Madonna - Hard Candy

Here is a complete rundown on the album.

This time round it has a seriously American angle, with hip-hop stars Timbaland, Pharrell Williams and pop king Justin Timberlake adding their influence.

Over to you, Madonna. You have 4 Minutes to tell it all in your own words.

4 MINUTES: The first single, which hit No1 on downloads alone. If you’re paying attention to what's going on in the world – the Middle East, the (US) election, the environment, there’s so much chaos and turmoil everywhere. Are you going to be part of the problem or part of the solution? But people also need to be cheered up. We also need to have fun and be given a sense of hope.



CANDY SHOP: This was the first song I wrote with Pharrell. It’s one of my favourites on the record. It personifies the mood I was in making the record – lots of innuendo. You can get so many things in a candy shop!



GIVE IT TO ME: It’s going to be a great song to do live. I can see the whole place jumping. It’s the ultimate “Give me all you’ve got, don’t try to stop me”. And a great song to work out to.



MILES AWAY: This is the first song I wrote with Justin. It’s definitely a song people in my business can relate to. All of us in the studio were like, “Yeah, I get that”.



SHE’S NOT ME: We were listening to a lot of Debbie Harry records. It’s kind of Debbie Harry meets Gloria Gaynor I Will Survive. Pharrell came up with the hook so we concocted a story about the ultimate jilted lover.



BEAT GOES ON: Lucky for us, Kanye West was recording his album across the hall while we were making our record. We were also channelling Marvin Gaye and different artists from the past.



INCREDIBLE: There’s a lot of angst in it and a lot of desire – wanting to recreate some feeling of happiness and fulfilment. But it’s also about abandonment and having a good time. Pharrell was playing me all these songs from Baltimore. There’s this sound coming out of Baltimore. He kept calling it The Be More.



THE DEVIL WOULDN’T RECOGNIZE YOU and VOICES: Both were written in the first chunk of time I had writing with Justin. Devil is a song about a person who everyone has in their life – a person who gets away with everything. Voices is about people playing mind games and who go on ego trips. The line, “Are you walking the dog or is the dog walking you?” . . . it’s like, who’s in control here? These last two songs really make you think and there’s something very orchestral and lush about them. We started out light with Candy Shop and ended in a thoughtful way with Voices. I think it was a good journey to go on.





Bonus track - Ring my bell




Ta, Madge. Get your copy of Hard Candy now.


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