American Life is the ninth studio album by American singer Madonna. It was released on April 21, 2003, by Maverick and Warner Bros. Records. The album, produced by the singer and Mirwais Ahmadzaï, features references to many parts of American culture. The album is a concept album, with themes panning the American Dream and materialism. These themes reject the reputation Madonna held in the 1980s, earned by her 1984 Billboard Hot 100 number-two hit, "Material Girl". American Life is a folktronica and eurotechno album, influenced by acoustic music.
American Life initially received mixed reviews upon release; critics found the album confusing and "about Madonna". Critics also found it "difficult to listen to" due to its awkward and brash production in some songs. However, retrospective reviews of the album have been much more positive, particularly for its lyrics. American Life reached number one in 14 countries, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, and also charted within the top-five of most markets. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) both certified the album Platinum in recognition of one million shipments in the United States, and 300,000 shipments in the United Kingdom, respectively. It became the 32nd best-selling album of 2003 and has sold five million copies worldwide. American Life garnered two nominations at the 46th Grammy Awards in 2004.
Four singles were released from American Life. The title track was released as the lead single to a generally negative critical reception, with Blender naming it the ninth worst song of all time. It charted at number 37 in the United States, while it entered the top-ten in most markets, peaking at number two in the United Kingdom. A controversial music video was pulled after scenes of war and violence were criticized which led to an edited version being released. Its following singles were "Hollywood", "Nothing Fails", and "Love Profusion", with the latter two reaching number one in Spain. All four singles peaked at number one on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart. Preceding the album release, "Die Another Day" was released as a single to promote the James Bond film of the same name, and peaked at number eight on the US Hot 100 and number three on the UK Singles Chart.
Madonna promoted the album during a small promotional tour in April and May 2003. At the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, she performed alongside Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Missy Elliott a medley of "Like a Virgin" and "Hollywood", and engaged in open-mouth kissing with Aguilera and Spears gaining great controversy and publicity. American Life was supported by Madonna's sixth tour, the Re-Invention World Tour, which was the highest-grossing tour of 2004 earning $125 million. The tour was chronicled in the documentary I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, which led to Madonna's first-ever live album of the same name.
Background and development
During the early 1990s, Madonna had focused on a number of provocative releases, like the erotic pictorial book Sex, the sadomasochist inspired album Erotica, and the erotic thriller, Body of Evidence, all of which she deduced was due to "a lot of rage and anger" within herself. However, by the beginning of the new millennium, Madonna was living a calmer and more introspective life with her husband Guy Ritchie, their son Rocco, and Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon from a previous relationship. According to biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, the presence of Ritchie in Madonna's life had a calming effect on the singer, making her more matured and easing her temper. The event had a profound effect on American society, with the cultural mood being bleakness and paranoia. People, including Madonna, started asking questions about their culture and the American Dream, which had been a long-lasting ideal for many. When Madonna started working on her ninth studio album, American Life, she wanted answers to her queries and an appropriate response to the 9/11 disaster and the ensuing Iraq war of 2003. In an interview with VH1 titled Madonna Speaks, the singer discussed her 20 years in the music industry, and revealed her motivations behind American Life, about "material things" being unimportant. "I have lots of 'material' things and I've had lots of beliefs about things and what's important, and I look back at the 20 years behind me and I realized that a lot of things that I'd valued weren't important", she concluded. Discussing her thoughts on the conception of the album, she told Q magazine that through her 20 years of being in the entertainment industry, she would have a correct opinion on fame and fortune and its perils, which would be the base of the album.
Writing and inspiration
When Madonna started writing the songs on the album, she was inspired by different situations, like having guitar lessons and getting an idea, or sometimes Ahmadzaï would send over a rough demo to her without the basic chord progression. The songs on American Life and their lyrics were developed like that. Madonna discussed the materialistic themes of the record and her personal encounters which have led to the composition with MTV saying:
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"Who better to say those things don't matter than somebody who's experienced them? [People may say], 'How can you say they don't matter? How can you say that money won't bring you happiness if you don't have a lot of money? How can you say that fame and fortune are not a guarantee for happiness and joy and fulfillment in your life?' You have to have that experience to know. 'Cause you have all those things, I've had all those things, and I've had nothing but chaos around me. So I'm just sharing what I know with the world. 'Cause I do think that we've become completely consumed with being rich and famous, our society has. And I just want to tell people, take it from me, I have all those things and none of them ever brought me one minute of happiness." The beginning of the album cleared away what was not important for her, so Madonna could concentrate on the things that did matter. So, in contrast to the first three tracks, the later songs on American Life also deal with issues close to the singer's heart, like talking about her relationship with her parents on the track "Mother and Father". But "Nothing Fails", along with tracks "Intervention" and "X-Static Process," became the centerpiece of the album as a triptych of love songs for Ritchie. The track is followed by the folk-inspired "Intervention" and "X-Static Process," both being reflective and emotional. Her reflective mood continued with the last track "Easy Ride," which was inspired by the imagery of a full-circle and symbolized life for the singer. The recording sessions for American Life started in late 2001, then was put on hold as Madonna filmed Swept Away on location in Malta and Sardinia and starred in the West End play Up for Grabs. She returned to the Olympic Recording Studios and Sarm West Studios in late 2002 and finished off the sessions in London and Los Angeles in early 2003. For the instrumentation featured in some of the songs, Ahmadzaï played the guitars, and Stuart Price played the piano. Tom Hannen and Simon Changer, both of them worked as assistant engineer during the recording.
American Life is suffused with Ahmadzaï's characteristic production techniques, like stuttering instruments and vocals, oscillating loop tones recalling 1950s Sonar pulses, morphing vocals consisting of grunts and squeals and treatments that make the music freeze in between rhythms. Priya Elan of NME described the album as "folktronica", while Ben Ratliff, in his review for Rolling Stone, described the album's sound as "diluted Eurotechno." Jon Pareles, writing for The New York Times, characterized the album's sound as a "mixture of acoustic guitar-picking, ticking drum machines and swooping, buzzing synthesizer lines", adding that "The guitar signals the sincerity of a singer-songwriter, while all the gizmos add the retro catchiness of the synth-pop music now being revived under the name electroclash." "American Life", the title track, is the first song on the record. Starting with Madonna's multi-tracked voice questioning, "Am I gonna be a star", "should I change my name", the lyrics then develop into what Rikky Rooksby of The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna states as a complaint about modern-day life. The lyrics accompany a "punchy octave synth figure" synchronized with a drum and bass beat. The texture grows with addition of drums and synths, until after a minute the instrumental is pulled out, leaving just Madonna's vocals and the acoustic guitar accompaniment where she alludes to the Beatles' Norwegian Wood. Vocally, the line "I got you under my skin" is repeated, while a male voice acts as the backing for the track as the final words, "feel good", are performed with no backing instrumental. Lyrically, like the title track, it questions modern life as Madonna sings "Jesus Christ will you look at me, don't know who I'm supposed to be". Still recovering from the commercial disappointment of Swept Away, Madonna changed her image completely to resemble that of a fighter, with inspirations from pictures of Argentinian guerrilla leader Che Guevara. The photo shoot for the album was done by photographer Craig McDean in January 2003 at Los Angeles, and cost a reported $415,000. In an interview with Veja magazine, she described Guevara as "an icon instantaneously identified with a revolution spirit. That goes for the whole album: the current moment, I feel a revolutionary state of mind". Author Santiago Fouz-Hernández wrote in his book, Madonna's Drowned Worlds: New Approaches to Her Subcultural Transformations, that the inclusion of Guevara as an inspiration for the cover was one of the many instances of Madonna incorporating Hispanic identity and the Latino subculture in her work. The album cover was also compared to an infamous 1970s photo of kidnapped newspaper heiress, Patty Hearst. The cover also had military styled stenciled lettering. The title American Life is written in blood red color and has a punk rock style. Inside the CD booklet, she wielded an Uzi submachine gun, her body in various martial art poses, spelling out her name. However, as the months went on and the album became more of a meditation on the difficulty of leading a spiritual life in the glamour industry, the title was changed to Hollywood with Madonna saying that it was "a reflection of my state of mind and a view of the world right now". Still, she was not satisfied with the name, and finalized on American Life.
American Life is Madonna's second album to bear a "Parental Advisory" label after Erotica (1992), due to the profanity used in the title song. The album was released in the United States on April 22, 2003 and eight months later, Warner Music France released a box set version containing both the album and the remix collection, Remixed & Revisited, in a cardboard sleeve entitled Édition Spéciale 2CDs: American Life + Remixed & Revisited. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the album's release, Madonna announced the release of an exclusive Record Store Day remixed EP of the album on April 22, 2023, in memory of Peter Rauhofer. A portion of the proceeds from this sale were given to charities specialising in brain cancer research.
To counter illegal downloads of the album, Madonna's associates created a number of false MP3 files of similar length and size. Some delivered a brief message from Madonna saying "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" followed by minutes of silence. The website was closed after the attack for about 15 hours. Madonna also performed at the HMV store on Oxford Street, London to 500 people. While in the United Kingdom, she performed "American Life" and "Hollywood" at BBC One's Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and Top of the Pops. Another performance on Tower's Fourth Street in Manhattan was presented to around 400 people. A stage was built in preparation for the performances with long dark drapes and large speakers, and according to Billboard was so that over one thousand fans nearby could hear the performance.
On August 27, 2003, Madonna opened the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards with American recording artists Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, performing a medley of "Like a Virgin" and "Hollywood". American rapper Missy Elliott also performed her song "Work It" halfway through the performance. After "Hollywood" was performed by Madonna, she engaged in kissing with both Spears and Aguilera becoming an infamous moment for all three acts and in television history. The plan for the box set was eventually cancelled and Remixed & Revisited was released in its place. The compilation contains remixed versions of four songs from American Life and a previously unreleased song called "Your Honesty".