Madonna – Confessions II

★★★★

WARNERS

Reuniting with Warner Brothers after a 20-year break seems to have concentrated Madonna’s mind. Tracks from her 15th studio album show less of the experimental rhythms and global beats, from Cape Verdean morna to Colombian reggaeton, that drove 2019’s Madame X. Instead, it’s a return to her gravitational centre in clubland. More the pounding pulse of I Don’t Search I Find, less Batuka.

Confessions II’s opening track I Feel So Free was released on April 18, 2026, a swirling post-disco epic that references Lil Louis’ 1989 house classic French Kiss. Madonna’s vocal has an intimate, breathy tone. “Sometimes I just like to hide in the shadows,” she whispers, “Create a new persona, a different identity, I can be whoever I want to be.” Slowly building synth chords and a spacey aura accentuate Madonna’s shamanic female energy – a dynamism also exuding from the next release, lead single Bring Your Love. Recorded with Sabrina Carpenter, this slice of big room dance pop samples Inner City’s Good Life and is laced with a sense of provocation and defiance. In the same way Madonna teased American Life by kissing Britney Spears at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, she trailed Confessions II by throwing down the gauntlet to another Disney princess: “Bring it Sabrina,” she challenges, “You got something to say about it?”

These two songs cued up an album that further explores persona and power, a process that started with 2024’s Celebration tour. By turns a sorrowful and joyful reckoning of her life’s choices, this show wasn’t just a Greatest Hits vehicle. One of the stand-out moments was Justify My Love, sung in a dreamlike, languid way as an older woman looking back at memories of a more spikey, sexual self.

Musical director Stuart Price linked remixes of original studio recordings in a way that was sensitively attuned to her live vocals. “The shorthand was there. We were able to create productively,” he told Billboard. “The key component of working together is ‘do you understand each other?’” Given their easy collaborative approach, it’s not surprising that during a break in the Celebration tour Madonna began working on a new album with Price in his Notting Hill studio, picking up where they left off with the first Confessions On A Dance Floor sessions back in the early 2000s.

Confessions II is a continuation of that vibe, plugging into rave culture and her New York disco past, while at the same time infusing tracks with the wisdom of her 67 years. In fact, one of the highlights is Danceteria, a spoken word piece (like the rap Vogue) that reminisces about her NYC club days.

As well as euphoric numbers like Good For The Soul and Love Sensation there are sadder, reflective songs. There’s the yearning for love lost in Bizarre, a song about “a movie star, deep blue eyes” who is clearly Sean Penn (the clue is in the reference to a Shelby Cobra car, her wedding gift to him). She reflects with surprise on how bizarre it is to still care so much and feel so much pain over her broken marriage. There’s also the florid drama of Betrayal, where Madonna gives her stepmother short shrift for trying to replace the mother she lost.

Central to the album is the track Fragile, which has the icy rush of Frozen from 1998’s William Orbit-assisted rebirth Ray Of Light, and recalls her estranged brother Christopher, who passed away in 2024. The song conveys the sense of a difficult family history that overshadowed their brother/sister relationship (“We shared a name, a home/We shared a fragile bond…we were so lost, as children,” sings Madonna). But when he was dying of cancer they were reunited, and she felt a weight had been lifted. For Madonna, the musical pull of the dance floor is not just about escape but catharsis, a way of releasing dark buried emotion. As she sings in One Step Away, a song propelled by soulful strings and a nu-disco pulse, “Understand your violence and the trauma you’ve survived.”

Working one-to-one with Madonna, Stuart Price helped her sculpt and create a record that is both disco manifesto and deeply personal. “Letting go is a really important part of nightlife,” he says. “Expression is at the core of clubbing, and not being observed while doing it. Madonna communicates that, she’s a great leader in that sense.” She has encountered criticism from some quarters around the promotion for Confessions II, that she should grow old elegantly and gracefully (whatever that means) – but to some extent the leotards and bodices are a distraction. The album is a grower, communicating through the music and lyrics Madonna’s own intuitive thoughts on ageing, memory and what it means to fade away.

Not only tracing similar moves to its sonic/spiritual predecessor (and arguably her last truly great album) 21 years on, Confessions II places Madonna, now approaching her eighth decade, back onto those dance floors: New York sweatboxes like Danceteria where the 22-year-old from Michigan first hustled her way towards superstardom, but also the scenes from which she drew so much from for the rest of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Filtering the intervening years, experiences, and life lessons through sounds that made her, like Chicago house and Detroit techno, it’s also a timely reminder of why Madonna was crowned the Queen Of Pop in the first place, and continues to be a vital musical force.

Confessions II is out now on Warners.

BUY: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV

Track Listing:

1. I Feel So Free
2. Good For The Soul
3. One Step Away
4. Bring Your Love
5. Danceteria
6. Read My Lips
7. Everything
8. Love Without Words
9. Bizarre
10. School
11. Fragile
12. My Sins Are My Savior

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