Madonna Review

ALLOT of things can be said about Madonna as we all know very well ( Brittany kisser, Cabala queen, rumors of divorce, A-Rod, Rodman etc....) and she is not known for being the world's greatest singer. Let's not even get started on her painful attempts at acting (I could name a few movies but I will just say one word....SWEPT AWAY).  Above all the thing that can be said most is this fact: she has managed to keep her finger on the pulse of the music world and in the public eye ever since her breakout 80's days. As I look back on it Madonna's music has been apart of my collection from then until now and BOY what a musical ride it has been.

The Beginning:

My earliest memory comes from the first time I heard the song Everybody with the addictive course "dance and sing get up and do your thing." It was some time before I found out that it was Madonna and when I did it was at that moment I became a reluctant fan. I say reluctant because though the song was a hot party number I still dismissed her as a thing of the moment but one night at a Baltimore club around about 12:45/1:00am in 1988 reluctant went out the window. The set up goes like this....when a new song was being premiered the lights were almost always lowered and a blue light would flash (think K-Mart's blue special....for those that remember:~). On one particular night that happened and a beat was released threw the speakers that upset many nerves. No vocals played....just a beat that was extended and manipulated for about 8:00 minutes thanks to the skills of an awesome DJ. Knowing that DJ I ran up to him and asked "Who the heck was THAT" to which he reply-ed "believe it or not MADONNA. I am almost ashamed to admit that the song I am speaking about is Vouge(lol)! I have a love hate relationship with that song because although I love the beat and the music the dance and words that went along with song I could have cared less for BUT OH THAT BEAT! The love for the song comes from the fact that it samples the 70's Salsoul Orchestra CLASSIC song Oh I Love It (Love Break).

The Middle:

MANY more musical highlights come to mind like the release of Bedtime Stories and by this time I was a full on reluctant-free fan of Madonna. The first release Secret was a mellow laid-back number that I played over and over but if that was not enough a friend let me hear a remix of that same song that took it to STILL unreachable heights (after not having that remix in my collection for some time I FINALLY got a copy:~). Madonna does her defiant best on the r&b thumper Human Nature and does an even more impressive if not outstanding job on the ballad Take A Bowwith Babyface cooing softly in the background. What made Bedtime Stories so special was the music video's that came along with the single releases. The video for Bedtime Stories (in my opinion her best video EVER) STILL gives me the feeling of seeing a magnificent video for the first time (think about the first time you saw Thriller).

The Now:

Hard Candy, Madonna's latest release, is (so far) the best release of 2008 and the more you hear it the more you love it. I had the greatest laugh when I heard a neighbor playing a track from Hard Candy over and over and OVER.........he by the way is a huge RAP fan and I NEVERthought I would hear him jamming off believe it or not again Madonna ( I laughed till I cried...LITERALLY). After teasing the living daylight's out of James at that moment I thought about writing this review because that proved my viewpoint showing that this lady still has that "IT" factor and if she can convert my neighbor that finger has yet to move an inch from the musical pulse.