Fridae

Madonna's latest release, "American Life" is being slammed by critics, accusing the pop diva of losing her "touch as pop's most successful chameleon."

Madonna's website was hacked last weekend by a file-sharing supporter, days after the Material Girl tried to combat illegal trading of songs from her American Life album by posting decoy MP3s of songs off of her new album to peer-to-peer networks. The decoy tracks contain recordings of her saying: "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

A hacker who obviously got relatively annoyed about artist's attitude hacked her official website, madonna.com, during the weekend and posted all the tracks from her album American Life for download. The hacked website simply stated: "This is what the fuck I think I'm doing."

After the hack, madonna.com was taken offline for nearly fifteen hours. Parts of the site remained offline through midday Monday, but were operating normally Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the ex-Material Girl's 10th studio album, which hit the stores on Tuesday have attracted far from rave reviews from prominent music critics in the US. They said that her music fails to live up to the hype and accused the pop diva of losing her "touch as pop's most successful chameleon."

Philadelphia Inquirer's music reviewer Tom Moon wrote: "For the first time in a remarkable 20-year record-making career, Madonna pours that near-mythic knack for reinvention into a spectacularly stinky artistic black hole."

"American Life... is not only the most wretchedly empty thing she's ever done, it's also one of those big-budget projects that make sense only as megastar indulgence, a cloying mess of beats and noise and meaningless wounded-childhood outpourings," the review said. "Among them: 'There was a time I had a mother. It was nice.'"

The New York Times noted: "Too often, the album approaches the folkie psychobabble of songwriters like Jewel," while Jim Derogatis, a critic at the Chicago Sun-Times also blasted the 44-year-old's new offering, calling it as "a confused and confusing mess."

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"American Life... finds her sounding more than a little bit tired, repetitive and all played out� Amazingly, after two decades in the business, the star still hasn't learned how to sing." Derogatis wrote.

He concluded by suggesting: "Really, Madonna: Don't you think a nice, long vacation is a little bit overdue at this point? You certainly seem to need a rest."

Industry watchers, however, expect the album to sell well despite the criticism and bad reviews.

Earlier in the month, Madonna attracted flak when she announced plans to re-edit the controversial American Life music video which originally featured camo-clad hunky soldiers preening on fashion runways, planes dropping bombs and Madonna tossing a cigar lighter (shaped as a grenade) to a George W. Bush lookalike, who uses it to light a cigar.

The tamer version now features Madonna dressed in a military uniform, but she's simply singing in front of a backdrop of ever changing flags of different countries.

"I have decided not to release my new video. It was filmed before the start of the war and I do not believe it is appropriate to air it at this time. Due to the volatile state of the world and out of respect and sensitivity to the armed forces, who I support and pray for, I do not want to risk offending anyone who might represent the meaning of this video." She explained.

Madonna will also appear on the popular gay sitcom Will & Grace on Thursday (April 24), playing a character who boasts about her dead-end job in the music industry.