This is the TRUE cover of Madonna's new album. It is Stuart Price's direction, inspiration, leadership and knack for an 80s groove that makes the album sing. Madonna is merely a trendwhore riding on the coattails of far more interesting musicians who are making far better music than she could ever hope to.

But it's not like she doesn't deserve credit. Madonna is, after all, a master of this sort of thing. She probes the underground, find out what it's doing these days, exploits it, and sells a cheap, plastic pop version of it to the masses for commercial digestion. The big irony to all this is that by the time the mainstream catches on to these trends, the underground has already moved on.

1990: Madonna looks at the underground New York gay fashion scene, full of style, excess, posture, and that lovely Italo House with those piano hooks. She rips off the scene and releases Vogue.

1992: Madonna focuses her sights on the emerging club kink/fetish scene, exploits it, and churns out Erotica. (and releases a raunchy book too, perfect for the art-house crowd).

1998: Madonna sees the growing fascination with trance explode everywhere, seeks to exploit it, hires William Orbit to be her Producer, and the end result is Ray of Light.

2000: French house is king in the club circuit, Madonna notices this too, seeks some funky french filter beats on her next album, which becomes Music. The real genius behind this album? Mirwais.

2005: Now electro-house rules the dancefloors. Naturally, Madonna wants to co-opt this and pretend it's something she invented too. So Confessions on a Dancefloor has got the neo-synthpop sound through and through. The smartest thing she did was hire Les Rhythmes Digitales (aka Jacques lu Cont, aka thin White Duke, aka Stuart Price) to be the mastermind of it. While the pop world will commend her genius and vision, those of us in the underground know better.

For all her staying power, Madonna is really only good at one thing: Surrounding herself with the best people she can find. She is a clever businessperson, a scenester, a poser, and a fronter all in one. But not really a musician. She's good at what she does, but she's really only a hollow faceplate--a shallow shell of what's actually there.