Madonna featuring Nicki Minaj & M.I.A. “Gimme All Your Luvin’”
“Don’t play the stupid game/ Cause I’m a different kind of girl/ Every record sounds the same/ You’ve got to step into my world,” sings Madonna on “Give Me All Your Luvin’”, the Queen of Pop’s bajillionth single and first preview of forthcoming album MDNA.
Alas, while this line would seem to hint of “Luvin’” being some sort of epic Top 40 game-changer, the record is really anything but, the “world” the one-time “Material Girl” is inviting us to simply consisting of a surprisingly underwhelming hybrid of pleasant back-to-basics tactics combined with some awkwardly tacked-on, not-as-hip-as-she-probably-thinks winks of modern pop chart awareness.
Co-helmed by Martin Solvieg (the French producer behind 2010 international hit “Hello”), “Luvin’” curiously captures Madonna resigning to simply coast by with a mostly tame marriage of the 60′s pop breeziness of her underrated Austin Powers cut “Beautiful Stranger” with some of her early downtown chic-meets-bubblegum career hits (note the high, airy pitching of her vocals here giving us “Borderline”/ “Everybody”-era chirpiness).
It bears a certain clean, summery charm, but it also directs the tune into the lane of being a piece of sleepy fluffy nothing, with lyrics that one can barely remember a few seconds after they’ve drifted by, while overall being made worse by an overly focus-grouped aesthetic where it distractedly feels more like an advertisement for shoes and/ or Target than anything else (strengthening the notion of Madonna being businesswoman first, pop artist second).
It also doesn’t help that the only time the record shows any signs of life comes via an unfortunate burst of Katy Perry-itis desperation on the bridge, where Madonna aims to get to No. 1 by any means necessary by tossing at us “dubstep breakdown”, a way-too-brief blip of signature wackiness from Nicki Minaj, and a ho-hum cameo from Minaj’s fellow guest star M.I.A. (who sounds just as bored to be here as the lead artist does) in the hopes that one of these elements will stick.
It’s still amazing to see/ hear Madonna continuing to do her thing after all these years, but for a major pop event such as this, we were expecting something a little more memorable.
“Gimme All Your Luvin’” (iTunes):
Below, check out the video to M.I.A.’s (far better) single “Bad Girls”:
