Member Since: 2/2/2012
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NY Times: "Madonna is still a contender"
Quote:
At 56, Madonna has to contend with a generation of singers who have studied her playbook so thoroughly that they are far more her competition than her admirers. But with the six songs she suddenly released on Friday, she’s still a contender.
“Rebel Heart” features Madonna’s better side: as a savvy pop ear and musical team leader, and as a lyricist who sometimes ponders sin along with romance and fame.
..at this point, she’s bouncing back. “Living for Love,” easily one of Madonna’s best singles in a decade, transmutes revenge into upbeat redemption.
“Ghosttown” mixes affection and postapocalyptic gloom. It’s a straightforward ballad over synthesizer chords, ... it begs for a dystopian-romance video.
“This world has turned to dust / All we’ve got left is love,” Madonna sings, before the chorus promises, “When it all falls down, we’ll be two souls in a ghost town.”
Madonna’s hedonism and higher consciousness converge in “Devil’s Pray.” Madonna, the longtime God-fearing bad girl, sings about how “we could do drugs and we could smoke weed and we could drink whiskey,” but no, those would be bad alternatives. She wants her soul saved from the devil, and not even the tempting electronic beats of clubland can dissuade her. “Teach me how to pray,” she implores. That’s a different Madonna — not blasphemous but devout.
The leaked tracks might, in the end, only raise Madonna’s stature. When the finished album is released — with or without different songs — fans will hear what she adds to them, what she changes, what her standards and instincts demand. They won’t hear experience Madonna the celebrity or Madonna the fashion statement, but the Madonna who has kept us listening for decades: Madonna the musician.
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Ny Times
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