Madonna’s upcoming fifteenth studio album will be another hour of nonstop music aimed at getting people dancing.
And for someone as globally famous as Madonna, being on the dance floor or throwing shapes in a DJ booth is where she insists she still feels the most free at the age of 67. It takes her back to a time when she was just another anonymous person in a nightclub, dancing to escape from their normal lives.
Looking back to the Seventies when she was a hopeful young dancer in Michigan, Madonna and her fans owe a debt of gratitude to her first ballet teacher who took her to the gay club Manjos in Detroit.
“He’s like, ‘I have to show you something, it’s gonna blow your mind’,” She recalls of a life changing moment. “I’m like ‘okay’. And so I walked into this club, and the doors opened, and there were these two really beautiful men without their shirts on, wearing roller skates and bow ties and shorts, and they had a drink on a tray, and I was like ‘Wow, we’re not in Kansas anymore’. And that was my first dancefloor experience, where everybody was so free. Girls were dancing with girls, and boys were dancing with boys, and some people were just whirling around by themselves. And I was like ‘Wow, so amazing, everybody’s so free’.
“Cut to my song, I Feel So Free, which I just released, and I feel a tremendous sense of freedom when I’m dancing.”
View 4 ImagesMadonna has teamed up with producer Stuart Price again for Confessions II(Image: Ricardo Gomes)
Looking back to that night and other ones clubbing in New York as a youngster before finding fame, she tells the BBC: “I didn’t have any cool outfits, and everybody had cool hair, earrings up their ears.
“I just took all my dance clothes and reinvented them, so hunger was the best sauce. I was very awkward, and I didn’t fit in. But I didn’t care, because when I start dancing, I really don’t care what you think. I’m in my body. I’m like, definitely not in my head. That’s the worst place to be!”
Confessions II is the follow up to the hugely successful Confessions On A Dance Floor with superstar producer Stuart Price back working alongside Madonna to create more anthems. The pair have already dropped tracks including I Feel Free and Freedom during a surprise set at Los Angeles club The Abbey.
Price says: “Madonna’s always got a story, and that’s always been the case, so she’s a great storyteller. She’s very poetic in the way that she writes. The studio just becomes a space to tell the stories.”
One Step Away is a moment on the record which Price says happened in “a kind of flash of light” after they were dancing around to the track before it had lyrics, and Madonna asked him to switch a microphone on, only for her to deliver the lyrics in one stream of consciousness.
“It’s kind of like I get possessed, it’s weird. The ideas come when I don’t try too hard. It just happens,” she admits
For someone who has written songs about her sex life, religion and her parents, finding new subjects close to her heart for inspiration could be tough. But Madonna has combined her love of the dance floor with the loves in her life for her first album in seven years.
Asked if the new album contains her most personal songs, Madonna says: “I wouldn’t say that, but you know, they’re very specific, they’re very…. a lot was happening in my life at the time that I was writing.
“In the beginning I was affected deeply by the death of my brother Christopher.”
View 4 ImagesMadonna with her brother Christopher(Image: Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Christopher Ciccone died aged 63 in October 2024 from cancer, and Madonna’s new track called Fragile is her response to this.
“That was another song that just came,” she says, revealing it was written and created in a day. “I actually came to the studio, and I spoke to my brother, who was in a lot of pain on the phone, and he was not in a good place, and I knew that it was close to the end. Then I went upstairs and wrote a song, so it was all connected to what was happening in my life.
“It’s cathartic. It’s like a kind of therapy, you know, to let go of somebody that you love. The best way to do it is to write about it…it’s like an exorcism.”
Asked by Graham Norton if her father has heard the track yet, she adds: “No. I’m gonna see him soon, and he will. I don’t wanna, like, push them over the edge! But it’s not disturbing, it’s beautiful.”
The family connections for Confessions II do not end there. Another track sees her duet with her daughter Lourdes Leon for The Test. For this song though rather than take control, Madonna insists it was a project with a 50-50 approach, even down to the lyrics.
“She approached me, and she’s been very reticent to work with me, or to be my daughter, taking advantage of her privilege.
“She’s been very standoffish, and working at her own pace, and you know, I respect that deeply, and she’s a great songwriter.
“She’s has a much, much better voice than I do, but then one day she came to me, and she said, ‘You know what I realized that I’m holding on to something, and maybe it’s a kind of anger’.
“Because at the end of the day she didn’t ask for this, she had been through her adolescence struggling with those feelings for a long time. And then she came to me, and she said ‘Let’s write a song together. I think it will be a very, very healing experience. And you say exactly what you want to say, and I’ll say exactly what I want to say’.
“I was like ‘Okay, you’re on, let’s do it’. I was so happy. We sound good together.”
There are many other female artists who want to work with her including Sabrina Carpenter and Kylie Minogue who appear on Confessions II.
View 4 ImagesMadonna and Kylie appear to be stoking the rumours they duet on the new album.(Image: Ricardo Gomes)
Although Kylie’s song is not 100% confirmed, she served Graham and Madonna drinks during their hour long BBC interview, which appeared to be their way of announcing a collaboration. They praised each other’s music but declined to talk specifically about their project together. With Sabrina, the iconic singer cut to the chase and reached out herself to make the collaboration happen on the track Bring Your Love.
Madonna says: “I DM-ed her. I said I’m making a new record, and I would love to collaborate with you on something. It ended up being Bring Your Love, and it worked perfectly. She was already scheduled to open for Coachella, so she invited me to perform with her. It all happened in a very sure way.”
In total there are 16 tracks on the album, which is a continuous mix of music “because that’s what happens in a club,” explains Madonna. It could have even been longer, but she wanted to only use songs she felt kept the energy of the LP high.
“We have eight songs that we really love that didn’t make it on the record. You could only put so many songs on the record, 16 seems indulgent almost.
“It’s a great record to work out to, like, ‘does this make me want to get up and move?’ Just drive me, just inspire me? Does this give me an incentive, make me want to sweat? Yeah!
“And if it didn’t, I was like ‘off the record’. It was actually a perfect way to choose things. These are the keepers.”
The only other thing fans will want to know is when they might hear Madonna perform these new songs live, with her last tour ending in May 2024. But those hoping to work up a sweat with Madonna on stage may be in for a wait, unless they are at the World Cup final where she will do a mini set at half time.
She tells Graham she will begin doing “promo tours” in the coming months, which is unlikely to feature full length shows, but then the next big live event won’t be until 2027 which she teases saying “then in the summertime something bigger” which she hints could be in the UK.
Host Graham says he thinks he knows what that could be, and the obvious answer seems to be a headline slot at Glastonbury Festival? Last night Madonna’s publicist told the Mirror any tour plans were “all speculation” at this stage.
But even if you have to wait until next Summer to see her, at least it’s now only a few days until millions of Madonna fans can dance along to her new album in the sunshine. Somewhere out there, Madonna is likely to be doing the same.
* Confessions II is out July 3 on Warner Music. Madonna & Graham is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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