Timecapsule: ''Hard Candy'' 1 year anniversay tomorrow

With news of Madonna back in the studio with Paul Oakenfold, it's time to look back just one year in the past - tomorrow will be 1 year anniversary of ''Hard Candy'' hitting the stores around the world.

When an early version of "Candy Shop" leaked two summers ago, Madonna deserved the benefit of the doubt, as every artist does when it comes to unreleased demos, particularly in the Internet age, when fans can gain access to failed experiments that should have never left the confines of a recording studio. But the inclusion of this virtually unchanged track, which is as catchy as a stomach virus and just as vile, on the singer's then new album, ''Hard Candy'', and the fact that Madonna reportedly wanted the song to be its first single, seemed to point to her seriously faltering instincts as not only an arbiter of what's hip but of good taste in general. Comparing oral sex to fine dining on 1992's "Where Life Begins" seemed daring, chic, and witty, but here she likens her clitoris to the front door of a confectionary and she wants us to know her sugar is "sticky and sweet" — all set to Pharrell's tired paint-can beats. The song is neither sexy nor campy, and somewhere, Dita is throwing her head back, laughing hysterically, and cracking her whip in disapproval.

For all the criticism she received at the time, there was an authenticity to Madonna's appropriation of black music and culture in the early '90s. House music and hip-hop were frequent bedfellows, and ''Erotica'' with production work from Andre Betts and featuring, yes, Dita rapping without so much as a peep from the white rock press — is a testament to that. The notion that Madonna was somehow "selling out" with her next album, ''Bedtime Stories'', was a dubious complaint considering she's an artist whose first goal was to rule the world and whose second was to maintain that reign (it's telling that the very first lyric of ''Hard Candy'' is "Say which flavor you like and I'll have it for you" — such an accommodating hostess!). And in hindsight, ''Bedtime Stories'' wasn't too far behind the curve; urban music, after all, was only just starting its own worldwide dominance in 1994.

In many ways, ''Hard Candy'' is the album ''Confessions on a Dance Floor'' was supposed to be, both in terms of musical style (despite the feathered hair and leotards, ''Confessions'' was more Eurotrash — and I use that term affectionately — than Eurodisco) and overall progression (French producer Mirwais' use of Autotune—years before T-Pain, thankyouverymuch—and glitchy synths was European, to be sure, but his heavy beats and use of acoustic guitars was patently American, to say nothing of Madonna's collaborations with Timbo cohort Missy Elliott, whose absence here hasn't gone unnoticed). Madonna hasn't delivered this many vapid floor fillers on one disc since her debut, and maybe not even then. Aside from a little careerism on the dance floor ("Give me a record and I'll break it," she dares on "Give It 2 Me"—okay, Mimi), there are few confessions here — nothing political, nothing too spiritual, no talk of fame, war, or the media. It's just what America ordered.