Single review: Madonna - Girl gone wild

When I heard this song in snippet form a month before its release, I had a vision of how I would feel about this song after hearing it in full. The vision being that it would sound dated on the whole and not go anywhere. Having now heard the song in its entirety, this is exactly the case.

The synth line is infectious. The hook wins. The vocal trickery springs up in all of the right places to just about hold your attention. But the whole time you're listening to this song, you're waiting it to build up to a moment of complete euphoria. You're expecting the bridge to blow out with 6 packed studs in silver hot pants coming down from the ceiling, slow grinding on podiums as the sprinklers go off; all the while a bunch of sweaty skanks flick their dirty weaves in each others faces in the grimiest corner of the club. But it never comes. The bridge is as weak as the screenplay for W.E and the song ends despite it never really having started. And then there are the lyrics. Cliché as f**k. Elementary at best. Making the likes of Katy Perry's "Peacock" sound like the most sophisticated club jam of all time.

Hey, at least a ho tried.

You do wonder much of an impact on pop culture that Madonna's post millennial music really has, when she seems to be playing catch up to a bunch of girls half her age. Madonna's music has never truly been revolutionary. Back in her 80s and 90s heyday there were always other artists out there putting out better music than she was. The draw was that none of them were selling the package as well as she was. Madonna always felt a little rougher around the edges. Tangible, yet out of reach. But now things have changed. Madonna is in a different place. She's not trying to be the next big thing and be the queen of pop, she already is. But she's failing to deliver new material to cement this title, all the while the younger pop bitches are making chart history with theirs. And it is exactly this notion which had everybody disappointed with "Give me all your luvin'" and could very much be the case with "Girl gone wild". Nobody will remember either of songs next year and it makes no difference that Madonna sang them.

"Girl gone wild" has enough of a bounce on it that you will dance to it. It has a chant worthy chorus that you bellow on the floor until your voice cracks. And despite the elementary lyrics and the generous helpings of auto-tune, Madonna sounds like she has more life in her than usual. Given how she's sounded on her past two albums, this isn't exactly saying much. But the bitch gives something. But the problem with this song is that it just isn't enough. As phoned in as Britney sounded on "Till the world ends", she rode that beat and Dr. Luke did not f**k around with the production. "Only Klingon (in the world)" was nothing new, but at least Forehead Fenty sang that chorus. There's no stand out or defining moment to this song other than how generic it sounds. There isn't that one point that hits and make you realise 'This is it. It's about to go down!'. The song just...is. It may be a grower. I may feel differently about it once I hear it in a club. But generally speaking, this song does not make enough noise and it doesn't give enough. To coin the term Madgina used to shade Lady Gaga, it's reductive.

On the plus side, "Girls gone wild" has a very Confessions on a dance floor vibe about it, as does the artwork for the cover funnily enough, which will please fans of that album. The MDNA album version of "Girl gone wild" also differs to the single version, featuring a lengthy spoken intro which stinks of "Sorry" (more Confessions vibes). Madgina fans who find the single version to be a carton of whack juice can pray on black Jesus' rosary beads that the album version gets a re-jigged bridge and outro to boot.

Let's hope Stuart Price thin white Duke's this shit.

RATING: 3.5 / 10