"I'm tired of doing the same old thing," Madonna can be heard saying on her 11th studio release, Hard Candy. For more than 25 years, the Material Girl's "thing" was identifying the next hot trend and turning it into at least a couple of immaculate singles per album. So Hard Candy breaks new ground for the pop icon by sounding not just old, but uninspired. The new album's first single, "4 Minutes," was a top-seller on iTunes, but that probably had more to do with the big-name presence of Timbaland and Justin Timberlake than the song's Tims-by-numbers marching-band groove. The Neptunes' Pharrell Williams doesn't stretch himself much here either, but the bigger problem with Williams-produced opener "Candy Shop" is Madonna's laughably labored innuendo: "Don't pretend you're not hungry / I've seen it before." The pretentiously narrated "Heartbeat" has Madonna repeating, "But / But / But / But" (or is it "butt"?). Even acoustic ballad "Miles Away" sounds like bad parody: "Hey you, just be yourself / Don't be so shy / There's reasons why." Hard Candy has more sweetness left in it than the new Janet Jackson album, but at least for this year, Madonna is no Mariah Carey.

-- Marc Hogan