Madonna has seemingly always been more interested in earning the title Mother of Reinvention than in maintaining her status as the Queen of Pop, pushing fearlessly into new sonic and visual terrain when most of her contemporaries were content to simply recreate their past successes. So what’s a girl to do when, at 67 and with many of her peers gone or effectively in forced retirement, she reaches her legacy era?
Embrace it, apparently. Even before Madonna started hinting at a sequel to her 2005 disco opus Confessions on a Dance Floor on social media more than a year ago, she had already begun referencing her past in earnest, most notably on 2015’s reflective Rebel Heart and her recent Celebration Tour. But even the title of Confessions II, due July 3, feels, well, reductive.
At first blush, so does “I Feel So Free,” the first track to be released from the album. With its undulating synths, spoken verses, and wisp of a vocal hook, the song follows the blueprint of the earlier album’s “Future Lovers,” which was co-produced by French knob-twirler Mirwais. Both are heavily indebted to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”—the new song’s final vocal harmonies echo the melody of the 1977 disco classic—and both serve less as “songs” than as mission statements for their respective dance-floor odysseys.
But “I Feel So Free”—co-produced by Madonna and Stuart Price, who was at the helm of most of Confessions on a Dance Floor, with additional programming by Arca—ultimately proves to be its own sublimely euphoric, nostalgic beast. Opening with spacey strings, rumbling sub-bass, and bone-dry snare hits, the track quickly morphs into something far more carnal, just as indebted to Lil Louis’s 1989 club hit “French Kiss” as it is to Giorgio Moroder. “C’mon, meet me on the dance floor,” Madonna chirps in a nod to at least half a dozen of her own hits (the song’s title itself is an explicit reference to the refrain from 1985’s “Into the Groove”) as the track climaxes in a symphony of moans.
In her manifesto for Confessions II, Madonna refers to the dance floor as “a ritualistic space.” It’s a place where she can escape the trappings of fame (“I never know why people like me/That’s why I like to go dancing/Safety in numbers”) and “create a new persona.” In this case, that new persona sounds a hell of a lot like the old Madonna. And we’re not complaining.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
Did Rafael Pavarotti take that photograph of Madonna when she was in her early twenties? Seems so.
This is a great review. I love Slant and have since 2009 or so. It was the only review site I visited semi-regularly. Sometimes it’s labeled pretentious but:
1. The writers will give credit where its due most of the time, including that due to media that other reviewers might not engage with seriously and
2. I know that the writers will say whatever-it-is with their chests regardless of how it’s received. Boy have I been a fan.
And boy am I frustrated that this website continues to be a nightmare to navigate and borerline unusable on mobile. I haven’t been a regular visitor for a few years now. With the quality of ads (“Replace your $21,000 facelift with this $50 cream!”), the number of them, the fact that you have to battle them just to lay eyes on more than a snippet of a page at a time…Why bother? But now, now in addition to the three different kinds of ads all throughout the page, there’s an autoplay, video ad that immediately drops down and obscures what little article text you can lay eyes on. I can’t even see the top part of this comment box because Slant is in such dire financial straits (I assume) that it will fall into ruin if I don’t watch the same, drop-down, autoplay Google workspace ad three times in a row! (There are even ads within ads! Worlds within worlds!)
I cant reconcile Slant’s desire to maintain its reputation as a respectable publication with the decision to run its ads like it’s an illegal streaming page.
If you’re thinking “Man I’m not trying to read all that. I’m here for the meat and potatoes, i.e. what you feel about the movie and its reception”, congratulations you now know 10% of the frustration that your readers experience everytime they visit your site. Even then, at least *I’m* not trying to sell you a miracle cure for a random ailment.
I imagine more of your readers would complain if they had the fortitude to make it past the 15 ads standing between the last line of the review and the comment section.
That said, again, I enjoyed the review! Big fan of Sal. Not a big fan of “USE CODE SPRING20 FOR A CRUISELINE DISCOUNT”. I mean my God.