Madonna’s epic new video featuring multiple songs from her forthcoming album Confessions on a Dancefloor II has arrived.
Running at over 10 minutes, the film showcases a suite of tracks including I Feel So Free, Good for the Soul, One Step Away, Bring Your Love, Danceteria and Read My Lips. It stands as one of the most ambitious visual projects of Madonna’s career to date.
Madonna premiered the film at the Tribeca Film Festival over the weekend and has now shared it globally via YouTube.
Alongside an appearance from Sabrina Carpenter, the clip also features Richard E. Grant, Kate Moss, Benedict Cumberbatch, Gwendoline Christie, Honey Dijon, Arca and actor Julia Garner, who has been tipped to portray Madonna in a proposed biopic.
Viewers can also spot British actor Archie Madekwe, footballers Cole Palmer and Joao Pedro, actor Odessa A’zion and British DJ Shygirl. Actor Debi Mazar also appears, having been name-checked in the song Danceteria.
Mazar previously appeared in the videos for True Blue, Papa Don’t Preach, Justify My Love, Deeper and Deeper and Music. She has been friends with Madonna since they first met at the Danceteria nightclub in New York in the early 1980s. Mazar also did the make-up for Madonna’s very first video, Everybody, back in 1982.
The film opens with Madonna reflecting on her love of creating new personas and identities, as camera-wielding spies close in on her apartment door. After breaking inside, the scene shifts to a misty outdoor setting populated by dancers with lasers beaming from their bodies. This segment features Good for the Soul, a track that had not previously been widely heard.
The next section juxtaposes speeding car footage with Madonna spinning on a table, as she introduces One Step Away. Following a crash, Madonna runs into a warehouse, where she is joined by Sabrina Carpenter for their duet Bring Your Love.
Madonna then transitions into a public bathroom scene for Danceteria. It’s reminiscent of a scene in the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan Alongside referencing Mazar, the song also name-checks the late DJ Mark Kamins, who helped Madonna secure her first record deal and produced her debut single. The lyrics also highlight close friend Martin Burgoyne, Madonna’s former roommate who designed some of her earliest record covers. Burgoyne died of an AIDS-related illness in 1986 aged just 23, a loss that deeply affected the singer. The track also interpolates Lou Reed’s hit Walk on the Wild Side.
For Read My Lips, Madonna teams up with Colombian singer Feid, appearing on multiple television screens that spin rapidly around him. The final scene features Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon, before returning to the original apartment setting, where the spy characters settle in to watch television and eat bananas – a visual callback to Madonna’s Deeper and Deeper video.
The new Madonna album Confessions on a Dance Floor II arrives in early July.
