Confessions on a Dance Floor

''Confessions on a Dance Floor'' is the tenth studio album by American singer and songwriter Madonna. It was released on November 9, 2005, by Warner Bros. Records. A complete departure from her previous studio album ''American Life'' (2003), the album includes influences of 1970s disco and 1980s electropop, as well as modern-day club music. Initially, she began working with Mirwais Ahmadzaï for the album but later felt that their collaboration was not going in the direction she desired. Madonna took her collaboration with Stuart Price who was overseeing her documentary ''I'm Going to Tell You a Secret''. The album was mainly recorded at Price's home-studio where Madonna spent most of her time during the recordings.

Musically, the record is structured like a DJ's set. The songs are sequenced and blended so that they are played continuously without any gaps. The title arrived from the fact that the album tracklisting consists of light-hearted and happy songs in the beginning, and progresses to much darker melodies and lyrics describing personal feelings and commitments. Songs on the album sample and reference the music of other dance-oriented artists like ABBA, Donna Summer, Pet Shop Boys, the Bee Gees and Depeche Mode, as well as Madonna's 1980s output.

Madonna promoted the album through several live performances and a promotional tour. She embarked on the Confessions Tour in 2006, which became the highest-grossing tour ever for a female artist at that time. Four singles were released from the album. "Hung Up", the lead single, topped the charts in a total of 41 countries. According to ''Billboard'', it was the most successful dance song of the decade. It was followed by " Sorry" which became Madonna's twelfth number-one single in the United Kingdom. " Get Together" and "Jump" were also released as singles, both becoming top-ten hits in several countries.

The album received widespread acclaim, with critics calling it a return to form for Madonna and ranking it alongside her best albums. Madonna was honored with a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album in 2007, as well as International Female Solo Artist at the 2006 BRIT Awards. Commercially, ''Confessions on a Dance Floor'' peaked at number one in 40 countries, earning a place in the 2007 ''Guinness World Records'' for topping the record charts in the most countries. The album sold between 3.6 to 4 million copies in its first-week worldwide, and remains one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century, with over 10 million copies. Ranked third on "The 99 Greatest Dance Albums of All Time" by ''Vice'' magazine, the album is noted as a testament to Madonna's longevity with the ability to continuously reinvent herself in the third decade of her career.

Background and development

''Confessions on a Dance Floor'' merged elements from 1970s disco, 1980s electropop and 2000s club music. Madonna decided to incorporate disco-influenced elements in her songs while trying not to remake her music from past, instead choosing to pay tribute towards artists like the Bee Gees and Giorgio Moroder. The songs reflected Madonna's thoughts on love, fame and religion, hence the title ''Confessions on a Dance Floor''. It was the complete opposite direction from her previous studio effort ''American Life'' (2003). The songs on that album were a form of diatribe directed at the American society. However, Madonna decided to take a different direction with this album. Regarding the development, Madonna commented:

"When I wrote ''American Life'', I was very agitated by what was going on in the world around me, ..I was angry. I had a lot to get off my chest. I made a lot of political statements. But now, I feel that I just want to have fun; I want to dance; I want to feel buoyant. And I want to give other people the same feeling. There's a lot of madness in the world around us, and I want people to be happy."

She started to work with Mirwais Ahmadzaï with whom she had previously developed her eighth album ''Music'' (2000). However, that collaboration did not suit Madonna's musical direction. According to Madonna, " roducerMirwais is also very political, seriously cerebral and intellectual. All we did was sit around, talking politics all the time. So, that couldn't help but find its way into the music. I think there's an angry aspect to the music that directly reflects my feelings at the time." Hence after recording tracks with Mirwais, Madonna decided to stop the project and start fresh. It was then that she turned to Stuart Price who had served as musical director on her two previous concert tours and co-wrote one song on ''American Life''.

In 2004, after the release of ''American Life'', Madonna began working on two different musicals: one tentatively called ''Hello Suckers'' and another one with Luc Besson, who previously directed the music video for her single "Love Profusion", which would portray her as a woman on her deathbed looking back on her life. Madonna collaborated with Patrick Leonard, Ahmadzaï and Price to write new songs, the latter being assigned to pen disco-influenced songs sounding like "ABBA on drugs". However, Madonna found herself dissatisfied with the script written by Besson and scrapped it. Hence Madonna and Price decided to use the compositions for the album instead. According to Madonna, it was easy for her to shift from her previous album's sentiments, since she included those political views in her documentary ''I'm Going to Tell You a Secret''. She elaborated:

I was running back and forth, literally, from the editing room with he documentary's directorJonas Akerlund to working with Stuart, who was also mixing the music in the film. We were together, non-stop, all of us. Cutting 350 hours of film down to two hours. There are a lot of serious aspects to the movie. I needed a release. When I would go to Stuart's, and we'd go up to his loft, it was like, 'Honey, I want to dance.' I wanted to be happy, silly and buoyant. I wanted to lift myself and others up with this record. So, yes, the new album was a reaction to all the other stuff I was doing, which was very serious in nature. I hope that doesn't imply that I wanted to make a superficial record, because it's not. I want people to smile when they hear this record. I wanted it to put a smile on my face, too.

Recording

The first three songs that were written for the album were "Hung Up", " Sorry" and "Future Lovers" In an interview with ''Billboard'', Madonna commented that the recording process was a give-and-take situation. According to her, Price used to stay up all night working on the songs. This was helped by the fact that he is a DJ and is used to staying awake all night. This gave Madonna the chance to work on other aspects of the compositions. She noted the fact that she and Price had opposite characteristics, which helped in their collaboration. The songs were mainly recorded at Price's home. Madonna said:

We did a lot of recording at his house. I'd come by in the morning and Stuart would answer the door in his stocking feet - as he'd been up all night. I'd bring him a cup of coffee and say, 'Stuart, your house is a mess, there's no food in the cupboard.' Then I'd call someone from my house to bring food over for him. And then we'd work all day. We're very much the odd couple.

She further elaborated that their camaraderie was also because they had toured together for Madonna's Re-Invention World Tour. Hence Madonna reflected that her relationship with Price was more of a brother-sister kind than the formal collaborations she was accustomed to during the recording process.

Music and lyrics

''Confessions on a Dance Floor'' is primarily a dance-pop, nu-disco, EDM, album, which is structured like a nightly set composed by a DJ. The music starts light and happy, and as it progresses, it becomes intense, with the lyrics dealing more about personal feelings, hence "Confessions". According to Madonna, " is is the direction of my record. That's what we intended, to make a record that you can play at a party or in your car, where you don't have to skip past a ballad. It's nonstop." Madonna used samples and references of music by other disco artists. In the album's first song, "Hung Up", she sampled ABBA's 1979 hit "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)", for which she wrote a personal letter to songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, who permitted Madonna to use the track. References of other disco-influenced acts, including Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, and Daft Punk, were also used on the album, as were the disco hits of Parisian DJ Cerrone. The album has a song called "Forbidden Love", which is different from the same-titled song from Madonna's sixth studio album '' Bedtime Stories''. Regarding sampling herself and her own song names, Madonna commented:

"I did all of that on purpose, ..I mean, if I'm going to plagiarize somebody, it might as well be me, right? I feel like I've earned the right to rip myself off. 'Talent borrows, genius steals,' .."Let's see how many other clichés I can throw in there. That's exactly it. I was only hinting early on, but then I tell it like it is. It's like, now that I have your attention, I have a few things to tell you."

A pulsating rhythm is present in the song "Isaac", which is regarded as the only song close to a ballad on the album. However, the song was heavily criticized by a group of Israeli rabbis who commented that Madonna was committing a blasphemy with their religion. They said that the song was about sixteenth-century Kabbalah scholar Yitzhak Luria. In reality, the song was named after the featured vocalist Yitzhak Sinwani, who sang portions of the Yemenite Hebrew poem ''Im Nin'alu'' in the track, as well as references to the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Initially, Madonna toyed with the idea of calling the song "Fear of Flying", since the idea behind the composition was to let go. In the end she decided to just call it "Isaac", after the English version of Sinwani's name. Regarding the song's development and the condemnation of the rabbis, Madonna said:

"You do appreciate the absurdity of a group of rabbis in Israel claiming that I'm being blasphemous about someone when they haven't heard the record, right? And then, everyone in the media runs with it as if it's the truth. And that's a little weird. But what's even weirder is that the song is not about Isaac Lurier, as the rabbis claim. It's named after Yitzhak Sinwani, who's singing in Yemenite on the track. I couldn't think of a title for the song. So I called it "Isaac" he English transliteration of "Yitzhak" It's interesting how their minds work, those naughty rabbis. ..He's saying, "If all of the doors of all of the generous peoples' homes are closed to you, the gates of heaven will always be open." The words are about 1,000 years old. ..itzhakis an old friend of mine. He's never made a record. He comes from generations of beautiful singers. Stuart and I asked him to come into the studio one day. We said, "We're just going to record you. We don't know what we're going to do with it." He's flawless. One take, no bad notes. He doesn't even need a microphone. We took one of the songs he did and I said to Stuart, "Let's sample these bits. We'll create a chorus and then I'll write lyrics around it." That's how we constructed it."

The lyrics of the songs on the album incorporate bits of Madonna's musical history and are written in the form of confessions. "Hung Up" contains lyrics from Madonna's 1989 duet with Prince called "Love Song", from the '' Like a Prayer'' album. "How High" continues the themes of two songs from Madonna's eighth studio album ''Music'', namely "Nobody's Perfect" and "I Deserve It". The lyrics of "Push" thank the person who challenged her to expand her limits and also incorporate elements of the Police's song "Every Breath You Take". Other tracks like "Sorry" include the title word in ten different languages (several of which are non-idiomatic). In "I Love New York" (written at the time of ''American Life''), she praises the city where her career began and replies to negative comments made by George W. Bush. Elsewhere, Madonna sings about success and fame ("Let It Will Be") and the crossroads of past, present and future ("Like It or Not").

Promotion

On November 4, 2005, Madonna opened the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards with her first performance of "Hung Up". She emerged from a glitter ball to perform the song, while wearing a purple leotard and matching leather boots. During the next days, Madonna performed "Hung Up" on TV shows such as '' Wetten, dass..?'' in Germany, and ''Star Academy'' in France, as well as on the Children in Need 2005 telethon in London. In order to promote the album's release, Madonna appeared on '' Parkinson''. She played a number of songs from the album at London's Koko Club and G-A-Y as part of a promo tour to support the album.

In December, Madonna travelled to Japan, where "Hung Up" was performed on TV show ''SMAP×SMAP'' and her concert at Studio Coast. On February 8, 2006, Madonna opened the 48th Grammy Awards, by pairing up with the fictional animated band Gorillaz. The band appeared on the stage via a three dimensional technique which projected their holograms on the stage. They performed their song "Feel Good Inc." while rappers De La Soul made a guest appearance. Madonna then appeared on the stage and started performing the song while interchanging places with the hologram figures of the band. She was later joined by her own group of dancers and the performance was finished on the main stage rather than the virtual screen. Another performance of "Hung Up" came on April 30, 2006 during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California.

A remix only album titled ''Confessions Remixed'' was also released in limited vinyl editions. In Japan, ''Confessions on a Dance Floor – Japan Tour Special Edition'' (CD+DVD) was released on August 23, 2006. It reached number 27 on the Oricon weekly albums chart and stayed on the chart for 12 weeks. The album received further promotion from the Confessions Tour which began in May 2006. The tour grossed over US $194.7 million, becoming highest-grossing tour ever for a female artist, at that time. Additionally, the tour received the "Most Creative Stage Production" at the Pollstar Concert Industry Awards, as well as "Top Boxscore" from the Billboard Touring Awards.

Singles

"Hung Up" was released as the album's lead single on October 17, 2005. The song received critical appreciation amongst reviewers, who suggested that the track would restore the singer's popularity, which had diminished following the release of her 2003 album ''American Life''. Critics claimed that it was her best dance track to date and have compared it to other Madonna tracks in the same genre. They also complimented the effective synchronization of the ABBA sample with Madonna's song. "Hung Up" became a worldwide commercial success, peaking atop the charts of 41 countries and earning a place in the ''Guinness Book of World Records'' along with the album. In the United States it became her 36th top ten hit, tying her with Elvis Presley. The corresponding music video was a tribute to John Travolta, his movies and dancing in general. Directed by Johan Renck, the video featured Madonna dancing in a ballet studio in a pink leotard, which she left to go to a gaming parlour to dance with her backup dancers. It also featured the physical discipline parkour.

" Sorry" was released as the second single from the album on February 6, 2006. The song received positive reviews from contemporary critics who declared the track as the strongest song on ''Confessions on a Dance Floor''. It achieved commercial success, topping the singles charts in Italy, Spain, Romania and the United Kingdom, where it became Madonna's 12th number one single. Elsewhere, the song was a top ten hit in more than a dozen countries around the world. However, in the United States, the song was less commercially successful due to underplay on radio, but managed to reach the top of ''Billboard''s dance charts.

" Get Together" was released as the third single from the album by Warner Bros. Records on May 30, 2006. The decision was spurred by the fact that "Get Together" was the third most downloaded song from the album. It was also released to coincide with the start of Madonna's Confessions Tour. Critics complimented Madonna's ability to turn cliché comments into pop slogans with the song. The song became a success on the United States dance charts, but failed to enter the Hot 100. It reached the top ten in countries such as Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and Italy, and peaked at number one in Spain. "Jump" was released as fourth and the final single from the album on September 11, 2006. Critics complimented the song and its empowerment theme. The song peaked inside the top ten of the charts in some European countries, while reaching the peak position in Italy and Hungary. In the United States, "Jump" charted in several ''Billboard'' dance charts but failed to chart on the Hot 100.

Critical reception

''Confessions on a Dance Floor'' received acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 80, based on 28 reviews. Keith Caulfield from ''Billboard'' commented that ''Confessions'' is a "welcome return to form for the Queen of Pop." Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic commented that ''Confessions'' is the first album where Madonna sounds like a veteran musician since she created the record for "the dance clubs or, in other words, Madonna's core audience." Alan Braidwood from the BBC
...