- Going into a Madonna album in the post 2008 Hard Candy years is akin to stepping on a Lime Scooter for the first time – either you will have an exhilarating ride to your destination, or you will get flipped over and come crashing down on the pavement, with your dignity, pride and self-respect irreparably damaged (not to mention the buggered-up condition of the mad thing on which you just rode.) Madame X is Madge’s fourteenth full-length release and it was probably her least anticipated album, given the messy ride she’s given fans and casual listeners since the high point of 2005’s Confessions On A Dance Floor. So, to be able to say, “y’know, this isn’t half bad…” is a major triumph.
Madonna isn’t so much a bower bird, as a hermit crab, who forcibly evicts the current occupier of the shell she fancies. This season, it’s roots-reggae and an even more forcible assault of urban RnB stylings that she’s decorating her lyrics with; lyrics which seem to be, at times, the equivalent of a Facebook post us mere mortals use with the heading “Rant Follows”. Madonna is, to be fair, damned if she does/damned if she doesn’t with the content of her lyrics. She can be accused of virtue signalling and the “white saviour complex”(God Control and Killers Who Are Partying being two such examples) and cultural appropriation (the cover art has her aping Frida Kahlo with the album title formed across her bright ruby red lips in the manner of a protestor’s sewing their lips closed). Then on the flip-side, her working with the women of Cape Verde on Batuka and featuring the Afro-Portuguese group Orquestra de Batukadeiras shows she is capable of meaningful collaboration and her treatment of the Portuguese smash hit Faz Gostoso by duo No Maka as a duet with Brazilian megastar Anitta proves she can play nicely with others. Clearly the last couple of years living in the delightful cosmopolitan surrounds of Lisbon has agreed with her and her musical explorations.
There are some bizarre offerings though, Dark Ballet is something that simply defies description and was a “courageous” choice (to channel Sir Humphrey Appelby’s damning phrase) for the second track on the album. It leads to the aforementioned God Control and comes after the album’s opener and lead single, Medellín (sung with Colombian rapper Maluma) which is that “isn’t half bad…” moment. Madame X is almost derailed by Madonna’s desire to be edgy, different and “unusual”. However, getting back to some contemporary pop flavours on Future (duetting with Quavo) and the second single Crave (also a duet, this time with Swae Lee) shows that Madonna can match it with the youngsters like Ariane Grande and Dua Lipa for whom this stuff is their meat and potatoes.
Production is mostly in the hands of Mirwais Ahmadzai (responsible for two of Madonna’s early 21st century albums – the creative Music and the excretable American Life which is bad thanks to Madonna’s lack of self-awareness at that time not to the production) and sometime Kanye West collaborators Jason Evigan and Mike Dean (who also are better than the so-called talent they worked with). There is too much reliance on auto-tune and the full digital fifteen track release has stuff that is average at best (similar to her last album, Rebel Heart) which could have done with a dispassionate, executive producer judiciously cutting the dross.Try telling Madonna that. As she claims on the one delicious, clubby track that harkens back to her early '90's glory days, “I Don’t Search I Find”. She is the one in control and if you don’t like it, that’s just fine with her.
- Blair Martin.