Madonna: American Life - 2003

2003 found Madonna again employing contemporary dance sounds and rhythms and blending them with pop hookiness and lots of acoustic guitar plucking to produce another very enjoyable album, just as 2000's Music had been. It was getting fashionable to slag her off as an old has-been by now, but it was difficult in the face of stuff like this. It was a good album. End of. As they said back then. 

American Life is addictively jerky with its stop/start walking pace beats. They can be a bit off putting, the same with the flamenco guitar parts but it is still a strong, captivating and adventurous song. Madonna raps on the track too, quite convincingly. I love Hollywood. It is a delicious blend of acoustic and electronic sounds. Again, Madonna's vocal is strong, far better than it ever used to be. More rap features and the lively dance beat ensured its popularity in that field. 

I'm So Stupid again finds a slow strummed guitar integrating with a solid, bassy dance beat over lots of electronic sounds. Once again, this is good stuff. Great sound quality too. Check out that crystal clear percussion. Love Profusion is a very similar track in sound and ambience. More acoustic guitars utilised with those heavy beats. 

Nobody Knows Me is a very staccato groover packed with bleeping electro sound effects. The acoustic fusion is back again on the slow, appealing Nothing Fails which is embellished by the use of a choir half way through. The guitar changes to electric for a similarly-strummed slow melodic backing on Intervention. A lot of these songs follow the same path - strummed, slow guitar then chunky dance beats behind a seductive Madonna vocal. No matter, though, they are all good songs. Finely created, constructed and delivered. 

X-Static Process has some intricate guitar picking and no dance beats as Madonna goes quasi-religious as she often liked to do. Mother And Father is also self-analytical, Madonna looking back thoughtfully over this time a more muscular, bassy, electronic backing. The bass line on this is truly excellent. I love it. If David Bowie had released this in the late seventies (or in any era) it would have been proclaimed a work of genius. Sometimes Madonna deserved more credit for her songwriting/arranging. This was one of those occasions. 

Die Another Day was her James Bond theme tune contribution, and it suits the album's ambience perfectly with its oddball beats and "Sigmund Freud - analyse this..." lyrics. It broke the mould for Bond themes too. The orchestrated Easy Ride has more acoustic guitar, making it sound a bit like David Bowie's Rock And Roll Suicide. It is a sombre, moving closer to what was a really good album. I've changed my mind about Madonna albums - put this one at the top, just under Music, then Ray Of Light and Bedtime Stories.