Madonna and New York have always been soul mates, the perfect match of artist and environment. Even her 1978 arrival in the city from Michigan is the stuff of legend. with only $35 in her pocket, she asked the cab driver to drop her off in Times Square, “the center of it all.” She was to be at the center of culture just ten years later, with the Big Apple not only the setting for many of her most iconic songs and performances, but serving as an indispensable inspiration and collaborator. Images of their symbiosis abound, particularly from the first decade of her career in the ‘80s: a scrappy Madonna singing “Everybody” at storied ‘80s nightclub Danceteria; a devil-may-care Madonna using a bathroom hand dryer to cool her armpits in a Port Authority bathroom in the movie “Desperately Seeking Susan”; a gamine, proudly Italian Madonna in Staten Island for the “Papa Don’t Preach” video; and many other examples.With the release of her new album “Confessions II,” the entertainer returns to her spiritual homeland, with New York intertwined as both a location and a mindset. A month ago, the 67-year-old staged a surprise mini-concert in Times Square as part of the album’s promotional campaign and the city’s Pride Month festivities. The next day, June 5th, saw the debut of the mini-movie related to the record at the Tribeca Film Festival, with Madonna herself in the audience and staying for a Q&A with Anderson Cooper afterward. Essentially a video medley of a few songs from the new album, the short film includes a segment in which lasers zap out of lower body orifices, as well as appearances by Benedict Cumberbatch, Kate Moss, Debi Mazar, Odessa A’zion, and other celebrities. The latter appear during a segment soundtracked to “Danceteria,” a new song from “Confessions II” that recounts the club’s glory days.The glory days of Madonna’s career in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and mid-aughts are the periods to which the latest record harkens back. A sequel to 2005’s “Confessions on a Dance Floor,” which many consider to be her last unqualified masterpiece, the album not only contains nods to the city, such as an interpolation of New Yorker Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” but multiple references to music from her musical past and clubbing roots. Until recently, the songstress had not been one to look back at her career or rest on her music-legend laurels. More of an iconoclastic icon, she would cycle through consecutive guises like a scenester unsatisfied with their look and outfit, infamously discarding one for another and another. Yet the last fifteen years have not been kind to her as a music maker or trendsetting force. Thus it’s no surprise that following her 2023-2024 “Celebration” tour, billed as a retrospective built on “legacy hits,” she again embraces a type of nostalgia by reconnecting with Stuart Price, the producer of the first “Confessions,” to recreate the magic of the earlier dance-centric record, and hopefully its success.The first “Confessions” includes a song called “I Love New York,” though it was no remake of Steve Karmen’s state-approved ditty. Featuring lyrics like “Los Angeles is for people who sleep / Paris and London, baby, you can keep,” it epitomizes Madonna’s love for, and kinship with, the city. Still, notwithstanding this ode to New York, she has spent considerable time elsewhere in the last ten years, despite owning a huge townhouse on East 81st Street in Manhattan and the fact that her archive is housed in an air-conditioned storage space in Brooklyn. After residing in Lisbon, Portugal, from 2017 to 2020, the singer has primarily ensconced herself in Los Angeles as she works on a film — now Netflix mini-series — based on her life. The superstar also demoed and recorded a sizable portion of “Confessions II” with Mr. Price at his London studio and other locations in the English capital, where the centimillionaire owns another home.While specific songs on “Confessions II” recall certain Chicago and Detroit-based records from the 1980s, it was New York through which techno and house music, not to mention their antecedent disco music, expanded to a wider audience — some even claim that “house” as a genre originated here, with “garage,” and not Chicago. Of course, many of Madonna’s biggest hits have been dance-oriented, or remixed versions of the originals, and the new album honors this tradition by playing like a meticulously transitioned DJ set, although not as seamlessly as the original “Confessions.” Furthermore, on the record’s uncomfortably personal latter half, several songs call to mind the ‘90s fusion of jazz and dance music, which Madonna delved into on her NY-based masterpiece “Erotica,” as well as the more trippy atmosphere of trance, explored on one of her other masterpieces, 1998’s “Ray of Light.” Whether overt or subtle recreations of music past will translate into sales, streams, and airplay is debatable, especially since the two official singles she’s released, the Sabrina Carpenter-assisted “Bring Your Love” and the joyful “Love Sensation,” have not gained much traction. There’s little doubt, though, that the album will debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart (its two digital versions currently hold the top two spots on iTunes). Ignoring commercial success, what Madonna seems to crave most is respect, an acknowledgement of her multiple era-defining, culturally impactful image, sights and sounds, as well as her continued ability to mix styles to heady effect. Aligning the new album with New York, where she first drank deep of creativity, community, sexuality, audacity, and four-on-the-floor classics, gives it immediate import and a vibrancy not found on her previous three LPs. Still, no matter what musical form or artistic guise she’s exploring — or where she’s currently located — Madonna is always “in” the city mentally, conveying a local perspective through ambition, tenacity, attitude, intelligence, and compassion. Another of the album’s promotions saw Madonna covering one month of studio rent for every musician leasing space at The Music Building in midtown. Considering the struggles the singer experienced early on in New York, the gesture felt genuine instead of manufactured. It also neatly ties in with the album’s final song, “L.E.S. Girl.” Ostensibly about a boy that got away, the song’s lyrics and Velvet Underground-ish balladry come across as a bittersweet love letter to our fair city, providing the perfect ending to the record: “Lower East Side girl / Lost in a fragile world / Ignored all the signs / The rent is overdue / Everything fades away / Except for you.”
