Patrick Runkle .com

Making a good album is harder than it used to be. Donna Summer's "comeback" CD, Crayons, was recently released as part of Summer's much-hyped new major label deal, and I can't imagine something being less appropriate of a career-revitalization vehicle for her. It sounds like no one associated with the project has ever listened to a Donna Summer song before, let alone actually figured out what elements people might like to hear in a new Donna Summer track. By making her run through the paces of a lot of really bland, overproduced tracks in eight or nine different dancey genres, it comes off as a cloying, tuneless mess. I mean, she's singing about iPods on track 2; who wants to hear that? The beauty of Summer's successful, towering Giorgio Moroder disco records is that they had a singular, brilliant production focus. (Even the Stock-Aitken-Waterman stuff arguably can be included in that category with less emphasis on the "brilliant.") But here, I can't overstate the bad choices made by the producers on this album. It can all be summed up in the title track, a would-be reggae stomper on which Ziggy Marley appears, and on which Summer sings with a Jamaican accent. Whoever thought it was acceptable to include that on the album, and as the title track no less, was not thinking very clearly. (For a more charitable review of the album, see the fantastic blog Disco Delivery, with which I must respectfully disagree.)

And Madonna's new CD, Hard Candy, a production blessed with unlimited resources, fares little better. It's easily Madonna's worst album, and I'm including American Life in that calculus. A bunch of warmed over Timbaland beats of the variety that have showed up literally everywhere for the past three years--from Justin Timberlake to Bjork to Duran Duran--can simply not be considered fresh. And there is nothing compelling going on over the beats; what happened to the songs?

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