Rich's last paragraph echoes what I posted about "4 Minutes" a couple of weeks ago:

...Her voice sits way up front, honking and cranking at you like it’s being squeezed out of a constricted larynx. My theory is that her regularly underwhelming pipes are mixed so loudly to counterbalance the conceptual and sonic anonymity she often resorts to here as success insurance. Maybe I'm off. Maybe it's that she just transcends technical skill – if enough people say something is good, so do the charts. However interpreted, what starts out as delusion ends up coming off as humility – she’s naked against these bare backing tracks. There she is imperfect, maybe even unpleasant, refracting the rays of musical sunshine that back her up Maybe the point isn’t forgetting that this is Madonna, after all. Maybe if you let your mind wander a little more, you can remember that you're listening to an actual, vulnerable person. You can remember that you're listening to just this girl who loves dance music.

It's enough to make grown man cry. Then again, Madonna would rightly balk at being expected to sound like 1983 all over again. I mean, wasn't that what Confessions On A Dance Floor was all about?