Madonna Returns, With Handclaps


The leak for Madonna’s lead single “Give Me All Your Love” from her new album might be a demo. Madge’s camp has yet to comment but it sounds like the (supposedly) MIA- and Nicki Minaj-featuring, Martin Solveig-produced track that was rumored. So far, Nicki is accounted for in the cheerleader-ish chant intro. Lady M has just announced tour dates in Europe for 2012 and is doing the halftime show for Super Bowl XLVI, and then doing whatever team wins. One can’t help but think this is the grande dame of pop showing the kids how to roll out album promotion in the digital age. A little bit of purposeful mystery goes a long way (or a Lana Del Rey) for even the most overexposed celebrity.

The surfy guitar and handclaps on “Give Me All Your Love” call to mind Madonna’s own “Beautiful Stranger” and Outkast’s “Hey Ya!,” and it’s been long enough since it was first everywhere that we can all enjoy “Hey Ya!” again. “Give Me All Your Love” is a good first single, if a little light, but that’s fine. Madonna exists to make pop songs about dancing and feeling free and falling in love and being a girl just like Björk exists to make avant-garde iPad operas about the environment and Coldplay exists to make songs to fuck to in minivans. Parts of “Give Me All Your Love” feel very Britpop and there is a dubsteppy bridge that could be a placeholder for a MIA or Nicki Minaj verse (please let there be both). I hope Nicki will lean even harder live with her Queens accent into the “donna” in “Madonna.” My main thought is that there will be at least one incredible remix of this and several extremely good ones. But you know, that’s how it works sometimes. She’s Madonna.

Filed Under: Madonna, Music, Nicki Minaj

Molly Lambert is a staff writer for Grantland.

Archive @ mollylambert