15 May 2008
‘4 Minutes’ is Madonna’s last Irish number one single. After that, she has two singles in 2008-09 that both peak at number 10, then a 2012 track that only reaches no. 11… and since 2012 Madonna hasn’t had any single crack the Irish top twenty. Not that the House of Ciccone will be too bothered about our little island, but it’s a similar tale on the US charts – plus Madonna’s last UK top ten single was in 2009. Her stock had been falling since her various early-’00s missteps so we probably didn’t notice. Even so, any true ’80s kid will find it strange to realise that Madonna hasn’t been having hits for quite a while now.
I can’t say ‘4 Minutes’ is any sort of valedictory lap of honour. As with her previous Irish number one, ‘Me Against The Music’, Madonna shares the billing with a newer star, plus instead of hip n’ obscure producers of recent work she goes straight for the proven hit-making product of Timbaland. You have to suspect it was those two collaborators du jour whose star power got this to the top of the charts. In fact, this feels more like a bang-average Timbaland record; depending on your point of hearing, either the two vocals are quite low in the mix or the electro-R&B smorgasbord is noticeably high. It’s not a memorable song anyway, and neither Madonna nor Justin eke anything distinctive out of it. In the story of Madonna’s revolutionary impact on pop music, ‘4 Minutes’ won’t detain us even that long.
