Boo Jian Wen Jeremy
The launch of Hard Candy releases a series of funeral dirges, declaring the death of the Queen of Reinvention.
The Funeral
The Funeral Dirges
Death Of The Queen Of Reinvention
The Obituary Photos
The Incinerator?
A large boxing ring sits in the middle of Zouk. Madonna’s music videos are projected on screens in the background, playing on repeat. The crowd, mostly young men with scatterings of women, waits impatiently, with their complimentary vodka drinks in hand.
The party kick-starts with the introduction of girl Thai boxers. The audience scrutinise them sceptically with reason – the boxers started off very slow, almost shadowboxing. The man standing beside UrbanWire laughs disparagingly, “They are fighting like girls!”, while another person near the stage yells impatiently, “Oi! Fight lah! What are you waiting for?”
As blows are exchanged, tempers flared and egos bruised. The blows start to come faster and harder. Amy, obviously the weaker boxer, takes 2 front hits to the nose and starts to bleed.
The crowd starts to boo, when MTV host VJ Taya announce the results – a boring and politically correct draw. UrbanWire feels that it’s sheer travesty since the Queen of Pop is renowned for controversy.
When Taya asks the audience to vote for a winner in another fight, the crowd take their revenge by cheering equally for both girls.
In an attempt to quell boredom, quizzes (“What’s Madonna’s favourite candy?”) are held to find out Madonna’s biggest fan. However, the fidgeting of the audience clearly betrays the futility of such an effort.
To make matters worse, by blatant product placement, the organisers of this event are adamant in reminding the audience that this is a thinly veiled PR event.
When asked for his opinions about the launch party, Steven Ngoing, 32, GAP merchandiser, expresses his bemusement about the fight. “Madonna doesn’t promote violence, but again, she’s always controversial, isn’t she?”
Summing up his feelings, he says, “ At least this is better than last year’s launch of Confessions.”
It’s a pity that the producers chose ‘Candy Shop’, a boring and utterly unimpressive number with weak sexual innuendos (“I got Turkish Delights!”) that fall unglamorously on its face, to open Hard Candy. This UrbanWire reviewer quickly switches it mid-track to “4 Minutes”. First impressions, as they say, always count.
In contrast, the second track and lead single of the album proved to be a dynamic collaboration with Justin Timberlake and Timbaland. A swarming fusion of elements, such as brass and beats, keeps the track from boredom and adds an additional dimension to the music.
Having said that, this track is not one of Madonna’s best, and is bound to tire after a while. With “4 minutes to save (Madonna’s) world”, UrbanWire is unsure if it has enough time. “Tick tock, tick tock,” Madonna chants. Time is certainly running out.
Beyond the seemingly fluffy only-sex-appeal of Hard Candy, Madonna reveals a sentimental, sometimes plaintive, note in a few songs. In ‘Miles Away’, she sings, “You always love me more, miles away. I hear it in your voice. We’re miles away.”
Singing “It’s like over and over, you’re pushing me right down to the floor. I should just walk away, over and over. I keep on coming back for more. I play into your fantasy,” she cranks up the melancholia in the upbeat ‘Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You’.
‘Heartbeat’ and ‘Dance 2night’ seem to promise dance redemption, but instead resembles weak stabs at dance grooves – an extremely pale shadow of Madonna’s previous albums.
Compounding the weakness of such songs is cringe-worthy ‘Spanish Lesson’. Without any engaging or outstanding tunes, lyrics or production, this number is so bad that it simply doesn’t deserve any more mention.
Death Of The Queen Of Reinvention
You are mistaken if you think that we’re implying that Madonna died. On the contrary, UrbanWire is confident that the entertainer will live for some years to come. Madonna still lives, but, with Hard Candy, the Queen of Reinvention commits suicide.
Instead of reinventing herself and setting industry trends, she jumps on the overrated hip-hop bandwagon and enlists the help from Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams (one-half of The Neptunes), and Kanye West, who then proceed to overpower her, completely overwhelming her identity.
This is especially evident in “4 Minutes”, ‘Miles Away’, ‘Dance 2night’, ‘Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You’ and ‘Voices’, where she co-wrote the songs with Timbaland and Timberlake, but didn’t participate in the producing process.
In “4 Minutes – in her very own single – she struggles with Timberlake, Danja and the blaring horns for attention, but fails. It’s laughable how Timberlake is featured as a “cameo”, when Madonna left a far smaller impression.
Her third track and second single “Give It 2 Me” is a commendable dance anthem, with club synths and lyrics. “If it’s against the law, arrest me. If you can handle it, undress me. Don’t stop me now, don’t need to catch my breath. I can go on and on and on,” she declares.
However, she might have forgotten that Williams, who worked very closely with her for this track, also collaborated with Gwen Stefani. Any saving grace this single might have is annihilated when Madonna started chanting repetitively “Get stupid, get stupid, get stupid, don’t stop it” a la Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”, and to the hook of Stefani’s “Wind It Up”.
It’s plain absurdity as the latter takes Madonna as her role model. “A lot of my influence came from her early work, like directly, like a Xerox,” Stefani told Fametastic.
Probably anticipating this backlash, Madonna tried to issue a riposte via ‘She’s Not Me’. She sings, “She’s not me. She doesn’t have my name. She’ll never have what I have. It won’t be the same.” UrbanWire isn’t convinced. In our opinion, this statement is best sung by a trendsetter, who wants to tell her followers that they aren’t like her. Madonna is clearly not the leader this time.
As if to finalise the departure of her identity and her full conformity with the urban culture, she wears a Championship belt, which has her new persona – M-DOLLA emblazoned on it, on the album cover. The pop star also wears a custom-made M-dolla knuckle-duster.
The album art is not less forgiving, both to Madonna and to our eyes. Oozing as much personality as an amoeba, the garish pink background and BDSM-eqsue images look less sexy and more try-too-hard. In the CD booklet, she poses in awkward positions.
But what is truly wincingly distasteful is her pose at the back of the Hard Candy album. Madonna sits on a high stool, with her legs spread wide and her looking down. It looks as though she’s taking a dump.
Hard Candy definitely has Madonna’s superb showmanship and her boundless energy. When Timberlake seemed to tire during recording, the Queen of Pop promptly gave him a vitamin shot. Admittedly, some songs, especially her singles, in Hard Candy aren’t a bad listen at all.
However, Timberlake got it right when he sung, “Who is the Master? Who is the Slave?”, in ‘Voices’, the album’s final song. Madonna has portrayed herself as the dominatrix ever since she held a whip in her hand, yanking a gagged male dancer by a black leather leash in her Confessions On A Dance Floor tour in 2005.
Thus, it is disconcerting and exceedingly disappointing that Madonna, with all her history, courage and unwillingness to bow to controversy, has decided to put that whip down and to submit to the whims of other music makers.
She killed the Queen of Reinvention and replaced it with a cheap mass-produced Barbie doll-like Queen of Imitation, which will never be like the authentic thing.
After all, in ‘She’s Not Me’, she sung, “She’s not me. She doesn’t have my name. She’ll never have what I have. It won’t be the same. It won’t be the same.”
It will never be the same.
UrbanWire rates Hard Candy 2 out of 5 stars.