Bandsplain - MADONNA: 'Confessions II' with Patrik Sandberg

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Madonna Month icon Patrik Sandberg is back to help Yasi break down 'Confessions II,' Madonna’s return to the dance floor. They break down the album’s callbacks to New York nightlife, the name-checks from Debi Mazar and Mark Kamins to Basquiat and Keith Haring, and why Madonna is revisiting one of her most beloved eras. Plus, our review (we love it)! CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guests: Patrik Sandberg @patriksandberg Producer: Rob Sundermann  Editor: Jamie Yukich  Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bansplain? Hello and welcome to Bansplain. I am your host, Yossi Salick. This is usually a show where I invite an expert guest to come on and help me explain an iconic artist or a cult band. Today's episode is an emergency episode.

To cap off our seemingly never-ending Madonna series, we have gathered here today to talk about the 50s. 15th Madonna studio album that came out last week. Confessions on a dance floor, too. Patrick, I've got something I want to talk about. It's a she-mergency episode. Sorry, it's her emergency. It's a she-her-mergency.

We are joined, of course, by Patrick Sandberg of Madonna Bansplay in Part 2 fame, our resident gay, Madonna expert extraordinaire. Welcome to the show. If I wasn't a Madonna expert before, you've made me one. By sheer force of Google. By sheer force of your hundreds of hours of research, we're all Madonna experts now. I hope so. As we said before, open the schools, you know?

Correct. Thank God is all I want to say. The relief? Yeah, because, okay, we were joking around before we started recording with our beautiful producers and engineers and they were like another Madonna episode and I was like

honestly if the album hadn't been good we probably would have like moved on with our lives you know but the album is so good it's like a seminal album yeah which

and I do want to firstly apologize to that one guy the one commenter who's like when are you going to get back to talking about guitar bands I know so I know he's like what happened to the

guitar bands and it's like... And to him, I say, skip all the way to the last track on the album. There you go. We have a little guitar for you. It's like there were rumors for a long time that the album was good. Yeah. You know? I heard a few of those.

Gay circles. There were whispers. The album's really good. And then some of us, you know, by virtue of proximity or whatnot, were able to hear some of it a while ago. kind of verify that it was good. So when you actually were first doing Madonna month, I remember I told you the album was coming out in June around Pride sometime, which you didn't even know.

You were just doing Madonna. And I was like, don't worry, the album's good. And that was me saying, that's what everybody's saying. Right. And from like the little snippets that I've heard, it's going to be good. And knowing, of course, that Stuart Price was working on it, which speaks volumes. Yes. Yeah, I think, you know, what were we?

betting people, just given the bit of information we had, I think we could have known at the very least it wasn't going to be bad. Yeah, and then as the singles kind of rolled out, people were starting to actually kind of debate, like, if it was really major or not, they're like, I like it, but is it like amazing? Yeah. And it was like, and we can get into the rollout of these songs and how they play now, hearing them in the context of the album. But I think that like, it was like, we all kind of resigned ourselves to like, okay, it's going to be tasteful and it's going to be good. Right. We don't know if it's going to be phenomenal.

And it's actually phenomenal. Spoiler alert. It's phenomenal. Yeah. At the very least we knew it wasn't going to be some sort of like 19 songwriter in a camp monstrosity that we've perhaps suffered through in the past. And yeah, I do want to talk about the role and I want to talk about the song because like I do feel. It's so incredible, and I've heard other people say this, like, how much more they pop the singles within the context of the album, within the continuous mix of the album, how much my relationship changed with them since, like, the first listen to then hearing them as God intended, as Stuart Price and Madonna intended. But I think us going brag to Club Confessions, Los Angeles, one of the most insane nights in my life felt like I was in a Fellini film.

It will forever be the night that I met Torrey Spelling. You met Tori Spelling. At every turn, I saw something more insane and convoluted to my brain. Bruce Valanche, napping in a bench, just like everything you want it to be. But there I was like, oh, because they were playing the songs or parts of the songs, right? And they were good. And I was like, I know that in, I know like obviously the context heightened it. It's how it's supposed to be heard.

you're in a club surrounded by people with open hearts for this music and gaze dancing, you know? But it was like really good. I went home from that being like, this shit's going to fucking bang. It kind of reminds me of the first time I heard the songs that were in the Confessions film, which were played to me in an SUV. Right. In their entirety or just the snippets? It was the mega mix that they were editing the video too.

And the whole time I was kind of, my mind was. being blown, but then I would skip to another song, you know, and I was just like, what? And I was like, wait, it's really good. And then I would be like, I don't know. And then I was like, actually, it was like crazy hearing it for the first time. And club confessions was like that too, because you just like, in the moment, you liked it. But then it was like, what are you left with at the end of the night? Right, you had nothing to grab on to. Yeah. You can't go home and play it. We didn't know names. We didn't know, you couldn't really make out the lyrics as much. Well, we're going to get into all of it. We're going to talk about.

the making of, we're going to talk about the cover art, we're going to talk about the themes, we're going to talk about the confessions film, we're going to talk with the track by track, and we're going to answer a bunch of listener questions. But before we do all of that, I wanted to make sure that we hear from our fellow compatriots, our fellow bandswain Madonna Month. Hostages. Hostages. I was going to say collaborators, but here is hostages.

Not Colmes, I don't know nobody wanted to do this. And I think is everybody wanted to do it? Everybody wants to do Bansplaine until they realize what Bansplains like. She has us all by the throat, which is going to be a theme. Okay, first up, we're going to hear from Mel Ottenberg, editor-in-chief of In Trivia magazine and the guest for Madonna, episode one. Yossi, it's Mel. My favorite songs and Confessions, too, are fragile, Lower East Side Girl, and the Test.

I think that fragile I really like because I get the story and I read his book or like I understand like the vibes and it's interesting and the test is just great and Lord is I feel like I'm so great on it

and Luricide's just got that sort of thing and it's got like the boom boom pow of Madonna song you know like a last song on the album thing that you like didn't expect to be the one that you loved but you love you know And that's how I feel.

And I do want to say that as the editor-in-chief of interview, I've always thought, will I ever have a Madonna moment? I need to have a Madonna moment because I'm a Madonna head. But will that ever come or will it be a good idea if it does come? And to have been able to do something cool with her and she was so great. And I just think so highly of her and watching her model and be the diva goddess that she is. also get to sit with her for 90 fucking minutes and talk to her is like really a dream and i and uh but like to be able to do something cool with someone that is your hero is is tough and hard but but i did it bitch and i am i'm so grateful to her um and i'm so i think it's so great to be living in an actual

madonna moment here we are it's 2026 we're in a madonna moment bye thank you maudanberg that was perfectly said. Yeah, we really are living in a Madonna moment. I think that's like such a takeaway. I don't know if it's partially because my algorithm is completely fried from my personal interest in research for the last couple of months, but it feels like it's broken containment from that. It has, and it feels different than Madamex and Revel Hart. I don't remember Madamex even like crossing my desk, if I'm being honest. Well, They all cross my desk. There's no way for them not to.

I mean, I saw the I patch artwork and stuff, and I remember clocking that. I don't think I heard one single one of the songs at the time. I'm always going to be part of a cabal of gays and some lesbians and some trans girls and some straight girls who everyone except straight men, probably. Right. Who group texts or who text every time Madonna does something, whether, or, you text. we like it or not, and then dissecting it, sure. Talking about it.

So all those albums were very present for me, but this feels like a big Madonna moment. I feel like a lot more people are talking about it. Again, I can't ever know because I'm biased, given my current preoccupations. Your instincts are correct. Thank you. All right.

Next we're going to hear from Madonna Vansplaine, episode four guest, the one and only Karen Gans. Hi, Madonna Splane friends. It is Karen. Confessions 2 is legitimately such a treat. It is a feast that I am still compiling my thoughts, but here are some quick impressions for you.

My expectations were very high because Confessions is such a landmark album for her in calling this part 2, which is set the bar. Did I have some ambient concerns because of the spottingness of Madam X for last release? I did, but rooting for Madonna is like rooting for the Mets, you know? You gotta believe. Hashtag, this is my religion. I think the album is of exceptionally high quality, and there is really only one song that's a skip for me every time.

That is everything. As much as I enjoy hearing Madonna say, I don't fuck with it. That song is just not strong enough to me. I think the album as a whole is perfectly sequenced. It is gorgeous. And for me, the standouts are I feel so free, which I thought was a really smart for a single danceateria,

bizarre school and betrayal. And yes, I appreciate her writing a song for me, an LES girl of 25 years. In the Madonna canon, I think this is a really strong entry that recast the conversation about her late career work. And if you listen to my episode, you know, I'm a fan of almost everything she has put out since 2005, especially hard candy and MD&A. And parts of Rebel Heart really are quite strong. But the generally negative reaction to Madam X, I think, was fair. And the celebration tour went a very long way to her helping her bounce back after that, largely because it was such an effective reminder of the things she has done to invent and reinvent pop music in her image for five decades.

I think this album functions in a similar, though not identical way. I love the visuals. Parts of the rollout did make you cringe. And I think this is because I want to see a Madonna who really does truly feel so free. And she still feels restrained or rehearsed to me in some of these moments. part of what I've loved about this album is that the rollout is that it's made people dig up old interviews and spontaneous moments

and put them on social media and it's that Madonna that really truly unhinged and unencumbered Madonna that is what I'd like to see right now but overall I think this is a mega win for her and I am really fucking happy about it Karen Gaines Bravo I know let's go home

Karen I mean Karen's She said everything I want to say A brilliant mind Yeah I love that I was kind of a lot to chew on, but I think she made good points. I like, I don't, I don't fuck with that song. Same, and we'll get there. And we'll get there.

It feels validating hearing this from the Keringans. I know, the one and only. Because I know she has very high standards. Yes. Although we disagreed on almost every single album in the late period. But also, like, as sort of a Madonna worshipper, I do think that, like, cringe moments or things that don't. don't work can be equally rewarding. I think it's like, it's like a feature.

It's a feature not above. I have low standards and high standards. It's like, it all brings me happiness. So I don't, I don't really know how to differentiate. 100%. And last,

but certainly not least. We're going to hear from Madonna Part 3 guest, the most lusted after guest of the Bansplain series. Okay. I'm sitting right here. That was rude.

I said most. not only. I send you multiple comments that were also lusting after you. I want to thank the three people who called me attractive. Do you know what this Madonna series didn't do for me? Bring me any straight mail attention. But I have a million new gay friends. Totally.

Listen, you win some. You listen. Paul Heyman. Let's hear it. It's an incredible feeling to have this album be so good. There's a feeling of, wow, she really did it. and, you know, it just really delivers on everything that we want from her. I think it's really cool how the album is sequenced and, you know, it's a continuous mix and kind of really rewards listening to it from front to back. And I really love that about it.

And even, to me, a lot of the singles make a lot more sense when listened to in context, even like something like I feel so free. I really love a lot more than I did, you know, when I first was listening to it. I think it sets the stage for the record in this sonic way references Confessions 1, but then the rest of the album feels like a really an evolution rather than a sequel, which I think is really cool. So a lot of really fresh production and much more sophisticated palette of references, you know, all kinds of music genres in there, techno, Detroit Techno, Chicago House,

like Two-Step, you know, French House. It feels very, you know, like a really cool palette to pay. from. And it feels like she's making things that we've never heard her do before, which is really cool. You know, something like school, it's just like, you've never heard that before. The level of like vocal production and, you know, the sort of processing of her voice, even things she's doing with her voice overall across the whole record, it's just, it's just really cool that she's still sort of pushing the boundary of what she's doing. A theme that I think is really cool in the whole sort of picture, like, is this kind of meta-narrative of Madonna lore, which we haven't really

seen her play with that much before. I mean, she kind of did bitch on Madonna, you know, like some self-referential stuff in the past, but I feel like this is really kind of playing into something that feels very internet and very right now. And you're seeing, you know, obviously this very specifically sort of the like nexus of it is, is Danciteria, which, you know, sort of tells the literal lore of Madonna, but then I think that kind of reverbs out across the whole record where it feels like, you know,

this kind of ownership of the dance for is a place of self-expression. And then that even kind of reverberates out into the rollout in this kind of very cool meta way where, you know, the rollout itself was building this thing organically and that it was converging with the algorithm in this cool way. So there's like this kind of fan-made art, even the things that they've been releasing,

you know, on her Instagram like that, you know, sort of BTS dance ateria reel feels like it's just kind of playing into this idea of like the internet, you're piecing together the history and like putting it into this like larger context. It's really cool. It feels very right now. It feels very satisfying for everything. So whether that was like really intentional or it's just happening organically or sort of like a combination of both. It feels very savvy. And, you know, I think it's, it's like helping to kind of like make the album really feel like it's the pinnacle of this promotional cycle. And you know, miraculously there's kind of like having a huge budget also helps so you can do these kind of great activations like the Times Square thing and the club confessions

rollout. But also there's like no sense of fatigue. Like even through the whole like pre-rollout, you know, promotional cycle, it felt like the excitement just kept building and the lore kept building around her. It was like a gathering of steam, like, you know, this kind of, like I said, convergence of this organic push and this algorithmic thing happening together. That was very cool to watch. And I think it's kind of like, it's this ineffable thing that I don't know that you can create, you know, intentionally. And I think every marketer's dream is that that happens, but it really kind of happened. And because she's such a powerful figure in culture, it's just very cool to see. And at this stage of her career, at the age that she is, everything about it

is really extremely satisfying. I think it gives people a lot of joy to see it. I mean, certainly as a fan, I feel that way, but I think even, you know, I'm just seeing, you know, anecdotally, people who aren't necessarily like big Madonna fans, like really kind of getting swept up and being excited about it. And, you know, let's face it, I don't think Bansplaine is no small part in that because I think, you know, it's an influential circle that, like, pays attention to that, to this podcast. And I think, you know, this, that Madonna month coming right where it did in the, like, promotional cycle is, you know, helping that's part of it. So that's part of what I'm talking about, this kind of sense of, like, there's all this lore on

the internet. And it's kind of just like being gathered together, like this kind of tsunami wave of algorithmic and organic, you know, promotion. And it just kind of. kind of built to this level. And it's, we're just really satisfying to see and everybody feels really good about it. So I think it's just a really great cultural moment that are, these things are rare. And it feels really great for her to have this now at this stage of her career. I think it's really reestablishing her legacy. Not that really needed to be, but it's like just reaffirming that for those of us who have known all along. And then, you know, school is in session. for the zoomers and everyone else who don't know

because it's kind of this, you know, collecting and blending together of all the lore on the internet and the current moment that feels like this really, like kind of pretty magical convergence. And it feels really good. I think everybody feels a lot of excitement about it. And it's an awesome feeling. We're so back.

Paul was like, hold my beer. He really had something he wanted to talk about, but also he made just exquisite and salient points. Sabrina, Madonna, Piazzi, Patrick? I have something I want to talk about. Well, I think Paul's the last one I wanted to play because I think we're going to cover like almost each and everything he talked about in there.

Yeah. Okay, this wouldn't be Vansplaine if I didn't do a little too much backstory. I will keep it brief. This is for the people that for whatever reason either did not listen to Vansplainsply. plain Madonna 1 through 4, though I must recommend. There's still time. I must recommend that you do it. Or just like myself are brain dead and do not retain the information. And someone in our, when I solicited questions, did ask, like, can you give us a Stewart Price primer again? Oh, okay. And I think we didn't go into like super detail. So I'll, I'll try to be a little broad, but also talk a little bit more about him. Because obviously he's a hugely important part of this project.

So in 2001, Mirway, who had just worked with Madonna on the album music, introduced her to a then-23-year-old Stuart Price to be her keyboard player and ultimately music director for the drowned world tour. He was born in Paris. He grew up in Reading, England. He had started working on two acts in his career simultaneously, which were, I think, both on Wall of Sound, Zoot Woman. with Adam Blake and Johnny Blake. Jesse, please don't go. That's right. And then Jacques Le Comte.

Mm-hmm. But then making music under the name Le Rhythm Digitalis. So good. So, so good. Which I didn't know this, but I really loved it. Okay, so they put out that single Jacques, Your Body, Make Me Sweat. And which charted, and he put an album out called Dark Dancer. And he would go, he would, like, go on interviews and pretend he only spoke French.

So major. That's so great. Anyway, so he had like a cool musical pedigree, and he was, you know, I don't think he was famous by any stretch, but, you know, he was like a semi-known quantity in a certain world of dance music. I mean, this was like the time of Electro Clash, and it feels like... Like late 90s? Yeah.

Yeah. And it was sort of like, if you were in the clubs, you heard Lay Rhythm Digitians. Like, a lot. Yeah, and of course Madonna loves to be up in the clubs and to know what's up in the clubs. By the way, you guys, just you should note I'm method because I'm back on the Celsius for this episode. So pray for your Aussie. Anyways, Stuart Price first kind of actually collaborated with Madonna, co-writing ecstatic process, actually one of my faves off of 2003's American Life. And then he came back to be musical director for the Reinvention Tour in 2004.

And I'm just going to say this part again because it's one of my favorite pieces of lore. And I feel like more people need to hear about it. even though I think I triangulated the proof pretty well, but obviously there's not like cold hard proof, but there's enough proof to put together a breadcrum trail, which is that confession sprang from an aborted film that was meant to be directed by Luke Bisson, who she had been working with on music videos.

They both love parkour. Never forget who loves parkour more than Madonna, nobody. They both love Gotier. They both love Gotier and Parkour. And it was allegedly, supposedly, a musical biopic about Candy Darling, but a fictional one because it was about a woman on her deathbed, Peter Hoosier, photo. That was remembering her life throughout the decades. But these were not real memories, so it was like a science fiction. It's Luke Bisson.

Anyways, sounds fucking awesome. Wish it had been made. but Madonna was while you know she sent Luke Bissan off to write the script she set about to write music for it and she tasked Stewart with the 70s portion the disco portion and she came down was like do you have anything that sounds like Abba

and he was like that's so funny you should ask that because about six months before that he had been DJing in Liverpool and he was driving home after it at 5 a.m. He heard gimme, give me, give me a man after midnight on the radio and he was like, you know what this fucks. This is me editorializing

in like a lifetime reenactment. And he went home and he cut a sample of that piano bit and he started playing with it in his DJ sets and people like went nuts for it. So he brought that sample to her and obviously that song became hung up. I think this is very interesting. It's very interesting.

Besides about, in and of itself, it's very interesting. I think it's very interesting as we tie it into Confessions too because I think you could say in a really strong way that Confessions too also comes from an aborted biopic. Not directly in the same way, but very much, like, spiritually and, like, where Madonna's head has been at for quite a while was working on this also aborted biopic of her own life. And I think it's really cool that Confessions won, because there's other tracks on Confessions

one that arose from that sci-fi musical. I think it's really cool that Confessions, too, also definitely arose. from a biopic that was never made. I think when she's doing that, something cool happens, especially here because she's reflecting on her own life. Anyways, they didn't talk for 15 years. She told that to Mel. And then in 2023, she phoned him up and hired him again as musical director

for the celebration tour. And she went to go work on her film, ultimately scrapped by Universal. Patrick works in Tintill Town, so he knows about this kind of stuff. Yes. Since repackaged and set up at Netflix as a miniseries. Budget constraints.

TBD. To be, I'm still waiting for the call to us, Patrick, as consultants. So am I. Yeah. We're here, Netflix. We're ready. So, yeah, she was supposed to make this movie about her life. They'd spent all these, like, she worked on the script for two years. There was two years at Universal doing, like, budgeting and casting and all this stuff.

And I think she said it's been great where she was like, I've had a huge life, so I needed a big budget. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Give her everything she wants. And maybe I'm wrong. I was under the impression the film does not cover her whole life.

I don't think so. It's sort of about the early days. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you think, first of all, again, I'll say one thing that I do feel that I'm pretty expert in, and it's music biopic films. And the biggest kiss of death is doing a cradle to grave.

Of course. They're not good. It's too much. It doesn't make sense. Unless you do it. Like, actually, I don't want to say never because I think there's someone who can subvert any form. I'm sure there's a way to do it that's fucking bonkers and bizarre and weird and kind of funny and cool.

Baz Luhrman's Elvis. Haven't seen it. I'll, just enter the chat. I'll believe you. Checks every box of every word you just said. Yeah. Also, does it care? Yeah, okay.

It is bad shit bonkers. Breaks form. Breaks form. Completely. Would you say it's good? You know what? Yeah. I haven't seen this.

Yes. Okay. It's good because in the context of itself, it's good. Okay. It was like not seeing it in the theater, I was confused if I thought it was good or bad because it was so strange. But what I, anyway, we won't get into it. What I like about Bazelerman is he's an autore. He does his own, he does his own thing.

He plays in his own sandbox. He builds a crazy fucking sandcastle. Much like Madonna, honestly. Correct. Not that they should. Not that they should collaborate, no. No. So I thought it was really funny that there was like that bit in the interview that Mel did with her for interview where she was like, I like fixed it.

I was like, we'll film in Serbia. It'll be cheaper. And they were like, we don't think that you can be in Serbia for more than four days. She was like, yes, I can. I'm a survivor. Anyways, yes, like you pointed out, that failed. She bought it back from them for some insane amount of money. She can. She can.

And then Netflix reached out. And I do feel like a, just my personal opinion, I think a short-form series is likely to be more effective at capturing something like that. Although I haven't seen it done that well. At least you have more space to play in and more easier time to do different kinds of pacing. Like, I don't know. It can be a deeper character study. Exactly. You can get more into the relationships.

Exactly. You don't have to like what they always do, particularly in biopics about men, where they're like, this woman never existed. She is a configuration of five of the women that this mandated. Okay, anyways. So she was like, well, I need to, I need to create apparently, right? That was like, I need to do something. This is frustrating. And she said, I reached out to Stuart Price because I thought the world is in a very dark place and people need to dance. And she said, what if we tried to make to make him? Fessions on a Dance Floor Part 2 and reenter the world of inspirational dance music. And thank God. And I think, you know, a lot has been made. And I think Karen mentioned it and Paul definitely talked about it, how this is such a reflective album about looking back on her life. And it makes total sense.

She spent four years immersed in her own history. She did it with the celebration tour. There was a lot of content within that tour. It wasn't just that she was singing those old songs again. It was like there were interludes that surfaced old remixes that had, some had never been released, but that fans were obsessed with. And like, she dug through her own back catalog, but also like the extended back catalog. And I think in doing so, and also there was a big reissue project that happened with all of her old albums where she was like remastering them. So she was just revisiting her whole career.

And I think it got her, I don't want to say nostalgic, but I think that it was like a good thing. because she was sort of forced to look back. Totally. When she's like sort of willfully not done so for so long. Right. Yeah. And so she's just already in that headspace. And then plus the movie, she's looking back at her origin.

And so it's not a surprise that all of that plays out on this album. Not at all. But she does it in like kind of nuanced ways too. It's not like the album isn't like, here's my story looking back. It's like she throws it in and like very fun surprising ways. And it stays fresh. I think she's a master of throwing in like cheeky little references. So those are all over the place.

And there's obviously some more direct ones like Danciteria. Uh-huh. I always want to say dancatoria. Dancateria. Y'all mind? White girls speak a little Spanish. Oh. Oh, the first one.

A Morocco. Oh, yeah. So yeah. And she reunited with Warner Brothers to put this out, which I think is also kind of a big deal, given that was her home and label for like the majority of her career until those four albums.

And that is, that is that story. Yeah. So that gets us to where we are. I just want to say about Stuart Price, like, um, hot. It's like, because I have seen things online of like, who is Stewart Price? Why is Stewart Price?

Why do people care that this is Stewart Price? Open the schools. And it's not, but you know what? It's, he's not like a house. household name. He's not someone that everybody knows. He's not even someone who's like a diplo who everyone is aware of. It's like.

And thank God for fucking that. Well, exactly. Stuart Price is someone who's and he kind of designed his career that way by taking on so many different aliases. Right. Right. Like he had Zoo Woman was a band, but then Lay Rhythm Digital, no one knew who that was really.

And then he became Jacques Lucant, which was sort of like an identity trick that he was doing. And then he, thin white Duke. came after that. And he's very selective about what he does. And he works a lot doing production with people. But he, as like with remixes and things like that, like it's like he's very tasteful. You know what fucks his remix of Mr. Brightside by the killers?

Well, yeah, that's like one of the legendary ones. Also, what you're waiting for by Gwen Stefani, Jacques Lucan remix. Get out of here. He's also remixed in. produce like New Order Pet Shop Boys, Kylie Minogue, Duolipa, the good Duolipa album, Future Nostalgia. Yeah, yeah.

Most recently he did Romi's solo album. He did the Take That Reunion album for my Take Badheads, for my Robbie Williams heads. Yeah, and there's like, you know, he did incredible work with Seal. Go back and look up clean. Who couldn't do amazing work with Seal, though? For amazing, I mean to say.

And then the remix of Amazing, really incredible. Depeche Mode, Scissor Sisters, he worked with a bunch. So it's one of those things where it's like, oh, my God, the thin white duke remix of the faint. Okay, anyway. Speaking of ElectroFish. Yeah, this was like, if you were like out in the 2000s doing Coke at parties, you were hearing Stuart Price's music. It's like he's what Georgio Maroder was, is like what Stewart Price was to the odds. Yeah, totally.

So people who know about Stuart Price when his name pops up, like when they found out Stuart Price is doing the celebration tour, that's like, your antenna is like, I'm going. Yeah. Like, this is going to be a big deal. Well, also, like, again, he's a former collaborator, but I think, like, Madonna's best albums are not done with, like, mega-superstar producers of the world.

They're done with, like, these sort of more nuanced, niche people. Nish is the wrong word, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah, well, she likes to discover them. She likes to discover them, but also I think she works like, how do I say this? Like, there's going to be one boss. Yeah. And I think these people have like a mega superpower in which they're so talented, but they're also able to coalesce and work with her in a way that like incredible, like I think some of the biggest failings in her in her latter stage career for me were like you're trying to put fit Madonna into your productions as if she's a feature. Right.

And it's like Madonna is not a feature, you know, on her own albums. And these producers don't do that, you know? And Stuart Price is obviously one of those excellent producers. And she does the best when she works with one person for the bulk of an album. That's so integral. And I think she's known that and has been aware of that as well. Yeah. And it's been a way that she likes to write and she likes to work and she's been wanting to go back to it.

can I just say I have Spotify open in front of me and I can see what Karen Gans is listening to and she's listening to Dance Ateria right now. Oh my God, Karen. What a real one. But what was I going to say? I saw that. It was like, L.O.L.

That's so good. Well, why don't we use this opportunity to go to the next part of our conversation, which I really am going to lean on you for because I think you have such good insight here. But we should obviously start with the cover art. Okay. But we'll start with, we have behind us

my personal favorite, although I've heard, I thought it was everyone's favorite, but I've heard like people being like they don't like that. You know, like, that's crazy. Why? Because you can't see her face? I don't,

said the pose was awkward. I think the pose looks cool. The pose is hot. She's about to get railed. Mm-hmm. Someone's going to come up behind her. Mm-hmm. Or she's stretching.

A team, her boyfriend is going to come up by her. Or she's doing a hamstring stretch. Yeah. However you want to look at it. Yeah. Dancing. I love it. I just, I love that typeface.

I love the color palette. Like, everything about it to me is like so fab and major. I love the thigh eyes. But that's not the main cover art. No. Or the primary cover art, we don't have it here, but we'll flash it up on the screen. It's Madonna with a pink diaphanous veil in kind of a triangle seat, but also kind of forming a triangle.

Is that a yoga pose? I think it's just like a 90-90, and it's like her lavender color that she likes so much. It's a bit of the original confessions on a dance floor color scheme. Right, and the way she sat in that 90-90 very famously in the artwork and in the video for a hug-up, which I think artfully recreated. You absolutely. It was shot for shot. Video, so. Do you feel, okay, so we should shout out. This is photographed by Rafael Pavarotti, styling by I.B. Kamara. And the creative direction said raw materials.

Okay. Apparently, she said about the fabric. It wasn't planned, but while we were fitting, I found this piece of fabric, and it seemed perfect for creating movement. And then while I was sitting on these speakers that are like the altar of the dance floor, I put it on my head as if I were becoming a saint, truly the Madonna, a kind of religious and revolutionary image. If you work with the right people, ideas come up like this.

That's how art is created. I love it because I love when Madonna gets in her fucking religious bag. I love it. I'm curious, we got a couple of questions about this, and some people have just gone ahead and said this is definitely true. I don't know where I land on it. I do think Madonna rarely does anything by accident and has looked at everything from every angle.

So at least at the very least it's probably aware it might be interpreted like this. But what do you make of the idea that this is also meant to be the act up triangle? the pink act up triangle It's a crap shoot, babe Yeah And like Not to take away any intention That Madonna has as an artist

But when you do enough of these shoots You realize that Everything is the pink act of triangle Or pink And the pink act up triangle Is kind of a vagina Totally But it's like

Everything is a vagina in the end You don't know what's going to be the final image You know And this shoot that they did for this album was big. Like there's a lot of images that have come out of this shoot that are still coming out. You know, the Vogitalia cover and that whole shoot was serviced to them from the same shoot. So it's like they, you know, in the old days, Liz Rosenberg, Madonna's former publicist, would have a binder of photos and she would walk up and down the halls of Condé Nast going from magazine to magazine being like,

you can have this one. You can have this one. you can have this one, which is why, like, there's so many photos from that, like, famous or Brits shoot. Right, right. During, like, a prayer, during Blonde Ambition, that ended up on the covers of so many different magazines because they were all being, it was Liz walking through the office, being like, you can have this one. You can't have that one. You can't have that one. Yeah.

That early on, she was like, we're controlling the image. Yeah. And they still, there's something old school about it and they're still doing it to an extent. But also younger artists do this, too. You know, there's, like, always, like, the album. cover shot and then there's like the interior photos that are with the liner notes. There's the promo photos. Yeah.

There's so, and you kind of see a same vibe and from the same photographer appearing in different places. I think that all of that, a lot of that intention is in the edit of the photos and like trying different things and seeing what feels good. So I don't think that they went into that shot probably being like, this is the album cover. Yeah, I don't think so either. Or, and I also kind of feel like if the pink triangle thing.

is a thing. I think it might... This is just my speculation that it might have been noticed after the fact and then be like, that's cool. Yeah.

We'll leave it. I think they definitely had a color scheme going on. Yeah. They knew the world they were creating. And I also think that's why you see

these different covers that they've put out because there are probably a few options that she liked and she would be like, can we use that? But maybe that's like this special edition

of the vinyl and this CD cover. And I don't know if they do Target exclusives anymore, but remember that era? They didn't grind her exclusive. Well, there you go. Yeah. I think they did a grinder exclusive and something else. I'm not like, me personally, I don't care too much about various elements of how many releases

there were. Should we talk about the themes of the album? Sure. Did you read the manifesto that they put out? No. We must dance, celebrate, and pray with our bodies. These are things that we've been doing for thousands of years. They really are spiritual practices. After all, the dance floor is a ritualistic space. It's a place where you connect. with your wounds, with your fragility. To rave is an art. It's about pushing your limits and connecting to a community of like-minded people. Sound, light, and vibration, reshape our perceptions,

pulling us into a trance-like state. Repetition of the base, we don't just hear it, but we feel it. Altering our consciousness and dissolving ego and time. I did read that, actually. It's beautiful. Yeah, I have read it. It's beautiful. I think more narrowly maybe Madonna said,

We talked about reflecting on her life. And then also a couple of things happened. She said, my stepmother died, my brother was ill. My brother died. My daughter approached me, like, I think for the first time, right, to work together. You know what I mean? And then I thought, well, it's like the script of my film. It begins with death and it ends with death.

But there's all this life in between. It's pretty good. She kind of nailed it. She's her year of realizing things. Yeah, it's Kylie Jenner voice. And then before we get into the track by track, I did want to talk about the film Because as we're talking about the rollout, I guess,

the film was a major part of the raw. Because prior to this, I Feel So Free came out. That was first, right? Yeah. But it wasn't a single. It wasn't a single. It was like a teaser. Which I loved it when I heard it.

So did I. That one made me really excited because I was like, this is fucking good. That was for the Confessions Heads. Yeah. song. Yeah. Because it sounds very similar to future lovers on the Confessions tour.

Yeah. Yeah. It has that same like drug high, like, vibey, just like incredible. Donna Summer sample. Totally. It has, it's like a defendant. It doesn't have a Donna. It has the little Louie sample, though I feel so free, right?

French Kiss. I think it does have, or it has like an interpolation of Donna Summer or something. It says it's an interpolation of I Feel Love by Donna Summer and French Kiss by Lil Louis. And it samples Sois Chiro by Arca. Okay. Interesting. Love that. That's why it sounded beautifully familiar. Yeah, but I love that as a single.

And then obviously the second moment, which was the first single, was the Sabrina Carpenter song that was debut. Am I correct in saying at Coachella, right? Bring Your Love. Yeah. That was the first time anybody really hurt. Well, not anybody, but the general public heard. Yes. Because Coachella's in April.

Yeah. Which was, like, such an interesting way to, like, try to take something in. Because I remember I didn't watch it live. I must have watched the video of it that night or the next day or whatever. And trying to be like, what do I think of this? You know, like, I'm trying to, like, piece it together. And I remember, like, kind of liking it. Although I'm not a huge Sabrina Carpenter person.

I don't have any ill beef or like dislike of her. You're feuding. Yeah, me and Sabrina are in a feud. No, I just like don't really listen to her music. She's like, famously I'm not super like up to date on pop gruelies. But definitely Sabrina's not one I've ever like put on. Like I know the hits. Like I know that's that me espresso and man child.

They played at the gym. Right. Yeah. She's an interesting case because I feel like maybe someday you will become familiar with her. Like, I think she's going to have longevity. Are you the one that said you feel like all her songs outside of her singles are actually really, like, amazing? Someone was saying this to me. Probably not me.

And the reason is that I don't like country music. Okay. And she does have a super twangy through line in her. Which I love and I think it's great for her. And I understand it all. I totally get it. It's just not what I listen to. But I can appreciate it.

A lot of people ask, so we might as well address it now. A lot of people asked, like, our thoughts on her as, like, kind of main or first feature. It feels very savvy. Yeah. For sure. It's, I questioned it when I first heard about it because I wondered if this was something like Warner's was pushing or, you know, why her, I guess. Seeing them perform at Coachella together and I was not at Coachella this year. I, what happened was I tuned in, I did watch it live on YouTube while it was happening because I wanted to see Madonna.

And so I ended up taking in like a big chunk of her set at Coachella. Right. And I started, and because I was watching it within that context, I was like, she reminds me of Madonna. 100%. Like there's something about her that was very, and her set at Coachella and the, like the set build, the physical set and the costumes and the whole, all the art direction. That was very Hollywood in this tongue-in-cheek way that reminded me of like Madonna during Dick Tracy. It was like a little bit of like a caricature.

She has that, I don't want to say cartoonish, but kind of. Kind of. That one streak of Madonna that we, I think, identified in a lot of our, like, episodes, like that Betty Boop quality that, but I mean, Madonna has many flavors, but I think Sabrina is a great living example of that one flavor. She is cartoonish in, in a cool way. Like, she, like, really, like, kind of vamps it up. She's like a pin-up in a gasoline station from the 50s come to life, you know.

If you go watch Madonna's Academy Awards performance of sooner or later, it has a very similar quality to what Sabrina Carpenter is doing now, and it feels like it, like Sabrina Carpenter could star in a remake of Who's That Girl. Totally. And do a new Who's That Girl song to go with it. It's like, like, obviously, like, if you were going to. you were going to partner with some young pop star, right? I don't know that anyone else made more sense.

And seeing them side by side, I was like, they're the same height. Totally. I was like, maybe she should play Madonna. I know, right? It made sense to me once I saw it. Yeah. And heard the song. And the song itself is interesting because then the next,

that single came out before the film. Yes. Right. Yeah, April. And it's interesting to me because I was perhaps underwhelmed at the beginning when that song came out. Me too. I liked it. Yeah.

Then it got stuck in my head and I was like, oh, there's something to this. And a lot of these songs that she put out, the singles, have had that kind of earworm quality. Totally. Where you aren't, it doesn't like hit you over the head the first time you hear it and you're not like, wow, this is a smash hit. You're kind of wowed by the production and then it sinks its sense. into your subconscious. So by the time the album came out, hearing it in the album context,

you're like, these are sensational songs. It's like actually unbelievable. We'll get into it. I also feel the single version we heard and the album version are slightly different, right? And I do prefer the album version.

And the film version is also different. Yeah. So like you kind of had all these opportunities to hear it a bit differently. And you're getting a lot of really fun insight into Stewart Price. by hearing these different versions and hearing the different transitions. Like the transitions in the film are also a bit different than on the album because there's like a film component.

So there's time, you know, like in the film she crashes the car. Yeah. The airbag deploys. And then you see the lipstick mark on the airbag. Yeah, I love it. But when she walks in, you hear the footsteps. So there's like different. The sound design of the film is incredible.

Yeah. Like there's so much of it. Like something small, but like there's a, the scene, my personal favorite part, which with the like, dominatrix filmers, for lack of a better word, I don't know what you could call those women. Right, which we need to talk about them. Yeah, I'm obsessed with them. But one's in the bathtub smoking,

and you hear her drag the cigarette. Like the sound is so clear. Okay, well, let's talk about the film since that's where we're at right now. Okay. I think that's the next thing that happened. I don't think any other music came out, or am I wrong?

Did Love Sensation come out before Confessions film? I'm iffy on dates and timelines, but I know that Love Sensation played at Club Confessions at the Abbey. That's true, but I don't think... But it was leaked. The video of leave, but I don't think it was officially out. No, but the fans kind of went crazy for it just based on, like, what leaked to the internet from that night. So I, from what I understood, I've never talked to anyone, I don't know if this is true, or if they were always planning to release it early.

I felt like they put it out because the fans were like, put that fucking song out, you know? She also played it at the... that Times Square concert. Yeah. It was one of the three songs that she played. So maybe it was planned. Anyways, but that, regardless, the film built around the first six songs of the album,

directed by your close personal good friends, Torso, David Toro and Solomon Chase, starring Madonna with appearances by In Order, Arka, Archie Medi, Dicue? Mediquet at Cumberbatch, Sabrina Carpenter, Cole Palmer, Debbie Mazar, Gwendolyn Christie, Honey Dijon, Fade, Zhao Pedro, Julia Garner, Kate Moss, Odessa Azezion, Richard E. Grant, Shy Girl, and Lordeus Leone, amongst others. I missed probably a couple people, but these were the feature players. And it premiered June 5th at the Beacon Theater in New York City during Tribeca Film Festival. Yeah. It premiered for me in my bedroom on my YouTube. It premiered for me

In a time and place I can't discuss Right, and you have an NDA I just I mean, I've watched it like several times now I think it's so good It's amazing It's amazing And it's there's so much

Every time you watch it New things like for me anyways come out Like the meta kind of arc Of these like Filmer dominatresses So it's because they're throughout, you know, like, it's so genius. The pacing of it is so perfect. I love the driving part.

It's funny to me that the way it begins is like you see the light beams. From the vagina. No, from the camera people. And you kind of think that it's like a SWAT team. Right, right. That they have guns and that they're like busting in. But of course it's like that the weapons are the cameras. that's so cunty.

It's so funny. It's so funny. But it's also so like salient. It's like, yeah, like being perceived is a weapon. It's punishing. It's punitive. You know, like, while like it's almost like I might be putting way too much into it. But I'm like, I think like one of a thing Madonna has had her whole life and maybe has come to terms with in a different sense and has made art about in the latter half of her career is like I always.

wanted so much attention and now I got it and I don't like it's not what I want you know like what a double edge sword that level of attention is and it's like we're now and we all remember when Britney Spears was inside like the crazy tunnel of cameras and the hold it against me video of course who could forget so we've seen this before this trope before but it feels like of course as time goes on with the internet and social media being what it is like were inside the Panopticon at all times, especially someone like Madonna. And then now hearing the album and going back

and if you watch the film again, certain things make much more sense than they probably did to begin with. Totally. Regarding that, you know, because it's like there, she's had many dance records throughout her career that had different kind of messages behind them

about like finding freedom in the music and, you know, losing yourself on the dance floor or whatever. But this feels like the most pointed that's like, I go to the club to be on the dance floor so people like stop looking at me. Yeah. Because I'm tired of, it's like almost like to get away from, to escape being Madonna. Right. And it's, I think it functions on two levels, which is what makes it so good.

It's obviously so specific to her, but it's also so applicable broadly in a world where we don't go anywhere. and we don't commune with other people and we don't engage in physicality to the everything, not everything obviously, but you know what I'm saying. We don't put our phones away. There's so much of a fixation

on two-dimensional, flattened, being perceived through your phone, whereas being, you know, resplendent and free and physical at a club where like,

yeah, maybe you're filming for a second or whatever, but if you're really in it, you're not, you're not even on your phone. And it's interesting, as like a fantasy for her because

we saw at club confessions that she can't do that still. No, of course not. Well, not at her own event. Right. Certainly not. I mean, it's like she's surrounded by security. She's behind like a kind of protective layer because she has to be. Yeah. And like you and so watching it

watching her in the video, it's like the scene where it goes into Bring Your Love, it's like she's in sort of like a concert like club dark room with tons of people and she's like in the crowd with that. And you're kind of like, oh, this is like what she's fantasizing. Right.

Like a dream situation. Yeah, I love it. I mean, I loved, I think one of my favorite parts was the table dancing. Oh, yeah. I loved that. Like the stretching and the knee pads, the yoga moves and like the, you know, circular motion of the camera. Obviously the day. And that was during one step away.

Yeah, I think so. Or is it, does it go through two songs in that part? Because I like vaguely remember hearing. Good for the. soul is the pussy lasers. Okay. And then it kind of bleeds into that part, I think. So I kind of remember some of the lyrics of Good for Your Soul, because I love that song. Obviously, the bathroom scene, which is with all the cameos, is, like, so major.

I was a little, like... It also seems to be the one that's caught on the most. Sure, because it's like, it's the, like, grab-yest. Also, it has Dancateria, which is the grabiest song. Yeah. It's the easiest one to, like, take away from when you walk away. I'm a little mad They didn't use the armpit

The Desperate's like Susan moment She might have I need to go back and rewatch Maybe we just didn't catch it I'm sure they filmed it They have her in front of it They did film it because a still of it Is I think in the bonus thing they put out

And I was like Major When Lourdes walks in There is something hilarious though About how her hair flies up when she does it Like she's just doing it to her face It's great. It reminds me of in the movie,

this is such a weird reference that just popped it to my head. You know, in the faculty, the movie, the faculty, the acclaimed film, the faculty. When Piper Lorry, they're like in the closet spying on her and she goes over to the water.

I've been seen it all the time. She goes over to the like, I don't know, what do you call it? Like the drinking. Fountain? It's not a fountain. The dispenser? The jug.

Yeah. She fills up the cup of water and she just throws it in her face and then her hair whips back. So they know she's like, an alien because the aliens need water. Right. Okay, anyway. Maybe that was the reference, and we don't know about it. I doubt it. Anyways, I loved it. I think it was great. Totally.

That's major. I mean... I think that if people haven't re-watched the Confessions film since getting into the album, it's very fun to go back and watch it after the album. Totally. And I'll tell you what, Ben and de Cumberbatch grew on me. At first, I was a little off foot by his prominent featuring, and now I'm like, it's cool. It's something about it's very Madonna. Yeah. To have him there. I love Richard D. Grant being in it. I'm such a stand. Me too. But I was like, hell yeah. I hope that was one of your best friends.

I hope they hung out every day in London. I had some foreknowledge of who was going to be in it, but I didn't know everybody who was going to be, so it was surprising. Obviously, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the hide the cocaine pan directly to Kate Boss moment, which is so wonderful. Yeah, Chef's Kiss. Which obviously she was in on because there's no way she would have allowed it if she was it.

And it's very cool and funny. The whole thing was choreograph. Yeah. It's so great. All right. This album has been sort of universally received with high marks. It's gotten great reviews. The Metacritic score, I think right now is 83. Everyone loved it.

I don't look at Metacritic for albums ever. Is that high? I think so. I mean, I don't usually either, but, I mean, it's quite high. Yeah. That means, like, you know, I didn't see. The only thing I saw under four stars was something called the Arts Desk, which I didn't look into. But even, I mean, Pitchfork gave it 8.1. That's really high.

But not Best New Music, which is a mistake. That is a mistake. We have a reward with you, Pitchfork. One last thing before we get on the tracks, and I wonder if you've heard them. She did reveal in that major interview with Mellonberg, which we should totally shout out because it's, A, the interview is amazing, but also the visuals are like, I think some of my favorite that I've seen in years of Madonna. of like so artfully styled. So the shots are so cool. It's just like amazing to be able to have that gift of something kind of new and outside of like you said, the album campaign.

The campaign. It's really wonderful. Yeah, I believe it's the only magazine cover shoot she's doing for this album. That's for it. That's an original shoot for magazine. I mean, she looks so cool and the hair is amazing. The looks are amazing. the like setting that film mix

sort of like Scorsese film vibe is so great. Anyways, she said that there's eight other songs that didn't make it on to the album, including one called What Will Save Me with ARCA or help produce with ARCA. Do you think those are going to come out? Yes, because I feel like, unless they're very unfinished,

they probably will because her, but who knows, might be in 30 years. Yeah. She has a tendency to release all of the old unreleased tracks. But also, we live in the age of like the various deluxe editions. Yeah. We also haven't had any remixes besides the Peggy Goo one.

Is that right? No, there have been a few. There's a Honey Dijon one that came out. There was a Stuart Price one that was a remix that came out also. The remixes are trickling out. I'm, I can't, I don't know. I feel like there's going to be a rejuice. remix record.

Record, yeah. I just get that. There's got to be. There's got to be. All right, let's go through the tracks. We talked about I feel so free a little bit, but I mean, the Deep House moment that is the song. It's just, I love that ecstatic sort of religious, ethereal soundscape that it starts with. It's such like a wonderful beginning to an album because you're sort of like,

hold into it, you know? And then her whispering, her statement. Thanks for coming. Sometimes I like to just hide in the shadows. Thanks for coming. Sometimes I just like to hide in the shadows, create a new persona. So good. It does have a little bit of erotica.

Yeah. Of like, my name is Dita. I'll be heremistress tonight. Which on my episode, I said that I thought erotica was like the prequel to confessions. that like if we're going to be looking at Confessions 1 and Confessions 2, I think that erotica belongs in that sequence somewhere. It's interesting. We're going to talk about it because we got a lot of questions of people being like, do you think this is actually a sequel to Confessions 1? Yeah, we will talk about it.

Yeah. Because I. Or should we talk about it now? I know. I'm interested in here. I kind of don't. Like fully musically, I think like maybe spiritually in the sense that it's like how confessional. was a return to like pure dance music.

This is a return to pure dance music. But I almost feel like it's more like the confessions of every dance. You know, I don't know how to say it. Like there's so much, there's so many, so many direct references and indirect references to other albums. Yeah. It's funny because I think that like there was a question that was like, what's your favorite throwback sound on the album to Madonna's Confessions?

And I was really struggling with. it because I was like it's not. I wouldn't call them throwback sounds. Yeah, there aren't. It's not one to one. I would almost say they were like nods or like updates. Yeah. And like I was hearing different ones like or I guess I was just sort of like what songs

could go together and I was thinking like weirdly get together works with bring your love. Yeah, totally. Or love without words kind of goes with jump. Yeah. Or I feel like sorry. and bizarre have a little like in common? And I thought sorry and fragile had something. Sorry, that's what I meant.

Sorry and fragile. No, did I mean bizarre? We'll get there when we talk about fragile, but it's like essentially like, I think that Steward and Madonna knew that they couldn't go backwards. Yeah. Like I think that Confessions 2 was sort of like, it's a spiritual sequel.

It's like born of a similar instinct of like, I want to make like a dance record. Right. I want to go back to this well. But I think that they knew that if they evoked confessions on a dance floor too much, that this album wouldn't stand on its own and be considered its own. I think that's so true. Because a lot of people I feel like, where's the hung up?

And I'm like, there's not going to be a hung up. No, you can't redo hung up. Yeah. Like, hung up was its own standalone thing. So I think that the Confessions Two Title and the visual references are, fun and I like it as a marketing thing and it sort of feels largely like a marketing thing, but it doesn't seem like it's like such a statement. I think maybe it's like a tribute to how she felt making Confessions One. Which, yeah, which is what she sort of talked about. Like,

I want to go back to that space that we made Confessions One from, like that sort of like free, like she had come off of American life that was so weighted and serious and political and gone into this other direction and if you think about it, Madame X, you know, was also with Mirway and like it's

it's like the repetition of that sort of one to make sense, but like... It also makes sense to do it because also you get people being like why doesn't she do a sequel to this album or this album or this album but it's like dance music is about repetition. Totally. So there's kind of a meta layer there. So true.

Of these albums kind of situating together. But it's like Madonna can't, she's never going to come and like not try and take her listeners to the next level. No. And I think she and Stewart knew they had to keep pushing it. And I think that's part of what made the album such a surprise for people when they heard it, how novel it felt. Because they were, especially with the title, they were expecting so much of confession. Nistalgia or looking back. And you're not really getting it.

Yeah, and it's funny, you do get it, but thematically, instead of musically, you know? I think I feel so free as a wonderful first song. And like we were talking about, like, hearing it in the context of the album as the kickoff is, like, made me like it even more. Yeah, and I guess just to reiterate a little bit, like, the future lovers, I feel love Confessions Tour track that this is like so similar. too. Of any track on this album, this is the most similar to a Confessions era song when it's that song. Future Lovers is of course produced

by Mirways on that album. And what's interesting about it is like Future Lovers has Madonna saying basically like forget all your problems, find brilliance and religion and this like Kabbalah futurism sort of thing.

And I feel like I feel so free it more narrates her desire to disappear and find safety in numbers on the dance floor. Yeah. Which kind of feels like more reactive to the times now, like in this like kind of like apocalypse we're living in. It's like less hopeful and it's a little more like I'm hiding or I'm like desperate to feel free like that again.

Yeah. Like I haven't felt I feel so constrained. Yeah. Like I like this is like casting a spell. Like, this is a manifestation ritual. Like, I want to feel that for you again. Which is kind of what Karen Gans was saying, right? She wanted to hear and see more of that.

Well, as a fucking certified woo-woo-ass bitch, I love Good for the Soul. I love it. Everything begins in consciousness. So true. Bedtime stories reference, maybe. Maybe. Slightly. Slightly.

Those, there's a bunch of those throughout the album, which makes me very happy. Just dance in the rain. No need to explain. Say no more fan. I went on a little bit of a Reddit dive with this one because I wanted to see what the fans were saying and someone pointed out that they feel that this is referencing Impressive Instant

which didn't cross my mind which I love. And Impressiveness is one of my favorite Madonna songs. Same. One of my top five, no. One of my top five too, babe. One of my endless top five. One of the magic trick top five,

which is Mary Poppins bag of top five songs. But that's because, Because this song, and lyrically you can see it, because she says, traveling through space and time, interstellar helix unwind, don't forsake or the love will die, don't forget your love

all right, on the spiral light, we fly, we will be one, we will be divine, all the spirits they intertwine. And then back on an impressive instant, it's similar but different. She says, cosmic systems intertwine, astrobi bodies, drip like wine,

all of nature, ebbs and flows, comets shoot across the sky. Like, it's like, it's, it's very... We're mining the same well of, of, uh, burning man references, which I love. Of new age pop spiritualism. Totally. I mean, this, this one doesn't have singy, singy, like a bird on a wingy wingy, unfortunately.

Um, but it does have astrology references. She could have been like, I like to dancey, dancing, dancing, dancey. Um, I love moon as in Virgo, the sun and the sky, Venus and Torres, the planets aligned. I love a little astrology reference. Yeah. And I didn't even think about what that might mean. And I'm sure there is a meaning. Well, Venus is exalted in Taurus.

It's the best position it can be in. Taurus is ruled by Venus. So the planets are aligned there. I love Good for the Soul. I don't know there's like a ton to unpack lyrically there like we talked about. I think it is in conversation with some of her ray of light and impressive.

Like some of her preoccupations around her spirituality and her idea of like the cosmic oneness and, you know. I had a thought here. Tell me. Not to get to TMZ. Sure. But it feels like an acknowledgement of mortality. Well, yeah.

Is happening in this song. And she did have a near-death experience right shortly before the celebration tour. Yeah. which was then when she toured the world with Stewart, then they went into making this album, feels potentially connected, or like she is expressing kind of like a new appreciation. Right.

For where she is. I have the through line of the whole album, though, because, like, the near-death experience, for sure. Like, I think there's no way to take stock of your entire life by writing a biopic about yourself and not think about your own mortality. and your own legacy and like, okay, where is my life going? How much longer do I have?

So I think that colors this whole album, which is very interesting because I don't think we've heard that before. Right. And I just want to sonically, I have to say that the minute the album came out. Yeah. I was up at a house in the woods. There was like not a party going on, but a gathering. Of the jugglers.

I French exited. Uh-huh. with my friend Jacques Lucant into a pitch dark bedroom, put headphones on, and listen to the entire album in the darkness, drinking glass of wine.

Ugh. Dream. So when I heard this, I had heard this song, of course, in the Confessions film. Right. When I was listening to it on headphones, I found the production super crystal clear. Every element hits with impact. It's like very sweeping and overwhelming and dazzling.

The strings are really phenomenal. I think this is a sleeper song on the album where it's not as graby and showy as some of the other songs. But when I listen over and over, I'm so drawn to this song for exactly the reasons that you're talking about. It takes you somewhere. It takes you somewhere. Stuart knocked it out of the park with kind of bringing to life what she's kind of trying to communicate melodically and with the lyrics. Also, in this song, there's like a build, and Stewart is really good at a build. Especially, like, with this structure of the songs mixing into each other.

Yeah, yeah, continuous mix. And he kind of takes this freedom of, like, letting it build until it's, like, this trancey techno refrain happening. Super fucking loud. It's wonderful. And I will mention there is a bird reference. And good for the soul, she says, because up to the. sky, a thousand birds fly. So the bird is back from, you're right, impressive Vincent. They're in conversation. The bird is back. A thousand birds flying in the sky.

That's her in the frozen video. Frozen video, exactly. So this goes into one step away. This was one of the ones that when I first heard it, I was like, let's fucking go. Completely. Like grabs you right away. One of my top songs. Her vocal performance on this. Well, you fucking love bedtime stories. I love bedtime stories. And my first note was it feels like it's sprouted off of bedtime stories. Or the untold chapter. Yeah. Mixes.

It's like, it's one of the most elegant songs on the record. I love it. I just, her vocal performance brings me back to like every old Madonna song that I love because she sounds, I think this is a song she sounds the most like her classic Madonna vocal self, in my opinion. It's like,

it has the sexy aughts like Midtown Manhattan, lounge feel. Buda bar is open for business. It's like you have a Rachel haircut, but it's really sleek. It's like a Tom Ford silk satin shirt. Totally. It's like maybe a choker, but like a really thin

chain. What is that was that restaurant that was like Asian themed that was like very big at this time? Tao. It's very Tao. Not Tao, the other one. They just opened it again in LA. Oh my God. Sushi Samba? Indochine. Oh, Indochine. I mean,

Indonesh is timeless, but... But also Sushi Samba. They did also... Sushi Samba also. It's very Indochine. It's like... This song has Detroit techno influences on it. The strings, the piano.

It's like... You know, and I wrote that it was like... It was like the wow track, like the standout on the Confessions film for a lot of people. Yeah. For like a certain kind of Madonna fan. You were like, oh my God, we're so back.

I love it so. And then we spoke a little bit about it, but this segue is a really great continuous piece moment. Really powerfully and insanely. Yeah, and to bring your love, I've had something all to talk about. And when that transition happens, like,

whatever Stewart and Madonna did with the album mix turned the song into a smash for me. Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. Someone mentioned this, and I actually didn't hear it at the first end, that they, was this only in the film where they put the, The Lucky Star Sinfab?

Yeah. Yes. Are we ever going to get it? Probably not. I didn't catch it when I listened to the film the first couple of times. The Lucky Star Sinfline to me is like so, if I hear it anywhere, I'm like, where is a dog whistle? It's the Batman call. You're like, I'm here.

Yeah. It's like that and like the intro to the X-Files have the same effect. I wonder why they didn't include that version on this album. It's so major. I'm obsessed with it. Maybe it'll come out in some other thing. When I'm listening to it, I actually hallucinate that it's there. Like when I'm listening to it at the gym this morning, I was like, I'm like, is it on there?

I'm like tweaking because of it. I can't unhear it. It's so good. I didn't hear it the first time because I was, or even the second time until someone pointed out. And then I was like, oh, yeah. This version has additional production by Pirece. I'm pointing this out because nine of the tracks I think are just. her and Stewart, but then there's the other tracks that have these additional collaborators.

This song interpolates at one point, Good Life by Inner City, which we hear. Good Life, Good Life. Major. Really, really major. Gorge. A very important song in my life and in the lives of generations of clubgoers. Like, it still hits like it was yesterday when they put that song on. I love, I talked about this maybe with Karen or I'm not sure, but.

I actually, Pink Pussy Hat, love the lyrical conceit of this song. Like, I do think, like, I do think there's something in it that's, like, bringing back don't tell me, bringing back kind of a throughline that started for her when she was like, stop fucking telling me what I can and can't do, stop telling me how old I am.

You know, like, and it's not so explicit, but it is. like don't try to shut me up. That's very don't tell me. She talked about it in dark ballet too and not to bring up dark ballet, which I love. Don't try to distract me with numbers, which is like both, I think, age,

but also like... Industry. We live into like, how many followers do you have, like, whatever. And the irony of her saying that on the Sabrina song, which is, like, of course, the label was probably thrilled to make it the first single. They thought it would do numbers,

and she's like preempting it by being like, Don't talk to me about numbers. I mean, Sabrina's on Universal. Warner could have probably pushed for one of their own, like, dual league or something. But yeah, I just, I do love that. I love, like, there is, there's a bit where she says, who are you doing it for? Ask yourself what you're doing it for. I think this is, like, a really good central question that, like.

Many people should be asking themselves? Yes, exactly. Not me, but other people. Me sometimes. Sometimes I, like, had the craziest dream, which I will not burn airtime boring you with the details of my dream. But it essentially panned out to being like, who are you doing it for? And I was like, damn, my dream about my ex-boyfriend being unmasked. We don't have to get into it.

Anyways, the song has grown on me incredibly. It reminds me a little bit of how, like, when Beyonce put out Renaissance, she had break my soul. And I was like, it's good. I was like, I don't know, you know, threw it on the playlist. Yeah. Come on. I was like feeling it more and more. Then when I heard the album, I was like, oh, the song is a smash fucking hit.

Right, right. Once you were able to hear it in its proper home and context. Yeah. It does something to it, you know. They sprinkle a little crack in it for me when they put on the album. I can't tell if the mix on the album version is different than on the single version. Because I'm like, am I tripping? Paul said it was.

Okay. I think, I don't want to put words in it off, but I believe he did. Or at the very least, I think he texted me and was like, I feel the production is different. So there is something, I'm too stupid to point it out, but I know that me hearing this version and me hearing the other version, I like this version better. Same. I love this version.

Might be an optical illusion, an oral illusion. Yeah, the whole entire album has a hallucinatory quality to it for me. And I think that's like because Stewart is being so maximalist. Totally. And so detail-oriented, like. Yeah, I'm like, I don't know what program he is, but I imagine like the Ableton or whatever had like 900 tracks on it.

Yeah, just like layers, yeah. But it's like, you hear things and you're like, did I hear that? Am I ears playing tricks on me? Is it the headphones I'm wearing? Is it my car speakers? Like, there's just so much detail that continues to fly at you

the more you listen to it. His age is like a fine line. Just so good. So with this one, it has this kind of like staccato like teleporting quality to it where the synth chords at least when you're listening to it on the headphones that I have, which are Bose, and if you put it in

immersive mode. On this podcast, we love Bose headphones. No free ads, but I have a gorgeous pair of Bose headphones that I love. You know, the synth chords kind of jump around you, they're like, here, here, here, here, here, here. And it's like surround sound, and you're like, and then like the song is just barreling forward to this, like, driving,

propulsive beat. It has this, like, shiny, bulletproof, like pop adrenaline. Yeah. It's pretty massive, actually, the song. It's amazing. I was like, wow, this is not really ever happened to me with a song. Songs have, like, grown on me with repetition, but it's never, like, to this extent gone from, like, me hearing it being like, and then me being like, I love the song so much. I love it. I don't want to hear it 10 times. I was driving down the freeway, listening to it, and when it, by the end of the song, when it builds and builds and builds,

I was like, how fast am I going? Oh, 92 miles per hour. I'm like, you get pulled over. You're like, Madonna. It's going to cause accidents. Well, and it's right into Danciteria. I have to stop every time to not say Danceturia.

Say it. Do it your way. How you do it in your culture? Girl, in my culture. I'm interested that this song is, there's two songs on this album that are co-written with Andrew W. and Henry Walter, who goes by Circuit, and this is one of them.

And Andrew Watt is obviously, like, kind of famously, or, like, as of late, a rock music guy, like, has been sort of the Pied Piper of Breathing Life back into sort of, like, 90s rock bands. Like, I think he did Pearl Jam. I believe he did Red Hot Chili Pepper's last album. And Circuit is, like, a big pop music writer. I noted that, I mean, a lot of these songs have a lot of writers.

He works with Gaga on the last album. Yeah, and so did Andrew Watt. But he also was a writer on Wrecking Ball by Miley, which is one of the fucking best songs of all our whole lifetimes. Katie Perry's Dark Horse, which I love that song. It's my favorite Katie Perry song. I hate that song. Go on. Oh, my God.

I love it. Sorry. And Starboy by the weekend, which I have no thoughts on because it's like wallpaper music. I love Starboy. I love Wrecking Ball. Great. And Circuit also is credited as a producer on here. So someone asked, can you please go through the name checks on Dantity?

Yeah. And I was like, I've never been born to do anything more in my life. Let's start. Well, can we start off saying what Densateria is? Yes, of course, please. So the song starts, and I like how it goes straight into the verse. Yeah. It's a little, it's much different than it is in the Confessions film.

Yeah. because they picked and shoot. Yeah, they chop it up. Like, when I run back to watch the film, I was like, wait, I was like anticipating how I know the song to be. And I was like, oh. That it just starts with like get off the train four or five, six. And it's because Dancaterio was on West 21st Street. And so you would take the four, five, six to 23rd Street to get there.

Yeah. And if you guys didn't listen to part one, we talk about it extensively. But this was like Madonna's, you know, first arena of like where she came to name. where she met all the people that sort of like became like important in her life and where she first got her music played for a crowd. Correct. And it was founded by Rudolph Piper and Jim Ferrat. It's where the club sequence and desperately seeking Susan was filmed. I know that's right.

The roof bar was called Wuthering Heights, which is so interesting to me because of the weird weathering heights connections to Madonna, the Alec Cushishian. thing that we discussed in our episode. It was like the locus of New Wave in New York City, which I think is really critical, you know. But also like a place where sort of like hip hop culture also met New Wave culture. And it was sort of an intersection there, right? Because you'd have like people like Fab by Freddie and people were going to talk about their name checked in here also coexisting at this club with like these white. New Wave kids, you know?

Like, it was like a really cool cultural, like, exchange there. But New Wave was sort of, like, the dominant pop music at the time. Yeah. And so, like, it's interesting when you're tracing Madonna's trajectory, like, being pop. And the fact that, like, Warhol was there and things like that. But it was, like, also, it's definitely where I probably would have been every single night had I been young and in New York back then. Because, like, everybody was there. And among the bands that would go.

there just to hang out and play there was like the Smith's New Order, Echo and the Bunnyman, B-52s. Do you know one thing we never talked about in the Madonna episodes I was really mad about because I didn't realize it until after the fact that Madonna opened for the Smiths. We didn't talk about that? No. We've talked about that. Yeah, but it would have been in episode one for some reason, but Johnny Marr brought it up, I think, semi-recently, and I was like,

can you fucking imagine? But also like Klaus Nomi and Soft Cell, Mark Almond told Vanity Fair that that soft saw was recording non-stop erotic cabaret in New York and they would go there every single night. That album was sort of like written as like a New York album but it was about

Dancetaria. I have a little footnote about Mark Almond also. Well. In my notes. Oh well there's Vanity Fair just like because of this Madonna album probably did an oral history of Danciteria that came out like in June. Which is great. Yeah.

Which is great and worth reading. But it was like it's crazy to think about because this was like it was like peak Fiorucci at that time and it was like you know

it was like it was the tail it was like CBGB's was kind of dead I mean it was like the heyday peak was over and there was still people playing there but it was like not a thing

and dance music was kind of like this other thing that was going on in all these clubs in York and dance at trio I did it again one of the main ones yeah

dance Etteria. And someone who's not mentioned in the lyrics, but who was major force of dance interior was Diane Brill. Yeah, there's a couple of people. I want to talk about who wasn't mentioned and kind of speculate on that. Okay. When we're done. So keep, put that in your...

But like David Waniarowitz and Keith Herring were the bus boys there. Yeah. It's like two of the most profoundly impactful gay artists of the 20th century. Totally. Or bus boys at dance at Tensitia. Another first people not mention are the Beastie boys who also work there. Mm-hmm. It was a scene, bitch.

Just imagine it. Let's get started. I get off the train, 456, walk to the club, don't wait for shit. Meet this boy named Martin Bagoine. He's my best friend. He's my boy toy. Martin Bagoine, he's my best friend. Martin Bagoine, we talked about it in episode one, but we'll talk about it again briefly here.

He was a bartender, occasional backup dancer from Madonna. he was born in England he was a transplant they met and they lived together she had to move out of her Riverside Drive apartment because Futura her boyfriend

another person not mentioned in this song had graffiti all over the wall of her bedroom which really makes these guys mad sometimes well I think he was just like doing a piece

he was like throwing up a piece and she was like his goodbye gesture like lidsick on the mirror the guy version they didn't live together they live next door to each other. And he was 19 and they became inseparable. And according to Christopher,

he had a huge influence on the way she dressed. And you can see that, like, when we get into some later Madonna. Like, she very much has the little hat and the, like, the vest and the little capri pants with the little shoes. Which feels very Buffalo as well, which maybe

it was influenced by it. And he's from England. So, he also did the artwork for her burning up EP and has, and has a brief appearance in the Michelle Girl video. They went to England together and stayed at Mark Allman's bed sit.

Perfect. Yeah, so that's a little. Anyways, I think this one was really, like, the most touching one to me because they were, like, such best friends. And he was one of her first, I think her first, like, very close friend to contract AIDS in 1986. and she kind of like moved heaven and earth to try to save him and paid for his medical expenses and leased him in an apartment and also like in a really amazing way like because at this time she's super famous

and she's with Sean Penn, the press are hounding them, their tabloids are running all these like ugly stories about how oh Sean Penn and Madonna have AIDS from their friend who's infected and she would like eat out of the same bowl as him and make a huge show of being like this is not a big deal I found it very touching and she was there with him when he died and he was only 23.

Yeah, Andy Warhol wrote about it in the Warhol diary or didn't write about it but dictated it to his summary. Dictated it to Pat Hackett in the Warhol Diaries that he was there visited him in the hospital and saw her doing all of this.

Really? So that was that, okay. The next part is cut to the front there's Howie Montag Waves us in, no Ntiendas. I'm not sure you understand this. Howie Montau. Doorman and promoter of many iconic New York City nightclubs, including Ancateria and Studio 54,

he also was the creator of a cabaret review called No Entiendes, which is the first place Madonna ever had an official live performance, October 13th, 1982. Which is why it's a fun lyric, and she says, I don't think you understand this. I don't think you understand that. It's so good. Not just because it's in Spanish.

Not because a white girl, Spiello L'o-Svignon. Y'all mind? Baggs Riles and Erica Bell are two people that we should talk about also not mentioned her early dancers. Howie Montaog was also diagnosed with AIDS in June of 1991 or around then, and he organized a suicide party. Major. Yeah, and Madonna came via phone from L.A. There's actually an amazing oral history on him from interview from like two years ago, if you guys want to read more about him. The next one is get...

It's a bit of an Andrew Feldman. vibe if you know who Andrew Feldman is. She staged her final performance, jumped out the window on Bond Street. So insane. But you know what? Good for you. Listen, it was a wild time

back then. I just read it. They did it a little bit different back then. This is so off topic, but today I was like on my 10 minutes of social media. Thank you, Brick. And I like, of course, I'm like, why do I come here? And it was like a news story about a pilot,

like a student pilot who was. Oh my God. Did you see that? Yeah, like I jumped up. We're not going to talk about it. Okay. The next part is. We live in hell.

Yeah. Get on the elevator. I run into Debbie Mazar. I love that she rhymed Debbie Mazar with elevator. Debbie Mazar worked the elevator at Density. That was her job. Take us to the third floor, walk us to the dance floor. Then I see Mark Kamens is the DJ.

He's the DJ. Hide the cocaine. He played my tape. Everybody. This is how we start the party. So Debbie Beazar, you all know who David Mazar is. She worked the elevator, like you said. They call each other the Weibo Girls, which is still her publishing company.

It's still called Webo Publishing. Girl Publishing, like Wayvo's, Girls with Balls, Debbie would do her makeup, like they were fast friends, and helped her in her quest to get Mark Kamens an influential DJ who also did A&R for Island to play her tape, and he actually brought, I think they kind of briefly dated, and she kind of alludes to that in the interview with Mel, brought the tape to Chris Blackwell at Island who passed on it. Well, she said that she, and again, the interview with Mel, she said that she did coke with him and kissed

Yeah, made out with him. And she was like, then he played the tape. What did Mel say? He was like, he's like, you must have done a bump for the glamour.

She was like, yeah, but it made my throat. She wasn't a partyer. She wasn't a co-cat. But she did what she had to do. She did what she had to do. And it worked. He got,

he's the one that that gave the tape to Michael Rosenblatt that A&R for Sire, which is how she got signed. Also just a note about Howie Montag he never let Donald Trump into Densatiria. Spotless record.

Legend. Gold Star. The next part is there's Fab Five Freddy and Basquiat, Keith Herring, and Kenny Scharf. Everyone came from Sha Fra Zee to the beat. You love that part. Sha Fra Z to the beat

is the craziest lyric of the year since he won a fuck Slater. Richard, we should link later. It's really good. Just like the most weird name drawing. drops done in such a poetic way.

I love it. Well, Fat Ferry Freddy, I think I would hope you guys all know who he is, but if you don't. Born Fred Braithway, late 1970s, he was part of the Fabulous Five,

which is a graffiti group with Lee Kinyonis, who you might know is the star of the film Wildstyle, Fat by Freddie also in it. They kind of were like some of the first to shift from street graffiti like into like the prestigious actual art world. Freddie was like a regular on Glenn O'Brien's, show TV party, then a Brian former editor of interview, TV party

iconic. He is named check by Blondie and her rap in rapture and he's also in that video. Basquiat. Do you know who Basquiat is? Me. Are you familiar with Bosquiat?

No, I don't know. I don't know who that is. Jean-Michel Basquiat. I don't like graffiti. I don't know into graffiti art. Obviously, iconic, famous painter. who dated Madonna in late 1982. They were together for a while,

but she couldn't be with him because he wouldn't stop doing heroin, quote, unquote. Keith Herring, famous American artist and activist, also you said busboy at Danciteria, she performed like a virgin and dressed you up before they came out at his first annual party of life at Paradise Garage.

And she would wear a lot of his customized clothes. Of course. And Kenny Sharf. Still alive. Kenny Schorf. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Amazing artist. He was roommates.

Also has fun parties and like his own venue in New York where he has them. I don't know if he does anymore, but he used to, right? Disco parties. Pretty recently. Cosmic caverns or whatever. And he lived with Keith Herring. Now very important for me, Shaftrazi, Iranian excellence. Tony Schafrasi, an Iranian-born American art dealer.

He's a fucking icon. I didn't know this. One of the huge legendary art dealer. Did you know that? In 1974, he spray painted over Guernica, Picasso's Guernica, in the MoMA, and wrote Kill Lies All in foot high letters in spray paint on Giernika. By the way, an allusion to James Joyce's 1939 Finnegan's wake. When they grabbed him, he screamed, call the curator.

I'm an artist. Wow. That's what I'm going to start saying whenever someone questions me on anything. called the curator. I'm an artist. He then went home, became the art advisor to the Shah of Iran, helped him collect all this incredible contemporary art,

became the director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and then came back to America. It did so much stuff. Anyways, he had a gallery that showed Kenny Sharp, all these people. So shot Frazi to the beat. Next part is there's Mary Pole and a guy named Fred.

See these guys spinning on their heads? There's Rock City Crew and Crazy Legs. Puerto Rican boys, they make me go crazy. That line. It's just, girl. I'm waiting for the remix. That's just that line. Over and over and over again.

Marie Pohl, do you want to tell people who Maripole is? Yeah, she's a legend. She's a photographer, fashion designer, jewelry designer, artist, like occasional film producer. I would maybe, I think. She produced Downtown 81 and then also a few documentaries. She was, she's largely seen as being responsible for a lot of Madonna's style in the early 80s, like all the bracelets. Yeah.

All the like a virgin era. Totally. She worked at Furucci. Yes. She is now really known for her Polaroid photography because back then she would take Polaroids of everybody. Yeah. released several anthologies and books of all of her Polaroids of like Warhol, Debbie Harry, Debbie Mazar, all the debis, Madonna, Madonna, Baskiot, Keith Herring, so on and so forth. So she was like major artistic style fixture.

Yeah, and I think had a lot of... In this scene at the time. And close friends with Madonna. And a lot of influence on her, like, early style with those... Like, she invented those bracelets, I think. The black rubber bracelets, yeah. Which came to define, like, hot topic style in the late 90s. Little did she know.

what she wrought. In my era. I used to have them. Yeah, same. A guy named Fred is still referring to Fab by Freddie because when she met Mary Pole, Fab by Freddy was performing and he had been like, can you find me some girls to dance on the stage with me? And she, like, had seen Madonna perform and was like, come dance on stage.

And the rock steady crew and crazy legs, those are B-boys. Look at it up, babe. I'm not going to close. Not Fred Schneider from the B-52s, although the B-52s do get a mention. But I do think she was talking about that. Crazy Legs was like one of the most famous break dancers. I think he was like one of the first breakdangers to have like a campaign with Fila or something. And anyways, they were around.

Next is Nile Rogers and David By-Firn. B-52's had money to burn. Lounge Lizards had so much style. Lower East Side take a walk on the wild side. Nile Rogers, we know. If you don't know anyone who Yossi just said... Open a book. Yeah, we don't need to get into it.

He produced the first Madonna album, though. He was the co-founder of Sheik. David Byrne, obviously of the talking heads. he was around during this time. B-52's had money to burn as a fun one because not only is a name check of the B-52s, but it's a reference to one of their big songs, well, it wasn't that big, but their 1983 song Legal Tender, which has the lyrics, we're in the basement learning to print all of its hot, 10, 20, 30 million, ready to be spent.

We're stacking them against the wall, those gangster presidents. It's talking about, like, counterfeiting money, money to burn, which I thought was really cool. Yeah. And lounge lizards were John Lurie's, like, avant-garde jazz. fake jazz, no wave band. Fucking cool, man. And in Norris Burroughs' book, which we're going to talk about

when we get to the last song, he talks about how they used to go see them play all the time. And John Lurie is, and members of the lounge lizardsards are in Desperately Seeking Susan. I think what's cool about this is like, you think of Madonna as the ultimate celebrity, the most famous person in the world,

certainly the most famous person in the world at one time, someone who's made it so big, who has so much money and fame in success and whatever. And there's this like cliche that people forget where they came from or like...

Totally. Or if you knew them, you're like, I wonder if they would even remember me or something like that. And it's just this moment where it's like, she fucking remembers everything.

She remembers everything. And also for me, I mean, when I tried to stress so much when I was doing this Madonna series was like, I know we're not used to this anymore but like I think so many people

have like divorced Madonna as like you said, just this famous pop star. And because now pop stars are kind of burst from the ether. Like, they're just like, you're a Disney star and then you're a pop star.

They don't really come from anywhere. Like, to remember that this person comes from a scene. Like, a deep scene of, like, artists and weirdos and fucking cool people.

And she was one of them. And it's just, her trajectory was different. But, like, never forget that she comes from the same pool as the fucking talking heads and these crazy legs and fucking the B-50.

You know, like, I think that's really important to remember for the kind of, of artist she is. Obviously, DeJude, Lou Reed, we know,

Walk on the Walson. He has a writing credit on the song. I love that part. I love it too. It's so good. It could have gone so bad,

but yet it works so well. And she threads in the theme of being like a somebody on this song because it has those lyrics of like, everyone might talk about us, like we don't care.

They might be watching us. We don't care. It's like, she's of like knowing your kind of hot shit but then also being like, I'm just here to have fun throwing that.

aside. Yeah. But still mentioning it. Totally. Okay. Well, then it goes in, this is a strange sequencing, but it goes in to read my lips featuring fade, which I told you. I recently learned that not everyone likes.

I like it. This is the World Cup song. Is it? Right? This is the song, yeah. That she's going to do at the halftime show. Because it was also released as its own single with like World Cup artwork. Right, right, right.

Co-written by Puerto Rican producer Tain. And Faye. I love Taney. If anyone hasn't gotten into Taney, get into Taney. Listen, I always love it because y'all mind if all my girls be the last man, y'all. And I just think it's good. Like, I, okay, every Madonna album needs to have some Spanish guitar, and this is the track. I like the fury and anger in it, you know.

Do you think the song is about Guy Ritchie? The thought didn't cross my mind. Please elaborate. I mean, you're giving lead actor. You want to steal the show. You like to be a bully. You like to always win. These are director-type accusations.

That's just what I thought about. It could be about, I mean, it's a broad enough song that it could be about anybody, but, like, it's a vitriolic song about an ex-lover, you know? That's really interesting. And she talks about, like, you know, you cut me with your lies, but you're just broken. It knocked me off my feet,

but I will survive. And I kind of feel like her divorce from Guy Ritchie was the biggest, like, thing that she sort of had to recover from, you know? I wonder how much she knew that there would be also a football element to this whole thing. Like this is a sports song? Yeah, this is a sports song, so he'll notice it or something. It will reach him because he's probably really into the World Cup or whatever. I don't know. that's me speculating. I have no idea.

I have no idea. It's just, we'll never know. We're improvbing here. I was trying to think of who's such a big, like, because she talks about Sean, another song, which we're going to get to. But I was like, and who is the other biggest, you know? But it could, I mean, she's had a lot of relationships, so I don't know. Or it could just be, you know, an imaginary song. There's a lot of, there's a lot of deeply felt anger in the song that I imagine. It's probably about a real person.

It goes into everything. This is I want to shoot my phone. This song is I want to shoot my phone song. Share, one of the best tweets of all time. Instagram, babe, I also don't fuck with it. I mean... Or I try not to fuck with it, but unfortunately I keep fucking with it. But I don't fuck with it.

Relevant? Valid? Sure. Is it a little old man screams, goes outside and screams at cloud? Maybe. Who amongst us though? Right. But what's so strange about the song, and I know Karen said that this is a skip for her,

is that I fucking love it. I don't even know why. I like it too. It's like, I understand, but I'm also like the production of it just as like a crazy dance song. Totally. It really hits.

It builds and it hits and it's like, it gets you. I really love it. Also, I'm sorry, why you always make me feel so bad about myself, why you always make me want to be like someone else. She's right.

She nailed it. Feminism. Feminism. The next song is love sensation. Yes. There's nothing that you cannot do. Nothing that you cannot do. I like the song a lot.

I'm obsessed with it. Yeah. I didn't write down any notes. Me either because it's just like, it's just great. The kind of three song. This is like no thoughts just vibes. Smooth brain. When I put this on, I'm just, like, dancing in the kitchen, you know?

Everything into love sensation, into love without words, is definitely, like, a peak on the album to me. It's personally. Yeah, I don't have, like, a lot intelligent or interesting to say about it. I just think it's fucking good. It has, like, this kind of sweeping sensation to it that reminds me of why I love get-together on confessions, actually. Because it feels like the most. like emotional, romantic, kind of like burning

melodic song on the album. Like love sensation might be my favorite song. We'll get into it because I know that was a question that somebody asked. Yeah, I just feel it. Can't explain it. I do fuck with it. Love Without Words. Additional Production, Pirece.

I love that song too. Me too. I do think it's like those two songs like you said into each other. are just like, it's the vibe moment. You're vibing. There's a synth sequence loop in the song that is so infectious and so addictive right off the bat that I was like,

what is the sample? I thought it was sampling something and it's not. It's not. It's just like pure crack. I thought she was saying, call it trans, whatever script. Call it trans, call it house. I was like, that's cool.

It's not trans. But also her delivery, and this is maybe going to sound weird, of someone somewhere out there will understand what I'm saying. Her spoken word performance in the song reminds sounds like ARCA. And I was like, is it ARCA? I was like, is ARCA on this track?

And it's not, but I'm like, is she just been listening to ARCA? She's giving an ARCA kind of delivery to it. It was, she's single white female a little bit on the track. Well, she's around. It's fab. Yeah, it's wonderful. Who wouldn't? There is a nod to Madame X.

in this song. How could you? Madam X is a spy in the house of love. That's true. Come to the club, come to my house, come to the club of love.

I'm just saying. So, I know, I just said love sensation is my favorite track. This might be my favorite track. I don't know why. It just like

taps a vein in me. I like click into place. I can't get out of it. It's like I'm in it. I'm a hostage. And like, when you talk about the sequencing of the album,

like this idea And I don't think it's that literal, but you can interpret that it's sort of like one long night out at the club, which the Confessions film does a good job of like you're in this kind of like, you're being like, it's like a full throttle kind of omnibus mega club experience where you're being led from like room to room by Madonna because it's all like through her point of view. And once you get to love without words, this is where. it feels like the peak of the club night just before things start to go downhill. You know? It's a little like over the edge. Oh my God.

What? It's like you do cocaine and like it's fun at first. Yeah. Like you're like, everything's so great. Oh my God. We're up. We're having fun.

And then someone starts talking about their ex and you're like, oh no. Things are about to go off the deep. It reminds me of Scream and Delica, the primal scream album, which is also sequenced that way. It's like kind of meant to be like a night at the club doing X's

see and then the end is the come down, you know? And I think this album is very much like that. Like it's like it's a buildup into the club and then it starts to go into a come down. Yeah, and it's a little bit of a horror. You're like, is it getting light outside? The fear. Actually, like is this. Yeah, the fear creeps then.

And the fear is mortality and we're going to talk about that. Which I think is beautiful for a song to be able to sort of capture that is very rare. Yeah. And it's like, it's very stunning. And it's not just the song. I think the song is a microcosm of the whole album. The album is just struck it out that way. Okay, the next song is bizarre.

This one is featuring Martin Garricks. It's stronger than just a co-write. He's 30. He's a Dutch DJ who is discovered by Tiesto. I'll be honest with you. I don't know a lot about Martin Garrick's. It's not my world. Same.

This song has six writers. I like what I'm hearing, though. Yeah, we're getting into a chunk of the part that starts to have multiple writers. So Madonna, Stuart, Martin Garricks, Oscar Rindaborg, Wilhelm Borg. Wilhelm Borgison and Taylor Upsall. Taylor Upsall, I went and listened to some of her music. Kind of good. I'm not going to lie. This song was born during a songwriting camp in Berlin in 2023,

which is why I have all these people on it. This is the Sean Fenn's song. And I don't think that's... This is what I was talking about of like someone starts talking about their ex and you realize the night is over. That's this song. Movie Star Deep Blue Eyes and Hollywood were paraphrased. Yeah, I don't think this one is like, we're not speculating

because she literally says Shelby Cobra, which is the car she gave him when they got married. So I think it's pretty obvious who it's about. I was kind of like sidiswiped by this song lyrically. Because I was like, oh, I thought. It's never really over. Yeah. There's certain people you never get over.

But I thought they were like, the whole thing was, the whole narrative was they were like so cool and chill with each other and their friends. But this song just like kind of has some animosity. It's like the roll the red. carpet out for us, but you won't share it. I guess you're threatened by me, but you won't admit it. It's maybe not, and I'm honestly, it's like airing, unerred grievances. There was a time recently, air quotes recently. Yeah. Because I don't remember when it was. It could have been 10 or 12 years ago, but there was a time where they were like seen together again. They were like hanging

out again. Yeah. And that was when it was like, oh, they're still friends. They can be friendly. They still have admiration for each other. We don't know what the fuck happened. So true. There could have been like a late night hangout, hookup. Yeah, maybe. Like, we don't know. We can't know. All we know, I do know that there was like a lot. I would love that, but we can't know.

Sean Penn smoking 200 cigarettes. Oh my God, so major. Just blasting Sigs. I still think there's time for them. Sean Penn right now in the Ukraine, listening to this song on repeat. Listening to this podcast. Like, what the fuck? It is, it is like, I mean, it makes a lot of sense.

Like we talked about it in episode one and I think in episode two, our episode where like he told Playboy that like when him and Madonna got together, she wasn't even on tour yet. And he didn't, my understanding of the direction that she was choosing was a misunderstanding. Basically, like, she got way more famous than he thought she was going to. And I don't think he really liked that. Because he was private or for whatever reasons. I mean, I think she sort of is like, you didn't. you know, you wanted the spotlight for yourself or whatever. Anyways.

Also, in a way, maybe that gets taken away from you, you know? It's like you're only going to become super famous once. Like the moment where it happens is only going to happen once. Right. And it was like kind of dampened. And it was like she couldn't enjoy it because of this thing going on. And that might be a grudge that she's nursing not to put a grudge in her mouth. And also, I mean, again, now we're like full fan thick.

Yeah, totally like, we don't know what we're talking about. We don't know anything. But I'm like, also what a bummer to have that tainted by the fact that it also ruined her marriage. You know, like that fame, not just because of him, but just because, like, I think any marriage would crumble under, like, they were like not stopped. Even after she wrote Cherish? Stopped by Parvro. You know. I'm on Broadway and I'm in love.

If the only good thing that came out of it was her, like, you know, hysterically writing Cherish to save the marriage. Not that's what she did. But then I'm happy with it. I'm fine with it. One of the best top five. With all the songs. Okay, the next song, this is my favorite. I'll go on record.

I'm on record school. That's my favorite, too. You already said three favorites. It's like, we'll get into it. I, okay, I was already like, once, you know, one step away or whatever. I was like, let's fucking go. And then school came on, and I was like, stop the fucking presses. That's like you think the night is over.

Exactly. There's one last gas. A surge comes in. Someone comes by with a little dropper of 2CB. And they're like, sorry. New wind. This song actually has seven writers on it, which I thought was really interesting. Well, it's a really complex and interesting song, even for how simple and repetitive it is.

Yeah. There's also a lot of like buried or not so buried references in here to various things that popped into my mind. Like, obviously I'd rather be your lover. Good Time Stories. Callback. But the vocal. pitching in it is so anarchic and playful and, like, weird and druggy that it reminds me of music. Totally. Oh my God, totally, like, mirror ways.

Yeah. Like, the kind of, like, willingness to be, like, indecipherable. Yeah. And then, like, I saw some fans posting, like, I'll teach you how to fuck being, which is just a much more kind of esoteric, like, moments in her career where she's been like, I'm the teacher. That is the, by the way, for those you don't know, that's. a line that is in the sex book. In the sex book. And then also is in erotica, except she doesn't say,

fuck at the end. She says, I'll teach you how to. It's also, to my ear, the most Brittany Blackout song on the record. It's like, which is, in case people don't know, Blackout by Britney Spears, the album is an incredibly important electronic music production landmark record. It's been. inseminated by Get Naked I Got a Plan.

Go listen to it. I swear to God. I can't prove it, but we need a paternity test. There's Get Naked Got a Plan. I can feel and guarantee that Madonna loves that song. Yeah. I also wonder if this was a song that Brittany was meant to be on because it feels very Brittany to me. Yeah.

The fans are demanding a Kylie Minogue feature or remix. We're going to talk about that because people have asked multiple questions about where we think the Kylie, the rumored Kylie remix is going to come in or the feature. I love Kylie, but I would not want it here. You can hear how her voice would do it.

Like you could hear her doing it sort of. It is very her. But also what I love about this song is like, it's not anyone. And it's not Madonna. And it's not confessions. And it's not bedtime stories. And it's not music.

This feels like one of the most forward. looking. I agree. I think that's why it stuck with me sometimes. I was like, oh, this is like so new. I mean, again, there's sort of like some lyrical nods and stuff. But like, I was like, damn. But also, I don't you say it's not Madonna, but it somehow is so Madonna. Spiritually it is.

Like new Madonna. I'm like, oh, like, this is like, it's a way of embracing sexuality that feels so honest and so like true to her, you know? Yeah. And also like, she's talked so much in other lyrics about. being the teacher and now wanting being like, please, please teach me something I don't know. Impress me, God damn it.

Yeah, wanting to be the student. And like, I don't know. The lyric of where she says, please someone teach me something I don't already know, is also kind of meta in the way that this feels like her being like, can we do something fucking new? She doesn't want something new.

Yeah. And this record is very new sounding. Once I had a masterpiece that burned in a fire, me too. Same. I don't think she actually did have a masterpiece that burned in a fire. I think that's a metaphor. Maybe you're Picasso, but you're also a liar.

That's another guy Richie dig? I don't know. I mean, geez. I don't think, not with like absolutely love. Is it a Rocco Richie did? With love and respect in my heart, I don't think anyone will compare Guy Richie's filmography to Picasso. Lockstock is good.

Anyways, love this song. Also, she says there's a little. little line. I think I need to show you the way, blind ambition. Blind ambition. Which is what people would say about her. Which is where blonde ambition came from. Lots of school is in session. Someone asked if they think there's a Bosquiat reference

with the masterpiece that burned in a fire and I'm like, I don't think so. Because he took back all his paintings when they broke out, except for one. And he painted over them. I feel like this is very, we're getting a lot of her personality in the song because it feels like, and I say this would love, most snide kind of lyrically. Yeah, I'm not your mother. Yeah. She's so, it's like, she's like,

I'm over it. Yeah. You know. I can make moves on the dance. I'm bored. Tell me you're a man, but you're not. So, many such cases. It's amazing and it's wonderful and it's perfect. Some of the other people on here, Lenita Lashonda Smith, who has sang backup and choir stuff for a bunch of C albums. So I believe I read made an intro for a lot of these people to Madonna.

Scott M. Carter, which I think has credits on Normani, like the most recent Normani and Cardi B. albums. And Mustafa Mibiyakup, I'm sorry if I mispronced that. Matthew Fonson. And then this woman,

Jessica Ashley Karpov, who goes by Harlow, who co-wrote Secret Sh with Charlie on Vroomvroom, and has written songs with Kelly Clarkson, Zane, Celine Dion, and also Britney Spears. She co-wrote Love Me Down for Glory. Secret by Charlie is a very Madonna-ish song.

One of her most Madonna-ish songs. Tapped for it. Okay, the next song is fragile, drum and bass-esque rave ballad. I think the intro, I know that this song is very obviously and clearly, and she said about Christopher, but I do think in the intro she's referencing a little nod to Prince, another past person. And people really think that there's a beginning and ending to this thing called life. I think anytime you say this thing called life, you are referencing, Let's Go Crazy. Of course.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to gather this thing called life. And obviously, they had a relationship. So that's what I want to think. Something I found interesting is that the intro also goes into the same chord progression of sorry. Yeah. And you already know Stuart Price. was like... Yeah.

Podic. Because she never does apologize on the track. And it feels like it's her being like, I understand you now and I forgive you, but not like I was wrong.

So you think the apology is buried in the court progression by referencing sorry. Yeah. Wow. Maybe. Seven-dimensional chess. I know.

With your dead brother. And we don't know what happened, but I found that interesting. Yeah. Maybe it's a figment of my imagination. No, but that's really interesting. But what makes this album so brilliant is that it allows for us to kind of project these things and, you know, frequently.

Yeah. And also, I mean, again, this is an autobiographical album more than almost any of her other ones. And that's, it's rich for us to look into that, especially people like us who have just spent the last three months of our life going through her autobiography. So if that was seven-dimensional chess, I'm going to move it into eight-dimensional chess now because I was listening to Sorry After I felt I was like, why does this remind me of sorry? And I realized it's the same chord progression.

Sorry was not a song about apologizing either. It was about not wanting to hear an apology. Yeah. It was like, and I, then I had the thought, could Sorry have been about Christopher? And maybe we didn't know it or realize it. And I don't think she's ever said that it was, but if you kind of time back when they started their riff,

Right. It was during confessions or before confessions. Because I know he had issues with Guy Ritchie. Totally. There was like, she was no longer working with him on the tour stuff. She knew, well, the book didn't come out since 2008. Yeah. So I don't know she knew about it yet.

But the book came out because of this stuff that had happened, which would time to confession. So I just wondered if she was saying, like, I don't want to hear I'm sorry from him. Yeah. And that's why it's in the strike. And we presumed it was Guy Ritchie when we were talking about. And now I'm a conspiracy theorist. Well, regardless, this song is explicitly about him. We talked a lot about his book on the other episodes.

If you guys haven't read it, you should read it. She told Graham Norton that she wrote this song right after she spoke to him on the phone, which was like right just before he died. They reconciled before he died. Thank God. And she said writing it was like an exorcism. This song is the one that I started crying on my first listen. It just like hit.

I mean, I guess I've been so immersed in the autobiography of this woman and her story. And a lot of the other parts made me emotional too. But like this song in hearing like we shared a name a home. We shared a fragile bond. Now you're gone. We laughed. We cried. We held each other's hands.

We had each other's eyes and we belonged. That line ruined me. I was like, they did have the same eyes. And they did belong together. And then I see inside your soul and I feel whole. It's just, it's, I do, someone pointed out that they think this is like the most emotionally vulnerable, like explicitly. She's been lyrically. And I kind of think it's true.

I mean, maybe like, oh, father a little bit. and there was, there's like some other bits of like a prayer that she gets pretty... Promise to try. Promise to try. Yeah. But, yeah. It's been a long time. Yeah.

For sure. It's been a long time. Also, like, people were saying this is the most, like, vulnerable she's ever been in terms of, like, talking about her family life and her grief, which also isn't true to me? Almost every single album she's spoken or done a song about her grief about her mother. I mean, I think that she, like, has done it in ways that are very funny. Or like where she's kind of,

you know, like you'll take something serious and you'll kind of make a joke, not that she was making a joke out of it, but you'll say it in a lighthearted way because it's too much to deal with. Yeah. I wasn't on the American Life episode, but mother and father is such a funny song to me

because she has that whole thing of, you know, the poem she basically does, which is like my mother died when I was five. Yeah. I did was sit and cry Like that whole thing She gets into all She's quite specific on that song

Yeah She will be very personal At times Throughout her career It's true Yeah I do think like a prayer Is like maybe the most

Because she also has the song About Um My luck is running at a time Oh yeah I'm in love with me Anymore That also people

That was also about Sean Penn And she said it was I can't remember. Why can I not remember the name of that song? Me neither, which is so embarrassing. Until death, do its part. Okay. Yeah. My God. Okay, the next song, anyways, I love, I love Fragile. I agree with Mel. I think it's one of the highlights of the album. I went to the trouble of answering some of these questions that you put in here.

Oh, we're going to, oh, wait, under Fragile. Okay, yeah. Oh, yeah, we should, we should talk. The only one I kind of left here was, what do you make about the nervous breakdown? These two questions are basically the same. What do you make of the nervous breakdown line and fragile? And would Christopher have liked fragile? Was it fair to reveal his breakdown? Okay.

So we don't know what happened. I do have like a little inside tea that it did happen. Okay. It's not tea, but like I know someone that was meant to interview him. And at that time he was unable to do the interview because he was hospitalized. and I'm pretty sure it was for this. Nervous breakdown actually? I think so. Again, I'm, you know, I'm...

Listen, it happens. It happens to the best of us. It totally happens. Mine's coming soon. I do think that she's being sincere on the song and she's trying to convey empathy to him. Yeah. Does nervous breakdown happen to rhyme?

Yes. Is it an exaggeration? Who knows? Is it a little shady? Absolutely. Yeah. But also, like, I'm sorry, like, he wrote a whole book putting her shit on Front Street. Yeah.

I think it's okay for her to like, does that shade portray their... He's also not even, he's not alive anymore. You know, like, it's... Convenient. And she's not... She could have been like, he was a drug addict. Right. Which is what a lot of people said.

And, you know, that would have been... That would have been fucked up. But I think if she had been like, you were addicted to drugs. For her to, like, poke at that, which I'm not even saying is what she's doing. Yeah. Again, I do think, at least in the delivery of the song, it feels very empathetic the way she's saying it. But nervous breakdown is kind of a barbed thing to say. I mean, she's forgiving him.

But does that pay tribute to their relationship in its own way? Like, yes. It's like they weren't like this. You know what I mean? So like it's almost like if she didn't take a little pot shot, would it be authentic? I also think I do think he would have loved it. Well, I also wonder, like, would they have reconnected if he wasn't dying? That's a good question.

So you kind of can't even, would the song even exist? Like, I'm not sure. And like, but I do think she wants closure in that relationship. Totally. And I don't really feel like she's going to get it. Yeah. Completely. Because you never do.

You never do. It's not real. It's it. Okay. The next song is My Sins or My Savior featuring Strom A. So am I saying that, right? Oh, one more thing. Yeah.

I do want to say that. I think for Madonna to explicitly devote a song to Christopher on this album is in and of itself, like an enormous gesture from her. Totally. She doesn't do that for a lot of people. Yeah. And there have been others who have also passed away, but she doesn't, including her other brother, Anthony.

Right. Well, she wasn't as close. Yeah. I mean, there are a couple, there's the Martin Bergoin song that's kind of about him, but also about her other friends. She's very specific about the people who she would do this for. So I think that's meaningful. I mean, he clearly was one of the more major.

relationships in her life, like, creatively and familially. Those beautiful houses. He had such a touch. And also, we talked about it on that, so I don't want to go into it. But, like, he really had such a hand in her creative direction on those early tours and, like, was so incredible at it. And there's a lyric on the song where she's like, sorry, we're going forever, but there's a lyric on the song where she's like, you couldn't be yourself or you can't be

yourself now. And it almost made me wonder if she's meaning about how, like, about him being gay. Well, he wasn't, he, he wasn't in the closet, but I remember there was like a huge thing because she revealed to the press that he was gay and he was really upset about it. Yes. But also, like, would his career have gotten to where it should have without her giving him that leg up, essentially? Yeah. And, like, him be, you know, and, like, maybe he resents her for it, but, I don't think that's her fault either.

It's like she did what she should have done. Yeah, I think they were, I mean, I think what's true is that they were like inextricably linked. Like, yeah. She benefited greatly from, I think, his creative input. And he could kind of only do that with her because that was his sister and he knew her the best. But otherwise, he would have done it for someone else eventually. And he didn't, you know. It's sad and it's beautiful.

And I love it. I also think it's not my favorite song on the record. I'm just going to put that out there. That's okay. Mel said it was... They can't all be your favorite song. Right.

And this one, to me, I just find the melody a little repetitive. Yeah. And it feels a little inert. Like, it doesn't build to anything. It kind of just repeats. And I was sort of like... I think it's a nice breather.

Yeah. Like, in the pacing of the album, this is like you had to sit down for a second. But I do want to say I love the breakbeat techno beat of the song. The guitar is cool and interesting. It's like a very Madonna touch. It feels a little ray of light to me,

a little bit of music. Yeah. A little Club 69, if you will. So I get it. It's just not my favorite. Okay, moving on. You're talking still about fragile. Yeah.

Okay. Now we're talking about track 13. My sons are my savior. Stromae, featuring Stromae. Not pronouncing that right. Okay. Do you remember, Justify My Love? No, I have not heard that song.

She got pregnant. Because she was a hoe. This is what I wrote. This is her son. I was like, this is the very Justify My Love vibe. Also, a lot of erotica vibes. Also, I'm going to throw something weird out there, but I think you'll get it. I was really in college.

I was really into like French Neo-Soul trip poppy kind of stuff, like Le Nubian. I can tell. So really. We can all tell. What a college thing to be into. And also, like, Fevery Corporation, who were not French. It was also, like, that time. It was that time.

But I feel that vibe through this song. And I think it's the French, obviously. It's percussive. It's, like, French. It's, like, sort of funky. And I fucking love it. I love this song. It flips my army of lovers by army of lovers.

And it makes that sound. I'm obsessed with that sound. I don't know what that sound is. I'm going to need Stuart Price. Can you tell us? It's like a percussive sense. piano through some type of patch or preset that just does this like, it's somehow aquatic to me.

It's somehow like a sex scene on a beach and a Catherine Bigelow movie in 1991 feeling to me. It's a backlit like Tony Scott film scene to me. It's like, I'm probably using the wrong terminology. It's this very percussive synth pad like, sound, it kills me. It's like a dramatic scene in 90210.10. Do you know what I'm saying? Totally.

It's like, it's so atmospheric. Yeah. And it makes the song so expensive and so major to me that I'm like, I actually, this is my favorite song. It's your favorite song now? It's my other favorite song. I feel like it fits. I love it. I love it, love it, love it.

I think it fits really well in the sequencing, because I, Like you said, you know, now we're on the down swing, right? Fragile is absolutely obviously a down swing. And this is also part of the... This is like you're coming down and so you need to smoke weed and you need to like... And like, you know, thematically you're kind of thinking, like she's thinking about looking for love in unfamiliar places. You're fucking a stranger. You just met at the club that you were at for the first part of this album.

And now you're like back at their place and you're like, who is this whatever? Like this is like why I am who I am, baby. It's interesting. I was thinking more that she was thinking like, this is like, she's thinking about all the people that judged her and they tried to take her down and she's like kind of reflecting on like

how she like, you know, those sins that they tried, like. But it's not sex. It's like sexuality. It's like for being risque, for being provocative. Talking about the erotica thing, I think it's really hearkening back to that,

that like time that like erotica and sex book came out and she was like vilified and it really emotionally affected. affected her, you know. This is a great song. The next song is betrayal. It's co-written with Mirway, an additional production by Parisi.

I'm going to tell you something. And you can laugh at me, but I like to be honest. At first, I thought this was sampling the succession of these songs. What? Wait, can we hear it for a second? Yeah.

It's much more sultry than the succession. Just that. D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D. Sorry, okay? I'm sorry. I'm fucking HBO-Pilled. But anyways, that's not. Okay.

My sins are my savior into betrayal. Yeah. To me, it feels like, I don't know how to put it, except to say, like, a major Madonna moment. Like, it just, it feels like you look at Madonna moment in the dictionary, and that sound plays, whatever it is. Because then it feels like we're fully back in erotica. The horns.

Totally. It's reminding me of bad girl a little bit. Yeah. Like, fans are speculating that this was held over. from Madam X, which I'm not sure is true, but maybe on some level, just because Mirways is listed as a co-writer on it. I felt like this song is a really good example, and there's many throughout this album,

how incredible it is that her voice sounds the same, like that it did in the 90s. Yeah. Like this song could have been recorded in the 90s. Someone could tell me that, and I would believe it. I mean, that's how I felt with one step away, you know? Like, I really feel like the voice is just, like, voicing. It's like, that's how I remember Madonna singing.

Which is not nothing, because a lot of people, their voices go. No, totally. And I think it's, like, one specific style of her singing. It's not all, everything, but it's so great. It still sounds like crystal clear, like, how it did a little bit. I do, I find this song kind of interesting. I love it sonically. I do you find the lyrical conceit so weird where I'm like,

and weird is not the right word. I was just like, oh, like also a whole song for Joan Chaconi, her stepmother, who obviously we know she had a fraught relationship with. But I do think it's an interesting pivot where it's like almost every other Madonna album has a song about her mother's death. And this one is sort of like sideways about her mother's death by like being about how she never really gelled with her stepmother. Poor Joan.

Listen, maybe she deserves it. Maybe Joan had it coming. If you asked Madonna. I wonder what the betrayal is. I don't know. Did she also write a book about Madonna? No, I don't think so. This one, I think, we'll just have to speculate and wonder.

Someone, one of our listener questions was like, do you think betrayal is about the media and her fans? And I was like, I didn't get that at all. She says, I used to hate you, I don't hate you. We're together forever. Yeah. Although, now that person is kind of spitting. And then you'll never... And then blocked forever till the end.

I don't think she means literally blocked. Like, social media blocked. You'll never take my mother's place. Is actually, if you interpret it as like how she said early on that because her mother died, she wanted the love of the world. Oof. You could almost... I mean, I don't know this is at all what she was...

It's the royal Joan. Yeah. The Royal Joan. And I thought that was interesting. Mother Earth. Mother Joan Earth. She's definitely talked at length about her, you know, not awesome relationship with her stepmother, at least when she was a child. Okay.

But I think what's cool about Joan. Why am I defending Joan? I know nothing. You love Jane Chikotney. I know nothing. I just think it's nice, I suppose, that her, that Joan and Madonna's father's relationship was, like, very genuine and sincere. And it wasn't like, oh, your daughter's rich and famous. Because Joan didn't really, from what I understand,

I feel like Joan didn't really care that much about Madonna and her career and all of that. They got married when she was like nine. She'd been, she's been, well before she was famous. But that she was, like, sort of unimpressed on some level or was, like, pretty much only interested in, like, their life. And I'm like, that's fucking cool.

They also had children. They had a couple of her siblings, right? I do think it's kind of very cool that this song about her fraught relationship with her stepmother. and also the absence of her own mother by dirt, you know, goes into the song with her own daughter and about that complicated relationship. It's like a kind of a genius sequencing moment.

It works. It works. I love this song. The Test featuring Lilalione. I love the song too. It's Tripopi. There's like a naivete to the song construction and production to me, like to the melodic writing.

It's like very sweet and kind of. like tender. Yeah, it feels like they didn't write lyrics for the song. They wrote the song around the lyrics. Yeah, yeah. You know? It feels a little bit like a sequel to promise to try to me in a funny way. Interesting.

It made me think about like this conceit that people can fix their issues with their parents through their relationships with their own children. Right, which is a big idea. It's a big idea that everyone, that gets a lot of airtime. that I think is bullshit. Well, at the very least, you are, you are going to

cause a litany of new problems for your child in a new and inventive ways. And like you are not your parents, your child is not your parents. It's a different relationship. It's a different person. Right.

And I think that someone like Lola is like a perfect example of like, I can't speculate on what she expected Lola to be like, but no, your kids never turn out exactly how you think. They're going to. They surprise you.

ways that are like good. Right. I think it's almost more that like you're able to empathize with your parent once you are a parent because you don't realize maybe how difficult or what that relationship was actually like until you take their place. But in Madonna's case, she didn't have a mother. Yeah. So it's also almost like a new frontier. Yeah. And then you add in what they're talking about in the song, which is like the issue of like having a famous parent.

And what it does to the kid. So incredible. Like, I can't even think of a time I've listened to something dealing with that sort of such, like, direct subject matter that everyone would think about. Like, the first time you heard, like, Oh, Lola Leon is going to be on a Madonna song. I wouldn't have expected they're going to, like,

call out the elephant in the room, you know? I know. And I'm so impressed and happy that they did. Totally. It's so cool. And it makes it such an honest and impactful song. And also... If this was Rebel Heart, it would have gone.

gone down this way. Would it have just been like an arc-produced, like, dance track? I do like some of the Rebel Heart country songs, and I think that they were, they're unfairly maligned. Okay, but, like, that's also like me underestimating Madonna by saying that, and like, underestimating the fact that of course if Lola was going to do a song with Madonna, that it would be like this deep and personal and profound to them. As she told Mel, she was, Lola, she was like, I never pushed Lola to do anything like with me, right? and then Lola came to me and said, I want to do something with you. And it was like such a big moment for her.

Like how beautiful, you know. Right. And it's the, it's kind of an amazing example of how, like, you have to let your kids go do their thing. Right. And eventually they will come back to you. You can't force the point. That TikTok conversation was really beautiful between the two of them that, and I think Lola talked about, like, how she, like, never wanted to, you know, ride her coattails, which is, I think, a lyric in here.

Well, I think that, like, you can hear, there's, we live in a culture of so many celebrities and so many nepoes and so many, like, celebrity offspring. And they all are like, I didn't want to live in my parents' shadow. Right. You hear it and you kind of think it's like a cliche. For the most part, they almost like fully ignore it, which I think why I was so struck by this. Like, they don't even, they're like, if I look at it, if I, like, mention it, people will

jump down my throat. Like, if I just pretend I don't have a famous parent. and never bring it up, maybe no one will be mad at me about it. And I thought this was so cool to like, again, like I said, take it on head on. And obviously, I'm sure everyone's been thinking, my whole life I've been thinking, like, what is it like to have Madonna as your mother? Well, and if you know Lola, who I do know, but also like Madonna fans probably know this too. There was something really funny that happened because she always had a private Instagram.

And then she created a public Instagram because she had done. something that required her to post online. So she was like, it was sort of like final start on Instagram so I can like fulfill this brand deal or whatever it was. And like, of course, day one, all the Madonna fans followed her and we're like leaving all these like positive loving comments. And she was like, I don't know who the fuck you are. Like get out of here.

Like she was like talking shit to them. So funny. Anyway, sorry. All of that is to say that like she genuinely is such an independent person. And she never. She's never, as far as I'm aware, or anyone has ever told me, she's never been, like, writing her mother's coattails at all. That's, like, disgusting to her.

And I think it's so cool. The music that she has made is great, by the way, and is, like, so different in its own lane. And, like, she does it clearly not use or lean on anything that she could use or learn. She's very much her own person. Yeah. And so if you know that, I think that makes this even more profound in moving. I was so moved by it when I listened to it. I always too. I really loved it.

Okay. The last song, Nage. L.S. Girl. It destroys me. Co-written with Andrew Watton's circuit, also credit as producers. We love an acoustic guitar ballady ending. Here's a fun fact. The chord progression

is a non-to ray of light. Both songs are in B major and both have the three most important chords. School is in session. Built off the first, fourth and fifth scale degrees. As you know, I'm doing theater when I'm saying this. I don't know what I'm talking about. But it does match up. And they're all B major, E major, and F major. The exact chord progressions are a bit different, but they take from the same well. That's crazy. I didn't even think about Ray of Light when I heard this. I did a little bit because of the guitar usage on Ray of Light. This is hat tip to Shah D'Souza. He mentioned it in his pitchfork review, which is wonderful. And then I decided to go do some like digging to be like, is the port?

chord progression the same, and then I found an insane website that tells you the chord progressions of every song, and the actual chord progression, LES girl, is a bit more complicated, but what I just said is true. They're both in B major, and they both are built off of these same major chords. Anyways... It's deceptively simple.

Yes, but it's not actually that simple. Yeah, and simple songs are often the hardest to write and to land like this. To me, it's just like so pure, it's so punk. it's like Yeah Our friend Cody Critchell

choke Did I say it's last name right Critchlow Cody Critchlow Um Sorry Cody I can't pronounce anything Um

It's the Celsius It's the Celsius I'm cracked out He called it her Lou Reed song Which I thought was like really good Oh my God I said that too I said it reminds me of I'll be your mirror

Yeah Nico but yeah I love it It's funny This is also a polarizing song Some people really hate it Like I think the New York Times called it treakly.

I was like, how fucking dare you? Unbelievable. Way to fucking miss the whole thing. If you're a real head, you would know. I think it's one of the most surprising and profound songs that she's ever written. It's also given what we've been talking about this whole time, which is that like the last part of this album really shifts from like love, light, hope into like sort of like reflecting on the fact that you're going to die one day and like what has

life meant and what have you lost so much about loss. This song is such an incredible cap to that. Like, it's about what we've lost, you know? And I think the very end, doesn't the very end have... It's a love letter to herself, too, at the same time. Because through all this looking back, I think she's very proud of the person that she was and she admires who she was and how she went about things. Everything fades away.

That's the end. Did you keep saying that? It's like, yeah, all the law. loss. Obviously what everyone wants to know, and I'm going to go ahead and give you the fucking scientific breakdown. I'm going to make a court case. It's already been out there who this is about, but I'm going to go ahead and prove it with 18 nails in the common. Okay. Not Dan Gilroy. Not Michael Jira. Not Michael Jira. Although, I mean, we can speculate a little bit about whether like this person is the cipher for all of those Lower East Side Boys or whatever, you know.

But... Not Stephen Bray. Not Stephen Bray. He played guitar on St. Mark's Place. He had a Marlon Brando face. Painted, nails the same shade as his boots, bleached blonde, dirty roots. I had one more, which was Nick Kamen, but she never dated Nick Kamen. But Nick Kamen was dropped out beautiful and did have that whole vibe.

And she did make write songs with him and sing backup vocals for him. Right. Which we never talked about. But I wanted to just drop that. Not about him. It's not about him. Yeah. He was younger a little bit.

Yeah. She was sort of a mentor toward him. This song is almost probably definitely referencing Norris Burroughs, who, and I know you think it's only in that one picture, but I unearthed several pictures where I do think he bears. It's fine. I don't think he needs to look just like Marlon Brando. I just don't necessarily see it, but that's, I can't. He wrote an entire book right here.

It's called My Madonna, my intimate friendship with the blue-eyed girl. She forgave that? in New York. Okay, she forgave that book? I'm not sure. I'm so, like, love, light, peace, and respect. I don't think anybody read this book besides me, and maybe like eight mega Madonna fans. It's actually, it's kind of like, it's not a really well-written book, but it's like kind of sweet. He recalls meeting her and writes, Madonna reached over with her forefinger and stroked my bicep.

A charge of electricity went through me. Nice arms. You look like Marlon Brando in a street car named Desire. And then later in the book. she calls him to invite him over and says, why don't you get your gorgeous Brando body over here? So it was almost definitely her. He was also in a band called Steel Breeze, playing guitar.

He was an artist and an illustrator. He actually played a few shows with Richard Lloyd from television. Most importantly, he's the one that introduced her to Dan Gilroy. So he actually did play a kind of a major part in her artistic formation. Also, after this is just, I thought it was really interesting, after her and Dan Gilroy started dating. So they had like a bit of a relationship, and then it kind of fizzled out,

and then she started dating Dan Gilroy. And him and Dan Gilroy were still friends, so that he was still around. And he has a piece in his book where he's like, I guess they were at a rehearsal for the breakfast club at the Gog, the synagogue, and just him and Madonna went to go get donuts. And he reached over and, quote,

gently brush the sugar from her mouth. You're covered with sugar as usual, I said. I moved closer and kissed her behind her ear. I love you and I always will. Ditto, she replied. He also wrote a song for her called My Little Angel. It's also possible that she had some private relationships that we didn't know about. I mean, it's just a total mystery.

She's an artist and maybe this was like a fun thing to look back on. I mean, it sounds like they had a pretty profound connection. Here's two other just really fun facts about him. He later played guitar and the house music group Craze. Do you remember this? They had a hit called The Party. in 1988. It's a big song.

I would need to hear the song. Do you know this one? Okay, okay, okay. Anyways, it's fab. He was in that. So apparently she knew about that. That's 88. And then in 1992, in his book, he says that Slam, Oliver, her dancer, called him and invited

him to Madonna's birthday party. And he was like, oh, I didn't think she would remember me. And he was like, oh, she remembers you. And I guess he thought it was kind of a hoax. So he said that he would love to come. but he can't afford the airfare. So if they would send him a round-trip ticket and all over was like, oh, go check for you and obviously never called back.

So I don't know. But she was thinking about him. If he has to be believed in his book in 1990s. And as we said, she doesn't forget anybody. Yeah. She remembers everyone. Also, he notes that he went on a blind date with Sandra Bernhardt in 1976 in L.A. randomly well before they became friends.

Small world. And he got really... Lower population back then. Yeah, lower population. And he got really into yoga. and his instructor was Madonna's masseuse and introduced him to Gwyneth Paltrow as Madonna's old friend, L.O.L.

He was not, he didn't not live in the Lower East Side, but he did work with Madonna at the same place on St. Mark's Place called the Gossamer Wing. So I think it's this guy. Okay. Detective Yossi. On the case, babe. I think what I would love to talk about is where you feel this lands in her,

canon. Could this be her best album? I don't think so. I think it's very high up, but I don't know if it's, I'm best. That's... I think what we've established throughout Madonna mania is that there is no best. It's like there are multiple monuments.

Yeah. I saw somebody that ranks on Madonna albums on X and put like true blue and like a prayer at the very bottom. And I was like, you should be executed. I kind of reflexively put true blue at number one, but I also, you know, you could argue she peaked at Ray of late or you could argue it's like her

or confessions. Some days I think music is her best record. So it's, but I do I think this is up there. Do I think this is the best album in the last 20 years? Yes. Yes. I think what's significant about even saying could this be her best record is, is this her best record? Is that is not a question that we were asking on hard candy, MDNA, Rebel Heart or Matt Max? So it's like, it would have been perfectly fair to assume that she was never going to hit this register again. Totally. And I think that if you're out in the world among civilians who are not necessarily paying attention, as I was recently, a lot of people are going to come with the assumption that it's not a good record or that it's not worth their time.

And those are people who have not listened to the album at all. And they won't even believe you when you say that it's good. So it's your job to definitely go out there and let everybody know. 100%. She's fucking back. I also, I do, someone asked about Grammys. I do think it's absolutely going to be nominated for dance, definitely dance electronic recordings and stuff. I think yes.

I think album of the year. You think it'll win? I think it'll be nominated. I think it'll be nominated too. The thing is, like, I'm pessimistic when it comes to, like, awards things and, like, awards bodies and shows and all that. but I think that like it's the perfect opportunity in an industry context to celebrate Madonna in a way that we haven't gotten to

and that she's not often celebrated like at the Grammy Awards you know, to have a big Madonna moment. There's this thing that happens with awards where it's like are you giving it the award for the work or because like this person's due or overdue? Yeah. I think in this case, you have someone who's overdue,

but you also are like, she deserves it for this record. Totally. Which is a thrilling... Like it's both. Yeah. That she could be in the mix and performing and appearing

on the Grammys and potentially winning an album of the year or something like that is... I mean, I think everyone should get into it. Don't fuck it up. I agree. Start the hype.

Start the drumbeat. I think one of the other interesting questions was, and I love this, Because I love that it came up a couple of times because I was like, hell yeah, my listeners fucking get it, which is that C2, that's what I'm calling confessions too. C2. C2. C2 reminded them of songs of a Lost World by The Cure and Black Star by David Bowie. And I think those are actually excellent comparisons because those are two recent examples of late career excellence that also deal with reflections on mortality.

So I thought that was wonderful. And they were like, do you have thoughts on age on music? And I do. I think my thoughts are that if you try to ignore what is an obvious consideration for you, you will make probably bad music. And I think if you're willing to be so honest with what you're actually living through, you can make some of the best music of your career in the late stage. And that's my personal opinion.

I agree. Great. Great. Okay. I obviously, I went deep. With the remixes? No. of like, who else has had this level of achievement at this career stage?

Yeah, who did you? Because I didn't really, like... It's hard to say because everyone's exactly at this career stage. And nobody will be. But weirdly, I thought of, like, when Slow Dive came back, that album in 2017, the self-titled album, they're not as old as Madonna, they're younger, but it was like... It felt unprecedented in a way because no one expected it to be as good as it was. And same with that new My Bloody Valentine album.

Totally. I'm gonna say, my bloody Valentine. A lot of the old shoe guys' bands are kind of keeping it up. Like, Ride is still really good. Yeah. I thought about Trent Reznor, which is a bit... Yeah, 9-inch noise is pretty fucking major. It's incredible.

And he's someone who's maintained and even on some levels improved over the years into this like eminent figure, you know? And we don't think about him, but he was around in the 80s. He's only like six years younger than Madonna. Yeah, that's really wild. And, like, he's really kept it up. Like, I think Trent Reznor will be thought of like Bowie. That's a really great one. Like, that to me is, like, pretty much.

But then there's, like, Leonard Cohen's last album was really good. Yeah. John Prine. I also was really excited because this gave me the opportunity to talk about how the pet shop boys have never fucking slipped. That's true. Like, all their later albums are still good. Yeah. I think that anyone that's gotten into Stuart Price,

because of this album or revisiting confessions needs to go and listen to Super, which was their album from, I think, like 2016 around then. Fucking flawless. Stewart Price produced it. Yeah. Amazing.

And then I just want to throw out also, and I'm not saying that, like, their recent albums are necessarily masterpieces, but they have high highs. Janet Jackson. Totally. Who were due a Janet album, I feel like,

because it's been about 10 years. since Unbreakable, which had some really good songs on it, Damn Baby, very important. Kylie Minogue, also, and Mariah Carey. Totally. And you know what? I'm going to throw out a crazy one. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Their last album was really good.

Yeah. The double album was actually really good. Okay. Let's close it out because we got to close it out. I think, I'm going to be honest. I don't, I want to go to the tour really bad. I don't have any opinions or thoughts of how it should be. Like, I want to be blown away and surprised.

But a lot of people ask what we'd want from the tour. And I'm like, I just want something amazing. And I know, like, I don't want, I don't want to dictate it. I feel like that's the whole thing about these tours is that she, like, she always comes up with something incredible that kind of surprises and blows people away. And that's exactly what I want again. And it's going to be based on what she feels like doing. Yeah. It's like if she wants to do one big performance, like her doing World Cup, she's like, you know, when she played in Rio, that was like, Matt.

Yeah. She decides to do these big things. I feel like the club confessions release parties that have been popping up are a little bit of her trying out this model of like if I threw, if I toured this as like a club night. Yeah. Rather than a concert, like a stadium concert. What would it be like? If it was more like clubs. Yeah.

And those sorts of venues. Something more intimate. And it could be cool because like it will become a hotter ticket. it's not going to sell, there's not as much opportunity to get in. Yeah, and also it kind of, I think, frees her from the, like, pressure to do such crazy spectacle, which, you know, I think obviously her physicality is challenged at this point. As would any, I think she can move almost better than I can. Well, she talked about her knee in the interview magazine. She has no cartilage, like, you had a hip replacement.

I mean, she's, I think she's incredible for what she's able to do at her age, but, like, she can't do, like, what she did 40. I think the last thing I'd like to talk about is remixes. Our desires and our speculations. For me, I would like Junior Vasquez. I would like Victor Calderon. I would like Danny Tenaglia. Okay. And of course, William Morbett.

But I would also like new people. I would like Jeff Barrow from Portisad. Amazing. We're doing a wish list. Wow. Okay. Fantasy League. I would like To Hollis. Okay.

I would like Nina Girachi. I would like classics. Classics? Isn't that random? I don't know. I love classics. Every classic remix I've ever heard is amazing. And I feel like they bring something a little more romantic.

It's like dreamy romantic to it. I was trying to think of like taking it in different directions. I mean, not know. Like some of our like, some of our like odonis adorn. You know like that world of people would be kind of cool. What's the Persian guy that we like? Like a Boy Harsher remix or something? Miss Grit, I think it could be really cool.

And Hank, my bro, Hank, who does house music, I think he could do really cool. Those are some of the ones that came to my mind. What about you? I didn't answer that question, but I can do it off the top of my hat. Obviously, I would love some Shep in the mix. Shep, for sure. Shep alert. Listening to it just this morning, I was like, I wonder what Shep thinks of this song.

I wonder what Shep thinks of this record. I'm very curious about Shep's thoughts. If Shep's phone has rang. Right. If he's... Shep's phone has probably been ringing. A Shep remix on a Stewart Price track is a little bit gay heaven to me. And I'm like hoping that it happens.

So Shep Pettibone, for sure. Of the old divas of the old cohort. Right. I love that. William Orbit, too. Great. I don't know. I can see her.

There's like where I could see her going and then it's like where she should be going. You know, it's like, Honey Dijon was predictable. Yeah. Peggy Goo was less predictable, but I really enjoyed it. I really liked that. Like, I can see her maybe with Fred again. Yeah. Jamie XX who I talked about before.

Romy. She obviously loves Romy. Romy was at our club confessions. That would be a great one. And apart from that, it's like... Maybe, like, I wouldn't mind like an underscores. I want to kind of like, I just want to hear, like, these songs taken in a bunch of different directions. That would be really cool for me.

Like, what's going on now, maybe some mid-tempo. Like, just like, stretch the songs in every way you can. A CFCF?C.F. Yes. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I guess we'll see what she does.

There's, like, a lot of the people that I initially thought about have been doing a lot lately. And so I'm like, I don't know if it should be, I'm more into, like, surprises. We previously talked about this on the mailbag episode. Yeah. I said she should do something with Richard X. or like Lady Tron or like Lady Tron It's like let's go through all the eras of like

Who you didn't fuck with But maybe you can now And a fun surprising guy I love it And I think I'm hoping like back to like Her being all the tap new talent I think she might surprise us Give me a Dare remix

I was gonna say the Dare Like is LCD busy Let's call the Dare Um All right Arca will do it Arca probably has done it play is doing it.

An Addison Ray remix? Well, for features. Yeah. Charlie. Robin. Kylie, obviously. Everyone's going to, everyone answers the phone when Madonna calls. Junior Vasquez.

When Madonna calls. All right, you guys, we said this was going to be short. We lied. Thank you for joining our emergency confessions on a dance floor two episode. Any final thoughts? Or you want to just... I think just...

like all great albums, keep listening to it. Like new things unfold to you. New favorites emerge. Songs you didn't think you loved. You're going to change your mind and love. You're not a lot to listen anymore. You're not allowed to have any more new favorites.

You had enough new favorites. Okay, come back next week for a new episode of Bansplaine. Thank you, Patrick. If you like what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bansplaine. Our guest today was Patrick Sandberg. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderman

and Jamie Ucic with help from Justin's sales. Executive producers for Bansplaine are Gina Delvac and me, Yossi Salih. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Costantino and Jennifer Clavent and graciously recorded by Carlos Delgado in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer, Dr.ita, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fennacy and the television program, The Agency. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bansplaine on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.