All through her career, it has been impossible to divorce
Madonna's music from her image, as they feed off each other to the point where it's hard to tell which came first, the concept or the songs. Glancing at the aggressively ugly cover to
Hard Candy -- its blistering pinks and assaultive leather suggesting cheap bottom-barrel porno -- it's hard not to wish that this is the one time
Madge broke from tradition, offering music that wasn't quite as garish as her graphics. That is not the case.
Hard Candy is all brutal hard edges and blaring primary colors, a relentlessly mercenary collection of cold beats and chilly innuendo. Sex has always been a driving force for
Madonna, but she's never been as ruthlessly pornographic as she is here, not even when she cut
Erotica as a companion to her softcore coffee-table book Sex back in 1992. For all of its carnality,
Erotica was coy, belonging to the classic burlesque teasing tradition, but
Hard Candy is utterly modern, a steely sex album for the age of Cialis. This new millennium is also an era when Top 40 has pretty much ceased to exist and a pop artist as sharp as
Madonna knows this, so she has abandoned the idea of a big crossover hit -- the kind that
Erotica courted with such gorgeous, shimmering adult contemporary ballads as "Rain" and "Bad Girl" -- and pitches
Hard Candy directly toward her core audience of club-conscious, fashion-forward trendsetters.