Madonna
Confessions II
WARNER
At the risk of sounding like a Madonna apologist, it’s about time that everyone got off her back. The ageism stuff, the pitting her against the Taylor-Charli-Sabrina-Addison pop bloc—let’s be done. Madge has been there, done that, and has the receipts and the right to go back to the well of what she believes are past victories—such as teaming with producer Stuart Price on 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor. For my money, Madonna’s last truly great pop album was 2000’s electro-washed Music, with (revisionist history will bear me out) 2019’s Madame X as the sound of fantastic, cross-cultural, experimentation. Confessions, however, was more effortlessly ebullient in its intersection of disco, electropop, updated club sounds, and past Madonna samples, its subject matter her usual wheel-spinning lyrical lot: God, sex, survival, truculence, connection, forbidden love, club-as-ritual. Her voice was warmer, more sensual with time and, yes, age.
Reconnecting with producer and co-writer Price, Confessions II capitalizes on the velvet cordiality of Madonna’s vocals (even when clipped) with a brand of sparklingly empathetic electropop arrangements tailor-made to that tone. What we have here is an ecstatic, exquisite, and perfectly programmed album—one where the 21st century dancefloor is her happy and holy place, and every physical, spiritual, and emotional drama plays out with the gravity of Arthur Miller. The three co-joined post-house moments that open II likely mark the best curtain-raising suite she’s ever fashioned, filled heatedly with desire and questions she may never fully answer, all set upon an infectious Lil Louis sample that’s guaranteed to make audiences sweat. Like Soft Cell, who also pay tribute to NYC’s most decadently ’80s club, Madge pursues the ecstasy of “Danceteria” without need or heed of chemical stimulation (instead she enlists help from producers Andrew Watt and Cirkut, Lou Reed’s “Wild Side,” and some gossipy name-dropping), a feat she follows-up on glam-gloriously on the reminiscing taut-disco closer “L.E.S. Girl.”
In between II’s audacious top and bottom, Madonna and her daughter Lola Leon heal each other during the impassioned reverie of “The Test,” while the righteous rave balladry of “Fragile” reminds listeners how important her late brother Christopher was to her salvation. She stretches the limits of that same salvation on the icily alluring “My Sins Are My Savior” with the silken aid of Stromae by her side. There are surprisingly simplistic back-to-back looks at what romance is for her in the present with “Love Sensation” and “Love Without Words,” and if you’re seeking the sound of haunted souls and equally evocative electro soul, her pairing with Dutch producer Martin Garrix for “Bizzare” is not for the faint of spirit. If you were looking for an excuse to have Madonna back in your life and on your dancefloor, Confessions II is your North Star.
