“Only when I’m dancing do I feel this free.” A 27-year-old Madonna sang those words back in 1985, when she was well on her way to becoming the biggest female pop star on the planet. Over the decades since, it’s a sentiment she’s returned to, most notably on 2005’s Confessions On A Dance Floor. Now, 21 years later, we have that album’s sequel.

It’s a surprising move, because if there’s one thing that Madonna doesn’t normally do, it’s look back. It’s been a trademark of her career that she’s constantly moved forward, evolved and led new trends rather than revisit them. There is though a lot more to Confessions II than nostalgia-baiting to revive a career that may have seemed in danger of flagging in recent years.

For a start, the songs are amongst Madonna’s strongest in some time. They’re produced expertly by Stuart Price, the same man who was behind the decks for Confessions I, and the first half of the album is structured as a continuous DJ mix, with the tracks running seamlessly into each other. It’s an approach that results in the most focused that Madonna has sounded in years.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in spotting the many easter egg-like nods to Madonna’s past that are scattered throughout the record. Opening track I Feel So Free references that famous line from Into The Groove when she sings “out here on the dancefloor, I feel so free”, while Read My Lips leans heavily into the flamenco-flecked pop that produced La Isla Bonita.

The brilliant Danceteria takes this nostalgic approach and turns it up to 11. It’s Madonna’s tribute to the legendary New York City club which launched her career (the resident DJ was the first person to play her demo version of Everybody in 1982), and manages in under four minutes to namecheck Nile Rodgers, David Byrne, The B-52’s, and style icons like Fab Five Freddy and Jean-Michel Basquiat, while also interpolating Lou Reed‘s Walk On The Wild Side, and adding in a Vogue-style rap. Looking back has never felt so exhilarating.

The more immediate highlights belong on the record’s club-influenced first half. Love Sensation may not be a cover of the Loleatta Holloway disco classic but it channels a similar euphoric house-infused energy, and Bring Your Love is a duet with Sabrina Carpenter that becomes a perfect summer dancefloor anthem, sampling Inner City‘s majestic Good Life. There’s really only Good For The Soul, with its heavily auto-tuned vocals and spirituality-by-numbers lyrics – “Just dance in the rain, no need to explain” – that falls a bit flat.

The second half of the album sees her step away from the dancefloor and explore more personal territory. Bizarre looks back at her tempestuous marriage to Sean Penn, referring to a “movie star, deep blue eyes” who soon becomes threatened by his wife’s success, while Fragile is a tribute to her brother Christopher who died of pancreatic cancer in 2024.

The album’s second half, while not without its charms, does start to sag a bit – tracks like My Sins Are My Savior and Betrayal seem more suited to a trip-hop record than a full-on disco tribute, and The Test, a duet with her daughter Lourdes that acts as a follow-up to Ray Of Light’s Little Star, feels a bit half-sketched in its floaty ambience.

It’s not a perfect album – at 64 minutes, it could do with some judicious editing and the record’s almost relentless energy during its first half does end up petering out somewhat towards the end. Yet it’s certainly Madonna’s best record since Confessions I: the Queen of Pop is still very much on her throne.