Madonna’s new album: time to recap

Now that you heard it from the Music Bible itself, let’s get back to where you heard it first. It was more than one year ago – January 2007 – and on MadonnaTribe you read some exciting new info about a new Madonna album that will be soon in the making as we happily broke the news about Madonna recording materials with producer Pharrell Williams, to make an hip-hop influenced album, that would put her in the American mainstream for a change.

Nine months later – November 18 – and M-Tribe had a chance to report the first detailed info about six tracks from the new album recording sessions. It was then when you first heard about a song called “4 Minutes to save the World” – an upbeat and very catchy hip-hop Madonna/Justin Timberlake duet, and the beautiful “Miles Away“ – a song that has “hit” written all over it, full of acoustic guitars, uptempo and with Justin on backing vocals again (the song structure may recall “Love Profusion”, but it’s much better, we had the chance to report at the time).

Rolling Stone talks about five songs from their exclusive first listen, but you actually heard more about the Madonna/Timbaland/Timberlake collaborations in the new album as M-Tribe had the chance to report insider’s talks about “Dance Tonight“, a cool disco track inspired by the classic of the late 70’s and early 80’s, an amazing ballad called “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You“, and “Across The Sky“, another very cool song that eventually did not make the final cut of the album – and yes, those are all M/T/T‘s babies.

We also told you how “Give it to me“ – a cool uptempo hit produced by Pharrell Williams – sounds like, and reported that this very catchy uptempo song reminds of early Madonna tracks from the “pre-Madonna era” such as “Love on the run”. The song’s break is very strange, stopping suddenly while Madonna says “Don’t Stop It” and the male voice, probably Pharell himself says “to the left, to the right”.

MadonnaTribe also reported news we heard about Madonna’s new record containing a song titled “Ring My Bell“, which is not a cover of the popular 1979 disco song by Anita Ward but a totally new and original track.

You also heard here that the new album will also have another unexpected collaboration, because when Madonna was putting the finishing touches to her CD at RecordPlant studios in L.A. Kanye West was recording his own stuff in the next room: a fortunate coincidence that brought the rapper to temporarely switch from the King to the Queen of Pop… and you’ll find out how cool it works when you’ll listen to the brand new “Beat Goes On“.

Speaking of surprises, you may have spotted here the news about Madonna digging back her love for Latin culture as she will be singing again phrases in Spanish in one of her new album tracks, going to give Spanish lessons and explaining the English meaning of Spanish phrases such as “te quiero” (I Love you), “callate” (shut up), “besame” (kiss me), and many more.

Yesterday Rolling Stone reported about another track they heard called “Heartbeat“, and we’ve been told that the song is yet another Pharrell production: yes, from what we hear the guy has seven songs out of 12 on the album as it is compiled now (or should we say “up to eight”…) while Timbaland and Timberlake “stop” at five (and by the way, it’s “Candy Store” eventually, no shop anymore, even if somehow you already know all about it).

Something else you happened to read first here as well was the news about Steven Klein and Giovanni Bianco teaming up with Madonna again for the photo session and artwork of her new CD, with a photoshoot that took place in London right before Xmas.

And in case you happen not to remember that we got the Jonas directing her new video wrong (oops, not Jonas Akerlund but Jonas & François) well, erm… we don’t mind (sorry again, folks!).

Get your voices ready to sing along, because Madonna’s new album is incredible.