Just remember her name

Madonnas new album,MDNA is a bipolar collection of songs whose familiar poses matter less than the panache of their delivery

Im gonna be OK/I dont care what people say, Madonna sings on her new album,MDNA. That may be the least necessary assurance in pop-music history. For nearly 30 years it has been a fact of popular culture that Madonna perseveres,calculates,reconfigures,strives and endures. Her gift for writing catchy tunes that suit her voice,matched to lyrics that often straddle the cliched and the universal,has been strong enough to carry her through hits and flops. Four years after her last album,Madonna,at 53,remains superstar enough to have been handed this years Super Bowl halftime show.

Madonnas timing is good for MDNA,her 12th studio album. Its a bipolar collection that pumps out effervescent electronic pop before making way for a contentious personal agenda. Madonna strikes some favourite poses: lapsing Roman Catholic,club hottie,woman in love andespeciallythe wounded tough gal. The poses matter less than the panache she brings to them.

On her 2008 album,Hard Candy,Madonna worked with the hip-hop and Ramp;B producers who dominated at the time. But since then Lady Gaga arrived,out-Madonna-ing Madonna. MDNA doesnt deign to grapple much with the competition. Occasionally it fights insecurity with self-advertising: placing Madonnas name in the chorus of Give Me All Your Luvin. Its just Madonna resuming her longtime habit of collaborating with dance-pop producers. MDNA places most of the dance-club songs up front,mingled with the ominous Gang Bang,which mixes gunshots with its ticking electro-pop as Madonna boasts about murder. Im Addicted to your love, of course has her singing MDMAthe abbreviation for the chemical in the club drug Ecstasy. Madonna now works her good girl/bad girl contrasts as the shtick they have become; the buoyant Im a Sinner, with a hint of Material Girl in its beat,proclaims Im a sinner/ I like it that way,Ah-whoo-hoo!; then she switches to singing about saints,assigning them tasks as if theyre the kitchen staff.

On the whole MDNA stays less arty and more determinedly poppy than her 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor,the last time she looked inward at length. Still,dont expect vulnerability. The lyrics insist there are no regrets,while nearly all the songs perk along to the unvarying,superhuman pulse of electronic dance music. Her survival instinct is her pop instinct,the one that hones catchiness above all,and it gets her through MDNA with hook after hook. Yes,shell be OK.