Today, Madonna releases her long-awaited new album, ‘Confessions II’, after a campaign that has included dozens of promotional actions. The last of them took place tonight in London, with Madonna herself commenting on the album with Bob the Drag Queen and her daughter, Lola León. In other cities, such as Madrid, raves have been held to launch the album.
The sequel to ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’ (2005) marks Ciccone’s recording return after seven years and, as a sister release to Madonna’s dance masterpiece, it is destined to reunite the public that ‘Madame X’ (2019) divided. But the best thing is that ‘Confessions II’ manages to differentiate itself enormously from its predecessor.
‘Confessions II’ explores sounds that had no place in the first part: the Ibizan house of ‘One Step Away’, the big beat of ‘Everything’ -about the isolation caused by networks-, the EDM of ‘Bizarre’, the techno of ‘School’ or the more nocturnal jungle and drum’n’bass of ‘Fragile’. If trip-hop marks ‘My Sins Are My Saviour’, with Stromae reciting verses, ‘LES Girls’ closes the album with guitars and atmospheres typical of Beach House and Broadcast to remember Madonna’s youth before her success.
If trip-hop returns in ‘Betrayal’, with a dejected Madonna who has “lost faith”, sampling Erik Satie with the help of none other than Mirwais, ‘The Test’ is the most emotional experiment thanks to the involvement of Lola León, leaving a beautiful dialogue between mother and daughter that begins with the phrase “Little Star”. It is not the only reference to a song from the past that appears on the album.
Among the songs previously advanced in the ‘Confessions II’ film, the surprises hidden in the arrangements of ‘Good for the Soul’ and the extended version of ‘Read My Lips’ stand out, while ‘Danceteria’ is the most hedonistic piece. Song Of The Day is as if Madonna had taken the spoken word from ‘Vogue’ and written an entire song from it. But it is much more than that.
This fun and dancey tribute to Madonna’s beginnings at night, by her friends Martin Burgoyne, Haoui Montaug and Debi Mazar, is the most accessible cut on the album, but its brief sample of Lou Reed’s ‘Walkin’ on the Wild Side’ is not the only surprise that the production contains. In its final stretch, step on the accelerator to fully surrender to the electro shoe. It is not known if it samples Daft Punk, as a tweet indicates, or ‘Music’ directly.
Charging …
