Madonna’s New Song to Save Earth, Camp Counselors

Sex romps, reinvention songs, and club anthems be damned — it doesn’t take a die-hard Madonna fan to know and love her soft and sappy side. (“Crazy for You,” anyone?) So it’s not necessarily a bad thing that you can’t krump to her new Pharrell-produced single “Hey You,” a Live Earth–inspired track that’s free to the first million downloaders. But this isn’t one of Ms. Ciccone’s classic party’s-over ballads. With guitar plucking that sounds cautious enough to be M’s own, a ra pum pum pum drummer-boy beat, and requisite string-orchestra swells, “Hey You” reinvents you-know-who as … a girlish camp counselor wearing a red-string bracelet. The chin-up platitudes here are too vague for Kabbalah propaganda, though. The sole innovation is a Möbius-strip lyric that could be used at Gitmo Bay: “First love yourself then you can love someone else / if you can change someone else then you have saved someone else / but you must first love yourself if you can change someone else / then you have saved someone else but you must first love yourself…” We wonder if the daisy chain we just wove is strong enough to hang us. —Justin W. Ravitz

“Hey You” [MSN]