Madame X-rated
Pop star Madonna delivers her most uncompromising musical statement yet
Madame X Madonna Interscope
Here’s a little-known pop-diva fact: Madonna used to have nightmares about Whitney Houston. In a 1995 Primetime Live interview, she described a dream she had in which she learned that her greatest ’80s chart rival’s then-new single, Exhale (Shoop Shoop), had replaced her You’ll See at No. 1. Meanwhile, in another room, her music teacher was humming Houston’s hit. Cue cold sweat. (Dreams don’t always come true: In real life, You’ll See never made it past No. 6.)
If Madonna is still watching the charts like a hawk, even in her sleep, she’s clearly no longer obsessed with ruling them.
In a 36-year recording career that has found the 60-year-old walking more tightropes than the average A-list pop superstar, Madonna has delivered her most uncompromising musical statement yet with her 14th album, Madame X.
The rebel heart she claimed to have in the title of this album’s 2015 predecessor is beating more loudly and passionately than ever before.
Freed from the need to be No. 1 with a bullet, Madonna finally has released an entire album that lives up to her reputation as one of pop’s greatest risk-takers.
The first single, Medellin, is a deceptively lovely opening statement that only hints at the fire raging just ahead. The comparisons that have been made to an earlier Madonna single, La Isla Bonita, aren’t far off, but Medellin, named for Colombia’s second-largest city, has sharper edges, and its Latin swirl is more jagged.
Colombian reggaeton rapper Maluma adds sexual tension to the mix, and when Madonna sings “Ven conmigo, let’s take a trip,” she sounds as inviting as she did cooing about the tropical island breeze in 1987.
After that, true weirdness sets in. Dark Ballet and God Control are ambitious and sprawling, the closest Madonna may ever come to her own Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s a pretty daring musical move to make only two songs in.
And then, re-enter Madonna, political rabble-rouser, the woman we first caught a glimpse of on 2003’s American Life. Although she never name-drops on God Control, which veers from mournful to hopeful to defiant in the space of its six minutes and 30 seconds, the song is emblazoned with the spirit of anti-Trump.
God Control sets the primary doom-and-gloomy, politicized lyrical mood of Madame X. Her head may be locked and loaded, but that doesn’t mean she’s about to give Michelle Obama a run for her eloquence.
Lyrically, Madonna’s political manifestos are no more sophisticated than they were 16 years ago. Her activism may be in the right place, but such jejune clichés as “Open your mind” (on Future), “Life is a circle” (on Extreme Occidental) and “Died a thousand times” (on Rise) go low when she should be aiming higher.
Killers Who Are Partying epitomizes Madonna’s trouble with words. “I know what I am, and I know what I’m not,” she sings, as if all too aware that she’ll be excoriated and nailed to the cross for swerving way outside of her lane with lyrics like “I will be gay, if the gay are burned / I will be Africa, if Africa is shut down
/ I will be poor, if the poor are humiliated.”
In her defence, it would be a somewhat unfair crucifixion. Madonna wasn’t always a rich, white woman. She came from nothing and triumphed, against all odds, in an industry ruled by predatory alpha males. Just because she now lives in the penthouse doesn’t mean she doesn’t remember what it felt like to be the girl from the gutter, or that she can’t express empathy and solidarity without pity.
Thankfully, the Midas touch of her old collaborator Mirwais still sparks. He shares Madame X production credits with Mike Dean, Diplo, Jason Evigan and Jeff Bhasker, and they’ve crafted solid state-of-the-art backdrops for Madonna’s musings. The electro gurgles, world beat flourishes and Madonna’s still-effective vocal presence (occasionally courtesy of AutoTune), make these 15 songs sing.
Madame X is best, though, not when it goes all CNN on us, but when it plays primarily like a musical travelogue, taking us to magical mystical places so fascinating that we might not even notice the storm clouds overhead. The electronic cha-cha swing of Medellin sounds like it was sun-kissed on the Cartagena coast before taking the love train south. Batuka, one of the album’s highlights, kicks off with Burundi-ish drumming and settles into a tribal rhythm that beats like Paul Simon’s Graceland relocated from Africa to South America.
The lyrical conceit of Killers Who Are Partying might have stopped it dead in its tracks if it weren’t for the fado flourishes that flutter over it like a ribbon of darkness. No one will ever mistake Madonna for fado legend Amalia Rodrigues, but if she were singing in Portuguese, Killers wouldn’t sound so out of place on a Madredeus album. She’s been spending a lot of time in Lisbon, and the Portuguese influence is all over Madame X.
Not surprisingly, when introspective Madonna gives in to the dance diva within, Madame X is a smoother ride. If pop radio were more hospitable to galloping robo-pop techno punctuated by mariachi horns and sung by women over 50, Come Alive might be an anthem of the summer. But with this album and at this point in her life, she’s not interested in editing herself for mass consumption.