After my series of ten blogs I think I've at least hinted that I'm a Madonna aficionado. Sure enough, Madonna's been with me the greater part of my life. Her new albums are events. It was with great anticipation that Hard Candy made its way into my life.

The night of Hard Candy's release was certainly a special one. I drove with three friends to Downtown Disney in my car, which was re-named "THE HARD CANDY TOUR BUS". Virgin Megastore was holding a Madonna release party. Trivia. Fellow Madonna fans. The evening held great promise, and it did deliver. Driving to Orlando we listened to Confessions On A Dance Floor one last time…officially drawing a close to the Confessions era. We all knew all the words…and it reaffirmed what a great album Confessions was. This album had separately been the soundtracks to all of our lives. And our love for it was now shared in a car.

There was a really cool vibe at the Virgin Store. Naturally, there were lots of gays. None of the strangers really talked to each other, which is unfortunate. It would have been cool to make new friends and bond with strangers based on the common thread of loving Madonna. But it wasn't to be.

Regardless, my crew and I had a wonderful time filling up our arms with Madonna stuff. It was with great eagerness we cashed out at the register and ran back to my car to listen to the new album. Sure, a couple of us heard it on her myspace page…but to actually hear Hard Candy "out in the field" was a whole different experience. Madonna's music works sitting at a computer, but its real place is out in life. In the car. On the dance floor. In motion.

And so the new Madonna album played. I remember upon first listening to the album my friend Okie and I agreed that Madonna's voice sounded grating on the album. I wonder to myself…if this is just because we've gotten used to her deeper and more emotive singing. Back in the early days, during Madonna and Like A Virgin… her voice held a similar high-pitched quality. Had those albums only come out now…how would we have felt about her voice on those albums? Hard Candy is certainly topically a return to the care-free lyricism of the first couple albums. I suppose it's only appropriate that Madonna's voice resumes shades of that early era. "Candy Shop" to "Four Minutes" and on. At some points during the ride back to Tampa the energy in me reached the fever pitch that the perfect Madonna song has sometimes given me. Each song was catchy. The album flowed nicely…the only glaring mis-step at first seeming to be "Spanish Lesson".

So what are my thoughts on the new Madonna album now that's it's been in my life for a few days? I like it a lot. But I cannot say I like it a lot with the gusto I was once able to say that about a Madonna album. I have a huge CD collection…and when I put a new Madonna CD in that collection…it always stood out glaring like a diamond. Hard Candy is a good album…but it doesn't have any more impact or relevance to my life than anything any of my other favorite artists have released this year. It's more than up to par. But it was a soul moving experience like every other Madonna album had been up to this point.

So what happened? Am I just getting older? Am I outgrowing pop music? Is it me? Or is it Madonna? In a way, Hard Candy is the perfect follow-up to Confessions. I think we can all agree that pushing the dark-weighty-topical grooves of Confessions any further would have been stale. There is a certain freshness and spunk to Hard Candy. It's fun. It's sassy. It's primarily weightless…like I said earlier…much like Madonna's first two albums. Sonically, many of the songs throw back to the early 80s/late 70s sound in a way Confessions promised to but didn't. Liner note readers will notice that former Prince and The Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin adds some funky licks to the sassy "She's Not Me". It's almost feels like 1982 again.

Despite the pop nature of the album, there are the somewhat experimental moments. "Incredible" goes from a melancholy stuttering pop song into a long coda full of grunts and swirling synth loops. "Give It To Me" benefits from an off-center bridge.

The albums best songs are the ones that invoke the "be free and get up on the dance floor" aesthetic of Madonna's early work. "Give It 2 Me" is a shouter. "Beat Goes On" and "Heartbeat" are effective calls to the dance floor. The only track to recall the more emotive, mature feel of later Madonna is the affecting "Miles Away". I do have to admit I found myself crying to this song driving for lunch the other day…recalling a life experience the song spoke of. I did take a couple other small nuggets with me from the album. "Incredible" is a call to recapture some of the romanticism of youth…while "Beat Goes On" and "Give It 2 Me" both urge forward movement and independence. I could use a bit of all of the above in my life.

I think what I miss most about the new Madonna album is her heavy emotional stamp. Our culture has moved into a place where most everything is centered around mindless fun. Madonna's earlier carefree pop music was released along-side the female-folk boom in the late 80s, alongside grunge albums in the early 90s, alongside the ska-punk revival in the mid 90s. And as society dumbed down, Madonna wised up. In the early part of this decade, as pop got more and more mindless (and counterculture became first commercial, then completely dissolved) Madonna delivered smart, thought provoking dance music. At fifty years old, I suppose our Madonna has a right to want to join the fun. But Madonna always had something different to offer. As trite as her lyrics sometimes got, at least at best Madonna was always attempting to channel into a depth of thought. Hard Candy is a very very effective Madonna dance album…it's a classic in some ways. But it's the kind of product and music that blends right into everything that's going on now…rather than sticking out from it. Hard Candy keeps Madonna afloat alive and well in this modern age. This album will keep her relevance among the youth market and most of us older fans. And probably an album like this is the only way Madonna can survive the current state of pop culture and the entertainment industry. But I'm still a bit bummed. I liked when Madonna was a pioneer for us weird ones too. At 33, I always appreciate a call to the dance floor, or even in the case of Hard Candy, six calls to the dance floor. But it takes more than that these days to catch and keep my interest for a long time. This may be the Madonna album with the shortest shelf live in my life. Time will tell.