Vulture
For most of Madonna’s career, it was déclassé to repeat yourself; to be seen as passé was a fate worse than death. These unspoken principles guided Madonna past the end of the 20th century after a reputation-building streak of collaborations with Reggie Lucas (“Borderline”), Nile Rodgers (“Like a Virgin”), and Patrick Leonard (“Live to Tell,” “Like a Prayer”). The ballooning scope and ambition of each successive release kept her forever in step with the pulse of the club at the time.
But the chart failures of ‘American Life’ in 2003 inspired something she doesn’t much endeavor: From the screaming 1979 ABBA sample of the lead single, “Hung Up,” 2005’s ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’ reconnected Madonna with her roots as a late-’70s club diva, feeding off her own rich history instead of morphing sonically to meet present trends. She now revisits the conceit of that latter-day classic with ‘Confessions II,’ her best new release since the first installment, writes critic Craig Jenkins.
Madonna is, like Paul McCartney this year, animated by rummaging through her own vaults. A second ‘Confessions’ is a smart play not just in the wake of renewed interest in her back catalogue but also a trail of Madonna full-lengths in the past two decades that made some points but never matched the highs of her 2005 opus. “The songwriting is airtight, regal but sometimes necessarily absurd, and tastefully cognizant of which points in Madonna’s career are most beloved,” writes Jenkins. “It’s a treat for a pop star who so furtively avoids circling home base to slide back to the lower Manhattan arts playgrounds that boosted her music and film careers, to shout out seminal clubs and DJs who put her on.”
Read Jenkins’s full review of Madonna’s latest album: https://nymag.visitlink.me/R4KHDb
