As a single, Madonna's 'American Life' is both a clever cultural statement and a crushing disappointment. To a clicky cyber strut, she jabs a disapproving finger at fame and the American Dream: "Do I have to change my name, am I gonna be a star", before sarcastically rapping about all the things that are meant to make her life complete including a list of everyone on her payroll. Yet for all her wit, the robotic bleeps, beats and squelches stick uncomfortably in the throat.
So painfully cool, it's as if she's read one too many times about being the mistress of reinvention and is now desperately chasing her own reputation. As the title and opening track of her tenth album - the second co-produced by French disco don Mirwais Ahmadzai - it makes perfect sense. To celebrate her 21st anniversary as the Queen of Pop, 44-year-old, mother of two Madonna, is having a mid-life crisis. Just as the birth of her first child, Lourdes, transformed sex obsessed Madonna into 'Ray Of Light''s mesmerising earth mother, it seems her taste of English life and the advent of the 'Pop Idol' generation have left her at odds with the world around her.
Like the title track, 'Hollywood' and 'I'm So Stupid' offer sci-fi click tracks and jaded sideswipes at those who aspire to the vacuous lifestyles of the rich and famous - unlike the title track though, they both come with proper, insidious, tunes. Her account of having a personality crisis, 'Nobody Knows Me', isn't quite so lucky. Merely words that rhyme (badly) spilled out over what sounds like a sequencer being dropped down the stairs, it only serves to prove that even Madonna can't undo the damage done by Cher to the vocoder's image.
With the style to content ratio weighed heavily in style's favour, it's hard not to see her one dimensional club tracks as trying too hard to be too clever; especially when teeth grindingly unBond Bond theme 'Die Another Day' bodypops into view.
What's remarkable is that 'American Life' is still a great album.
When she turns from fathoming everyone else's existence to her own, and stops frantically waving her style icon credentials, the genius of hers and Mirwais' partnership is overwhelming. Contrary to tabloid opinion, being Mrs Guy Ritchie is all she hoped it would be, and the subject brings out a depth of feeling that few would previously thought her capable of. Spectacularly understated, country guitar odes 'Love Profusion', 'Intervention' and 'X-Static' are truly gracious and beautiful songs, tenderly embellished with the lightest of computer-generated touches. Meanwhile, 'What It Feels Like For A Girl' co-writer Guy Sigsworth returns with staggeringly poignant declaration of love, 'Nothing Fails'.
In fact, her quiet affection is so compelling that it makes almost anything forgivable - even generic cyborg nonsense. Evidently, Madonna's songs, or at least the ones she puts her heart in, have finally outgrown the shallow confines of the singles chart. So maybe it's time she left the gimmicks and grand attention grabbing artistic gestures to someone else altogether, because she really doesn't need them anymore.
