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Past sounds of things to come
A mesmerizing collage of self-referential pastiche, retro-futurism and unabashedly inane lyrics in Madonna’s ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’
By Diego Costa
The lyrics make no sense — they don’t have to, nothing like gibberish sounds to support unforgettable electro. The kind that foresaw robots taking control of the Earth by 2001.
Madonna seems to be running out of things to say. After making a career out of pushing America’s prudish buttons, it must be hard to come up with more controversy.
Her career recalls a teenager who has done everything to catch people’s attention (piercings, tattoos, pink hair, blue hair, fuchsia hair, “Clockwork Orange” eye makeup) and now that she’s got the attention, there isn’t much left to keep the show going.
Perhaps Madonna wasn’t counting on her own longevity as she exploited every sexual taboo in the ’80s and ’90s, only to become the haute couture and motherly English countryside countess of the ’00s.
Intelligently, she switched from sex to politics, attempting a political voice just when we most needed one, with her 2003 album “American Life.” But while some say the album relatively flopped because of its socially engaged undertones, it probably flunked because it wasn’t socially engaged enough.
After being the only high-tier pop star to have the balls to shoot a blatantly anti-war music video, Madonna pulled it from all media outlets. And a hesitant Madonna isn’t the Madonna we have nourished all these years.
The reason why we have bought into her charisma is because she has always been the antidote for cowardice, the opposite of conformism. Even if only on the surface.
With “Confessions on the Dance Floor,” much is at stake. She is 47, post-sexual and post-half-assed-political. So where to go now?
Wisely, Madonna circumvents all high social and sexual expectations with her new album by limiting her music to the music world. A self- and meta-homage to the sensorial power of music itself. In plain English: dance, don’t think.
The self-described “non-stop dance music tour de force” offers an all-tracks-connected mix of retro and forward-thinking electronica, self-referential beats and embarrassingly frivolous lyrics.
While dance tracks aren’t exactly known for the cerebral power of their lyrics, it usually takes one clever and simple sentence repeated ad nauseam to make them fly. Like the year’s best club track — David Guetta’s “The World Is Mine” — in which he mumbles some hackneyed nonsense about losing one’s fears (“to what appears” — you gotta rhyme) and keeps repeating the track’s title over and over.
That is what a dance song needs. A simple hook, catchy beats with very slight variations and some feel good, attitudey innuendo.
And while “Confessions” offers little lyrical insight, British producer Stuart Price manages to outwit Madonna’s truisms and insistence on infantile rhyming (New York with dork, glad with mad and sad).
The album’s most brilliant achievement may be that it sounds so much more like a real experimental electronica disc than lofty formulaic pop desperate to be a hit. So you never get sick of listening to it. Quite a feat for someone of Madonna’s stature to create something that transcends her own Madonnaness.
Like when an actor, whose career has been built on their own persona (Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep) it is hard to differentiate them from the character they are playing. But if one is able to abstract the fact that this is a Madonna album, one can hear some truly avant-garde electronic sounds, not some merely self-serving aural masturbation.
The fact that there are no pauses between the songs also helps create the feeling of a genuine club experience. While “Ray of Light” already explored the contemporary fusion of electronic music and pop, she didn’t allow the beats to embody the songs — too many lyrics, not enough space for just the beats.
In “Confessions” Madonna often allows her voice to play more of a supporting role to the synthesized thumping. Quite an evolution, for the queen bee of the “it’s all about me” generation.
Hung Up
While the video borrows the Travolta and bulky boombox ’80s aesthetics and the song uses ABBA sampling, everything else is forward-thinking drag music. It crescendos and teases an ending a million times before it finally closures. The epitome of progressive.
Get Together
In this one-step-up-from-lounge-track, Madonna is a teen again, wondering if there is such a thing as love at first sight. But in the end, as a wise woman, she realizes that whether it exists or not, she doesn’t care, since “all is just an illusion.” Yeah, we heard it all before, she will even admit it in the following track, but it doesn’t mean we don’t want to hear it again.
Sorry
The intro features Madonna saying “I’m sorry” in various languages, one version sexier than the other. In this self-empowerment ballad-on-Meth of sorts, she gives continuity to her “I take no BS” persona, telling her man he is not half the man he would like to be. Yes, belittle me, Madonna!
Future Lovers
The chorus is something said backwards, whatever it is she is saying, it is kind of annoying. But she bypasses the hyper-realist logic criticism by infusing the song with a god-like, omniscient narration that proclaims that “there is no love like future love.”
I Love New York
For all the classic pretense of its title, this is definitely the silliest thing Madonna has ever done in her career, not counting “Swept Away.” The song epitomizes uninventive lyrics and then tries to make up for the lack of creativity by using swear words here and there. Too bad it doesn’t work. Skip.
Let It Will Be
Here the album starts to pick up. Even if the lyrics go on and on about how awful it feels to be rich and famous, the Kraftwerk-esque beat will not get out of your head. Smartly, the lyrics make no sense — they don’t have to, nothing like gibberish sounds to support unforgettable electro. The kind that foresaw robots taking control of the Earth by 2001.
Forbidden Love
In the best track in the album, Madonna sings the pains of meant-to-be heterosexual love that is frowned upon. Here she continues the set of futuristic hymns of “man on the verge of becoming machine” digressions — one of electro’s favorite motifs. And while talking about the future feels ironically passé, she reclaims it as timeless aural parable. The deliciously synthesized vocals give it a tinge of post-modern, minimalist gloomcore. “We are the robots” with a dash of girlie humanism.
Jump
A bossy, slightly sadistic spoken intro by Madonna, just like in “Erotica,” so who can resist? A knock-yourself-out, club-tailored take on the wasteful nature of inertia.
How High
More complaints and looking-back commentary on fame and ruthless ambition — really, Madonna’s only confessions on the disc. Originally made for the musical “Hello, Suckers,” which sank before even going into production.
Isaac
The traditional singing in the background is all this track has to offer. Too bad the over-produced fragmentation of the Yemenite chanting makes this sound like a “Sky fits heaven” without the catchy beats. Maybe she thought invoking ancient religion always worked. But for all its exploitative usage of prophecy-sounding foreign babble, it comes off as pretentious as Ray of Light’s Bollywood-campy “Shanti.” Without the henna.
Push
The amateur nature of the lyrics kills this song. We’ve noticed the trend, songs about nothing. But while the beats can handle their meta-hollowness, lyrics are inescapably more than just sensorial. Unless you completely overshadow them with mesmerizing techno, which is what her producer, wisely, often tries to do.
Like it or not
This song jumps out because the lyrics actually have something to say. Nothing too smart, but it evokes some interesting imagery. Like Madonna being put her on a pedestal or being dragged in the mud. And there is something vicariously gratifying about listening to her unabashedly compare herself to Cleopatra and Mata Hari and promise “I will never ever stop.”
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