MADONNA - Confessions On A Dance Floor

1. Historical premise

Managing to ride the wave, and stay firmly in the saddle for twenty years or more, is a privilege granted to few. Doing so in the field of popular music, on an international level, showing up alive year after year with new records, without coasting on past glories, is quite an achievement.

Madonna's gift lies precisely in this: in how she's managed it. Building a career on constant changes of image and sound means having instinct and surrounding yourself with the right people.

Madonna took the big risk back in '98 with "Ray of Light". Since then, given how winning that formula proved to be, the changes made hadn't been many, and the steps taken had moved sideways rather than forward.

2. In praise of sound

It was time for a change of direction.

From the blend of rock and electronica that “Ray of Light” helped bring to mainstream audiences a few years earlier, the scenery shifts completely: the early rumours of a rock record in the works gave way instead to this “Confessions on a Dancefloor” (nomen omen).

Don't see it as a return to the past, because, quite simply, it isn't.

“Confessions” moves instead along three temporal lines: Eighties dance music, what came before (its chief inspirations, Kraftwerk) and what came after (those who rediscovered it, chiefly Daft Punk). Everything converges into a sound that's both current and precise, with Stewart Price at the production helm delivering a practically flawless job.

Praising the production and sound of a Madonna album borders on stating the obvious, we admit it, but if we're talking about it anyway, there must be a reason.

Indeed, it's precisely the sound of “Confessions” that is its added value, at once referential and personal, cerebral (aiming for the head) and profane (aiming for the legs) at the same time.

3. The “pen” behind “Confessions on a Dancefloor”

Of course, sound alone gets you nowhere.

You need at least decent songwriting to let the groundwork bear fruit. And when a good idea isn't lying around at home, you have to know how to go fetch one.

That's how the first single from “Confessions”, “Hung Up”, came about.

The perfect solution comes in the form of an ABBA sample, which lends the right verve to the track's tight electronic grooves, unfolding at a locomotive pace. The song, thoroughly successful, doesn't actually grab you on first listen and needs the right amount of spins, as does the whole album really, digging deeper as time goes on.

Without a break in continuity (the whole of “Confessions” is one continuous dancefloor flow), we move on to “Get Together”. A sinuous melody stretches out over beds of lightly distorted synths, mid-tempo electronic drums, and little keyboard flourishes and pulses filling out the sound. Its melodic strength makes it the most impactful track.

The one that gradually reveals itself instead is the future second single, the brisk “Sorry”, a pulsing little tune boasting metallic clangs and vocoder in the backing vocals. A choice that couldn't have been more spot-on, given that it's one of the most engaging and danceable (and also most beautiful) tracks on the record.

“I Love New York” deserves the same recognition, a track with a high rock attitude, declaimed, “tough” vocals, drums marking out the air, and electronic inserts.

All in all, the opening run is dazzling, with only “Future Lovers” (the most Eighties-sounding track of the bunch) failing in its search for atmosphere.

So, the “pen” is there.

4. The main body

The main body of “Confessions”, on the other hand, is a bit more laid-back (we're talking about quality here, not tempo, to be clear).

The air, in practice, is enjoyable and no track deserves to be skipped, but the peaks of the first part aren't quite reached again.

What stands out most is the chorus of the ballad “Forbidden Love”, with its vocoder and little bells carrying a Daft Punk-ish flavour and a very Madonna-esque melody, sung with grace and enchantment, while underneath a very Computerworld pulse works away, linking it to the restless “Jump”.

The violins (floating in the background and taut in the foreground) of “How High”, the guitar figures of “Isaac” (a duet in Arabic flavour with Yitzhak Sinwani, hard to digest at first but it grows on you) and the synths on both tracks instead deserve great credit for doing dirtier, more atmospheric work, which proves extremely useful for fully enjoying the record's true gem.

5. The best of…

That would be “Push”, an extremely sensual track, a masterpiece of arrangement with Arabic-tinged percussion, gusts of synth and violins, crystalline touches slipping in between dream and fear, surprise and delight when it opens up into the sweet caress of the chorus.

A most worthy closer is the (almost equally) beautiful hand-clap-tempo stroll of “Like It or Not”, built on a slightly desolate guitar music-box figure, with a deeply felt, assured vocal performance from Madonna.

6. Conclusions

And so “Confessions on a Dancefloor” comes to an end.

The impact of the record on the mainstream music world will only become clear with time.

Even if things go badly (that is, if it doesn't become a trend the way “Ray of Light” did), the feeling is that it won't end up forgotten among the many records in Madonna's discography (and that someone, years from now, will want to go back and listen to that “one” record, the “odd” one).

“Confessions” indeed doesn't even seem to set itself the primary goal of starting a trend: it's driven, more than anything, by a communicative urgency and a desire to say something, to simply be. That's why it chooses a different form, one entirely its own (and why, essentially, nothing would have changed had it been a rock record instead).

And even if what it has to say isn't the best thing that could possibly be said, it undoubtedly deserves some chance (some, not just one).

Ride the wave of great music

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06/11/2005