HARD CANDY
| Madonna
HARD CANDY
Hard Candy is the eleventh studio album by American singer and songwriter Madonna. It was released on April 19, 2008, by Warner Bros. Records. The album was her final studio album with the record company, marking the end of a 25-year recording history. Madonna started working on the album in early 2007, and collaborated with Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, The Neptunes and Nate "Danja" Hills. The album has an overall R&B vibe, while remaining a dance-poprecord at its core. The Pet Shop Boys were also asked to collaborate with Madonna on the album by Warner Bros., but the record company later changed their mind and withdrew their invitation. - WIKIPEDIA
Critic Reviews
Show All-
RollingStone
For Hard Candy, Madonna’s midlife meditation on her own relevance, she lets top-shelf producers make her their plaything.
-
Pitchfork
Hard Candy is Madonna's link-up with the American men who've come to define global pop, including Timbaland, the Neptunes, Kanye West, and Justin Timberlake.
-
CoS
Hard Candy is not a Madonna album, but more of a collaboration featuring Madonna.
-
SLANT
Hard Candy is the album Confessions on a Dance Floor was supposed to be, both in terms of musical style and overall progression.
-
BBC
Easy to chew, Hard Candy is everything you'd hope for from a Madonna album.
-
The Guardian
Whenever Hard Candy threatens to get boring, something always happens to recapture your interest.
-
sputnik music
With R&B and hip-hop being the dominate music style in the American market it was only a matter of time before Madonna jumped on the trend.
-
ALL MUSIC
Hard Candy is all brutal hard edges and blaring primary colors, a relentlessly mercenary collection of cold beats and chilly innuendo.
-
Entertainment
Candy finds her dropping her Kabbalah string on the dance floor and readopting an American accent to offer up an unpretentious, nonstop dance party.
-
Boston Globe
Thanks to the blunt force of her personality, Hard Candy feels perfectly concerted, without a whiff of desperation.
-
prefix
Madonna and some of music’s edgiest producers have again brought an underground sound to the forefront of pop music.
-
NOW
Hard Candy sounds a bit too much like Madonna’s trying to catch up with the American R&B princesses.
-
NME
a solid enough album by the standards of most pop tarts, but from the mistress of innovation? Pretty mediocre.
-
DROWNED IN SOUND
Those of us with clearer vision, though, will have to go on missing the time when this pop chameleon could stimulate change in the wider musical landscape rather than resign herself to following already tiring trends.
-
musicOMH
Overall, Hard Candy lacks subtlety and is overworked and overproduced.
-
pop sugar
nothing stands out as particularly unique or sounds like something we haven't heard before.
-
The New York Times
Madonna uses “Hard Candy” to renew her brand and defy skeptics, yet again.
-
Digital Spy
Hard Candy makes for a brisk, exciting listen.
-
UNCUT
Back to bubblegum basics for the Material Girl.
-
RTE
It might give you a quick sugar rush, but there isn’t enough substance here to put it down in the annals of pop.
-
NPR
the album has several high-revving dance tracks that might make you forget that Madonna is pushing the half-century mark.
-
entertainment.ie
The end product, therefore, is in real danger of becoming a strange conundrum: a Madonna album that sounds like a Neptunes/Timbaland/Justin Timberlake album featuring Madonna.
-
popMATTERS
Madonna is striving to reassert her once risqué preeminence.
-
ALL HIP HOP
Madonna has done it again.
-
INDEPENDENT
Madonna herself, a sweet soft centre in a crisp hardbody shell.
-
GLOBE GAZETTE
Madonna may be strutting her way into AARP-territory but she still belongs on that forever shimmering dance floor.
-
swap a CD
Madonna's final album for Warner Brothers is by no means her best, but it's a fitting swan song for the artist who anchored the label for the past quarter-century.
-
Los Angeles Times
"Hard Candy" is simply one last roar before Madonna mellows into the autumn of her years.
-
rueters
a set of catchy, easily digestible, mass-appeal songs by a star who’s not taking chances.
-
SFGATE
It certainly makes for her most fun release in ages, if not her most age-appropriate.
-
The Neptunes
a slick, ultra-modern urban dance concoction.
-
Sunday Express
The hard truth is that Hard Candy is samey and over-produced and never really allows Madonna’s nasally voice to soar.
-
Robert Christgau
OK, a middle-aged fitness nut can sing pop ditties just like middle-aged lushes could once sing pop standards, with this requirement--a little help from Timbo and Kanye.
-
TRIB LIVE
'Hard Candy' is more bland than sweet.
-
Lincoln Journal Star
hopping on the hip-hop/dance bandwagon is fraught with peril for the changling, who turns 50 in August.
-
plugged in
Among the teasing treats in Madonna's "Candy Shop" is Turkish Delight.
-
IGN
an all-around disappointing affair.
-
The Sun Review
Despite a few tasty treats, I’m not sure rap was the right direction for a singer approaching her fifth decade.
-
Vancouver Sun
there is something incredibly sad about a near-50-year-old woman unwilling to show her age and instead choosing to ramp up her campish sexuality to sell albums.
Rate This Album and Leave Your Comments