Confessions on a Dance Floor

麦当娜诞生自舞曲，她的第一张同名专辑《Madonna》就是一张完全舞曲专辑，而2005年新作“Confessions on a Dancefloor”是她值得纪念的第2张舞曲专辑。舞曲能量来自于她的血液，她的呼吸，这是唯一能解释为何人群总是不经思索地在她的舞曲中忘我的原因。在舞池的国度她是无庸置疑的女皇，每每登高一呼，子民只有膜拜的份。

“Confessions in a Dancefloor”是一张精心设计的专辑，麦当娜说：“我要摆脱舞曲专辑”内容空洞”的刻板印象，让歌曲是有内涵的，这也是这张专辑名为--“告白”的意义”。这次她挑选了英国当红 DJ 新秀 Stuart Price 携手合作专辑大多数歌曲，把70年代的 Disco、80年代的 House、90年代的 Techno、Trance…等各种风靡一时的舞曲形式，假 Stuart Price 之巧手以及麦当娜与生俱来的舞曲细胞，打造出这张全新又带有复古风韵的连续舞曲专辑。“我把‘过去’的音乐，带来‘现在’，希望也能走向‘未来’”，这塑造出了21世纪的“Future Disco”雏型，使电子舞曲不再是特定团体的专属，Future Disco 是前卫世纪的舞曲新貌。

你只要把 CD 放进机器里，按下 PLAY 键就可以就位了，想像你租下了顶尖舞厅的 VIP 室，邀请一位专属 DJ，没有压力，没有冷场，享受完完整整不中场休息的 Happy hour。开场首支单曲“Hung Up”带你直接跨越时空与1979年的 ABBA 交会，以平均 120bpm 以上的高空处带你体验震荡起伏的快感。经过急速冷酷、玩弄语言魅力的“Sorry”到迷幻唯美的“Future Lovers”、铿锵彪悍的“I Love New York”、让浩室重生的“Jump”、“How High”；富神秘卡巴拉哲学与异国舞韵的“Isaac”与“Push”；最后以特立独行的“Like It Or Not”完美终场。

除了前卫高能量的强劲节拍外，“Confessions on a Dancefloor”如同一贯的麦当娜作品，总是挟带远超过流行文化的深度与讯息，除了音乐持续带给人们新鲜快感外，此张创作势必也将带领全世界的流行趋势。继成功让牛仔风、迷彩风重生后，全世界都在等待她的一举一动，身为金氏世界记录里音乐史上的最成功艺人，她就是流行的指标；随着她乐坛生命的增长，以及跨世纪不可动摇的地位，除了舞曲的敏锐度有增无减，创造出欢愉热闹的动感节奏，麦当娜仍难能可贵地维持专辑的艺术价值，并且继续带领流行舞曲大步向前进化。

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Given the cold shoulder Madonna's 2003 album American Life received by critics and audiences alike -- it may have gone platinum, but it was her first album ever not to have a single enter the Billboard pop Top Ten (in fact, its title track barely cracked the Top 40) -- it's hard not to read its 2005 follow-up, Confessions on a Dance Floor, as a back-to-basics move of sorts: after a stumble, she's returning to her roots, namely the discos and clubs where she launched her career in the early '80s. It's not just that she's returning to dance music -- in a way, she's been making hardcore dance albums ever since 1998's Ray of Light, her first full-on flirtation with electronica -- but that she's revamping and updating disco on Confessions instead of pursuing a bolder direction. While it's true to a certain extent that contemporary dance music is still recycling and reinventing these songs -- besides, anything '80s is in vogue in 2005 -- coming from Madonna, it sounds like a retreat, an inadvertent apology that she's no longer on the cutting edge, or at least an admission that she's inching ever closer to 50. And no matter how she may disguise it beneath glistening layers of synths, or by sequencing the album as a non-stop party, Confessions on a Dance Floor is the first album where Madonna seems like a veteran musician. Not only is there a sense of conscious craft to the album, in how the sounds and the songs segue together, but in how it explicitly references the past -- both her own and club music in the larger sense -- the music seems disassociated from the present; Madonna is reworking familiar territory, not pushing forward, in a manner not dissimilar to how her former opening act the Beastie Boys returned to old-school rap on their defiantly old-fashioned 2004 album To the 5 Boroughs. But where the Beasties are buoyed by their camaraderie, Madonna has always been a stubborn individual, working well with collaborators but always, without question, existing on her own terms, and this obstinate nature is calcifying slightly into isolation on Confessions. There's no emotional hook in the music, either in its icy surface or in the lyrics, and the hard-headed intention to deliver a hardcore dance album means that this feels cold and calculated, never warm or infectious. Of course, Madonna has always been calculated in her career, often to great effect, and this calculation does pay off some dividends here. Taken on a purely sonic level, Confessions on a Dance Floor does its job: with the assistance of co-producer Stuart Price (Bloodshy & Avant produce two tracks, Mirwais produces one, while another was originally produced by Anders Bagge and Peer Astrom), she not only maintains the mood, but keeps the music moving nicely, never letting one track linger any longer than necessary. This is shimmering music falling just short of sexy, yet it's alluring enough on the surface to make for a perfect soundtrack for pitch-black nights. That's what the album was designed to do, and it works well on that level. It works well as a whole, but as a collection of individual tracks it falls apart, since there is a distinct lack of melodic or lyrical hooks. But Confessions wasn't intended to be pop music -- as the title makes clear, it was made for the dance clubs or, in other words, Madonna's core audience, who will surely be pleased by this sleek slice of style. But the fact that she's making music just for her core audience, not for the mass audience that she's had for 20 years, is yet another indication that Madge is slyly, slowly settling into her new status as veteran (or perhaps as survivor), and while she succeeds rather handsomely on those modest terms, it's more than a little odd to hear Madonna scaling back her ambition and settling for less rather than hungering for more.