Confessions II arrives amid a welter of promotional spectacle and global corporate partnerships. At heart, though, it’s Madonna retreating from projects stuck in development hell, and working through bereavement, via the salve of making music in a low-key London situation with Stuart Price. He produced 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, to which this is a sequel. The preceding singles did not bode well but Confessions II contains surprises and shows a superstar holding her own.
Returning to the arena of clubland bangers, and presented as a continuous mix, it’s hampered by the fact that house music, once the most exciting musical form in the world, is now one of the most retro-conservative, providing ear chewing gum for every suburban high street bar in Britain. At 16 tracks and an hour in length, there are too many cuts that are generic, even when, in the case of “Bring Your Love”, with Sabrina Carpenter, the lyrics are feistily self-affirmative.
With that said, there’s much to enjoy too. An immediate stand-out is the hymn to 1980s New York clubland, “Danceteria”, wherein Madonna raps, a la Debbie Harry on “Rapture”, and sings with unalloyed nostalgic enthusiasm and remembered detail (“Then I see Mark Kamins, he’s the DJ/He’s the DJ, hide the cocaine/He played my tape ’Everybody’.”) over a euphoric filter-disco-house chunker.
Other cuts that raise the temperature, move the feet, and also stick in the memory, are the spacey, bassy back-room throbber “School”, the bitchy Latin bouncer “Read My Lips”, with Colombia reggaeton artist Feid, and, in more poptastic terms, “Bizarre”, with Dutch EDM kingpin Martin Garrix.
The unexpected aspect of Confessions II, however, is the high quality slowies at its tail-end. Madonna’s eulogy for her brother Christopher, who died in 2024 is a likeable breakbeat affair, affectingly melancholic, lyrically heartfelt, musically redolent of her “Frozen”-era work with William Orbit. “Betrayal” nicks Erik Satie’s beautiful piano motif from Gnossienne No.1 for a delicious slice of trip hop, while her bubbly chugger “The Test”, with daughter Lola Leon, is a mother’s apology for a profile that overshadows (“We're not the same but I’m treading on your footsteps”) .
It’s the final song, “L.E.S. Girl”, that really displays Madonna in the raw, an acoustic guitar-picked, bedroom-indie snapshot of her pre-fame “rent is overdue” New York days and a long-in-the-past boyfriend. It ends, “Everything fades away,” and is a poignant acknowledgement that, yes, times passes so fast and there’s a sadness to that.
40-plus years ago Madonna invented sexing it up in your pants in pop for girls, so all respect for keeping it up these decades later. Confessions II is a bold, righteous affront to those who would place pop culture’s veteran female performers in desexualised boxes. But it would also be lovely to hear more from contemplative, unselfconsciously older Madonna.
Below: Watch Madonna's 14-minute Confessions II - The Film
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