For the first couple decades of her career, Madonna took pride in never making the same album twice. This is an artist who, in the space of six years, pivoted from sexually-charged pop (Erotica) to seductive R&B (Bedtime Stories) to Broadway showtunes (Evita) to Earth Mother electronica (Ray of Light). The biggest surprise about 2003’s American Life, then, was that there were few surprises.
Three years earlier on Music, Madge further extended her Queen of Pop reign by aligning herself with Mirwais Ahmadzaï, then a relatively unknown Frenchman whose production style was built on swooping laser-like synths, finger-picked acoustic guitars and chopped-up rhythms that left you wondering whether your CD player had skipped.
This dream team was responsible for half of her hit 2000 album, including standouts “Don’t Tell Me,” “Impressive Instant” and “Paradise (Not for Me).” On this occasion, though, Madonna tasked Mirwais with co-producing the entire record.
While American Life’s sound failed to match its striking cover art – a graffiti portrait of Madonna cosplaying as Cuban rebel Che Guevara – its lyrics were a little more revolutionary. Reacting to the September 11 attacks and the impending Iraq War, the star posed all kinds of questions about the state of America, most notably its obsession with fame and fortune. No longer was Madonna the Material Girl.
Audiences appeared to be confused by this combination of the familiar and the radical, however. Although it topped the Billboard 200 in its first week, it moved 241,000 copies in its first week, compared to Music’s first-week total of 420,000, according to Luminate. It remained Madonna’s lowest-selling album until 2012’s MDNA. But does the record deserve a reevaluation two decades on? Twenty years after it first hit the shelves (April 21), here’s a ranking of its 11 tracks.
