By the spring of 2012, Madonna had been away from the studio for four years. She came back the way she always does when she has something to prove: on the dance floor.
MDNA was her first record for Interscope after nearly three decades with Warner, and it arrived on the back of a remarkable few weeks. In January she won a Golden Globe for “Masterpiece”, the ballad she wrote for W.E., the film she had directed. In February she played the Super Bowl halftime show to one of the biggest television audiences of the year. The new record didn’t so much launch as land.
Old friends, new noise
For the sound, she brought back William Orbit for the first time since Music, and set him alongside two club producers from the European scene: Martin Solveig from France and Benny Benassi from Italy. You can hear the three hands at work. Orbit brings space and melancholy; Solveig brings bright, tight pop; the Benassis bring the hard, distorted edge of the big-room club.
“Give Me All Your Luvin’”, with Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., opened the era with cheerleader chants. “Girl Gone Wild” begins with a whispered act of contrition before the beat crashes in. “Turn Up the Radio” is pure release. But underneath the gloss sit darker songs about the end of her marriage, written with an anger she rarely lets show on record.
A party record with a bruise underneath it.
What it left behind
MDNA went straight to No. 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, and within weeks she was rehearsing The MDNA Tour, which would turn these songs into one of her most theatrical shows.
Heard now, it sounds like a bridge. Behind it is the high gloss of Hard Candy; ahead of it, the more exposed songwriting of Rebel Heart. In between, a woman in her fifties dancing harder than anyone half her age, and daring us to say something about it.
Explore the record: MDNA · Every song on The Tracks
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