Madonna: Music on CD

Madonna has shown a quite remarkable ability to stay at the top of her game, year after year., After more than 50 hit singles (most of them Top 10) and 16 years in the limelight, she’s still coming up trumps.

The 90s proved slightly tricky for the Material Girl, with a full 8 year gap between the No.1s Vogue and Frozen. Between them, she enjoyed a steady flow of minor Top 10 releases which for any other artist would be considered a success. Not so Madonna, and only with the brilliant comeback of 1998’s contemporary Ray Of Light that teamed her with remixer-made-producer William Orbit, did she find the form of old.

Effortlessly shrugging off any notions of being a fallen 80s icon, Madonna sounded utterly in tune with the times. Music pulls off the same trick, taking as it does the sounds of European techno and trance on board courtesy of her latest collaborator Mirwais. Therein perhaps lies her secret to longevity and continual change in her work.

She has hooked up with a succession of male songwriters, producers and remixers down the years…from Jellybean, Arthur Baker and Pat Leonard in the 1980s to the aforementioned Orbit and Mirwais for her last two records.

Music is essentially upbeat and immediately memorable. The more sombre touches from Ray Of Light are dispensed with here, allowing a quite stunning 45 minutes of very modern, very stylish club-flavoured pop.

The single – and title cut – sets the tone, although it’s not even close to being the best track on the album. Nor is Don’t Tell Me, which has a nifty guitar motif etched into its tapestry of techno beats and cut-ups.

It’s an album that almost flies by, so enjoyable is this particular brand of Music. The best tracks are saved for the end, with next single What It Feels Like For A Girl the outstanding moment. The addition of her cover of Don Maclean’s American Pie on UK editions, meanwhile, is icing on the cake.