Madonna`s `Music` is a copy of a copy

"Music"; Madonna; Maverick/Warner Brothers.

Throughout her incredibly resilient career, Madonna`s been creating hit albums by using other peoples sounds and styles. This time out, though, the mimicry gets complicated: She`s copied herself copying others.

Madonna`s re-created the `80s-style club sound of her youth - the snappy, synthesized grooves of her self-titled debut, released in 1983. "Music," the first single off the album (for those of you without MTV), sounds like a slightly updated version of "Everybody," the song that got Madonna noticed on the New York City club scene almost two decades ago. Sure, "music," the oft-repeated chorus, has two syllables and "everybody" has three, but both songs rely on the same tempo and rhythm. And they`ll both get you dancing against your will. The beats are heavy and use the kind of synthesized sounds R&B singers have been lifting from rap artists for the past 20 years.

As for the rest of the tracks (for which there are no videos yet), when she sticks to the dance songs, Madonna really cooks. Her hooks are as catchy as always. Particularly good and dance-worthy are "Impressive Instant" and "Amazing." On other tracks, the post-material girl gets a bit unwieldy, employing a lot of unappealing whispering and some irritating mechanized lyrics that sound a lot like Cher`s latest album. And when the music slows down, Madonna`s robotic vocals get harder to mask and their insincerity becomes all too apparent.

Of course, Madonna might not be in agreement with this last comment. After all, she`s now a yogi and a mother. And as she says in "Gone," the final song on "Music," "I`m not," she sings, "I`m not what you think."

Yeah, right.

"Righteous Love"; Joan Osborne; Interscope Records.

Though Joan Osborne was born in Kentucky, her music is hardly country western. Unlike recent releases by Emmylou Harris and Patty Larkin, Osborne uses Eastern flourishes to shake up this powerful rock `n` roll album.

"If I was Your Man," one of the standouts on "Righteous Love," kicks off with an Indian-style percussion and guitar that works beautifully with Osborne`s incredibly rich and mellifluous vocals. You can also hear the Eastern influences in the small accents. For example "Hurricane," a mainly classic-style rock song, contains just a smattering of sitar-inspired strings and emphatically spare drumbeats.

It`s stylings such as these and other deft touches that make Osborne`s music just a bit better than the average female rock album. The musical maturity in "Righteous Love" perhaps is due to the long lapse between this album and "Relish," Osborne`s 1995 debut. (Osborne had a difficult time putting out this sophomore effort, getting dropped by two major labels before getting picked up by Interscope.) In the five-year space, Osborne went East to study classical Indian music, wrote with Cuban artists, and had a chance to perform with the likes of Luciano Pavorotti and Bob Dylan.

But it`s unfair to say that Osborne`s completely matured, as she occasionally deviates to a more playful alter ego. In "Baby Love," she rocks out to a punchy-sounding baritone sax and a hard-driving percussion. The song`s topic: a real-life romance between a teacher and her very young student.

Best known for her single "One of Us," a quasi-philosophical but ultimately silly musing ("what if God was one of us?") Osborne often gets mixed in with other Lilith Fair artists, but "Righteous Love," should put those comparisons to bed. This sophomore effort demonstrates that this singer-songwriter is growing and has the potential for even better albums in the future.

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Emily Friedlander