【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评 Madonna2005年专辑《Confessions on a Dance Floor》

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原文链接：https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/CKiMfkzAEnyUHs0c40kTOA

原文翻译：Ryan-Xiang

原文审译：Emma Z

原文排版：Ryan-Chopin（在原文基础上添加了英语原文，评分截图与排版调整）

Twenty years ago, Madonna was a postmodernist's dream. Her ability to transform herself from song to song and from album to album became a proclamation of self-nullifying empowerment, giving her the ability to create a stationary persona out of shifting identities. However, by the start of the 1990s, Madonna's transformations Appeared more calculated as she aged and fell behind the curve, trying to predict the next dominant style instead of confidently setting it.在Madonna（麦当娜）的第十四张专辑《Confessions on a dancefloor（舞池告白）》中，这位流行巨星与Stuart Price（斯图尔特·普莱斯）共同完成复古创作；这张专辑沿用了麦当娜出道早期的夜店女王路线，并再次展现了曾被她和其他歌手在80年代早期所颠覆的70年代风格。

With Confessions on a Dance Floor, her 14th album, Madonna again reinvents herself, and it Appears she's nearly lApped herself. Her latest iteration is a pre-Madonna (prima donna?) disco vixen, basking in a '70s musical style that she herself, among others, helped to morph and displace in the early '80s. Allowing her to accessorize creatively (love that wrap-around top), this new persona has the potential to be immensely entertaining, but there's something a little sad about it too. At 47 Madonna is playing the role of someone 25 years younger, and those retro space leotards and that feathered hair only make her look more mature and matronly, like your friend's mom dressed up embarrassingly for Halloween.

二十年前，Madonna是后现代主义者的完美偶像。她在不同歌曲和专辑间的转变能力成了人格否定的力量宣言，这使她能够在变化的人格中保持一个稳定的身份。然而，到20世纪90年代初，随着年龄增长和乐坛地位下滑，Madonna的转型似乎变得更为谨慎，她开始尝试去预测下一个主流风格而不是自信地创造潮流。Madonna用第十四张专辑《Confessions on a dancefloor》再次转型的同时却又几乎束缚住了她自己。这张专辑沿用了麦当娜出道早期的夜店女王路线，并再次展现了曾被她和其他歌手在80年代早期所颠覆的70年代风格。这个全新的人格使得她能够在装束方面大胆创新（尤其是那件曲边的上衣），并有着极大的取悦市场的潜能。但令人悲伤的是：47岁的Madonna扮演着比她年轻25岁的角色，那些复古紧身衣和羽毛装饰的头发反而让她看起来更加精于世故，就像在万圣节造型尴尬的老阿姨一样。

If the outfit depresses, the music on Confessions accomplishes the feat of making her sound young again. Kicking off the album, "Hung Up" is an impressive and enjoyable single, strong enough to have everyone trying to figure out if it's her best since "Ray of Light" or since "Like a Prayer". The main groove is lifted from ABBA's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme (A Man After Midnight)", but used in such a way that it resembles a brilliant mash-up rather than a lazy sample. Credit is due Stuart Price of Les Rhythmes Digitales, who builds a warehouse-size wall of sound for Madonna's songs, allowing her to revel in the shameless mirrorballsiness of it all.

尽管麦当娜的新专造型着实有些让人失望，但是这张专辑的音乐却成功完成了让她的声音年轻如初的任务。作为专辑的开头，“Hung up(心神不宁)”是一首抓耳又讨巧的歌，它的质量是如此上乘，以至于让人想去探究这是不是她在“Ray of Light(光线)”或是“Like a prayer（宛如祈祷）”后最好的单曲。这首歌的主旋律采样于ABBA的“Gimme！Gimmme！Gimme！(A Man After Midnight)（午夜孤男）”,但采取了一种出色的类似混搭的方式而不是懒惰地将其生搬硬套。这归功于Les Rhythures Digitales的Stuart Price（斯图尔特·普莱斯），他为Madonna创作的音乐足够铺满整个仓库的墙壁，这些创作使她能够在专辑里那些镜像中毫无羞耻地尽情狂欢。

That collaboration stays strong over the first half of Confessions. On "Get Together", as Price's synths ebb and flow moodily, Madonna asks the eternal pop question, "Do you believe in love at first sight?", over a tripping vocal melody. The cascades of sound wash directly into "Sorry", setting up the song's panlingual apologies and shifting bass tectonics. These songs have a deceptive lyrical vacuity that hints at greater depths, but leaves them to the listener to consider. On the other hand, "Future Lovers" begins with similar escapism, as Madonna warmly exhorts, "Let's forget your life, forget your problems, administration, bills, and loans." But it's no simple call to the dancefloor: Over a prismatic vocal theme, she unequivocally equates music with spirituality, dancing with religious ritual.

在这张专辑的前半部分，Madonna和Price的这种合作一直表现强势。在单曲“Get Together（聚在一起）”中，Price用合成器使节奏随着整体情绪的变化跌宕起伏，同时Madonna在这种轻快的旋律中抛出了一个经典问题：“你相信一见钟情吗？”。接着这些旋律如同瀑布般又卷入了单曲“Sorry（对不起）”，为这首歌设定了各种语言的道歉和富有层次感的低音结构。这两首歌曲都带着一种迷幻却又深情的空虚感，这些空虚感有着更深层次的意义，留给了听众更多思考的空间。另一方面，“Future Lovers（未来情人）”的开头也有类似的逃避现实色彩，正如Madonna歌曲中循循善诱的话语，“忘记你的生活，忘记你的所有的烦恼。”，但这并不仅仅是来自舞池中央的邀请：在这个棱镜般迷幻的声音里，Madonna明确地将音乐与灵性，舞蹈与宗教仪式划上了等号。

This impressive momentum, unfortunately, is interrupted by "I Love New York", which stumbles over mad-glad-bad rhyme schemes and dumb-ass lyrics like "I don't like cities but I like New York/ Other cities make me feel like a dork." It sounds like a transparently targeted post-9/11 valentine to the Big Apple-- odd coming from an ex-pat. Inanities like "If you don't like my attitude/ Then you can eff off" are at least partly excused by Price's production, which builds from the beat up to incorporate rock elements that could be a nod to Brooklyn hipster dance punk.

不幸的是，这种令人印象深刻的势头被“I Love New York（我爱纽约）”所打断，这首歌被糟糕的狂欢押韵和“我不喜欢城市，但我喜欢纽约，其他城市让我觉得自己像个傻子”这样愚蠢的歌词拖累了。它听起来就像是给经历了911事件后的纽约城的情人节礼物，这样一首歌从Madonna这个外乡人口中唱出来就显得更加奇怪了。Price在制作这首歌时在节拍中融合了摇滚元素以致敬布鲁克林式嘻哈朋克，这样的制作给诸如“如果你不喜欢我的态度，那么你就可以放手”这样的肤浅歌词提供了一个合理的借口。

Despite Price's best efforts to infuse these songs with motion and finesse, Confessions never quite reaches its earlier heights after "I Love New York". When Madonna actually starts confessing, the album loses its delicate balance between pop frivolity and spiritual gravity. "Now I can tell you about success, about fame," she intones at the end of "Let It Will Be", as if that's all she knows anymore. She proselytizes the Kabbalah on "Isaac", but despite the controversy that song has created, it's remarkable only for Price's two-note pendulum string sample and a hummed melody that could have been lifted from "Frozen".

尽管Price拼尽全力让后面这些歌曲充满节奏感和细节，但在“I Love New York”之后，这张专辑再难企及前半部分的高度。当Madonna真的开始坦白时，这张专辑就失去了在轻快的流行曲风和精神层面的张力之间原有的那种微妙平衡。她在“Let It Will Be（顺其自然）”的结尾说：“现在我可以告诉你关于名誉的所有”，好像这就是她所知道的一切。她还将卡巴拉教义改编成了“Isaac（以撒）”。尽管这首歌引起了不小的争议，但实际上它值得注意的地方只有Price的双音符钟摆弦乐片段和可能是从“Frozen（冰封）”采样的嗡嗡曲调。

The young Madonna pops up repeatedly on Confessions, a foil to her older self. "How High" plumbs the motives behind her headline- and crotch-grabbing behavior of yore, but it only reveals how deeply she has embedded herself into the establishment. The album title recalls her contentious relationship to Catholicism on "Papa Don't Preach" and "Like a Prayer", and that pop visionary subversiveness makes her reverence to the Kabbalah seem tame by comparison. There's no conflict between her and her new faith, so there's no journey. As Confessions weighs down with more of her personal baggage, the songs become, despite Price's inventive and mercurial production, less inviting and less danceable, as if Madonna wants the dance floor all to herself.

为了衬托她年长的一面，年轻Madonna的形象反复出现在这张专辑中。“HowHigh（声名远扬）”这一歌曲深究了她当年摸胯等博眼球动作背后真正的动机，但其实这首歌只揭示了她已经深深地融入了这些人设。这张专辑的名字让人想起了她在“Papa Don't Preach（爸爸别说教）”和“Like a Prayer(宛如祈祷)”两首歌中与天主教饱受争议的关系；与这种通过流行文化对宗教的幻想性颠覆相比，她对卡巴拉教的崇敬显得平淡无奇。她和她的新信仰没有冲突，因此也就没有什么值得关注的经历。由于这张专辑被Madonna个人包袱所过多的限制，这导致尽管Price的编曲天马行空，但这些歌曲最终却并不那么抓耳，也不怎么适合做舞蹈伴奏，显得Madonna似乎想要独占舞池一样。