Madonna

Erotica is the fifth studio album by American singer and songwriter Madonna. It was released on October 20, 1992, by the Maverick and Warner Bros. Records. The album was released simultaneously with Madonna's first book publication, Sex, a coffee table book containing explicit photographs featuring the singer…

Most pop stars reach a point where they accept the slow march of time, but not Madonna. Time is Madonna's enemy – an enemy to be battled or, better still, one to be ignored. She soldiers on, turning tougher, harder, colder with each passing album, winding up with a record as flinty as MDNA, the 2012 record that is her first release since departing Warner for Interscope…

All through her career, it has been impossible to divorce Madonna's music from her image, as they feed off each other to the point where it's hard to tell which came first, the concept or the songs. Glancing at the aggressively ugly cover to Hard Candy – its blistering pinks and assaultive leather suggesting cheap bottom-barrel porno – it's hard not to wish that this is the one time Madge broke from tradition, offering music that wasn't quite as garish as her graphics…

Rebel Heart was introduced to the world with an indiscipline uncharacteristic of Madonna. Blame it on hackers who rushed out a clutch of unfinished tracks at the end of 2014, a few months before the record's scheduled spring release. Madonna countered by putting six full tracks up on a digital service, a move that likely inflated the final Deluxe Edition of Rebel Heart up to a whopping 19 tracks weighing in at 75 minutes, but even that unveiling wasn't performed without a hitch: during an ornate performance of "Living for Love," she stumbled on-stage at the BRIT Awards…

Given the cold shoulder Madonna's 2003 album American Life received by critics and audiences alike – it may have gone platinum, but apart from the Bond theme “Die Another Day,” released in advance of the album, it generated no new Top Ten singles (in fact, its title track barely cracked the Top 40) – it's hard not to read its 2005 follow-up, Confessions on a Dance Floor, as a back-to-basics move of sorts: after a stumble, she's returning to her roots, namely the discos and clubs where she launched her career in the early '80s…