We all know that when Madonna puts out a new album, it’s not really about the music — it’s an excuse to retool her image. With Hard Candy, Madge is all about playing up her role as a pop icon and dance floor demon, and she attempts to reclaim her position as an unabashed sex queen. Unfortunately, she’s still got to crank out an album’s worth of songs, and with Hard Candy the audio is about as subtle and easy to take as the album’s brash cover art.

Working with rather obvious players like Pharrell Williams, Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, Madonna is clearly trying to maintain a sense of cultural currency, but there’s something desperately self-conscious about Hard Candy. The opening track, “Candy Shop,” is filled with heavy-handed sexual metaphors that turn the Material Girl into a parody of herself, and her voice is hard and unforgiving. The bulk of the album is filled with mid-tempo pop songs backed by monotonous dance beats and is nearly devoid of melody and full of painfully lame lyrics. Madonna’s album tracks have never been masterpieces, but songs like “She’s Not Me” and “Miles Away” are particularly weak.

Hard Candy isn’t a total loss: the single “4 Minutes” has a decent chorus, if only because Timberlake’s vocals make it sound like the Madonna-Michael Jackson duet that we all would have killed for back in 1985. Kanye West collaboration “Beat Goes On” sees Madge holding back a little bit and sounding a little disco. Still, once Madonna’s age finally catches up with her and she turns into Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, we’re still going to be humming “Borderline,” and Hard Candy, image and all, will be a distant memory.