Madonna says her brother’s death and the dancefloors of her youth inspired new album Confessions II

Madonna is working with Stuart Price on Confessions on a Dance Floor and Confessions II will be released on 3 July.

Madonna’s upcoming fifteenth studio album will be an hour of nonstop music aimed at making people dance.

And for the globally famous person mother of jesusBeing on the dance floor or throwing shapes in the DJ booth is where she insists she still feels most free at age 67. This takes her back to the time when she was just another anonymous person in a nightclub, dancing to escape her normal life.

Recalling the seventies, when she was a hopeful young dancer in Michigan, Madonna and her fans are grateful to her first ballet teacher, who took her to the gay club Manjos in Detroit.

“He says, ‘I have to show you something, it’s going to blow your mind’,” she recalls of a life-changing moment. “I’m like ‘Okay’. And so I walked into this club, and the doors opened, and there were these two extremely handsome men without shirts, wearing roller skates and bow ties and shorts, and they had drinks on a tray, and I thought ‘Wow, we’re not in Kansas anymore’. And that was my first dancefloor experience, where everyone was so free. Girls were dancing with girls, and boys were dancing with boys, and some people were alone. Wandering around. And I was like ‘Wow, so amazing, everyone is so free’.

“Cut to my song, I Feel So Free, which I just released, and I feel this tremendous feeling of freedom when I’m dancing.”

Recalling that night and other nights clubbing in New York as a youngster before finding fame, she explains BBC: “I didn’t have any nice dresses, and everyone had nice hair, earrings.

“I just took all my dance clothes and revamped them, so hunger was the best sauce. I was so awkward, and I wasn’t fitting in. But I didn’t care, because when I start dancing, I don’t really care what you think. I’m in my body. I’m like, definitely not in my mind. It’s the worst place to be!”

Confessions II is the sequel to the hugely successful Confessions on a Dance Floor, with superstar producer Stuart Price teaming up with Madonna to create more anthems. The pair have already performed tracks including I Feel Free and Freedom during a surprise set at Los Angeles club The Abbey.

Price says: “Madonna always has a story, and it’s always like that, so she’s a great storyteller. The way she writes is very poetic. The studio just becomes a place to tell stories.”

There is a moment on the One Step Away record, which Price says happened in “a kind of flash of light”, when he was dancing to the track before the lyrics were due, and Madonna asked him to turn on a microphone so she could deliver the song in a stream of consciousness.

“It’s kind of coming over me, it’s Strange. Ideas come when I don’t try too hard. It just happens,” she admits.

For someone who has written songs about his sex life, religion, and his parents, it can be hard to find new topics close to his heart for inspiration. But Madonna has combined her love of the dance floor with the love of her life for her first album in seven years.

Asked whether the new album contains her most personal songs, Madonna says: “I wouldn’t say that, but you know, they’re very specific, they’re very… There was a lot happening in my life at the time I was writing it.

“Initially the death of my brother Christopher had a deep impact on me.”

Christopher Ciccone died of cancer at the age of 63 in October 2024, and Madonna’s new track titled Fragile is his response.

“That was another song that just came,” she explains, revealing that it was written and composed in one day. “I actually came to the studio, and I talked on the phone to my brother, who was in a lot of pain, and he wasn’t in a good place, and I knew it was close to the end. Then I went up and wrote a song, so it all connected to what was going on in my life.

“It’s cathartic. You know, it’s like a kind of therapy, letting go of someone you love. The best way to do that is to write about it…It’s like an exorcism.”

Asked by Graham Norton whether her father has heard the track yet, she says: “No. I’m going to see him soon, and he will. I don’t want to push him over the edge! But it’s not upsetting, it’s beautiful.”

The family ties of Confessions II don’t end there. Another track features a duet with his daughter Lourdes Leon for The Taste. Instead of taking control for this song, however, Madonna insisted that it was a project with a 50-50 approach, even down to the lyrics.

“She contacted me, and taking advantage of her privilege, she is very hesitant to work with me or be my daughter.

“She’s been very headstrong, and working at her own pace, and you know, I respect that deeply, and she’s a great songwriter.

“She has a much better voice than me, but then one day she came to me and she said, ‘You know I realized I’m holding on to something, and maybe it’s kind of angry.’

“Because at the end of the day she didn’t ask for it, she struggled with those feelings for a long time in her teenage years. And then she came to me, and she said ‘Let’s write a song together. I think it would be a very therapeutic experience. And you say what you want to say, and I’ll say what I want to say.’

“I was like ‘Okay, you’re fine, let’s do it’. I was so happy. We look good together.”

There are several other female artists who wanted to work with him including Sabrina Carpenter and Kylie Minogue who appears in Confessions II.

Although Kylie’s song hasn’t been 100% confirmed, she served drinks to Graham and Madonna during their hour-long BBC The interview, which appeared to be their way of announcing the collaboration. They praised each other’s music but declined to talk specifically about their project together. With Sabrina, the iconic singer cut to the chase and went ahead herself to collaborate on the track Bring Your Love.

Madonna says: “I DM-ed her. I said I’m making a new record, and I’d love to collaborate with you on something. It ended up being Bring Your Love, and it totally worked out. She was already going to be opening for Coachella, so she invited me to perform with her. It all happened in a very serendipitous way.”

Madonna explains that the album consists of 16 tracks in total, which is a continuous mix of music “because that’s what happens in a club.” It could have been longer, but she only wanted to use songs that she felt kept the energy of the LP high.

“We have eight songs we really like that didn’t make it on the record. You can only put so many songs on a record, 16 seems almost indulgent.

“It’s a great record to work on, like, ‘Does this make me want to get up and walk?’ Just drive me, just motivate me? Does it make me feel motivated, want to sweat? Yes!

“And if it wasn’t, I’d be like ‘off the record.’ It was really a perfect way to pick things. These are keepers.”

The only thing fans will want to know is when they’ll hear Madonna perform these new songs live, with her last tour ending in May 2024. But those hoping to sweat it out with Madonna on stage may have to wait until they’re at the World Cup final, where she’ll perform a mini set at half-time.

She tells Graham that she will start doing a “promo tour” in the coming months, which is unlikely to lead to full-length shows, but then the next big live event won’t be until 2027, which she teases by saying “then something big will happen in the summer” which she hints could be in the UK.

Host Graham says he thinks he knows what it could be, and the obvious answer appears to be a headline slot at Glastonbury Festival? Last night Madonna’s publicist told mirror Any tour plans were “all speculation” at this stage.

But even if you have to wait until next summer to see her, at least there are only a few more days left when Madonna’s millions of fans can dance to her new album in the sun. Somewhere, Madonna must be doing the same.

*Confessions II is available July 3 on Warner Music. Madonna and Graham are available to watch on BBC iplayer.

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