Music Review: Madonna, “Celebration”
Rating: 69
No artist of Madonna’s stature can go nearly two decades without a definitive greatest-hits collection, and the two-disc set “Celebration” is a career-spanner, folding nearly every track from 1990′s “The Immaculate Collection” into a survey of Madge’s 27-year recording career. But while “The Immaculate Collection” culled the hits from the singer’s golden age, serving as a bargain for those not willing to invest in her first four (and arguably best) proper studio recordings, “Celebration” adds the key tracks from hit-and-miss years that followed, separating a few precious stones from mounds of sequins.
“Celebration” takes almost every hit from “Everybody” to “Miles Away,” adds two new songs and shuffles 36 tracks, and there’s an understandable whiplash effect going from 2008′s “4 Minutes” to 1983′s “Holiday.” Sure, Madonna is the constant, but in that elapsed time, Lady GaGa was conceived, born, raised and established as the current pop culture’s foremost Madonna wannabe. A lot can change, and it does on “Celebration”: if any best-of rightly deserved to be sequenced in historical order and offer a coherent notion of how the singer has evolved, it is this one.
Fortunately, current technology can rectify this sequencing error — a “Celebration” playlist taking a trip from her street-urchin beginnings to her “queen mother dance diva” present makes more stylistic sense. As for the new tracks, “Revolver” and “Celebration” are pleasant throwaways: “Revolver,” featuring Lil Wayne, is a bouncy rehash of Rihanna’s “S.O.S.,” and the Paul Oakenfold-produced “Celebration” is a slight update of her old Jellybean Benitez dance-pop classics. Not exactly “Immaculate,” but generally worth celebrating.
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Whether you like her or not, this album should be on your shelves. CELEBRATION is worth keeping. Get it from iTunes and your fave record bars.