Madonna gives a figurative finger to ex-hubby Guy Ritchie on her lively new album — her best work in years. (Mert & Marcus)
“MDNA” makes Madonna the top pop diva once again. (AP)
Madonna
MDNA
★★★★
Hell hath no fury like Madonna scorned.
In the four years since she recorded her last studio album, Madonna blew up her marriage to Guy Ritchie, made a tedious film about two supposedly glamorous Nazi sympathizers and allowed herself to be upstaged by M.I.A.’s middle finger in front of 111 million people. Distracted by ventures into clothing lines, fitness centers and international adoption, she drifted from her roots as a pop diva with a knack for popularizing cutting-edge electronic music.
Rage, however, seems to have focused the Material Girl on what she does best. With “MDNA,” she’s made her best record since 1998’s “Ray of Light.” It’s a collection of club tracks and confessionals that drops white-hot disco bombs with laser-guided precision.
Working with “Ray of Light” producer William Orbit, Italian electro producer Benny Benassi and French DJ Martin Solveig, she serves up a succession of intoxicating grooves that stand up to anything Lady Gaga and Beyoncé have sent up the charts.
Where Madge manages, at 53, to actually outpace her far younger peers is her willingness to lay bare the raw, jarring emotions of the past few years. Her break with Ritchie has inspired surprisingly catchy observations of hearts imploding — Sean Penn and Warren Beatty never worked her into such a lather.
“I Don’t Give A” and “I F – – ked Up” (available as a bonus track on the deluxe edition) capture two facets of the horror of being newly divorced. The first rails against the process — “You were so mad at me, who’s got custody? The lawyers suck it up, didn’t have a prenup” — but pledges that she’ll survive and move on. The second expresses the guilt and remorse of a woman who accepts her own role in the split: “I f — ked up, I made a mistake. Nobody does it better than myself.”
Yet even at her darkest, Madonna keeps intact her legendary instincts for a killer hook. “Gang Bang” is a straight-up hater’s anthem. “I thought it was you, and I loved you the most,” she chants, “but I was just keeping my enemies close.” As the Orbit-produced bass track grinds through the mix like a tank tread, she merrily pronounces herself a proud assassin: “Bang bang, shot you dead, shot my lover in the head.” It’s an exquisite kiss-off that’s equal parts meditation on spite and rump-busting dance-floor workout.
While most of the album wades through the debris field of her failed marriage, there are glimpses of brighter times. “Girl Gone Wild” leans on Benassi’s thumping house production for a party track that could have easily been a single from her 2000 album “Music.” Then there are the breath-like keyboards on LMFAO’s remix of “Give Me All Your Luvin’ ” (another deluxe-edition cut) that sound like they were lifted straight from one of the Material Girl’s “Express Yourself” sessions.
Managing to find substance in fury and freedom in tears, “MDNA” is an uplifting testament to resilience. Better still, it’s evidence that Madonna has finally returned from her sojourn as a would-be Renaissance woman and to deliver an album with the guts and groove of her finest work.