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Song of the Day #4,800: ‘Joan of Arc’ – Madonna

Madonna’s 13th studio album, Rebel Heart, dropped in March of 2015. It marked a departure from the club-heavy albums she’d been putting out for more than a decade, leaning more on techno-tinged power ballads.

It was also her best record since 2005’s Confessions On a Dance Floor.

Rebel Heart has a large lineup of producers, both big names and small, including Kanye West, Avicii and Diplo. Nicki Minaj returns to feature on a track. But unlike on previous releases, that laundry list of contributors doesn’t overwhelm the final product.

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Song of the Day #4,799: ‘Masterpiece’ – Madonna

Madonna followed up what I consider her worst album so far, 2008’s Hard Candy, with 2012’s MDNA, an electronic pop album informed by her divorce from filmmaker Guy Ritchie several years earlier.

After the lackluster results from the star-studded producer lineup of her previous effort, Madonna enlisted a host of lesser-known producers for this album. Most notably, she brought back William Orbit, who helped deliver one of her best albums in Ray of Light. Orbit’s contributions to MDNA are by far its best tracks.

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Song of the Day #4,798: ‘Give It 2 Me’ – Madonna

It took 25 years and 11 albums before Madonna finally bored me. 2008’s Hard Candy is the first of her releases that left me cold from start to finish.

I think that’s because it’s the first album that feels like she’s chasing something rather than blazing a new path.

On previous albums, Madonna sought out little-known producers who helped push her music in new directions, often redefining the pop music landscape in the process. On Hard Candy, she teamed up for the first time with established stars.

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Song of the Day #4,797: ‘Fear City’ – Elliott Smith

‘Fear City’ is a track from the 2007 Elliott Smith compilation album New Moon, which included songs recorded during sessions for the mid-90s albums Elliott Smith and Either/Or.

This album and 2004’s From a Basement on a Hill were the two major posthumous releases after Smith’s 2003 death (which was initially reported as a suicide but later classified as a possible homicide — the investigation remains open).

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Song of the Day #4,796: ‘Shattered’ – The Rolling Stones

Today is my sister’s birthday, and you all know what it means when a birthday falls on a Random Weekend. Time to spin the wheel and see what the Random iTunes Fairy has in store by way of celebration.

And it’s… ‘Shattered,’ the final track on The Rolling Stones’ 1978 album Some Girls. This album, which embraced the dominant disco sound of the era, was critically acclaimed and became the band’s top-selling album.

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