Which album(s) does Confessions II feel like the sequel to?

[Choose up to three] Confessions II is the successor to...

  • Madonna

    Votes: 2 16.7%

  • Like a Virgin

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • True Blue

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • You Can Dance

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Like a Prayer

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • I'm Breathless

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • The Immaculate Collection (new tracks)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Erotica

    Votes: 8 66.7%

  • Bedtime Stories

    Votes: 2 16.7%

  • Ray of Light

    Votes: 4 33.3%

  • Music

    Votes: 4 33.3%

  • American Life

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Confessions on a Dancefloor

    Votes: 7 58.3%

  • Hard Candy

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • MDNA

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Rebel Heart

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Madame X

    Votes: 1 8.3%

  • None

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    12
I chose Erotica, Music and Confessions, with shades of Bedtime Stories, RoL and Madame X in a couple of tracks.
 
I feel the most synergies with:

1. Erotica... the huge amount of spoken word, icy club meets jazz (One Step Away, Love Without Words... Betrayal, My Sins Are My Saviour)
2. Ray of Light on School (Skin) and L.E.S. Girl (Drowned World, Candy Perfume Girl)
3. Music due to the more chaotic, left-field production choices (Everything... Nobody's Perfect x Impressive Instant), the distinctly French vibes towards the end (and also on Love Sensation)

I get the Confessions thing (one long danceable affair, Stuart Price), but I just feel that C1 was a much more vacuum-packed, steely collection of dance-pop songs designed to regain commercial success and C2 is... sprawling and unapologetic
 
This album has made me reflect on who Madonna is artistically. And while we can't deny the bullet-proof Imperial Era of the 80s, those songs don't feel like the Madonna blueprint anymore. It's like everything rebooted in 1990 and the actual artistic identity crystallised between then and 2003.
 
Loufoque said:
This album has made me reflect on who Madonna is artistically. And while we can't deny the bullet-proof Imperial Era of the 80s, those songs don't feel like the Madonna blueprint anymore. It's like everything rebooted in 1990 and the actual artistic identity crystallised between then and 2003.
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Like A Prayer was her first proper artistic work in my opinion - as an album, that is. Of course there were elements of the NY art scene she came up from in the early days in terms of her image and the visuals, but the first three albums musically at least were essentially an exercise in getting her to commercial super stardom. With Like A Prayer she changed the game.
 
Like a Prayer is definitely a step up into authorship, but it still, somehow, feels transitional to me (it's kind of her 4, if you will). That being said, there are some tropes she revisited (Like a Prayer / Nothing Fails; Pray for Spanish Eyes / You'll See; Promise to Try / Falling Free); but for me, gospel choirs, Latin ballads or piano introspection is not the absolute core of Madonna's DNA.
 
It still feels 75% COAD, but with some added Erotica and Music production elements, and some Like A Prayer and American Life themes thrown in.

Strangely there’s very little in the way of a thread to ROL that I’m finding so far. But then ROL was just on a different plain altogether and is very difficult to recreate that very specific kind of magic.
 
Loufoque said:
Like a Prayer is definitely a step up into authorship, but it still, somehow, feels transitional to me (it's kind of her 4, if you will). That being said, there are some tropes she revisited (Like a Prayer / Nothing Fails; Pray for Spanish Eyes / You'll See; Promise to Try / Falling Free); but for me, gospel choirs, Latin ballads or piano introspection is not the absolute core of Madonna's DNA.
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I see what you're saying but I raise you Shep Pettibone remixes in the Like A Prayer era.
 
funky said:
It still feels 75% COAD, but with some added Erotica and Music production elements, and some Like A Prayer and American Life themes thrown in.

Strangely there’s very little in the way of a thread to ROL that I’m finding so far. But then ROL was just on a different plain altogether and is very difficult to recreate that very specific kind of magic.
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The back end feels very Ray of Light to me. More ethereal, vulnerable lyrically, expansive-yet-intimate in its production.
 
funky said:
Strangely there’s very little in the way of a thread to ROL that I’m finding so far. But then ROL was just on a different plain altogether and is very difficult to recreate that very specific kind of magic.
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The Test has a very clear thread back to Ray Of Light and Little Star specifically. But beyond that I'd say lyrically there's a link to RoL in terms of poignancy and how emotionally open she is, even if musically other albums are perhaps more apparent.
 
Yes I can hear the lyrical links for sure. And yes it’s trippy. But it feels way more early 90s trippy like Erotica to me, but that might be because of the jaziness of it all. Also, Orbit’s sound is very singular.
 
I will say, as much as I am loving this album, it sent me back to Ray of Light, and it's only confirmed to me what an absolute masterpiece that album was. Like, how did she pull that off? It's just perfect.
 
I don't think she's ever had a better producer and songwriting partner than William Orbit. he was sensational. his productions from the turn of the century still sound like the future.

Stu and Mirwais are a close second though.
 
ROL still blows me away when I put it on. The production choices are just ridiculous. Yes William Orbit was in the right place at the right time but she deserves a lot of credit for taking hold of his direction and making it fit her sound, her delivery, her brand.

At the time if I knew she ditched a potential sequel to Bedtime Stories to create a more electronica album and rework the already existing songs, I would have been fuming. Actually, it’s the best creative decision she ever made.
 
Did she rework anything? The only songs she did that were Bedtime Stories-esque were the ones she did with Babyface which didn’t come out til they leaked years later.
 
I seem to recall there were different versions of some the songs where there not? Maybe I’m just thinking of the early Babyface demos.
 
Oh no, there were demo versions out there, but not really BS-style. Other than the aforementioned Babyface ones, which were abandoned.

It wasn’t till she started working with Rick Nowells that some of the ROL stuff came together. I think Orbit was actually the last collaborator to come on board.

There’s certainly very different sounding versions of Drowned World (which was just No Substitute For Love at the time) and Power of Goodbye out there, and also less different Skin, Nothing Really Matters and Little Star, maybe? 🤔 I can’t remember exactly about those latter ones.
 
Oh yes I remember now. I can still imagine a more R&B / downtempo album was in the works even after Babyface… I don’t know how documented it actually is, but it feels like she hit a point where she felt that the album was too much more of the same, and decided a reset was in order. That would make sense to me, and speaks to her creative instincts at the time.
 
well, Orbit has production credits on two of the three songs she made with Rick Nowels and Pat Leonard before he was involved and the album had its direction, so I guess there was an element of reworking some of what she already had, no?

and you can kind of tell those songs come from different sessions although obviously the album as a whole is still cohesive.
 
I also remember a really good Q interview that I THINK was either for Music or American Life promo were she talked about electronic music taking a real hold of her (again I guess) in the mid 90s. I remember because she sited EBTG as an example which I found strange at the time, but “Missing” had a big impact on her. Makes sense because you can hear it in “Nothing Really Matters”
 
funky said:
Oh yes I remember now. I can still imagine a more R&B / downtempo album was in the works even after Babyface… I don’t know how documented it actually is, but it feels like she hit a point where she felt that the album was too much more of the same, and decided a reset was in order. That would make sense to me, and speaks to her creative instincts at the time.
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She went from Babyface to Rick, but he wasn’t R&B at all (I don’t think). I think the R&B slant went with Babyface, but who knows.
 
Jark said:
well, Orbit has production credits on two of the three songs she made with Rick Nowels and Pat Leonard before he was involved and the album had its direction, so I guess there was an element of reworking some of what she already had, no?

and you can kind of tell those songs come from different sessions although obviously the album as a whole is still cohesive.
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Well yes, there was reworking from the demo stages, absolutely, but my point was about things being worked from a supposed BS-sequel, which they weren’t.
 
Orbit (and her) basically produced the whole thing. Leonard didn’t get involved in the main production for the most part. He is credited mainly cause of the work he did on the demo versions.
 
I’ve always found it interesting that you can more or less divide RoL in three “acts”, depending on who she wrote them with, as she keeps them together (pun intended) in the running order. I can’t think that happens on another Madonna album.
 
funky said:
What is the breakdown out of interest?
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The first four songs are Orbit
Skin to Frozen is Leonard (bar Shanti/Ashtangi)
Power of Goodbye to Little Star is Nowels
Mer Orbit again
 
Well, except they’re ALL basically Orbit’s production.
 
Yes I can hear it now… but Orbit did the final mixing on all the tracks right? The album has always been remarkably cohesive to me, I never even considered multiple inputs.
 
funky said:
Yes I can hear it now… but Orbit did the final mixing on all the tracks right? The album has always been remarkably cohesive to me, I never even considered multiple inputs.
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He produced everything on the album except Little Star. I did just have to check that, admittedly. That was done with Marius de Vries, who is co-credited on a couple of other songs as producer.
 
I'll do a track by track inspo thing...

I Feel So Free = Confessions
Good For The Soul = Music
One Step Away = Ray of Light
Bring Your Love = Confessions
Danceteria = Confessions; Ray of Light; Music; Madonna; 'Vogue'
Read My Lips = Madame X
Everything = Music; Erotica; Ray of Light
Love Sensation = Confessions
Love Without Words = Erotica
Bizarre = MDNA; Confessions
School = Erotica
Fragile = Ray of Light
My Sins Are My Savior = Bedtime Stories; Erotica
Betayal = Erotica
The Test = Ray of Light
L.E.S. Girl = Ray of Light; Music
 
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Love Sensation is Madonna for me. It’s that era. It’s the jump rope front cover scene of the Everybody single.
 
Sheena said:
Love Sensation is Madonna for me. It’s that era. It’s the jump rope front cover scene of the Everybody single.
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You know - I HONESTLY had Madonna there as well and then took it off. Totally agree. :disco:
 
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