{"id":218833,"date":"2019-06-15T00:25:54","date_gmt":"2019-06-15T04:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=218833"},"modified":"2019-06-15T00:25:54","modified_gmt":"2019-06-15T04:25:54","slug":"madonna-offers-a-needy-trying-too-hard-mess-of-an-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/06\/15\/madonna-offers-a-needy-trying-too-hard-mess-of-an-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Madonna offers a needy, trying too hard mess of an album"},"content":{"rendered":"
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These days Madonna is wearing an eyepatch for dubious reasons. But it’s her ears that seem to have failed her. (cinemafestival \/ Shutterstock)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Madonna, \u201cMadame X\u201d (Interscope)<\/p>\n

These days Madonna is wearing an eyepatch for dubious reasons. But it’s her ears that seem to have failed her.<\/p>\n

The shape-shifting Queen of Pop has missed badly with \u201cMadame X,\u201d a needy, trying-too-hard mess of an album that sounds like Madonna threw up on Madonna. Even she admits: \u201cIt’s a weird kind of energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

She used to thrill with endless new looks and an edge to her pop, but that was decades ago. Now she’s like that daffy aunt who shows up at the holiday party inappropriately dressed, slightly high and offering to buy beer for the teenagers.<\/p>\n

The 13-track \u201cMadame X,\u201d Madge’s first LP since the underappreciated 2015’s \u201cRebel Heart,\u201d sees her predictably collaborate with the hot young things of pop \u2014 Quavo, Swae Lee, Maluma, Anitta \u2014 with results that are fine, but boring. It seems more like a checklist than the spark of partnership.<\/p>\n

In \u201cMadame X,\u201d she sings \u2014 too often computer-altered \u2014 in Portuguese, Spanish and English, covering all bases. There’s reggaeton, Latin pop, trap, disco, African drumming, dancehall and gospel choirs. There’s a restless churning even in the same song and \u2014 with Pablo Picasso and Jean-Paul Sartre referenced \u2014 a whiff of pseudo-intellectualism.<\/p>\n

Why \u201cMadame X\u201d? She has told us: \u201cMadame X is a dancer. A professor. A head of state. A housekeeper. An equestrian. A prisoner. A student. A mother. A child. A teacher. A nun. A singer. A saint. A whore. A spy in the house of love. I’m Madame X.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, everything and nothing. JUST WANT ME, she seems to ask. Perhaps she’s too exhausted to even construct a new coherent persona. She leaves it up to us. And leaves behind a sonic jigsaw puzzle that even recycles from her past, referencing saying \u201ca little prayer\u201d several times.<\/p>\n

Even her hammy attempt to push the boundaries in \u201cDark Ballet\u201d \u2014 a return to her Joan of Arc obsession \u2014 starts promising enough but drifts into a computer-altered pile of jumbled, pointless slogans that eventually dissolves into Tchaikovsky.<\/p>\n

Madonna has plenty to say but none of it is very coherent. She seems to be referencing Trump when she sings \u201cGet that old man\/put him in a jail\/where he can’t stop us\u201d on \u201cBatuka,\u201d but it’s never clear. Yet when it comes to the cloying \u201cKillers Who Are Partying,\u201d she’s overly blunt: \u201cI’ll be Islam\/If Islam is hated,\u201d she sings with a faux British accent. \u201cI will be a child\/If the children are exploited.\u201d<\/p>\n

She even steps on herself, needlessly. One of the album’s best song is the last, \u201cI Rise,\u201d which she has said is about gay and marginalized people. But she samples a speech from Parkland School shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez. So is it really about gun control? Madonna can’t even get that message straight. (And, Madge, if you’re so anti-gun, you might want to skip using gunshots as a \u201cwake up call\u201d in \u201cGod Control\u201d).<\/p>\n

Madonna here is sticking with the same gimmick that made her a mega-star: borrow cool stuff from others \u2014 voguing, Marlene Dietrich, Latin music, EDM \u2014 and adopt it as her own. But these aren’t good days for Madonna. We are hungry for authenticity and she’s hiding behind a bejeweled eye patch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Madonna, \u201cMadame X\u201d (Interscope) These days Madonna is wearing an eyepatch for dubious reasons. But it’s her ears that seem …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":15755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","mauthors-mark-kennedy","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218834,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218833\/revisions\/218834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}