Candy Shop or Body Shop?

[shoobeedude 1]

If anyone is curious here’s what the critics wrote about  “Body Shop” back in 2015…. Funnily enough Slate’s Sal CinquemanI brought up  “Candy Shop” in his review below….,

 

“Other songs, too, find Madonna exploring new sounds or revisiting them in novel ways, like the Eastern-flavored ‘Body Shop’ a reminder of how agile both her vocals and lyrics can be; as extended metaphors for sex organs go, the track is the clever, more sophisticated cousin to 2008’s crass ‘Candy Shop’” 

Slant Magazine • Album Review: Rebel Heart • By Sal Cinquemani  • 26 February 2015 

 

“Songs such as the largely acoustic “Devil Pray,” which will stylistically remind many of “Don’t Tell Me”; the achingly vulnerable “Joan of Arc”; and the deceptively double entendre-filled, lilting “Body Shop” course with vitality and showcase some of Madonna’s best singing in years” 

The Record • Album Review: Rebel Heart • By Melinda Newman • 09 March 2015 

 

“Madonna sounds most inspired on Rebel Heart’s ballads, which allow her melodies and choruses to do the heavy lifting. As such, “Body Shop” is easily the best song and the subtlest sexual metaphor on the album”

Bearded Gentleman Music • Album Review: Rebel Heart • By Michael White• 23 March 2015 

 

“‘Rebel Heart’ may well be Madonna’s most diverse album, encompassing the playful “Body Shop,” with its automotive double-entendres backed by the plink of a sitar……”

The New York Times  • Madonna Rebel Heart Review • By Jon Pareles • 05 March 2015  

 

“‘Body Shop’ is great, a sweet Cherish-like melody over what sounds like a kutam”

 The Guardian • Madonna: Rebel Heart Review • By Alexis Petridis • 05 March 2015 

 

Adam Markovitz: “I actually like ‘Body Shop’ which has some neat sonics, including the most natural vocals on the album—Madonna sounds like an actual human woman performing and I wish there were more bits like it” 

Entertainment Weekly •  Love It Or Loathe It Debate Over Madonna's 'Rebel Heart' With Kyle Anderson & Adam Markovitz • 09 March 2015 

 

“Body Shop is perhaps the album’s best track- with Madonna going almost all Paul Simon ye worlde music over a Mali style piece of desert music. It’s a stunningly, effective piece of pop and surely should have been one of the contenders for the lead single off the album. A great piece of 21st century pop with Madonna’s voice never sounding so good and intimate and is a perfect example of her instinctive grasp of pop culture and the way it now embraces the whole world and the anglo American hegemony is now smashed and the music of everywhere is current as the street crackers to music from London, New York, Mali or Cairo and it’s all up for grabs.”

Louder Than War • Madonna: Rebel Heart – Album Review.• By John Robb • 26 February 2015 

 

The ‘Heart’ songs are rich in the same reckoning with faith, sacrilege, and love that have marked Madonna’s work for three decades, but there’s a new and palpable fatigue to the writing and performance. Her voice sounds great, light and a little worn around the edges; it bears the weight of a full love, of love won and lost, real pain and real joy. On highlights like the gentle “Joan of Arc” and weightless fantasy “Body Shop,” she sounds a little like a mother tucking into an old story at the kitchen table, running through the decisions she’s made and the paths she could’ve taken: her years of purposeful provocation, the isolation that stems from defiance, the fight to accept imperfections within yourself. There are albums where it’s been difficult to remember that Madonna is a real person and not just a figurehead, a concept, a lightning rod. That’s not the case with Rebel Heart: it has surprising gravity, and doubles as a portrait of a lion approaching the winter of a career without precedent. It’s the realest, and the best, Madonna has sounded in quite some time. 

Time • Review: Rebel Heart • By Jamison Cox • 09 March 2015 

 

Body Shop:

Seemingly out of nowhere pops this ever so light, sunshiny sketch that could be a cut from Damon Albarn’s Mali Music. There’s warm, rolling, clapped percussion and fingers on strings with M delivering a gem of a verse, in a style that could not be further removed from either hard-hitting dancefloor belt or quivering electro-drama. The lyrics seem composed only to create a bubbling, breathy, percussive patter that feels improvised and loose but also totally integrated with the music around it. Important to note that this song is not about the ethical bath products brand – more like, love is a highway, M is a battered car and with some careful / dextrous repairs it will be possible to get back on the road. The chorus melody is pure, laidback jouissance and feels somehow like vintage Madonna. Also fun are the residues of her anglophile phase in the lyric that suggests "We could go on a bender." Nice.

The Quietus • A Track By Track Review Of Madonna’s Rebel Heart • By Amy Pettifer • 25 February 2015

 

Despite the double entendres ‘Body Shop’ allows Madonna to make the most casual and breezy delivery of a song in her entire career. Thanks to some super-sweet melodies, this is actually a stellar cut. It’s got wisps of world music to it, a gently-driving undertow of clap-along percussion, and a whimsical banjo base that lends a wistfulness that defies the listener not to sway along.

Album Review • A Revelation and a Rebellion • Madonna’s Rebel Heart • By Alan Bennett Ilagan • 10 March 2015 

 

[Adonna 21,110]

Candy Shop winning in a land slide here!