base talk Hard Candy is a good Madonna album

[Slayn]

Give It 2 Me is one of my fav Madge songs, and I love this album.

[robattack332]

I can understand the argument that she has a lot of better albums as pieces of work…..but when it comes to certified bopZ, this album is untouched Miles Away, She's Not Me, Best Goes On are pop bible imo

Edited Friday at 05:11 AM by robattack332

[ICLDXU4HS]

I think it's her most "just there" and auto-pilot'd record. It's neither great, nor is it offensively bad. It wasn't noteworthy for its narrative and didn't make any particularly grand artistic statements. It's overall just very inessential to her overall body of work. 

 

Whenever I go back to it (rarely) it bugs me how uniform it is in sound. It's almost always the same beat with slight alterations. 

[ariesgroove]

i'm a hard candy apologist, others simply do not get it!

[mike_int]

13 hours ago, IBeMe said:

Just re heard the record today and it was solid! ppl always clown it as being her first horrible album and they say Confessions was her last good album but that's just not true. Hard Candy was solid!

 

4 Minutes, Miles Away, Dance 2 Night, Beat Goes On, Candy Shop, Heartbeat, Devil Wouldnt Recognize You & Voices  all AMAZING records that could have been hits with better vocal mixing imo. I suspect the mixing on her vocals was bad cuz these were not singles. 4 Minutes was mixed well.

It is a solid album, but it is a first album which represents Madonna to follow trends and not to dictate them.

 

Especially some of Timbalands beats didn't age the best and some of them were already quite overused at the time of release.

 

What I appreciate is the cohesiveness which MDNA, Rebel Heart and Madame X lack of.

 

I just wish we got better imagery in terms of album cover and booklet cause those are the worst M ever done

Edited Friday at 02:06 PM by mike_int

[Letters From Adi]

Miles Away is one of the most beautiful songs she put out, not much of a fan of the rest ngl

[xluvxduffxmusicx]

Candy Shop did thaT!

[Madaboutmusic]

Heartbeat is so melodically gorgeous. 

Edited Friday at 07:58 AM by Madaboutmusic

[Capris Groove]

It's a fantastic album. The cover art is amazing and people missed the irony there (that it's supposed to be tacky, because candy is). And songs like Incredible which were really maligned upon release hold up so well today.

Edited Friday at 08:17 AM by Capris Groove

[Crayzik]

True! I'm really glad she released an album like Hard Candy. Incredible, Miles Away or Give it 2 Me are amazing songs...my only regret is that she should've kept the original version of  Beat Goes On.

[Princess Aurora]

It's cute

[UrMom]

Great album, perfect companion to Confessions. Some of the Pharrell tracks were really forward thinking too, kind of prototypes for the trends of summer 2013 and 2020.

[The7thStranger]

Hard Candy was only disliked because it followed such a juggernaut. Though the production has aged like milk, the songs are generally very good.

 

And the fact that she changed the album cover was such a tragedy. To date, it is her worst album cover.

[americanlife]

Devil Wouldn't Recognize You clears a lot of her 2010s music but it's my second least favorite from her. I revisit even MDNA way more than Hard Candy.

[SupremeGoddess]

my only problem with it is its two main justin timberlake collabs. like ma'am time to release hard candy (madonnas version - no more justin timberlake [fan demanded] edition) 

 

im fine with his back up vocals on voices tho. 

Edited Friday at 01:23 PM by SupremeGoddess

[Digitalism]

She was late to the party with the Timbaland and Pharell sound 

Also ageism. Some of the lyrics were critcized because of her age and because her previous albums were generally more serious.

[Beyondslay]

It really is tbh! just bops on top of bops! 

[PaloSanto]

I am very fond of it actually cause S&S was my first concert. It holds up pretty well even if it does sound like a mid 00s album, but then again her 80s records also sound like products of their time.

 

With a slightly different aesthetic (keep the boxer in the ring of life vibe but make it darker) and a different track order it'd be much better remembered. It is commendable though that she did something completely different instead of a quick Confessions 2.0 album to milk its success.

 

like imagine...

 

Spoiler

1. Candy Shop
2. 4 Minutes
3. Give It 2 Me
4. Heartbeat
5. Miles Away
6. She's Not Me - Sticky & Sweet Tour studio version
7. Spanish Lesson
8. Incredible - Edit
9. Beat Goes On
10. Animal
11. Across The Sky
12. Devil Wouldn't Recognise You
13. Voices

with this as an album shoot

a completely different story

 

also in hindsight, it's such an obvious I'm heading for divorce record, like you can hear her bitterness towards Guy Ratchie in the way she sings a bunch of lyrics

Edited Friday at 01:49 PM by PaloSanto

[bestfiction]

It's a fun album, I've always liked it. Plus 4 Minutes is a modern classic

[theweekend]

it's an amazing album. I love me some r&b so it's obvious I would love it.

 

i will be forever mad that the black madonna concept was changed. imo hard candy should've been a bubblegum pop album because of the aesthetic she's served with no storytelling/concept at all lmao

[Bethenny Frankel]

I enjoy the album but the cover art is a choice. Give It 2 Me is lowkey one of her best singles but some people aren't willing to accept that.

[Escape]

Yup.

[NoAngelus]

HC is and always has been great album. It's basically more urban COADF.

 

It suffers from having horrible cover, horrible visuals overall, being boring/bad era and narratives created by GP and fans. 

 

[Reginald]

Give It 2 Me 

[John Slayne]

it's kind of in the middle in her discography and can't compete with here truly stellar works, but yes it is a good album and several tracks are 10/10 (Give It 2 Me, Miles Away, Devil Wouldn't Recognize You come to mind)