Madonna Confessions II review: A hypnotic dancefloor odyssey

Madonna grieves for her late brother Christopher on Fragile, a delicate song about their childhood, estrangement and reconciliation, that ends with her wishing, “I hope you found a higher ground”.

It’s touching and poignant, but a clattering breakbeat is a distraction from the sentiment.

More successful is Betrayal, a jazzy, trip-hop excursion that appears to be about Madonna’s stepmother, Joan Ciccone, who died of cancer in 2024.

It’s sequenced with another cross-generational saga, The Test, where Madonna and her eldest daughter, Lourdes Leon, thrash out their differences over a spacious, trancey instrumental.

“You didn’t ask for all the flashing lights… I wish I knew the pain I caused,” sings Madonna in a rare mea culpa.

Lourdes responds with a verse acknowledging her mother’s love, while asserting her independence.

“I trace the line of what you have sewn [but] keep my own design.”

The album concludes with another memory song – L.E.S – which finds Madonna daydreaming about an early crush on a guitar-playing boy from New York’s Lower East Side.

It’s a charming palate cleanser after the familial drama of the album’s final third.

And it’s funny. Madonna started the record craving anonymity but by the end she’s lifted that purple veil. This is the closest we’ve come to hearing the real Madonna since Ray of Light, almost 30 years ago.

As a great lyricist once observed: Only when she’s dancing can she feel this free.