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BEFORE
Hard Candy, her 11th studio album, Madonna had never
before opened her legs for an album cover. Two decades
ago, her patchouli-scented belly adorned the sleeve of
the intimate Like a Prayer, and in 2005 she
showed a bit of derrière for the disco-nostalgic
Confessions on a Dance Floor. She’s played with
self-exposure in her scandalous 1992 book, Sex,
and in plenty of videos. But now the mistress of
organized fantasy has put out, front and center.
Taken by
her frequent collaborator Steven Klein (whose
spread-eagle shots of Madge have appeared in magazines,
including the April issue of Interview, and art
galleries), the photograph shows its subject sitting
back like a fighter in a corner. She’s corset-clad,
wrestling belt around her waist, binding her hands with
black tape. Her tongue registers more strongly than her
half-closed eyes; her hair is styled in an androgynous
pompadour. The background looks like cracked peppermint.
She is Venus and Mars, the embodiment of sex as war.
Hard
Candy
is a coldly effective show of prowess that should yield
several hit singles beyond the irresistible, nonsensical
“4 Minutes,” which has already topped charts
internationally and inspired a
viral video from up-start
Miley Cyrus.
Madonna’s pugilistic mood extended to her choice of
collaborators—the album’s 12 cuts unfold as a battle
between rival production teams the Neptunes and
Timbaland-Timberlake,
who established their reps (in part) by updating
Madonna’s style to suit Britney Spears and Nelly Furtado,
and now have a field day trying similar tricks at the
source.
As a
lesson in the contemporary deployment of female
allure—and a survey of Madonna’s career as an
exhibitionist—Hard Candy is powerful, precise and
coldly revelatory. As an exploration of female sexuality
at midlife, it’s depressing.
Throughout her career, Madonna has explored the two
poles of sex—its transformation into a product and its
potential to become the opposite, a liberating force
beyond laws. Hard Candy comes down firmly on the
side of the marketplace.
It opens
with “Candy Shop,” a Neptunes track that pops along on a
conga beat and some double-time heavy breathing—and
where better to situate our predatory guide (go ahead,
call her a “cougar,” everyone else does) than in a store
full of tempting treats? It’s never a great idea to
overanalyze Madonna lyrics, but any grade-schooler’s mom
might wonder at the song’s reference to Turkish Delight,
the stuff the White Witch uses to entrance the young
Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Right
away, Madonna tinges her sweetness with menace and the
will to win.
This
ambivalence about desire extends throughout the disc,
along with the distinct message that, when it comes to
hotness, there’s no extra room at the top. There are a
few contemplative moments, notably the Tim-team produced
ballads “Miles Away” and “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You,”
which set their meditations about troubled long-term
relationships against thick layers of instrumentation
and effects.
Yet for
all their gossip-causing intimations about a marriage
possibly gone a bit dry, Madonna seems oddly less
involved on these tracks than she does on the album’s
more memorable, up-tempo muscle-flexors.
Among
her cowriters, Neptunes member Pharrell Williams is best
at helping her express her views of scarce happiness in
a highly competitive world. His nervous energy and flair
for the perverse add heat to songs that, on other
Madonna outings, might have been dreamier—even utopian.
The pretty, freestyle swirl of “Heartbeat” ultimately
turns on a narcissistic image: Madge the dancer as “the
only one the light shines on.”
“Incredible,” one of several songs in which she mourns
for tenderness lost, starts out wistful but then turns
frantic, as her longing turns into a craving for a
hookup.
“She’s
Not Me,” the album’s midpoint centerpiece, mixes a Rick
James bass line and melody with the hand-clap beats of
Prince’s “Kiss,” but it turns those excited expressions
of male desire into a tale of women battling over a man.
“She
doesn’t have my name,” says Madonna of her
replacement—an interesting choice, given the sacred
connotations of her famous moniker. Yet Madonna doesn’t
take this comparison further; she misses the chance to
suggest that sexual connection might be a matter of
soulfulness, as well as long legs and perfect hair.
Instead, she offers a warning: Watch out for admirers
who try to pimp your style.
These
assertions of ownership counter the problem Madonna
caused herself by choosing her producers this time out:
They can’t help but reference their work with younger
female artists, since it followed Madonna’s lead in the
first place. It’s incontestable, however, that artists
like Furtado, Spears and
Gwen Stefani wouldn’t even own a map if not for
their spiritual mother’s years of intrepid journeying.
Perhaps
Hard Candy is simply one last roar before Madonna
mellows into the autumn of her years, reflecting upon
all she’s accomplished and throwing down wisdom instead
of a gauntlet.
But even
if she gets this latest fight out of her system, Madonna
already might be done with nostalgia. Her last album,
the house music-warmed Confessions, was as sweet
as Hard Candy is lip-puckering. Madonna knows
better than anyone that looking backward is dangerous
for pop stars, especially women. It can lead them into
the most vicious competition of all—with their younger
selves.
Given
this compulsion to keep moving, “Voices,” the ballad
that closes Hard Candy, feels genuinely
heartfelt. Intoning lyrics about dominance and
submission over a Timbaland slinky movie-soundtrack
groove, Madonna revisits the sexual underworld where she
first daringly ventured more than a decade ago. She
drags Timberlake along, which had to be fun for
her—imagine that alpha male under a whip! But the song’s
hard questions about commerce and control seem meant for
the diva herself.
And who
can blame her for getting a bit wistful, invoking the
now somewhat dated language of master and servant? At
least in that black leather underworld, it’s always
clear who’s on top. |
