FEATURE:
After Grand Confessions…
PHOTO CREDIT: Nadia Lee Cohen for Interview Magazine
What Next for Queen Madonna?
__________
THIS year…
PHOTO CREDIT: Rafael Pavarotti
has been a busy one for Madonna. There has been a mix of the old and new. In terms of the old, we marked forty years of True Blue in June. That is one of her best albums, though one a lot of people might not have heard. Perhaps not ranked as high as Ray of Light or Like a Prayer. Confessions II came out earlier this month and got widespread acclaimed. A follow-up to 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, Madonna proving still to the be the Queen of Pop. As we celebrate her sixty-eighth birthday on 16th August, what next for the best-selling female artist of all time? There have been rumours that she has booked Wembley Stadium for dates, nothing has been confirmed up to the time of me writing this feature (26th July). What is apparent is that Madonna is as vital and important as she has ever been. With everything she does, there is ageism and misogyny. The latter she has been dealing with since her career started in the 1980s. The latter she has faced for decades. She always hits back and does not put up with any of it. A magnetic performer, I have never seen her live, even though her music was deep in thew tapestry of my childhood music upbringing. With one of the greatest back catalogues in music history, I do want to start with a review of Confessions II. Arguably her best album since Confessions on a Dance Floor, this incredible album is going to sit alongside the best albums of this year too. The Guardian wrote a four-star review for, as they see it, Madonna’s most vital album in two decades:
‘Ask yourself this – what are you doing it for? / Is it for you? Is it for them?” ponders Madonna during Bring Your Love, a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter from Confessions II. It’s a question you could ask of her decision to release a follow-up to 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor 21 years on.
The official line is, of course, that it’s for her. Confessions II was inspired by Madonna’s 2023 Celebration tour, a rampage through her back catalogue – with staging that recreated the videos for old hits including Don’t Tell Me and Human Nature – that apparently set the singer thinking about her past. Certainly, Confessions II is rich with references to Madonna’s history, and not only the album from which it borrows its title and its initial structure, a sequence of house-influenced tracks that segue into each other like a DJ mix. There’s also the trip-hop-inspired Madonna of Bedtime Stories (the album concludes with a suite of slower, more introspective material); the club-hopping, fame-hungry Madonna of her 1982 debut single Everybody, who keeps cropping up in the lyrics; and the maternal, spiritually inclined Madonna of Ray of Light. The Test, a duet with her daughter Lourdes, is an older, wiser sequel to that album’s lullaby-like Little Star, alluded to in its opening lines.
Equally, a more sceptical voice might suggest that Confessions II is for them – namely the fans who’ve bailed on Madonna over the last two decades. By common consent, Confessions on a Dance Floor was her last untrammelled triumph. Every subsequent album she’s released has sold half what its predecessor did: her last, 2019’s Madame X, shifted half a million copies compared to Confessions on a Dance Floor’s 10m. Here, Confessions II’s title seems to implicitly suggest, is the Madonna you used to love; a craven attempt to win back deserters.
There’s doubtless a grain of truth in that – but Confessions II doesn’t feel particularly craven. Its sound eschews cutting-edge developments in dance music in favour of more tried-and-tested stuff. There’s the odd hint of UK garage – a noticeable skip to the rhythms of both Fragile and Good for the Soul – a whisper of EDM in Everything’s heavy bassline, and of Euro pop-dance in Read My Lips’ cocktail of pacy beat, Spanish guitar and sampled batucada drums. But for the most part, its primary influences are defiantly old school: I Feel So Free is derived from Lil Louis’ old Chicago classic French Kiss; Bring Your Love borrows from Inner City’s Good Life; an acid line erupts midway through Love Without Words; there’s lovely, understated piano on One Step Away that recalls Mr Fingers’ deep house. Similarly, the downtempo tracks carry a distinctly 90s Mo’ Wax mood: breakbeats, misty atmospherics, crackling vinyl, muted orchestrations, a Gainsbourg-y bit of spoken word from Belgian rapper Stromae and an interpolation from Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No 1 on Betrayal (more artfully done than the chunk of Tchaikovsky unceremoniously dumped in the middle of 2019’s Dark Ballet).
This is music that Madonna – and indeed producer Stuart Price – is well versed in: she seems far more at home than she did incorporating trap on Rebel Heart or duetting with Maluma during Madame X’s game attempts to glom on to the Latin American pop vogue. A sense of confidence is audible in the album’s willingness to let Madonna-free instrumental passages run long in the style of a 12in remix and, more strikingly, in the lyrics. Clearly she feels comfortable enough to be vulnerable: there’s a bit of standard-issue Bitch-I’m-Madonna posturing, but more often the mood is reflective, even brittle and regretful.
The vignettes of her life in early 80s New York are fantastic. Danceteria paints a vivid picture of the titular club, namechecking not only artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring but doorman Haoui Montaug; it quotes Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side, neatly linking different Manhattan demimondes. The vintage drum machine-driven LES Girl remembers a guitar-playing bohemian ex, who – not entirely unexpectedly – got the heave-ho when it became apparent he didn’t share her ambition. The most affecting song might be Fragile, an acoustic guitar-heavy eulogy to her late brother Christopher, with whom Madonna had a turbulent relationship – “we shared a fragile bond … don’t forget about me, don’t forget to be happy” – but The Test runs it close, filled with maternal remorse: “You didn’t ask for all the flashing lights.”
It’s not all good news. Confessions II is nearly 10 minutes longer than the original, and it doesn’t need to be: you could easily lose a couple of the less distinguished house tracks, Love Sensation and School among them. It lacks an undeniable, solid-gold pop banger along the lines of Hung Up, although Danceteria’s bright-hued disco house – one of two tracks co-written and produced by Andrew Watt and Cirkut – comes close. But if it’s not quite as good as Confessions on a Dance Floor, it’s unequivocally Madonna’s best album since Confessions on a Dance Floor, which you suspect will be more than enough for her fans, and might even beckon back some apostates: an accommodation with her past that bodes well for her future”.
This all bodes very well for the future. I am already interested to see where Madonna heads on her next album, which will be her sixteenth. That might be a while away, as she has left gaps between albums. Confessions II arrived six years after Madame X. However, this Queen of Pop will be releasing albums into her seventies. So many artists inspired by her. From Sabrina Carpenter to Charli xcx, you can see they channel elements of Madonna. To me, she is one of the most important artist in history. The career she has forged and all that she achieved. I was sad when the planned biopic with Julia Garner was shut down. An actress who resembles Madonna, especially in the mid-1980s, it would have been wonderful to see that biopic brought to life. I am going to end with an interview with Madonna from his year, as it is quite interesting. This amazing artist still inventing characters, switching sounds and remaining distinctly herself. Someone uncompromising and so assured. My biggest hope is that the biopic gets green-lit again. The budget was supposedly too high, but this is arguably one of the greatest stories in music history. I would be fascinated to see someone, possibly Julia Garner, cast as a young Madonna arriving in New York. Maybe having various actresses playing her. Maybe Mckenna Grace – who, at twenty, may be considered too young for the role, but she is a singer and a tremendous actor who could embody Madonna – could play Madonna in the early-'80s, and Julia Garner in the mid-‘80s. It is tragic that we may not see the biopic, though I hold out hope that it will come about. As Madonna celebrates her sixty-eight birthday on 16th August, there will be Instagram posts and worldwide celebrations. Perhaps she will play Wembley and mount this incredible show. She has teased she may headline Glastonbury next year. I think it is unlikely. As I have said before, Glastonbury has only ever had one woman over the age of forty headline the Pyramid Stage, so would they make an exception for Madonna? Also, her budget would be quite large, and I feel that it may be a costly slot. Though a Madonna headline slot would be amazing! I would love to see her lead an all-female Pyramid stage next year. You never know, she could already be locked in and confirmed for Glastonbury 2027 and is keeping quiet(ish) for now.
We desperately need to see that biopic. A great film that could feature cameos from artists like Sabrina Carpenter, if judged right, it could be one of the best biopics ever. There will be dates ahead, though I am not sure whether we will hear of any major London gigs quite yet. New music possibly in a couple or few years. It does mean there is availability for Madonna. Could she not get funding for a biopic or could Netflix bankroll it?! What is one of the most compelling stories of this genius Pop artist needs to be seen on the screen. Get Julia Garner back and have Madonna work with a screenwriter who would not take over, but could provide a useful sounding board and edit the script. I think another director should shoot the biopic, just a more experienced female director who could bring elements and layers to the story, as Madonna herself was mooted to direct. Whatever happens, we will keep hearing from Madonna, as she is never too far away. Keeping fans up to date across social media. Let’s end with snippets of an interview from Interview Magazine between Mel Ottenberg ana Madonna:
“OTTENBERG: Do you doomscroll?
MADONNA: Occasionally I open Instagram and something pops up that makes me go to the next visual. And then I go, “What am I doing? I have 5,000 things to do. Get off the phone.” I have a lot of discipline when it comes to social media, simply because I grew up without it. I didn’t have Instagram until 2018 or something. I grew up without TV. I’m not a person who gravitates toward distraction. Oh my god, I make lists every night, put Post-its everywhere, and then my day is filled with sometimes boring but also very exciting activities. And I do see, if I go on Instagram for more than 10 minutes, I get depressed, and I don’t want to go there. Why am I giving this nonexistent entity power over my soul, my brain, my vision of myself, my vision of the world? Time is precious, and that’s something I’ve known all my life. Time’s precious. What can I get done? What can I do?
OTTENBERG: Yes.
MADONNA: I keep journals. My manager gets them for me all the time. This one says “The Queen.” I go through probably three a week. I love to write. With my hand. I write all my lyrics. I see you write too…
OTTENBERG: I have to.
MADONNA: In the studio I have to write on paper and read from that paper when I’m singing. I scribble, make mistakes, rewrite, go to the next page. But I value those pages. They’re artifacts. The mind-hand connection is part of your soul in a way texting can never be. There’s no soul in texting.
OTTENBERG: There’s not.
MADONNA: I’m happy I grew up without all that, because it made me go to museums. That’s how I discovered Frida Kahlo. When you have to go out to learn and meet people, you have such a different experience in life.
OTTENBERG: Will you show me the album cover?
MADONNA: I only have it digitally.
OTTENBERG: Confessions is really one of my favorite album covers of all time.
MADONNA: Really? We didn’t think that one through too much, me and Steven [Klein], but it worked out really good.
OTTENBERG: And the Arianne [Phillips] styling, I was just like, “Oh my god.”
MADONNA: It was just my leotard and disco hair.
OTTENBERG: And not seeing the face but seeing the body and immediately knowing who it is. That outfit was so fresh, but not like anything that was in or cool in 2005. It went so hard because it was—
MADONNA: Unique.
OTTENBERG: You gave us something we didn’t know we needed.
MADONNA: Yeah. I’m looking for the cover. It references Confessions I, and I wear a lot of the same clothes, the YSL boots and the jackets Gucci made for me in every color. I don’t know if you remember that look.
OTTENBERG: Of course I remember. I’m obsessed with Confessions, forever.
MADONNA: I took it all out of my archives and brought it to the album cover photo shoot with Rafael Pavarotti.
OTTENBERG: Oh, fantastic.
MADONNA: We worked it into everything.
OTTENBERG: I love that. We were talking about A Clockwork Orange yesterday and you were telling me how that was a style reference for the “Hung Up” video.
MADONNA: Oh, yeah.
OTTENBERG: Fucking hot.
MADONNA: A Clockwork Orange also inspired Truth or Dare, when I’m singing the song “Keep It Together” and we have the bowler hats. If you go back and listen to that, I take a whole chunk of dialogue out of that movie and I say it on the microphone”.
I did just want to muse what comes next for Madonna. I am obsessed by that biopic and getting it on track. Whether rumoured dates at Wembley Stadium will materialise. If we are going to see any more singles come from Confessions II, and if there will be expanded edition. Perhaps Madonna getting someone to remix the album or covering songs for a sort of follow-up. If not a biopic, I would love to see a film with Madonna’s music at its heart. Maybe with an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ love story at the centre, set in the 1980s or ‘90s. After the massive love shown for Confessions II, one would think Madonna has a blank cheque she can write. Following a hectic first half of this year, the summer will be quite busy for Madonna. Though I hope that she has opportunity to kick back and relax…
AT the end of this year.