Madonna

Released just as her worldwide Re-Invention tour was hitting the States in the summer of 2006, I'm Going to Tell You a Secret is a CD/DVD package that isn't so much a souvenir of the tour but as a way to advertise it. The DVD contains a lengthy -- over two hours! which is longer than Truth or Dare! -- look at the tour, including its rehearsal plus some performance footage, while the CD offers a 14-track sampler of the set list, heavy on songs from Music, American Life, and Confessions on a Dance Floor. With the notable exception of "Vogue," the oldies on this CD have been given a makeover, so "Into the Groove" and especially "Holiday" feel like they could fit the Eurotrash, campy retro-disco feel of Confessions, while "Like a Prayer" is now a chilled-out come-down tune. Good, logical reworkings one and all, and they help give the disc a cohesive feel even if the live performance, like the album it's hawking, is kind of humorless. That said, as Madonna's first live CD, I'm Going to Tell You a Secret is strong and entertaining, and even if the excessive minutiae on the accompanying DVD means only hardcore fans will sit through its two hours, it's also quite well done. Which means I'm Going to Tell You a Secret serves its purpose well: it will convince anybody who is on the fence about going out to see the 2006 tour to go ahead and buy those expensive tickets already (although years from now, this combination of promotion and retrospective will probably seem odder than it already does). ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide