Track Listing

1. Candy Store
2. 4 Minutes
3. Give It 2 Me
4. Heartbeat
5. Miles Away
6. She's Not Me
7. Incredible
8. Beat Goes On
9. Dance Tonight
10. Spanish Lesson
11. Devil
12. Voices
13. 4 Minutes Remix
14. 4 Minutes Remix

Product Details

• Released on: 2008-04-29
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Dimensions: 1.11 pounds

Amazon.com
Madonna’s eleventh, and final, studio album for Warner Bros., Hard Candy is a brilliant up-tempo collection that adds a hip-hop beat to the cultural icon’s club sensibilities, thanks to collaborations with Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams, and Nate "Danja" Hills. Following her previous studio album, 2005’s Confessions On A Dance Floor, which debuted #1 and has sold more than 8 million copies around the globe, Hard Candy punctuates the first 25 years of the album career of the most successful female artist in history with a musical exclamation point.

Album Description
Special Collector's Edition/CD + Amary Box + Booklet. This special edition of Hard Candy comes in a DVD-sized hinged box with the full album PLUS two bonus tracks. Tracy Young's House and Rebirth remixes of the first single "4 Minutes." Also included in the case is a 16-page full colour booklet with pictures of Madonna and a bag of "Starlite" mint candies. Hard Candy is a brilliant uptempo collection that adds a hip-hop beat to the cultural icon's club sensibilities, thanks to collaborations with Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams, and Nate "Danja" Hills. Hard Candy punctuates the first 25 years of the album career of the most successful female artist in history with a musical exclamation point.

Customer Reviews

I choked on Hard Candy
Dear Madonna

What happened to you?

I've been a fan since the start, I've seen your concerts, I've even defended your performance in Body of Evidence, and you give me... this.

Now I know that Confessions on a Dance Floor is a tough act to follow, and maybe you're guilty of raising your own bar too high, but is this really the album you want to give us? Sure you've got Timbaland on there, Justin's boppin about in a couple of songs, and Pharrel is bringing his own hip-hop sound to the table, but where are you? Once upon a time you defined trends in music, and everyone was left scrambling in your wake to grab a piece of what you created, but now it looks to me as if you're running after them and trying to put yourself into a new arena to compete with other acts.

Okay so 4 Minutes is a fun little song, and Give It 2 Me is being hailed as the best dance song on the album. But I admit I had to stifle a yawn during Candy Shop; yes, sticky and sweet, your candy is raw... these lyrics are far from clever. You and Guy have challenging times in Miles Away. Incredible is anything but.

Are you getting old? Am I? Am I being too harsh? I always thought that as your career evolved you were getting ready to become this matriarch of pop, this reverred idol who nobody would be able to touch, but I gotta tell you, this severe left turn you have taken now almost reeks of desperation. You don't need to sound like anyone else - you're MADONNA. Take your own advice from Little Star on your inspired Ray of Light album, and never forget who you are. Because when all the music sounds the same, everyone else just might.

Love,
SS

Enjoyable but not thrilling.
Madonna has spent a lifetime injecting sex into mainstream pop, and the cover of her new record says it all. Almost unchanged from her "Like a Virgin" imagery, there is the underwear, the big eyes, the hungry mouth. "Look at me," it screams, "I'm nearly 50 but I'm still hot."
The problem with "Hard Candy", though, is that it is one of the least sexy records Madonna has made.
Great music for Madonna has usually been the product of intense, one-on-one relationships with her producer, whether that be Jellybean Benitez, Lenny Kravitz or William Orbit.
Here she has splashed the cash on urban music's A-list producers, from Pharrell Williams to Timbaland, but the chemistry just doesn't work.
The beats are tired and over-familiar: each producer sounds as if he is doing an impression of himself. Nor do any of these boys seem to have the emotional maturity to draw anything deeper out of a woman who must surely have something to say at this point in her life.
Madonna sounds muted and lyrically guarded - sometimes even downright sad and lonely.
Most importantly, Madonna has always understood what makes a body want to move.
Madonna's instinct for a killer tune has pushed producers such as Stuart Price, Mirwais and William Orbit to career peaks. Given time here, "Incredible" and the Kanye West-assisted "Beat Goes On will" scrub up alongside some of her best - especially the latter's nods to Detroit techno at its poppermost.
Justin Timberlake cameos on the new single "4 Minutes" and three other songs, including the immediately excellent "Miles Away" - a collision of acoustic downstrokes and feverishly jaunty rhythm that verges on reggae.
"Heartbeat" and "Dance 2night" try desperately to evoke the joy of the disco, but it's too contrived to get you on your feet, and the whole thing falls flat.
"Hard Candy" is not a bad album.
It's enjoyable, well crafted as all her albums, but not thrilling.

She's not just going to roll over and die...
...as many of her detractors hope for. Hard Candy is far from being a brilliant album or the best in pop music but she's still miles ahead of the competition. She's still the entire package with great danceable songs with infectious melodies and hard hitting beats.
This is the closest Madonna has been in the new millennium to replicating her early 80s dance image and it appears many are in fear of her being invincible in the industry. Ironically enough everyone appears to want to have the "old" Madonna back and this album has all the qualities of the earlier era of her career.

People now criticize her for teaming up with accomplished producers as opposed to the underground "groundbreaking" sounds she would discover and manipulate to her own advantage. So now she's playing a different game, if not more humbling and now it's become apparently more desperate on her part. Perhaps people would like to consider that Madonna is coming off a hugely successful album "Confessions on a Dancefloor" and wasn't in need of "reviving" her career. Perhaps she actually does appreciate Pharrel and Timbaland's work and wanted to mesh it with her own pop/dance sensibilities. And Hard Candy is living proof of it going according to plan.

Regardless of the critical response the album has received she's still ahead of the game. Michael Jackson is facing yet another trial, Janet Jackson is having problems sustaining a tour, Britney is nuts, etc. No one has been able to play the game as well as Madonna. And whether you pray for her to go away or sit and bicker about her, she's going nowhere anytime soon. So continue to enjoy the ride.