Music

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.

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.

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.

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.

An absolutely amazing mainstream pop album.

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.

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]

A more thoroughly radical-sounding album than even Ray Of Light...

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.

'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)

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.

The first Madonna record in years that feels as effortless as the dance-pop of her Ciccone youth. [Oct 2000, p.173]

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.

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.