Ladies and gentlemen, they’s and thems, please make your way to the dance floor. This is not a drill. Madonna needs you to dance, celebrate and pray with your bodies. Twenty years after the release of Confessions on a Dance Floor, the Queen of Pop returns with its long-awaited successor and it would not be CONFESSIONS II without Stuart Price serving as executive producer. Together, the duo is determined to deliver some of Madonna’s strongest work in decades.
A sequel does not mean a copy-and-paste continuation of a successful album. Instead, Madonna and Stuart Price begin by exploring new territory. Acid house may well be one of the few genres Madonna had yet to embrace. On ‘I Feel So Free’ and ‘Good For The Soul’, she once again proves that no sound should be off limits for a living legend. Reinvention has always been one of her greatest strengths, and we can only hope she never stops pushing herself creatively.
As much as we understood the decision to release the Sabrina Carpenter-assisted ‘Bring Your Love’ as the lead single, we could not help but feel it sounded a little too polished and commercial on first listen. Within the context of the album, however, it makes complete sense. Not only does it fit seamlessly into the tracklist, but Madonna’s decision to invite one of today’s biggest pop stars onto the record almost feels symbolic. It is as if she is giving Sabrina her own stamp of approval to take over the reins.
The rest of the collaborations are just as thoughtfully chosen. Martin Garrix joins Madonna on the EDM banger ‘Bizarre’. It is undoubtedly one of the album’s more commercial moments, but a banger nonetheless. She also embraces today’s Latin music landscape by inviting Zeid onto ‘Read My Lips’. At first, the collaboration feels slightly unexpected, yet it ultimately provides a welcome breather from the album’s shivery, orgasmic club music. Stromae, in turn, adds another layer of depth to the sensual ‘My Sins Are My Savior’, his warm French vocals blending beautifully with Madonna’s. Our favorite collaboration, however, has to be with her daughter Lola Leon on ‘The Test’. There is something heartbreakingly beautiful about hearing Madonna sing to Lola, “Little Star, I tried to put you on a pedestal. You didn’t ask for all the flashing lights. I didn’t think of how it could disturb. Or how it hurt.”
Recently, the news broke that Universal pulled the plug on the Madonna biopic due to budget issues. Listening to CONFESSIONS II, we cannot help but wonder whether we even need a big-budget film to tell Madonna’s story when she is perfectly capable of doing so through her music. The fun and playful ‘Danceteria’ revisits the early days of her career, ‘Fragile’ reflects on her complicated relationship with her brother Christopher, who sadly passed away while the album was being recorded, and ‘Betrayal’ opens another deeply personal chapter as she reflects on her complicated relationship with her late stepmother.
Where most artists reference the musicians who inspired them, Madonna has the legacy to reference the defining moments of her own career. Throughout CONFESSIONS II, she pays tribute to herself through both the lyrics and the production. We hear echoes of Erotica on ‘My Sins Are My Savior’, revisit Bedtime Stories on ‘Betrayal’, and catch glimpses of Ray of Light on ‘L.E.S. Girl’. Elsewhere, songs like ‘Bring Your Love’ and ‘One Step Away’ lovingly nod to ‘Vogue’. This feels like so much more than a continuation of Confessions on a Dance Floor. It feels like Madonna choosing to tell her own story before anyone else can. CONFESSIONS II is unmistakably her best work in years. Now all that is left to hope for is a deluxe edition featuring those rumored collaborations with Kylie Minogue and Charli XCX.