Madonna
Confessions On A Dancefloor

Everything has already been said. Everything has already been written.

It's beautiful, ugly, overhyped, disgustingly dance, it's "Donna Summer revived by Daft Punk", sex in search of sex, it's "the mirror ball of Danceteria crashing into Ground Zero", nothing more than a return to the past, nothing more than a clever, cultured anthology of references: sometimes subtle, sometimes not.

All true, all false. With just one fixed point: it's Madonna, and it works. Once again. Definitively abandoning the "electrorock" path of "Ray Of Light", Louise Veronica Ciccone, together with trusted Stewart Price (aka "Les Rhythmes Digitales" aka "Jacques Lu Cont", maybe not a genius, but certainly a master), chooses to revolve everything around a simple, simple motif, yet so damnably fashionable: the 80s dance.
And so she dances, sings, provokes, shimmies, quotes whoever comes to mind (Abba, Prodigy, New Order), falls into the purest self-celebration (the strings of "Let it will be" are an example, and then "Push", which so much recalls "Like a prayer"), snatches vocoder from the hands of Kraftwerk ("Sorry"), and is not ashamed to rob Daft Punk of their best instruments (filters) spreading here and there drops of spirituality seasoned with French Touch (Air).

It is an album to listen to, to dance to, all in one breath to preserve the illusion. Worth noting is the great fluidity in the transition from song to song: it's like listening not to a normal album but to a kind of “mix”, an uninterrupted continuum of “confessions”.
It starts off at a thousand with "Hung up", the first release, continues with the numerous retro references of "Get together", leading to the second explosive single, "Sorry", perhaps the most energetic and engaging track of the Twelve, and it goes on, always without discontinuity: "Future Lovers" (see Donna Summer), "I love New York", "Forbidden love" (see Kraftwerk), and then "Jump", whose rhythm manages to push even the shyest and most awkward "on the dancefloor".

Rounding it all off are "How high", "Isaac" (the voice at the end of the track is Yitzhak Sinwami, rabbi of the London Kabbalah Centre), and the dark, smooth step sequencer of "Like it or not". It's certainly cliché to emphasize the great style that characterizes the entire album, but it must be done because before being electronic-dance-celebratory to the point of nausea, it is above all pop, great pop, and if you take away the style, the pleasure of listening disappears. And of dancing.