mmmmmcx

Rowdy Clowns with Hearts Painted upon Their Cheeks

     Come to the Club, come in to the Club of Love
                     —Madonna, ”Love Without Words”

Or that’s how I heard it come out when I
accidentally—or inadvertently—found my way catching
the entire brand new album, the first one she has released in
six or seven years, I believe, and a sequel to one of her most
popular albums ever.  So, before I even know it, I’ve listened to the
whole of today’s newly released Confessions II.  And like the lyrics of the

3rd, 4th and 5th best songs on either of her albums, I find myself at times
laughing at her silly lyrics.  But also, all the while, and especially with this album,

I am one hundred percent on board, in this case caught up in each subtly

complex, hippie ditty, even and especially the silly, particularly Madonna-esque

turns of some of the dumbest-sounding lyrics.  One after the other, all of the

songs pop up on my YouTube screen, each song playing in its entirety, as I just listen, 

in awe of how the album is so smartly and tightly and thematically put together,

how poignant her lyrics are, how crisp and deceptively-layered each tune is.

Several songs have sparkling resonance with individual singles from this album’s

prequel, Confessions on a Dancefloor.  Much as I do love her and her music

and how she’s steadily flown through the zeitgeist ever since I was a teen,

there are some very integral qualities of a typical dance-popstress that she

doesn’t have.  And yet, her albums are most often brilliant successes.  

I am not here to explain this mystery, just to point it out.  It can be debated 

whether or not she can sing well.  Her lyrices often verge toward ridiculous.  

Her albums rarely seem to stay on a central theme.  Within each compliation, 

simplicity appears to to trump complexity.  Much of her songs have a comfortable

redundancy, almost to the point of becoming trite or cliche.  So while with all of

these characteristics, I will easily confess that I am a life-ling fan, I keep coming

back to thinking that this album confoundingly sounds...too good?...to be a

Madonna album.  But it is (too good AND a Madonna album)!  Somewhere in

here, there has to have been an inside joke which has some clique rolling their

eyes in disgust at the ignorance of the masses.  Yet as I listen to each song, then

begin to re-listen, it seems this lovely collage of dancefloor pop is no joke.  It is,

rather, an earnest masterpiece.  A masterpiece?  From Madonna, who has already

given us so much.  How could we possibly deserve a Madonna masterpiece.  

It is not something I ever thought might come, though some do no doubt argue

that several from her decades in the business have been.  While she might have

at times simultaneously been the butt-end of a few jokes, no doubt could 

reasonably be given that she has had amazingly illustrious career.  That has now

been elevated.  Again, with six or maybe even seven years since she has released

an album.  And no one’s musical output is more representative of each

dancefloor’s diary over the past nearly 50 years; of my lifetime.  Her music has

dominated, with iconic hit after hit filling the radio airwaves, television and 

internet, music videos, awards ceremonies, the cinema, and always bouncing

from the walls of dancehouses the world over, ever since I found inside of them.

Her controversies, and her causes, were discussed in abundance in cubicles,

classrooms, news venues, everywhere.  She’d masterfully ride the fence that

separates being loved from being hated, often having a hand in creating whatever

was trending at any particular moment, simultaneously thrilling fans and stirring

venom among pundits, emerging with regularity just to turn something upside

down or inside out, instantaneously repopularizing her own self, paving the way

for new scrutiny for each hot potato, all while building out of seemingly nowhere

awareness and devotion to urgent causes, bringing assistance to folks on the

fringes, something for a world which was craving something risque and

humanitarian, etc., at the center of moments that would forever and almost

overnight change how a general populace would thenceforward view a particular

subject.   Today is a day in pop history that will surely be another such pivot.  

And to make things even more riveting (at least to me) it seems that everyone 

in the industry has come out to impress, as if simply in celebration of her

or to ride her coattails, rallying around the debut of her new phase.  Madonna.

She once again has caught us off-guard.  How nostalgic.  Once again the

grandmother of pop is holding on to the zeitgeist as if it were the reigns to an

elaborate stagecoach.  And I am happy about it.  Happy for us.  For wherever 

it will us.  And surely she will gain innumerable new fans in the process.  I am

indeed so happy for her.  And, in her honor, look forward to inhabiting a

dance floor again soon.