Review Summary: One of her most underrated and misunderstood albums of her career. While not a masterpiece it shows us that she isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Her freshest, most interesting record since Confessions on a Dancefloor.
After listening carefully to many of Madonna's albums throughout her long and ever-changing career I am left a bit confused about one thing and it's not Madonna, its people's reaction to it. I think this is one of Madonna's most interesting albums to date. Why? Because she isn't afraid to try new things and experiment with new sounds that she previously had not explored. She did something different and fresh. Compared to MDNA and Hard Candy its no doubt that Rebel Heart comes out on top. It was the only album out of the three that really sounded like Madonna at her roots, a contradictory figure at heart. My girlfriend was listening to the album with me one time and she asked: "Why aren't some of these songs on the radio?" I couldn't agree more. Living for Love and Ghosttown and honestly Hold Tight would've been hits if she was younger. The radio is designed to market towards middle-schoolers after all.
From a musical standpoint I admit I think some of the demos were superior such as Living for Love, but overall I dig the more urban sound she was going for. It reminds me of a mix between Erotica and Bedtime Stories both lyrically and musically. The album glides between soft and supple to banging and brash. I suppose this has to do with the contrast between her rebel and heart personality being expressed in the music. It is reasons like this that I find it a bit confusing why so many people give Madonna a hard time on this record. I personally was not bothered by the sexual innuendos in Holy Water and S.E.X, I actually just thought they were cheeky and funny, and that's exactly what Madonna's intentions were, not to be taken seriously. Not everything has to be taken literally. So what if she's in her late 50's here she's still admitting to us that she's a sexual being and has no way of stopping.
I think the album as a whole is highly misunderstood and I hope as Erotica did that Rebel Heart will in time become a more respected work of pop music. It was a bold move and I don't know many artists at her place in their career doing something as daring. Do I think it's a masterpiece like Ray of Light or Confessions? No, but I don't think that was her goal with this record. More than anything this album is a work showing Madonna struggling to adapt to a schizophrenic music scene that has become so fragmented due to the power of artistry becoming more to do with producers than artists that the artist's integrity can be put in jeopardy. Madonna comes from a different generation of pop music where she and her contemporaries like Prince, Janet, MJ, Bowie were directly invested in the musical/artistic process 100% and frankly that isn't how it is anymore, unfortunately, and she is trying to adapt as best she can. I see this album as a precursor to her next album which I think will be her next pop masterpiece, but Rebel Heart was needed for her to understand what she does best, which is having artistic control and I think at times she struggled with that in this record. She even alluded to it that her producers were often not available or were constantly distracted as well as having her songs split between multiple producers at once and not really having a centralized environment to put everything together. Regardless, Rebel Heart is daring, frustratingly catchy and odd. Its okay to be odd.
