Madonna looks like she’s hiding something on the cover of her 15th album. Confessions II. She sits on a speaker, her swimsuit and legs peeking out from under a flowing deep purple veil. The effect is regal, holy, sexy and mournful—a chic update to her signature blend of sacred and profane tastes. But there is one caveat: she is covering up.
Secrecy is not usually Madonna’s thing. From the very beginning she was determined to make the world look at her, all of her – in her bed, on a cross, with a cone, naked. As a young woman who took MTV by storm, she found strength in visibility; More recently, her insistence on staying in the picture has become a challenge. In 2023, my colleague Sophie Gilbert described Madonna’s social media presence (her surgically sculpted sixty-year-old face rocking TikTok) as a breach of contract between the public and its female stars: “If you age privately, then, as the deal goes, you can triumphantly return to being royalty in your silver age. But Madonna never signed up for a dignified pacification.”
Confessions II It’s finally Madonna’s turn to settle down with dignity. This may seem like a strange description of a club album being sold with the Grindr Exxxclusive Picture Disc, but then again, hedonism has been her home since Like a Virgin. The sequel to her last great album, 2005. Confessions on the dance floor, Confessions II moves forward steadily and nostalgically, like the officially sanctioned biopic she recently had to shelve. In fact, the most interesting thing about the record is the recognition it generated (believe me New York Post to crudely clarify the cultural narrative: “Taylor Swift has a tacky wedding with MSG and Madonna releases an amazing album—it’s a bizarre world”). Fans are thrilled that Madonna has rediscovered who she is, but unfortunately, there’s a lot missing.
Just like the first time Confessions The album, which he contributed to, produced by Stuart Price, travels through a menagerie of dance styles: swing house, fast-paced big beat, meditative drum and bass. Many of these subgenres have long since been commercialized into hokum—the jazzy breakbeats of “Betrayal” would kill over snacks at Tao—but Price’s touches are impressively subtle. The songs evolve in overlapping waves of sound, making listeners feel as if they are floating on an endless wave.
But then like the first Confessions there was a molten brightness to his mood – think ABBA’s runaway hit ‘Hung Up’ – that frosty one. The title track, “I Feel So Free,” opens with a synth that pulsates like a lost satellite and Madonna’s almost resigned whisper. She feels she can’t trust people and her antidote is “safety in numbers” on the dance floor. She begins to coo in the manner of Donna Summers’ “I Feel Love,” but the expected explosion of ecstasy never comes. The track is about freedom, but it also talks about restraint.
One reason for this reticence is to emphasize her words. Last year, on health influencer Jay Shetty’s podcast, Madonna expressed her desire to spread the wisdom she gleaned from Kabbalah; many of the ideas she conveyed in that conversation have now been translated almost word for word into songs. She encourages listeners to focus on their intentions and believe in love—great ideas that are also completely cliché in pop music and are delivered artlessly here. “It all starts with consciousness,” she says emphatically in “Good for the Soul.” Later, through the shaky strings of “Everything,” she paraphrases St. John of the Cross and Harvey Dent: “Where there’s most darkness / There you’ll find the greatest light.”
True transcendence approaches only when she stops preaching and Price risks interrupting the breathing exercise. “Everything” and “Bring Your Love” emphasize energy and sonic wonder, while Madonna plays a campy character angry at modern phone culture in the former and girlishly giggling with Sabrina Carpenter in the latter. Moreover, Danceteria will renovate the famous nightclub where Madonna performed in the 80s. When she raps about hanging out with Jean-Michel Basquiat and hiding cocaine from the DJ, the arrangement changes: a hip-hop break here, an acid house strobe there. Some listeners will call the track corny; others will enjoy it as theater. The edge of taste is where it belongs.
Later on in the album, the pace slows down and she shares personal revelations with caution. “Bizarre” is a catchy piece, seemingly about holding the torch for Sean Penn; “Betrayal” humiliates her late mother-in-law. At this point in her life, Madonna is clearly tormented by unsettled bills and denial of relationship closure, but it feels like she’s holding back her most intense feelings so as not to disrupt the flow. “Fragile” is the most effective ballad on the album because Madonna, touchingly if transparently, turns the death of her brother Christopher in 2024 into her own story of self-realization. Another highlight, “The Test,” features her daughter Lola Leon singing with an unusual rhythm and word choice that demonstrates how typical her mother was.
The problem here is not that everything is fine. Madonna has been trying to enlighten us since 1998. Ray of Lightbut then—and for much of her career—her personal quest was linked to her creative one. With an underground ear and an eye for the mainstream, Madonna continues to try to push pop music forward. This once included trip-hop and yoga mantras. What would it mean to release a modern Madonna album right now? Sort out forgotten efforts like fried EDM MDNA (2012) and trap-tastic Rebel Heart (2015), and you’ll find a lot of poor answers to that question, but there are also tracks here and there that are so crazy with ambition that they Confessions II sound like AI.
Trading her restless spark for an enjoyable consistency could theoretically earn her at least a few top-notch fireworks, but one return visit to the first Confessions It’s amazing how mediocre the songwriting is here. Nothing calls for another greatest hits collection; nothing is likely to inspire the next wave of pop music. Instead, she gave fans a completely normal summer soundtrack. Overestimating this gift risks sending a sad message: What the world ultimately wants from Madonna, and any bold performer in her vein, is the safest version of herself. I suspect that she is hiding her boredom behind the veil.