Given the cold shoulder Madonna's 2003 album American Life received by critics and audiences alike -- it may have gone platinum, but apart from the Bond theme “Die Another Day,” released in advance of the album, it generated no new Top Ten singles (in fact, its title track barely cracked the Top 40) -- it's hard not to read its 2005 follow-up, Confessions on a Dance Floor, as a back-to-basics move of sorts: after a stumble, she's returning to her roots, namely the discos and clubs where she launched her career in the early '80s.
It's not just that she's returning to dance music -- in a way, she's been making hardcore dance albums ever since 1998's Ray of Light, her first full-on flirtation with electronica -- but that she's revamping and updating disco on Confessions instead of pursuing a bolder direction.
While it's true to a certain extent that contemporary dance music is still recycling and reinventing these songs -- besides, anything '80s is in vogue in 2005 -- coming from Madonna, it sounds like a retreat, an inadvertent apology that she's no longer on the cutting edge, or at least an admission that she's inching ever closer to 50.
And no matter how she may disguise it beneath glistening layers of synths, or by sequencing the album as a nonstop party, Confessions on a Dance Floor is the first album where Madonna seems like a veteran musician.
Not only is there a sense of conscious craft to the album, in how the sounds and the songs segue together, but in how it explicitly references the past -- both her own and club music in the larger sense -- the music seems disassociated from the present; Madonna is reworking familiar territory, not pushing forward, in a manner not dissimilar to how her former opening act the Beastie Boys returned to old-school rap on their defiantly old-fashioned 2004 album To the 5 Boroughs.
| Title/Composers | Performer | Listen | Time | Size | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hung UpBenny Andersson, Madonna, Stuart Price, Björn Ulvaeus | Madonna | Play | 05:36 | 12 MB | 41 MB |
| 2 | Get TogetherPeer Astrom, Anders "Bag" Bagge, Madonna, Stewart Price | Madonna | Play | 05:30 | 12 MB | 41 MB |
| 3 | SorryMadonna, Stuart Price | Madonna | Play | 04:43 | 10 MB | 36 MB |
| 4 | Future LoversMirwais Ahmadzaï, Madonna | Madonna | Play | 04:51 | 11 MB | 37 MB |
| 5 | I Love New YorkMadonna, Stuart Price | Madonna | Play | 04:11 | 9 MB | 32 MB |
| 6 | Let It Will BeMirwais Ahmadzaï, Madonna, Stuart Price | Madonna | Play | 04:18 | 9 MB | 32 MB |
| 7 | Forbidden LoveMadonna, Stuart Price | Madonna | Play | 04:22 | 10 MB | 32 MB |
| 8 | JumpMadonna, Stuart Price | Madonna | Play | 03:46 | 8 MB | 30 MB |
| 9 | How HighHenrik Jonback, Christian Karlsson, Madonna, Pontus Winnberg | Madonna | Play | 04:40 | 10 MB | 34 MB |
| 10 | IsaacMadonna, Stuart Price | Madonna | Play | 06:03 | 13 MB | 43 MB |
| 11 | PushMadonna, Stuart Price | Madonna | Play | 03:57 | 9 MB | 30 MB |
| 12 | Like It or NotHenrik Jonback, Madonna, Pontus Winnberg | Madonna | Play | 04:31 | 10 MB | 30 MB |
| 56 mins | 129 MB | |||||
| 56 mins | 423 MB | |||||
| Artist | Job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mirwais Ahmadzaï | Composer, Producer, Programming |
| 2 | Benny Andersson | Composer |
| 3 | Peer Astrom | Composer, Producer |
| 4 | Anders "Bag" Bagge | Composer, Producer |
| 5 | Angela Becker | Management |
| 6 | Giovanni Bianco | Art Direction, Graphic Design |
| 7 | Alex Dromgoole | Assistant Engineer |
| 8 | Brian Gardner | Mastering |
| 9 | Henrik Jonback | Composer |
| 10 | Christian Karlsson | Composer |
| 11 | Steve Klein | Photography |
| 12 | Madonna | Composer, Primary Artist, Producer |
| 13 | Guy Oseary | Management |
| 14 | Monte Pittman | Guitar (Acoustic) |
| 15 | Stewart Price | Composer, Drum Programming, Engineer, Mixing, Producer, Programming |
| 16 | Stuart Price | Composer |
| 17 | Yitzhak Sinwani | Vocals |
| 18 | Mark "Spike" Stent | Mixing |
| 19 | Björn Ulvaeus | Composer |
| 20 | Pontus Winnberg | Composer |
| Quality | Format | Encoding | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | MP3 | 320kps 44.1kHz | MP3 is an audio coding format which uses a form of lossy data compression. The highest bitrate of this format is 320kbps (kbit/s). MP3 Digital audio takes less amount of space (up to 90% reduction in size) and the quality is not as good as the original one. |
| CD Quality | FLAC | 16bit 44.1kHz | FLAC is an audio coding format which uses lossless compression. Digital audio in FLAC format has a smaller size and retains the same quality of the original Compact Disc (CD). |