Madonna Don't Preach

Madonna's newest release, I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, can be separated in to three parts: the good (the remixes of her 80's songs she that brought her fame), the adult (her newest songs which sound like self help books set to a bass line) and the honest (the DVD which shows Madonna still has moments of being the Madonna we all knew and loved).\nShe sings songs like "Vogue" and "Like a Prayer" with a passion that makes you want to sing and dance along. The techno beat takes a dance club favorite from 20 years ago and brings new life to it, turning it in to a dance club favorite of today.\nBut then she sings a version of "Imagine," and her rendition neither adds anything new to the song nor does she really sound like believes in what she is saying.\nSongs like "American Life" are just forced. With lyrics like "I tried to be a boy, I tried to be a girl…I guess I did it wrong, That's why I wrote this song," Madonna is miles away from the lyrics that made her famous. \nAnd her decision to rhyme New York with dork in the song "I Love New York" just makes me cringe. This is the pop star who pushed the limits with cone bras and Coke bottle fellatio. And here she is with a cheap rhyming dictionary pretending like it is cool.\nThe DVD, on the other hand, is intriguing not only because it is offers background info on her 2004 "Re-Invention World Tour" but because Madonna goes from laughing at completely wrong pedophile jokes to making sure that the dancers that she is about to hire don't smoke too much grass -- after all she doesn't want anything to interfere with her performers. \nThe DVD is definitely not "Truth or Dare" but I can see myself returning to the DVD many more times than I will be listening to the CD. Instead, I will rip the songs like "Holiday" and "Into the Groove" to my iPod and try to forget that the Madonna that took the world by storm and scared parents with lyrics about being an unwed mother is now an adult who wants me to grow up too.