Madonna

Madonna sure has her well-manicured finger on the pulse of musical trends. At this point in her storied career, Madge is keeping up with what's current in dance music and then putting her own spin on it. Hard Candy is a dance-pop record, as we have come to expect from Madonna, but it's also her most hip hop styled album to date. She takes a cue from fellow blonde Gwen Stefani throughout the whole of Hard Candy.

Synthetic beats are woven into a tapestry of thoroughly urban grooves, and its all sewn together by the pop star's sexified purrs. It's enough to make you question her induction to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, since she always was, always is and always will be a pop entertainer. But despite that fact, you can't deny that the "Queen of Dance Pop" knows how to hire a team to create songs that carve out real estate in your brain for days, weeks and months at a time. Most of the jams on Hard Candy are unforgettable, sweet slices of brain candy that you'll be humming all day and all night. Ever the consummate and intelligent businesswoman, Madge wisely recruited a white hot stable of collaborators for what is her final album for longtime label Warner Bros. before she heads off –on a steed, no doubt- to the greener pastures of her 360 deal with Live Nation. Justin Timberlake, who lends his pipes on the confectionary yet booty-thumping "4 Minutes," Timbaland and The Neptunes all man the boards here, piping the album full of "right here, right now" relevance and credibility. Her "Candy Shop" isn't quite as street as 50 Cent's song of the same name, but it'll have you leaning back on the dancefloor in nanoseconds, while the crowd pleasing "Give It 2 Me" is a juicy slice of pop candy, expressly designed for when you wanna get romp and horizontal with a hottie.

While most of the songs on Hard Candy hardly rival the "classic" and "canon" nature of her earliest work, they do illustrate that Madonna Louise Ciccone still plans to leave her mark on current pop culture. — Amy Sciarretto
05.02.08

All through her career, it has been impossible to divorce Madonna's music from her image, as they feed off each other to the point where it's hard to tell which came first, the concept or the songs. Glancing at the aggressively ugly cover to Hard Candy with its blistering pinks and assaultive leather, it's hard not to wish that this is the one time Madge broke from tradition, offering music that wasn't quite as garish as her graphics. But that is not the case, and Hard Candy is all hard edges and blaring primary colors, an utterly modern, steely sex album for the new millennium, the age of Cialis and an era when Top 40 has pretty much ceased to exist. A pop artist as sharp as Madonna knows this, so she has abandoned the idea of a big crossover hit and pitches Hard Candy directly toward her core audience of club-conscious, fashion-forward trendsetters. This is a smart play, as this is the audience that has always consisted of Madonna loyalists, and it's also is a savvy way to negotiate the explosion of niches in 2008. Madonna relies on the Neptunes and the pair of Timbaland and Justin Timberlake for most of her modern makeover -- a good idea in theory as they are some of the biggest hitmakers of the decade. Sometimes this can result in reasonably appealing grooves -- "Candy Shop" captures Pharrell Williams' flair for slim, sleek grooves; "Dance 2night" conjures Timberlake's Off the Wall obsession nicely; and the icy heartbreak of "Miles Away" is a worthy successor to "What Goes Around Comes Around." But this also points out a shortcoming of Hard Candy: the tracks take precedence over the songs. Madonna's greatness has always hinged on how she channeled dance trends into pop songs, placing equal emphasis on sound and melody, which provided a neat way to sneak underground club trends into the mainstream. Here, she cedes melodic hooks to rhythmic hooks, and sounds as if she handed the reins over to Pharrell and Timba-Lake, trusting them to provide the polish. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide