Celebration - Slant Magazine Review

Madonna
Celebration
(Warner Bros., 2009)

4 out of 5 stars

Confession from my own private dance floor: I’ve never been a fan of The Immaculate Collection, despite the canonization accorded it in the absence of any competing career compilation up until its companion volume GHV2 in 2001. In almost every case, I found Immaculate’s QSound makeovers by Shep Pettibone (at the time, Madonna’s go-to guy thanks to his revelatory work on “Express Yourself” and “Vogue”) to be earsores, if not total desecrations, of the original works. The winningly tremulous qualities of her earliest hits were all but obliterated by Pettibone’s glossy remixes, and don’t even get me started on the deadening house beats he used to kamikaze “Like a Prayer,” a song which, like no other song from her first decade, did not exactly want for urgency. The upside of the album was and remains this unique feat: how its obligatory new tracks, the simmering “Rescue Me” and the aromatic “Justify My Love,” are considered by most fans to be among the singer’s best work.

Full Article
http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/music_review.asp?ID=1858

From: All About Madonna