Press reviews: Hard Candy

Madonna's career has spanned more than two decades

Madonna's eagerly-awaited 11th studio album, Hard Candy, hits shops this week.

Her latest hit, 4 Minutes, featuring Justin Timberlake, is taken from the album and is currently top of the UK singles chart.

On Hard Candy, she invites us to imagine her as a confectioner running a musical sweet shop. Here is what the critics thought.

Hard Candy features the best songs Madonna has come up with in the decade since Ray of Light, a stunning trio packed right in the middle of Hard Candy: Beat Goes On, the collaboration with Kanye West; the fizzing, rattling Incredible; and She's Not Me, a song in which Madonna reminds herself how good she can be.

The problem with Hard Candy, though, is that it is one of the least sexy records Madonna has made. Great music for Madonna has usually been the product of intense, one-on-one relationships with her producer, whether that be Jellybean Benitez, Lenny Kravitz or William Orbit. Here she has splashed the cash on urban music's A-list producers, from Pharrell Williams to Timbaland, but the chemistry just doesn't work.

The beats are tired and over-familiar: each producer sounds as if he is doing an impression of himself. Nor do any of these boys seem to have the emotional maturity to draw anything deeper out of a woman who must surely have something to say at this point in her life. Madonna sounds muted and lyrically guarded - sometimes even downright sad and lonely.

Hard Candy is a let-down after 2005's triumphant Confessions on a Dancefloor. Still, your disappointment is tempered by the certainty that there'll be another Madonna album along in a bit, and it would be a foolish man who wrote off her chances of scaling the heights again. "I can go on and on," she sings on a track called Heartbeat. Twenty-six years into her career, who would doubt it?

Love or hate her (there's rarely anything in-between), Madonna always seemed to be one step ahead.

She was a master at trolling underground styles and appropriating them for mainstream makeovers, in the same way that David Bowie kept redefining cool in the 70s by repackaging outrageousness as exquisitely crafted pop, rock and ersatz soul.

But the days of Madonna bending the mainstream to her enormous will apparently are over. Her latest album, Hard Candy, finds her working with established collaborators in an effort to keep up with trends, instead of starting them.

Mega-star collaborations always look promising in theory, but rarely live up to expectations. The same can be said for Madonna hooking up with four of the biggest names in pop on Hard Candy: Timbaland, the Neptunes, Justin Timberlake and Kanye West.

Hard Candy casts a wide safety net, working with the biggest hitmakers of recent years as Madonna strives to regain her place atop the pop charts.

The result: Madonna's ability to provoke has evaporated. In its place are a series of lushly produced mid-tempo pop songs that try to fit in with what's already hot on commercial radio.

Once again, Madonna has reinvented herself. On Hard Candy the Queen of Pop veers toward hip-hop by recruiting ubiquitous producers Timbaland and Pharrell Williams.

But fans who might wince at the thought of Madonna relinquishing control can relax - the results sound surprisingly natural, not forced attempts to cash in on the latest trend.

Though Hard Candy is a radical departure from Madonna's last CD, 2005's Grammy-winning Confessions on a Dance Floor, which was a continuous mix of disco-and house-tinged dance songs, its goal is mostly the same - to get your feet moving. She just goes about it in a different way.

Hard Candy is the kind of album a record company longs for in the current embattled market: a set of catchy, easily digestible, mass-appeal songs by a star who's not taking chances.

Hard Candy is a retrenchment, but its a typically savvy one. The dance floor - not the pulpit, not the art gallery - is Madonna's truest home, and it's a good place to shake off pretensions and excesses.

Her grand statement on Hard Candy is nothing more than that she's still around and can still deliver neat, calculated pop songs.

Madonna has had more profound moments - Like a Prayer, Ray of Light - but not every pop star is cut out for full-time profundity. This time around, concocting new ditties that will have her arena audiences singing along, she was smart to stay shallow.

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