Madonna's new album: Divorce, rage, regret -- and you can dance to it, too!!

By Liz Smith, Tribune Media

"THERE'S SOMETHING remarkable about Madonna's decision to share her suffering the way she once shared her pleasure. Her music has always been about liberation from oppression, but for the first time the oppression is internal: loss and sadness. Stars -- they really are just like us."

That is Rolling Stone's Joe Levy reviewing Madonna's upon-us-any-minute album "MDNA."

Ads by GoogleThis record is dance-driven, revenge-driven, regret-driven and self-referential to the max. It has already received a batch of powerfully impressive reviews; those who have heard it agree it is disconcertingly dark, eminently danceable, and delicately mournful. A wild mash-up.

Madonna, who is only 53, is not going quietly into that good night of ballads and a single spotlight. (Although "MDNA" does contain three ballads, one of which, "Falling Free" is among the most intimate and well-sung of her career.)

But the beat goes on for Madonna. The album is chock full of 21st-century, in-your-face techo -- it thumps relentlessly, the bass booms, they do odd computerized things with her voice. Yet it often recalls her earlier efforts, during the halcyon days of her recording career. Her pure, unaltered voice is heard enough to reassure the fans who loved her in the '80s or in 1996's "Evita."

"MDNA" is not my kind of music, necessarily. But it is impressive. Impressive in that Madonna does what she wants to do, and says what she wants to say (Guy Ritchie, when you hear "Gang Bang," duck for cover!) And she says it -- haters be d--ned -- against throbbing dance beats.

Listen, Marlene Dietrich spent her entire career -- well into her 70s -- attempting to maintain the illusion of the fabulous femme fatale image created for her by Josef von Sternberg in the '30s. At Madonna's age, she was wearing semi-transparent gowns and singing the same old songs on stages around the world. And looking increasingly bored doing it, too.

Madonna was the sexy, controversial pop star. So she's still doing what she knows how to do. Difference? She doesn't seem bored. In fact, "MDNA" announces her revitalization.

She's always supposed to be "over," but somehow she never is. And I abhor the ageism and sexism so resonant in criticism of her.