i do not like the offical cover of "hard candy" sooo...

i'll be buying that limited edition

stevenpottle said:

I ordered my copy already

WPGC radio interview with Donnie Simpson (Washington,DC)

http://wpgc955.com/pages/925657.php


She reveals that "Miles Away" is the first song they wrote for the album...she also confirms a tour to begin in late summer....it's a fun interview!


Who remembers Donnie Simpson from BET's "Video Soul"?

EXCLUSIVE: WORLD TOUR NEWS!

Drownedmadonna has some news on the upcoming Hard Candy world tour...


***The first show will take place at London's Wembley Stadium on September 11 with a second show on September 13.

***After London,it's on to Paris for several shows.

***Australia,Brazil,Argentina,Dubai and Israel.....she's gonna visit these places and many more.This will be a genuine "world tour".


Save your money now

that are some intersting locations. on her site fans coulv vote for a song she should perform on the tour and you could choose between Rescue Me, Keep It Together, Into The Groove...

I'd so love to see her performing Keep It Together!! The BAT performance is my favorite Madonna performance ever!

graecophilos said:

That's great.I too would love to see "Keep It Together" revived for this tour.

Are you a member of ICON? I heard that members are gonna get an exclusive download of "La La",an outtake from Hard Candy.This is the song that Timbaland was bragging about last summer.

since there are so many different versions of this CD,I wanted to list them all here so nobody gets confused.Be sure you guys know which one you're buying

HARD CANDY

***THE REGULAR CD---contains 12 tracks.
***JAPANESE EDITION---13-track edition contains the bonus track "Ring My Bell".
***SPECIAL EDITION---containing the entire album,two "4 Minutes" remixes in a hinged-DVD-sized "Candy" box.It also includes a 16-page booklet and approximately 35 Starlite Mint candies packaged in a clear cello bag.Check out the cover posted above (it's black).
***LP LIMITED EDITION---Contains the 12-track album on three regular-weight vinyl discs (one black,two "candy" colored swirled) in a three-pocket Stoughton jacket,with a bonus audio CD of the album.It also includes the same two remixes that are found on the Special Edition.I just ordered this set and I can't wait to receive it!
***iTunes DELUXE VERSION---Contains the album,two "4 Minutes" remixes,bonus track "Ring My Bell",digital booklet and a new remix of the second single "Give It To Me"!!!!! Remixed by Paul Oakenfold!!! It's nearly six minutes long.
***iTunes PRE-ORDER VERSION---Contains the album,digital booklet and the bonus track "Ring My Bell".

If you're a member of ICON (Madonna's official site),you will soon receive an exclusive download of the track "La La",an outtake from 'Hard Candy'.Produced by Timbaland.

Any questions? Anybody still confused? lol

heartbeatocean said:

Very Brigitte Bardot. Beautiful.

Madonna's way,all the way

by Liz Smith
The Buffalo News


"Norma,there's nothing wrong with being 50,as long as you don't pretend that you're 25!".That was Bill Holden's final plea for reason,arguing with deluded star Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard".(Gloria Swanson played Norma,a role that came to define her).On April 29,Madonna's final album for Warner Records-her home base for 25 years-debuts.The first single,a duet with Justin Timberlake titled "4 Minutes",has rocketed up the Top 40 Countdown faster than any song in the chart's 38-year old history.It is No.1 on iTunes.Perhaps most significantly,Ellen DeGeneres shimmies to it everyday on her TV show. (Ellen now equals Oprah in shaping cultural cravings.If either of these women says,"Buy it! Love it!"-millions do).

So Madonna's swan song for Warner might be her biggest hit ever.The "4 Minutes" video features Madonna-relentlessly athletic,and Justin,effortlessly limber-dancing up a storm.We've heard some snarky comments about Justin "making music with his mommy" but in the video,there seems to be hardly a year between them.She will be 50 in August;he is 26.You'd never know that Madonna could,chronologically,be his mother,watching the pair bump and grind in 4 Minutes. (Madonna is toned to the max; a disciplined life is not be despised!).

The album is titled 'Hard Candy' and it features one delirious thump,thump,thump,shake-it-til-you-drop dance track after another.Madonna is not ready to go minimalist-a microphone and a simple black coctail dress,or whispering moody ballads.

Yet,even some of Madonna's most ardent admirers wonder if she has overreached-at least in terms of presentation.The album art for Hard Candy crystallizes this concern.There she is,photographed in a black leatherette dominatrix outfit and faux-fierce attitude.It is a retread of her old "Sex" book persona.Harsh.Madonna,if challenged,would say, "It's ironic,it's a parody!".And sure,every great star eventually riffs on his or her image.But why not simply let the brilliant Steve Meisel photograph her as the powerhouse glamour-puss she is today? (Meisel's Vanity Fair cover this month-Madonna clutching a giant globe of the earth-is sensational).

Inappropriate photos notwithstanding,there seems to be no such thing as an "irrelevent" Madonna.Unlike Norma Desmond,Madonna's audience is alive,kicking and packing stadiums to see her.(She'll tour for Hard Candy in the summer,pocketing,oh,another $200 million,give or take a mil).The media always says has "become a bore" but they can't stop writing about her.She has been counted out more times than Hillary Clinton and has always bounced back.(Like Sen.Clinton,she is super-focused: "in it to win it" as Clinton has said famously-ominously,to some!).

And Madonna never has to rely on,or refer to any man to embellish her resume or validate her status.Madonna did it her way,all the way.

EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE:MADONNA IN THE STUDIO WITH TIMBALAND

SoulAlive said:

that's Madonna, JT and Timbaland after the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

MikeMatronik said:

Is that a pencil drawing????

SoulAlive where did you get that from with La, La?? I bet the song sucks but of course I want it anyway.
but honestly... I'm not an Icon member but do own Super Pop...

seriously..now Madonna better come with it, cuz Mariah aint cuttin it out 4 me right now

LISTEN TO PREVIEWS OF HARD CANDY HERE!!!

http://www.musicload.de/a.../item.html

Holy crap! give it 2 me sounds amazing! wow wow wow. non of the other songs sound like what was reviewed! very bedtime stories (the faster songs)

I loved Miles Away and 4 Minutes, never was too keen on Candy Shop!

Give It 2 Me sounds amazing!! Much better than one could assume from hearing that 0 sec bad quality clip!!
this song's gonna be huge!

Heartbeat has a melancholic melody and teh chord change reminds of something...

She's Not Me - sounds okay, a quality that's not fantastic but too good to be mediocre!

Incredible - boring

Beat Goes On - sounds better than the first version but the chorus seems to be almost the same. it's the same chords than the demo, I guess

Dance 2Night - it's true it sounds really 80s... like Shalamar??

Spanish Lessons ---> it may be the worst one...

Devil Wouldn't Recognize You ---> i need to hear more (the verses) to have a proper opinion.

Voices ---> sounds okay, probably the best last song since the one on teh Ray Of Light album?

Madonna
Hard Candy

Rolling Stone: 4 of 5 Stars

Dominance isn't just a fetish for Madonna, it's her religion. It's no accident that she opened each show on 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor tour by clenching a riding crop in her hand, jerking a gagged male dancer around by a leather leash. And she never puts down the whip: Since 1986's True Blue, Madonna has claimed writing or production credits on every one of her songs, even when she worked with dance-music artists such as William Orbit, Mirwais Ahmadzaï and Stuart Price. So it is surprising that her eleventh studio album — her final one for longtime label Warner Bros. — is an act of submission. For Hard Candy, Madonna's midlife meditation on her own relevance, she lets top-shelf producers make her their plaything.

A songwriting team of American chart royalty helps Madonna revisit her roots as an urban-disco queen. Madonna isn't even the star on the first single, "4 Minutes": Timbaland and Nate "Danja" Hills provide a clanging whopper of a beat, and her vocal bobs alongside Justin Timberlake's, fighting not to drown in the brassy funk of a marching band. Timberlake is the album's melody doctor, and he steals from his own broody "What Goes Around . . . Comes Around" on Madonna's "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You." Madonna co-wrote but didn't co-produce the Timberlake-Timbaland team's five songs, which smack more of their creators' stamps than her own. The songs are solid, but slightly anonymous, as though they could be stripped down and peddled to other singers.

The creative tension between Madonna and the Neptunes' Pharrell Williams crackles. Williams bangs on paint cans to generate the beat on the innuendo-laden opener, "Candy Shop", and pumps up the thumpy self-empowerment anthem "Give It 2 Me" with clubby synths that trumpet one of Madonna's favorite life-dance-sex metaphors: "Don't stop me now, don't need to catch my breath/I can go on and on." "Heartbeat" pulses like "Lucky Star," and the soulful "Beat Goes On" (which features an uninspired Kanye West cameo) is one of a handful of tracks with bells and whistles — the classic disco "toot-toot, beep-beep" — traceable to two of Madonna's touchstones: Chic, whose Nile Rodgers helped steer her early career, and Donna Summer.

Like Confessions, Hard Candy celebrates dance as salvation, but even the euphorically groovy "Heartbeat" and "Dance 2night" strike wistful notes. Although the uptempo set features no ballads, the dominant lyrical themes — regret, yearning, distrust — are far from upbeat. Morphing from a syncopated shuffle into a lathery, orgasmic hysteria, Pharrell's "Incredible" is a challenging song about longing for a relationship's idyllic beginning. There's a melancholy pining in Timbaland-Timberlake's lush "Miles Away," which implies that all is not peachy in the house of Ritchie. "You always have the biggest heart when we're 6,000 miles apart," Madonna sings. International pop megastars — they're just like us!

The album's weakest moment is its most emotionally vapid. Madonna dips into Español for the painfully literal "Spanish Lesson." She has said the music was inspired by a Baltimore dance called the Percolator but seems more indebted to Timberlake's fast-strummed "Like I Love You." Fortunately, there's also the bass-popping retro-boogie "She's Not Me," where Madonna imagines her lovers feeling buyers' remorse for being seduced by a copycat who "doesn't have my name." The offender who's "reading my books and stealing my looks and lingerie" could be any young pop starlet. But it also seems like an oddly timed barb at Madonna's now-fallen successor, Britney Spears, who has teamed up with many of the guys on Hard Candy — Pharrell, Danja and (ahem) Timberlake — and Madonna herself.

Madonna can still scoff at wanna-be's half her age because she's stayed so flexible with her sound. (She's performed a similar feat with her body, devoting herself to a yoga regimen that's made her impossibly elastic — name another near-fifty-year-old who can still rock a hot crotch shot on her album cover.) Even when she wrestles with Pharrell's abrupt stylistic changes or lets herself get absorbed in a Timberlake melody, Madonna still finds her way back on top. The atmospheric closing track, "Voices," poses the question "Who is the master, who is the slave?" before its operatic wind-down ends in a dramatic bell toll. The answer to both questions is still Madonna.

CARYN GANZ

Today, the US iTunes Store offers a batch of remixes of 4 Minutes:

4 Minutes Remix Edits:
4 Minutes - Edit 3:11
4 Minutes - Peter Saves Paris Edit 4:49
4 Minutes - Bob Sinclair Space Funk Edit 3:23
4 Minutes - Junkie XL Dirty Dub Edit 4:05

4 Minutes Remixes:
4 Minutes - Rebirth Remix 7:55
4 Minutes - Bob Sinclair Space Funk Remix 5:39
4 Minutes - Tracy Young House Mix 7:54
4 Minutes - Junkie XL Remix 6:13
4 Minutes - Peter Saves Paris Mix 8:52
4 Minutes - Junkie XL Dirty Dub 4:51

The edits can be bought together as an album or separately, while the long mixes can only be bought separately

OMG can't wait to buy me some hard candy

WTF!

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.

THE SNIPPETS

IT'S LIKE SOMEONE PUNCHED ME IN THE STOMACH!

MADONNA'S VOCAL APROACH IS SO DIFERENT!

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY!

http://www.zshare.net/dow...13cefdc3a/

30 second preview of the songs

MikeMatronik said:

it sounds like old Maddy.

I just downloaded 4 Minutes (Peter Saves Paris Mix) on iTunes which is almost 9 minutes long (8:53 to be exact)!! I love it!!!

mrexperiance said:

bedtime stories had fast songs?
[Edited 4/15/08 20:00pm]

From the snippets I'm hearing, the best songs are "Candy Shop", "Give it 2 Me", "Miles Away", "Spanish Lesson" & "Voices". The worst are "4 Minutes" (I've heard it too many times) & "Beat Goes On" (I prefer the unreleased version).
[Edited 4/16/08 5:48am]

I don't get the buzz about 'Miles Away'. It sounds like it could fit in perfectly with American Life. Its the least catchy song on the album based on those snippets. It sounds like it's going to be a pretty good album though. 'Dance Tonight' is great, very Michael Jackson, my favourite so far along with 'Heartbeat'. 'Devil Wouldn't Recognize You' sounds too much like a Justin Timberlake song, I can't put my finger on which one, I think a mix between 'What Goes Around Comes Around' and 'Cry Me a River'. This album is probably going to be her best since 'Music' for me. I can't bear to listen to American life and only mildly enjoyed Confessions.
[Edited 4/15/08 22:49pm]

"Heartbeat"


What's really amazing about this album is...it's very 80s-sounding! I don't hear alot of hip-hop influence at all.Based on these clips,it appears that "4 Minutes" is the only real hip-hop sounding track."Beat Goes On","Dance Tonight","Give It To Me" and "Heartbeat" are pure 80s-sounding dance songs.This is a dance/pop album,which is what I predicted it would be.Madonna did not "go hip hop" "She's Not Me" sounds very Chic-ish.


It's nice to finally hear a clear version of "Candy Shop"

Based on these brief clips,my two favorite songs are "Heartbeat" and "Miles Away".

The last two tracks,which are slower,didn't blow me away.I'll have to wait to hear these songs in their entirety.

i have not been this underwhelmed since i first heard snippets
from "planet earth"



having said that, i'm sure that i will come to like this album
a lot more than planet earth, in due time.

"Incredible" didn't blow me away,based on this brief clip.Gotta wait for the full version.It's the longest track on the album.

I can already tell that "Spanish Lesson" is the filler track.Didn't sound too exciting.

It seems that the first half of the album (from "Candy Shop" to "She's Not Me") is stronger than the second half.

I like the new version of "Beat Goes On"....it's straight from 1982! Has a cool early-80s vibe,as does "Dance Tonight".It was a smart move to place these two songs back-to-back.