Madonna has danced through the 80s, 90s, and even into the 2020s, nevertheless some of her experiments have gone over better than others. While I will personally defend the album American Life, I know from the get go no one else wants to hear it or cares.
However, Confessions was a complete departure from its predecessor musically, where she leaned back into pure pop music. By that, I mean straight up dance music. Everything is definitely produced to be enjoyed at a dance club, a party, or wherever lighter beats are required. However, the album is not solely for the club as you hear the words, where the light mood begins to sober and reach into a darker place.
The album starts with "Hung Up", probably the main single you have heard and if you were as young as I was in 2005, it might have been your first major Madonna moment. I absolutely love the beat to the song, it adds such a sass and flare to the lyrics. She complaining that guy STILL has not called her. Dude needs to pick up the phone, it's Madonna!
"Get Together" falls a little flat for me. It isn't a hard skip but it tends to be very forgettable in the midst of other, stronger tracks. The melody felt a little off for me and the lyrics just didn't grab me.
"Sorry" is probably the OTHER track you have heard from this album, and it feels like the story of the album is now building. Her boy isn't calling her, so she's trying to "Get together" with someone else, and now he's trying to say sorry and she's heard it all before. Usually people doing this weird "foreign language break" kind of mess up the song but for some reason it felt fitting in this song.
The next track, "Future Lovers", feeds off track 2, where she's back to trying something new and getting away from the original problem. I find the track more interesting than "Get Together". It plays a lot more with distortion.
"I Love New York" is lyrically terrible but the production draws me back in and makes me want to listen to it. I mean it is simplistic as any other song that seems invented to blandly promote tourism (yes...Looking at you Taylor for whatever the hell Welcome to New York was...) but the production here was just earwormy. I guess they have to do SOMETHING to make you keep the ad on.
My personal favorite on the album is "Let It Will Be". The production is fantastic, the beat great, and the lyrics stand out. They are a bit cryptic. Point of no return, watch me burn, let it be. What exactly are we allowing to fester? No one really knows...
"Forbidden Love" takes us back to the story arc where I am assuming she's downright cheating now, hence them being forbidden lovers and sealing it with a kiss. The song falls a bit dull for me in the similar vein of "Get Together" but I wouldn't skip it on an album play through.
"Jump" goes more into a place of distrust and struggle, piggybacking off the festering wounds of fame complicatedly discussed in "Let It Will Be". Determined to find a place of her own, she will fight her way through and jump right in. This could be a reference to many feeling Madonna was relatively done and washed up in her career, and her finding her way back.
"How High" is a very reflective song and grabs you from that. It definitely rides the secondary "struggles with fame" theme within the album, where she is now questioning if all the lights and shine are actually worth it. Will it matter when she is gone? How much can you really make?
The next song "Isaac" feeds into the reflection, wondering if she could sacrifice what she has done and where she has been to enter a foreign land. Finding the way even with a broken spirit. Hey, who would've thought those kind of thoughts could be discussed on a dance album? I wish some more pop stars would take notes that awesome beats does not have to sacrifice the messages you are speaking about.
"Push" likely references a partner that makes her work to be the better version of herself, but with a song like "Isaac", I always imagined she was actually talking to God. Between themes of distrusting people, forbidden love, and losing other lovers, it seems that God would be the person to run to in a distressing time like this.
The album closes with "Like It or Not", which appears to be a commentary for her critics. No matter what they make her out to be, or how they treat her, she is going to be here and go on. Whether they like it or not. It brings us back to the original attitude of Hung Up and makes for a great closer. We got a middle section of trouble and weakness, but ends with newfound strength.
Lyrics: 6/10 - Not the greatest thing since peanut butter, but also not the worst thing since Justin Bieber's "Yummy".
Music: 8/10 - The music of the album really adds to the experience.
Overall: 8/10 - I personally really enjoy this album and it is one of my personal favorites from Madonna. If you like dance music and introspection then this is a great album to play through. If you only like dance music, her album "Music" isn't that far away. While many describe Confessions as a complete departure from American Life, you can still hear the themes of struggling with fame and identity in the lyrics of this album. I think they are more connected than most think. Not everything has to be sonically connected.
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