plorentz's Full Review: Confessions On a Dance Floor [Limited] by Madonna
There's a moment in the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? where we see Bette Davis all dressed up as the Baby Jane persona that had made her a child star on the Vaudeville circuit (she's planning a comeback); in her pretty little school dress and twirly blonde Nellie Olson curls in her hair with a big fat bow on top, she sings that treacly little ballad "I've Written a Letter to Daddy" - a little girl's love song to her dead father - in a jagged, broken voice, a harsh light deepening the shadows and lines on her withered face, exaggerating her advanced age (Davis was in her early 50s), so that she looked like a pale, scary clown.
There's something almost as grotesque and desperate about the photographs of Madonna (now 47), posed in prone position, pink pantied ass to the camera - a veritable invitation to all sorts of inequitable buggery, which accompany her latest disc, Confessions on a Dance Floor. Just when I'd thought Madonna had settled comfortably into the delicious (not to mention age-appropriate), powerful pimp mama image she worked so well in the videos to Britney's "Me Against the Music" and her own "Music", she turns it well on its head. This isn't the woman stuffing dollar bills into a female lap-dancer's g-string. Nor is she really the pluckily vulnerable girly-toy of her "Borderline" video. Instead, she's become the pimp mama playing the girly-toy she used to be.
And if I wasn't confident that, after a quarter-century in The Biz, Madonna had developed an elaborate sense of irony, I might be embarrassed for her.
Still: give us a single with a solid beat and an undeniable hook, and lyrics that don't really challenge our worldview or self-image, and Madonna gets our absolution every time. The lead-off track from Confessions, a taffy confection with a supersweet ABBA sample called "Hung Up", is just such a single. It's the kind of vulgar, by-the-numbers pop that can make anyone (who wants to) forget that an album like 2003's American Life (which, I confess, I actually like) ever happened. Melodically, lyrically, beat-wise, it's no more complex or subtle - and no less irresistible - than anything off her first album back when she was little more than an above average lip-syncer with a big, infectious attitude. Confessions on a Dance Floor finds Madonna playing (or at least trying to play) the opposite of the Norma Desmond character in Sunset Boulevard. She's still that spunky little girl on American Bandstand. It's the pictures that have gotten big.
Indeed, thanks to her producer-of-the-moment (she goes through them like handbags) Stuart Price, Confessions is probably the biggest sounding record of Madonna's career, substituting American Life's intimately tinny quality for massive disco extroversion; and replacing the new age spaciness of Ray of Light with a dense military industrial complex reminiscent of Ministry (circa 1985). And especially for people who have bristled for the last decade over her phony British accent and dubious "trained" singing, Confessions hits the g-spot - at least the first half of the record does.
"Get Together" is pure party material with a melody that sounds like a mash-up of all of her earliest singles; while the synthesized strings that open the obligatory fame-and-fortune message song (and, unfortunately, this album boasts a few of 'em) "Let it Will Be" pays winking homage to "Papa Don't Preach." In "I Love New York" (which sounds like nothing so much as a killer collaboration with Basement Jaxx), she memorably (for all the wrong reasons) rhymes "York" with "dork." Nuff said.
You may feel guilty about it in the morning, but it's a blast while you're listening to these songs.
Unfortunately, as the album progresses, it also seems to get more self-involved and narcissistic. But where the supremely self-involved American Life was teeming with unanswered questions and contrition, Confessions comes off more certain, more self-satisfied - even smug at times. Especially on "How High" where she comes to this conclusion about her fame: "I guess I deserve it." Well, okay. I'm not going to argue with that, but still.
Oh, Paul, just shut up and dance.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Confessions on a Dance Floor" by Madonna
Warner Bros. Records
Released 11/15/05
Produced by Madonna and Stuart Price w/Mirwais Ahmadzai and Bloodsdy & Avant
56 min.
SONGS: Hung Up - Get Together - Sorry - Future Lover - I Love New York - Let It Will Be - Forbidden Love - Jump - How High - Isaac - Push - Like It Or Not
On Confessions of a Dance Floor, Madonna, the most popular and significant female artist in pop music, returns unapologetically to her roots. A stunni...More at Buy.com
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