“People think dance music is just superficial,” Madonna announces early on her excellent new album, Confessions II. “But they’re all wrong. The dance floor is not just a place. It’s a threshold, a ritualistic space where movement replaces language.” That’s the threshold where Madonna has spent her whole life. Ever since she blew up in the Eighties, pop’s queen of queens has devoted her career to proving how complex, how dramatic, how ecstatic a dance floor can be.
On Confessions II, Madonna returns to the floor, the place where she always goes to rediscover herself. It’s a sequel to one of her most beloved albums, Confessions on a Dance Floor, her 2005 collaboration with the London disco master Stuart Price. But it’s also her best album since the original Confessions 21 years ago. It’s a 64-minute nonstop groove that flows like a club-DJ set, each song fading into the next, drawing from all over the history of dance music. You might hear a flicker of “I Feel Love” here, or “Apache” there, but it’s a history lesson that she turns into her musical autobiography.