MADONNA: 'Confessions II' with Patrik Sandberg

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:05Speaker 02

  What's with this band, anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really like this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. Bandplain!

• 1:45Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. 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 15th Madonna studio album that came out last week, Confessions on a Dance Floor 2.

• 2:10Yasi Salek?

  Patrick, I've got something I want to talk about.

• 2:14Speaker 04

  It's a she emergency.

• 2:15Yasi Salek?

  Sorry, it's a her emergency.

• 2:18Speaker 04

  It's a she/her emergency.

• 2:20Yasi Salek?

  We are joined, of course, by Patrick Sandberg of Madonna Bands Play in Part Two fame, our resident gay Madonna expert extraordinaire.

• 2:31Yasi Salek?

  Welcome to the show.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  If I wasn't a Madonna expert before,

• 2:36Speaker 04

  you've made me one.

• 2:37Yasi Salek?

  By sheer force of Google Doc.

• 2:39Speaker 04

  By sheer force of your hundreds of hours of research, we're all Madonna experts now.

• 2:44Yasi Salek?

  I hope so. As we said before, open the schools, you know?

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 2:54Yasi Salek?

  Thank God, is all I want to say.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  The relief?

• 2:58Yasi Salek?

  The real, 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 have been good, we probably would have like, like, moved on with our lives, you know? But the album is so good.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  It's, it's like a seminal album.

• 3:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:21Speaker 04

  Which, and I do want to firstly apologize to that one guy, the one commenter, who's like, when are you gonna get back to talking about guitar bands?

• 3:31Yasi Salek?

  I know. So I know. He's like, what happened to the guitar bands? And it's like,

• 3:35Speaker 04

  And to him, I say, skip all the way to the last track on the album.

• 3:38Yasi Salek?

  There you go. We have a little guitar for you.

• 3:43Speaker 04

  It's like, there were rumors for a long time that the album was good.

• 3:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  You know, in elite 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 and 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.

• 4:23Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  And from like the little snippets that I've heard, it's gonna be good. And knowing, of course, that Stuart Price was working on it, which speaks volumes.

• 4:30Yasi Salek?

  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 gonna be bad.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  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?

• 4:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 04

  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 gonna be tasteful and it's gonna be good.

• 5:08Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  We don't know if it's gonna be phenomenal. And it's actually phenomenal. Spoiler alert, it's phenomenal.

• 5:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the very least we knew it wasn't gonna be some sort of like nineteen songwriter in a camp monstrosity that we've perhaps suffered through in the past. Um, and yeah, I wanna talk, I do wanna talk about the rollout and I wanna talk about the song. Cause 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 them, hearing them as God intended.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:50Yasi Salek?

  As Stuart Price and Madonna intended. Um, but I think us going, brag, to Club Confessions, Los Angeles, one of the most insane nights of my life, felt like I was in a Fellini film.

• 6:02Speaker 04

  It will forever be the night that I met Tori Spelling.

• 6:05Yasi Salek?

  You met Tori Spelling. At every turn, I saw something more insane and, and convoluted to my brain. Bruce Valanche napping in a bench, just like everything you want it to be. Um, but there, I was like, oh, cause they were playing the songs or parts of the songs, right? And- They were good. And I was like,

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Really good.

• 6:25Yasi Salek?

  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, and gaze dancing, you know, but it was like, really good. I went home from that being like, this shit's gonna fucking bang.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  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.

• 6:47Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Um.

• 6:48Yasi Salek?

  In, in, in their entirety, or just the snippets?

• 6:51Speaker 04

  It was the mega mix that they were editing the video to.

• 6:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  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'd be like, I don't know. And then I was like, actually, uh, it was like crazy. Hearing it for the first time in 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?

• 7:18Yasi Salek?

  You had nothing to grab on to.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  You can't go home and play it.

• 7:21Yasi Salek?

  We didn't know names. We didn't know, you know, you couldn't, you couldn't really make out the lyrics as much. Um, well, we're gonna get into all of it. We're gonna talk about the making of, we're gonna talk about the cover art, we're gonna talk about the themes, we're gonna talk about the Confessions film. We're gonna talk with the track by track, and we're gonna answer a bunch of listener questions. But before we do all of that, I wanted to make sure that we, um, hear from our, uh, fellow compatriots, our fellow Bansplain Madonna month.

• 7:50Speaker 04

  Hostages.

• 7:51Yasi Salek?

  Hostages. Col- uh, I was gonna say collaborators, but here's hostages. I'll call them, no, nobody wanted to do this. And I think that everybody wanted to do it. Everyone wants to do Bansplain until they realize what Bansplain's like.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  She has us all by the throat, which is going to be a theme.

• 8:08Yasi Salek?

  Okay, first up, we're gonna hear from Mel Ottenberg, editor in chief of Interview Magazine and the guest from Madonna, episode one.

• 8:18Speaker 05

  Yasi, 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, you know, his book, or like, I understand like, the vibes and it's interesting. And The Test is just great and Lower East Side, I feel like I saw great on it. And Lower East Side's just got that sort of thing. And it's got like the Boom Boom Pow and Madonna song, you know, like a, like, 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, and that's how I feel. And I do want to say that as the editor in chief of interview, I've always thought,

• 9:01Speaker 05

  will I ever have a Madonna moment? I need to have a Madonna moment. Because I'm on Madonna head, but like, 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, I think so highly of her. And watching her model and be, uh, the diva goddess that she is, and 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,

• 9:44Speaker 05

  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.

• 9:51Yasi Salek?

  Thank you, Mel Ottenberg.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  That was perfectly said.

• 9:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we really are living in a Madonna moment. I think that's like such a takeaway. Um, I don't know if it's partially because my algorithm is completely fried from my personal interests and research for the last couple of months, but it feels like it's broken containment from that.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  It has, and it feels different than Madame X and Rebel Heart.

• 10:18Yasi Salek?

  I don't remember Madame X even like crossing my desk, if I'm being honest.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  Well, they all cross my desk. There's no way for them not to.

• 10:28Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I saw the eye patch artwork and stuff and I remember clocking that. But I don't, I don't think I heard one single one of the songs at the time.

• 10:34Speaker 04

  I'm always gonna be part of a cabal of, of gays and some lesbians and, uh, some trans girls and some straight girls.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  Everyone except straight men, probably.

• 10:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  Who group text or who text every time Madonna

• 10:52Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  does something, whether we like it or not, and then dissecting it.

• 10:57Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Talking about it. So all those albums were very present for me, but this feels like a big Madonna moment.

• 11:03Yasi Salek?

  I feel like a lot more people are talking about it. Again, I'm can't ever know because I'm biased, given my current preoccupations.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  Your instincts are correct.

• 11:12Yasi Salek?

  Thank you. All right. Next, we're gonna hear from Madonna, Van's Man, episode four guest, the one and only Karen Gans.

• 11:21Speaker 06

  Hi, Madonna's Blaine 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 two, which has set the bar. Did I have some ambient concerns because of the spottiness of Madame X, her 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 was really only one song that's a skip for me every time. That is Everything.

• 12:07Speaker 06

  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, Dance Etiria, Bizarre, School, and Betrayal. And yes, I appreciate her writing a song for me, an LES girl of 25 years.

• 12:34Speaker 06

  In the Madonna canon, I think this is a really strong entry that recasts 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 M D N A. And parts of Rebel Heart really are quite strong, but the generally negative reaction of Madame X, I think was fair. And the Celebration Tour went a very long way to 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 me cringe. And I think this is because I want to see a Madonna who really does truly feel so free.

• 13:18Speaker 06

  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.

• 13:42Yasi Salek?

  Karen Gans.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  Bravo.

• 13:43Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Let's go home.

• 13:44Yasi Salek?

  Karen, I mean Karen's.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  She said everything I want to say.

• 13:47Yasi Salek?

  A brilliant mind.

• 13:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I love that. It was a little, kind of a lot to chew on, but I think she made good points. I like, I don't, I don't fuck with it, so.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Same, and we'll get there.

• 14:00Yasi Salek?

  And we'll get there.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  It feels validating hearing this from the Karen Gans.

• 14:04Yasi Salek?

  I know, the one and only.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Because I know she has very high standards.

• 14:08Yasi Salek?

  Yes, although we disagreed on almost every single album in the late period.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  But also like, as sort of a Madonna worshiper.

• 14:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  I do think that like, cringe moments or things that don't work can be equally rewarding.

• 14:25Yasi Salek?

  I think it's like, it's like a feature, it's a feature, not a bug.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  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.

• 14:36Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent. And last, but certainly not least, we're gonna hear from Madonna Part III guest, the most lusted after guest of the Band's Plan series.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm sitting right here, that was rude.

• 14:51Yasi Salek?

  I said most, not only. I sent you multiple comments that were also lusting after you.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I want to thank the three people who called me attractive.

• 14:59Yasi Salek?

  Do you know what this Madonna series didn't do for me? Bring me any straight male attention.

• 15:06Yasi Salek?

  But I have a million new gay friends, so.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 15:09Yasi Salek?

  Listen, you win some, you lose some. Paul Heyman, let's hear it.

• 15:13Speaker 07

  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.

• 15:26Speaker 07

  I think it's really cool how the album is sequenced and you know, it's a continuous mix. And it 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's like, it kind of sets the stage for the record. In this like sonic way, references Confessions one, 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.

• 16:09Speaker 07

  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 pick 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, that sort of processing of her voice, even things she's doing with her voice overall across the whole record. It's, it's just, it's, 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

• 16:49Speaker 07

  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 kind of 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 Dance Ateria, 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, that's a kind of ownership. Of the dance floor 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.

• 17:32Speaker 07

  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. Or even the things that they've been releasing, you know, on her Instagram, like that, you know, sort of BTS. Dance Aterior 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.

• 18:18Speaker 07

  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. Like 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.

• 18:59Speaker 07

  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 Van Spleen is no small part in that because I think,

• 19:40Speaker 07

  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 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

• 20:24Speaker 07

  at this stage of her career. I think it's really reestablishing her legacy. Not that it 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, it's an awesome feeling. We're so back.

• 21:03Yasi Salek?

  Paul was like, hold my beer.

• 21:07Yasi Salek?

  He really had something he wanted to talk about, but also he made just exquisite and salient points.

• 21:10Speaker 07

  Sabrina, Madonna, Kiyoshi, Patrick.

• 21:15Speaker 07

  I just don't think I want to talk about.

• 21:16Yasi Salek?

  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. So, okay, this wouldn't be Van Spleen 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 Van Spleen Madonna, one through four, though

• 21:41Yasi Salek?

  Must recommend. I must recommend that you do it. Or just like myself are brain dead and do not retain the information. Um, and someone in our, when I solicited questions, did ask like, can you give us a Stuart Price primer again?

• 21:56Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 21:58Yasi Salek?

  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. Cause obviously he's a hugely important part of this, uh, 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. Um, he was born in Paris. He grew up in Reading, England. He had started, uh, working on two acts in his career simultaneously, which were I think both on Wall of Sound, Zoot Woman, uh, with Adam Blake and Johnny Blake.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  Jesse, please don't go.

• 22:42Yasi Salek?

  That's right. Um, and then Jacques Lecomte.

• 22:48Yasi Salek?

  But then making music under the name Les Rhythmes Digitalis.

• 22:51Speaker 04

  So good. So, so good.

• 22:53Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 23:07Speaker 04

  So major.

• 23:08Yasi Salek?

  So great. Um, anyway, so that was, so he had like a, 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.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  I mean, this was like the time of electro clash and it feels like.

• 23:24Yasi Salek?

  Late 90s. Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  And it was sort of like, if you were in the clubs, you heard Les Rhythmes Digitalis. Like a lot.

• 23:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And of course Madonna loves, um. 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 ass.

• 23:46Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, Stuart Price first kind of actually collaborated with Madonna, co-writing Ecstatic Process, actually one of my faves, um, 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 gonna say this part again, 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, there's enough proof to put together a breadcrumb trail, which is that confession sprang from an aborted film that was meant to be directed by Luc Besson, who she'd been working with on music videos.

• 24:28Yasi Salek?

  They both love parkour. Never forget who loves parkour more than Madonna, nobody.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  They both love Gautier.

• 24:34Yasi Salek?

  They both love Gautier 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 Hojar photo. That was remembering her life throughout the decades.

• 24:57Yasi Salek?

  But these were not real memories, so it was like a science fiction. It's Luc Besson. Anyways, sounds fucking awesome, wish it had been made. But Madonna was wild, you know, she sent Luc Besson off to write the script, she set about to write music for it. And she tasked Stuart with the seventies portion, the disco portion. And she came down and 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 and at 5am, he heard Gimme Gimme Gimme 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.

• 25:36Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 25:49Yasi Salek?

  I think this is very interesting.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  It's very interesting.

• 25:51Yasi Salek?

  Besides about in and of itself, it's very interesting. I think it's very interesting as we tie it into Confessions Two, because I think you could say in a really strong way that Confessions Two also comes from an aborted biopic.

• 26:06Yasi Salek?

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

• 26:50Yasi Salek?

  musical director for the Celebration Tour.

• 26:54Yasi Salek?

  And she went to go work on her film. Ultimately scrapped by Universal. Patrick works in Tinseltown, so he knows about this kind of stuff.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  Yes, since re-packaged and set up at Netflix as a mini-series.

• 27:07Yasi Salek?

  Budget constraints.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  TBD.

• 27:10Yasi Salek?

  TBD. I'm still waiting for the call to us, Patrick, as consultants.

• 27:14Speaker 04

  Um, so am I.

• 27:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we're here, Netflix, we're ready.

• 27:20Yasi Salek?

  So, yeah, she was supposed to make this movie about her life. They 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 something great where she was like, I've had a huge life, so I needed a big budget. And.

• 27:37Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 27:38Yasi Salek?

  Correct, yeah. Give her everything she wants.

• 27:41Speaker 04

  But and maybe I'm wrong. I was under the impression the film does not cover her whole life.

• 27:46Yasi Salek?

  I don't think so.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  That it cuts off.

• 27:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  It's sort of about the early days.

• 27:50Yasi Salek?

  Is that right?

• 27:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:51Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 28:02Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 28:03Yasi Salek?

  They're not good.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  It's too much. It doesn't make sense.

• 28:05Yasi Salek?

  Unless you do it, like, a- 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.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Baz Luhrmann's Elvis.

• 28:17Yasi Salek?

  Haven't seen it.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  I'll just enter the chat.

• 28:19Yasi Salek?

  I'll believe you. Um.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  Checks every box of every word you just said.

• 28:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Also, does it ca- yeah, okay.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  It is batshit bonkers, breaks form.

• 28:29Yasi Salek?

  Breaks form.

• 28:29Speaker 04

  Completely.

• 28:30Yasi Salek?

  Would you say it's good?

• 28:32Speaker 04

  You know what?

• 28:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I haven't seen it.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  Yes. It's good because i- i- in the context of itself, it's good.

• 28:39Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  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 Baz Luhrmann is he's an auteur. He does his own, he does his own thing. He plays in his own sandbox.

• 28:55Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  He builds a crazy fucking sandcastle.

• 28:58Yasi Salek?

  Much like Madonna, honestly.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 29:00Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 29:01Speaker 04

  Not that they should.

• 29:02Yasi Salek?

  Not that they should collaborate, no.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  No.

• 29:04Yasi Salek?

  Um, so I thought it was really funny that there was like that bit in the interview that Mel did with her for an 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." Um, anyways, yes, like you pointed out, that failed. She bought it back from them for some insane amount of money. And then.

• 29:30Speaker 04

  She can.

• 29:31Yasi Salek?

  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, and more easier time to do different kinds of pacing, like. I don't know.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  It can be a deeper character study.

• 29:58Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 29:59Speaker 04

  You can get more into the relationships.

• 30:00Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. Um, 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

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Hi Brad.

• 30:10Yasi Salek?

  configuration of five of the women that this man dated. Um, 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 Confessions on a Dance Floor Part Two and re-enter the world of inspirational dance music? And thank God. And I think, you know, the law has been made and I think Karen mentioned 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

• 30:50Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 30:51Yasi Salek?

  immersed in her own history.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  She did it with the Celebration Tour.

• 30:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  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

• 31:05Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  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

• 31:19Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  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.

• 31:33Yasi Salek?

  Totally. When she's like sort of willfully not done so for so long.

• 31:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 31:37Speaker 04

  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.

• 31:47Yasi Salek?

  Not at all.

• 31:47Speaker 04

  But she does it in like kind of nuanced ways too. It's not like, um. The album isn't like, here's my story looking back. It's like she throws it in and like very fun, surprising ways.

• 31:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Stays fresh.

• 32:00Yasi Salek?

  She's a, 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 Danceateria.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 32:11Yasi Salek?

  I always wanna say Danceateria.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  Danceateria.

• 32:15Yasi Salek?

  Y'all mind? Are white girls speak a little Spanish?

• 32:17Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 32:18Yasi Salek?

  No, the first one.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  A Morocco.

• 32:21Yasi Salek?

  Oh yeah.

• 32:24Yasi Salek?

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

• 32:41Speaker 04

  That is where we are. So that gets us to where we are. I just wanna say about Stuart Price, like, um.

• 32:46Yasi Salek?

  Hot.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  It's, it's like, cause I have seen things online of like, who is Stuart Price? Why Stuart Price? Why do people care that this is Stuart Price?

• 32:55Yasi Salek?

  Open the schools.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  And it's not, but you know what? It's, he's not like a household name. He's not someone that everybody knows. And like, he's not even someone who's like a Diplo, who everyone is aware of. It's like.

• 33:06Yasi Salek?

  And thank God for fucking that.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Well, exactly. But Stuart Price is someone who's. And he kinda designed his career that way by taking on so many different aliases.

• 33:15Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  Right? Like he had Zoo Woman was a band, but then Lay Rhythm Digital, no one knew who that was really like. And then he, he became Jacques Lucan, which was sort of like an identity. Trick that he was doing. And then.

• 33:27Yasi Salek?

  Thin White Duke.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  Thin White Duke came after that. And he's, he's very selective about what he does. And he, 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.

• 33:44Yasi Salek?

  You know what fucks? His remix of Mr. Brightside by The Killers.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, that's like one of them.

• 33:50Yasi Salek?

  Legendary.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  It's one of the legendary ones. Also What You Waiting For by Gwen Stefani, Jacques Lucan remix. Get outta here. He's also remixed and produced like New Order, Pet Shop Boys, Kylie Minogue, um, Dua Lipa. The good Dua Lipa album, Future Nostalgia.

• 34:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  Most recently, he did Romy's solo album.

• 34:10Yasi Salek?

  He did the Take That reunion album for my Take That heads, for my Robbie Williams heads.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. And there's like, you know. He did incredible work with Seal.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Go back, go back and look up Clean.

• 34:25Yasi Salek?

  Who couldn't do amazing work with Seal, though?

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Or amazing, I mean to say. Amazing, 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, I'm gonna have the Thin White Duke remix of The Faint. Okay, anyway.

• 34:43Yasi Salek?

  Speaking of, speaking of Lachlan.

• 34:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, this was like, if, if you were like out in the 2000s, doing coke at parties, you were hearing Stuart Price's music.

• 34:53Yasi Salek?

  I wasn't, but I have friends that did that.

• 34:56Speaker 04

  It's like what Stuart Price was to the aughts, I feel like.

• 34:59Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  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, bing, like your antenna is like, I'm going.

• 35:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 04

  Like, this is gonna be a big deal.

• 35:11Yasi Salek?

  Well, also, like, again, he's, he's a former collaborator, but I think, like,

• 35:18Yasi Salek?

  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. Niche is, is the wrong word, but you know what I'm saying.

• 35:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, she likes to discover them.

• 35:36Yasi Salek?

  She likes to discover them, but also I think she works, like,

• 35:41Yasi Salek?

  how do I say this? Like, there's gonna be one boss.

• 35:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:46Yasi Salek?

  And I, 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, you're trying to put, fit Madonna into your productions as if she's a feature.

• 36:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:08Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  That's so integral, and I think she's known that, and has been aware of that as well.

• 36:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  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 Danceteria right now.

• 36:39Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, Karen. What a real, what a real one.

• 36:44Speaker 04

  But what was I gonna say? I saw that and was like lol.

• 36:48Yasi Salek?

  Well, why don't we use this opportunity to to go to the next part of our conversation? Which I really am gonna lean on you for, because I think you have such good insight here. But we should obviously start with the cover art.

• 37:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 37:01Yasi Salek?

  But we'll start with, we have behind us my personal favorite, although I've I've heard, I thought it was, I thought it was everyone's favorite, but I've heard like people being like they don't like that. You know, I was like, that's crazy.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  Why? Because you can't see her face?

• 37:13Yasi Salek?

  I don't, it said the pose was awkward. I think the pose looks cool.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Um, the pose is hot. She's about to get railed. Someone's gonna come up behind her.

• 37:22Yasi Salek?

  Mm hmm. Or she's, or she's stretching.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  Her boyfriend is gonna come up.

• 37:25Yasi Salek?

  Or she's doing a hamstring stretch.

• 37:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:27Yasi Salek?

  Um, however you want to look at it. Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  Dancing.

• 37:30Yasi Salek?

  I love it. Also, I just, I love that typeface. I love the the color palette, like, everything about it to me is like so fab and major. I love the thigh highs. Um, but the, but that's not the main cover art, the like, or the primary cover art. The primary cover art, we don't have it here, but we'll flash it up on the screen. It's um Madonna with a pink diaphanous veil

• 37:53Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 37:54Yasi Salek?

  in kind of a triangle seat, but also kind of forming a triangle.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  Is that a yoga pose?

• 38:01Yasi Salek?

  I think it's just a, like, it's like a 90 90, and it's like her lavender color that she likes so much.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  It's a bit of the original Confessions on a Dance Floor color scheme.

• 38:11Yasi Salek?

  Right, and and the way that she sat in that 90 90 very famously in the artwork and in the video for Hung Up, which I, I think artfully recreated.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  You, absolutely. It was shot for shot.

• 38:23Yasi Salek?

  Video, so. Um, do you feel, okay, so we should shout out, this is photographed by Rafael Paparotti, styling by IB Kamara, and the creative direction said raw materials.

• 38:37Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 38:38Yasi Salek?

  Apparently she said about the fabric, it's not back there. Um, 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 revelatory image. If you work with the right people, ideas come up like this. That's how art is created. Um, 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, probably aware it might be interpreted like this.

• 39:20Yasi Salek?

  But what do you make of the idea that this is also meant to like be the act up triangle? The pink act up triangle.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  It's a crap shoot babe.

• 39:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  And, and I, 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.

• 39:40Yasi Salek?

  Everything is the pink act of triangle.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Or pink, and the pink up triangle is kind of a vagina. Um.

• 39:48Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  But it's like.

• 39:49Yasi Salek?

  Everything is a vagina in the end.

• 39:53Speaker 04

  You don't know what's gonna 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 Vogue Italia.

• 40:04Yasi Salek?

  Amazing.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  Cover and that whole shoot was serviced to them from the same shoot.

• 40:08Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 40:09Speaker 04

  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 Conde 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 are so many photos from that like famous Erbret's shoot.

• 40:29Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  Um, 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 have that one, Interview Magazine's getting that one.

• 40:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that early on, she was like, we're controlling the image.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  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.

• 40:58Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 40:58Speaker 04

  There's the promo photos.

• 41:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  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.

• 41:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I don't think so either. I, or, and I also kind of feel like if the pink triangle thing is a thing, I think it may, my, this is my speculation, that it might have been noticed after the fact and then be like, that's cool.

• 41:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:31Yasi Salek?

  We'll leave it.

• 41:32Speaker 04

  I think they definitely had a color scheme going on.

• 41:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 04

  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, this CD cover. And I don't know if they do target exclusives anymore, but remember that era?

• 41:53Yasi Salek?

  They did Grindr exclusive.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Well, there you go.

• 41:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think they did a Grindr exclusive and something else. Um, I'm not like, me personally, I don't care too much about various elements of how many releases there were. Um, should we talk about the themes of the album?

• 42:08Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 42:09Yasi Salek?

  Did you read the manifesto that they put out?

• 42:11Speaker 04

  No.

• 42:12Yasi Salek?

  "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 bass, we don't just hear it, but we feel it, altering our consciousness and dissolving ego and time."

• 42:43Speaker 04

  I did read that, actually.

• 42:45Yasi Salek?

  It's beautiful.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have read it.

• 42:47Yasi Salek?

  It's beautiful. Um, 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 mother, or 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.

• 43:17Yasi Salek?

  It's pretty good. She kinda nailed it.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  She's her year of realizing things.

• 43:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's Kylie Jenner voice. And then before we get into the track by track, I did wanna talk about the film because

• 43:29Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 43:29Yasi Salek?

  as we're talking about the rollout, I guess. We, the film was a major part of the rollout because prior to this, I Feel So Free came out. That was first, right?

• 43:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:39Yasi Salek?

  Which, but it wasn't a single.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  It wasn't a single. It was like a teaser.

• 43:42Yasi Salek?

  Which I loved it when I heard it.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  So did I.

• 43:44Yasi Salek?

  That one made me really excited because I was like, this is fucking good.

• 43:48Speaker 04

  That was for the Confessions heads, that song.

• 43:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  Because it sounds very similar to Future Lovers on the Confessions tour.

• 43:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Yeah, it has that same like

• 44:01Yasi Salek?

  drug high, like vibey, just like incredible.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  Donna Summer sample.

• 44:07Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  It has, it's like a

• 44:11Yasi Salek?

  It doesn't have a Donna. It has the Lil Louis sample though, I Feel So Free, right? French Kiss.

• 44:16Speaker 04

  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 Soy Shiro by Arca.

• 44:29Yasi Salek?

  Okay, interesting.

• 44:32Yasi Salek?

  Love that. That's why it sounded beautifully familiar. Um, yeah, but I, I loved that as a single. And then obviously the second moment, which was the first single, was the Sabrina Carpenter

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:44Yasi Salek?

  song that was debuted, am I correct in saying at Coachella, right? Bring Your Love?

• 44:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:51Yasi Salek?

  That was the first time anybody really heard, well, not anybody, but the, the general public heard it.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Because Coachella's in April.

• 44:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, which was like such an interesting

• 45:02Yasi Salek?

  way to like try to take something in. Because I remember I 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 dislike of her.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  You're feuding.

• 45:29Yasi Salek?

  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 girlies. 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.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 04

  She's an interesting case because I feel like maybe someday you will become familiar with her. Like, I think she's gonna have longevity.

• 45:57Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  Probably not me, and the reason is that I don't like country music.

• 46:09Yasi Salek?

  Okay, and she does have a super twangy through line in her.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Which I love, and I think it's great for her, and I understand. I understand it all, I totally get it, it's just not what I listen to, but I can appreciate it.

• 46:21Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  It feels very savvy.

• 46:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  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 I don't, you know, why her, I guess? Seeing them perform at Coachella together, and I was not at Coachella this year.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  I, 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.

• 47:03Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  And I started, and because I was watching it within that context, I was like, she reminds me of Madonna.

• 47:09Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  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 art, 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.

• 47:28Yasi Salek?

  She has that, I don't wanna say cartoonish, but kind of like that.

• 47:31Speaker 04

  Kind of.

• 47:31Yasi Salek?

  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's, she is cartoonish in, in like a cool way, like, she, like, really, like, kind of vamps it up. She's like a, she's like a, a pinup in a gasoline from, station from the 50s come to life, you know?

• 47:56Speaker 04

  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?

• 48:12Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 48:12Speaker 04

  And do a new Who's That Girl song to go with it.

• 48:15Yasi Salek?

  It's like, like, obviously, like, if you were gonna, you were gonna partner with some young pop star, right? I don't know that anyone else made more sense.

• 48:27Speaker 04

  And seeing them side by side, I was like, they're the same height.

• 48:30Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 48:31Speaker 04

  I was like, maybe she should play Madonna.

• 48:33Yasi Salek?

  I know, right?

• 48:35Speaker 04

  Um, it made sense to me once I, once I saw it.

• 48:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 48:39Speaker 04

  And, and heard the song. And the song itself is interesting because then the next, that, that single came out before the film.

• 48:48Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  Right?

• 48:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, April.

• 48:51Speaker 04

  And it, it's interesting to me because I was perhaps underwhelmed at the beginning when that song came out.

• 48:58Yasi Salek?

  Me too.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  I liked it.

• 48:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 04

  It, 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.

• 49:09Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  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 itself 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.

• 49:28Yasi Salek?

  I also feel the single version we heard and the album version are slightly different, right? I do prefer the album.

• 49:34Speaker 04

  And the film version is also different.

• 49:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so like you kind of had all these opportunities to hear it a bit differently.

• 49:43Speaker 04

  And you're getting a lot of really fun insight into Stuart 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.

• 50:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 04

  The airbag deploys and then you see the lipstick mark on the airbag.

• 50:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 50:04Speaker 04

  But she walks in, you hear the footsteps. So there's like different.

• 50:07Yasi Salek?

  The sound design of the film is incredible.

• 50:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:10Yasi Salek?

  Like there's so much of it, like, like something small, but like there's a, the scene, my, my personal favorite part, which with the like dominatrix filmers. Um, for lack of a better word, I don't know what you could call those women.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  Right, which we need to talk about them.

• 50:24Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 50:35Yasi Salek?

  I think that's the next thing that happened. I don't think any other music came out, or am I wrong? Did, did Love Sensation come out before Confessions film?

• 50:43Speaker 04

  I'm iffy on dates and timelines, but I know that Love Sensation played at Club Confessions at the Abbey.

• 50:50Yasi Salek?

  That's true, but I don't think, but it was. The days that leaked, I don't think it was officially out.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  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, 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?

• 51:14Yasi Salek?

  She also played it at that Times Square concert.

• 51:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:17Yasi Salek?

  It was one of the three songs that she played. So maybe it was planned. Anyways, but that, regardless, the film.

• 51:28Yasi Salek?

  Built around the first six songs.

• 51:30Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:30Yasi Salek?

  Of the album. Directed by your close, personal, good friends.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:36Yasi Salek?

  Torso. David Toro and Solomon Chase.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 51:40Yasi Salek?

  Um, starring Madonna, with appearances by In Order, Arca, Archie Madique, Madique? Benedict Cumberbatch, Sabrina Carpenter, Cole Palmer, Debbie Mazur, Gwendolyn Christie, Honey Dijon, Fade, Zhao Pedro, Julia Garner, Kate Moss, Odessa Azion, Richard E. Grant, Shy Girl, and Lourdes Leon amongst others. So I missed probably a couple of people, but these were the featured players.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:07Yasi Salek?

  And it premiered June 5th at the Beacon Theater in New York City during Tribeca Film Festival.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:12Yasi Salek?

  It premiered for me in my bedroom on my YouTube.

• 52:16Speaker 04

  It premiered for me

• 52:20Speaker 04

  in a time and place I can't discuss.

• 52:21Yasi Salek?

  Right, and you had an NDA. I just, I mean, I've watched it like several times now. I think it's so good.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  It's amazing.

• 52:31Yasi Salek?

  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, the meta kind of arc of these like filmer dominatrices, because they're throughout, you know, like, is so genius. The pacing of it is so perfect. I love the driving part.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  It's funny to me that the way it begins is like you see the light beams.

• 52:59Yasi Salek?

  From the vagina?

• 53:01Speaker 04

  No, from the camera.

• 53:02Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  People, and you kind of think that it's like a SWAT team.

• 53:06Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 53:07Speaker 04

  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.

• 53:15Yasi Salek?

  It's so cunty, it's so funny, it's so, but it's also so like.

• 53:19Yasi Salek?

  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 edged sword that level of attention is.

• 53:51Speaker 04

  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.

• 54:00Yasi Salek?

  Of course, who could, who could forget?

• 54:03Speaker 04

  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, we're 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.

• 54:27Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  Regarding that, you know, because it's like,

• 54:33Speaker 04

  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 and 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.

• 54:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 54:53Speaker 04

  Because I'm tired of, it's like, almost like to get away from, to escape being Madonna.

• 54:58Yasi Salek?

  Right, and it's, it, 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, like,

• 55:17Speaker 04

  We don't put our phones away.

• 55:18Yasi Salek?

  There's so much of a, of a, 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.

• 55:39Speaker 04

  And it's interesting as like a fantasy for her because we saw at Club Confessions that she can't do that still.

• 55:45Yasi Salek?

  No, of course not. Well, not at her own event.

• 55:48Speaker 04

  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.

• 55:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 55:56Speaker 04

  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.

• 56:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  Dark room with tons of people and she's like in the crowd with them and you're kind of like, oh, this is like what she's fantasizing about.

• 56:12Yasi Salek?

  Like a dream situation. Um, yeah, I love it. I mean, I loved, I think one of my favorite parts was the table dancing.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:20Yasi Salek?

  I loved that, like the stretching and the knee pads, yoga moves and like the, the, you know, circular motion of the camera. Obviously the.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  And that was during One Step Away.

• 56:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think so. Um, or is it, does it go through two songs in that part? Cause like, I like vaguely remember.

• 56:39Speaker 04

  Good For The Soul is the Pussy Lasers.

• 56:41Yasi Salek?

  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, cause I love that song.

• 56:49Yasi Salek?

  Obviously the bathroom scene, which is with all the cameos is like so major. I was a little like.

• 56:55Speaker 04

  It also seems to be the one that's caught on the most.

• 56:57Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Cause it's like, it's, it's the like grabbiest. Also it has Danceateria, which is the grabbiest song.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:04Yasi Salek?

  Cause the easiest one to like take away from when you walk away. Um, I'm, I'm a little mad they didn't use the armpit. This Desperate Like Susan moment.

• 57:15Speaker 04

  She might have. I need to go back and re-watch. Maybe we just didn't catch it. I'm sure they filmed it.

• 57:20Yasi Salek?

  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. Um, when Lourdes walks in with the mask.

• 57:32Speaker 04

  There is something hilarious though about how her hair flies up when she does that, like that she's just doing it to her face.

• 57:37Yasi Salek?

  It's great.

• 57:38Speaker 04

  It reminds me of in the movie, this is such a weird reference. It just popped into my head, you know, in The Faculty.

• 57:43Yasi Salek?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:44Speaker 04

  The movie, The Faculty, the acclaimed film, The Faculty.

• 57:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 57:47Speaker 04

  When Piper Laurie, they're like in the closet spying on her and she goes over to the, to the water.

• 57:52Yasi Salek?

  I haven't seen it in a long time.

• 57:53Speaker 04

  She goes over to the like, I don't, what do you call it? Like the drinking.

• 57:57Yasi Salek?

  Fountain?

• 57:58Speaker 04

  It's not a fountain. It's like the jug, the dispenser. She fills up the cup of water and she just throws it in her face and then her hair whips back. That's how they know she's an alien, because the aliens need water.

• 58:08Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  Okay, anyway.

• 58:09Yasi Salek?

  Maybe that was the reference, and we don't know about it.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  I doubt it.

• 58:13Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, I loved it. I think it was great.

• 58:16Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 58:17Yasi Salek?

  Major. I mean.

• 58:18Speaker 04

  I think that if people haven't rewatched the Confessions film since getting into the album, it's very fun to go back and watch it after the album.

• 58:25Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And I'll tell you what, Benedict Cumberbatch grew on me. At first I was a little off foot by his prominent featuring, and now I'm like, it's cool.

• 58:33Speaker 04

  It's something about it's very Madonna.

• 58:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:35Speaker 04

  To have him there.

• 58:36Yasi Salek?

  I love Richard D. Grant being in it. I'm such a stan.

• 58:38Speaker 04

  Me too.

• 58:39Yasi Salek?

  But I was like, hell yeah. I hope that was one of your best friends. I hope they hung out every day in London.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  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, it was surprising.

• 58:52Yasi Salek?

  Obviously, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the hide the cocaine pan directly to Kate Boss moment, which is so wonderful.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, chef's kiss.

• 59:00Yasi Salek?

  Which obviously she was in on, because there's no way she would have allowed it if she wasn't. And it's very, it's very cool and funny.

• 59:05Speaker 04

  The whole thing was cool.

• 59:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's so great. All right. This album has been sort of universally, uh, received with high marks. It's gotten great reviews. The Metacritic score, I think, right now is 83. Everyone loved it.

• 59:24Speaker 04

  Is that, I don't look at Metacritic for albums, ever. Is that high?

• 59:29Yasi Salek?

  I think so. I mean, I don't usually either, but, I mean, it's quite high.

• 59:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:34Yasi Salek?

  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. Like, even, I mean, Pitchfork gave it 8.1. That's really high.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  But not best new music, which is a mistake.

• 59:47Yasi Salek?

  That is a mistake.

• 59:50Yasi Salek?

  We have a word 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 Melonberg, which we should totally shout out, because it's, A, the interview's amazing, but also the visuals are like... I think some of my favorite that I've seen in years of Madonna, 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

• 1:00:19Speaker 04

  The album campaign.

• 1:00:20Yasi Salek?

  The campaign. It's really wonderful.

• 1:00:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, I believe it's the only magazine cover shoot she's doing for this album.

• 1:00:27Yasi Salek?

  So great.

• 1:00:28Speaker 04

  That's for, that's an original shoot from the magazine.

• 1:00:31Yasi Salek?

  It's, I mean, she looks so cool and the hair is amazing. The looks are amazing. The like setting, that film, like sort of like Scorsese film vibe is so great. Anyways, she said that there's eight other songs that didn't make it onto the album, including one called What Will Save Me with Arca, or helped produce with Arca. Do you think those are gonna come out?

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  Yes, because I feel like unless they're very unfinished, they probably will because her, but who knows, it might be in 30 years.

• 1:01:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Speaker 04

  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 and

• 1:01:14Yasi Salek?

  We also haven't had any remixes besides the Peggy Gou one. Is that right?

• 1:01:21Speaker 04

  No, there've 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 gonna be a remix record.

• 1:01:37Yasi Salek?

  Record, yeah.

• 1:01:37Speaker 04

  I just get that feeling.

• 1:01:38Yasi Salek?

  There's gotta be. There's gotta be.

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

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• 1:02:43Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 1:02:53Yasi Salek?

  I love, 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 pulled into it, you know? And then her whispering her statement.

• 1:03:16Yasi Salek?

  Thanks for coming.

• 1:03:19Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 1:03:30Speaker 04

  It does have a little bit of erotica.

• 1:03:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  Of like, my name is Dita, I'll be your mistress 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 one and Confessions two, I think that erotica belongs in that sequence.

• 1:03:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  Somewhere.

• 1:03:53Yasi Salek?

  It's interesting, we're going to talk about it because we had a lot of questions of people being like, do you think this is actually a sequel to Confessions one?

• 1:04:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, we will talk about it.

• 1:04:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because I.

• 1:04:04Speaker 04

  Or should we talk about it now?

• 1:04:05Yasi Salek?

  I know, I'm interested. I kind of don't, like, like fully musically. I think like maybe spiritually in the sense that it's like, how Confessions was a return to like pure dance music? This is a return to pure dance music. But I, I almost feel like it's more like the Confessions. Of every dance floor. 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.

• 1:04:35Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. 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, Madonna's Confessions? And I was really struggling with it because I was like, it's not.

• 1:04:47Yasi Salek?

  I wouldn't call them throwback sounds.

• 1:04:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, there aren't. It's not one to one.

• 1:04:51Yasi Salek?

  They were like not, they're like nods or like updates, you know?

• 1:04:56Speaker 04

  And like, I was hearing different ones, like, or I, 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.

• 1:05:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:05:07Speaker 04

  Or Love Without Words kind of goes with Jump.

• 1:05:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, or, or, um, I feel like Sorry and, um, Bizarre have a little like in common.

• 1:05:21Speaker 04

  And I thought Sorry and Fragile had something.

• 1:05:23Yasi Salek?

  Sorry, that's what I meant. Sorry and Fragile. No, that, I mean, bizarre.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  We'll get there when we talk about Fragile, but it's like, essentially like, I think that Stu and Madonna knew that they couldn't go backwards. You know, 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.

• 1:05:47Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:05:48Speaker 04

  I want to go back to this well, but I think that

• 1:05:54Speaker 04

  they knew that if they, if they evoked Confessions on a dance floor too much, that this album wouldn't stand on its own and be considered its own.

• 1:06:01Yasi Salek?

  I think that's so true. Cause a lot of people I feel like, we're like, where's the Hung Up? And I'm like, there's not going to be a Hung Up.

• 1:06:06Speaker 04

  No, you can't redo Hung Up.

• 1:06:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like Hung Up was its own standalone thing.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  So I think that the Confessions 2 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 I, um, 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 1.

• 1:06:27Yasi Salek?

  Which, yeah, which is what she's sort of talked about, like, I want to go back to that space that we made Confessions 1 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-two makes sense, but like-

• 1:06:57Speaker 04

  It also makes sense to do, 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.

• 1:07:05Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:07:05Speaker 04

  So there's kind of a meta-layer there-

• 1:07:07Yasi Salek?

  So true.

• 1:07:08Speaker 04

  Of like, of these albums kind of situating together, but it's like Madonna can't, she's never gonna come and like not try and take her listeners to the next level.

• 1:07:19Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:07:20Speaker 04

  And I think she and Stuart 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.

• 1:07:28Yasi Salek?

  Because they were, especially with the title, they were expecting so much of Confessions 1.

• 1:07:32Speaker 04

  Nostalgia or looking back, and you're not really getting it.

• 1:07:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And it's funny, you do get it, but thematically instead of musically, you know? Um, I think "I Feel So Free" is a wonderful first song. And like, 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.

• 1:07:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I guess just to reiterate a little bit, like, the Future Lovers, I, um, "I Feel Love" Confessions Tour track that this is like so similar to. This is the most of any track on this album, this is the most similar to a Confessions era song, where it's that song. Future Lovers is of course produced by Mirways on, on, um, that album. And-

• 1:08:20Speaker 04

  What's interesting about it is like Future Lovers has Madonna saying basically like, "Forget all your problems, find brilliance in 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.

• 1:08:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:41Speaker 04

  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."

• 1:08:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Like I haven't felt, I feel so constrained.

• 1:08:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Yasi Salek?

  Like I, like, this is like casting a spell. Like I, this is a manifestation ritual. Like I want to feel that free again. It's 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.

• 1:09:21Speaker 04

  Bedtime Stories reference, maybe.

• 1:09:24Yasi Salek?

  Maybe.

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  Slightly.

• 1:09:25Yasi Salek?

  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, fam. I'm bought in.

• 1:09:36Speaker 04

  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 Instinct."

• 1:09:47Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 1:09:48Speaker 04

  Which didn't cross my mind.

• 1:09:49Yasi Salek?

  Which I love.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  And "Impressive Instinct" is one of my favorite Madonna songs.

• 1:09:52Yasi Salek?

  Same.

• 1:09:52Speaker 04

  Um, one of my top five. No.

• 1:09:56Yasi Salek?

  One of my top five too, babe. One of my endless.

• 1:09:58Speaker 04

  Endless top five.

• 1:09:59Yasi Salek?

  One of the Magic Trick top five, which is Mary Poppins' bag of top five songs.

• 1:10:03Speaker 04

  But that's because this song, and lyrically you can see it.

• 1:10:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Speaker 04

  Because she says, "Traveling through space and time, interstellar helix unwinds. Don't forsake or the love will die. Don't forget your love, alright. On the spiral light we fly. We will be one, we will be divine. All the spirits, they intertwine." And then- Back on Impressive Instant, it's similar but different. She says cosmic systems intertwine, astro bodies drip like wine, all of nature ebbs and flows, comets shoot across the sky. Like, it's like, it's very-

• 1:10:38Yasi Salek?

  We're mining the same well of Burning Man references, which I love.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Of new age pop spiritualism.

• 1:10:46Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And this one doesn't have singy, singy, singy like a bird on a wingy, wingy, unfortunately. But it does have astrology references.

• 1:10:54Speaker 04

  She could've been like, I like to dancy, dancy, dancy.

• 1:10:58Yasi Salek?

  I love moon is in Virgo, the sun is in the sky, Venus in Taurus, the planets aligned. I love a little astrology reference.

• 1:11:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I didn't even think about what that might mean. And I'm sure there is a meaning.

• 1:11:11Yasi Salek?

  Well, Venus is exalted in Taurus, it's the best position it can be in.

• 1:11:17Yasi Salek?

  Taurus is ruled by Venus. So the planets are aligned there. I love Good For The Soul. I don't know if there's 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.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  I had a thought here.

• 1:11:42Yasi Salek?

  Tell me.

• 1:11:43Speaker 04

  Not to get too TMZ.

• 1:11:45Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:11:46Speaker 04

  But it feels like an acknowledgement of mortality.

• 1:11:50Yasi Salek?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:11:52Speaker 04

  Is happening in this song. And she did have a near-death experience right shortly before the Celebration Tour.

• 1:11:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:00Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:12:15Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:12:16Speaker 04

  For where she is.

• 1:12:17Yasi Salek?

  I love the throughline 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.

• 1:12:42Speaker 04

  Right. And I just want to, sonically-

• 1:12:46Speaker 04

  I have to say that the minute the album came out.

• 1:12:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  I was up at a house in the woods. There was like, not a party going on, but a gathering. I.

• 1:12:57Yasi Salek?

  Of the juggalos.

• 1:12:57Speaker 04

  I French exited. With my friend Jacques Lucotte. Into a pitch dark bedroom. Put headphones on. And listen to the entire album. In the darkness, drinking glass of wine.

• 1:13:13Yasi Salek?

  Ugh, dream.

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  So when I've heard this, I had heard this song, of course, in the Confessions film.

• 1:13:20Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:13:20Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:13:37Yasi Salek?

  I think this is a sleeper song on the album where it's not as grabby 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.

• 1:13:48Speaker 04

  It takes you somewhere.

• 1:13:49Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 1:14:00Speaker 04

  Also, in, in this song, there's like a build. And Stuart is really good at a build. Especially like with this. Structure of the songs mixing into each other.

• 1:14:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, continuous mix.

• 1:14:13Speaker 04

  And he kind of takes this freedom of like. Letting it build until it's like this trancey techno. Refrain.

• 1:14:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Speaker 04

  Happening, super fucking loud.

• 1:14:24Yasi Salek?

  It's wonderful. And I will mention, there is a bird reference. And good for the soul, she says, cause up to the sky, a thousand birds fly. So the bird is back from, you're right, impressive and they're in conversation.

• 1:14:34Speaker 04

  The bird is back. The a thousand birds flying in the sky, that's her in the frozen video.

• 1:14:39Yasi Salek?

  Frozen video, exactly. Um, 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. Like grabs you right away. One of my top songs. Her vocal performance on this.

• 1:14:55Speaker 04

  Well, you. Fucking love bedtime stories.

• 1:14:57Yasi Salek?

  I love bedtime.

• 1:14:57Speaker 04

  And my first note was, it feels like it's sprouted off of bedtime stories.

• 1:15:02Yasi Salek?

  Oh, really?

• 1:15:02Speaker 04

  Or the untold chapter.

• 1:15:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:04Speaker 04

  Mixes.

• 1:15:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Speaker 04

  It's like, it's one of the most elegant songs on the record.

• 1:15:08Yasi Salek?

  I love it. I just, I, I, her, her vocal performance brings me back to like, every old Madonna song that I love. Because she sounds, I think this is the song she sounds the most like, her classic Madonna vocal self, in my opinion.

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  It's like, it has this sexy, odd, like, midtown Manhattan lounge feel.

• 1:15:31Yasi Salek?

  Buddha bar is open for business.

• 1:15:33Speaker 04

  You have a Rachel haircut, but it's really sleek. It's like a Tom Ford silk satin shirt.

• 1:15:39Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:15:40Speaker 04

  It's like maybe a choker, but like a really thin.

• 1:15:43Yasi Salek?

  My god, what is that? Was that restaurant that was like Asian themed? That was like very big at this time?

• 1:15:49Speaker 04

  Tao. It's very Tao.

• 1:15:50Yasi Salek?

  Not Tao, the other one. They just, they just opened it again in LA. Oh my god.

• 1:15:56Speaker 04

  Sushi Samba?

• 1:15:56Yasi Salek?

  Indochine.

• 1:15:57Speaker 04

  Oh, Indochine. I mean, Indochine is timeless, but.

• 1:16:00Yasi Salek?

  But also Sushi Samba. They did also, that's Sushi Samba also.

• 1:16:03Speaker 04

  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, it was like the wow track, like the standout on the confessions film for a lot of people.

• 1:16:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:19Speaker 04

  For like a certain kind of Madonna fan, you were like, oh my god, we're so back.

• 1:16:26Yasi Salek?

  Um, and then we've spoken a little bit about it, but this, this segue is a really great continuous moment.

• 1:16:32Speaker 04

  Powerfully and insanely.

• 1:16:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and to bring your love, I've had something I want to talk about.

• 1:16:38Speaker 04

  And when that transition happens, like, whatever Stuart and Madonna did with the album mix, turned the song into a smash for me.

• 1:16:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. Um, someone mentioned this and I did, I actually didn't hear it the first time, that they, was this only in the film where they put the, uh,

• 1:17:00Speaker 04

  The Lucky Star Sin stab?

• 1:17:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Speaker 04

  Uh, yes. Are we ever gonna get it? Probably not.

• 1:17:06Yasi Salek?

  I didn't catch it when I listened to the film the first couple of times.

• 1:17:09Speaker 04

  The Lucky Star Sin line to me is like so, if I hear it anywhere, I'm like.

• 1:17:15Yasi Salek?

  Right. It's like a dog whistle. You're like. It's a Batman call. You're like, I'm here.

• 1:17:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like that and like the intro to The X-Files have the same.

• 1:17:24Yasi Salek?

  I wonder why, I wonder why they didn't include that version on this album.

• 1:17:28Speaker 04

  It's so major. I'm obsessed with it.

• 1:17:30Yasi Salek?

  Maybe it'll come out in some other thing.

• 1:17:32Speaker 04

  When I'm listening to it, I actually hallucinate that it's there. Like when I'm listening to, I heard 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.

• 1:17:43Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. I didn't hear it the first time because I was, or even the second time until someone pointed it out and then I was like, oh yeah.

• 1:17:51Yasi Salek?

  This version has additional production by Parisi.

• 1:17:56Yasi Salek?

  I'm, I'm pointing this out because nine of the tracks I think are just her and Stuart. But there's the other tracks that have these additional collaborators. And this song interprets at one point, Good Life by Inner City, which we hear.

• 1:18:11Speaker 04

  Really, really major.

• 1:18:13Yasi Salek?

  Gorgeous.

• 1:18:13Speaker 04

  A very important song in my life and in the lives of generations of club goers.

• 1:18:19Yasi Salek?

  Like it still hits like it was yesterday when they put that song on.

• 1:18:24Yasi Salek?

  I love, I, I talked about this maybe with Karen or I'm not sure, but.

• 1:18:31Yasi Salek?

  I actually, Pink Pussy Hat, love the lyrical conceit of this song. Like I do, I do think like, I do think there's something in it that's like bringing back, don't tell me. Bringing, bringing back kind of a through line 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. Stop, you know, like, and it, it's not so explicit, but it is like, don't try to shut me up. That's very, don't tell me.

• 1:19:03Yasi Salek?

  She talked about it in Dark Ballet too, and not to bring up Dark Ballet, which I love. Um, Don't Try To Distract Me With Numbers, which is like both, I think, age, but also like

• 1:19:13Speaker 04

  Industry.

• 1:19:14Yasi Salek?

  Industry. We live in a like, how many followers do you have? Like, whatever.

• 1:19:18Speaker 04

  And the irony of her saying that on the Sabrina song, which is probably, like, of course, the label was probably thrilled to make it the first single.

• 1:19:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I was thinking about like-

• 1:19:25Speaker 04

  They thought it would do numbers, and she's like preempting it by being like, don't talk to me about the numbers.

• 1:19:29Yasi Salek?

  Right, don't talk to me about numbers. Um, I mean, Sabrina's on Universal. Warner could have probably pushed for one of their own, like, duet or something. Um, but yeah, I just, I do love that. I love like, there is, there's a bit where she says,

• 1:19:45Yasi Salek?

  who are you doing it for? Ask yourself who you're doing it for. Um.

• 1:19:52Yasi Salek?

  I think this is like a really good, central question that like-

• 1:19:57Speaker 04

  Many people should be asking themselves.

• 1:19:59Yasi Salek?

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:20:00Speaker 04

  Not me, but other people.

• 1:20:02Yasi Salek?

  Me sometimes. Sometimes I, 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? It's a whole, it's a bit, we don't have to get into it. Um, anyways, the song has grown on me incredibly, and-

• 1:20:23Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:20:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:34Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:20:40Yasi Salek?

  Right, right. Like, once you were able to hear it in its proper home and context.

• 1:20:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, it does something to it, you know?

• 1:20:48Yasi Salek?

  Um, they sprinkle a little crack in it for me when they put on the album.

• 1:20:51Speaker 04

  I can't tell if the mix on the album version is different than on the single version.

• 1:20:55Yasi Salek?

  Paul-

• 1:20:55Speaker 04

  Cause I'm like, am I tripping?

• 1:20:57Yasi Salek?

  Paul said it was.

• 1:20:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:20:58Yasi Salek?

  I think, I don't want to put words in the mouth, but I believe he did, or he, 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.

• 1:21:14Speaker 04

  Same, I love this version and it's like-

• 1:21:16Yasi Salek?

  Might be an optical illusion, an aural illusion.

• 1:21:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, the whole entire album has a hallucinatory quality to it for me, and I think that's like because Stuart is being so maximalist.

• 1:21:26Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:21:26Speaker 04

  In the best way.

• 1:21:27Yasi Salek?

  And so detail oriented, like-

• 1:21:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm like, I don't know what program he used, but I imagine like the Ableton or whatever had like nine hundred tracks on it.

• 1:21:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, just like layers, yeah.

• 1:21:36Speaker 04

  But it's like, you hear things and you're like, did I hear that? Are my 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.

• 1:21:49Yasi Salek?

  His age is like a fine line, I must say.

• 1:21:51Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:22:06Yasi Salek?

  On this podcast, we love Bose headphones, no free ads, but I have a gorgeous pair of Bose headphones that I love.

• 1:22:11Speaker 04

  You know, the synth chords like kind of jump around you. They're like, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and it's like surround sound and you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then like the song is just barreling forward, like to this like driving, propulsive beat. It has this like shiny, bulletproof, like pop adrenaline.

• 1:22:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:33Speaker 04

  It's pretty massive, actually, the song.

• 1:22:35Yasi Salek?

  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 they've, it's never like to this extent gone from like me hearing it being like, meh, and then me being like, I love this song so much. I love it. I want to hear it 10 times.

• 1:22:54Speaker 04

  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, I-

• 1:23:06Yasi Salek?

  You get pulled over, you're like, Madonna.

• 1:23:08Speaker 04

  It's gonna cause accidents.

• 1:23:09Yasi Salek?

  Um, well, and it, it's right into-

• 1:23:14Yasi Salek?

  Danceteria. I have to stop every time to not say Danceteria.

• 1:23:18Speaker 04

  Says, "Do it, do it your way. How you do it in your culture."

• 1:23:21Yasi Salek?

  Girl, in my culture. I'm interested that this song is, there's two songs on this album that are co-written with Andrew Watt 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 Peppers' last album.

• 1:23:55Yasi Salek?

  And Circuit is like, a big pop music writer. I noted that, I mean, a lot of, these songs have a lot of writers-

• 1:24:03Speaker 04

  He worked with Gaga on the last album.

• 1:24:04Yasi Salek?

  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. Katy Perry's Dark Horse, which I love that song. It's my favorite Katy Perry song.

• 1:24:17Speaker 04

  I hate that song. Go on.

• 1:24:19Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, I love it.

• 1:24:21Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 1:24:22Yasi Salek?

  Na na na, na na na. And Starboy by The Weeknd, which I have no thoughts on, because it's like wallpaper music.

• 1:24:28Speaker 04

  I love Starboy. I love Wrecking Ball.

• 1:24:32Yasi Salek?

  It's great. And Circuit also has credit as a producer on here. So, someone asked, can you please go through the name checks on Danceteria? Yeah. And I was like, I've never been born to do anything more in my life. Let's start.

• 1:24:47Speaker 04

  Well, can we start off saying what Danceteria is?

• 1:24:50Yasi Salek?

  Yes, of course, please.

• 1:24:51Speaker 04

  So, the song starts, and I like how it goes straight into the verse.

• 1:24:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:56Speaker 04

  It's a little, it's much different than it is in the Confessions film, because they picked and chose-

• 1:25:00Yasi Salek?

  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, hmm.

• 1:25:07Speaker 04

  That it just starts with like, get off the train, four, five, six. And it's because Danceteria was on West 21st Street, and so you would take the four, five, six to 23rd Street to get there.

• 1:25:17Yasi Salek?

  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-

• 1:25:26Yasi Salek?

  Arena of like where she came to dance, 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.

• 1:25:37Speaker 04

  Correct. And it was founded by Rudolph Piper and Jim Ferrati.

• 1:25:45Speaker 04

  It's where the club Sequence and Desperately Seeking Susan was filmed.

• 1:25:49Yasi Salek?

  I know, that's right.

• 1:25:50Speaker 04

  The Roof Bar was called Wuthering Heights, which is so interesting to me because of the weird Wuthering Heights connections to Madonna, the Alec Chisholm

• 1:25:59Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:26:00Speaker 04

  Thing that we discussed in our episode.

• 1:26:05Speaker 04

  It was like, it was like the locus of new wave in New York City, which I think is really critical, you know?

• 1:26:11Yasi Salek?

  But also like a, 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 we're gonna talk about that are name-drafted 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.

• 1:26:33Speaker 04

  The new wave was sort of like the dominant pop music at the time.

• 1:26:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  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 Smiths, New Order, Echo and the Bunny Men, B-52s.

• 1:27:05Yasi Salek?

  Do you know one thing we never talked about in the Madonna episodes that I was really mad about? Because I didn't realize it until after the fact, that Madonna opened for The Smiths.

• 1:27:12Speaker 04

  We didn't talk about that?

• 1:27:13Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:27:14Speaker 04

  We've talked about that.

• 1:27:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but it was, 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?

• 1:27:23Speaker 04

  But also like Klaus Nomi and Soft Cell. Mark Almond told Vanity Fair that they, that Soft Cell was recording non-stop erotic cabaret in New York and they would go there every single night. And that that album was sort of like written as like a New York album, but it was about dance hysteria.

• 1:27:39Yasi Salek?

  Well, I have a little footnote about Mark Almond also.

• 1:27:43Speaker 04

  Well.

• 1:27:44Yasi Salek?

  In my, in my notes, so.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  Oh, well, there was Vanity Fair, just like because of this Madonna album, probably, did an oral history of Dance Et Era that came out like in June, which is great and worth reading. But it was like, it's crazy to think about because this was like, it was like peak Furucchi at that time, and it was like, you know.

• 1:28:06Yasi Salek?

  It was like, it was the tale, it was like, CBGB's was kinda 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 New York, and Dance Et Era, I did it again, one of the main ones.

• 1:28:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:27Yasi Salek?

  Dance Et Era.

• 1:28:29Speaker 04

  And someone who's not mentioned in the lyrics, but who was major force of Dance Et Era, was Diane Brill.

• 1:28:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, there's a couple, I wanna talk about who wasn't mentioned, and kind of speculate on that.

• 1:28:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:28:40Yasi Salek?

  Um, when we're done, so.

• 1:28:42Speaker 04

  Okay, okay.

• 1:28:42Yasi Salek?

  Put that in your.

• 1:28:43Speaker 04

  But like, David Wanyarowicz and Keith Haring were the busboys there.

• 1:28:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  It's like, the, like, two of the most profoundly impactful gay artists of the 20th century.

• 1:28:52Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:28:52Speaker 04

  Were busboys at Dance Et Era.

• 1:28:54Yasi Salek?

  People not mentioned are the Beastie Boys, who also worked there.

• 1:28:57Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:57Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 1:28:58Speaker 04

  It was a scene, bitch.

• 1:29:00Yasi Salek?

  Okay, let's get, let's get started. I get off the train, four, five, six, walk to the club, don't wait for shit, meet this boy named Martin Begoyne, he's my best friend, he's my boy toy. Get off the train, four, five, six, walk to the club, don't wait for shit, meet this boy named Martin Begoyne, he's my best friend, he's my boy toy.

• 1:29:20Yasi Salek?

  Martin Begoyne, we talked about in episode one, but we'll talk about it again briefly here, he was a bartender, occasional backup dancer for Madonna, they, he was born in England, he was a transplant, um, they met, uh, and they lived together, she had to move out of her Riverside Drive apartment, cause Futura, her boyfriend, another person not mentioned in this, uh, song, had graffiti all over the wall of her bedroom.

• 1:29:45Speaker 04

  Which really makes these guys mad, sometimes.

• 1:29:47Yasi Salek?

  Well, I think he was just like. Doing a piece. He was like throwing up a piece.

• 1:29:52Speaker 04

  I thought it was like his goodbye gesture, like lipstick on the mirror.

• 1:29:56Yasi Salek?

  So, sorry.

• 1:29:56Speaker 04

  The guy version.

• 1:29:57Yasi Salek?

  They didn't live together. They live next door to each other. And he was nineteen and they became inseparable. And according to Christopher, he had a huge influence on the way she dressed. 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 little capri pants with the little shoes.

• 1:30:15Speaker 04

  Which feels very Buffalo as well, which maybe it was influenced by, maybe.

• 1:30:19Yasi Salek?

  And he's from England, so.

• 1:30:23Yasi Salek?

  He also did the artwork for her Burning Up EP and has a brief appearance in the Michelle Girl video.

• 1:30:33Yasi Salek?

  They went to England together and stayed at Mark Almond's bedsit.

• 1:30:37Speaker 04

  Perfect.

• 1:30:38Yasi Salek?

  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 eighty, nineteen eighty-six. And she kind of, like, moved heaven and earth to try to save him and paid for his medical expenses and leased him 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.

• 1:31:18Yasi Salek?

  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. Like, I found it very touching. And she was there, like, with him when he died. He was only twenty-three.

• 1:31:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, Andy Warhol wrote about it in The Warhol Diary, or didn't write about it, but.

• 1:31:33Yasi Salek?

  Dictated it to his secretary.

• 1:31:36Speaker 04

  Dictated it to Pat Hackett in The Warhol Diaries, that he was there, visited him in the hospital and, like, saw her doing all of this.

• 1:31:44Yasi Salek?

  Really? So that was the, okay. The next part is, cut to the front, there's Howie Montag, waves us in, No Entiendes. I'm not sure you understand this. Howie Montag, doorman and promoter of many iconic New York City nightclubs, including Ansetiria and Studio 54. He also was the creator of a cabaret review called No Entiendes.

• 1:32:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:05Yasi Salek?

  Which was the first place Madonna ever had an official live performance. October thirteenth, nineteen eighty-two.

• 1:32:13Speaker 04

  Which is why it's a fun lyric and she says, I don't think you understand.

• 1:32:16Yasi Salek?

  I don't think you understand. It's so good.

• 1:32:18Speaker 04

  Not just because it's in Spanish.

• 1:32:19Yasi Salek?

  Not because a white girl speaks Spanish. Y'all mind? Bags Riles and Erica Ball are two people that we should talk about also not mentioned, her early dancers.

• 1:32:30Yasi Salek?

  Howie Montag was also diagnosed with AIDS in June of 1991 or around then, and he organized a suicide party.

• 1:32:38Speaker 04

  Major.

• 1:32:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and Madonna came via phone from LA. 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.

• 1:32:50Yasi Salek?

  The next one is.

• 1:32:50Speaker 04

  It's a bit of an Andrea Feldman vibe, if you know who Andrea Feldman is. She staged her final performance, jumped out the window on Bond Street.

• 1:32:57Yasi Salek?

  So insane.

• 1:33:00Yasi Salek?

  But you know what? Good for you.

• 1:33:03Speaker 04

  Listen, it was a wild time back then.

• 1:33:05Yasi Salek?

  I just read it. This is so.

• 1:33:07Speaker 04

  They did it a little bit different back then.

• 1:33:08Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 1:33:17Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:33:18Yasi Salek?

  Did you see that?

• 1:33:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, like I jumped off a plane.

• 1:33:20Yasi Salek?

  We're not gonna talk about it. Okay, the next part is.

• 1:33:22Speaker 04

  We live in hell.

• 1:33:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Get on the elevator. I run into Debbie Mazur. I love that she rhymed Debbie Mazur with elevator.

• 1:33:29Speaker 04

  Debbie Mazur worked the elevator in Sotira. That was her job.

• 1:33:32Yasi Salek?

  Take us to the third floor, walk us to the dance floor. Then I see Mark Kamins's is the DJ. He's the DJ. Hide the cocaine. He played my tape, everybody. This is how we start the party. So Debbie Mazur, you all know who Debbie Mazur is. She worked the elevator, like you said. They called each other the Weebo Girls. Which is still her publishing company is still called Weebo Publishing, Weebo Girl Publishing, like Weebo's, girls with balls. Debbie would do her makeup, like they were fast friends and helped her in her quest to get Mark Kamins's, an influential DJ, who also did A and 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.

• 1:34:15Yasi Salek?

  Brought the tape to Chris Blackwell at Island who passed on it.

• 1:34:17Speaker 04

  Well, she said that she, and again, in the interview with Mel, she said that she did coke with him and kissed.

• 1:34:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, made out with him and she was like.

• 1:34:23Speaker 04

  Then he played the tape.

• 1:34:24Yasi Salek?

  What did Mel say? He was like, he's like, you must have done a bump for the glamour. And she was like, yeah, but it made my throat hurt. She wasn't a partier.

• 1:34:31Speaker 04

  She wasn't a coke head.

• 1:34:32Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 1:34:33Speaker 04

  But she did what she had to do.

• 1:34:34Yasi Salek?

  She did what she had to do. And it worked. He got, he's the one that, that gave the tape to Michael Rosenblatt, the A and R for Sire, which is how she got signed. Um.

• 1:34:45Speaker 04

  Also, just a note about Howie Montag. He never let Donald Trump into Densitaria.

• 1:34:51Yasi Salek?

  Spotless record.

• 1:34:51Speaker 04

  Legend.

• 1:34:53Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 1:34:54Speaker 04

  Gold star.

• 1:34:55Yasi Salek?

  The next part is, there's Fab Five Freddie and Basquiat, Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf. Everyone came from Sha'frazee, Sha'frazee to the beat. You love that part.

• 1:35:04Speaker 04

  Sha'frazee to the beat is the craziest lyric of the year since, but he wanna fuck Slater, Richard, we should link later.

• 1:35:16Yasi Salek?

  It's really good.

• 1:35:16Speaker 04

  Just like the most weird name drops done in such a poetic way.

• 1:35:22Yasi Salek?

  Love it. Well, Fab Five Freddie, I think, I would hope you guys all know who he is, but if you don't, born Fred Braithwaite, late 1970s, he was part of the Fabulous Five, which is a graffiti group with Lee Quinones, who you might know as the star of the film Wild Style, Fab Five Freddie also in it. Um, they kind of were like some of the first to shift from street graffiti, like into like the prestigious actual art world. Um, Freddie was like a regular on Glenn O'Brien's show, TV Party. Glenn O'Brien, former editor of Interview, TV Party iconic. Um.

• 1:35:57Yasi Salek?

  He is name checked by Blondie and her rap in Rapture, and he's also in that video. Um. Basquiat, do you know who Basquiat is?

• 1:36:07Speaker 04

  Me?

• 1:36:08Yasi Salek?

  Who's Flair, the Basquiat?

• 1:36:09Speaker 04

  No, I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:36:12Yasi Salek?

  I don't know who that is. Uh, Jean-Michel Basquiat.

• 1:36:15Speaker 04

  I don't like graffiti.

• 1:36:15Yasi Salek?

  No, I'm not into graffiti art. Um, obviously iconic famous painter, um, who dated Madonna in late 1982. Um, they were together for a while, but she couldn't be with him because he wouldn't stop doing heroin, quote, quote unquote. Keith Haring.

• 1:36:31Yasi Salek?

  Famous American artist and activist, also the, you said busboy at Danceteria. She performed Like a Virgin and Dress 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.

• 1:36:47Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:36:48Yasi Salek?

  And Kenny Scharf, still alive, Kenny Scharf.

• 1:36:51Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Amazing artist. He was.

• 1:36:55Speaker 04

  Also has fun parties in like his own venue in New York.

• 1:36:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:59Speaker 04

  Where he has them. I don't know if he does anymore, but.

• 1:37:00Yasi Salek?

  He used to, right? Disco parties.

• 1:37:02Speaker 04

  Pretty recently.

• 1:37:03Yasi Salek?

  Cosmic caverns or whatever. And he lived with Keith Haring. Now, very important for me, Shafrazzi. Iranian excellence. Tony Shafrazzi, an Iranian-born American art dealer. He's a fucking icon. I didn't know this.

• 1:37:17Speaker 04

  One of the huge legendary art dealer.

• 1:37:19Yasi Salek?

  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 Guernica?

• 1:37:35Yasi Salek?

  By the way, an allusion to James Joyce's 1939 Finnegans Wake. When they grabbed him, he screamed, "Call the curator, I'm an artist."

• 1:37:46Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:37:47Yasi Salek?

  That's what I'm gonna start saying whenever someone questions me on anything. "Call the curator, I'm an artist."

• 1:37:54Yasi Salek?

  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. Did so much stuff. Anyways, he had a gallery that showed Kenny Scharf, all these people, so.

• 1:38:11Speaker 04

  Basquiat.

• 1:38:12Yasi Salek?

  Shafrazzi to the beat.

• 1:38:15Yasi Salek?

  Next part is, there's Mary Pole and a guy named Fred. See these guys spitting on their heads? There's Rocksteady Crew and Crazy Legs. Puerto Rican boys, they make me go crazy.

• 1:38:24Speaker 04

  That line.

• 1:38:26Yasi Salek?

  It's just, girl.

• 1:38:29Speaker 04

  I'm waiting for the remix, it's just that line.

• 1:38:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:31Speaker 04

  Over and over and over again.

• 1:38:33Yasi Salek?

  Mary Pole, do you want to tell people who Mary Pole is?

• 1:38:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, she's a legend. She's a photographer, fashion designer, jewelry designer, artist. Like, occasional film.

• 1:38:48Speaker 04

  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, all the Like a Virgin era.

• 1:39:06Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:39:06Speaker 04

  Um, she worked at Furuchi.

• 1:39:08Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:39:09Speaker 04

  She is now really known for her Polaroid photography because back then she would take Polaroids of everybody. She's released like several anthologies and books of all of her Polaroids of like Warhol, Debbie Harry, Debbie Mazur, all the Debbie's. Uh, Madonna, Basquiat, Keith Haring, so on and so forth. So she was like major artistic style fixture.

• 1:39:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and I think had a lot of.

• 1:39:35Speaker 04

  In this scene at the time. And close friends with Madonna.

• 1:39:38Yasi Salek?

  And a lot of influence on her like early style with those, like she invented those bracelets.

• 1:39:42Speaker 04

  Those black rubber bracelets.

• 1:39:43Yasi Salek?

  Black rubber bracelets, yeah.

• 1:39:44Speaker 04

  Which came to define like Hot Topic style in the late 90s.

• 1:39:47Yasi Salek?

  Little did she know what she wrought, yeah.

• 1:39:50Speaker 04

  My era, I used to have them.

• 1:39:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, same. Um, a guy named Fred is still referring to Fab by Freddie because, uh, when she met Mary Poole, Fab by Freddie was performing and he had been like, can you find me some girls to dance on stage with me? And she like had seen Madonna perform and was like, come dance on the stage. And the Rocksteady Crew and Crazy Legs, those are b-boys. Look it, look it up, babe, I'm not gonna.

• 1:40:12Speaker 04

  Not Fred Schneider from the B-52s, although the B-52s do get a mention.

• 1:40:16Yasi Salek?

  But I do think she was talking about that. Um, Crazy Legs was like one of the most famous break dancers. I think he was like one of the first break dancers to have like a campaign with Fila or something. And anyways, they were around. Um, next is Nile Rodgers and David Byrne. B-52s had Money to Burn, Lounge Lizards had So Much Style, Lowry's Side, Take a Walk on the Wild Side. Nile Rodgers, we know.

• 1:40:38Speaker 04

  If you don't know anyone who Yasi just said.

• 1:40:42Yasi Salek?

  Open a book.

• 1:40:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, we don't need to get into it.

• 1:40:44Yasi Salek?

  He produced the first Madonna album, though. He was the co-founder of Chic. David Byrne, obviously of the Talking Heads, he was around during this time. B-52's Had Money to Burn is a fun one because not only is it a name check of the B-52's, 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 it's hot. Ten, twenty, thirty million, ready to be spent. We're stacking them against the wall, those gangster presidents." It's talking about like, counterfeiting money.

• 1:41:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:11Yasi Salek?

  Money to burn, which I thought was really cool.

• 1:41:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:14Yasi Salek?

  And Lounge Lizards were John Lurie's like avant-garde jazz, fake jazz, no-wave band. Fucking cool, man.

• 1:41:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:23Yasi Salek?

  And in Norris Burrows's book, which we're gonna 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 Lizards are in Desperately Seeking Susan.

• 1:41:34Speaker 04

  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 and success and whatever. And there's this like, cliche that people forget where they came from, or like-

• 1:41:53Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:41:54Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:42:01Yasi Salek?

  She remembers everything. And also, for me, I mean, what 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 divorced Madonna as like, like you said, just this famous pop star. And because now pop stars are kind of birthed 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-

• 1:42:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:28Yasi Salek?

  A deep scene of like, artists and weirdos and fucking cool people, and she was one of them, and it just, her trajectory was different. But like, never forget that she comes from the same pool as the fucking Talking Heads, and these, and Crazy Legs, and fucking the B-52. You know, like, I think that's really important to remember for the kind of artist she is. Obviously, dude, dude, Lurie, we know, Walk on the Wild Side. He has a writing credit on the song.

• 1:42:54Speaker 04

  I love that part.

• 1:42:55Yasi Salek?

  I love it too.

• 1:42:55Speaker 04

  So good.

• 1:42:56Yasi Salek?

  It could, like, it could have gone so bad, but yet it works so well.

• 1:42:59Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:43:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Speaker 04

  They might be watching us, we don't care. It's like, she's of like knowing you're kind of hot shed, and but then also being like, I'm just here to have fun.

• 1:43:17Speaker 04

  Throwing that aside.

• 1:43:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:19Speaker 04

  But still mentioning it.

• 1:43:21Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Okay, well then, it goes in, this is a strange sequencing, but it goes into Read My Lips, featuring Fade, um, which I told you, I recently learned that not everyone likes.

• 1:43:33Speaker 04

  I like it. This is the World Cup song.

• 1:43:36Yasi Salek?

  Is it?

• 1:43:36Speaker 04

  Right? This is the song, yeah, that she's.

• 1:43:38Yasi Salek?

  That she's gonna do at the halftime show?

• 1:43:39Speaker 04

  Because it was also released as its own single with like World Cup artwork.

• 1:43:43Yasi Salek?

  Right, right, right, right. Um, co-written by.

• 1:43:46Speaker 04

  I like it.

• 1:43:47Yasi Salek?

  Puerto Rican producer Taney and Fade.

• 1:43:49Speaker 04

  I love Taney.

• 1:43:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:50Speaker 04

  If anyone hasn't gotten into Taney, get into Taney.

• 1:43:53Yasi Salek?

  Listen, I always love it because y'all might know my girls be the last man y'all like. And I just think it's good, like, I, okay.

• 1:44:02Speaker 04

  It is.

• 1:44:02Yasi Salek?

  Every Madonna album needs to have some Spanish guitar, and this is the track. Um, I like, I like the fury and anger in it, you know? Um.

• 1:44:16Yasi Salek?

  Do you think the song is about Guy Ritchie?

• 1:44:19Speaker 04

  The thought didn't cross my mind. Please elaborate.

• 1:44:22Yasi Salek?

  I mean, you're giving lead actor, you wanna steal the show, you like to be a bully, you like to always win. These are director-type, uh, accusations. That's just what I thought about. Could be about, I mean, it's a broad enough song that it could be about anybody, but like, it is, it's a vitriolic song about an ex-lover, you know?

• 1:44:42Speaker 04

  That's really interesting.

• 1:44:43Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 1:44:57Yasi Salek?

  Biggest like thing that she sort of had to recover from, you know?

• 1:45:03Speaker 04

  I wonder how much she knew that there would be also a football element to this.

• 1:45:10Yasi Salek?

  Like, like this is a sports song?

• 1:45:12Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:45:22Yasi Salek?

  I have no idea. It's just, we'll never know. It's just like.

• 1:45:25Speaker 04

  We're improv-ing here.

• 1:45:26Yasi Salek?

  I was trying to think of like who's such a big, like, because she talks about Sean, another song which we're gonna get to, but I was like, and who is the other biggest? You know, but it could, I mean, there's, she's had a lot of relationships, so I don't know. Or it could just be a, you know, an imaginary song. Uh, 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. Um, it goes into everything. This is I wanna shoot my phone. This song is I want, the I wanna shoot my phone song. Cher, one of the best tweets of all time. Um, Instagram, babe, I also don't fuck with it.

• 1:46:04Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 1:46:05Yasi Salek?

  Or I try not to fuck with it, but unfortunately I keep fucking with it, but I'm, I don't fuck with it.

• 1:46:09Speaker 04

  Relevant, valid, sure. Is it a little old man screams, goes outside and screams at cloud? Maybe.

• 1:46:17Yasi Salek?

  Who amongst us, though?

• 1:46:18Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:46:26Yasi Salek?

  I like it too.

• 1:46:26Speaker 04

  It's like, I understand, but I'm also like, the production of it, just as like a crazy dance song.

• 1:46:33Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:46:34Speaker 04

  It really hits. It builds and it hits and it's like, it gets you.

• 1:46:40Yasi Salek?

  I really love it. Also, I'm sorry, why you always make me feel so bad about myself? Why you always make me wanna be like someone else?

• 1:46:49Yasi Salek?

  It's, she's right. She nailed it.

• 1:46:52Speaker 04

  Feminism.

• 1:46:53Yasi Salek?

  Feminism. Um, the next song is Love Sensation.

• 1:46:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:47:03Yasi Salek?

  It's nothing that can't do, nothing that can't do. I like this song a lot.

• 1:47:07Speaker 04

  I'm obsessed with it.

• 1:47:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:09Speaker 04

  I didn't write down any notes.

• 1:47:11Yasi Salek?

  Me neither because it's just like, it's just great.

• 1:47:15Speaker 04

  The, the kind of three song.

• 1:47:17Yasi Salek?

  This is like No Thoughts, Just Vibes, Smooth Brain. When I put this on, I'm just like dancing in the kitchen, you know?

• 1:47:25Speaker 04

  Everything into Love Sensation into Love Without Words is definitely like a peak on the album to me. It's personally.

• 1:47:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I don't have like a lot intelligent or interesting to say about it. I just think it's fucking good.

• 1:47:40Speaker 04

  It has like this kind of

• 1:47:44Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:48:10Yasi Salek?

  I do fuck with it.

• 1:48:13Yasi Salek?

  Love Without Words, additional production, Parisi.

• 1:48:16Speaker 04

  I love that song too.

• 1:48:17Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 1:48:26Speaker 04

  It's, 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 this sample? I thought it was sampling something and it's not.

• 1:48:36Yasi Salek?

  It's not.

• 1:48:37Speaker 04

  It's just like pure crack.

• 1:48:39Yasi Salek?

  I thought she was saying, call it trans. Whatever. Call it trans, call it house. I was like, that's cool. It's not, it's trans.

• 1:48:47Speaker 04

  But also her delivery, and this is maybe going to sound weird, 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 femaleing a little bit on the track.

• 1:49:12Yasi Salek?

  She's around.

• 1:49:14Speaker 04

  It's fab.

• 1:49:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's wonderful.

• 1:49:17Speaker 04

  Who wouldn't?

• 1:49:18Yasi Salek?

  There is a nod to Madame X in this song.

• 1:49:22Speaker 04

  How could you?

• 1:49:23Yasi Salek?

  Madame X is a spy in the house of love.

• 1:49:26Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 1:49:27Yasi Salek?

  Come to the club, come to my house, come to the club of love. I'm just saying.

• 1:49:32Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:49:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:44Speaker 04

  It's like, I'm in it, I'm a hostage. And like, when you talk about the sequencing of the album,

• 1:49:51Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:49:59Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 1:49:59Speaker 04

  Which the Confessions film does a good job of like, you're in this kind of like,

• 1:50:06Speaker 04

  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?

• 1:50:27Yasi Salek?

  It kind of reminds me of-

• 1:50:28Speaker 04

  It's a little like, over the edge.

• 1:50:30Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, what?

• 1:50:32Speaker 04

  It's like you, you do cocaine, and like, it's fun at first.

• 1:50:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:37Speaker 04

  Like, you're like, everything's so great. Oh my god, we're up, we're having fun, da da da da. And then someone starts talking about their ex, and you're like, oh no, things are about to go off the deep end.

• 1:50:44Yasi Salek?

  It reminds me of Supreme Adelica, 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 ecstasy, and then the, 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 build up into the club, and then it starts to go into a come down.

• 1:51:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's a little bit of a horror. You're like, is it getting light outside?

• 1:51:05Yasi Salek?

  The fear.

• 1:51:05Speaker 04

  Actually, like, is this, yeah, the fear creeps in.

• 1:51:07Yasi Salek?

  And the fear is mortality, and we're gonna talk about that.

• 1:51:09Speaker 04

  Which I think is beautiful for a song, to be able to sort of capture that.

• 1:51:14Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:51:14Speaker 04

  Is very rare.

• 1:51:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:15Speaker 04

  And it's like, it's very stunning.

• 1:51:18Yasi Salek?

  And it's not just the song. I think the song is a microcosm of the whole album. The album is structured that way.

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• 1:52:26Yasi Salek?

  Okay, the next song is bizarre. This one has a, this one's featuring Martin Garrix. It's this stronger than just a co-write. He's 30. He's a Dutch DJ who was discovered by Tiesto. I'll be honest with you, I don't know a lot about Martin Garrix. It's not my world.

• 1:52:40Speaker 04

  Same.

• 1:52:42Yasi Salek?

  This song has six writers.

• 1:52:43Speaker 04

  I like what I'm hearing, though.

• 1:52:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we're getting into a chunk of the part that starts to have multiple writers. So Madonna, Stewart, Martin Garrix, Oscar Rindberg, Wilhelm Borgesen, and Taylor Upsal. Taylor Upsal, I went and listened to some of her music, kind of good. I'm not gonna lie. This was, 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 Penn song. And I don't think that's...

• 1:53:10Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:53:15Yasi Salek?

  Movie star, deep blue eyes, and Hollywood were purr-eyes. 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.

• 1:53:30Yasi Salek?

  I didn't, I thought, I was kind of like side, side-swiped by this song lyrically, because I was like...

• 1:53:36Speaker 04

  It's never really over, you know? There's certain people you never get over.

• 1:53:40Yasi Salek?

  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 they're friends. But this song is 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, unaired grievances.

• 1:53:58Speaker 04

  There was a time recently, air quotes recently.

• 1:54:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:02Speaker 04

  Cause 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.

• 1:54:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:10Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:54:17Yasi Salek?

  So true.

• 1:54:18Speaker 04

  There could have been like a late night hangout, hookup.

• 1:54:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 1:54:23Speaker 04

  Like.

• 1:54:25Yasi Salek?

  We don't know.

• 1:54:26Speaker 04

  We can't know.

• 1:54:27Yasi Salek?

  All we know, I do know that there was like a lot.

• 1:54:30Speaker 04

  I would love that, but we can't know.

• 1:54:33Yasi Salek?

  Sean Penn smoking 200 cigarettes.

• 1:54:35Speaker 04

  Oh my god, so major.

• 1:54:36Yasi Salek?

  Just blasting cigs.

• 1:54:38Speaker 04

  I still think there's time for them.

• 1:54:40Yasi Salek?

  Sean Penn right now in the Ukraine, listening to this song on repeat.

• 1:54:44Speaker 04

  Listening to this podcast, being like, what the fuck?

• 1:54:49Yasi Salek?

  It is, it is like, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. Like we talked about in episode one, and I think in episode two, our episode where like he taught, 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.

• 1:55:14Yasi Salek?

  Cause 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.

• 1:55:25Speaker 04

  Also, he, 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.

• 1:55:34Yasi Salek?

  And it was, it was like kind of dampened.

• 1:55:37Speaker 04

  Because of this thing going on and that might be a grudge that she's nursing, not to put a grudge in her mouth.

• 1:55:42Yasi Salek?

  And also, I mean, again, we're now we're like full fanfic, but I'm like.

• 1:55:46Speaker 04

  Totally like, we don't know what we're talking about.

• 1:55:47Yasi Salek?

  We don't know anything, but like, 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 nonstop.

• 1:56:00Speaker 04

  She wrote cherish?

• 1:56:01Yasi Salek?

  Stopped by. You know?

• 1:56:04Speaker 04

  I'm on Broadway and I'm in love.

• 1:56:05Yasi Salek?

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

• 1:56:22Speaker 04

  It's my favorite too.

• 1:56:24Yasi Salek?

  You already said three favorites.

• 1:56:26Speaker 04

  It's like, we'll get into it.

• 1:56:28Yasi Salek?

  I, okay, I was already like once, you know, uh, one step away or whatever. I was like, let's fucking go. And then school came on and I was like,

• 1:56:40Yasi Salek?

  stop the fucking presses.

• 1:56:42Speaker 04

  You think the night is over?

• 1:56:43Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 1:56:44Speaker 04

  There's one last gasp.

• 1:56:45Yasi Salek?

  Comes in, someone comes by with a little dropper of 2CB. And they're like, sorry.

• 1:56:50Speaker 04

  New wind.

• 1:56:51Yasi Salek?

  Um, this song actually has seven writers on it, which I thought was really interesting.

• 1:56:55Speaker 04

  Well, it's a really complex and interesting song, even for how simple and repetitive it is.

• 1:57:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:03Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:57:11Yasi Salek?

  Bad time stories, callback.

• 1:57:14Speaker 04

  Um, but the vocal pitching in it is so anarchic and playful and like weird and druggie that it reminds me of music.

• 1:57:23Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Oh, my God, totally like mirror ways.

• 1:57:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, like the kind of like willingness to be like indecipherable.

• 1:57:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:31Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:57:43Yasi Salek?

  That is the, by the way, for those who don't know, that's a line that is in the sex book.

• 1:57:48Speaker 04

  The sex book.

• 1:57:49Yasi Salek?

  And then also is in erotica, except she doesn't say fuck at the end. She says, I'll teach you how to uh.

• 1:57:55Speaker 04

  It's also, to my ear, the most Britney blackout song on the record. It's like, which is, in case people don't know, Blackout by Britney Spears, the album, is incredibly important electronic music production landmark record. It's,

• 1:58:15Speaker 04

  it's been inseminated by Get Naked, I Got A Plan.

• 1:58:22Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:58:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:35Speaker 04

  I also wonder if this was a song that Britney was meant to be on because it feels very Britney to me.

• 1:58:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:43Speaker 04

  The fans are demanding a Kylie Minogue feature or remix.

• 1:58:46Yasi Salek?

  We're gonna talk about that because people have asked us multiple questions about where we think the Kylie, the rumored Kylie remix is gonna come in or the feature. I don't, I love Kylie, but I would not want it here.

• 1:58:58Speaker 04

  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, 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.

• 1:59:16Yasi Salek?

  I agree. Like, 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 know you said it's not Madonna, but it somehow is so Madonna to me.

• 1:59:29Speaker 04

  Spiritually it is.

• 1:59:30Yasi Salek?

  Like, new Madonna. I'm like, oh, like, this is, like, it's, it's a way of embracing sexuality that feels so honest and so like, true to her, you know?

• 1:59:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59:42Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 1:59:51Speaker 04

  Impress me, goddammit.

• 1:59:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, wanting to be the student and like, I don't know.

• 1:59:56Speaker 04

  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 wants something new.

• 2:00:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:09Speaker 04

  And this record is very new sounding.

• 2:00:11Yasi Salek?

  Once I had a masterpiece that burned in a fire, me too. Same.

• 2:00:17Yasi Salek?

  I actually don't think she, 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.

• 2:00:27Yasi Salek?

  That's another Guy Ritchie dick. I don't know.

• 2:00:30Speaker 04

  I mean, geez.

• 2:00:32Yasi Salek?

  I don't think, not with like absolute love.

• 2:00:33Speaker 04

  Is it a Rocco Ritchie dick?

• 2:00:35Yasi Salek?

  With love and respect in my heart, I don't think anyone will compare Guy Ritchie's filmography to Picasso. Um. Lockstock is good. Uh. Anyways, love this song. Also, she says, there's a little, that 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 blind ambition came from, which is lots of school isn't. School is in session. Someone asked if they think there's a Basquiat reference with the masterpiece that burned in a fire, and I'm like, I don't think so. Um.

• 2:01:04Speaker 04

  Cause he-

• 2:01:05Yasi Salek?

  He took back all his paintings when they broke out, except for one.

• 2:01:08Speaker 04

  And he painted over them?

• 2:01:09Yasi Salek?

  He painted over them.

• 2:01:11Speaker 04

  I feel like this is very, we're getting a lot of her personality in this song because it feels like, and I say this with love, the most snide, kind of lyrically.

• 2:01:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'm not your mother.

• 2:01:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, she's so, it's like, she's like, I'm over it.

• 2:01:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:24Speaker 04

  You know?

• 2:01:25Yasi Salek?

  I can make moves on the dance floor.

• 2:01:26Speaker 04

  I'm bored.

• 2:01:27Yasi Salek?

  I can make love with you. Tell me you're a man, but you're not, so, many such cases. Um, it's amazing and it's wonderful and it's perfect. Um, some of the other people on here, uh, Lenita LaShonda Smith, who has sang backup and choir stuff for a bunch of C album, so I believe I read, made an intro for a lot of these people to Madonna. Scott M. Carter, which, who I think has credits on Normani, like the most recent Normani and Cardi B albums. Um, and Mustafa M. Mbiyakup, I'm sorry if I mispronounced that, Matthew Fonsen, and then this woman, Jessica Ashley Karbov, who goes by Harlow, who co-wrote, uh, Secret with Charlie on Vroom Vroom,

• 2:02:11Yasi Salek?

  and has written songs with Kelly Clarkson, Zayn, Celine Dion, and also Britney Spears, she co-wrote Love Me Down for Glory.

• 2:02:19Speaker 04

  Secret by Charlie is a very Madonna-ish song.

• 2:02:23Yasi Salek?

  So maybe that's why-

• 2:02:24Speaker 04

  One of her most Madonna-ish songs.

• 2:02:26Yasi Salek?

  Tapped for it. Um, okay, the next song is Fragile, drum and bass-esque rave ballad.

• 2:02:35Yasi Salek?

  Um, 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, she's referencing a little nod to Prince, another past person. 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.

• 2:02:53Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 2:02:53Yasi Salek?

  Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get this thing called life. And obviously, they had a relationship, so.

• 2:03:03Speaker 04

  Something I found interesting is that the intro also goes into the same chord progression of Sorry.

• 2:03:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:12Speaker 04

  And.

• 2:03:14Yasi Salek?

  You already know Stuart Price was like.

• 2:03:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:19Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:03:30Yasi Salek?

  Oh, so you think the apology is buried in the chord progression by referencing Sorry?

• 2:03:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:34Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 2:03:35Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 2:03:35Yasi Salek?

  Seven dimensional chess.

• 2:03:36Speaker 04

  I know.

• 2:03:38Yasi Salek?

  With your dead brother.

• 2:03:38Speaker 04

  And like, we don't know what happened, but I found that interesting.

• 2:03:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:42Speaker 04

  Maybe it's a figment of my imagination.

• 2:03:44Yasi Salek?

  No, but that's really interesting.

• 2:03:45Speaker 04

  Um, but what makes this album so brilliant is that it allows for us to kind of project these things.

• 2:03:54Speaker 04

  And, you know, frequently.

• 2:03:55Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 2:04:09Speaker 04

  So if that was Seven Dimensional Chess, I'm gonna 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.

• 2:04:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:27Speaker 04

  It was like, and I, then I had the thought, could Sorry have been about Christopher?

• 2:04:33Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 2:04:34Speaker 04

  And maybe we didn't know it or realize it. And I don't think she's ever said that it had, that it was, but if you kind of time back when they started their rift.

• 2:04:43Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:04:44Speaker 04

  It was during Confessions or before Confessions. Because I know he had issues with Guy Ritchie.

• 2:04:51Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:04:52Speaker 04

  There was like. She was no longer working with him on the tour stuff.

• 2:04:56Yasi Salek?

  She she knew, well, the book didn't come out in two thousand eight.

• 2:05:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:02Yasi Salek?

  So I don't think she knew about it yet, but there was other.

• 2:05:04Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:05:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:13Speaker 04

  And that's why it's in this.

• 2:05:14Yasi Salek?

  And we presumed it was Guy Ritchie when we were talking.

• 2:05:16Speaker 04

  And now I'm a conspiracy theorist.

• 2:05:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, um, well, regardless.

• 2:05:24Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 2:05:34Yasi Salek?

  She told Graham Norton that she wrote this song like right after she spoke to him on the phone, which was like right before, just before he died. They they reconciled before he died, thank God.

• 2:05:47Yasi Salek?

  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 and 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 it, they had did have the same eyes and they did belong together. And then I see inside your soul and I feel whole. It's it's, I do, someone pointed out that they think this is like the most emotionally

• 2:06:31Yasi Salek?

  vulnerable, like explicitly she's been lyrically, and I kind of think it's true. And maybe like, oh, father, a little bit. And there was, there's like some other bits of like a prayer that she gets pretty.

• 2:06:47Speaker 04

  Promise to try.

• 2:06:47Yasi Salek?

  Promise to try, yeah. Yeah, it's been a long time.

• 2:06:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:06:55Yasi Salek?

  It's been a long time.

• 2:06:56Speaker 04

  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 because-

• 2:07:06Yasi Salek?

  Almost every single album she's spoken or done a song about her grief about her mother.

• 2:07:10Speaker 04

  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 be, say it in a lighthearted way because it's too much to deal with.

• 2:07:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:29Speaker 04

  Uh, 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."

• 2:07:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:42Speaker 04

  All I did was sit and cry. Like, that whole thing. She gets into all, she's quite specific on that song.

• 2:07:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:48Speaker 04

  She will be very personal at times throughout her career.

• 2:07:52Yasi Salek?

  It's true. Yeah. I, I, I do think "Like a Prayer" is like maybe the most...

• 2:07:59Yasi Salek?

  Because she also has the song about, um, "Our luck is running out of time."

• 2:08:05Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:08:06Yasi Salek?

  "You're not in love with me anymore."

• 2:08:08Speaker 04

  Love that song.

• 2:08:09Yasi Salek?

  That was also about Sean Penn, and she said it was. Um, can't remem-, why can I not remember the name of that song?

• 2:08:15Speaker 04

  Me neither, which is so embarrassing.

• 2:08:16Yasi Salek?

  Till the end of this part.

• 2:08:17Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:08:19Yasi Salek?

  My god. Um, okay, the next song, anyways, I love, I, I love "Fragile," I agree with Mel. I think it's one of, one of the highlights of the album.

• 2:08:27Speaker 04

  I went to the trouble of answering some of these questions that you put in here.

• 2:08:31Yasi Salek?

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

• 2:08:49Speaker 04

  Okay, so we don't know what happened.

• 2:08:51Yasi Salek?

  I do have, like, a little inside tea that it did happen.

• 2:08:55Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:08:58Yasi Salek?

  It's not tea, but like, I know someone that was meant to interview him and at that time, he was unable to be, do the interview because he was hospitalized and I'm pretty sure it was for this.

• 2:09:09Speaker 04

  Nervous breakdown, actually.

• 2:09:11Yasi Salek?

  I think so. Again, I'm, you know, I'm

• 2:09:13Speaker 04

  Listen, it happens. It happens to the best of us.

• 2:09:16Yasi Salek?

  It totally happens.

• 2:09:17Speaker 04

  Mine's coming soon.

• 2:09:19Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 2:09:19Speaker 04

  I do, I do think that she's being sincere on the song and she's trying to convey empathy to him.

• 2:09:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:26Speaker 04

  Does nervous breakdown happen to rhyme? Yes. Is it, is it an exaggeration? Who knows? Is it a little shady? Absolutely.

• 2:09:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and, but also like, I'm sorry, like, he wrote a whole book putting her shit on Front Street.

• 2:09:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:43Yasi Salek?

  I think it's okay for her to like

• 2:09:44Speaker 04

  Does that shade portray their

• 2:09:46Yasi Salek?

  He's also not even, he's not alive anymore, you know, like, it's

• 2:09:50Speaker 04

  Convenient.

• 2:09:50Yasi Salek?

  And she's not, she could have been like, he was a drug addict.

• 2:09:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:09:54Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 2:10:01Speaker 04

  For her to like poke at that, which I'm not even saying is what she's doing, because again, I do think, at least in the delivery of the song, it's, it feels very empathetic, the way she's saying it. But nervous breakdown is kind of a barbed thing to say.

• 2:10:15Yasi Salek?

  I mean, she's forgiving him.

• 2:10:17Speaker 04

  Tribute to the 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?

• 2:10:28Yasi Salek?

  I also think, I do think he would have loved it.

• 2:10:32Speaker 04

  Well, I also wonder, like, would they have reconnected if he wasn't dying?

• 2:10:36Yasi Salek?

  That's a good question.

• 2:10:37Speaker 04

  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 and I don't really feel like she's gonna get it.

• 2:10:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:48Speaker 04

  Completely. Because you never do.

• 2:10:50Yasi Salek?

  You never do. It's not real. It's a, um, okay, the next song is My Sins Are My Savior featuring Stromae. Is that my saying that right?

• 2:10:58Speaker 04

  Oh, one more thing.

• 2:10:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:00Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:11:09Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:11:10Speaker 04

  She doesn't do that for a lot of people.

• 2:11:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:13Speaker 04

  And there have been others who have also passed away that she doesn't, including her other brother, Anthony.

• 2:11:18Yasi Salek?

  Right. Well, she wasn't as close.

• 2:11:19Speaker 04

  Who she wasn't close with.

• 2:11:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, there are a couple. There's the, there's the Martin Burgoyne song. That's a kind of about him, but also about her other friends.

• 2:11:29Speaker 04

  She's very specific about.

• 2:11:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:31Speaker 04

  The people who she would do this for, so I think that's meaningful.

• 2:11:34Yasi Salek?

  I mean, he clearly was one of the more major relationships in her life, like creatively and fam- familiarly.

• 2:11:43Speaker 04

  Those beautiful houses.

• 2:11:45Yasi Salek?

  He had such a touch. And also, we talked about it on that set, 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.

• 2:11:57Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:12:09Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 2:12:17Speaker 04

  Yes. But also, like, would his career have gotten to where it should have without her giving him that leg up, essentially?

• 2:12:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:29Speaker 04

  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, she did what she should have done.

• 2:12:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think they were, I mean, I think what's true is that they were like inextricably linked, like.

• 2:12:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:44Yasi Salek?

  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?

• 2:13:00Yasi Salek?

  It's sad and it's beautiful, and I love it.

• 2:13:03Speaker 04

  I also think.

• 2:13:06Speaker 04

  It's not my favorite song on the record. I'm just gonna put that out there. I thought it was interesting. Mel said it was.

• 2:13:10Yasi Salek?

  It can't all be your favorite song.

• 2:13:12Speaker 04

  Right. And this one to me, I just find the melody a little repetitive.

• 2:13:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:16Speaker 04

  And it feels a little inert. Like it doesn't build to anything. It kind of just repeats. And I was sort of like.

• 2:13:22Yasi Salek?

  I think it's a nice breather.

• 2:13:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:13:24Yasi Salek?

  Like, in the pacing of the album, this is like you, you had to sit down for a second.

• 2:13:30Speaker 04

  But I do wanna say I love the breakbeat techno beat of the song.

• 2:13:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:36Speaker 04

  Uh, 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.

• 2:13:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:45Speaker 04

  A little Club 69, if you will. So I get it. It's just not my favorite. Okay, moving on.

• 2:13:52Yasi Salek?

  You're talking still about Fragile.

• 2:13:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:13:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Now we're talking about track 13. My sins are my savior, Stromae, featuring Stromae. Not pronouncing that right.

• 2:14:02Speaker 04

  Okay, so do you remember Justify My Love?

• 2:14:04Yasi Salek?

  No, I have not heard that song.

• 2:14:06Speaker 04

  She got pregnant. Cause she was a hoe.

• 2:14:09Yasi Salek?

  This is what I wrote.

• 2:14:10Speaker 04

  This is her son.

• 2:14:11Yasi Salek?

  I was like, this is the very justify my love vibe. Also a lot of erotica vibes. Um, also, I'm gonna throw something weird out there, but I think you'll get it. I was really in, in college, I was really into like French neo-soul trip poppy kind of stuff, like Les Nubians.

• 2:14:27Speaker 04

  I can tell.

• 2:14:29Yasi Salek?

  So really.

• 2:14:29Speaker 04

  We can all tell.

• 2:14:31Yasi Salek?

  What a college thing to be into.

• 2:14:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:14:33Yasi Salek?

  And also like Fevery Corporation, who are not French.

• 2:14:35Speaker 04

  It was also like that time.

• 2:14:36Yasi Salek?

  It was that time. But I feel that vibe through this song. And I, I think it's the French, obviously, but.

• 2:14:41Speaker 04

  It's percussive. It's like French. It's like sort of funky.

• 2:14:45Yasi Salek?

  And I fucking love it. I love this song.

• 2:14:47Speaker 04

  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 gonna need Stuart Bryce.

• 2:14:58Yasi Salek?

  Can you tell us?

• 2:15:00Speaker 04

  It's like a percussive synth piano through some type of patch or preset.

• 2:15:09Speaker 04

  That just does this like, it's somehow aquatic to me. It's somehow like a sex scene on a beach in a Katherine 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 choo choo choo sound. It kills me. It's like a dramatic scene in 90210. Do you know what I'm saying?

• 2:15:41Speaker 04

  It's so atmospheric.

• 2:15:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:43Speaker 04

  And it makes the song so expensive and so major to me. That I'm like, I actually, this is my favorite song.

• 2:15:52Yasi Salek?

  It's your favorite song now?

• 2:15:53Speaker 04

  It's my other favorite song.

• 2:15:55Yasi Salek?

  I feel like it fits, well, I love it. I love it, love it, love it. I think it fits really well in the sequencing. Cause like you said, you know, now we're on the downswing, right? Fragile is absolutely, obviously a downswing. And this is also part of the like-

• 2:16:07Speaker 04

  This is like you're coming down and so you need to smoke weed and you need to like-

• 2:16:11Yasi Salek?

  And you're, and like, you know, thematically, you're kind of thinking, like she's thinking about

• 2:16:18Yasi Salek?

  looking for love in unfamiliar places.

• 2:16:21Speaker 04

  You're fucking a stranger. You're just mad 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, this is like why I am who I am, baby.

• 2:16:32Yasi Salek?

  It's interesting. I was thinking more that she was thinking like,

• 2:16:38Yasi Salek?

  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 to like-

• 2:16:49Speaker 04

  But it's not sex. It's like sexuality. It's like for being risque, for being provocative.

• 2:16:54Yasi Salek?

  Talking about the erotica thing, I think it's really harkening back to that, that like time that like erotica and sex book came out and she was like vilified and it really emotionally affected her, you know?

• 2:17:07Yasi Salek?

  This is a great song. The next song is Betrayal. Co-written with Mirway, additional production by Parisi. I'm gonna tell you something and you can laugh at me, but I like to be honest. At first I thought this was sampling the Succession theme song.

• 2:17:22Speaker 04

  What? Wait, can we hear it for a second?

• 2:17:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:35Yasi Salek?

  You know what I'm-

• 2:17:35Speaker 04

  It's much more sultry than the Succession-

• 2:17:38Yasi Salek?

  I just said, dun dun dun dun. I was, that, sorry, okay? I'm sorry, I am fucking HBO pilled. Um, but anyways, that's not-

• 2:17:44Speaker 04

  Okay, my sins are my savior into betrayal-

• 2:17:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:47Speaker 04

  To me, it feels like, I don't know how to put it, except to say like, a major Madonna moment. Like, I just, it feels like you look up Madonna moment in the dictionary, and that sound plays, whatever it is. Cause then it feels like we're fully back in erotica. The horns-

• 2:18:05Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:18:05Speaker 04

  It's reminding me of Bad Girl a little bit.

• 2:18:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:08Speaker 04

  Like, fans are speculating that this was held over from Madame X, which I am not sure is true, but maybe on some level. Uh, 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.

• 2:18:35Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 2:18:35Speaker 04

  Like, that it did in the 90s.

• 2:18:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:38Speaker 04

  Like, this song could have been recorded in the 90s. Someone could tell me that, and I would believe it.

• 2:18:43Yasi Salek?

  I mean, that's how I felt with One Step Away, you know? Like, I really feel like the, the voice is just like, voicing. It's like, that's how I remember Madonna singing.

• 2:18:56Speaker 04

  Which is not nothing, cause a lot of people, their voices go.

• 2:18:59Yasi Salek?

  No, totally.

• 2:18:59Speaker 04

  And I think it's a-

• 2:19:00Yasi Salek?

  And I think it's a one specific style of her singing. It's not all, everything, but, uh, it's so great.

• 2:19:05Speaker 04

  It still sounds like crystal clear, like, how it did, a little bit.

• 2:19:09Yasi Salek?

  I do, I find this song kind of interesting. I love it sonically. I do 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.

• 2:19:30Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 2:19:46Speaker 04

  Poor Joan. Listen, maybe she deserves it. Maybe Joan had it coming.

• 2:19:50Yasi Salek?

  If you ask Madonna.

• 2:19:53Speaker 04

  I wonder what the betrayal is.

• 2:19:55Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. Did she also write a book about Madonna?

• 2:19:57Speaker 04

  No, I don't think so. This one, I think we'll just have to speculate and wonder.

• 2:20:03Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 2:20:10Speaker 04

  She says, I used to hate you. I don't hate you. We're together forever.

• 2:20:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, although now that that person is kind of spitting, so like you'll never-

• 2:20:19Speaker 04

  Forever till the end. I don't think she means literally blocked, like social media blocked.

• 2:20:23Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 2:20:33Speaker 04

  Oof.

• 2:20:34Yasi Salek?

  You could almost, I mean, I don't know this is at all what she was.

• 2:20:37Speaker 04

  It's the royal Joan.

• 2:20:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the royal Joan. And I thought, I thought that was interesting.

• 2:20:43Speaker 04

  Mother Earth, Mother Joan Earth.

• 2:20:44Yasi Salek?

  She's definitely talked at length about her, you know, not awesome relationship with her stepmother, at least when she was a child. Okay.

• 2:20:53Speaker 04

  But I think what's cool about Joan, why am I defending Joan? I know nothing. 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.

• 2:21:15Yasi Salek?

  They got married when she was like nine. She'd been, she's been well before she was famous.

• 2:21:19Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:21:27Yasi Salek?

  They also had children. They had a couple of her siblings, right, are. 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.

• 2:21:53Speaker 04

  It works, it works.

• 2:21:54Yasi Salek?

  I love this song. The Test featuring Lollone.

• 2:21:58Speaker 04

  I love this song too.

• 2:21:59Yasi Salek?

  Trip hoppy.

• 2:22:01Speaker 04

  There's like a naivete to the song construction and production to me, like to the, to the melodic writing. It's like very sweet and kind of like.

• 2:22:12Yasi Salek?

  Tender.

• 2:22:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, it feels like they didn't write lyrics for the song. They wrote the song around the lyrics.

• 2:22:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:22:19Speaker 04

  You know?

• 2:22:22Speaker 04

  It feels a little bit like a sequel to Promise to Try to me in a funny way.

• 2:22:26Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 2:22:27Speaker 04

  It made me think about like this conceit that people can fix their issues with their parents through their relationships with their own children.

• 2:22:34Yasi Salek?

  Right, which is a big, a big idea.

• 2:22:37Speaker 04

  It's a big idea that every, that gets a lot of airtime that I think is bullshit.

• 2:22:43Yasi Salek?

  Well, at the very least.

• 2:22:45Speaker 04

  It never ends up happening.

• 2:22:46Yasi Salek?

  You are going to, you are going to cause a litany of new problems.

• 2:22:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:22:52Yasi Salek?

  For your child in a new and inventive ways.

• 2:22:54Speaker 04

  And like you are not your parents, your child is not your parents. It's a different relationship. It's a different person.

• 2:22:59Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:22:59Speaker 04

  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 in ways that are like good.

• 2:23:13Yasi Salek?

  Right. I think it's, 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, you didn't realize maybe how difficult or what that relationship was actually like until you take their place.

• 2:23:27Speaker 04

  But in Madonna's case, she didn't have a mother.

• 2:23:30Yasi Salek?

  A mother, yeah.

• 2:23:30Speaker 04

  So it's also almost like a new frontier.

• 2:23:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:34Speaker 04

  And then you add in what they're talking about in the song, which is like.

• 2:23:39Speaker 04

  The issue of like having a famous parent and what it does to the kid.

• 2:23:42Yasi Salek?

  So incredible, like, 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 gonna be on a Madonna song. I wouldn't have expected they're gonna like, call out the elephant in the room, you know?

• 2:24:02Speaker 04

  I know, and I'm so impressed and happy that they did.

• 2:24:04Yasi Salek?

  Totally. It's so cool. And it makes it such an honest and impactful song. And also.

• 2:24:10Speaker 04

  If this was Rebel Heart, it wouldn't have gone down this way. Would it have just been like, uh, Arca-produced, like, dance track?

• 2:24:15Yasi Salek?

  I do like some of the Rebel Heart country songs, and I think that they were, they're unfairly maligned.

• 2:24:19Speaker 04

  Okay, but you, but like, that's also like me underestimating Madonna by saying that. And like, underestimating the fact that of course, if Lola was gonna do a song with Madonna, that it would be like, this deep and personal and profound to them.

• 2:24:32Yasi Salek?

  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 wanna do something with you. And it was like such a big moment for her. Like, how beautiful, you know?

• 2:24:45Speaker 04

  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, and eventually they will come back to you. You can't force.

• 2:24:57Yasi Salek?

  That TikTok conversation was really beautiful between the two of them. That, and I think Lola talked about, like,

• 2:25:06Yasi Salek?

  how she like, never wanted to, you know, ride her coattails, which is, I think, a lyric in here.

• 2:25:12Speaker 04

  Well, I think that like,

• 2:25:15Speaker 04

  you can hear, there's, we live in a culture of so many celebrities and so many nepos, and so many like, celebrity offspring, and they all are like, I didn't wanna live in my parents' shadow, da-da-da. You hear it, and you kind of think it's like a cliche.

• 2:25:28Yasi Salek?

  They almost like, fully ignore it, which I think why I was so struck by this. Like, they, 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? Like.

• 2:25:53Speaker 04

  Well, and if you know Lola, which, who I do know, but also like Madonna fans probably know this too. There was something really funny that happened because she's 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 in Instagram. So I can like fulfill this brand deal or whatever it was.

• 2:26:19Speaker 04

  And like, of course, day one, all the Madonna fans followed her and were 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.

• 2:26:31Yasi Salek?

  So funny.

• 2:26:32Speaker 04

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

• 2:26:49Yasi Salek?

  And I think it's so cool that the music that she has made is great, by the way, and is like so different and in its own lane. And like, she does clearly not use or lean on anything that she could use.

• 2:27:00Speaker 04

  She's very much her own person.

• 2:27:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:02Speaker 04

  And so if you know that, I think that makes this even more profound and moving. I was so moved by it when I listened to it.

• 2:27:10Yasi Salek?

  I was too. I really loved it. Okay. The last song, major, L E S girl.

• 2:27:16Speaker 04

  It destroys me.

• 2:27:17Yasi Salek?

  Co-written with Andrew Watten, Circuit, also credit as producers. We love an acoustic guitar ballady ending. Here's a fun fact. The chord progression is a nod to Ray of Light. Both songs are in B major and both have the three most important chords.

• 2:27:34Speaker 04

  School is in session.

• 2:27:35Yasi Salek?

  Built off the first, fourth, and fifth scale degrees. As you know, I'm doing theater when I'm doing this. I don't know what I'm talking about. But it does match up. They're all B major, E major, and F major. The exact chord progressions are a bit different, but they, they take from the same well.

• 2:27:52Speaker 04

  That's crazy. I didn't even think about Ray of Light when I heard this.

• 2:27:55Yasi Salek?

  Um, 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, uh, review, which is wonderful. And then I decided to go do some like digging to be like, is the chord progression the same? And then I found an insane website that tells you the chord progressions of every song and it. The chord, actual chord progression, LES Girls, 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 like same major chords. Anyways.

• 2:28:25Speaker 04

  It's deceptively simple.

• 2:28:27Yasi Salek?

  Yes, but it's not actually that simple.

• 2:28:29Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:28:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, our friend, our friend Cody Critchlow. Did I say his last name right?

• 2:28:43Speaker 04

  Critchlow.

• 2:28:44Yasi Salek?

  Cody Critchlow. Um, sorry, Cody. I can't pronounce anything. Um.

• 2:28:49Speaker 04

  It's the Celsius.

• 2:28:50Yasi Salek?

  It's the Celsius. I'm cracked out. He called it her Lou Reed song, which I thought was like really good.

• 2:28:55Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. I said that too. I said it reminds me of I'll Be Your Mirror.

• 2:28:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Nico, but yeah. Um. I, 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 treacly. I was like, how fucking dare you?

• 2:29:09Speaker 04

  Unbelievable.

• 2:29:10Yasi Salek?

  Way to fucking miss the whole thing. Um, if you're, if you're a real head, you would know.

• 2:29:15Speaker 04

  I think it's one of the most surprising and profound songs that she's ever written.

• 2:29:20Yasi Salek?

  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 gonna 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, like, and I think the very end, doesn't the very end have, um?

• 2:29:51Speaker 04

  It's a love letter to herself too, at the same time, because through all this looking back, she, I think she's very proud of the person that she was and she admires who she was and how she went about things.

• 2:30:03Yasi Salek?

  Everything fades away. That's the end. You keep saying that. It's like, yeah, all the loss. Um, obviously what everyone wants to know, and I'm gonna go ahead and give you the fucking scientific breakdown. I'm gonna make a court case. It's already been out there who this is about, but I'm gonna go ahead and prove it with 18 nails in the common.

• 2:30:20Speaker 04

  Okay. Not Dan Gilroy.

• 2:30:22Yasi Salek?

  Not Dan Gilroy.

• 2:30:23Speaker 04

  Not Michael Gira.

• 2:30:24Yasi Salek?

  Not Michael Gira. Although, I mean, we can, 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.

• 2:30:36Speaker 04

  Not Stephen Bray.

• 2:30:37Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 2:30:44Speaker 04

  I had one more, which was Nick Kamen, but she never dated Nick Kamen. But Nick Kamen was drop dead beautiful and did have that whole vibe and she did make, write songs with him and sing backup vocals for him.

• 2:30:57Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:30:57Speaker 04

  Which we never talked about.

• 2:30:58Yasi Salek?

  But like, it's not about him.

• 2:31:00Speaker 04

  It's not about him. He was younger a little bit and she was sort of a mentor toward him.

• 2:31:06Yasi Salek?

  This song is prob- almost probably definitely referencing Norris Burrows. Who, and I know you think it's only in that one picture, but I unearthed several pictures where I do think he bears-

• 2:31:17Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:31:23Yasi Salek?

  He wrote an entire book.

• 2:31:27Yasi Salek?

  Right here. It's called My Madonna, My Intimate Friendship With The Blue Eyed Girl.

• 2:31:33Speaker 04

  She forgave that?

• 2:31:34Yasi Salek?

  In New York.

• 2:31:34Speaker 04

  Okay, she forgave that book?

• 2:31:36Yasi Salek?

  I'm not sure. I'm so, with like love, light, peace and respect. I don't think anybody read this book besides me. And maybe like eight mega Madonna fans. Um, it's actually, it's kind of like, it's not a particularly well-written book, but it's kind of sweet. Um, 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 streetcar 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's 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.

• 2:32:20Yasi Salek?

  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 like 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 they, him and Dan Gilroy were still friends, but 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 brushed 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.

• 2:33:07Yasi Salek?

  He also wrote a song for her called "My Little Angel," just so you know.

• 2:33:10Speaker 04

  It's also possible that she had some private relationships that we didn't know about. And that it's just a total, uh, mystery.

• 2:33:17Yasi Salek?

  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, uh, connection. Here's two other just really fun facts about him. He later played guitar in the house music group Crays. Do you remember this? They had a hit called "The Party" in 1988. It's a big song.

• 2:33:33Speaker 04

  I would need to hear the song.

• 2:33:44Speaker 04

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 2:33:45Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 2:34:03Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 2:34:03Yasi Salek?

  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 Oliver was like, oh, I'll go check for you. And obviously never called back. So I don't know, but she was thinking about him. If he is to be believed in his book in 1992.

• 2:34:21Speaker 04

  She doesn't forget anybody. She remembers everyone.

• 2:34:24Yasi Salek?

  Um, also he notes that he went on a blind date with Sandra Bernhard in 1976 in LA randomly, well before they became friends.

• 2:34:31Speaker 04

  Small world.

• 2:34:32Yasi Salek?

  And he got really.

• 2:34:33Speaker 04

  Lower population back then.

• 2:34:34Yasi Salek?

  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. LOL. Um, he was not, he did 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.

• 2:34:54Speaker 04

  Okay, Detective Yossi.

• 2:34:55Yasi Salek?

  On the case, babe.

• 2:35:05Speaker 00

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• 2:35:31Yasi Salek?

  I think what I would love to talk about is

• 2:35:35Yasi Salek?

  where you feel, like where you feel this lands in her canon.

• 2:35:40Speaker 04

  Could this be her best album?

• 2:35:42Yasi Salek?

  I don't think so. I think it's, it's very high up, but I don't know if it's, I mean, best, that's.

• 2:35:48Speaker 04

  I think what we've established throughout Madonna mania is that there is no best. It's like there, there are multiple monuments.

• 2:35:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I saw somebody that ranks 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.

• 2:36:06Speaker 04

  I kind of reflexively put True Blue at number one, but I also, you know, you could argue she peaked at Ray of Light. Or you could argue.

• 2:36:12Yasi Salek?

  It just depends what lens you're looking through.

• 2:36:13Speaker 04

  Herodica or Confessions. Some days I think music is her best record. So it's, but I do think this is up there.

• 2:36:19Yasi Salek?

  Do you think this is the best album in the last 20 years? Yes.

• 2:36:24Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:36:35Yasi Salek?

  That has been asked recently, yeah.

• 2:36:35Speaker 04

  On Hard Candy.

• 2:36:37Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:36:37Speaker 04

  M D N A, Rebel Heart or Mad Max. So it's like, we, it would have been perfectly fair to assume that she was never going to hit this register again.

• 2:36:47Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:36:47Speaker 04

  And I think that like, 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, 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.

• 2:37:14Yasi Salek?

  A hundred percent.

• 2:37:15Speaker 04

  She's fucking back.

• 2:37:16Yasi Salek?

  Um, I also, I do, someone asked about Grammys. I do think it's absolutely going to be nominated.

• 2:37:23Yasi Salek?

  For dance, definitely dance electronic recordings and stuff.

• 2:37:27Speaker 04

  I think yes. I think album of the year.

• 2:37:30Yasi Salek?

  You think it'll win?

• 2:37:31Speaker 04

  I think it'll be nominated.

• 2:37:31Yasi Salek?

  I think it'll be nominated too.

• 2:37:32Speaker 04

  The thing is, like, I'm pessimistic when it comes to like awards things and like,

• 2:37:38Speaker 04

  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?

• 2:38:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:06Speaker 04

  I think in this case, you have someone who's overdue, but you also are like, she deserves it for this record.

• 2:38:13Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:38:13Speaker 04

  Which is a thrilling.

• 2:38:15Yasi Salek?

  Like it's both. Yeah.

• 2:38:16Speaker 04

  Like 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.

• 2:38:30Yasi Salek?

  I agree.

• 2:38:30Speaker 04

  Start the hype. Start the drumbeat.

• 2:38:33Yasi Salek?

  I think one of the other interesting questions was, and I love this, because I love that it came up a couple of times. So I was like, hell yeah, my listeners fucking get it. Which is that C2, that's what I'm calling Confessions 2.

• 2:38:45Speaker 04

  C2.

• 2:38:45Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 2:39:02Yasi Salek?

  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 make some, you can make some of the best music of your career in the late stage. And I, that's my personal opinion.

• 2:39:28Speaker 04

  I agree.

• 2:39:29Yasi Salek?

  Okay, great.

• 2:39:30Speaker 04

  Great.

• 2:39:30Yasi Salek?

  Great. Um, okay.

• 2:39:32Speaker 04

  I obviously, I went deep.

• 2:39:34Yasi Salek?

  With the remixes?

• 2:39:35Speaker 04

  No, of like, who else has had this level of achievement at this career stage?

• 2:39:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, who did you? Because I didn't, I didn't really like.

• 2:39:41Speaker 04

  It's hard to say because no one's exactly at this career stage.

• 2:39:44Yasi Salek?

  And nobody ever will be.

• 2:39:48Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:40:05Yasi Salek?

  Totally, I was gonna say My Bloody Valentine.

• 2:40:07Speaker 04

  A lot of the old shoegaze bands are kind of keeping it up, like Ride is still really good.

• 2:40:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:11Speaker 04

  I thought about Trent Reznor, which is a little bit-

• 2:40:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Nine Inch Nails is pretty fucking major.

• 2:40:16Speaker 04

  Incredible, and he's someone who's maintained and even on some levels improved.

• 2:40:22Yasi Salek?

  Right, I mean, his film, his film work.

• 2:40:24Speaker 04

  Figure, you know? And we don't think about him, but he was around in the eighties, he's only like six years younger than Madonna.

• 2:40:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's really wild.

• 2:40:34Speaker 04

  And like, he's really kept it up. Like, I think Trent Reznor will be thought of like Bowie.

• 2:40:40Yasi Salek?

  That's a really great, that's a really great one.

• 2:40:43Speaker 04

  Like, that to me is like, pretty much, but then there's like Leonard Cohen's last album was really good.

• 2:40:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:49Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:40:57Yasi Salek?

  That's true.

• 2:40:57Speaker 04

  Like, all their later albums are still good.

• 2:41:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:00Speaker 04

  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, Stuart Price produced it.

• 2:41:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:16Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 2:41:19Speaker 04

  And then I just wanted to throw out also, and I'm not saying that like their recent albums are necessarily masterpieces, but they have high highs.

• 2:41:28Speaker 04

  Janet Jackson.

• 2:41:29Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:41:29Speaker 04

  Who I, 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.

• 2:41:43Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And you know what? I'm gonna throw out a crazy one. Red Hot Chili Peppers, their last album was really good.

• 2:41:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:41:49Yasi Salek?

  The double album is actually really good.

• 2:41:53Yasi Salek?

  Okay, let's close it out because we gotta, we gotta close it out. I think, I'm gonna be honest, I don't, I wanna go to the tour really bad, I don't have any opinions or thoughts of how it should be. Like, I, I wanna be blown away and surprised. Um, 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, 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.

• 2:42:25Speaker 04

  And it's gonna be based on what she feels like doing.

• 2:42:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:27Speaker 04

  It's like, if she wants to do one big performer, like her doing World Cup, she's like, what? You know, when she played in Rio, that was like massive.

• 2:42:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:34Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:42:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:51Speaker 04

  Rather than a concert, like a stadium concert.

• 2:42:54Yasi Salek?

  What would it be like?

• 2:42:55Speaker 04

  If it was more like clubs.

• 2:42:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:57Speaker 04

  And those sorts of venues.

• 2:42:58Yasi Salek?

  Something more intimate.

• 2:42:59Speaker 04

  And it could be cool because like, it'll become a hotter ticket. It's not gonna sell, there's not as much opportunity to get in.

• 2:43:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and also it kind of, I think frees her from the like, uh, pressure to do such crazy spectacle, which, you know, I think obviously her physicality is challenged at this point. Um, as would any, I think she can move almost better than I can.

• 2:43:19Speaker 04

  Well, she talked about her knee in that interview magazine.

• 2:43:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, her knee, she has no cartilage, like, she 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 at 40. Um, I think the last thing I'd like to talk about is remixes. Our desires and our speculations. For me, I would like Junior Vazquez. I would like Victor Calderon.

• 2:43:46Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:43:46Yasi Salek?

  I would like Danny Tanaglia.

• 2:43:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:43:49Yasi Salek?

  And of course, William Morbid. But I would also like new people. I would like Jeff Barrow from Porta Sun.

• 2:43:56Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 2:43:57Yasi Salek?

  We're doing the ma, we're doing a list.

• 2:43:58Speaker 04

  Wow, okay, fantasy league.

• 2:43:59Yasi Salek?

  I would like Two Hollis.

• 2:44:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:44:02Yasi Salek?

  I would like Nina Giorachi. I would like classics.

• 2:44:07Speaker 04

  Classics?

• 2:44:08Yasi Salek?

  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 romance, like dreamy romantic to it. I was trying to think of like, taking it in different directions. I mean, not no. Like, some of our like-

• 2:44:23Speaker 04

  That's fun.

• 2:44:24Yasi Salek?

  Some of our like, Adonis, Adonis, you know, like, that world of people would be kind of cool. What's, what's the Persian guy that we like?

• 2:44:31Speaker 04

  Like a Boy Harscher remix or something?

• 2:44:33Yasi Salek?

  Um, Miss Grit, I think would 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?

• 2:44:42Speaker 04

  I didn't answer that question, but I can do it off the top of my head.

• 2:44:46Yasi Salek?

  Obviously, I would love some Shep in the mix.

• 2:44:48Speaker 04

  Shep, for sure.

• 2:44:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Shep alert.

• 2:44:50Speaker 04

  I, 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.

• 2:45:01Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:45:02Speaker 04

  If he is-

• 2:45:03Yasi Salek?

  Shep's phone has probably been ringing.

• 2:45:04Speaker 04

  A Shep remix on a Stuart Price track is a little bit gay heaven to me. And I'm like, hoping that it happens.

• 2:45:13Speaker 04

  So Shep Pettibone, for sure. Of, of the old divas, of the old cohort, I would, I love that. William Orbit too, great.

• 2:45:22Speaker 04

  I don't know, I, 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.

• 2:45:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:32Speaker 04

  Peggy Gou was less predictable, but I really enjoyed it.

• 2:45:35Yasi Salek?

  I really liked that.

• 2:45:36Speaker 04

  Like, I can see her maybe with Fred again.

• 2:45:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:40Speaker 04

  Uh, Jamie XX, who I talked about before.

• 2:45:42Yasi Salek?

  I remember Romy.

• 2:45:43Speaker 04

  Romy.

• 2:45:44Yasi Salek?

  She obviously loves Romy. Romy was at our club confessions. That would be a great one.

• 2:45:49Speaker 04

  And apart from that, it's like-

• 2:45:51Yasi Salek?

  Maybe like, I would, I wouldn't mind like an underscores. I, I wanna, kinda like, I just wanna 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 other mid-tempo stuff, like, just like, stretch the songs in every way you can.

• 2:46:10Speaker 04

  A CF CF remix, maybe.

• 2:46:15Speaker 04

  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. I said she should do something with Richard X. Or like Lady Tron, or like-

• 2:46:33Yasi Salek?

  Lady Tron.

• 2:46:35Speaker 04

  It's like, let's go through all the eras of like, who you didn't fuck with, but maybe you can now in a fun, surprising way.

• 2:46:43Yasi Salek?

  Love it. And I think, I'm hoping, like, back to like, her being all the top new talent. I think she might surprise us.

• 2:46:50Speaker 04

  Give me a Dare remix.

• 2:46:51Yasi Salek?

  I was gonna say The Dare. Like, is LCD busy? Let's call The Dare. Um, alright.

• 2:46:57Speaker 04

  Arca will do it. Arca probably has done it, probably is doing it. Um, and Addison Rae remix?

• 2:47:02Yasi Salek?

  Well, for features? Yeah. Charlie?

• 2:47:06Speaker 04

  Robyn?

• 2:47:08Yasi Salek?

  Kylie, obviously.

• 2:47:09Speaker 04

  Everyone's gonna, everyone answers the phone when Madonna calls. Junior Vasquez.

• 2:47:13Yasi Salek?

  When Madonna calls. Um, alright, you guys. We said this was gonna be short. We lied. Um, thank you for joining our emergency confessions on the dance floor two episode. Um, any final thoughts, or you wanna just, uh?

• 2:47:28Speaker 04

  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 gonna change your mind and love.

• 2:47:39Yasi Salek?

  You're not allowed to listen anymore. You're not allowed to have any more new favorites. You had enough new favorites. Um, okay, come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplain. Thank you, Patrick. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain. Our guest today was Patrick Sandberg. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and Jamie Yukich with help from Justin Sales. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Delvecq and me, Yasi Soli. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon, and graciously recorded by Carlos Solgarza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, Prudusia Dillon, AKA Dillon Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy and the television program, The Agency. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 2:48:27Yasi Salek?

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