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Music Vs. American Life (The battle of Mirwais)


Music Vs. American Life  

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    • Music
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    • American Life
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  • 5 years later...

Music has a lot of filler that was fun when it came out but I’m not too fond of. 
 

Amazing, Runaway Lover, Nobody’s Perfect, I Deserve It

American Life has less for me…

Mother and Father is kinda meh, Nothing Fails kinda bores me but I still like it and maybe I’m So Stupid is not the best. 
 

but I still chose Music as better cuz the high points are extremely high…

 

Music, Impressive Instant, Gone, Paradise Not for Me 

Where as the high points on AL don’t really reach the same heights with the exception of Die Another Day and Easy Ride. 
 

I might have to make a hybrid album of the two and see what happens. 

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3 hours ago, RUADJAI said:

Music has a lot of filler that was fun when it came out but I’m not too fond of. 

😳

3 hours ago, RUADJAI said:

Amazing, Runaway Lover, Nobody’s Perfect, I Deserve It

All amazing. A+ songs

3 hours ago, RUADJAI said:

Mother and Father is kinda meh

wrong

 

3 hours ago, RUADJAI said:

maybe I’m So Stupid is not the best

You are so wrong for this

 

3 hours ago, RUADJAI said:

but I still chose Music as better cuz the high points are extremely high…

Finally you say something right

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On 6/2/2017 at 12:30 PM, Turuncan said:

"Music" has mediocre songs and plain lyrics, simply "I love Guy Ritchie" thing just the way "True Blue" was "I love Sean Pean" thing. But it has a great production, great melodies, great arrangements. It is also experimental in some ways with 'Paradise (Not for Me)' and 'Impressive Instant' as well as some touch of folk music. Besides, it includes one of the most successful singles of her career, this being the title track.

 

"American Life" has good songs and deeper, more personal/more trying-to-be-universal lyrics and although it is partly "I am infatuated with Guy" thing this time, the first half of the album makes it more worldly. However, its production is rehashed and on most songs it is bad. 'Mother and Father' is a disaster in every way, and 'Die Another Day' really has nothing to do with the album. Additionally, I would expect more universality and social criticism from an album called "American Life". This is achieved through the first three songs, but beginning from half-protest half-love song 'Love Profusion', the album turns into the diary of Madonna. Totally misleading, especially when the blood-splashed Che Guevara-like cover art and the original video for the title track are considered. Good idea, terrible management.

 

So, as much as I like "American Life" too, I do not think it is a good album. My vote goes to "Music".

In retrospective, I agree with this. Music is legendary and Iconic. Ok, everybody was wondering what she was going to do after such an iconic, perfect, peak album like Ray of light, and changing the direction with Mirwais was risky but genius at the same time, for Music, Don´t tell me , I deserve it and gems, traditional but very 21 century fitting at the same time. What´s more, she was in great spirits for this albums and it´s promo, after having Rocco, with great energy, and even if the album have very dark and alternative moments like the amazing Paradise not for me, overall I remeber it as a very shining and happy Madonna era. I came as a fan in 1999, one year after ROL was smashing the charts, so American Pie and this were my first Madonna releases as a fan, and they were very succesful, so I was in the moon and still love them. On a not so positive note, I don´t think the Orbit stuff is as good as it should, ok it´s not bad, but it´s not shining either, which was downer, after doing such an amazing work on ROL. But there you have Patrick Leonard and others involved, so there you have your answer. One last thing: I always loved Gone, and has a very special place in heart forever.

Mmmm, American Life had a very special place in my heart in 2003 and for many years after being released. It is more of a full Mirwais record. I love it for personal reasons, but I agree it has its problems. The production is not as rich as in Music, as it is a low key record for a big part, but sometimes it migh sound undercooked. Then her mood was not as happy and shining as with music, although she looked amazingly beautiful as a brunette, but overall the feeling was depressing, the retired great clip, then the one wirh the flags, people not liking the title track,  and then after all the criticism, the single without videoclip and Madonna hidding the initial concept and turning blonde again with Love Profussion and hollywood left an image of an era like semi aborted. I agree that the concept of criticising America with the Che guevara cover did not represented well the album, that is in general quite personal and low key. So all in all, despite the very good songs here and there, a mess. I agree Die another day was not fitting. But the next tour was amazing and she did recover amazing with Confessions, so, well American Life is not her best records, but it also has a special place in my heart.  

But overall I would choose Music I think.

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26 minutes ago, Drownedboy said:

Mmmm, American Life had a very special place in my heart in 2003 and for many years after being released. It is more of a full Mirwais record. I love it for personal reasons, but I agree it has its problems. The production is not as rich as in Music, as it is a low key record for a big part, but sometimes it migh sound undercooked. Then her mood was not as happy and shining as with music, although she looked amazingly beautiful as a brunette, but overall the feeling was depressing, the retired great clip, then the one wirh the flags, people not liking the title track,  and then after all the criticism, the single without videoclip and Madonna hidding the initial concept and turning blonde again with Love Profussion and hollywood left an image of an era like semi aborted. I agree that the concept of criticising America with the Che guevara cover did not represented well the album, that is in general quite personal and low key. So all in all, despite the very good songs here and there, a mess. I agree Die another day was not fitting. But the next tour was amazing and she did recover amazing with Confessions, so, well American Life is not her best records, but it also has a special place in my heart.  

But overall I would choose Music I think.

THIS

AL is a really special album in her discography because it was a jump in Ms 40s, refusing to do stupid pop and but missing the popular in the songwriting. After Don't Tell Me perfection, AL's post-folktronica felt a little too experimental and ahead of its time, but it resurged later in the new generation which curiously led to musical crossovers like Taylor Swift and Lil Nas X.

I really loved that M took such a radical route. But the fact that it ended with Hollywood and Nothing Fails not being the hits I hoped they would be, Remixed & Revisited so-so u-turn, and The Re-Invention Tour which didn't bring life to my favourite AL songs imho... a shame because her vocals were so great during that  era... it's such a missed opportunity for me.

Music is stronger as a milestone in her discography and still holds very well the test of time. Even if it's originally a song for Mirwais' Production solo album, Paradise (Not For Me) is one of the Top 5 songs they did together.

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I love the singles from Music. And "Impressive Instant". The Orbit tracks are good songs but stick out like a sore thumb because of the production. I loved many of the remixes from this era at the time, but only a few still hold up today. That transition from "Runaway Lover" to "I Deserve It" is always such a downer. I wish "Music" would have stuck to the same vibe as the first 3 tracks and then AL have the electro folk theme. 

AL might not have those huge singles Music did, but it sounds more cohesive to me. Many of the remixes still hold up. The original AL video isn't her most iconic but to me will always be her most important. AL felt like a risk. Music didn't. That gives AL the edge for me.

They both shit on Madame X.

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I remember when I heard Music for the first time on the radio and how captivated I was because I had never heard a similar sound before. But big was my disappointment when I listened to the rest of the album and none of the other songs resembled Music: they were simple pop songs with electronic sounds. However, they weren't bad for that and I really enjoyed listening to the whole album.

But it is the fusion of the acoustic with the electronic in American Life, and that one can verify in most of the songs of this excellent album, which ended up convincing me that this was one of her best works. So much so that to this day I dream of Madonna releasing an American Life part 2 because the original album was so short that I feel like it didn't make me reach orgasm, musically speaking.

The only song that breaks the cohesion of the album is Die another Day. Its chaotic and disordered sound bears no resemblance to the original American Life proposal, thus becoming an undesirable intruder that does not deserve the place it occupies on the album and that could well have been replaced by Hey you or The Game, which do bear resemblance to the sound of the album and whose features are similar to the rest of the songs. That is why I will always discriminate Die another Day because if it weren't for that song the album would have been perfect from start to finish.

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