“Medellín”

It should come as a surprise to precisely no one that Madonna rides the Latin pop wave for her first single in four years. From “La Isla Bonita” to Evita, Madonna’s occasional flirtation with Latin America over the years has yielded some career highlights. That, combined with the fact that Madge practically invented the now-common pop-star move of vampiring all that is young and hot from album to album, leads us down to Medellín, Colombia. The reggaeton singer Maluma guides the way, carrying the sultry, dembow-tinged song with his whispered Spanish responses to his duet partner’s eerily still verses. On a track that opens with Madonna counting off a cha-cha-chá like she’s in an ASMR video, Maluma stands out, via actual singing, as the heart and soul really selling this fever dream of young love. The chorus pops off into a joyous celebration because of him.

“Medellín” may end up being a bigger moment for Maluma than Madonna, but as far as the pop icon’s semi-recent cool-hunting exploits go, the song sits closer to the top of the heap than the bottom. It is more sonically restrained than her EDM phase, leaving room in the production for tactile details that mostly work (though the echo and Auto-Tune on her vocals is a bit much). Madonna has struggled at times in her late career to find a balance between campy bangers and more mature balladry; “Medellín” is something of a sexy, stylish middle ground. Of course, she couldn’t let a whole song this decade go by without at least one cringe-y moment. “We built a cartel just for love,” she declares, turning the titular city’s violent drug trafficking history into lyrical myopia.