sex and candy

Hey kids - it's April 29, a pretty big day around here cuz it's the release date of Madonna's Hard Candy. New albums from Madonna are considered big events in my life - like getting married or having a newborn or receiving a long-awaited rebate check. I can mark my life by every record she's put out. All that time anticipating, buying all the magazines, and recording all the tv promotions. It all cumulated to the orgasmic experience of hearing a batch of new Madonna songs for the very first time. Every release, I was a virgin again.

Anyhoo, the first time I heard Hard Candy is thru my computer speakers - not the ideal. But tinny speakers or not, these songs are banging, particularly Give It 2 Me, She's Not Me, and Miles Away. I don't think there is a bad song in the bunch. It's all dance pop done to its most immaculate perfection - maybe a little too perfect, if anything. It's like superpop without the vulnerability. I will always take the wounded, reflective but not preachy Madonna of Like A Prayer and Ray Of Light over the sexed-up, sweated-up Madonna. But hey, at least this is not the hip hop album I feared - it is still very quintessential Madonna - as EW puts it, sex as metaphor for dance, dance as metaphor for world domination. Just listen to Give It 2 Me - it's all there in full glory.

So go out and buy your copy of Hard Candy. It's sweeet. (You knew that was coming.)

P.S. She is performing a free show at Roseland in NY tmw. It's going to be broadcast via msn, starting at 7pm Pacific. Only 23 hours and 28 minutes to go...