EDGE: I’d like to ask you about the process of the album — it is a great album, by the way — I know that you’ve generally stuck with one producer on the last few albums —
MADONNA: Thank you. I try to…
EDGE: And this time you just let it rip with multiple producers. How was it different approaching it this way?
MADONNA: I didn’t mean to work with so many different producers. First of all, I didn’t know that Avicii was going to have a life-threatening illness and disappear. So a lot of the songs that I wrote with him or his songwriting team, I ended up having to go out and find other producers to work on them, to finish the songs with me.
And then Diplo came along and I very much wanted to work with him, and he also wanted to work with me, but I didn’t know that he also was working with 5,000 other people and had to get on a jet and go to the other side of the world to play festivals and then go here and play that and then go here and do that — just getting him to sit still for a couple of days to finish a song was a challenge.
So I ended up working with a lot of young DJs and I naively didn’t think it through. Oh, it’s summertime — it’s the festivals, and they’re on tour, and I’ll be lucky if I get them for three days, so a lot of that had to factor in. OK, I can’t wait for three months for this dude to come back. I have to find somebody else.
EDGE: Was it ultimately satisfying? Or you wouldn’t do it that way again?
MADONNA: Ultimately satisfying…? [Long Pause] If I had my way and I could do it again, I would make people sign an iron-clad agreement that they would stay and ensure they would not leave me until all the songs were finished.
ROUNDTABLE # 2: You were forced to change album release schedule because of the leaks that happened last year. The next time you go to create a new album or film, is your practice going to change because of the way these new tracks [were leaked]?
MADONNA: Well, I’m never going to put anything on a server and send information back and forth as had been done. That was the first mistake. That’s when we first realized that the music was being hacked on the server. But then the last leak came from a mastering lab and that was just a technician’s oversight. After everything had happened and everyone knew we had to crack down and be really super secure, someone sent the record on the server – AGAIN! My hacker’s very clever, obviously. It was not up for very long, but it was snatched. So I would never do anything like that again. Hand delivery.
Read full article on EDGE
