Happy 10th Anniversary to Madonna’s twelfth studio album MDNA, originally released in select territories March 23, 2012 and in the UK & US March 26, 2012.
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Opening at the Venice Film Festival on September 1, 2011, W./E. was an imaginative retelling of the controversial courtship between the Prince of Wales Edward VIII and American socialite Wallis Simpson. Anchoring this ambitious period piece were James D’Arcy and Andrea Riseborough, who compellingly portrayed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; both actors were personally selected by Madonna, the film project’s mastermind. She not only co-wrote the script alongside longtime friend/director Alek Keshishian, Madonna also occupied the role of director.
Notwithstanding its stunning cinematography, lush score and evocative performances, upon W./E.’s general release in late January of 2012, the movie was greeted with indifference. There was a silver lining: its theme “Masterpiece” received a “Best Original Song” nomination at the 69th Annual Golden Globes earlier that same month. Written and smithed by the Queen of Pop in conjunction with writer-producers Julie Frost and Jimmy Harry, the song won big that evening.
This dusky, tango-inflected ballad might have incidentally recalled past glories like “La Isla Bonita” and “Who’s That Girl?,” but “Masterpiece” was only one of many songs featured on Madonna’s twelfth studio album, soon to be set loose. It would be her first effort on the Interscope/Live Nation imprint after her groundbreaking tenure at Warner Bros. Records concluded three years prior.
On December 17, 2010—with shooting well underway for W./E.—Madonna took to her official Facebook page to proclaim, "It’s official! I need to move. I need to sweat. I need to make new music! Music I can dance to. I'm on the lookout for the maddest, sickest, most badass people to collaborate with. I'm just saying.” It was a bold statement that got chins wagging about what Madonna was going to do next in her preferred medium—especially given where she’d last left off.
The issuance of Celebration (2009)—her third compilation following The Immaculate Collection (1990) and GHV2 (2001)—brought the curtain down on another decade which saw Madonna simultaneously peak with American Life (2003) and stumble with Hard Candy (2008). The latter work emerged in the slipstream of Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005), a stunning example of how to balance commercial appetites, creative nerve and veteran certitude.
But Madonna’s aim to recapture the post-disco clubland vibes of her self-titled debut from 1983—via retrofitting the chart-ubiquitous, stateside R&B-pop of the late 2000s— saw her fall short of her goal. Still, the successor to Hard Candy was less of course correction and more of a shrewd recalibration once workshopping sessions for it started in the summer of 2011. With MDNA—a triple entendre/reference on Madonna’s name, DNA and the psychoactive drug MDMA—the singer-songwriter cast a wide collaborative net. Two accomplished trackmasters that went on to have a major hand in shaping the record’s sound were Martin Solveig and William Orbit.
The former was a fresh face that made a name for himself in the French music scene of the early 2000s before propelling himself to broader renown by that decade’s end; the latter figure was more than familiar with Madonna having assisted her in plotting eventual classics Ray of Light (1998) and Music (2000).
Although Solveig and Orbit wrote several sides on MDNA, per Madonna’s request, the pair split their production tasks in half for the long player. Further writer-producer aid came from several quarters, notably Michael Tordjman, Klas Åhlund, Jean-Baptiste Kouame, Michael “Mika” Holbrook, Laurie Mayer, brother-in-law Joe Henry and cousins Alessandro and Benny Benassi. Madonna joined in not only as a co-producer on the album’s twelve tracks—sixteen on the deluxe iteration barring one remix—her pen touches each song in either a lead or co-write capacity.
Madonna commences MDNA with “Girl Gone Wild,” a decadent slice of European synth-funk trimmed with various electro-pop ephemera. What follows is a canny assortment of dance-punk, nu-disco, power pop, and EDM as heard across “Gang Bang,” “I’m Addicted,” “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” and “Some Girls.” Even better, she leaves enough room for a bit of worldbeat psychedelia and digitized exotica flavors with “I’m a Sinner” and “Love Spent” respectively.
The urban au courant of Hard Candy this was not.
And while not everything works—“Superstar,” “Beautiful Killer,” and “I Fucked Up” sound like unfinished demos—MDNA does feel more substantive than its predecessor. For all the muscle behind the tracks, the scripts affixed to them are just as arresting. The LP was crafted in the wake of Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s marital collapse; their divorce was finalized at the outset of 2009. Not a straightforward cogitation on her ex-husband, MDNA is instead a study of emotional extremes in reaction to the separation itself. Because there’s no conventional linear structure concerning the album’s narrative, it can come across as disjointed—it’s possible this was intentional on Madonna’s part to reflect her splintered mood. Regardless, whether she’s engaging in diarist introspection (“Best Friend”) or vending in mindless escapism (“Turn Up the Radio”), polarity is her thematic compass.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on “Gang Bang” and “Falling Free.” The first selection is a dark revenge fantasy and its violent tone makes it singular within her song catalog; the second piece is an existentialist meditation triggered by romantic loss. Although “Falling Free” had been mostly conceived by Henry and Mayer, it’s clear that it spoke to Madonna’s lived circumstances at the time; she and Orbit provided their own minor compositional flourishes as needed. Out of all the material present on MDNA, “Falling Free” is the only one where Madonna’s guard slips completely to reveal the complex, vulnerable woman underneath taking stock of her life—the warmth and sensitivity conveyed in her vocal helps to center it as the strongest cut on MDNA. The finished product was, as I remarked in my 2018 book Record Redux: Madonna, “a harried pop kabuki of berserk sonics and scattershot lyrics,”—it remained to be seen if it could sufficiently charm audiences.
A whirlwind of promotional activity preceded MDNA’s March 23, 2012 street date with the aforementioned stump for W./E., the reveal of its inaugural single “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” and a showstopping turn headlining the Super Bowl XLVI Halftime Show on February 5, 2012. In short, it was business as usual for the hardest working woman in pop.
Critical notices were almost uniformly positive, though reviewers did comment on MDNA’s fragmentary nature; chart wise, at its start, the record impacted as expected worldwide, proof that Madonna albums were guaranteed to be events. Requisite touring duties kicked off in the spring of that year in Tel Aviv, Israel and saw Madonna continue on as an undiminished live act.
However, the triumph of MDNA felt somewhat front loaded. Sustained sales interest in the LP began waning right before she began to gig in support of it, and this was even after “Girl Gone Wild” and “Turn Up the Radio” had gone out to radio and retail after “Give Me All Your Luvin’.” That launch single—Madonna’s final U.S. Top 10 showing (to date)—sported two unique women in the popular music arena of the period: Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. Madonna’s decision to retain their services on the MDNA non-single fare “I Don’t Give A” and “B-Day Song” suggested calculation favored over organic alliances—a habit that had come to ground on Hard Candy.
Ten years on, conversation among her fans runs hot about MDNA’s legacy within her canon; it is commonly written off as a lesser, transitional misfire. In truth, MDNA was the soundtrack to Madonna’s own internal battle for her artistic soul made public. Despite that conflict, MDNA is a more tuneful and gripping listening experience when compared to what came later with Rebel Heart (2015) and Madame X (2019). A reappraisal of its finer points is definitely in order.
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