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Music
by Madonna

Madonna reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 80 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.8 out of 10
based on 16 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 22 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album

The follow-up to Madonna's hit 'Ray of Light' was produced by 'Light's producer William Orbit and French electronica artist Mirwais.

LABEL: Warner Bros.
RELEASE DATE: 19 September 2000
DISCS: 1 disc
GENRE(S): Pop, Rock

NOTES: The UK version includes the single "American Pie" as an additional track.


What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

90
MTV.com
An absolutely amazing mainstream pop album.
Read Full Review
90
Dot Music
Generally an upbeat dancey album which finds Madonna still ahead of the game sixteen years into her career, 'Music' takes an occasional breather with some more grown-up, reflective balladry.
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82
Wall of Sound
[Co-producer Mirwais Ahmadzai's] deft touch for crafting disarmingly warm songs out of synthetic tools gives Music a rich, human quality that nicely underscores Madonna's quietly personal -- if purposefully vague -- lyrics.... it's the music that ultimately sucks us into Music.
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80
Q Magazine
A more thoroughly radical-sounding album than even Ray Of Light...
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80
Select
'Music'... sees Madonna cast as a nu disco diva taking a taxi ride through a world which is definitely hers. Much of it sounds like Daft Punk. It's fun. (Oct 2000, p.100)
80
Rolling Stone
Unlike Ray of Light's pristine inner-ear landscapes, Music is dirty, casually urgent, as if Madonna walked into the studio, got on the mike and let the machines bump.
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80
Spin Cycle
The real standouts here, though, are the ballads. With "I Deserve It" and "Gone," the legacy of the corporeal and spiritual Madonna lays down amid the simplicity of basic percussive beats and acoustic guitar.
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80
All Music Guide
Filled with vocoders, stylish neo-electro beats, dalliances with trip-hop, and, occasionally, eerie synthesized atmospherics, Music blows by in a kaleidoscopic rush of color, technique, style, and substance.... an appealing, addictive record.
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80
Mojo
Music is fitful and its charms aren't all immediate, but Madonna is still doing what she does best--giving a lick of pop genius to the unlikely genre of experimental dance music.
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80
New Musical Express
Vocodered, stretched, distorted, warped, deliberately upstaged by beats so showy they belong in a strip joint - quite simply, she's almost managed to make herself disappear. That bluntly explicit title isn't just pointless irony. This record is about the music, not Madonna; about the sounds, not the image.
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75
Entertainment Weekly
It's her most patchwork record since the Sean Penn years.... In the way it tiptoes around sundry moods and beats, ''Music'' is frustratingly inconsistent, as if Madonna herself weren't sure where to venture next. At times, it feels like a collection of sounds -- clever, intriguing ones, to be sure -- that seek to compensate for ordinary melodies and Madonna's stoic delivery.
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70
Spin
The first Madonna record in years that feels as effortless as the dance-pop of her Ciccone youth. [Oct 2000, p.173]
70
Village Voice
Music breaks down neatly into three discrete sections, on which I'll hang the very technical names the dance part, the good part, and the dirge part. The good part, so named because it's really good, accounts for half of Music's 10 songs, conveniently nestled into tracks four through eight inclusive, so you can play that section over and over again without interruption.
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70
Sonicnet
Folkish acoustic guitar and lumbering trip-hop rhythms grind the second half into one bland, undifferentiated musical mass. Because she's an icon, she probably doesn't feel comfortable releasing a formal coup of an album where she toys with French disco-house the entire time.
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70
New York Magazine
Mostly, as on Ray of Light, sophisticated production masks Madonna's shortcomings as a songwriter.... Often Mirwais is the real star here... It's his music that makes Music matter. [Sep 25, 2000]
Read Full Review
50
CDNow
Music is a weaker record than its predecessor, with only a few tracks possessing the strength, pop sensibility, and hooks that made Ray of Light such a success.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now! The average user rating for this album is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 22 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Ruan H gave it a9:
Excellent follow up to Ray Of Light, moving into new musical directions and sounds. "Music" is easily one of her best singles of all time.

Aldo M gave it a10:
fantastic!!!! the best!!!!

niels m gave it a 9:
great songs and madonna proves herself more than worthy to listen at.

christian s gave it a 7:
music is madonna's best album since "Like a Prayer". Filled with an ambitious electronic production and some acoustic guitars, the album is mostly a dance recording with only few moments of seriousness, and that's not a bad thing at all. Impressive instant, Runaway lover, Don't tell me and Gone are the album's good tracks. the bad here is nobody's perfect and the worst is Paradise (not for me). The compelling thing here are the funky - electronic Music and the soft electronic ballad What it feels like for a girl

Christian G gave it an 8:
Good Songs: Music, Impressive instant, amazing, I deserve it, Runaway lover, Don´t Tell me, What it feels like for a girl, Gone Bad Songs: Paradise (not for me), Nobody´Perfect

Henry H. gave it an 8:
Don't think of yesterday. This is her adventurous French connection.

[Anonymous] gave it an 8:
Not as good as Ray Of Light, but then again, it would take a perfect album to be better than Ray of Light!

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