Madonna has announced the release of her 15th studio album, Confessions II: a sequel to Confessions on a Dance Floor, her disco-fabulous 2005 release regarded as one of the jewels of her discography.
The album will be released on 3 July. Details are still relatively scarce beyond that, but like its predecessor, Confessions II is a collaboration with the British producer Stuart Price.
Madonna said in a statement:
When Stuart Price and I first started working on this record, this was our manifesto:
We must dance, celebrate, and pray with our bodies. These are things that we’ve been doing for thousands of years — they really are spiritual practices. After all, the dance floor is a ritualistic space. It’s a place where you connect with your wounds, with your fragility. To rave is an art. It’s about pushing your limits and connecting to a community of like-minded people.
Sound, light, and vibration
Reshape our perceptions
Pulling us into a trance-like state.
The repetition of the bass, we don’t just hear it but we feel it.Altering our consciousness and dissolving ego and time.
She also quoted from a new song, One Step Away: “People think that dance music is superficial, but they’ve got it all wrong. The dancefloor is not just a place, it’s a threshold: A ritualistic space where movement replaces language.”
She also released a teaser of new music on YouTube: a deep house track with Madonna uttering a soliloquy over the top: “Thanks for coming. Sometimes, I like to just hide in the shadows, create a new persona, a different identity. I can be whoever I want to be, create a new persona. Honestly I wish I could be like other people and just not care, but out here on the dancefloor I feel so free.”
The album looks set to be a return to the nightclub music that Madonna has visited at various points in her career, with hits such as Vogue, Music and Confessions on a Dance Floor’s Abba-sampling lead single Hung Up.
After the first Confessions album, she pivoted towards pop, R&B and hip-hop on the albums Hard Candy, MDNA and Rebel Heart, before her most recent record, Madame X, which was a quirky collection whose influences included Portuguese fado.
With its sleek and euphoric sound helmed by Price – also known for his projects Les Rythmes Digitales, Zoot Woman and Thin White Duke – Confessions on a Dance Floor restored Madonna to global mega-popularity after her relatively little-liked 2003 American Life. Hung Up went to No 1 in 41 countries, including the UK, where the follow-up single Sorry also topped the charts.
Since the release of Madame X in 2019, Madonna has been revisiting her back catalogue, releasing Veronica Electronica, an album featuring remixed versions of material from her Ray of Light era; and Bedtime Stories: The Untold Chapter, an EP of demos and rarities from the time of 1994 album Bedtime Stories.
She also had a hit with Popular, a track with the Weeknd and Playboi Carti for the TV series The Idol, and collaborated with Christine and the Queens.
In 2023, having survived a serious bacterial infection that had required her being put in a medically induced coma, she set off on her epic Celebration tour, a greatest hits live spectacle which culminated in a concert for 1.6m people in Rio de Janeiro.