Rebel Heart Reviews

[groovyguy 63,869]

Thanks to that dumb NME rating, Rebel heart's metacritic score dropped to 66! :(

[Breathless 5,286]

Body Shop

There is a hodgepodge of sounds here, with warm synths, plucked banjos and hollow drums as Madge metaphorically riffs on the open roads and repairing her heart. It’s uninspiring but probably a great commercial jingle if you can afford it.

 

That bit had me in stitches :lol:

It's a cute song.

[groovyguy 63,869]

Madonna – Rebel Heart – Review

Written by John Preston

Filed in Music
on March 4, 2015

 

http://vadamagazine.com/04/03/2015/music/album-review-madonna-rebel-heart

 

Madonna may struggle with the Rebel but her Heart is utterly convincing on her 13th album.

 

In 2001, Madonna was still very much riding the wave of what could be called her ‘second coming’. ‘Ray of Light’ and ‘Music’ had re-established her position as a still influential, global pop-star who could simultaneously top singles and albums charts whilst having the critical elite eat from the palm of her hand. When the earnest and quasi-political American Lifestalled in 2003 and became her lowest selling album to date, Madonna re-evaluated her stance and the next 3 albums saw her regularly declare ‘a return to the dance floor’. Bar the disco-opus of 2005’s Confessions On a Dancefloor, this saw a steady decline in songwriting and a further drop in sales for each subsequent release.

 

Rebel Heart then is not a return to the dance floor, its considerable running time unusually contains almost an album’s worth of ballads and mid-tempos. More than anything, it is Madonna’s most explicit attempt at recreating the sound of the pop princesses of the day. Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry and Iggy Azalea and their homogenised yet skilful brand of urban-pop can be heard via Rebel Heart’s myriad of producers which include Avicii, Kanye West, Diplo and Blood Diamonds. At its heart are Madonna’s considerable songwriting skills, an all too frequently overlooked and a crucial factor into her best albums successes.

 

Rebel Heart’s track-listing sums up its themes: ‘S.E.X’, ‘Holy Water’, ‘Iconic’, ‘Joan of Arc’, ‘Messiah’ and ‘Unapologetic Bitch’. In her own simplistic language, Madonna is commenting on the legacy of Madonna, colluding with her own mythology. There is a tremendous amount of looking back here, musically and lyrically, to the point where the oddly macabre sounding ‘Veni Vedi Vici’ sees Madonna drawl through her own songs titles ( ‘I justified my love, I made you say a little prayer‘) with a brass riff reminiscent of ‘Holiday’. Excruciatingly on-the-nose and featuring a guest feature from Nas in which he bad mouths Kelis, it is not the celebration it could have been.

 

‘S.E.X’ and ‘Holy Water’ should have also been great. This is Madonna after all and her sexuality has been a near-constant driving force of her artistry, creative output and cultural significance since ‘Burning Up’ in 1983, but both tracks, adequately enough produced by West, are childish and regressive. ‘S.E.X’, in particular, is uninventive melodically and stagnant lyrically (‘Oh my God, you’re so hot. Hold my head, let me get on top‘), with Madonna’s experiences over the last 30 years accounting for little more than what reads like a teen diary entry. The marginally better ‘Holy Water ‘, co-written with UK singer Natalia Kills, includes a sudden and gratuitous tacked-on sample of ‘Vogue’ for no apparent reason other than well, it’s one of Madonna’s best ever songs. ‘Best Night’, sounding like a Timbaland production from the Hard Candy sessions, transposes ‘Justify My Love’ onto its whispered bridge.,

 

The few all-out dance tracks are split between ‘Living For Love’, which attempts to be all things to everyone and in particular ‘Like A Prayer’ but falls flat where a chorus should go and the near novelty track ‘Bitch I’m Madonna’, which is at least funny and features intriguing and by-turns grating sonic textures from UK producer SOPHIE. ‘Unapologetic Bitch’ sees Diplo assign an ordinary reggae backing to a song that Rihanna might have recorded 4 albums back. The remainder of Rebel Heart is quieter, and while not especially introspective, there is a welcome and all-too-rare intimacy that sees Madonna genuinely re-engaging with her greatness again. ‘Ghosttown’ is a quiet-loud, quality power ballad that could belong to either Beyonce or Taylor Swift but instead Madonna, sounding disconcertingly like Karen Carpenter, brings a lightness and warmth that is unexpected and moving. The breezy ‘Joan of Arc’ may attempt vulnerability, but its real strength is in a superbly constructed song that sticks like taffy but never irritates.

 

A brooding and distorted electronic bass finally gives way to a bashing mid-tempo hip-hop beat, serenading Madonna’s clear up-front vocal on the gorgeous and nurturing ‘Inside Out’. (‘I want to know what you’re all about, you’re beautiful when you’re broken down, let your walls crumble to the ground‘) informs one of her best choruses ever. Sitar-strummed and like an R&B swaddled Bollywood ballad, ‘Body Shop’ is probably the most idiosyncratic and sonically strange moment on Rebel Heart. While it’s not her best moment lyrically with Madonna comparing her body to car parts in need of a tune-up, the beautiful and romantic middle-eight however soars and entrances. Madonna saves the weightiest moment until last, maybe in fact symbolising some significant finality. ‘Who am I to decide what should be done? If this is the end let it come, let it rain all over me‘, ‘Wash Over Me’ is melodically and vocally imperious, lyrically ambiguous and joins ‘Live to Tell’, ‘Til Death Do Us Part’ and ‘Drowned Word/Substitute for a Love’ as one of her most vulnerable and affecting songs.

In 2015, it is difficult to know how to approach a new Madonna album with listeners hoping for something that is innovative but reassuringly identifiable from what is essentially a massive and established brand. Her best albums have all been one-on-one collaborations with relatively little known musicians, well-documented small scale and intimate sessions. With ‘Like A Prayer’, her first major taste of credible recognition, it was Patrick Leonard, the reclusive William Orbit and Mirwais on ‘Ray of Light’ and ‘Music’ respectively, and electronic music-nerd Stuart Price on ‘Confessions On a Dancefloor’. These environments helped construct a trust where Madonna could experiment and flourish creatively and not see her record sales suffer. Rebel Heart is in part a very good album but not a fantastic one. For all of the references to her own musical past, Madonna seems less confident in how she defines and fits into the now: a frustrating situation that can betray the essential point of Madonna and what will continue to be her ongoing legacy.

[Fighter 28,888]

Joan of Arc

A Madonna track harping on about the unforgiving media was always going to sound a bit rich. The anaemic production here doesn’t help as she laments: “Each time they write a hateful word/Dragging my soul into the dirt, I wanna die”. Yeah, I am sure Madonna’s verbal-bullying victim Lady Gaga would agree.

 

 

what kind of bullshit 

[groovyguy 63,869]

http://madonnaunderground.com/excellent-rebel-heart-review-in-todays-dutch-telegraaf/

If you’re able to get a hold of today’s edition of Dutch Telegraaf newspaper, please do so. Madonna is on the front, there’s a tour ad, she’s on the cover of a news section and there is a large full page excellent review on Rebel Heart giving it four stars out of five!

[groovyguy 63,869]

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/05/madonna-rebel-heart-review

Madonna: Rebel Heart review – braggadocio v self-examination on an album of two halves

3/5 stars

Half of Madonna’s 13th album seems concerned with proving she can keep up with the kids. The other half is mature, reflective – and far more affecting

 

Its release has been plagued by controversy over piracy, the term “artistic rapeâ€,claims of cultural appropriation and the vexing question of whether or not it’s all right to laugh at a 56-year-old woman falling on her arse midway through a dance routine. But the most immediately striking thing about Madonna’s 13th studio album is rather more prosaic: it’s extremely long. The deluxe version features 19 tracks and lasts for the best part of an hour and a half. The super-deluxe version adds a second disc, featuring another raft of songs and remixes – anyone planning to listen in full is advised to first ensure their will is up to date in case they die of old age before they get to the end.

 

Rebel Heart is that long because it is essentially two separate albums. One is wistful and thick with reflections on failed love affairs and intimations of self-doubt. Most shockingly, it occasionally touches on the hitherto-unmentionable notion that Madonna’s career might draw to a conclusion at some point: “In a world that’s changing, I’m a stranger in a strange land,†she sings over wafty electronics and a battery of percussion on the gorgeous Wash All Over Me, “if this is the end then let it come.†The other offers dirty talk and defiant I’m-still-here snarls set to EDM-inspired productions, frequently the handiwork of Diplo.

 

There’s obviously no reason why an album can’t contain both. But on Rebel Heart, the two don’t quite gel, perhaps because you get the sneaking feeling that the former might represent the music Madonna wants to make, while the latter is the music she feels obliged to make, in order to compete with whoever the big new female pop star is: listening to a track called S.E.X., you’re struck by the sense of a woman dutifully going through the motions.

 

Certainly, the first category contains almost all of Rebel Heart’s indispensable moments, and not just because they belong to the slim canon of Madonna songs on which the singer genuinely seems to be revealing her personal feelings and frailties: Ghosttown and Joan of Arc are cut from the same emotional cloth as Like a Prayer’s Promise to Try or Ray of Light’s Drowned World/Substitute for Love. As well as the most intriguing words, they’ve got the album’s best melodies. For all the expressions of insecurity, they boast an effortlessness and a confidence that contrasts sharply with the sweat and strain that’s audibly gone into what Miley Cyrus would call the bangerz. There’s an ease and unaffectedness about the title track – a stark depiction of the cost of fame, clear-eyed and devoid of self pity – that’s noticeably absent when Madonna starts carrying on like a rapper on Best Night, informing us that “it gon’ be like this – we gon’ be gangstas tonight†etc.

 

That said, the bangerz aren’t all bad, by any means. Kanye West’s co-productions carry the same thrillingly authentic twang of bug-eyed lunacy that graced Yeezus, not least Illuminati, a fizzing cacophony of fragmented vocal samples and synthesisers that don’t so much throb as pound. Body Shop is great, a sweet Cherish-like melody over what sounds like a kutam. And, if nothing else, you have to admire the sheer brass cojones of a woman who tells interviewers she never deliberately tries to be provocative – “I wasn’t sitting there in my laboratory of shit-stirring going, ‘This is gonna fuck with people’†– while promoting an album that contains a song on which Madonna compares her vaginal mucus to holy water, and suggests that Jesus might have enjoyed giving her cunnilingus: “On your knees and genuflect, Jesus loves my pussy best.â€

 

Elsewhere, however, things go awry. Bitch I’m Madonna is a fantastic title in search of a song. In lieu of one, producer Diplo comes up with a kind of hybrid of EDM and happy hardcore and throws Nicki Minaj at her most hyperactive into the mix; the result genuinely sets your teeth on edge. There are moments when Madonna appears to be frantically chasing after other artists or trends. The hook of Inside Out is perilously close to that of Rihanna’s Diamonds, while Devil Pray â€“ a bit of anti-drug sermonising that offers the deeply improbable image of Madonna indulging in solvent abuse – is a pretty transparent attempt by Avicii to come up with something along the lines of his hit Wake Me Up. Veni Vidi Vici, meanwhile, starts out a fascinating memoir of Madonna’s early days in New York, before disappointingly devolving into a plonking list of her hits: “I justified my love, I made you say a little prayer/ They had me crucified you know I had to take it there.†Mercifully, this grinds to a halt before it can start exploring the less celebrated areas of her oeuvre: “I did Evita too and also Hanky Panky/ And in Sex there was a photograph of me having a wanky.â€

 

There’s something bracing about Madonna’s insistence that she belongs in exactly the same place she’s been for more than 30 years – at the forefront of mainstream pop, asserting her supremacy over anyone who dares challenge her – and something impressive about her steadfast refusal to do the kind of things every other artist four decades into their career does: no unplugged shows with the singer sitting demurely on a stool and emoting to an acoustic guitar; no deviation into the Great American Songbook; no album that cravenly attempts to recreate the sound of her best-loved early work. You can understand why she sees that kind of thing as a one-way ticket to the knacker’s yard, why she’d rather prove she can still talk dirtier or come up with more outrageous braggadocio than any young pretender. But at least half of Rebel Heart proves it’s not as stark a choice as that. She can come up with songs that are both mature and reflective and that function as fantastic pop music, and they’re all the more potent because they sound like they’re being made entirely on her own terms.

 

[groovyguy 63,869]

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/03/05/rebel-heart-review?hootPostID=acbfd556bab0dc5ed0fe49495db8cef3

Madonna's Rebel Heart: A Point/Counterpoint Review

BY KYLE ANDERSON, ADAM MARKOVITZ

KYLE ANDERSON It’s been sort of a rough 21st century for Madonna. After the stellar premillennial onetwo punch of Ray of Light and Music, it’s felt like she has been following rather than innovating. Rebel Heartis stuffed with top-level talent—Diplo, Avicii, Kanye—but at the end of the day, they’re not who we’re here for. Adam, what are your expectations of a Madonna album in 2015? 

 

ADAM MARKOVITZ Even for those of us who remember her imperial phase (c. 1985–2001), she’s become a giant cultural question mark. Is Madonna a still-active pop star in a slow period? A nostalgia act who puts out new music? A living legend who won’t go gently into that good four-nights-a-week Vegas residency? Rebel has an electro-rap track called “Bitch I’m Madonnaâ€â€”but I honestly don’t know what that means anymore. And by the sound of Rebel Heart, which has some nice melodies and thoughtful lyrics buried under a lot of badass posturing, Madonna doesn’t either. Her best albums always had a clear goal, whether it was dancing or shocking or chakra-ing. This time it feels like she just wants to prove she isn’t finished yet.

 

ANDERSON You’re not wrong. Both sonically and philosophically, the album is all over the place. The opener, lead single “Living for Love,†has a big sexy disco underbelly and just enough Diplo glitch to give it some edge. Then there’s the rocksteady dub “Unapologetic Bitch,†the post-Yeezus robo-grind “Illuminati,†the electro-campfire sing-along “Joan of Arc.†All that style whiplash can be vertigo-inducing. And yet despite the idea overload, I like way more here than I expected to. I would have assumed that a Mike Tyson rant, a barely intelligible Chance the Rapper verse, and seemingly six different hooks would make “Iconic†my most skipped track. Yet I kind of admire its chaos. Same goes for “Holy Waterâ€: I should be completely over the idea of Madonna juxtaposing Christian imagery with frank sexuality, which she has been doing for three decades. Maybe it’s the bass gurgles that remind me of classic Massive Attack or the reference to “Vogue,†but she sells it for me. I can’t stand “Body Shop,†though—an extended car/sex metaphor that sounds as if she just discovered literary devices.

 

MARKOVITZ â€œS.E.X.†is pretty awful: “Oh my God/Soaking wet/Back and forth/Until we break the bed†is amateur-hour erotica from somebody who once released an album literally called Erotica. But I do like the weird touches. She name-checks Bieber and the Pope on “Illuminati†and then implies that her body fluids are a sacrament on “Holy Water.†“Body Shop†has the most natural vocals on the album; Madonna sounds like an actual human woman instead of Siri singingFifty Shades of Grey on low batteries. The funny, creative, outrageous Madonna we’ve known is still in here somewhere. It just takes a lot of patience to find her.

 

ANDERSON I have faith that she’ll reveal herself with repeated listens. (Weirdly, for an album mostly designed to move people in a club, it’s actually a pretty fascinating headphone trip.) This may be damning it with faint praise, but this is Madonna’s best outing since 2000’s Music, and that earns Rebel Heart a solid B.

 

MARKOVITZ I love that she’s as frustrating and ambitious as ever—still difficult, complicated, and hard to pin down. But that’s how I’d describe this album, too. If Like a Virgin is her A game, and something rocky but rewarding like Bedtime Stories is B level, then this gets a C+.

 

BEST TRACKS: 

“Living for Loveâ€

“Ghosttownâ€

[stfan97 2,847]

That crap EW review counted both the B and the C+, which is another 58 to the metacritic score.

[stfan97 2,847]

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0141a1a8-c35b-11e4-8fa9-00144feab7de.html#axzz3TY6oUjxZ

In “Joan of Arcâ€, a track on her new album Rebel Heart, Madonna complains about haters hating on her. “Just hold me while I cry my eyes out,†she sings, accompanied by glum acoustic guitar. We tentatively place our arms around the sobbing superstar, disconcerted to find the imperious alpha female of old in such a pitiable condition. “I can’t be a superhero right now,†she sings with pathos. An awful image comes to mind: Madonna tumbling to the floor at the Brit Awards, victim of a cape-related mishap no superhero would ever suffer.

 

This aura of fallibility permeates Rebel Heart, her unlucky 13th studio album, which was leaked unfinished to the internet last year. It is overlong and crammed with producers and songwriters, including Avicii, Kanye West and Diplo. Mike Tyson and Chance the Rapper guest on the wonderfully unhinged “Iconicâ€, Nicki Minaj pops up on “Bitch I’m Madonnaâ€. The tone swings wildly from poor-me break-up songs to hard-edged bangers. The latter, designed to rile critics carping on about her age, are the most fun.

 

The Madonna who snarls “Get off my pole†over sleazy electro-pop in “Holy Waterâ€, channelling both her own hit “Vogue†and the preposterous erotic thriller Showgirls, is vastly preferable to the Madonna maundering about being “scarred and bruised†in dull ballad “Hold Tightâ€. We want the cape and the attitude: more rebel, less heart. Leave vulnerability to the little people.

[stfan97 2,847]

Billboard review (3.5 out of 5 stars):

http://www.billboard.com/articles/review/6487805/album-review-madonna-rebel-heart

 

In December -- as Madonna rushed out six songs from Rebel Heart after some truly ugly cyber-bullying -- she told Billboard she had recorded so much material that she had considered doing a double album. And indeed, there are at least two albums struggling to come into being amid these 19 tracks.

 

Oppositions are the animating tension of Rebel Heart: Biting breakup songs like "Heartbreak City" rub up against some of the most absurdly lubricious sex songs of her absurdly lubricious career, like the Kanye West-co-produced "Holy Water," where she compares her bodily fluids to the song's title, then proclaims, "Yeezus loves my pussy best." Declarations of invincibility like "Unapologetic Bitch" are undone by laments over the price of fame and the way that even hearts of steel can break. Her decades-long love affair with house continues alongside her decades-long love affair with singer-songwriter confessions. Religious devotion and earthly love are cross-wired in the Avicii-helmed power ballad "Messiah." And songs with spare, inventive beats battle for dominance against expertly realized maximalist pop.

There's one other tension of note: Her determination to outgrow the past and shed her skin (as she puts it on the title track) tangles with her own back catalog. Three different songs refer to old hits, with "Veni Vidi Vici" stringing together titles like a bad Oscar medley: "I opened up my heart, I learned the power of goodbye/I saw a ray of light, music saved my life." If anyone is entitled to honor herself with her own drag show, it's her. Still, these backward glances are odd, and perhaps tip the hand that Madonna albums are now launching pads for Madonna tours, where the old songs can come out and play (indeed, on March 2, she announced a 35-city global run).

Or maybe not. Madonna has never gotten the credit she deserves as a musician, or as an album artist. Her essential interests are unchanging -- dancefloor ecstasy, European balladry, 1960s pop classicism -- but her expression of them finds new articulations. Rebel Heart has 14 producers working in seven different teams and still it sounds exactly like a Madonna album. That includes oddball standouts like "Body Shop," courtesy of beatmakers DJ Dahi (Drake, Kendrick Lamar) and Blood Diamonds (Grimes), which is propelled by a spare, sitar-like guitar figure.

One of the strangest things about Rebel Heart is how subtle it seems by current standards. These songs unfold slowly, building through foreplay-like intros before hooks are displayed over a shifting series of textures, as if the tracks were being remixed while you're listening to them. In a short-attention-span world of hits that relentlessly spotlight mini-hook after mini-hook for club DJs to drop in a few bars at a time, they seem positively luxurious and downright intellectual.

There are times you hope for a little more dumb fun -- enter Diplo, who turns up on five tracks with his air horn and Caribbean beats and would be welcome on more -- and there's at least one moody ballad too many. But then an aqueous bassline bubbles up and a surge of trance-y pulses sweeps you along to Madonnaland, where introspection and abandon engage in erotic acts of self-actualization. After 32 years, it's still a great place to be.

[stfan97 2,847]

Fort Worth Star-Telegram (4 stars):

http://www.star-telegram.com/entertainment/arts-culture/article12670982.html

 

Watching Madonna attempt to wrestle the 21st century into submission ahead of her new studio album, Rebel Heart, has been fascinating.

 

A refugee from music’s monocultural heyday, Madonna has tried to seem nimble and flexible rather than a MTV relic.

 

One stumble after another has dogged Her Madgesty, whether it’s her recent, painful tumble at the BRIT Awards or Heart’s Internet leak a full month ahead of its release.

 

In each instance, she’s forged ahead, but these missteps underscore how difficult a high profile publicity campaign is — no matter your stature — in the Internet age.

 

She even included a brief memo to journalists with Heart, her first studio album in three years, following 2012’s MDNA.

In it, the 56-year-old singer-songwriter shares her initial vision — “I knew I wanted to explore the duality of my personality which is renegade and romantic,†Madonna writes — as well as what seems like a disclaimer as defensive as it is paradoxically vulnerable.

 

“I have opinions,†she writes. “What else can you do if you’re an artist? I don’t know any other way except to offer up my heart, or ‘Come on, you wanna f— with me? Let’s go.’â€

 

Such overbearing, pre-release micromanaging gives a whiff of preemptive damage control, mitigating the impact of a forgettable record (for my money, Madonna’s last high water mark was a decade ago, on 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor), so imagine the pleasant surprise: Heart manages to balance the tough and tender sides of Madge’s personality in entertaining fashion.

 

For a substantial stretch of Heart, from the gorgeous atmospherics ofGhosttown through to the gritty Joan of Arc, Madonna offers a side of herself she hasn’t exhibited since the transitional ‘90s. The human side of being an icon is fertile terrain, often left unexplored, because introspection doesn’t always mesh well with pop escapism.

 

And while Madonna has some fun with tabloid rumors — Illuminati, her much-touted collaboration with Kanye West, is bitingly funny, as well as pleasingly of-the-musical-moment — Heart takes hold when she drops her guard, and distances herself from guests like Nicki Minaj and Chance the Rapper, admitting the high cost of global superstardom.

 

“I don’t want to talk about it right now/Just hold me while I cry my eyes out,†she sings on Joan of Arc, a mid-tempo ballad providing sharp contrast with boastful tracks like the reggae-tinged, Diplo-produced Unapologetic B—.

 

What sneaks up on you as Rebel Heart unfolds — a little lengthy in its 55-minute version; absurdly over-long in its 75-minute “deluxe edition†format — is Madonna, for all the hiccups in the months prior to the album’s release, hit upon a realization as true in the 21st century as it was in the 19th: being yourself, regardless of the consequences, will win out every time.

 

In other words, substance almost always trumps style, but for a rare few artists, one can enhance the other.

 

Having the chutzpah to pull it off, in this short-attention-span age, is Madonna’s true act of rebellion.

[stfan97 2,847]

Shockingly, she got 4/5 stars from the Daily Mail who hate her:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2982033/Why-Madge-high-fall-No-stumbles-Queen-Pop-s-latest-album-Rebel-Heart-writes-Adrian-Thrills.html

Why Madge is on a high (even after THAT fall): No stumbles in Queen of Pop's latest album Rebel Heart, writes Adrian Thrills

 

Madonna: Rebel Heart (Interscope)

Verdict: No stumbles 

Rating: 4/5

 

The omens for Madonna’s first album in three years have not been good. Not only was the Queen of Pop shaken when unfinished tracks were leaked online in December, but Radio 1 seems to have ruled that the 56-year-old’s music no longer appeals to its mainly teenage audience.

 

Then came the Material Girl’s wardrobe malfunction at last week’s Brits, when she tumbled inelegantly down steps on stage, because her extravagant matador’s cape had been tied too tight. We’ve all been there.

 

But, as she proved by finishing her performance of Living For Love despite this, the pop diva is a trouper. And her 13th studio album reiterates a capacity for rejuvenation.

 

Rebel Heart is Madonna’s best album since 2005’s Confessions On A Dancefloor, probably because she is at her most relaxed and natural. 

 

Playing to her strengths while using modern tricks, it is an eclectic mix of dance, pop, reggae and balladry.

 

It is also an upgrade on 2008’s Hard Candy, where she struggled to keep pace with trends, and 2012’s cold, machine-tooled MDNA.

 

Looking at the long list of credits, you could be excused for thinking Rebel Heart was designed by committee. There are collaborations with Swedish producer Avicii, U.S. DJ Diplo, rappers Kanye West, Nas and Nicki Minaj — even a spoken-word cameo from Mike Tyson.

 

Despite the supporting cast, Madonna has produced a cohesive album enhanced by her respect for traditional pop songs.

 

Even dance-orientated numbers are built around tuneful guitars and pianos rather than crushing beats.

 

Famous for not giving away too much of herself, the singer also explores a surprisingly wide range of moods and emotions, from the crudely defiant to the quietly confessional. Her lyrics are uncomplicated, but there are revealing flashes of intimacy.

 

More arrogant, self-aggrandising themes are to the fore on Unapologetic B***h, a pop-reggae workout, and B***h, I’m Madonna, with Minaj. The bubbly, hypnotic Iconic is an electronic pop number.

 

As pop’s original rude girl, Madonna still presses the ‘outrage’ button, although now it veers more towards the silly than the shocking.

 

Body Shop relies on car-related innuendo involving engines and gaskets, while deluxe edition bonus track S.E.X. is similarly vulgar.

 

Madonna comes into her own on the more adventurous tracks. Referencing ecstasy and ‘weed’, folk-tinged Devil Pray initially sounds like a glorification of drugs, but is actually a warning of their dangers.

 

The strongest moments are those where Madonna shows vulnerability, such as tender love song Joan Of Arc. Along with Heartbreak City and Wash All Over Me, it has the most personal lyrics she has penned since 1998’s, soul-baring Mer Girl. 

 

After spending nine months finishing Rebel Heart, the workaholic star is set to begin a huge world tour in August that arrives in the UK in December. As she sings on the title track: ‘I live my life like a masochist /Hear my father say “I told you soâ€â€™. 

 

She might not be growing old gracefully, but Madonna is still doing things her way.

[stfan97 2,847]

This blurb is in the print edition of People magazine about Rebel Heart:

 

She may have stumbled in Britain, but this is a triumph

 

The beauty of the indefatigable provocateur's latest is how she reaches new levels of invention even when looking back to classic moments.  Teaming up with A-list producers like Diplo and Kanye West, Madge nods just enough to her prime moments - you recognize the gospel-pop of "Like a Prayer" in "Living for Love," the brash sensuality of Erotica in "Holy Water" - to make this her best album in a decade. (March 10)

[Fighter 28,888]

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/03/05/rebel-heart-review?hootPostID=acbfd556bab0dc5ed0fe49495db8cef3

Madonna's Rebel Heart: A Point/Counterpoint Review

BY KYLE ANDERSON, ADAM MARKOVITZ

KYLE ANDERSON It’s been sort of a rough 21st century for Madonna. After the stellar premillennial onetwo punch of Ray of Light and Music, it’s felt like she has been following rather than innovating. Rebel Heartis stuffed with top-level talent—Diplo, Avicii, Kanye—but at the end of the day, they’re not who we’re here for. Adam, what are your expectations of a Madonna album in 2015? 

 

ADAM MARKOVITZ Even for those of us who remember her imperial phase (c. 1985–2001), she’s become a giant cultural question mark. Is Madonna a still-active pop star in a slow period? A nostalgia act who puts out new music? A living legend who won’t go gently into that good four-nights-a-week Vegas residency? Rebel has an electro-rap track called “Bitch I’m Madonna”—but I honestly don’t know what that means anymore. And by the sound of Rebel Heart, which has some nice melodies and thoughtful lyrics buried under a lot of badass posturing, Madonna doesn’t either. Her best albums always had a clear goal, whether it was dancing or shocking or chakra-ing. This time it feels like she just wants to prove she isn’t finished yet.

 

ANDERSON You’re not wrong. Both sonically and philosophically, the album is all over the place. The opener, lead single “Living for Love,” has a big sexy disco underbelly and just enough Diplo glitch to give it some edge. Then there’s the rocksteady dub “Unapologetic Bitch,” the post-Yeezus robo-grind “Illuminati,” the electro-campfire sing-along “Joan of Arc.” All that style whiplash can be vertigo-inducing. And yet despite the idea overload, I like way more here than I expected to. I would have assumed that a Mike Tyson rant, a barely intelligible Chance the Rapper verse, and seemingly six different hooks would make “Iconic” my most skipped track. Yet I kind of admire its chaos. Same goes for “Holy Water”: I should be completely over the idea of Madonna juxtaposing Christian imagery with frank sexuality, which she has been doing for three decades. Maybe it’s the bass gurgles that remind me of classic Massive Attack or the reference to “Vogue,” but she sells it for me. I can’t stand “Body Shop,” though—an extended car/sex metaphor that sounds as if she just discovered literary devices.

 

MARKOVITZ â€œS.E.X.” is pretty awful: “Oh my God/Soaking wet/Back and forth/Until we break the bed” is amateur-hour erotica from somebody who once released an album literally called Erotica. But I do like the weird touches. She name-checks Bieber and the Pope on “Illuminati” and then implies that her body fluids are a sacrament on “Holy Water.” “Body Shop” has the most natural vocals on the album; Madonna sounds like an actual human woman instead of Siri singingFifty Shades of Grey on low batteries. The funny, creative, outrageous Madonna we’ve known is still in here somewhere. It just takes a lot of patience to find her.

 

ANDERSON I have faith that she’ll reveal herself with repeated listens. (Weirdly, for an album mostly designed to move people in a club, it’s actually a pretty fascinating headphone trip.) This may be damning it with faint praise, but this is Madonna’s best outing since 2000’s Music, and that earns Rebel Heart a solid B.

 

MARKOVITZ I love that she’s as frustrating and ambitious as ever—still difficult, complicated, and hard to pin down. But that’s how I’d describe this album, too. If Like a Virgin is her A game, and something rocky but rewarding like Bedtime Stories is B level, then this gets a C+.

 

BEST TRACKS: 

“Living for Love”

“Ghosttown”

 

 

this is quite interesting actually. But I find it appaling that they don't count COADF's massive success and groundbreaking influence as an achievement.

[stfan97 2,847]

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/music/albumreviews/article4373132.ece

The Times review

Will Hodgkinson

Published at 12:01AM, March 6 2015

 

4 out of 5 stars 

 

One of the more colourful explanations for Madonna’s near garrotting by her own cape at the Brit Awards last week puts the blame on a cabal of all-powerful figures intent on ruling the world through a combination of blood sacrifice and song-and-dance routines.

 

Halfway through Rebel Heart, her 13th album, comes Illuminati, a robot-voiced listing of all the people — or shape-shifting lizards, according to David Icke — who are said to belong to this sinister order. Jay-Z, Beyoncé, even that poor lost man-child Justin Bieber get a mention in a catchy disco tune that pokes fun at conspiracy theorists’ fondness for mythologising famous people.

 

Those same theorists are now suggesting that the Illuminati took revenge on Madge by subjecting her to a terrible punishment at the Brits: tying her cape on too tight.

 

In fact, Madonna’s accident showed her to be not only human after all, but also possessed of a strength of character that has seen her through four decades of outrageous fortune. She knew how to fly backwards without breaking her neck, she bounced up in seconds and got on with the show and, rather than sack her mortified dancers, she took them out for dinner.

 

All this won public approval, which she needed badly after melodramatically describing the leak of Rebel Heart in December as “artistic rape and terrorismâ€. Madonna’s fall became the story of the Brits, but it was her reaction to it that casts her album in such a benign glow.

 

It’s not perfect. Like so many recent albums by major pop stars, it’s too long. Why do we need a standard and a deluxe edition? Would an author offer an extended version of their new novel for a few quid more? It takes away from the idea of an album as a complete work.

 

Madonna has drafted in all manner of modish producers, including Kanye West, resulting in a modern pop equivalent of a bring-and-buy sale. And the lyrical rudeness can be less sexy, more downright gynaecological. When she sings “kiss it better, make it wetter†onHoly Water, you don’t know where to look. Yet at her best Madonna remains head and shoulders above everyone else in pop.

 

There’s a price to pay for reinventing yourself as a postmodern figure of worldwide fame and controversy and Madonna weighs it up onJoan of Arc, a ballad that is as smart as it is heartfelt. “Each time they take a photograph I lose a part I can’t get back,†she sings. “Each time they write a hateful word, dragging my soul into the dirt, I want to die.â€

 

The agonies of fame and fortune is not a subject we non-rich, non-famous people traditionally have much sympathy for, but Madonna throws a light on to her reality by being honest and it draws the listener towards her.

 

Heartbreak City is another cri de coeur, a piano ballad on which she tries to make sense of the end of a relationship. There’s more than a tinge of bitterness to the words about an ex-boyfriend (or husband? Watch out, Guy Ritchie) who hitched a ride on Madonna’s coat-tails.

 

“You got just what you came for, a bit of fame and fortune, and now I’m no longer needed,†she sings, adding: “And then you had the nerve to say that we could still be friends.†It’s reassuring to know the most disingenuous pay-off in the history of relationships is used not just on teenagers getting chucked for the first time, but on multimillionaire queens of pop too.

 

The hi-octane pop songs here recall the hook-laden glories of Madonna’s Eighties heyday. Living For Love and Devil Pray have tinges of the irreligious gospel that made her 1988 classic Like a Prayer so irresistible, and the aforementioned Illuminati recalls Vogue, her 1990 paean to posing in nightclubs, while also serving as a reminder that a fun, throwaway tune can be clever too.

 

Things fall apart on Iconic, on which Madonna comes across less like a cultural icon and more like a motivational speaker reading out platitudes of empowerment, but for the most part the album jumps happily between revelation and disco escapism.

 

Frustratingly, some of the best songs are on the deluxe edition only. Madonna has a Julius Caesar moment on Veni Vidi Vici, giving us a quick run-through of her myriad achievements before deflating her own pomposity by adding, “I exposed my naked arse and I did it with a smileâ€.

 

The (deluxe) album ends with the title track, a combination of country rock and electronic pop. “I’ve spent time as a narcissist . . . trying to be provocative,†sings Madonna before telling herself, “Never look back. It’s a waste of time.†It sums up the message of this flawed but vibrant album: still in the game, still pushing forward, now in a position to reflect on all that has happened with sagacity.(Out now, Interscope)

[Rod Erick 70]

4 stars

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/madonna-rebel-heart--album-review-a-confirmation-of-madonnas-sustained-musical-relevance-10090878.html

 

"It’s fortunate, then, that this ironic triumph should be followed by confirmation of her musical relevance."

[PlayPause 2,891]

.

[groovyguy 63,869]

4 stars

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/madonna-rebel-heart--album-review-a-confirmation-of-madonnas-sustained-musical-relevance-10090878.html

 

"It’s fortunate, then, that this ironic triumph should be followed by confirmation of her musical relevance."

Madonna, Rebel Heart - album review: A confirmation of Madonna's sustained musical relevance

The lyrics mine familiar tropes of sex, dance, religion and celebrity but the music pushes out from her electropop template

If any confirmation were required of Madonna’s sustained cultural relevance, it was surely provided by a mere wardrobe malfunction out-shining the combined micro-celebrity wattage of the entire Brit Awards line-up.

 

It’s fortunate, then, that this ironic triumph should be followed by confirmation of her musical relevance. Rebel Heart capitalises on the comeback charm of 2012’s MDNA, and in places repeats aspects of its success. Nicki Minaj reprises her role as Madge’s rapping henchgirl on the amusingly abrasive “Bitch I’m Madonnaâ€; and Madonna again slips sly hints of hits such as “Vogue†into the arrangements, like straps binding the material to her legacy.

 

The most welcome reminders are those which recall the career-apex achievements of Like a Prayer, particularly “Devil Pray†and album closer “Wash All Over Me†– the latter mining a resistant melancholy while the former urges the adoption of a deeper spirituality not dependent on drugs. A less reverential employment of religious imagery, however, occurs in the controversy-courting cunnilingus anthem “Holy Waterâ€, where she proclaims, “Bless yourself and genuflect/Jesus loves my p***y best.†

 

But if the lyrics mine familiar tropes of sex, dance, religion and celebrity, the music pushes out from her electropop template, with the brittle beats and wheezing dubstep electronic flourishes augmented by the kalimba groove of “Body Shopâ€, the choral responses of “Heartbreak City†and the Middle Eastern drone of “Best Nightâ€.

 

The inventive Diplo is a frequent collaborator, with support from Avicii, Michael Diamond and Kanye, but what’s most impressive is Madonna’s singing, which for the most part eschews the excessive vocal treatments of R&B in favour of a simple clarity, which, on “Ghosttown†and “Joan of Arcâ€, recalls the purity of Karen Carpenter.

It’s a sonic nakedness that’s more revealing than any flirty flash of boob or buttock.

[groovyguy 63,869]

Review scores from Swedish papers:

Aftonbladet 3/5
Svenska Dagbladet 2/6 ???
Göteborgsposten 3/5
Dagens Nyheter: 3/5

As with most other critics the heart tracks receive the most praise with Joan of Arc, Living for Love and Addicted as the main favorites.

[groovyguy 63,869]

Really awesome to see that the British press has decided she's OK again.And Dan Wootton just mentioned the album being released on morning TV and said it was her best album since Ray of Light!

[groovyguy 63,869]

The Times UK

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/music/albumreviews/article4373132.ece

4 Stars

 

One of the more colourful explanations for Madonna’s near garrotting by her own cape at the Brit Awards last week puts the blame on a cabal of all-powerful figures intent on ruling the world through a combination of blood sacrifice and song-and-dance routines...

[groovyguy 63,869]

Another excellent review from Switzerland...(in French)

http://www.lematin.ch/culture/musique/Madonna-rebelle-de-corps-et-d-esprit/story/13569888

[stfan97 2,847]

Chicago Tribune (3/4 stars):

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/kot/ct-madonna-rebel-heart-review-new-madonna-album-20150306-column.html

 

The previous two Madonna studio albums, "MDNA" (2012) and "Hard Candy" (2008), have come off as transparent attempts at co-opting the latest waves of dance music. She used to be a step ahead of the mainstream, artfully cannibalizing underground danceclub moves and turning them into pop gold. Now she was playing catch-up.

 

She sounds less desperate on her 13th studio album, "Rebel Heart" (Boy Toy/Live Nation/Interscope). Though Madonna is celebrated and vilified as a button-pushing rabble-rouser, she has actually done some of her finest work in a more introspective vein. Her best album in the last two decades, "Ray of Light" (1998), was also her most atmospheric and inward-looking. And "Rebel Heart" is in many ways a distant cousin, an unusually personal album that seems less about keeping up and more about taking stock. At least three songs reference her past hits, but she's not celebrating herself all the time. On the contrary, she reveals insecurities that make her sound somehow more human and uncharacteristically vulnerable.

 

The album sags from an excess of songs and multiple personalities.

 

The 19 tracks on the deluxe version cram together Diplo's airhorn-blast ravers, wispier confessionals and a handful of daring outliers. Surprisingly, the keeper moments are the most inward-looking. That coincides with Madonna's increasing acuity as a ballad singer; the squeaky-voiced pop diva has developed a warmer tone as she's matured.

 

The electro-pop ballads "Ghosttown" and "HeartBreakCity" simmer in melancholy as Madonna reflects on a broken relationship (she ended a three-year fling with dancer Brahim Zaibat in 2013). "Joan of Arc" suggests that the steely air of self-confidence that has carried the singer through decades of stirring things up may be just a shield for deeper insecurities. The title track revisits some of the folk-rock tropes that have tripped up Madonna in the past, but the arrangement skips along with brisk strings and finger snaps while the singer psychoanalyzes herself as an individualist bedeviled by narcissism (who knew?). In addressing character flaws and missteps with unprecedented candor, she suggests how a onetime provocateur can mature and still remain interesting, if not remain at the center of pop culture as she once was.

 

She hedges her bets on the dance cuts. The coldly remote "S.E.X." should be subtitled "Y.A.W.N.," "Holy Water" conflates religion and erotica for the 3,243rd time in Madonna's career, and the reggae-tinged "Unapologetic B …" and the pumped up "B… I'm Madonna" come off as half-hearted attempts to keep up with the younger competition on the pop charts, including Nicki Minaj, who raps on the latter track.

 

How much better would this album have been without those missteps and a few more tracks that venture outside of Madonna's comfort zone? The wacky conspiracy theories and squelching video-game beats of the West-produced "Illuminati" and the low-key industrial-folk ballad "Body Shop" are welcome simply because they're so unexpected. They're part of a messily inconsistent but still-fascinating album, the type of Madonna release that no one could've predicted when she was in her "Like a Virgin" infancy.

[stfan97 2,847]

Spiegel Online (German):

http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/musik/madonna-rebel-heart-25-gruende-das-neue-album-zu-hoeren-a-1022003.html

 

Translated by Wunderkind on MNation:

 

Kneel, Bitches

Time to retire? Nobody wants to hear her anymore? Much less see her?
That's all nonsense. Here are 25 reasons why it's worth giving Madonna a chance. 

1. "I lived my life as a masochist" Madonna sings on the title track. 
"Rebel Heart", released on Friday, is her most personal album. She says. It is definitely her most varied in terms of style. From the embracing dance-hymn, the delicate Gospel-Ballad to the hard HipHop track, it's all there. She worked hard for us. Respect. 

2. Diplo, Kanye West, Avicii, DJ Dahi, Sophie, Blood Diamonds, Ryan Tedder, Ariel Rechtshaid, Nicki Minaj, Nas, Chance the Rapper and, uhm, Mike Tyson. When Queen Madonna calls, they all show up. Wether Superstar or Underground. Value for money!

3. Rule for all superheroes: Never wear a cape. After all, it was the long cape that caused her to fall at the Brit Awards. The humiliation! But she got up, despite whiplash, and finished performing the song. At age 56!

4. "Living For Love" is a very solid single which refrains from giving in to the Kiesza sounding Nineties-Eurodance-Revival but shamelessly references the late eighties one-hit-wonder "The only way is up". Boldness. Wins. 

5. "Devil Pray" with its mix of acoustic guitar and dance beats reminds of "Don't tell me" from her last fully good album "Music". That was 15 years ago. And now she is finally picking up where she left there. Amazing. 

6. Take that, Miley. "We could do drugs and we could smoke weed and we could drink whisky/Yeah, we could get high and we could get stoned/And we could sniff glue and we could do E and we could drop acid/Forever be lost with no way home" Madonna sings in "Devil Pray". What would qualify as a scandal for the california brat simply causes a yawn for Madonna: Been there, done that. The only drug that works for her is religion: "Sing Hallelujah, the devil's here to fool ya". 

7. About religion. Pop music and the catholic church are part of Madonna's holy trinity. And sex, as she told the U.S.-Hipster-Magazine Pitchfork in a recent interview. "Why not? All three together, if possible". A threesome that she keeps going. 

8. Talking about interviews, also called audiences. She gives them rarely. Those journalists that got to meet her, had to play a tough drinking game with Tequila. For each dumb question a shot for the interviewer, for each inspiring question a shot for Madonna. Rock'n'Roll. 

9. "Maybe it was all too much, too much for a man to take. Everything's bound to break" (Ghosttown). Marbel, rock and marriages break, Men break. Only Madonna doesn't. Eternal girl power. 

10. "Unapologetic Bitch": Reggae with a pressing fanfare and the classic justification for bitching. Sometimes you gotta say it how it is. Madonna is the better Gwen Stefani. 

11. "Illuminati": brutally produced by Kanye West. Madonna's comment on corporate paranoia and the fear of Facebook and Google. "Everybody in this party's shining like Illuminati". Clearly she has the best solution of them all "Let the music take you out of control". According to the conspiracy theory of numbers, it should have been track 23 (but it's number 5). 

12. "Bitch, I'm Madonna" with Rapper Nicki Minaj: What's to say against a 56 year old still recording Teen-Hymns? Wonderfully pseudo-cheap production from Diplo and the up and coming British Sophie. " I just wanna have fun tonight". 

13. Age doesn't matter. Not covering up at 56, showing yourself sexy and playing the eternal Lolita. That's Madonna's ongoing, rebellious and emancipating act. 

14. Of course she is still vain. Her face was never, ever shown up close at the Brit Awards. But hey. The far younger Paloma Faith looked far older, while standing in the rain during her heartbreak ballad "Only love can hurt like this". 

15. "Joan of Arc". A ballad about Madonna feeling hurt over bad words written about her. Really! But she doesn't want to talk about it right now. Sob. Then the beat kicks in. By the way: She's not Joan of Arc...not yet ". 

16. According to rumours, Jay-Z didn't want to do the guest rap on "Iconic". What does Madonna do? Gets Chance the Rapper and box veteran Mike Tyson into the studio. Good punch. 

17. Honestly: Lady Gaga is crazy shit, Rihanna always gets naked, Beyoncé is cool but way too demure. Only Madonna is megalomaniac enough to show herself as a Mega-Martyr with a nail through her hand. Strike a (Jesus) Pose. 

18. As long as Madonna's albums appear on the Internet way before they are released, everything is in order. Upsetting as such a leak is, it's also reassuring that there is still demand. 

19. "Cut me down the middle, fucked me up a little". When Madonna spews lines like this, with holy contempt, Christian Grey can do whatever he wants with his cable binders. "That's all child's play" says Mum. (Heartbreak City). 

20. "bless yourself and genuflect". It's always good when rare words show up in Pop-context (Holy Water")

21. "Jesus loves my pussy best" she says in "Holy Water". With Madonna, not only sweat tastes like Holy Water. Bam!

22. "Inside Out": Madonna kinda just chucks this as track 13, for Rihanna it would have been a single. Give it a try!

23. Self-Referencing: "Wanting", "Needing", "Waiting"... Those words in "Best Night" sound a lot like "Justify my love". Fun fact: the protagonist of Mondinos Sado-Maso clip now says that the best night of your life is the one "without sex-tapes and cameras". Well, that was 25 years ago. Today, intimacy is the new scandal. Or so. 

24. "Veni, Vidi, Vici". Rapper Nas joins for a rapped list of Madonna's life story. "I came, I saw, I conquered". That is a bit stupid. 

25. "Oh my god, you're so hot" she moans in S.E.X. 
Only a fool would think that Madonna is not holding a conversation with herself here. 

One of the very best reasons to find Madonn's album absolutely super are articles like this one from "Tagesspiegel". After 30 years of Madonna criticism, we are all tired. Unconditional surrender is all that's left. Madonna, you win!
And besides. Who knows if her all-encompassing 13th album is her last. Let's celebrate her as long as we still can. 

[groovyguy 63,869]

Digital Spy

Madonna: Rebel Heart album review - "Some truly great pop songs"

4 Stars
http://www.digitalspy.com/music/review/a633737/madonna-rebel-heart-album-review-some-truly-great-pop-songs.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=dsuk&utm_campaign=twdsuk#~p6ck5XbcCNshjg

Madonna's influence on modern pop culture is something that can never be taken away from her. For over 30 years the Bay City native has pushed the mainstream's envelope, stamped down doors for female artists, and has weaved through musical styles more times than she has turned her nose up at hydrangeas. It's an achievement that very few - if any - will match again, but it leaves Madonna with the dilemma of expectation. What can she do next? The answer, according to new album Rebel Heart, is to have a few attempts all on one disc.

Rebel Heart contains some truly great pop songs that can contend with Madonna's best, but as an overall collection, it feels like the start of three separate projects lumped together. It starts with lead single 'Living For Love'; a thumping, uplifting dance anthem which nods back to the '90s, but confirms her relevancy as part of house music's revival nonetheless. 

It sits nicely alongside the glitchy electronics of 'Iconic', where a towering pre-chorus drops into stabs of ice-cold synths for a club-ready dash of trap-pop. But between these two numbers, it's almost like there's a mini sonic evolution of Madonna on this record.

Rebel Heart goes from the brilliant, dancehall groove of 'Unapologetic Bitch' and the scuzzy squiggles of 'Bitch I'm Madonna' - both helmed by Diplo - to more reflective and somber pop ballads such as 'Ghosttown' and 'Hold Tight'. At this stage in her career, if Madonna doesn't have 'pop chameleon' on her LinkedIn profile (and what a 'resumé' that would be), then Rebel Heart alone is enough to endorse that title.

'Bitch I'm Madonna' hears the Queen of Pop at her most fabulously ridiculous; popping corks, "kissing anybody that's around us" and threatening to "blow up the house", with PC Music's Sophie keeping production ahead of the curve with a hyperpop emboss, and Nicki Minaj strolling in as her partner in crime. It's a track that could possibly grate on first listen, but if you let it, its teeth are waiting to dig in.

'Unapologetic Bitch', on the other hand, takes full advantage of Diplo's knack for a breezy, reggae-pop production. Despite appearing carefree on the surface, Madonna is overcoming a break-up in the only way we'd all expect her to; pause, reflect, forget. "It took a minute, but now I'm feeling strong/ It almost killed me, but I'm moving on," she steely declares, never willing to let a man dent her armor, and rightly so.

Essentially, staying faithful to its title, Madonna's heart is placed firmly at the center of the album. 'Ghosttown' is prime example that the icon still has that straight-down-the-line pop clout when she wants to do it. It's an affecting serenade to loyalty that will bury deep into the cranium, and one that shows the most potential when it comes to mainstream chart success. 'Hold Tight' nips at its heels with its marching beats and flourishes of pastel electronics. However, what is most encouraging on each track is the space Madonna's voice is given to shine - something we'd like to hear more often.

Where Rebel Heart does stumble, though, is when Madonna is revisits two of her favorite themes: religion and sex. It's most explicitly touched upon in the Kanye West-produced 'Holy Water', where orgasmic gasps form part of the chorus as Madonna demands "Kiss it better, kiss it better/ Don't it taste like holy water?" It's frustrating because the production is sharp and offers some of the most interesting moments on the album, but the overtly sexual lyrics (which includes "Yeezus loves my pussy best") feel like forced shock value. Are they gasps of disgust, or are they gasps of pleasure? Of course, shocking the audience is Madonna's business, but here it feels more crass than clever.

If anything, the most radical moment on Rebel Heart comes in the form of guitar-led ballad 'Joan of Arc'. "I can't be a superhero right now/ Even hearts made out of steel can break down," Madonna admits, continuing to grapple with the pressures of fame and expectation 30 years into her career. It's a reminder that behind the superstar - and when we say that, we mean the superstar - there's a woman who is still very much a sensitive soul despite a hardened public persona. Madonna acknowledging her mortality, for some reason, feels wholly more intriguing than suggestive rhetoric that belongs with her work back in the '90s.

So yes, Madonna's 13th studio outing can feel like a confused bag sonically as she continues to experiment with a host of modern music's finest. But ultimately, when she's wearing her heart on her sleeve, Rebel Heart is some of her most captivating work in years.