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Nov 23, 2009, 1:15am

Bazzeroos's Music Zone :: ALL MUSIC TALK :: Singles/Tracks :: Madonna - Celebration

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Topic: Madonna - Celebration (Read 21 times)

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Madonna - Celebration
« Thread Started on Aug 28, 2009, 5:28pm »

Celebration is probably the most calculated single of Madonna’s career. It is the Trojan Horse meant to propel the greatest hits into new bedrooms, designed to get younger fans to pick up the album, realise Madonna’s finest output was before the millennium, and go out and buy the entire back catalogue. Celebration is less about music and more about commercial product, something Madonna has become increasingly guilty of with every new album release. Her last album, and perhaps my least favourite of all her records, Hard Candy (2008), was specifically orchestrated to re-establish Madonna into the American, r’n’b music buying public’s heart. The majority of it on reflection was dross (apart from some moments of brilliance courtesy of Pharrell Williams), but it proved that Madonna, who has so brilliantly bridged art and commerce throughout her career, had landed on the side of commerce. The cold calculation of Four Minutes left so many shuddering that the album, although selling reasonably well, didn’t quite have the desired effect.

Perhaps learning her lesson, Madonna enlisted Paul Oakenfold to provide a Euro-centred clubby feel for Celebration, bringing back to mind Get Together, one of my favourite songs from Confessions On A Dance Floor (2005). Perhaps lacking Stuart Price’s sonic innovation, Paul Oakenfold places Madonna back in the spot she likes best - the dancefloor - and in some ways Celebration sounds like an artist coming full circle. Although Madonna is equated with being Queen of Pop, she is rather Queen of Clubs, her music often keying into what is going on in the underground club scene. She stole the synth-sleaze sound heard in New York club’s for tracks such as Everybody and Physical Attraction (1983), capitalised on the a dance craze and the House music of the early nineties for Vogue (1990), went back to the modern clubby sound of New York for Deeper and Deeper and Fever (1992), was inspired by Ibiza for most of Ray of Light (1997), looked to French House and electronica on Music (2000), and went Euro-dance on all of Confessions (2005). Even the poppier singles were given heavier club overhauls by the likes of David Morales, Masters At Work, Junior Vasquez, Felix da Housecat and Victor Calderone.

Although the lyrics are largely mindless, there seems a calculation in their recycled nature. Madonna makes references to hits such as Holiday, Everybody, Into the Groove and Hung Up, but rather than appear as an artist who can no longer be bothered writing anything meaningful, it may suggest that she is strengthening a manifesto that she has made throughout her career – that the dance floor is the only place where all life’s troubles can be forgotten. It’s not exactly Satre, but when we remember that Madonna started out life as a dancer, it certainly shows that there is some thematic consistency to her canon. Will Celebration be a huge hit? Most likely (though in Europe rather than America). Is it the best single of her career? No, but I would rather it to almost everything on Hard Candy. The case in fact is that it says what it does on the tin – Madonna is celebrating twenty-five years of still making dance music that demands you get your groove on.

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