Album Review

In the early Sixties, when girls were first carving their niche in rock & roll, the Crystals were singing about how it didn't matter that the boy they loved didn't drive a Cadillac car, wasn't some big movie star: he wasn't the boy they'd been dreaming of, but so what? Madonna is a more, well, practical girl. In her new song, ''Material Girl,'' she claims, ''the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mr. Right/'Cause we're living in a material world/And I am a material girl.'' When she finds a boy she likes, it's for his ''satin sheets/And luxuries so fine'' (''Dress You Up''). Despite her little-girl voice, there's an undercurrent of ambition that makes her more than the latest Betty Boop. When she chirps, ''You made me feel/Shiny and new/Like a virgin,'' in her terrific new single, you know she's after something.

Nile Rodgers produced Like a Virgin, Madonna's second LP; he also played guitar on much of it and brought in ex-Chic partners Bernard Edwards on bass and Tony Thompson on drums. Rodgers wisely supplies the kind of muscle Madonna's sassy lyrics demand. Her light voice bobs over the heavy rhythm and synth tracks like a kid on a carnival ride. On the hit title song, Madonna is all squeals, bubbling over the bass line from the Four Tops' ''I Can't Help Myself.'' She doesn't have the power or range of, say, Cyndi Lauper, but she knows what works on the dance floor.

Still, some of the new tracks don't add up. Her torchy ballad ''Love Don't Live Here Anymore'' is awful. The role of the rejected lover just doesn't suit her. Madonna's a lot more interesting as a conniving cookie, flirting her way to the top, than as a bummed-out adult. [rollingstone.com]