Madonna……MDNA review by Romero

MDNA

For the first time in 4 years, the Queen of Pop has released an all-new album that has everything: tracks with hard dance beats, pop sensibilities, and loving ballads. The album begins with a great track, Girl Gone Wild. She recently released the music video for it; can we say fierceness? It’s sexy, sensual, and contains men dancing in 6 inch heels; and they are getting it! Absolutely love it!

What surprised me about the album were the songs that talked about her personal life. I Don’t Give A featuring Nicki Minaj talks about her current life, without her former husband Guy Ritchie and all of the problems that come along with divorce. Minaj’s verse towards the end is amazing and goes well with beat. Minaj kills it when she says towards the end “There’s only one Queen…and that’s Madonna…B*itch!”

Another track, Gang Bang, is racy with a hard dance beat. She sings about shooting her lover dead, in the head, and I rather enjoyed the pure anger of her rant towards the last minutes of the song. So raw and passionate, it kinda makes me wonder what she would do if she was in a room alone with Mr. Ritchie?!

The only featured artists on the track are M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj (unless you want to count a remix with LMFAO). I love both of these artists. They have done amazing things with their careers and it’s nice that they get recognition from such a legend. Give Me All Your Luvin’ is not my favorite track but it has grown on me, especially since seeing the Super Bowl performance as well as the music video. During the video, I felt I was having flashbacks of watching her MTV VMA performance with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

The slower, synth-string based Falling Free is a favorite of mine. It is simple, elegant, and comes in with harmonies at just the right time to give you that surge of bittersweet sadness. Masterpiece is also emotive with the common theme being how hard it is to love someone so beautiful and pure; how loving her “masterpiece” has helped and hindered her own growth.

This EP has everything. At times, she seems to be channeling her characters of yesteryear; I’m A Sinner reminding me of something to be found on her album Ray of Light; or maybe an extension of Beautiful Stranger from her album Music. Turn Up The Radio and Love Spent sounding like something from her Pharrell-produced album Hard Candy. I’m Addicted sounds like it should be a bonus track on Confession On A Dance Floor. This is not to say that these similarities weaken the album, they just happen to be some of my favorite albums of the past 15 years; the works of Madonna that have affected me the most.

All in all, I would recommend this album. It is solid. It is so multi-faceted that every song is pure pop perfection. But would you expect anything less from the Queen of Pop?!

– Romero H