Arts & Entertainment

Back with a ‘Bang’

New Madonna album is upbeat campy fun, but also packs emotional punch with deluxe cuts

Published

14 years ago

March 29, 2012

Joey DiGuglielmo

Madonna's new album dropped this week. (Image courtesy Liz Rosenberg Media)

It seems to take a few years to fully assess a new Madonna album. That may be true for many recording artists, but there’s always so much excitement and anticipation around a new Madge disc, it’s only after that’s died down a bit can one determine how it stands up to her best projects.

The downside to being such a consistent hitmaker is that she has no “Tapestry,” “Jagged Little Pill” or “Miseducation” to her name. All her albums have several great songs, but there’s always a dud or two — “Words” from “Erotica,” “Mer Girl” from “Ray of Light,” “I Love New York” from “Confessions” or “Spanish Lesson” from “Hard Candy” — that keep her from having a start-to-finish masterpiece. Even “Like a Prayer,” which many consider her most consistent effort, gets derailed slightly by the clunky “Love Song,” a Prince duet.

The new “MDNA,” out this week on new label Interscope after Madonna spent decades at Warner Bros., is refreshingly clunker free. Only a couple tracks — the throwaway “Turn Up the Radio” and nursery rhyme-ish “I’m a Sinner” — sound like they could have been B-sides. As expected, there are several killer batches of smoking dance songs — more on those in a sec — but the biggest surprise is the bonus material on the deluxe edition.

Get the no-frills version and you’re missing out on some mind-blowing stuff. “Beautiful Killer” is the most traditional bonus cut here, an old-fashioned pop song with a strings topcoat, but then things get really interesting. “I Fucked Up” sounds a little ho-hum at first, even though it’s a great idea for a song. It kicks into high gear with a killer middle section that slowly works up a nice lather. “B-day Song” is cute and silly with a late ‘60s vibe. The whole project simmers to a shattering climax with “Best Friend,” a mid-tempo barn burner that beautifully captures the mixed emotions of a shattered relationship courtesy of some of Madonna’s all-time most insightful lyrics and the Benassi production duo.

Madonna, acknowledging (presumably) the complicated relationship she shared with ex-husband Guy Ritchie, sums things up cleverly when she suggests they were “driving with two hands on the clutch.” She gets the anger out elsewhere — on the campy, crunchy “Gang Bang” and rap-doused “I Don’t Give A,” which veers into high drama with its “Carmina Burana”-esque outro. But once the anger subsides, “Friend” is the more cathartic experience, both musically and emotionally.

It didn’t take a genius to realize these two had a complicated marriage — fans sensed they were a mis-match from the “I’m Going To Tell You a Secret” documentary and the last album’s melancholy “Miles Away.” But it’s refreshing to hear the seemingly invincible Madonna address and assess her own disappointments. She’s never so much as acknowledged that her brother wrote an unflattering memoir; at least with her marriage, “MDNA” brings insight and closure. She can pose for glamorous photos, pull off tour acrobatics and craft mindless dance pop til the end of time, but all that resonates more when we have a sense of the woman behind the face, and “MDNA” brings us that.

Though more notable for its eye-popping video, album opener “Girl Gone Wild” is light, catchy fun as is “I’m Addicted,” first single “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” and the aforementioned “Killer.” The Golden Globe-winning ballad “Masterpiece,” the theme from the “W/E” movie Madonna directed, brings things to a lovely finish along with the refreshingly lush “Falling Free,” which doesn’t even have a rhythm track, giving the beat-heavy album a nice change of pace.

It’ll take awhile for all this to sink in, but regardless of whether U.S. radio gives its singles the time of day (though “Luvin” did briefly crack the U.S. top 10), “MDNA” is a resoundingly solid effort. Helmed by producers new (Martin Solveig) and old (William Orbit), “MDNA” is a more unified, less trend-influenced album than “Hard Candy” and that bodes well for its ultimate place in her increasingly vast canon.

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PHOTOS: Capital Pride Festival and Concert

Annual LGBTQ celebration held on Pennsylvania Ave.

Published

14 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Washington Blade photography department

Maren Morris performs at the 2026 Capital Pride Concert on Sunday, June 21. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The 2026 Capital Pride Festival was held on Pennsylvania Ave. on Sunday, June 21.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key and Landon Shackelford)

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PHOTOS: 2026 Capital Pride Parade

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Published

2 days ago

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Washington Blade photography department

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Theater

‘Feeling Afraid’ explores life of a neurotic stand-up comic

Navigating sex, work, and possibly love in London

Published

3 days ago

June 20, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Steven Webb in ‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen’ (Photo by DJ Corey)

‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’
Through July 12
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St., N.W.
$55-$102
Studiotheatre.org

Wordily yet rightly titled, solo show “Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen” dives deeply into the world of a neurotic stand-up comic as he navigates sex, work, and possibly love in London.

Busy arranging hookups and dates on “The App,” the 36-year-old gay funnyman juggles a full dance card; still he’s never been in a romantic relationship. While he’s willing to give love a shot, he’s not pressed about it. As he says, he harbors no fear of dying alone.

Currently making its American premiere at Studio Theatre, this darkly humorous Edinburgh Fringe import features terrific out English actor Steven Webb as The Comedian who’s about to explore what it means to spend all his time with one man.

At Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Kat Heath’s minimal set says standard comedy club (fluorescent tube lighting, the mic with a long cord, a single stool backed by a rose-colored curtain), but gay playwright Marcelo Dos Santos has conjured something much more than a live comedy set.

Yes, The Comedian bounces onstage in his red Converse high tops, jeans, and pink shirt with a huge mouth emblazoned on the back, but he delivers more than jokes. At times hilariously self-deprecating, then dark, and occasionally a lesson on what makes standup work, this is a layered, well-acted piece.

With Webb (a keen caricaturist of types and voices) playing all the parts while conducting The Comedian’s hilariously frenetic interior monologue, “Feeling Afraid” takes us through a summer of love. It seems after six chaste dates with The American, our nervous hero has found Mr. Right. The American is earnest, smart, hesitant to initiate sex. He’s also well built with a beautiful smile. And strangely, he’s been medically advised not to laugh aloud.

The Comedian delights in the joys of new love: dates, first kisses, sex, and then suddenly spending all of his time with the adored. Visits to art galleries become fun. Eating home cooked meals followed by grim documentaries is a thing. The Comedian is beguiled as his own boyish figure fills out, but something isn’t right. He can’t entirely relax.

Along the way we meet the Aussie doctor, our protagonist’s longtime hookup; a young runner with some exceptional body parts; the random third in a failed threesome; grumpy working comics, male and female; and an ineffectual counselor.

Webb gives a lightning-fast performance that boggles the mind (in terms velocity and virtuosity). He can be impish, very impish. He’s nervous energy incarnate, flashing jazz hands, grimacing but handsome when still. He’s likeable, a necessity when delivering a hilariously rude joke just feet away from two stone-faced audience members. (Perhaps they were laughing on the inside? At any rate, they stayed through the end the show.)

Produced by the team behind Fringe hits “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” small stage works that were developed into major TV screen successes, “Feeling Afraid” is funny for sure, and it’s also highly confessional, sexually explicit, and raw.

Written by Dos Santos during COVID lockdown, the piece was a smash hit in the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe before finding further success in London. Its depiction of a youngish queer guy navigating the big city rings entirely true. Like so much Fringe stuff, the one-man show is delightfully lewd and standup inspired.

One little moan: the show closes cleverly but too abruptly with its star dashing offstage without sufficiently basking in the admiration and applause of his thoroughly chuffed audience.

They say third time’s a charm, and regarding “Feeling Afraid,” I’d agree. After two performance cancellations (first for laryngitis and the second involving faulty air conditioning on an especially muggy June evening), I made my third trek to Studio where I found both the actor and AC in very fine fettle. And truly, Webb’s work was more than worth the wait.