The World’s First Defense Of… Madonna’s American Life

This month’s issue of the US edition of GQ presents a year end commentary with lists and such. In the Essentials section they have Madonna’s American Life as an “essential”.

Here is the write up:

“I’ts really easy to say Madonna’s new music stinks. “Madonna’s new music stinks!”. See-easy! It’s much harder to ignore the pervasive, knee-jerk criticism(not to mention dismal sales) of her latest album, American Life, and give it a serious relisten.

Sure, it currently resides on several music critics’ year-end worst albums list. But aside from it’s dumb-ass Madonna-as-che cover art-and the equally dumb-ass rap she does on the title track- it’s actually quite a good record that nearly everyone missed because they were gleefully backlashing Ms. Ciccone.

To be fair, American Life’s secret weapon isn’t Madonna herself but her producer, Frenchman Mirwais Ahmadzai. Mirwais’ dense, space-agey sound is sometimes a little cold and impersonal-he makes dance music Kubrick would have loved- but it’s still good. And it’s a nice break from all that top 40 Timbaland/Neptunes rat-a-tat-tat that’s starting to sound really repetitive. And now you can listen to DJ’s producers and other folks interpret Madonna’s(and Mirwais’s) work on the new American Life Renixed and Revisited.

Take her home in a brown paper bag, play her behind drawn shades, enjoy!”

Jason G

Source: GQ
Thanks to Stavros from the Dotmusic forum.