Madonna gets back on the dance floor

I know that Madonna’s last album was entitled American Life. I cannot recall though when it was released. Was it two years ago or more? Was this the one where she wears the Stetson hat on the cover? Cowgirl Madonna. Was it the one with her cover of American Pie? The one with Rupert Everett in the video? I will have to look for the album to learn the answer. Strangely though, I remember very well when Like a Virgin or Crazy for You came out and in what albums and that was oh so long ago.

But not American Life. I guess this is because although it was another well-produced effort, the album failed to produce any memorable single. Come to think of it, while she still remained in the news, it did look like we had seen the last of the Material Girl in the charts with American Life. That’s it, I thought. We had seen the end of Madonna, until probably the time when she will be reinvented as a singer of lovelorn ballads from bygone days.

But I should have dismissed that thought right away and rationalized that the artist concerned in this case is Madonna. After all, the 47-year-old wife and mother has probably had more reinventions during these past 20 years than silent horror king Lon Chaney had in his heydays. She will surely think of something that will put today’s sweet young things on their toes or maybe I should say in their proper places. And she has. So from English lady of the manor with a Grace Kelly wardrobe, she has now turned herself into a flaming haired disco diva with the ecstatic dance moves for her new album Confessions on a Dance Floor.

Madonna and disco. The combination is not really new. Truth to tell, that was how she started way back in 1984 with Holiday, Borderline, Lucky Star, Like a Virgin, Material Girl, In the Groove, Isla Bonita and others. Most of her early hits were made for the dance floor and she helped keep the disco fever burning hot. Now these past years have seen disco fall out of favor. Kids today go to the clubs or have rave parties. Disco is considered old hat, as passe as padded shoulders and fingerless gloves. Still, it cannot be denied that disco means a good time and anything fun to do can never be out for long. More so, when somebody like Madonna has decided to update or maybe, in her case, I should say, to reinvent the genre.

Now, I admired the sleek precision that characterized Madonna’s more recent work. Very trendy. Very sophisticated. Like pencil-painted lips. Confessions is nothing like that. With its plenitude of rhythms, jumbled themes and other gimmickry, it presents disco as a tribal ritual of harsh lights and whirling dervishes. This is the power of the dance in an album that accepts no excuses. Move or be banished. Loud, fast-paced, eternally in motion, this is a DJ’s dream come true. The only problem is that Madonna has already done his job. Mix. Add. Mix. Scratch. Mix. Etc. etc. She did it all. All that the DJ has to do now is pop Confessions on his player and allow it to run its course while he grabs a meal or catches up on his sleep.

The first single out is Hung Up, which with its pounding beat, is easily the most commercial tune in the album. You can bet that it will be playing in most of the Christmas parties this year. I look forward to the release of Future Lovers as the next one and then maybe the lighter paced Forbidden Love. Isaac, the slowest song in the line-up, also seems to have huge possibilities as a single. The other songs are Get Together, Sorry, I Love New York, Let It Will Be, Forbidden Love, Jump, Push and Like It or Not.

Incidentally, I have discovered another use for Confessions aside from the dance floor. Pop music fans will surely have lots of fun identifying the samples Madonna used in the album. And she used a lot! I am thoroughly amazed about the research and the number of hours she spent in the studio to get those interesting snippets in place. Find them if you can.