Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 12/03/2011 at 3:05 PM News

The Popdust Files: madonna, masterpiece, new songs, w.e

About a month after the demo for “Give Me All Your Love”—her breezy, charmingly unassuming comeback single—got us excited for the prospect of new Madonna, we now have another transmission: “Masterpiece,” a William Orbit-produced number from the soundtrack to Madge’s W.E movie, which may end up on her new album as well. The song is a stately ballad which, like “All Your Love,” is also fairly low-key for Madonna, with just a simple picked guitar riff and some light strings providing the hook, and Madonna’s vocals (and the nice harmonies on the chorus) providing the real meat of the song. It seems like the sort of song that should have inspired Britney Spears’ “Criminal,” though the chronology doesn’t really work out so well on that.

The song is certainly pretty, though the lyrical theme about the perils of “be[ing] in love with a masterpiece” isn’t a resounding winner, and leads to some minorly icky lyrics—the opening lines are “If you were the Mona Lisa / You’d be hanging in the Louvre.” Still, as Perez Hilton points out (and unfortunately, for now you have to click over there to listen to the song), it wouldn’t be totally out of place on Madonna’s mid-’90s ballad compilation Something to Remember, and for longtime fans, that should be enough to make this a must-listen. “You are QUEEN!” Perez also says about Madonna, though we think he might be mixing her up with Lady Gaga.