Madonna - Medellín - Single [Review]

Madonna (considered by many to be the Queen of Pop) has finally returned to the music scene (following her 2015 album Rebel Heart) after a pretty lengthy hiatus with "Medellín," the first single from her upcoming studio album Madame X (which is set for release on June 14th, 2019). "Medellín" (the title of which being in reference to the city in Columbia where collaborative vocalist Maluma was born) is Madonna's first single since "Hold Tight" (which was released in July of 2015, so it has been nearly four years). The song (as previously mentioned) features guest vocals from Latin pop vocalist Maluma and is very Latin pop oriented itself. Madonna is certainly not a stranger to infusing Latin beats and Spanish lyrics into her music. She did it on her hit single "La Isla Bonita" (which she has performed on every single tour since its 1986 release) and on 2008's Hard Candy's "Spanish Lesson" track. "Medellín" offers a catchy chorus, and I love Madonna's whispered vocals when she says "1, 2, cha-cha-cha" and "Slow down, papi." Overall, however, I consider the track to be one of the weaker tracks from Madonna's career thus far. Not only are its Latin style and heavy hip hop beat simply not to my usual preferred style of music (which is saying a lot because I am a very eclectic music listener), I also don't like Maluma's rap (Is it rap? I am honestly not even too sure) parts because they are in Spanish, and as a non Spanish speaker, I can't much appreciate verses of a song that I can't comprehend (although Billboard does graciously offer an accurate translation here). I do like Madonna's filtered vocals in the verses which remind me of her 1998 album Ray of Light (probably my second favorite Madonna album, my first favorite being her 2003 album American Life), but there are parts that are aggressively auto-tuned in a cringe-worthy sort of way, especially when she sings "I felt so naked and alive" in her second verse. I can get behind auto-tuning when it's used in a stylistic sort of way, but it just feels utterly unnecessary here. While I don't much care for the song, however, the music video is visually gorgeous and cinematic and is unlike anything that I have seen in a while from any artist, but I am ultimately hoping for some more introspective and meaningful songs from Madame X, which, as a reminder, is scheduled to drop on June 14th! (Here is to hoping that a leak doesn't lead to an earlier release date as infamously happened with Rebel Heart four years ago!)

MARINA - LOVE [Review]

On Thursday, April 4th, 2019, Marina Diamandis (previously known professionally as Marina and the Diamonds and now known simply as MARINA), surprise dropped the first half of her upcoming fourth studio album LOVE + FEAR. The full album, which is due to drop on April 26th, 2019, is conceived as two albums released together as one set, which as MARINA explained on LOVE's aforementioned release date, is essentially why she decided to release LOVE a little bit early. The album is inspired by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' theory that humans are really only capable of two emotions - love and fear - and that all other emotions are basically just extensions of either love or fear. The theory also states that love and fear cannot be experienced at the same time and that all positive emotions stem from love and all negative emotions stem from fear, and I feel the need to offer the disclaimer that I wholeheartedly disagree with the theory. What if, for example, you are in love with someone but are reluctant to tell the person because you are afraid of being rejected? Aren't you then experiencing love and fear simultaneously? Even on Marina's LOVE album here, some songs express both positive and negative emotions. "Superstar," for example, while a cute love song, features these lyrics: "When I'm afraid, when the world's gone dark, come and save my day; you're my superstar." "Baby" is also very much a song about wistfulness and regret: "Wish I'd met you in another place and time. If only, if only you were mine" (even though it's on the LOVE half of the album). I therefore find it strange that MARINA would find the theory relatable enough to release an album centered around it because as expressed here in a tweet that she posted, she doesn't seem to fully agree with it herself. While I do find the Kübler-Ross idea of the five stages of grief interesting and quite accurate, I do not find her theory of love and fear to be accurate at all. Human emotion is simply far too complex and even sometimes contradictory to say that we can't experience positive emotions and negative emotions at the same time. I, however, digress, as I obviously want to move on to actually discussing the album.

The first half of LOVE is made up of four songs that had already been released as singles prior to all of LOVE being released, and I therefore have already reviewed them. (Read my review of "Baby" here, of "Handmade Heaven" here, of "Superstar" here, and of "Orange Trees" here.) I will therefore begin my discussion here with the fifth track, titled "Enjoy Your Life." This one honestly took a little bit of time to grow on me. It has a much more mainstream and more clubby sound than I am used to hearing from MARINA, and the lyrics are also much more seemingly uplifting and positive than a lot of the cynicism of her earlier works. In the chorus of "Enjoy Your Life," for example, MARINA sings, "Sit back and enjoy your problems; you don't always have to solve them 'cause your worst days, they are over, so enjoy your life," and when you compare those lyrics to these from "Are You Satisfied?" (the opening track from her debut studio album The Family Jewels), "...it's my problem if I have no friends and feel I want to die," you can clearly see what I mean. What I do find really interesting about "Enjoy Your Life," however (which is actually one of the main reasons why I ended up warming up to it), is that, as MARINA herself said, it's really only a positive song on the surface. She sings at the very beginning of the song, "I know you've been feeling stuck, feeling low. You can't see how good this life can be." The song is clearly addressing a very unhappy and anxious person, trying to encourage them to relax a little bit and stop trying to solve every single problem because some aren't solvable. (It reminds me a bit of a line from "In Venere Veritas," one of my favorite songs from retired Finnish band HIM: "Have no fear; there are wounds that are not mean to heal...") I therefore find the song to be very relatable because, as someone who has been suffering from mental illness in one way or another for a very large chunk of my life, the song is a nice reminder to try to relax when I can. I especially relate to when she sings that "your worst days, they are over," because I have to believe that. MARINA's subdued "oh"s and "yeah"s in the song's chorus remind me a great deal of her work on Electra Heart (her second studio album), especially the album's lead single, "Primadonna" (although this song's theme definitely would not fit on that album).

"True" is another one that is kind of mainstream and clubby. I love the electronic production on the song, especially the musical blips and bleeps at the beginning. The song is melodically catchy, and MARINA once again reminds me of Electra Heart (particularly "Teen Idle") on this song when she sings "Ooh-ooh-ooh" in the song's verses. "True" reminds me lyrically of the first song that I ever heard from MARINA - "I Am Not a Robot" from The Family Jewels. Although "I Am Not a Robot" is, in my opinion, much, much better, both songs offer themes of embracing individuality, being proud of who you are, and not feeling the need to change to satisfy others. Next on LOVE is my favorite song from the album. "To Be Human" is one of the best songs of MARINA's career thus far. Beautiful and socially conscious, it features a music video to match, and I love the song's delicate melody featuring MARINA's porcelain vocals as well as the heartbreaking and deeply meaningful lyrics, especially when she references historical events: "From Kyoto, Hiroshima, watch the black cloud crawling nearer" (alluding to the United States dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, killing tens of thousands of innocent people) and "There were riots in America just when things were getting better" (which I believe to be referring to events such as the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the 2017 Women's March following Donald Trump's presidential election). I also love the part in the second pre-chorus when she sings that "anywhere you go, you'll see people are just like you and me" as well as the bridge when she sings, "People driving fancy cars, look like beetles to the stars. The missiles and the bombs sound like symphonies gone wrong, and if there is a god, they'll know why it's so hard to be human." This song really stresses the idea that in the grand scheme of the size of the universe, it doesn't matter what kind of car we are driving or how much money we have because we are all human beings. I absolutely love MARINA's earlier work such as The Family Jewels and Electra Heart, but this song in comparison to those albums really shows how much she has grown and evolved as both a songwriter and as a human being.

Love closes with "End of the Earth," which MARINA has described as a sister track to "To Be Human" since both songs are about unity. That is definitely exemplified in the song's chorus when she sings that "we're all living in the same universe where the stars collide as the planets turn." "End of the Earth" is a beautiful and cinematic song (she even recently said in this Q&A session that the song was intended for a movie but wasn't chosen, although she unfortunately said that she wasn't allowed to say what movie) and definitely sounds like a closing track, which calls back to what I said earlier about MARINA thinking of LOVE and FEAR as two separate bodies of work. My favorite aspect of "End of the Earth" is its synthy production, reminding me of things like 80s synthpop and Stranger Things. LOVE is overall a very strong body of work, although it's interesting because I would argue that some of it ("Superstar," "Orange Trees," and "True," as examples) is some of her weakest work thus far while other parts of it (especially "To Be Human" and "End of the Earth") showcase some of her strongest work thus far. As I discussed in many of my reviews of the songs from the first half of LOVE, I find a lot of those songs to be difficult to relate to because I am single and ultimately have been for the better part of the last five years. I therefore often find it difficult to connect to love songs, and "Superstar" (just as an example) would likely mean a lot more to me if I were able to listen to it with someone in mind. "Orange Trees" is very much about loving and feeling connected to nature, and as someone whose religion is nature-based, I can relate to that, but I can't really relate to the specifics like orange trees and sand because I have not spent much time on beach terrain, whereas MARINA has because the song is about the Greek island where she spent a lot of time as a child. The back half of LOVE is overall a lot better, and I find it to be overall more relatable and universal, but I have a strong feeling that I am overall going to find a much deeper connection to FEAR and am so excited for that to drop on April 26th! I pre-ordered the album as a CD and vinyl bundle (primarily because the vinyl offers an exclusive version of "Baby" that omits Luis Fonsi's parts) and am hoping that the bundle arrives when it is supposed to! (EDIT: It did not. It arrived a week late.) (Be on the lookout for a review of FEAR after the 26th, as I plan to review it as soon as possible!)