What would you do if you had ‘4 Minutes’ to save the world?
Madonna, Justin Timberlake and Timbaland’s answer clearly was: create an infectious Pop bop.
This week’s From The Vault pick is ‘4 Minutes’ by the dynamic trio.
In 2008, after celebrating the disco era with the impeccable ‘Confessions On A Dancefloor’ era, Madonna had her sights on the future. Notably with subsequent release ‘Hard Candy.’ So, in a very expected manner, she made sure she surrounded herself with the people responsible for the biggest hits at that time.
Enter Timberlake and Timbaland, with whom she released ‘Minutes’, a glorious, brassy and high-octane number as the album’s first single.
Commercially, the collaboration proved to be successful with the track peaking at #3 in the US and topping the charts in 21 countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.
For the video, the ever-edgy chanteuse turned to French directors Jonas & François and creative director/choreographer Jamie King to come up with a visual as spectacular as the song. The result was an apocalyptic offering where Madge and JT race against a black amorphous entity in order to have fun one last time before the world ends.
The video was nominated for a MTV VMA for Best Dancing in a Video in 2008, but lost to The Pussycat Dolls’ ‘When I Grow Up’.
********
We’ll never knock Madonna’s hustle when it comes to keeping up with what’s hot. Because, when it’s tastefully done (as seen with this very song), the outcome can be a commercially fruitful pop dream, as well as a big middle finger to ageists around the world.
Sadly, in recent years Magde hasn’t scored a song that was able to match the quality of ‘4 Minutes’ from any of the whoever hip collaborators she got in the studio with.
Still, what time has taught us, is to never count her out.
While the priority is for her to recover after her ‘Madame X’ tour, we’re excited as always about what’s coming next for Madonna.
Your thoughts?
