Tuesday, January 20, 2015

'Rebel' Smell


The track listing for Madonna's much-leaked "Rebel Heart" LP is out HERE and features a whopping 19 songs, which has me wanting to send an open letter to ALL artists. Just because you now can put 19 songs on an album doesn't mean you should. Less is frequently more -- just ask Tracey Thorn -- and if "Silver Springs" had to be left off of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours," surely some self-editing could have been done on the group's Christine McVie-less "Say You Will" marathon, or Debbie Harry's "Necessary Evil" and Madge's latest. (Sleater-Kinney is getting raves for its 32:17-minute comeback album.)


That said, I finally got around to listening to the six officially released new Madonna songs from the album -- preview/buy on iTunes HERE -- and here's what I thought: As blogged, "Ghosttown" is my favorite. Felt like it could have been on "Like a Prayer," even, so perfect. "Living for Love" isn't bad, but I feel like everyone's making it out to be the dream old-school Madonna single we have been waiting FOREVER to get, but which really was "Celebration" -- the single from her most recent best-of collection that radio still chose to ignore. (If you're not 12, then they won't play ya -- plain and simple -- so I don't see this inferior tune faring any better.) Disappointingly, I was pretty shocked by how weak the other songs were. I'd heard such promising things, but the lyrics from "Devil Pray" had me cringing, and the self-referencing and double-dose of the word "bitch" in two others weren't any better. (And now I see Mike Tyson is featured on a song? There's one that didn't need to be included!) Madonna will always be one of my favorite music acts -- she's got enough classic material to last a lifetime -- and it's not that unusual for the greats to stop being as great as their careers go on. (See: Harry, Debbie.) Still, I am hoping there are a few more "Ghosttowns" buried in this monstrosity. When she's good, she's still better than most.

UPDATE: The deluxe edition has TWENTY-FIVE songs???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 comments:

das buut said...

I love the idea of so many songs. There's usually only 1 or 2 out of an album of 10 that I want to hear and it burns my ass after I paid so much for it. The 10+ songs and bonus content, is where I usually find my favorites. Digital stores eliminated the need for shelling out for crap without a first peak, but when the new release is the same old 2/10 ratio, it feels the same.

Blobby said...

To be fair, 'Say You Will' was slated for a double album and Fleetwood Mac did cut songs to make it a jam-packed single disk - though it could have used more pruning.

Madonna - well, those six songs dropped off iTunes top 200 in 6 days. Four of them in four days. It took two other days for the other two songs. She can market all she wants......the album will be going nowhere fast.