graecophilos said:

toronto

Moonbeam said:

Okay Moonbeam, but was COADF on the BB 100 after 4,5 months??

Anyway, my fave is clearly Heartbeat. Then comes Miles Away.

I loved 4 Minutes in December when the first snippet from that Tibaland concert was played. I thought it was fantastic! I knew it would become a smash.

As anyone ever recocknized that the 4 Minutes chorus is similar to the Dress You Up chorus? Chord-wise I think!

alphastreet said:

"Beat Goes On" is a perfect Madonna song....it's catchy and the positive lyrics are right up her alley (she seems obsessed with the message of "don't hesitate,reach your goals right now"....lol)The production is very retro,sounding like a 1987 dance track.I like her vocals on this song.Many fans consider this song to be a worthy sequel to "Jump".

SoulAlive said:

Jump is fantastic!!! Well, I think the HC album could be titles "Urgency" as well. She sings about "waiting/ hesitating/anticpitating/tick tock/your time has come/don't was your time) alot. Hung Up was about that too, and Jump partly. Most of Madonna's hits are about how we should do what we want NOW and don't hesitate.

and she always uses that rhyme. Listen to "Bye Bye Baby" - I keep on waiting/ keep anticipating ..

Moonbeam said:

Oh come on....no matter what kind of record she made,it would still be out of the Top 100 by now We live in an era where most albums aren't big sellers anymore.But "4 Minutes" became her biggest hit single since "Vogue",so it's not all doom and gloom.




I love 'Bedtime Stories' too,but it's an album that divides her fanbase.Many fans think she soldout with that album,which I don't agree with.

beat goes on sounds more like something from 1980-1983 more than the late 80's. I would say 4 minutes sounded the most like something from the late 80's. To me it's the duet that madonna and mj never did.

Although I liked the Bedtime Stories era, she's had more exciting ones before so I find it weird when a bunch of janet fans say BS was her best era. Secret and Take a Bow still get airplay quite a bit. I had to get used to it cause this wasn't dancy, campy, fun madonna even if I thought the videos were some of the best of her career and she still had that edge with Human Nature

alphastreet said:

My favorite songs on that album are "Secret","Inside Of Me","Human Nature" and "Forbidden Love" which really should have been a single!

alphastreet said:

Don't ask me why,but when I hear "Beat Goes On",I think of 'Who's That Girl' That's why I say the song sounds like 1987 to me.It wouldn't have sounded out of place on that movie soundtrack.Her vocals,especially,sound just like that era.




Seriously,I bet that MJ is green with envy."4 Minutes" sounds like the type of song that he's looking for.Not surprisingly,he is gonna be meeting with Timbaland soon,to discuss working together...lol...

graecophilos said:

It actually was! US Chart Run: 1-4-8-13-15-17-21-15-20-24-40-60-59-50-56-53-60-67-
75-73-82-102-93-107-115-117-117-120-111-124-140-135-
141-135-138-145-174

I think the song that sounds like the one Madonna and Mj never did is..... "In The Closet". Madonna wanted to make a fantastic video, with her playing the man and Mj being a woman. Imagien that!! WOuld have been cool!

SoulAlive said:

Confessions has sold nearly 3x what Hard Candy has in the US, and worldwide! Album sales haven't shrunk THAT much in 2 and a half years. Without a big radio hit, Confessions still managed to sell pretty well (nearly 1.7 million in the US). Hard Candy is languishing around 650,000 and is nearly out of the top 200!

Moonbeam said:

I don't think record sales have much to do with the quality of an album.I mean,come on....look at the sales figures for the latest Lil Wayne CD! LOL.With the way things are,it's likely that Madonna will never have another "massive" album in the US.As she gets older,it'll be harder for her to get radio airplay (MJ and Prince have this same problem,as does Janet).She already knows this,which is why she recently said "Thank God that I don't have to rely solely on record sales...I know how to put on a show" Touring is what she's more focused on.Have you noticed that she did virtually no major promotion for Hard Candy? She focused solely on the tour because she knows where her bread is buttered...lol...
[Edited 9/15/08 5:36am]

SoulAlive said:

I would agree with all of that, but Hard Candy seems like such a desperate attempt to garner US sales. I think she is right to put her effort into touring. At this point, I think she should release music without worrying about its commercial viability. She has a large enough fanbase where it will sell reasonably well regardless. I think that the chart performances of Confessions versus those of Hard Candy prove that she is more likely to reach a natural audience when she stays true to herself.

Moonbeam said:

True,and like I said earlier,I give her a "pass" for making a big,commerical album this time around,because she doesn't do this everytime.For all we know,the next CD might be a dark,haunting collection of torch ballads....lol...She doesn't "sellout" with every album.

graecophilos said:

I think this theme is getting tired The whole "Don't wait,don't hesitate,do it now".....good message,but she's starting to say it a little too much.

I don't think she cares about US sales when the rest of the world is where her huge sales are. She's still huge in Canada, it's hard not to hear her music wherever you go, even album tracks at stores.

SoulAlive said:

Interesting, I guess the melody sounds like something off Who's that Girl, though the beat itself is completely Holiday 2008.

I'm glad mj is hooking up with timbaland, I hope it's not stale and overproduced like Rodney Jerkin's tracks though. The neptunes would be good for him too. I think a lot of the songs on Hard Candy could have been mj tracks to be honest.

Moonbeam said:

I remember that part.

SoulAlive said:

I think songs like She's Not Me and Miles Away are closer to her musical origins than Euro-dance-pop! She#s an American!!

graecophilos said:

Oh definitely.It's obvious that Pharrell and Timbaland really "studied" her 80s work,especially the first album.This album sounds like they wanted to update the first album but bring it into 2008."Give It To Me","Heartbeat","She's Not Me","Dance 2Night" and "Beat Goes On" are all retro-sounding,with very little hip-hop influences.That's the biggest surprise about this album: it's not the big hip-hop album that some fans were fearing....lol...it's basically a pop/dance album with an urban twist."4 Minutes" is the only overtly hip-hop-flavored track.The other four Timbaland tracks are actually kinda mellow.

SoulAlive said:

SoulAlive I can't believe we share so many same opinions. You talk like me but with better English!
I think EXACTLY the same!!! it was Timbaland who said he and Justin wrote 10 songs for Madonna. He talked about one song, La,La and said it sounds Like Lucky Star but with an hip-hop beat.

in 2007, when Beat Goes On and Candy Shop leaked, I didn't like the songs. I stoill dislike CS but the reworked BGO is far superior than the demo! And I still get nuts when people say
Madonna's hip-hop album...

I can't think of any other M-album expect the first one where so many pop melodies met at less than an hour!
[Edited 9/15/08 7:09am]

I thought it was stupid how people freaked out at madonna going "urban" when she was an urban played artist earlier in her career, and people thought she was black until she hit mtv. Her music always sounded like black music, so I knew HC would just be an extension of that. And people think rap/hip hop is all the slow shit today, when really it sounded like disco a long time ago. Good Times-Chic and Rapture-Blondie are great examples of early hip hop merged into r&b/pop/disco so I knew it would be something like that.

what a shitty album. i don't have a favorite. it's all such shit.

Heartbeat and Miles Away.

The rest of the album is dire shit.

SoulAlive said:

Hasn't Madonna's entire career been about big, commercial albums for the most part

VoicesCarry said:

no, I think Michael Jackson stands for that. Madonna took risks. Almost all of her albums have songs that are NOT commercial. Think oft the American Life or Music album, about songs like Astahnga or Mer Girl from Ray Of Light.

graecophilos said:

Her albums may have some songs that are not commercial, but they are still big commercial albums - they are created with the intention of generating massive record sales.

This is like saying Like a Prayer is not a big commercial album simply because Act of Contrition is on there
[Edited 9/15/08 12:00pm]

VoicesCarry said:

Okay, that's right!!!

BUTT... there's nothing wrong with being commercial. Stevie, The Beatles were DAMN comercial as well.
As long as you have at least a BIT of artistic integrity it's oka ybeing commercial.
And that's the point with HC. Many fans complain she lost her integrity, she did it for the US market, for money.

But it's not that Madonna has been an undergroudn artist before.

I agree that madonna has taken way more musical risks than mj in the last 10 years, and even at times during the 80's with like a prayer and early 90's with bedtime stories and erotica.

To those mj fans who say madonna is not a real artist, I'll shun Oh Father or Ray of Light in their face. Bottom line is both are pop artists, I don't buy any of that "but michael was around longer crap"

My favorite is "She's Not Me." Love it!

According to my top 50 Madonna songs, 3 Hard Candy songs make the list:

41. She's Not Me
43. Miles Away
47. Beat Goes On