“‘Confessions II’ and It’s Completely Different but Also Still ‘Confessions’.” For a while now we’ve known that Madonna drew inspiration from ‘brat’ for the campaign of her latest album. There’s a reason she hired their creative team: Special Offer for design, Torso for the videos. There have been many coincidences: the strategy developed over the summer, the Times Square concert, the remixes with familiar names (Lorde/Kylie) and above all the sense that the campaign doesn’t end with the album release, as was expected in 2024/2026.
The campaign —or at least the coincidence— will reach its apex this Thursday, September 24 — probably at midnight, already Friday in Spain, if the pattern of other singles is followed— with the release of a long-awaited Madonna remix with Charli XCX on one of the songs. Coincidentally two days before the VMAs. And that track will be ‘Danceteria’, according to the teaser the two have shared on social media, which already has millions of views.
To know whether the remix works, whether it improves on the original where there is nothing to improve—Charli wasn’t born in 1982, the year in which the lyrics unfold—or whether it’s simply a curiosity like the remix of ‘Love Sensation’, we’ll have to wait until Thursday. What I can’t help but wonder is since when Madonna and Charli XCX knew they would collaborate together.
Both had a supposed beef this year when Charli declared that dance music was dead. Madonna fired back on social media, suggesting she might not be listening to the right music, and afterward the two made up, appearing together at Paris Fashion Week in a “Club Confessions” DJ set, flirting on social media. We’ve seen Charli XCX on TikTok, promoting ‘Bring Your Love’ to exhaustion with her partner, starting a trend that many other celebrities have followed; and also dropping nods to ‘American Life’ and ‘Hollywood’, an influence openly acknowledged on her latest album ‘Music. Fashion. Film’. Recently Madonna shared a video of the acoustic ballad ‘L.E.S. Girl’, citing Charli, which made one think of a rock version of this song that ultimately doesn’t seem likely to happen (though note, social posts say they’re heading to the ‘East side’).
The remix of ‘Danceteria’ seems to have been conceived during Paris Fashion Week, when a “Madonna x Charli” began to be spun, which many believe was improvised with AI. But there will always be conspiracy theorists who think they had it planned from the start. If that’s the case, I’m not sure it would make much sense for Charli to have been left out of the original album, unless the idea was to go too blatantly after the new ‘Girl, so confusing’. Charli wrote that song out of disappointment with Lorde for not wanting to collaborate, and the remix had the charm of containing Lorde’s apology, turning it into a sisterhood anthem.
It’s hard for this new remix to equal that spontaneity. What’s certain is that the ‘Afterhours’ edition of ‘Confessions II’ is increasingly resembling the remix album of ‘brat’. Will Charli XCX be the last link in the chain before they truly begin releasing those eight 100% unreleased tracks?
