Metro Pulse/Platters/Madonna, Björk, Joan Osborne

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This week: Three women try to follow in their own footsteps

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

Madonna
Music (Maverick/Warner Bros.)

Björk
Selmasongs (Elektra)

"Boy," said the guy at the cash register, "I wish I had a nickel for every time today someone has bought both of these CDs." No surprise there. It was a coincidence the new releases by pop's leading lady and its eclectic techno princess came out simultaneously, but they have a natural affinity.

They're both veterans, '80s dance divas who have managed to mature without losing their grip. They've even worked together (Björk wrote the title track to Madonna's Bedtime Stories album). But the similarities only go so far, as Music and Selmasongs emphatically illustrate.

Music is a respectable effort, but not much more than that—a reminder that Madonna is still with us, for those who needed reminding. Following up 1998's Ray of Light, her most coherent (and, within its limits, thoughtful) album to date, la dame Ciccone seems only fitfully interested in the project at hand. The cover image is the first sign something's off: she's all duded up like a cowgirl, and the deliberately generic title is offset by a buckin' bronc logo. Surely our lady of the grooves hasn't gone country on us?

No, she hasn't. It's just a cool outfit. Likewise, the of-the-minute club production on Music, mostly courtesy of French mixmaster Mirwais, draws heavily on the retro-disco electronica of the past few years. Madonna's doing what she's always done—positioning herself comfortably between hipster clubland and the mainstream, riding the wake of the former until it crests in the latter. And there's nothing wrong with that when it's matched to classy, catchy pop, her other abiding strength. On Ray of Light, with producer William Orbit turning her drifting melodies into rolling soundscapes, she came as close as she ever has to finding a sound of her own. But this time, even with Orbit on board for a few tracks, she has trouble catching and holding a hook.

The highlights are the hit-single title track (if you can overlook the dippy lines about "the bourgeoisie and the rebels"), the trancey "Impressive Instant" and the straight-up break-up ballad "Gone." Elsewhere, Mirwais' sonic tricks are grabby (e.g. the stop-start acoustic guitar samples on "Don't Tell Me"), but they wear out. At this point, Madonna is way too smart to make a bad album. But there's a treading-water feel to Music, a sense that, having made her money and her children and her men, having proved herself over and over again, she doesn't find any of it all that challenging anymore.

Björk, on the other hand, never stops looking for new dragons. Selmasongs is actually an EP (and, at $15.99, an overpriced one) of songs from the Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark. Björk stars in the movie as Selma, a single mother losing her eyesight who escapes her daily struggle by staging movie musical numbers in her head.

On her three solo albums of the '90s, Björk staked out territory nobody else even knew existed. It's fun to string together adjectives to describe her music (wailing Icelandic techno-jazz chamber-pop?) but not particularly helpful. On Selmasongs, she builds on environmental noise from Selma's world—clanking machines, clacking trains—to create crazily imaginative collages that unexpectedly coalesce into grand musical productions. There's "Cvalda," which sounds something like a woman singing over a factory assembly line while two or three radios blare different stations in the background. There's the unaccountably pretty "I've Seen It All" (a duet with Radiohead's Thom Yorke, whose high, weathered alto works well with Björk's hard-edged yawp), and the wistful "In the Musicals." When the movie winds its way to Knoxville, you can decide whether Björk deserved the Best Actress nod she got at Cannes. But as Selmasongs makes clear, with its sweeping string and horn arrangements and epic darkness, she's plenty cinematic all by herself.

Joan Osborne
Righteous Love (Interscope)

You can shorthand the difference between Joan Osborne's first album, the multi-platinum Relish, and this delayed follow-up by comparing her choice of Bob Dylan covers. On Relish, she tackled "Man in the Long Black Coat," the best track from a so-so Dylan album (1989's Oh Mercy). On Righteous Love, she chooses "Make You Feel My Love," the weakest song from Dylan's mostly excellent Time Out of Mind.

In other words, Righteous Love is Relish without the relish. It's a sturdy collection of middling bluesy rockers in the Sheryl Crow/Bonnie Raitt vain, largely lacking the groovy grind and pop smarts of its predecessor. Where Relish offered the loose-limbed sexuality of "Right Hand Man," Righteous Love gives us the left-over ZZ Top grumble of "Love Is Alive." The Mediterranean swirl of the first album's "St. Teresa" is reprised to lesser effect on "If I Was Your Man." And so forth.

She can still be nicely seductive when she puts her mind (or crotch) to it, as on the underage ode "Baby Love," and when she has a solid groove to work with, she can sink her teeth in and sing like she means it (best example: the just-this-side-of-bombast title track). But the album as a whole is slickly unsatisfying. I have a friend who used to go see Osborne when she was playing the Manhattan club circuit. He was disappointed by Relish, because he said it muted her gutsy growl. I hope he doesn't hear Righteous Love.