Hard Candy for the most part feels manfactured, lifeless, cliched, derivative, and forced, especially when compared to
its excellent predecessor. There are undoubtedly a lot of decent ideas here and a couple good songs, mainly "Devil
Wouldn't Recognize You" and "4 Minutes". However, most of songs really go nowhere or simply lose their authenticiy
and soul when, for example, Kanye West comes in to rap about how "fresh" he is, or someone yelps "Get down on
the floor" for the millionth time. Haven't I heard this before, like in every song played on mainstream pop radio?
Hard Candy is listenable as long as you are doing something else and aren't paying attention, because you hear a
couple of the hooks and think it's not bad. But when you sit down to really focus on the music, you just want to
shake your head. Even Madonna's legendary voice can't make this album feel anything more than shockingly
average. It's not horrendous, but she can do so much better.
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