Album review: Madonna - Madame X

When I first listened to Madame X, I wasn't all that keen on it. I didn't think the album was bad. It was just that nothing about it really said anything to me. But I decided to give it another listen and pay a bit more attention to it and my opinion of it changed quite a bit.

Madonna's albums tend to fall into two categories for me. One. Those that can be taken at face value with no real understanding of context. Music, Confessions on a dance floor, Like a virgin, her self-titled debut, all fall into this category. Two. Those where the enjoyment is somewhat dependant on you understanding the album's context and where Madonna is at in her life. This is where I'd place Ray of light, American life and now Madame X. These albums feature some good songs which stand on their own as just that. But they're dependant on you understanding the what's and why's of Madonna doing them in the first place. Otherwise you're kinda lost as to what you're really listening to and why everything sounds the way it does, and there's a whole layer of the album that goes unaccounted for, which can affect the level of enjoyment you get out of it.

Madonna is at a point in her career where she can do what she likes with her albums. But she's also placed herself at this weird intersection where she wants to appeal to the younger crowd who perhaps don't know her history and her legacy, whilst still servicing the fans who are aware of her journey and been on their own alongside her. Trying to cater to the former is how we ended up with Hard candy. Trying to cater to them all is how we ended up with Rebel heart. Madame X is perhaps the first Madonna album we've had since Confessions on a dance floor where she manages to maintain a form of balance. Not a perfect one. But a balance all the same.

Madonna has never struck me as the kind of artist that looks back, but she does quite a bit of it on Madame X. Not just in terms of the subject matter of some of the songs, but the story and the context around the album itself, in addition to who she chose to work with (Swiss producer Mirwais Ahmadzaï is back after his stints on Music and American Life). There is still that veneer on some of the songs, but there's a vulnerability to this album which is refreshing from an artist who doesn't always show that side of herself. Madonna seems to be willing to open up to us. To a point.

Madame X is a return to form in many respects, but it's far from perfect. And what 'form' is for Madonna at this point is difficult to pinpoint. But at this point after the fatigue of a string of lacklustre albums, I'm kinda okay with that. The bar was definitely lowered after Hard candy. But this is a better album than Rebel heart (an album which could have been pretty damn good if the tracklist was pruned), MDNA and Hard Candy. There's even a level of enjoyment I get out of Madame X over Confessions on a dance floor. Confessions on a Dance Floor was tight and meticulous in its production - but so much so to the point that at times it lacked any real heart. Madame X is a far warmer album in comparison. But it doesn't have the immediate accessibility that Confessions on a Dance Floor had, which is what can make Madame X a difficult album to get into at first.

As began to be the case with Madonna from around Like a Prayer onwards, Madame X is pretty thematic and consistent with it as a whole. The fictional character of Madame X is essentially an avatar for Madonna herself. She is is many different things, much like Madonna has shown herself to be over the years. Madame X and Madonna are one and the same. This factors into the music, because Madame X sounds like an album comprised of songs from each iteration of Madonna we've gotten over the past 30 years. Like a Praydonna makes an appearance for the intro of "God Control", before she pulls a Sailor moon and transforms into Confessions on a Dancedonna as the song turns into a Disco bop. Eroticadonna walks bow legged through the hallways in black and white for "I Don't Search I Find". MDNAdonna appears on the jovial "Come Alive".

What was worse than Madonna hiding behind this whole 'Life is shit', 'Money isn't everything' rhetoric that she would continue to cling to (and still clings to) was that Madonna seemed to be hellbent on trying to show the world that she can still do Pop like all of the other girls who aren't even a third of her age. Madonna has had to unfairly defend her age in a way that Bon Jovi, Iggy Pop and all those old white Rock men have never had to. But she's brought it on herself in some instances.  Cutting a song with Justin Timberlake and bussin' her pussy open in her drawers in front of him in the music video was...something. And "Bitch I'm Madonna" was rich coming from a woman who called Lady Gaga reductive. It was difficult to get whether it was pure satire or Madonna thought that shit was genuinely 'Hip'. But regardless, it was a mess that I thought Madonna was above and beyond.

With Hard candy, MDNA and in parts, Rebel heart, there was a sense of Madonna not really knowing herself and trying to find how she can sit alongside popular artists of this day and age who weren't even around when she was dosey-doe'n in a cowboy hat, let alone sucking the toes of black Jesus in a church. Collaborations with Timbaland, Pharrell Williams and Diplo didn't go down wonderfully (even though these collabos did yield some great songs). But the lasting impressions were never how good the good songs were. It was how lost and desperate Madonna seemed to be to have even gone there in the first place.

But what Madame X made me realise is that Madonna's music has never been wholly progressive. Madonna has given us some great songs throughout her career. But her music has never caused a seismic shift on its own to the point where other artist sought to emulate it. Madonna's music was always off the back of a trend that was already existing. It never set a trend itself in the same way that Max Martin's sound for Britney defined a whole era of music which saw record labels climbing over themselves to sign blonde white girls and have them put out songs that could compete with "...Baby One More Time" and "Oops!... I Did It Again". Or the way in which Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" ushered in a wave of songs with Go-Go inspired production and horn samples. Or how Mariah being a pop artist doing songs with rappers set a trend for girls in Pop to do the same. A ripple effect of which continues even now with the likes of Demi Lovato, Christina Aguilera and Ariana Grande. Madonna's music never had the impact that she as a person and her antics had, and it took Madame X for me to realise that and zone in on why Madonna seemed to chase certain sounds so aggressively with her last couple of albums. It's kinda what she's always done. Except there is more music releasing faster than ever, with more artists releasing it. And with the age of the Internet it's far easier to access it all and compare it in ways nobody could do in the 80s and 90s.

Madame X feels like Madonna has found a sweet spot and therein herself. And has managed to turn the likes of Hard Candy, MDNA and Rebel Heart into lessons and decent songs. Because the DNA of these albums is still present. It's just channelled differently.

Madonna still strives to sound 'relevant' and keep up with the children though. Diplo returns into the fold for the Reggae laden "Future" which also features Quavo. This song has no reason being as good as it is. I should be cringing at the thought of Madonna on a Reggae beat with one of those Migos boys and their auto-tuned croaking in the background. But this bitch really had me on the cross trainer putting my whole back into it and poppin' whines when nobody was looking. It's a great song. Madonna and her team made a big mistake not making this a fully fledged single with a music video. I feel a stomach ulcer forming at what I'm about to say, but Quavo sounds really good on this song and his verse is *starts choking* kinda fire. *Collapses and starts wheezing* Continuing the trend of mumble rappers, Swae Lee appears on the song "Crave". He doesn't feel as essential to the song as Quavo did on "Future", but it's not a bad song by any means.

Latin music and Reggaeton is still a thing, so of course Madonna had to have two of the hottest Latin music stars in the game right now make appearances. Maluma and Anitta both take over the songs they feature on. The lead album single "Medellín" was a bad choice for a lead single. But, Madonna and Maluma sound good together. And as dusty as the song is, it does a good job of setting the expectation of the album, as the sound of "Medellín" runs through the veins of Madame X. He also appears again on "Bitch, I'm loca" which is a really fucking awful and see's Rebeldonna back with the pink Claire's accessory clip-in's and a Jeremy Scott / Moschino ensemble. Anitta appears on "Faz Gostoso" which is a cover of Blaya's song of the same name, but with some of the lyrics flipped from Portuguese into English, but still featuring a tonne of Portuguese. As with "Future", this song has the actual nerve to be as good as it is, when it shoulda been a whole mess. But Madonna brings great energy to the track and you hit a point in the song where Madonna and Anitta cross over so much that you can barely tell them apart.

Madonna seems far more free on these 'hipper' songs than she did on the likes of Hard Candy, where you could hear the effort she was making to stay on beat and hit the songs in a certain way, because the rhythms and styles of beats were so unlike anything she'd sung on before. Here, she feels much more at ease. And what sells these songs, even the shit ones, is that Madonna sounds wholly present and as though she's just having fun simply being. Enjoying the fact that she's a woman in her 60s who still gets to do what she loves. That sense of love and also relinquishment to the music is what was missing from Confessions on a dance floor, Hard candy and MDNA, even though she was singing about it on all 3 albums at some point.

Two issues which run through near enough every song on this album are structure and Madonna's vocals. Some of these songs have strange song structures which makes them difficult to sing-a-long to, which should be a core criteria of a Madonna song. Even Ray of light with it's sprawling 5 minute affairs had standard verse chorus verse song structures which could be followed, even if 2 minutes of that shit was humming. "God Control" is a great song. But you will forget which lyric or verse comes next or how many counts it is until the vocals come in. "Bakuta"? Bitch. Don't even bother. Time signature? Who is she? Just stay silent and get into how hard the beat goes. Madonna taking a liking to auto-tune is a problem. I have no issue with auto-tune if it adds to a song and sonically makes it better than if it didn't have it (i.e "Nobody Knows Me"). But on "God Control", "Future" and "Bakuta" it feels unnecessary. All 3 songs have such raw, grounded instrumentation, that the auto-tune causes Madonna to feel like she's sitting separate from the music and not part of it. These 3 songs also sequenced together, which means you have to listen to this bitch sing auto-tuned for 15 minutes straight. Three of the best songs on the album have the biggest issues and they're still great songs. Maybe this is why Madonna and the producers of them felt they could take such liberties. But they each would have worked better if they didn't feature Robodonna and their song structures were a bit more conventional.

Madame X is fittingly a very introspective album, even in it's most dance-able moments. Madonna's always been honest in her music, but there's a different type of honesty here. Almost as though Madonna is done trying to be anything and is finally at peace with the person that she has become or the many things that life has forced her to become.

Life forcing Madonna to reflect back on herself gives Madame X a similar energy to it as Ray of light. Where-as Ray of Light was an album inspired and channelled by Madonna becoming a mother for the first time and having her life change completely in a way no other experience or thing ever will, Madame X is an album about reconciling with the person that you've become in a world that tries to do that on your behalf. Because of this, Madame X has far more focus than Rebel heart, MDNA and Hard Candy had. It has less obvious choices for singles, but makes for a better album and listening experience as a whole.

Madame X is focused, but it isn't perfect. But that's kinda what makes it in a way. And maybe it's not supposed to be.

VERDICT: *SLOW WHINES TO "FUTURE"*

Highlights:
■ God Control 🏆
■ Future 🔥
■ Batuka 🔥
■ Faz Gostoso 🔥
■ I Don't Search I find