all-about-musicians-and-the-people-who-help-them-make-music
Is Beyonce’s “Sasha Fierce” Just Another Sasha Farce??
I want to like Beyonce. Really I do. She’s fantastic looking. She has a fantastic voice. However, over the course of four Destiny’s Child albums and now three solo albums, she’s mostly struck me as the musical equivalent of a ton of pretty wrapping paper with no gift inside. All style and no substance. As a songwriter, she’s not especially insightful, and it doesn’t really seem like she inhabits the songs she sings the same way some less talented but more believable vocalists do. So, to make a long story short, just about every album Beyonce has been a part of has been a case of unfulfilled promise and ultimately a frustrating listening experience.
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Get Into the Groove: The Ultimate Madonna Mix
She’s the Queen of Pop. She’s (like) a virgin. She’s a dance diva. She’s an Earth mother. She’s Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone Penn Ritchie, and she’s been a musical icon for the past twenty-five years.
Much has been said about Madge’s body of work, not all of it complimentary. Truthfully, although I’m certainly a fan, I’d have to say she peaked early. In my eyes, her first album is still her best. However, each of her albums has at least a couple of strong songs, and, while her latest, Hard Candy, hasn’t exactly been critically or commercially praised, it’s not an altogether bad piece of work (dear Madonna: Justin Timberlake yes, Pharrell Williams no).
If I had 80 minutes to describe the essence of Madonna in a nutshell to a stranger (although, let’s face it, who doesn’t know Madonna?) These are the songs I would go with:
1) Get Together (from “Confessions on a Dance Floor”, 2005)
The only way I can describe this song is: this is the way it feels inside a club when you’ve completely lost touch with your life and all the everyday crap you go through and just submit yourself to the music. I’m certainly not the clubgoer I was back in the mid-Nineties (actually, I hate clubs nowadays), but this song reminds me of those transcendent moments. It was really the only thing worth keeping on “Confessions on a Dance Floor”.
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Lenny Kravitz Bops Horizontally in New Dancin’ Video
Those of you old enough might remember critics saying that Lenny Kravitz was too derivative and that he wouldn’t last. Well, twenty years later, the man is still here, still derivative, and sexier than ever. It Is Time for a Love Revolution is his most inspired record in a decade, and Dancin’ Till Dawn might be just the song and video to resurrect the underperforming album. Boasting a fantastically erotic video (and this is the […]