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Hard Candy | 
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| Artist: Madonna
Label: Maverick
Category: Music
List Price: CDN$ 15.99
Buy New: CDN$ 9.95
You Save: CDN$ 6.04 (38%)
New (23) Used (2) from CDN$ 8.99
Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 232
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 4.9 x 0.4
MPN: 093624988496
UPC: 093624988496
EAN: 0093624988496
ASIN: B0015D3Z4O
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships within 1 - 2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Factory Sealed Ships Fast!
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| Tracks:
| • | Candy Shop | | • | 4 Minutes - Madonna, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake | | • | Give It 2 Me | | • | Heartbeat | | • | Miles Away | | • | She's Not Me | | • | Incredible | | • | Beat Goes On - Madonna, Kanye West | | • | Dance 2night | | • | Spanish Lesson | | • | Devil Wouldn't Recognize You | | • | Voices |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 Pure Sugary Delight... August 29, 2008
It may not be Madonna's best album. But it is so fun and catchy I can't help but like it. Its "Confessions On The Dancefloor" promised to (catchy, poppy...). My favorite tracks on the album are Give It 2 Me, She's Not Me and Incredible.
 hard candy, hard to like July 26, 2008
Madonna is coming home: Having spent a decade working with producers drawn from European club culture, Hard Candy is her link-up with the American men who've come to define global pop. Five songs with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, six with Pharrell Williams, one with Williams and Kanye West. The best, this line-up announces, need to work with the best. But lead single "4 Minutes" doesn't sound like the best working with the best: It sounds complacent, like a pop supergroup high-fivin' each other.
The "4 Minutes" marching band rhythm-riff may be Timbaland's strongest idea on the album but the performers seem happy to let it do the work. He keeps shouting for "Mad-DON-nuh!" but she's a guest on her own track, singing from the margins of what might as well be a Timberlake outtake. Timbaland's productions are the weaker links on this frustratingly ordinary album. Partly he's a victim of his own ubiquity-- we know his tricks by now: the interlocking rhythmic hooks on his upbeat tracks, the bubbling claustrophobia on his ballads. "Devil Wouldn't Recognise You" is the third time-- at least-- that he's written "Cry Me a River", right down to the moody rainstorm breakdown and thunderclaps. But his less-typical productions don't all work well here either: "Dance 2Night" aspires to 80s funk slickness but lumbers where it should cruise.
The 1980s, specifically Madonna's 80s, haunt Hard Candy: It's been touted as a return to the spirit and sound of her earliest work, but her voice and delivery have changed too much for the comparison to hold. Her vocal training and singing lessons in the 90s broadened her range but she's never sounded as hungry since, and her phrasing on Hard Candy is frequently dreadful-- words so evenly spaced and emphasized that it sounds like she's reading aloud to a class. Or teaching you the choruses: You won't get "Miles Away" out of your head in a hurry but that's less to do with its quality than the didactic way she delivers it. Her biggest misstep is "Heartbeat"-- lyrics deliberately reminiscent of "Into the Groove" but sung so detached you might as well be at a Madonna Studies lecture.
The record's better tracks are, unsurprisingly, those where Madonna sounds more engaged. Second single "Give It to Me" has her delivering an imperious lesson on success and survival-- "Show me a record and I'll break it/ I can go on and on"-- over Hard Candy's most urgent tune, hard-pushing electro-ska whose keyboards break up trying to keep pace. Closing track "Voices" is gorgeously gothic orchestral synth-pop that she seems to relax and revel in. Centerpiece "She's Not Me" is a stirring piece of turf-defense, prowling between Chic-era disco and modern pop-house as Madonna slaps down a rival. It's taut and cold, easily Hard Candy's most emotionally compelling moment.
"She's Not Me" smoothly lays out Madonna's credentials: Twenty-five years at the top of the game. She doesn't reinvent pop; she defines it. Her strengths have always been her authority, and her smart sense of who to work with and when. So even if it's a summary of where pop's at rather than where it's going, Hard Candy should still be excellent. After all, if you're not going to do your best work for Madonna, who are you going to do it for? But after listening, the question's still open-- nobody involved in Hard Candy is anywhere near their creative peak.
 Sugar and Spice July 25, 2008
Everyone likes candy right? From the moment it hits your tongue, candy will flood your mouth with many flavours: savoury, tart, tantalizing. You close your eyes and are transported to another world full of sweet delights and sugary pleasure.
Such is the case with Madonna's new album, Hard Candy. As soon as the first note plays, you know you're in for a sensational treat. Mixing R and B with hip hop, pop and some good old 1980's funk, Hard Candy is a flat out amazing musical experience.
After Confessions on a Dance Floor, I was wondering what Madonna's next musical offering would be like. She is constantly reinventing herself to stay ahead and on top in the world of music. Going from electronica (Ray of Light) to electronic country pop (Music) to hard core electronic funk (American Life) to neo-disco pop (Confessions on a Dance Floor), Madonna is constantly changing and evolving.
Many were worried about what Hard Candy would be like when rumours started floating around about an R and B influence. Madonna, who is known to work with influential producers, worked with Justin Timberlake, Timberland, The Neptunes and Nate Hills this time around. Many felt that the album would sub par and I worried that Hard Candy would not be as good as Confessions on a Dance Floor.
I needn't have worried. Hardy Candy is perhaps the most ambitious musical offering that she has ever done. It is also without a doubt her best work to date. Far from being an attempt to harness the urban market, it actually goes beyond the ideals of urban hip-hop and R and B. In true Madonna fashion, she makes the music her own.
Unlike Confessions on a Dance Floor where the songs were somewhat similar and flowed into each other from one to the next, Hard Candy is a musical candy box full of different delights and startling treats. Each song on the album has a different flavour, a different sound but somehow manages to work well; each song plays off the other songs and, collected together, give us a sticky and sweet musical tapestry.
What I love most about Hard Candy is its message: get up and dance. The theme runs through out the album but is especially notable on Give it 2 Me, Beat Goes On, Spanish Lesson, Heartbeat and Dance 2Night. There are no political or personal agendas here; instead, we are given twelve tracks that will make you want to get out on the dance floor and strut your stuff.
There are tons of musical surprises on Hard Candy. Just when you think a song will go one way, it veers off into an unexpected yet wonderful direction. Give it 2 Me breaks down into a wonderful and catchy beat box chorus. Spanish Lesson starts off with soft Spanish guitar and a wonderfully catchy tune but veers into a hypnotic chorus where we're told to do our homework and get up on the dance floor. Voices, the last song on the album, starts off slowly, almost sensually and then veers into a sexy electronic funk that makes you sit up and take notice. Surprise after surprise makes this Madonna's most fantastic album yet.
The dancing theme plays through out the album but the song that best describes what Hard Candy is all about is the track Dance 2night: Do it, do it/Let me turn you on/Let the music pull you through it/Till the break of dawn/Do it, do it/While the night is young/Let the music pull you through it/Till the lights go on.
With those lyrics, and indeed the lyrics of all twelve songs on Hard Candy, you can't help but listen to Madonna's message: get up and dance. Hard Candy is hypnotic as Madonna pulls us through her music and helps us give into the beat.
Hard Candy is Madonna at her best and most creative. It's also one of the best albums this year. One thing is for sure: with Madonna as our musical muse, we'll be dancing for years to come.
 Get if only if you are a true Madonna fan June 29, 2008
I have all her CD's & I am a true Madonna fan for the past 20 years!
Sadly, I have to admit that this CD is not that great, I bought it because I get everything from Madonna, but this CD is absolutely not the best. You will enjoy about 4 songs in total!
MADONNA Dances Back Onto The Charts- June 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There have been some reviews written for this CD that say Madonna just hit a speed bump on the musical highway. In her defense, she may not have been able to avoid that bump, the reason being that her last album "Confessions on a Dancefloor" was absolutely brilliant, a perfect album in every way, which eventually led to the most successful live concert tour of her career thus far, and those ticket numbers would be huge. The "Confessions" CD was a concept album of sorts with each song segueing into the next, creating a dance floor extravaganza. How can she top that? Maybe she doesn't, so she follows a different, yet familiar path. Calling out the 'big guns' in the form of Timbaland and Justin Timberlake helps a heap too; the first single, "4 Minutes", is a great song and you can tell by the sound of it that the two T's are making their mark in the grooves. I'm thankful that Madonna's 'people' realized just how good "Give It To Me" is; this is the best song on the disc and is the new single that's just been released. This is Madonna at her very best as this song is super-hot and funky. As for other tracks, it doesn't hurt the cause to recruit Kanye West into the fold to help the rap/groove of "Beat Goes On" and old school funk shines big-time on "She's Not Me", with Prince collaborator Wendy Melvoin's signature guitar playing pushing the overall groove of the number.
How are the other tracks? To mention a few, "Candy Shop" is really good and "Dance Tonight" is a hot number that will probably end up on the urban charts soon. What ticks me off lately is when I read articles and reviews where people are taking shots at the fact that Madonna is almost 50 and shouldn't be strutting her stuff the way she does; this is age-ism and sexism at it's worst. For God's sake George Clooney is 47 and when was the last time you heard anyone making an issue out of that? Exactly. Madonna is a fantastic artist and entertainer who should just keep on trucking. Here's the way I look at it; Madonna at her very worst is far better than Britney at her very best. This is far, far from Madonna's worst album. She should be proud of this effort; it's actually one of her best, and definitely a CD worth buying.
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