Release Roundup: 7/3/26

Top Pick

Madonna – Confessions II (sexy sexagenarian dance pop)

Just because Madonna is the most successful, important and influential female music artist of all time, and that The Immaculate Collection (1990) is as perfect a collection of pop songs as you could possibly curate, doesn't mean anything she's released over the past two decades has been in any way relevant, let alone worth listening to. While no where near as musically potent or culturally seismic as Like a Prayer (1989), Ray of Light (1998) or even Music (2000), most fans and critics concur that 2005's Confessions on a Dancefloor is the premier pop star's last truly great outing and the lone exception to her otherwise turgid twenty-first-century output (even if I personally prefer 2012's much maligned MDMA myself). So it is that the bluntly named Confessions II is the most anticipated Madonna album in over two full decades, bringing her more commercial and critical attention than she's experience in almost a quarter century. What's more surprising though, is that the record largely sticks the landing.

The reviews are in, and the shockingly consistent critical consensus is that Confessions II is by far the best Madonna album since her first foray onto the disco dancefloor. Much like Kylie Monogue's Tension (2023) before it, the second Confessions is a sultry, sex-positive, queer-courting affair that sees the senior sensation sounding more energised and invigorated than she has since her heyday. Unlike that Australian starlet's rushed sequel record (2024), however Confessions II also caries a confident maturity with it, that sees Madonna sitting comfortably in her power and experience, rather than attempting to recapturing both her and the attention of the current youth, as she cringingly has over the intervening albums.

Maybe more than Madonna herself though, Confessions is the product of DJ and producer Stuart Price, who helmed the original Confessions before going on to work with a slew of popular artists, including Kylie, The Killers, Pet Shop Boys, Take That, Dua Lipa and Jessie Ware (I'd say his work on that one Biffy Clyro song was his most Blog-adjacent credit, but we've covered Minogue, Lipa and Ware much more extensively (and enthusiastically) than that bafflingly popular British band). His hypnotic, trance-like beats paint a picture of a celebratory night out, rather than the frantic dance-floor fillers of both her history and contemporaries though there is a knowing nod to both on the more upbeat "Danceteria", which recalls Madonna's own "Vogue" as much as it does Lady Gaga's "Babylon" and other, Ouroboros-ean homages.

The album also features collaborations with an array of international dance-floor icons, including Arca, Stromae, Feid, Martin Garrix among others, along with daughter Lola Leon who fulfills the nepo-baby quota and industry plant du jour Sabrina Carpenter, whose affectedly breathy additions to stand-out single "Bring your Love" are at least as inoffensive as they are unarousing, and a whole lot better than the roster of convicted rapists, domestic abusers, Nazi sympathisers and paedophile-marrying MAGA courtiers that have littered her intermittent albums and plays for relevancy. So that's definitely an improvement, even if she can't really be held accountable for her lack of foresight in that department.

At 64 minutes, Confessions II is also a tad too long for its own good, and the repetitive, rhythmic nature of the individual songs themselves make for an ultimately less engaging affair than the original Confessions or any of the earlier Madonna outings (or MDMA!). Perhaps then, the best way to consume the album is via the fourteen-minute video version (below), which—if nothing else—sees the 67-year old shining a spotlight from her vagina while strutting down an isle lined with similarly luminous admirers, spinning around shooting laser beams at her from their very own orifices. What are you gong to do, not watch that? ...And anyway, everything else is bad this week.