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\n\t\u201cPeople think dance music is just superficial,\u201d Madonna<\/a> announces early on her excellent new album, Confessions II.<\/em> \u201cBut they\u2019re all wrong. The dance floor is not just a place. It\u2019s a threshold, a ritualistic space where movement replaces language.\u201d That\u2019s the threshold where Madonna has spent her whole life. Ever since she blew up in the Eighties, pop\u2019s queen of queens has devoted her career to proving how complex, how dramatic, how ecstatic a dance floor can be.<\/p>\n \n\tOn Confessions II<\/a>,<\/em> Madonna returns to the floor, the place where she always goes to rediscover herself. It\u2019s a sequel to one of her most beloved albums, Confessions on a Dance Floor<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> her 2005 collaboration with the London disco master Stuart Price. But it\u2019s also her best album since the original Confessions<\/em> 21 years ago. It\u2019s a 64-minute nonstop groove that flows like a club-DJ set, each song fading into the next, drawing from all over the history of dance music. You might hear a flicker of \u201cI Feel Love\u201d here, or \u201cApache\u201d there, but it\u2019s a history lesson that she turns into her musical autobiography.<\/p>\n \n\tShe opens with a bang, in the triptych of \u201cI Feel So Free,\u201d \u201cGood for the Soul,\u201d and \u201cOne Step Away,\u201d a 12-minute suite where she rides the electro-throb beat while pondering the inner neediness that drives her to the floor. \u201cSometimes I like to just hide in the shadows,\u201d she murmurs over a groove sampling the Lil Louis house classic \u201cFrench Kiss.\u201d \u201cI can be whoever I want to be, create a new persona. Honestly, I wish I could be like other people, and just not care \u2014 but out here on the dance floor, I feel so free.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tStuart Price produced the whole album, with guest co-production shots from Andrew Watt, Cirkut, Mirwais, Arca, Triangle Park, Parisi, and more. Belgian artist Stromae joins her on the Catholic exorcism \u201cMy Sins Are My Savior,\u201d while \u201cRead My Lips\u201d has Tainy producing and a Spanish vocal interlude from Feid.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cBring My Love\u201d is her heavy-breathing duet with Sabrina Carpenter, which the two stars debuted at Coachella in April. It soars on glimmers of Detroit techno, interpolating Inner City\u2019s 1988 classic \u201cGood Life,\u201d as they hold their dialogue on artistic inspiration. \u201cBring it, Sabrina,\u201d Madonna commands \u2014 a clever pairing, since she was ripping the man-children to shreds before Sabrina was born.<\/p>\n