Six Confessions about Madonna's "Confessions II"

On the eternally intriguing topic of Madonna, let’s be honest. No matter when you discovered her, on “Holiday” or Ray of Light or Confessions on a Dance Floor, the last decade or so of her music has been challenging, to say the least. Seven years later, I’m still trying to make sense of Madame X’s gothic art-pop, or whatever it was.

So when news leaked that Madonna would not only be returning to her former record label, Warner Brothers, but to dance music as well, it was cause for some degree of dancing in the streets. Or maybe just in one’s kitchen. But either way, good news.

Compared to her last few records, Confessions II has been given a laudatory sendoff, which is more or less correct. Her most cohesive and warmest work in years—”warm” by Madonna standards, anyway—it wants to tug you back onto the dance floor, not turn you away at the door with a disapproving frown.

How confessional is it? For such a notoriously guarded public figure, a little: there are songs about broken relationships (“When the book of love is written, I am the writer/And by the last page, you will not be mentioned”) and reminisces about her club days. But starting with its title, Confessions II is practically an admission that some of her later work hasn’t been up to par, even when she was, admirably, trying to not repeat her own musical past.

Also in keeping with the title, I have a few Madonna confessions of my own to make. And it’s time I spill them, tied to a record that tries to be many different things at once—much like Madonna herself over the decades.

Confession No. 1: I’m wary of sequel albums, so I went into this one with a degree of skepticism.

The sequel record is not one of pop’s especially noteworthy legacies. Who among us still listens to Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell 2: Back into Hell, Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick 2, Metallica’s Re-Load or Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience Part 2? Maybe Neil Young’s Harvest Moon, which is kind of, sort of, a followup to Harvest.

Confession No. 2: I really love “Hollywood” and “Love Profusion” on the largely dismissed American Life.

This may seem like an off-the-wall admission to make, but let me explain. While that album is spotty at best, those two songs (and “What It Feels Like for a Girl” from the previous Music) felt like new-era Madonna. They harked back to her early singles but also revealed a singer and songwriter with a more burnished and more mature approach to her craft: dance music for adults, as it were.

A good chunk of Confessions II settles into a similar groove, jettisoning some of the musical and lyrical crassness that overcame her music this century. Reuniting with producer Stuart Price, who worked on the first Confessions, Madonna has made an album that simulates one long, winding night in a club. Songs segue into each other, making you feel as if you’re wandering from one room to another, with a drink or something else in hand.

With a few exceptions, the beats aren’t especially hard. With their soft, padded grooves, the mood is akin to an employees’ after-hours rave at an Urban Outfitters. But when the rhythms, that queen-siren voice and the melody come together—especially early in the album, on “I Feel So Free,” “Good for the Soul” and “One Step Away”—the results are beguiling.

Confession No. 3: That said, I miss the ballads.

Here and there, Confessions II lives up to its title. “It’s really hard for me to trust people/Can you blame me?” she intones on “I Feel So Free. “I never know what people like me,” adding that that’s why she prefers to go out dancing, for “safety in numbers.”

But the music doesn’t always have the same range. As more than proven on Something to Remember, the compilation of her ballads that’s one of her best anthologies, Madonna is one of our great sad-sack singers.

The only time that musically contemplative side of her emerges is on “L.E.S. Girl,” a gentle twinkler that looks back on being young, in love and relatively carefree in downtown New York in the ’80s. It’s a wonderfully evocative song, but it’s the last tune on the album, it’s the only one like it, and it’s barely three minutes long.

Confession No. 4: I’m sorry I once wrote something snippy about her singing.

Having been a fan of “Borderline” and “Lucky Star,” and some of Like a Virgin, I was looking forward to her set at Live Aid. But at least on the live TV broadcast we were all watching, her voice sounded a little shaky and out of tune, and I made some crack about it in something I wrote way back then.

But as Confessions II shows, she’s long been one of pop’s most distinctive singers. No belting or melisma for her, but still so much nuance, subtlety and personality in her delivery. Much like the great singers of her times, from Sinatra to Presley to Adele, you know it’s her as soon as she opens her mouth to sing. And that’s very much the case here.

Confession No. 5: I’m still not a fan of her collabs with pop stars half her age.

Someone on Madonna’s team needs to sit her down and explain that inviting a younger, “hotter” pop artist to join her is no guarantee of a hit or even a good record. From Britney to Justin to Nicki Minaj, Madonna’s sonic hookups with the kids have never resulted in anything up to her standards.

The same goes here when Sabrina Carpenter pops up on “Bring Your Love.” Her voice blends so much into the sonic woodwork that she’s barely audible, but then, the song is such a generic semi-banger that it wouldn’t matter if she were up front or not.

Confession No. 6: Confessions II will be on steadier rotation than “Bitch I’m Madonna,” but time will tell if it will wear well.

Like the first Confessions, which peaked with “Forbidden Love,” Confessions II starts to sag and feel repetitive halfway through. “Everything” launches like it wants to burn down the disco, but it never quite achieves liftoff; the ecstasy is missing, and I don’t mean the drug. In “Danceteria,” it’s fun to hear her look back at the club days, making references to cocaine, early breakdancers and the Lounge Lizards. But Madonna doesn’t seem to truly give herself over to the grooves like she once did.

We could also do without the many spoken song intros or the TED-Talk-with-a-beat lyrics (“the dance floor is not just a place, it’s a threshold/a ritualistic space where movement replaces language”).

In the end, Confessions II does what it needed to do: It humanizes Madonna once more, reminds you what made her so special, makes you want to root for her again. Whether or not the beats can save her—or us—anymore is a confession for another day.

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