Music

Performer: Madonna/Leela James
Engineer: Geoff Foster; Mark Endert; Sean Spuehler; Jake Davies
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Producers: Mirwais Ahmadzai, William Orbit, Guy Sigworth, Mark "Spike" Stent, Talvin Singh. Recorded at Sarm East and Sarm West, London, England; Guerilla Beach, Los Angeles, California; The Hit Factory, New York, New York. MUSIC won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Recording Package. The album was nominated for the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album. "Music" was nominated for the 2001 Grammy Award in the categories of Record Of The Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Personnel: Madonna (vocals); Guy Sigsworth (guitar, keyboards, programming); Steve Sidelnyk (drums); Sean Spuehler (programming). Audio Mixer: Mark "Spike" Stent. Recording information: Air Lundhurst Studios, England; Guerilla Beach, Los Angeles, CA; Sarm East And Sarm West, London, England; The Hit Factory, New York, NY. Photographer: Jean Baptiste Mondino. With MUSIC, Madonna expands upon the electronic advances made on her previous album, RAY OF LIGHT. RAY producer William Orbit is back on board, joined by French artiste electronique Mirwais Ahmadzai. Both men aid Madonna in pursuing ever more sophisticated electronic soundscapes. The accent here is squarely on club-oriented dance music, as propulsive electronic beats and percolating synthesizers power such pure-pop confections as the title tune and "Runaway Lover." Even Madonna's voice undergoes a fair amount of electronic modification, as on the moody "Nobody's Perfect" which bears a hook that hinges on the same vocoder effect that endeared millions to Cher's "Believe." There's another side to MUSIC, though. While Orbit and Ahmadzai maintain the sonic thread of loops and samples throughout the album, several songs leave the party atmosphere behind in favor of a more melancholy, balladic approach. "I Deserve It," "Gone," and "Don't Tell Me" are pushed along by drum loops, but are based around acoustic guitar, and it's easy to imagine them being performed effectively with nothing more than guitar and voice. While MUSIC pushes Madonna into the future, it allows her to arrive in her new surroundings with the full emotional range of her vision intact.

Rolling Stone (1/4/01, p.106) - Ranked #3 in Rolling Stone's Top 10 Albums of 2000. Rolling Stone (10/12/00, p.86) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Dirty, casually urgent....[It's] her most radical sonics yet....intimate, futurist pop..." Spin (1/01, p.73) - Ranked #18 in Spin's "Top 20 Albums of the Year [2000]". Spin (10/00, p.173) - 7 out of 10 - "...It's the first Madonna record in years that feels as effortless as the dance-pop of her Ciccone youth..." Entertainment Weekly (9/24/00, pp.72-3) - "...[She's] encased in a jet-stream, hard-disco beat and continually contorting her voice....MUSIC burps and thumps harder than RAY OF LIGHT, and it allows her moments of playful humor absent from that predecessor..." - Rating: B Q (1/01, p.93) - Included in Q's "50 Best Albums of 2000". Q (10/00, pp.108-9) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...A brave, radical and punchy album....thrilling non-stop Eurocentric disco....this is Madonna without a safety net." Uncut (10/00, p.86) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...Nursery rhyme melodies hang off twinkling, cut-glass keyboard lines..." Mixmag (10/00, p.179) - 3 out of 5 - "...It's full of Mirwais' trademark production gimmicks: stuttering vocal edits, tortured analog synth howls and oceans of vocoder....Yet the album's finest moment is the ruthlessly simple guitar-and-voice ballad 'I Deserve It'..." Vibe (11/00, p.173) - 4 discs out of 5 - "...A masterpiece of brilliantly arranged keyboards, futuristic drums and electronica dressings....it's a weird and fresh-sounding mix..." Melody Maker (9/26/00, pp.50-1) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...A collection of her slickest and sexiest sounds since 'Justify My Love'....impressive..." Mojo (Publisher) (10/00, p.102) - "...Still doing what she does best - giving a lick of pop genius to the unlikely genre of experimental dance music." NME (Magazine) (12/30/00, p.79) - Ranked #47 in NME's "Top 50 Albums Of The Year". NME (Magazine) (9/16/00, p.35) - 8 out of 10 - "...A bionic record, a triumph of advanced mechanics and the faultless design of a consumate superstar..."

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