonna released a greatest-hits album, The Immaculate Collection, at the end of the year. It featured two new songs, including the number one single "Justify My Love," which sparked another controversy with its sexy video; the second new song, "Rescue Me," became the highest-debuting single by a female artist in U.S. chart history, entering the charts at number 15. Truth or Dare, a documentary of the Blonde Ambition tour, was released to positive reviews and strong ticket sales during the spring of 1991. Madonna returned to the charts in the summer of 1992 with the number one "This Used to Be My Playground," a single featured in the film A League of Their Own, which featured the singer in a small part. Later that year, Madonna released Sex, an expensive, steel-bound soft-core pornographic book that featured hundreds of erotic photographs of herself, several models, and other celebrities — including Isabella Rossellini, Big Daddy Kane, Naomi Campbell, and Vanilla Ice — as well as selected prose. Sex received scathing reviews and enormous negative publicity, yet that didn't stop the accompanying album, Erotica, from selling over two million copies. Bedtime Stories, released two years later, was a more subdued affair than Erotica. Initially, it didn't chart as impressively, prompting some critics to label her a has-been, yet the album spawned her biggest hit, "Take a Bow," which spent seven weeks at number one. It also featured the Björk-penned "Bedtime Stories," which became her first single not to make the Top 40; its follow-up, "Human Nature," also failed to crack the Top 40. Nevertheless, Bedtime Stories marked her seventh album to go multi-platinum. Beginning in 1995, Madonna began one of her most subtle image makeovers as she lobbied for the title role in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita. Backing away from the overt sexuality of Erotica and Bedtime Stories, Madonna recast herself as an upscale sophisticate, and the compilation Something to Remember fit into the plan nicely. Released in the fall of 1995, around the same time she won the coveted role of Evita Peron, the album was comprised entirely of ballads, designed to appeal to the mature audience that would also be the target of Evita. As the filming completed, Madonna announced she was pregnant and her daughter, Lourdes, was born late in 1996, just as Evita was scheduled for release. The movie was greeted with generally positive reviews and Madonna began a campaign for an Oscar nomination that resulted in her winning the Golden Globe for Best Actress (Musical or Comedy), but not the coveted Academy Award nomination. The soundtrack for Evita, however, was a modest hit, with a dance remix of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" and the newly written "You Must Love Me" both becoming hits. During 1997, she worked with producer William Orbit on her first album of new material since 1994's Bedtime Stories. The resulting record, Ray of Light, was heavily influenced by electronica, techno, and trip-hop, thereby updating her classic dance-pop sound for the late '90s. Ray of Light received uniformly excellent reviews upon its March 1998 release and debuted at number two on the charts. Within a month, the record was shaping up to be her biggest album since Like a Prayer. Two years later she returned with Music, which reunited her with Orbit and also featured production work from Mark "Spike" Stent and Mirwais, a French electro-pop producer/musician in the vein of Daft Punk and Air. The year 2000 also saw the birth of Madonna's second child, Rocco, whom she had with filmmaker Guy Ritchie; the two married at the very end of the year. With Ritchie as director and Madonna as star, the pair released a remake of the film Swept Away in 2002. It tanked at the box office, failing to crack seven digits, making it one of the least profitable films of the year. Her sober 2003 album, American Life, fared a little better but was hardly a huge success. That same year she released a successful children's book, The English Roses (it was followed by several more over the coming years). Confessions on a Dance Floor marked her return to music and to the dance-oriented material that had made her a star; released in late 2005, it topped the Billboard charts, and was accompanied by a worldwide tour in 2006, the same year that I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, a CD/DVD made during her Re-Invention Tour, came out. In 2007 Madonna released another CD/DVD, Confessions Tour, this time chronicling her controversial tour of the same name.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd600/d660/d66085y6456.jpg Madonna (1983) 5 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Although she never left it behind, it's been easy to overlook that Madonna began her career as a disco diva in an era that didn't have disco divas. It was an era where disco was anathema to the mainstream pop, and she had a huge role in popularizing dance music as a popular music again, crashing through the door Michael Jackson opened with Thriller. Certainly, her undeniable charisma, chutzpah, and sex appeal had a lot to do with that — it always did, throughout her career — but she wouldn't have broken through if the music wasn't so good. And her eponymous debut isn't simply good, it set the standard for dance-pop for the next 20 years. Why did it do so? Because it cleverly incorporated great pop songs with stylish, state-of-the-art beats, and it shrewdly walked a line between being a rush of sound and a showcase for a dynamic lead singer. This is music where all of the elements may not particularly impressive on their own — the arrangement, synth, and drum programming are fairly rudimentary; Madonna's singing isn't particularly strong; the songs, while hooky and memorable, couldn't necessarily hold up on their own without the production — but taken together, it's utterly irresistible. And that's the hallmark of dance-pop: every element blends together into an intoxicating sound, where the hooks and rhythms are so hooky, the shallowness is something to celebrate. And there are some great songs here, whether it's the effervescent "Lucky Star," "Borderline," and "Holiday" or the darker, carnal urgency of "Burning Up" and "Physical Attraction." And if Madonna would later sing better, she illustrates here that a good voice is secondary to dance-pop. What's really necessary is personality, since that sells a song where there are no instruments that sound real. Here, Madonna is on fire, and that's the reason why it launched her career, launched dance-pop, and remains a terrific, nearly timeless, listen.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd600/d660/d66086e27i4.jpg Like A Virgin (Nov 12, 1984) 4.5 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Madonna had hits with her first album, even reaching the Top Ten twice with "Borderline" and "Lucky Star," but she didn't become a superstar, an icon, until her second album, Like a Virgin. She saw the opening for this kind of explosion and seized it, bringing in former Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers in as a producer, to help her expand her sound, and then carefully constructed her image as an ironic, ferociously sexy Boy Toy; the Steven Meisel-shot cover, capturing her as a buxom bride with a Boy Toy belt buckle on the front, and dressing after a night of passion, was as key to her reinvention as the music itself. Yet, there's no discounting the best songs on the record, the moments when her grand concepts are married to music that transcends the mere classification of dance-pop. These, of course, are "Material Girl" and "Like a Virgin," the two songs that made her an icon, and the two songs that remain definitive statements. They overshadow the rest of the record, not just because they are a perfect match of theme and sound, but because the rest of the album vacillates wildly in terms of quality. The other two singles, "Angel" and "Dress You Up," are excellent standard-issue dance-pop, and there are other moments that work well ("Over and Over," "Stay," the earnest cover of Rose Royce's "Love Don't Live Here"), but overall, it adds up to less than the sum of its parts — partially because the singles are so good, but also because on the first album, she stunned with style and a certain joy. Here, the calculation is apparent, and while that's part of Madonna's essence — even something that makes her fun — it throws the record's balance off a little too much for it to be consistent, even if it justifiably made her a star.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd600/d660/d66087m7695.jpg True Blue (1986) 4.5 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine True Blue is the album where Madonna truly became Madonna the Superstar — the endlessly ambitious, fearlessly provocative entertainer that knew how to outrage, spark debates, get good reviews...and make good music while she's at it. To complain that True Blue is calculated is to not get Madonna — that's a large part of what she does, and she is exceptional at it, but she also makes fine music. What's brilliant about True Blue is that she does both here, using the music to hook in critics just as she's baiting a mass audience with such masterstrokes as "Papa Don't Preach," where she defiantly states she's keeping her baby. It's easy to position anti-abortionism as feminism, but what's tricky is to transcend your status as a dance-pop diva by consciously recalling classic girl-group pop ("True Blue," "Jimmy Jimmy") to snag the critics, while deepening the dance grooves ("Open Your Heart," "Where's the Party"), touching on Latin rhythms ("La Isla Bonita"), making a plea for world peace ("Love Makes the World Go Round"), and delivering a tremendous ballad that rewrites the rules of adult contemporary crossover ("Live to Tell"). It's even harder to have the entire album play as an organic, cohesive work. Certainly, there's some calculation behind the entire thing, but what matters is the end result, one of the great dance-pop albums, a record that demonstrates Madonna's true skills as a songwriter, record-maker, provocateur, and entertainer through its wide reach, accomplishment, and sheer sense of fun.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd600/d660/d66088yb768.jpg You Can Dance (1987) 3 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Released in 1987 as a stopgap, the remix album You Can Dance reworks material from Madonna's first three albums. Actually, it keeps the spotlight on her first record, adding non-LP singles like "Into the Groove" for good measure, along with a bonus track of "Where's the Party." Since it's a dance album, it doesn't matter that "Holiday" and "Into the Groove" are here twice, once each in dub versions, because the essential grooves and music are quite different in each incarnation. It is true that some of this now sounds dated — these are quite clearly extended mixes from the mid-'80s — but that's part of its charm, and it all holds together quite well. Not essential, but fun.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drc400/c423/c42359yahm8.jpg Who's That Girl OST (Jul 21, 1987) 2 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine In the strictest sense, Who's That Girl isn't a Madonna album — it's a soundtrack album to her 1987 comedy, featuring competent but uninspiring dance-pop by Club Nouveau, Scritti Politti, Coati Mundi, Michael Davidson, and Duncan Favre. Madonna has four new tracks on the record, including the number one "Who's That Girl" and the number two "Causing a Commotion." Both of the hits aren't among her finest singles — neither song made her greatest-hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection — making it her weakest album.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd600/d660/d6608973gf3.jpg Like A Prayer (1989) 5 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Out of all of Madonna's albums, Like a Prayer is her most explicit attempt at a major artistic statement. Even though it is apparent that she is trying to make a "serious" album, the kaleidoscopic variety of pop styles on Like a Prayer is quite dazzling. Ranging from the deep funk of "Express Yourself" and "Keep It Together" to the haunting "Oh Father" and "Like a Prayer," Madonna displays a commanding sense of songcraft, making this her best and most consistent album.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd600/d685/d685794o373.jpg I'm Breathless (May 1990) 2 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine A collection of songs featured or inspired by the comic-book-turned-movie Dick Tracy, I'm Breathless is essentially Madonna's take on popular music from the '40s, particularly big-band pop. Although her singing shows a surprising amount of range, the material tends to be nothing more than cutesy novelty numbers, like the double entendre-laden hit "Hanky Panky." I'm Breathless approaches greatness only on "Vogue," a hit single tacked on to the end of the record. Featuring an endlessly deep house groove and an instantly memorable melody, "Vogue" is a detatched, affectionate celebration of transcendent pop and gay culture and stands as Madonna's finest single moment.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd500/d520/d52093mrc5p.jpg Erotica (Oct 20, 1992) 3 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine While it didn't set the charts on fire like her previous albums, the ambitious Erotica contains some of Madonna's best and most accomplished music (including the hit singles "Deeper and Deeper" and "Rain"), even if it runs a bit long.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd600/d665/d66524mvcwx.jpg Bedtime Stories (Oct 25, 1994) 4 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Perhaps Madonna correctly guessed that the public overdosed on the raw carnality of her book Sex. Perhaps she wanted to offer a more optimistic take on sex than the distant Erotica. Either way, Bedtime Stories is a warm album, with deep, gently pulsating grooves; the album's title isn't totally tongue-in-cheek. The best songs on the album ("Secret," "Inside of Me," "Sanctuary," "Bedtime Story," "Take a Bow") slowly work their melodies into the subconscious as the bass pulses. In that sense, it does offer an antidote to Erotica, which was filled with deep but cold grooves. The entire production of Bedtime Stories suggests that she wants listeners to acknowledge that her music isn't one-dimensional. She has succeeded with that goal, since Bedtime Stories offers her most humane and open music; it's even seductive.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd000/d026/d0266543txb.jpg Selections From Evita (Jul 29, 1997) 3 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Selections From Evita boils the original double-disc soundtrack down to a single, 77-minute disc of highlights, featuring such songs as "You Must Love Me," "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," and "Another Suitcase." For fans who liked the hit singles and familiar items from Evita but didn't want the entire soundtrack, Selections is an excellent purchase.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd200/d235/d23547t75wm.jpg Ray of Light (Mar 3, 1998) 4 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Returning to pop after a four-year hiatus, Madonna enlisted respected techno producer William Orbit as her collaborator for Ray of Light, a self-conscious effort to stay abreast of contemporary trends. Unlike other veteran artists who attempted to come to terms with electronica, Madonna was always a dance artist, so it's no real shock to hear her sing over breakbeats, pulsating electronics, and blunted trip-hop beats. Still, it's mildly surprising that it works as well as it does, largely due to Madonna and Orbit's subtle attack. They've reigned in the beats, tamed electronica's eccentricities, and retained her flair for pop melodies, creating the first mainstream pop album that successfully embraces techno. Sonically, it's the most adventurous record she has made, but it's far from inaccessible, since the textures are alluring and the songs have a strong melodic foundation, whether it's the swirling title track, the meditative opener, "Substitute for Love," or the ballad "Frozen." For all of its attributes, there's a certain distance to Ray of Light, born of the carefully constructed productions and Madonna's newly mannered, technically precise singing. It all results in her most mature and restrained album, which is an easy achievement to admire, yet not necessarily an easy one to love.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/dre200/e278/e27881up28f.jpg Music (Sep 19, 2000) 4 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Filled with vocoders, stylish neo-electro beats, dalliances with trip-hop, and, occasionally, eerie synthesized atmospherics, Music blows by in a kaleidoscopic rush of color, technique, style, and substance. It has so many layers that it's easily as self-aware and earnest as Ray of Light, where her studiousness complimented a record heavy on spirituality and reflection. Here, she mines that territory occasionally, especially as the record winds toward its conclusion, but she applies her new tricks toward celebrations of music itself. That's not only true of the full-throttle dance numbers but also for ballads like "I Deserve It" and "Nobody's Perfect," where the sentiments are couched in electronic effects and lolling, rolling beats. Ultimately, that results in the least introspective or revealing record Madonna has made since Like a Prayer, yet that doesn't mean she doesn't invest herself in the record. Working with a stable of producers, she has created an album that is her most explicitly musical and restlessly creative since, well, Like a Prayer. She may have sacrificed some cohesion for that willful creativity but it's hard to begrudge her that, since so much of the album works. If, apart from the haunting closer "Gone," the Orbit collaborations fail to equal Ray of Light or "Beautiful Stranger," they're still sleekly admirable, and they're offset by the terrific Guy Sigsworth/Mark "Spike" Stent mid-tempo cut "What It Feels Like for a Girl" and Madonna's thriving partnership with Mirwais. This team is responsible for the heart of the record, with such stunners as the intricate, sensual, folk-psych "Don't Tell Me," the eerily seductive "Paradise (Not for Me)," and the thumping title track, which sounds funkier, denser, sexier with each spin. Whenever she works with Mirwais, Music truly comes alive with the spark and style.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drf800/f813/f81386js8yd.jpg American Life (Apr 22, 2003) 2.5 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine American Life is an album performed by a vocalist who has abandoned the U.S. for the U.K. and co-produced by a French techno mastermind, recorded during a time of strife in America, and released just after the country completed a war. Given that context and given that the vocalist is arguably the biggest star in the world, the title can't help but carry some import, carry the weight of social commentary. And it follows through on that promise, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, but either way, American Life winds up as the first Madonna record with ambitions as serious as a textbook. It plays as somberly as either Like a Prayer or Ray of Light, just as it delves into an insular darkness as deep as Erotica while retaining the club savviness of the brilliant, multi-colored Music. This is an odd mixture, particularly when it's infused with a searching, dissatisfied undercurrent and a musical sensibility that is at once desperate and adventurous, pitched halfway between singer/songwriterisms and skimming of current club culture. It's pulled tight between these two extremes, particularly because the intimate guitar-based songs (and there are a lot of them, almost all beginning with just her and a guitar) are all personal meditations, with the dance songs usually functioning as vehicles for social commentary. Even if the sparer ballads are introspective, they're treated as soundscapes by producer Mirwais, giving them an unsettling eerie quality that is mirrored by the general hollowness of the club songs. While there are some interesting sounds on these tracks, they sound bleak and hermetically sealed, separate from what's happening either in the mainstream or in the underground. Perhaps that's because she's aligned herself with such flash-in-the-pan trends as electroclash, a hipster movement that's more theoretical than musical, whose ill effects can be heard on the roundly panned James Bond theme "Die Another Day," featured toward the end of American Life. Then again, it could also be that this is the first time that Madonna has elected to rap — frequently and frenetically — on a record, something that logistically would fit with Mirwais' dense, house-heavy productions, but sound embarrassingly awkward coming out of her mouth. But that insular feel also comes from the smaller-scale, confessional songs, particularly because Mirwais doesn't give them depth and the songs themselves are imbalanced, never quite having a notable hook in the music or words. Even so, there's a lot that's interesting about American Life — the half-hearted stabs at politics fall aside, and there are things bubbling in the production that are quite infectious, while the stretch from "Nobody Knows Me" to "X-Static Process" in the middle of the record can be quite moving. But, overall, American Life is better for what it promises than what it delivers, and it's better in theory than practice.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drh000/h096/h09666xbvry.jpg Confessions on a Dance Floor (Nov 15, 2005) 3.5 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Given the cold shoulder Madonna's 2003 album American Life received by critics and audiences alike — it may have gone platinum, but it was her first album ever not to have a single enter the Billboard pop Top Ten (in fact, its title track barely cracked the Top 40) — it's hard not to read its 2005 follow-up, Confessions on a Dance Floor, as a back-to-basics move of sorts: after a stumble, she's returning to her roots, namely the discos and clubs where she launched her career in the early '80s. It's not just that she's returning to dance music — in a way, she's been making hardcore dance albums ever since 1998's Ray of Light, her first full-on flirtation with electronica — but that she's revamping and updating disco on Confessions instead of pursuing a bolder direction. While it's true to a certain extent that contemporary dance music is still recycling and reinventing these songs — besides, anything '80s is in vogue in 2005 — coming from Madonna, it sounds like a retreat, an inadvertent apology that she's no longer on the cutting edge, or at least an admission that she's inching ever closer to 50. And no matter how she may disguise it beneath glistening layers of synths, or by sequencing the album as a non-stop party, Confessions on a Dance Floor is the first album where Madonna seems like a veteran musician. Not only is there a sense of conscious craft to the album, in how the sounds and the songs segue together, but in how it explicitly references the past — both her own and club music in the larger sense — the music seems disassociated from the present; Madonna is reworking familiar territory, not pushing forward, in a manner not dissimilar to how her former opening act the Beastie Boys returned to old-school rap on their defiantly old-fashioned 2004 album To the 5 Boroughs. But where the Beasties are buoyed by their camaraderie, Madonna has always been a stubborn individual, working well with collaborators but always, without question, existing on her own terms, and this obstinate nature is calcifying slightly into isolation on Confessions. There's no emotional hook in the music, either in its icy surface or in the lyrics, and the hard-headed intention to deliver a hardcore dance album means that this feels cold and calculated, never warm or infectious. Of course, Madonna has always been calculated in her career, often to great effect, and this calculation does pay off some dividends here. Taken on a purely sonic level, Confessions on a Dance Floor does its job: with the assistance of co-producer Stuart Price (Bloodshy & Avant produce two tracks, Mirwais produces one, while another was originally produced by Anders Baggee and Peer Astrom), she not only maintains the mood, but keeps the music moving nicely, never letting one track linger any longer than necessary. This is shimmering music falling just short of sexy, yet it's alluring enough on the surface to make for a perfect soundtrack for pitch-black nights. That's what the album was designed to do, and it works well on that level. It works well as a whole, but as a collection of individual tracks it falls apart, since there is a distinct lack of melodic or lyrical hooks. But Confessions wasn't intended to be pop music — as the title makes clear, it was made for the dance clubs or, in other words, Madonna's core audience, who will surely be pleased by this sleek slice of style. But the fact that she's making music just for her core audience, not for the mass audience that she's had for 20 years, is yet another indication that Madge is slyly, slowly settling into her new status as veteran (or perhaps as survivor), and while she succeeds rather handsomely on those modest terms, it's more than a little odd to hear Madonna scaling back her ambition and settling for less rather than hungering for more.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drh300/h353/h35388rb6df.jpg I'm Going to Tell You a Secret (Live) (Jun 20, 2006) 3 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Released just as her worldwide Re-Invention tour was hitting the States in the summer of 2006, I'm Going to Tell You a Secret is a CD/DVD package that isn't so much a souvenir of the tour but as a way to advertise it. The DVD contains a lengthy — over two hours! which is longer than Truth or Dare! — look at the tour, including its rehearsal plus some performance footage, while the CD offers a 14-track sampler of the set list, heavy on songs from Music, American Life, and Confessions on a Dance Floor. With the notable exception of "Vogue," the oldies on this CD have been given a makeover, so "Into the Groove" and especially "Holiday" feel like they could fit the Eurotrash, campy retro-disco feel of Confessions, while "Like a Prayer" is now a chilled-out come-down tune. Good, logical reworkings one and all, and they help give the disc a cohesive feel even if the live performance, like the album it's hawking, is kind of humorless. That said, as Madonna's first live CD, I'm Going to Tell You a Secret is strong and entertaining, and even if the excessive minutiae on the accompanying DVD means only hardcore fans will sit through its two hours, it's also quite well done. Which means I'm Going to Tell You a Secret serves its purpose well: it will convince anybody who is on the fence about going out to see the 2006 tour to go ahead and buy those expensive tickets already (although years from now, this combination of promotion and retrospective will probably seem odder than it already does).
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/dri300/i366/i36646fsif2.jpg The Confessions Tour (Jan 30, 2007) 2.5 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Like I'm Going to Tell You a Secret before it, The Confessions Tour is a CD/DVD souvenir set documenting a new millennium Madonna concert — this time, a London show at Wembley supporting her 2005 neo-disco album, Confessions on a Dance Floor. Unlike Secret, whose centerpiece was a lengthy documentary, this is a straight-up live album with the DVD capturing a full 21-song set and the CD culling 13 highlights from the set, a whopping eight of them from Confessions ("Sorry" and "Sorry [Remix]" counted separately since they are, after all, indexed separately here). Even if the newer songs don't sound radically different from their album incarnations — they're either delivered straight or puffed out like extended 12" remixes — the handful of oldies that do show up here are given disco makeovers: "Like a Virgin" pulses with electro keyboards; "Lucky Star" eventually gives away to the ABBA sample that drives "Hung Up." This helps give the CD on The Confessions Tour a sonic cohesion that's about as stylized and chilly and its accompanying album — the unity means it holds together, yet that icy reserve means it's not all that much fun to hear, even if the reinterpretations of the 20-year-old hits are interesting. The DVD doesn't feel as cold thanks entirely to the pizzazz of the visuals and the determined efficiency of the show, but even so, this is primarily of interest to the diehards who don't mind purchasing another live CD/DVD set just a year after the first.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd600/d660/d660901y97i.jpg The Immaculate Collection (1990) 5 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine On the surface, the single-disc hits compilation The Immaculate Collection appears to be a definitive retrospective of Madonna's heyday in the '80s. After all, it features 17 of Madonna's greatest hits, from "Holiday" and "Like a Virgin" to "Like a Prayer" and "Vogue." However, looks can be deceiving. It's true that The Immaculate Collection contains the bulk of Madonna's hits, but there are several big hits that aren't present, including "Angel," "Dress You Up," "True Blue," "Who's That Girl," and "Causing a Commotion." The songs that are included are frequently altered. Everything on the collection is remastered in Q-sound, which gives an exaggerated sense of stereo separation that often distorts the original intent of the recordings. Furthermore, several songs are faster than their original versions and some are faded out earlier than either their single or album versions, while others are segued together. In other words, while all the hits are present, they're simply not in their correct versions. Nevertheless, The Immaculate Collection remains a necessary purchase, because it captures everything Madonna is about and it proves that she was one of the finest singles artists of the '80s. Until the original single versions are compiled on another album, The Immaculate Collection is the closest thing to a definitive retrospective.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/dre900/e910/e910703tfcr.jpg Something to Remember (Nov 7, 1995) 4.5 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Something to Remember is Madonna's second greatest-hits collection, compiling a selection of the singer's ballads. Several of her biggest hits are included, including the number ones "Crazy for You," "Live to Tell," "This Used to Be My Playground," and "Take a Bow," as well as a handful of first-rate album tracks (a remixed "Love Don't Live Here Anymore," "Something to Remember," "Oh Father") and three new tracks, most notably a version of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" recorded with the British trip-hop group Massive Attack. Only two tracks on the album overlap with The Immaculate Collection, and the disc also marks the first appearance of "This Used to Be My Playground" and "I'll Remember" on one of Madonna's albums. Throughout the album, Madonna proves that she's a terrific singer whose voice has improved over the years. Not one of the tracks is second-rate, and the best songs on Something to Remember rank among the best pop music of the '80s and '90s.
February 10, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drf000/f017/f017586sl4e.jpg GHV2 (Nov 13, 2001) 4 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Why isn't this as good as it should be? Why does it seem to have songs missing when it really doesn't? Why is it slightly disappointing? You could blame it on the non-chronological sequencing, which tends to rob this collection of Madonna's '90s hits of any momentum it might have had, or you could blame it on the presence of radio edits (which is actually sort of a good thing, since these are indeed the versions that were on the air), or the very presence of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," which simply does not feel comfortable next to the rest of the savvy, modern music here. But the real problem is that during the '90s, Madonna was a true album artist, even as she was making singles as tremendous as "Take a Bow," "Deeper and Deeper," "Ray of Light," "Don't Tell Me," and the non-LP "Beautiful Stranger." Which means that these songs don't really hold together when taken together, since they were designed to be part of a bigger context — either their parent album or the airwaves of the time. Taken on their own, most of these are still pretty tremendous, but tossed together on GHV2, the end result is less than the sum of its parts, even if this is a good way to get all of Madge's '90s hits at once.
