I drive my Mini Cooper and I'm feeling super-duper

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

04/05/03 : American Life - Madonna


Our ninth visit with Madge and you certainly can't accuse her of having served up the same old stuff every time - some hit and some miss, but she's always trying something (even if sometimes she shouldn't). This is one that totally passed me by at the time, so I can't say expectations are sky-high but I'm at least intrigued to hear it.

And what an intriguing listen it is too - she's sounding quite reflective on it, almost as if she's thinking "was it really worth all the fuss?". It's surprisingly stripped back at times - and also amazingly repetitive in places, with some absolutely appalling lyrics. I didn't hate it and it was an interesting listen, but I can't say I was completely convinced it was any good - if anyone else had come out with this, I suspect it would have done absolutely nothing.

We're at #3 in the charts this week on her second week of a surprisingly long twenty week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its debut week.  The rest of the top five were Justin Timberlake, The White Stripes, Busted and David Sneddon (a new entry) with the next highest new entry being Fleetwood Mac's Say You Will (#6) which I'm not aware I even knew existed - apparently it's their final album.

Wikipedia has a huge amount on the album (538 milliPeppers) which tells us it's her ninth album and is "a concept album, with themes panning the American Dream and materialism". Sigh - there's just so much text here and anything I read is just so full of itself. Apparently the album genres include folktronica, eurotechno and electroclash (they're just making words up now) and the cover is based on a famous photo of Che Guevara. I'm also reminded that it was around this time that she "engaged in open-mouth kissing" with Britney and Christina which means I've absolutely no desire to read any more about what she got up to - so knock yourself out if you care!

Critically, Wikipedia tells us the reviews were "favorable" to mixed reviews and then proceeds to quote from mixed ("frequently self-indulgent, misguided, unpleasant, difficult to listen to, silly and humorless, but it's also consistent, uncompromising and unapologetic") to "unfavorable" reviews ("the tunes are bland and weak, the lyrics are uninspired and self-absorbed"). It also has a legacy section which amusingly seems to tell us the album has left no legacy at all and a retrospective reviews section which suggests the lyrics are way better than you remember them (spoiler alert - they ain't) and also quote Rolling Stone who listened to it again and said it was 'hopelessly muddled when it wasn't just downright embarrassing".  Commercially, of course, it rocked in terms of getting to #1 everywhere but didn't do as well on the year-end lists as Madge would have hoped.

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" - which is kinda unusual for someone of the profile of Her Royal Madgeness. I feel I was maybe overly nice about this album earlier (although I stand by my statement it's an interesting listen) but having read a load of Wikipedia text telling me it was really remarkably good, I'm feeling less generous about it. But wherever my feelings end up, there's no danger of me actually recommending you listen to it - a lot of it is really quite poor.

27/04/03 - Giving the fans what they want
11/05/03 - Plenty to admire, but little to love

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