CD reviews for Oct. 9, 2009
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Madonna
CELEBRATION
Easily among the most successful female recording artists of the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s, Madonna, the singer, dancer, songwriter and provocateur, has sold 200 million records and sent 37 songs to the Billboard Top 10. Celebration, her new two-CD hits package, contains 36 tracks, most of them famous enough to be ingrained into popular consciousness.
Though Madonna doesn’t possess the best of voices, her talent, timing, a winning package of music, dance and image and, maybe most of all, a desire to rule the world, made Madonna an ’80s megastar. Like her singing, dancing contemporary, Michael Jackson, she made particularly good use of MTV, then primarily a vehicle for music videos. Of course, Madonna’s videos were the most provocative on the network.
Even when Madonna doesn’t write or co-write her material, she makes it her own. Working with a series of dance-oriented producers — including Nile Rodgers, John “Jellybean” Benitez, William Orbit, Dallas Austin, Paul Oakenfold and Timbaland — she’s kept the quality of her music high for 27 years. That goes for early, synth-filled dance hits “Holiday,” “Lucky Star” and “Borderline,” the Nile Rodgers-produced, MTV-era “Like A Virgin” and “Material Girl” and such later-career highlights as the swirling “Beautiful Stranger” and pulsating “Ray of Light.”
Two newly produced songs — recent dance hit “Celebration” and a charmingly sing-songy duet with New Orleans rap star Lil’ Wayne, “Revolver” — show that Madonna’s music skills are ever sharp.
Various artists
WHIP IT: MUSIC FROM THE MOTION PICTURE
There’s plenty of musical girl power in the new roller derby movie, Whip It. The skating adventures of Bliss, a 17-year-old from a little Texas town who travels to Austin and falls in love with roller derby, are accompanied by such female-featuring music acts as the aptly stomping Tilly and the Wall; alt-rock veterans the Breeders; retro-pop, artful Danish noisemakers the Raveonettes; latter-day punk band the Ettes; and the rousing Go! Team.
Garage rock dominates the track list, but there’s also Har Mar Superstar’s faithful remake of the Association’s “Never My Love” and the classic rock of .38 Special’s “Caught Up In You.” Joan Jett, a natural choice for such a collection, doesn’t make the cut, but Peaches’ “Boys Wanna Be Her” fits Jett’s strutting milieu. The CD’s generous 19 tracks could just as well have done without Clap You Hands Say Yeah’s fragmentary “Blue Turning Sky” and a remix of “Lollipop” that spoils the charming Chordettes original.
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