Hard Candy (Madonna Album) - Background and Development

Background and Development

In February 2007, Timbaland said that he was working with Madonna for her upcoming 11th studio album. It was Madonna's last studio album for Warner Bros. Records, and following the release of a greatest hits collection (Celebration), she would join Live Nation Artists, a new initiative launched by concert promoter Live Nation. The 10-year deal with Live Nation encompassed all of Madonna's future music and music-related businesses, including the exploitation of the Madonna brand, new studio albums, touring, merchandising, fan clubs/Web sites, DVDs, music-related television and film projects and associated sponsorship agreements. In August 2007, Timbaland spoke about the development of the album to MTV News. Together he and Justin Timberlake were confirmed to have worked on the album with Madonna and said that they wrote ten songs for her. Songs confirmed to have been developed were "La, La" and "Candy Shop", which was written by Pharrell Williams. Timbaland added,

"Me and Justin did the records. got a hot album. Her album is up there with Justin's album. Ah, man, there's this one song, we taking it back to 'You must be my luck-eee starrrr!' ... Remember 'Ugly' by Bubba Sparxxx? I got a beat similar to that. The hook is no words. It's saying stuff named after coffee... The name of the song is 'La, La'. Pharrell did a hot one for her too called 'Candy Shop'."

Timbaland finished off by saying that the title of the album was not decided then, but he had to reconvene with Madonna to complete the record by September 2007. MTV described the new album as moving in an urban direction. It had initially been defined as having "a lot of producers from a lot of genres in there." Pet Shop Boys were originally asked by Warner to write and produce some songs for the album. Timbaland referred to the album as being "like 'Holiday' with an R&B groove".

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