AMERICAN LIFE - 2003
American Life - The song/album starts with the title track which is not all that great, more like a mess. It starts with her singing, then a car alarm/nintendo/laser gun sound repeats uncomfortably unrhythmically throughout the song where it occassionally shuts up for a sudden change in direction involving slow singing over an accoustic guitar, then back to the laser noises, then back to accoustic, then she starts rapping ridiculous lyrics which sound like they were written by her daughter (not a good combination, too many elements). This song pathethically peaked at #37 (ironically Bad Girl peaked at #36 10 years earlier the very week before), not a good single week for her. I saw this song performed four times, she did it live in the MTV studios twice and at tower records the following day twice. The original video she decided to pull due to the country currently being at war. I however did like the video very much, but then they edited out all the good parts and just left her standing in front of flags in the background looking old and gross which now takes the seat for my all-time least favorite video.
Hollywood - I don't know if it's a mistake that the first second or two we still hear the end of "American Life" in track 2 but whatever. This song is another acoustic song which is slightly upbeat where she talks about Hollywood California. Poor Madonna still has yet to make it there and at the end of the song she shouts "push the button dont push the button..." where it then morphs into a very deep voice which I feel is lyrically poor. The only part of this song that I like is "Music stations always play the same song im bored with the concept of right & wrong". She performed this one many times and it is rumoured to be single number two.
I'm So Stupid - Yes you are Madonna and so is this song. This song is a pain to listen to and it sounds very amateurally written, I've only heard it like 3 times. I do like the shouting at the very end of the song though.
Love Profusion - Before the album was released, I was always hearing about Love Profusion, Love Profusion, Love Profusion, how great Love profusion is, how upbeat and great it is, how it's everyone's favorite song. I highly beg to differ, it reminds me of "Gone". It's not exciting, it is NOT upbeat and it's quite boring, her tone of voice sounds cute but this song does nothing for me and I can not understand why anyone would point out this one as being one of the better ones on this CD. (although it's not a good album overall).
Nobody Knows Me - The only club/dance sounding song has arrived. Not much evidence of growth here where they use the voice coder and the music itself sounds like atari from 1983. However, i guess compared to everything else on this album, it is by far one of the better tracks.
Nothing Fails - I thought "Don't tell me" as soon as I heard the beginning and then toward the end after she says "I'm not religous" 9,742 times there is a choir. It was performed twice at MTV as well but they just aired the one performance of it. It's OK, I think it's very overrated by most fans.
Intervention - This song never sat comfortably with me from the first note until the part I skip to the next track (which is 2 seconds later). I don't like anything about it and I don't think she says the title in the song here.
X-static Process - Her first song that starts with the letter 'X', now just Q and Z are the only letters left to fill. This sounds just like "Dust In The Wind" by Kansas. I love it and think it's up there as being one of the better songs on this CD but would be quickly murdered if it was released as a single. An art exhibit titled "The X-static Process", affiliated with W magazine in NYC had many screens of Madonna's images playing like a video for a couple of months. The pics of her moving in the bed upstairs played the "I'm not myself when you're around" part of the song backwards as well as another verse.
Mother & Father - This song initially sounded quite bizar when I first heard it, her voice sounds childish and the beat sound circusy, which I suppose is the whole point behind the song, but the lyrics are excellent and the sorta rap part toward the end is very good and the "I've got to give it up" part (which she really should do), is the best part of the CD. The song ofcourse is about dead mommy and poor daddy. This song was perfomed a few times accoustically and sounded great. There was also a huge demand for this to be a single at the MTV Live show when the whole place went crazy if she asked us during commercial if it should be a single.
Die Another Day - Originally from the James Bond 007 soundtrack of the same name, comes one of her best videos ever and awesome songs of the past few years. I love the Papa Don't Preach violins in there as well as the creepy music it portrays. A great singing and dancing song and the video had loads of behind the scenes video footage and the video was completely awesome in every way. The ONLY complaint I have here is the single cover... who the hell designed that?? Her baby son???
Easy Ride - I'm not sure why she chose to name this song "easy ride" although it is a lyric in the song which she says only once, perhaps "Like a circle" would have been interesting. The song is mostly dull, even Madonna sounds bored singing it, until the violins come in around 3minutes into the song then sounds like it's going somewhere right before it's all over with the "Paradise (not for me)" sounds. I love the end of this song. Surprisingly the mother-death-song was not the last track on the CD.