★★★★★
“Sometimes I just like to hide in the shadows / Create a new persona…” admits Madonna on ‘Confessions II’s opening track as she brings to an end a seven-year wait since her last full-length album. Compared to 2019’s ‘Madame X’, where she proclaimed “I guess I’m lost” (‘Extreme Occident’), she’s now right back where she belongs: on the dancefloor with sounds that make this one of her strongest albums to date.
Opener ‘I Feel So Free’ was our first glimpse, released as a promotional feeler, rather than a single, to set expectations. Living in a dimension with 2005’s ‘Future Lovers’, both sample Donna Summer’s hit ‘I Feel Love’. However, this sequel track has an irregular, unpredictable structure: a gratifying feature heard throughout the entire album as each track is distinctively unique and vitalising.
Madonna teamed up with producer Stuart Price once again (the idea came after he joined her as musical director on her 2023 Celebration Tour), but the pair do not mimic the sound of ‘Confessions on a Dancefloor’. Never allowing herself to become bound by nostalgia, she instead draws on the first album’s pivotal essence and carries that into new styles with dirtier, more rapid beats and intensified moods.
Our second peek at the fiercely anticipated sequel came during a surprise performance at Coachella. During Sabrina Carpenter’s Coachella set in April, the notable, airy synths that commence ‘Vogue’ revealed Madonna as her surprise guest before they performed 'Bring Your Love', then unreleased. Officially released a week later, proper listening confirmed it as a contagious, full-blown house track where the pair warn “Don’t try to distract me with numbers” to those who dared to try and tell them what kind of music to make for the new record to hit algorithms.
Madonna gives the gays what they want, so ‘Love Sensation’ premiered with a performance at New York’s Times Square in June, in partnership with Grindr, of course (along with the first performance of 2005’s ‘Get Together’ in 20 years). It’s ecstatic house and bounces with cheers of “There’s nothing that we cannot do”.
However, lead-up singles barely revealed the full extent of what the 16-track masterpiece has to offer, and not listening to it in full from start to finish would be doing it an injustice.
Fans were in a chokehold on the 5th of June when Confessions II - The Film dropped, featuring a star-studded cast including Sabrina Carpenter, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kate Moss and Debi Mazar, and previewed a snippet of ‘Danceteria’. Taking us back to the culturally-seismic ‘80s club where she made her name, she cuts between rap (think: ‘Vogue’ crossed with ‘American Life’) and names the characters she used to lay eyes on as she floated from floor to floor each night, even subtly dropping a Lou Reed sample with ‘Walk On The Wild Side’s distinctive “Doo-doo-doo”s forming the final bridge.
Martin Garrix previewed an unreleased track at a show in Brooklyn, which he later confirmed to be his collaboration with the Queen of Pop, ‘Bizarre’. It has hints of ‘MDNA’ (but more addictive) as Madonna’s icy-cool vocals soar over a lightning beat. It’s made for a sweat-soaked crowd and demands to be blasted through speakers. ‘Love Without Words’ is equally a technohead’s dream with provocative vocals over enlivening, club-heavy production from Price. On dark-techno track ‘Everything’, aggressive, electronic assertions fly as Madonna curses a disconnected society: “It’s not okay / I don’t f*ck with it”. After watching clips from her Coachella appearance, where she performed to a sea of phones recording her, it’s easy to understand why.
Powerful, spoken-word segments act as hair-raising moments of consciousness throughout, linking themes and submerging listeners deeper into the album’s chemistry of sounds. On ‘One Step Away’, a level-headed, reverberated declaration signifies the album’s purpose: “People think that dance music is superficial, but they’ve got it all wrong”. It’s a stimulating, sonic journey that redefines what dance music can be and taps into your soul. As such, ‘Good for the Soul’ pairs movement with mantra as vocoder vocals soothe whilst provoking motion.
During recording, Madonna lost her brother Christopher Ciccone, causing her to channel that pain into ‘Fragile’ and one of her most crushing opening lines: "People really think that there’s a beginning and ending / To this thing called life / But energy never dies”. Low notes hit hard over muffled violins that plead emotion before the track fully begins. Set over a jungle beat, it encourages listeners to release their grief together, all at once.
This is arguably her most biographical record. 'The Test’ not only allows Madonna to sing vulnerably about motherhood, but also her daughter, Lola Leon, who said, “There’s a lot of love that is unspoken but also a lot of tensions and emotions that are difficult to put into words” when speaking in an interview with Bob the Drag Queen. 'Betrayal' also digs deep, with a noir soundscape revealing a buildup of tension and hatred towards her late step-mother (“You’ll never take my mother’s place”), where vented frustrations allow her to let off steam over palpitating beats.
It wouldn’t be a Madonna album without reference to her Catholic roots, so on 'My Sins Are My Savior’, she’s joined by Stromae’s sensual, sultry French verses to make clear that she doesn’t detest her sins; she embraces them.
‘Confessions II’ reaches its climax with 'L.E.S. Girl', a pivot compared to the other 15 tracks, slowing right down to some '60’s guitar flicks and a vintage drum machine to tell a melancholy story about a “Lower East Side girl / Lost in a fragile world” and a mysterious boy with “a Marlon Brando face”. It’s a reminder of where it all began for her and an anchor to a time when she was less known and more susceptible, and when dancing was her greatest weapon. This album proves that it still is.
Kai Palmer
Image: ‘Confessions II’ Official Album Cover