Madonna channels the essence of Lisbon’s Fado music in ‘Crave’

A low-key moment which nods vaguely back towards the heartbreak of ‘Like A Prayer’, and yet sounds nothing like it

Blending mumble-rap with a mournful core, ‘Crave’ throws yet another Madonna-sized curveball in the run-up to the superstar’s 14th album ‘Madame X’.

Madonna permanently relocated to Lisbon last year, where she posted this faux-tragic picture of herself sipping champagne alone; “Would anyone like to sip Cham-Pain with me?” she asked wryly with a crying emoji – it was all very tongue-in-cheek. So far the influence of her latest hometown stretches as far as the Euro-pop flavour of lead single ‘Medellin’, but in the opening lines of ‘Crave’ she appears to be tackling loneliness and unfamiliar surroundings with a new vulnerability. “I’m tired of being far away from home,” she sings over gently picked guitar, “far from what can help, far from where it’s safe”.

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And while Madge’s Mike Dean-produced auto-tuned vocals might cause a minor controversy in a tiled old Taberna, ‘Crave’ certainly draws on elements of Lisbon’s traditional Fado music. Sure, Madonna’s not belting it out like she’s filling up a town square with her intense melancholy, but even so, there’s a vulnerability to ‘Crave’ which also shares the genre’s resignation and fatefulness. “You know I just can’t change, this is how I’m made,” she sings in unison with an understated Swae Lee. “I’m not afraid, take me to that place”. The connection makes sense: Madonna’s been hanging out in Fado bars for at least the last year…

Placing Madonna’s other two singles side by side – the Latin pop channelling ‘Medellin’ and orchestral smoulderer ‘I Rise’ – and they don’t give much away about the overall direction of  ‘Madame X’. That’s only confounded by this: a breezy, low-key moment which nods vaguely back towards the heartbreak of her 1989 album ‘Like A Prayer’, and yet sounds nothing like it. A dancer, a professor, a head of state, a housekeeper, an equestrian, a prisoner, a student, a mother, a child, a teacher, a nun… no wonder Madame X has such a varied career path. Thus far, she’s proving tricky to pin down.

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