Madonna is getting candid about family drama.

The Queen of Pop spoke out during her first-ever podcast appearance on On Purpose with Jay Shetty about her 2026 studio album, and an upcoming song she wrote for it called “Fragile.”

During the conversation, she revealed it was inspired by her estranged late brother Christopher Ciccone, who died in 2024, and whom she hadn’t spoken to for years and considered her “enemy.”

Keep reading to find out more…

“It’s important to find a way to forgive even people that you perceive as your biggest enemies. For a really long time, it was my brother who died recently,” She said.

“I think the hardest ones are the people that you feel like…you’re the closest to. They’re your greatest ally and they turn on you. The people that hurt you the most are the people that you love the most.”

“Having to forgive my brother or knowing that I had to forgive my brother was, you know, it’s like your ego dances around it like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it. I’ll get to calling him up or talking to him or being his friend or helping him.” But eventually I did.”

“If someone you love deeply betrays you and does something that shows that they have no consciousness in that moment that they made that choice to do that, it’s a bitter pill for me to swallow. I can’t speak for everyone, but I imagine that lots of people feel this way,” she went on to say.

“For my brother, I didn’t speak to him for, you know, for years, years, and years. And it was him being ill um and reaching out to me and saying, ‘I need your help.’ And me having that moment like, ‘Am I going to help my enemy?’ You know, that’s how it felt. And I just did…and I felt so relieved. It was such a load off my back, such a weight that was removed, baggage that I could put down to finally be able to be in a room with him and holding his hand even if he was dying and saying, ‘I love you and I forgive you.’ That was really important,” Madonna explained.

“And interestingly, I wrote a song about him. I’m working on new music and I wrote a song called ‘Fragile,’ which is about my brother. And then I wrote another song…it’s called ‘Forgive Yourself.’ The chorus of the song is ‘If you can’t forgive me, forgive yourself,” which is something we all have to do. We have to forgive others, but we also have to forgive ourselves and stop beating up on ourselves about things, choices we’ve made in the past that haven’t worked out for ourselves or other people.” Watch from the 1:11:00 mark above.

In 2008, Christopher published a book called Life With My Sister Madonna, which was a tell-all about his deteriorating relationship with Madonna over the years.

See her emotional statement after his death.

She also revealed a moment in her life that she felt like she wanted to die.