Maverick
Pop, 2005
I think it says a lot of the appeal of Madonna’s latest CD Confessions on a Dance Floor that I really like the track Push because it’s Like A Prayer cut and pasted along with the bridge from Mariah Carey’s Fantasy over a more electronic backing track. Packed with uptempo dance tracks, this CD doesn’t actually have much going for it. It’s dancey, it’s packed with sounds that can only be made by electronic musical equipment, and the vocals are so processed that Madonna sounds like a singing tin whistle.
One noticeable thing about this CD though is the huge contrast between the sophisticated and sleek production that went into the background track and the melody and the lyrics of these songs. Many of these songs come off like annoying nursery rhymes morphed into dance tracks (Jump). I especially have my doubts about the lyrics. How old is Madonna now? 47? Why is a 47-year old supposedly-creative woman writing gems like this one from Hung Up?
Ring, ring, ring, goes the telephone
The lights are on but there’s no one home
Tick tick tock it’s a quarter to two
And I’m done
I’m hanging up on you
Speaking of Hung Up, it probably reflects Madonna’s need to pander to her most loyal fans – the pink brigade – when she blatantly and unimaginatively samples the hook from ABBA’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight). There’s a certain charming camp element to that track that is missing on the other tracks on this CD, however. The other tracks have a relentlessly monotonous pattern of throbbing bass lines and synthesizers overkill to the point that it is hard to tell apart the tracks without repeated listening. Perhaps that’s the point of this CD: to be played in clubs where everyone is either too drunk, too high, or too deaf to pay attention to the music.
Whether any non-pink clubs will play this CD though is debatable. It isn’t a particularly creative or exceptional dance CD, it doesn’t have any innovative variations in the use of its electronic instruments in the tracks, and frankly, everything sounds the same. All Confessions on a Dance Floor has to offer is that it is a Madonna album. The usual clubs will no doubt have this CD on rotation on its Madonna Nite, which is sandwiched between Kylie Nite and Village People Festival, but for the everyday Average Joe or Jane, the appeal of this CD may wane when it’s played in the more mundane environment of one’s home.
