That's because Madonna's album all sounded like the same song. I actually fell asleep listening to it!
I could say the same about any hip-hop album released in the past five years. It's all the same garbage to me, and yet you can't turn on the radio these days without being bombarded with it, so obviously the masses are eating it up. Ultimately, it's all subjective.
Madonna's "Confession" album was meant to be an all-dance album, so it necessarily follows that every song on the album is going to have a dance beat. However, she covers a broad range, moving from electro-rave ("Hung Up," "Get Together") to 80's-new wave inspired pop ("Jump") to guitar-driven rock-based pop ("I Love New York") to world music ("Isaac") to torchy jazz ("Like It Or Not") to 70's disco-electro fusion ("Future Lovers"). For what on the surface seems to be a very superficial, frothy dance album, it's actually very sophisticated, extremely well-produced (thank you Stuart Price!), and features some of Madonna's most self-critical, introspective lyrics to date ("How High?" anybody?).
I don't necessarily agree that "Sorry" should have been a bigger hit than "Hung Up," but "Get Together" and "Jump" are easily not only the best dance tracks on the album but in Madonna's entire career. "Get Together" got no airplay in the U.S. at all, and "Jump" was just released as a single, so we'll see how it does. Even if it bombs, I am sure Madonna will be crying all the way to the bank to count the gazillions she just made on her record-breaking "Confessions" tour, which is now ranked as the highest grossing tour of any female pop artist, even out-grossing Cher's 3-year-long "Farewell" tour (by contrast, the "Confessions" tour lasted only 4 months).
She can't sing and doesn't play nice with others. The only reason she is so successful is because she uses extreme visual images to stir up the media.
Wrong on all counts! I agree that Madonna sounds like shit live, but try singing while doing aerobics and you will sound like shit too. She actually has an amazing voice when she concentrates more on her singing and less on her stage performance. I saw her twice on the "Confessions" tour and both times she nailed "Drowned World," one of the most vocally challenging songs in her repertoire. She's also had a lot of formal voice training. Andrew Lloyd Webber would not have hand-picked her to star in the screen version of "Evita" amongst the many superstar actresses vying for the role (including Michelle Pfeiffer, also a gifted singer) had she not nailed the audition.
As far as not playing nice with others, you are about 15 years out of date. Madonna actually goes out of her way now to say something nice and forgiving to anyone who makes derogatory comments about her, for example, when Elton John recently picked on her for lip-synching and she responded by pointing out that she considered Elton John her friend and was sure that he was just having a bad day when he made that comment. She's really grown into a class act as she's matured over the years. Age, motherhood and marriage have really mellowed her out.
In the early 90's, around the "Erotica" period, Janet Jackson made a comment that she had much more class than Madonna. Madonna responded by simply saying that she didn't know why Janet would make such a comment since they had never met each other. Flash forward about 15 years and my, oh my, but the shoe is on the other foot, isn't it? Janet can't produce a hit record to save her life and has been relying on flashing her plastic tits every chance she gets for publicity.
Madonna has always been a visionary artist -- she's one of the pioneers of the video music revolution after all -- but her artistry is about so much more than shock value. It's always been about shining a light on the hypocrisy of the conservative socio-political establishment and raising consciousness about the evils facing the world -- AIDS, bigotry, war, religious intolerance, spousal abuse. Have you ever seen one of her shows??? If you have, and still don't get what Madonna's all about, it says a lot more about your intellectual limitations and political apathy than it does about the commonly retreaded criticism that Madonna is nothing but a media whore.
People with real talent don't need to do that!
