Madonna proves her staying power as a creative force and an enduring pop icon with her new album, “Rebel Heart,” her 13th studio album that also shows her renegade and romantic sides.
The album is a revealing portrait of the Material Girl, showing the Grammy-winning singer as a trail-blazer and provocateur but also someone who is vulnerable, reflective, and an outsider.
Madonna, 56, told Reuters the album’s title “Rebel Heart” reflected her original intent to make a two-sided record featuring 10 songs on each side.
“I was going to make a two-sided album and have liked 10 songs on each side. One side, that’s why I called it ‘Rebel Heart’, one side was going to represent the more rebellious provocative envelope pushing part – side of me. And then the other side was going to be the more romantic vulnerable side of me,” she said.
“Rebel Heart” is her first album since 2012’s “MDNA,” which shot to the top of the Billboard 200 chart. It is also autobiographical, with the track “Veni Vidi Vici,” which chronicles her career, and personal, revealing feelings of insecurity, heartache and loss.
Madonna said creating music is still fun, but she expressed how technology can sometimes get in the way.
“It doesn’t get harder to write music to write songs. I think it gets harder to find producers who have long periods of time to sit in the studio with you to finish the production. Especially, when you’re working with DJ’s who are really busy and traveling around. And also then there is the music not linking component that’s make things harder.”
In December, unfinished tracks from the album were leaked, an act the singer described as “artistic rape” in a post, later deleted, from her Instagram account. In January, an Israeli man was arrested on suspicion of hacking into the computers of a number of international singing stars and selling their songs online.
The album’s 19 tracks include lush, lyrical ballads, such as “Devil Pray,” “Ghosttown” and “Joan of Arc” that ponder the meaning of life, breakups and love.
“Each time they write a hateful word/Dragging my soul into the dirt/I wanna die/Never admit it but it hurts,” she says in “Joan of Arc.”
But Madonna also lets loose with catchy dance numbers including “Living for Love” and “Unapologetic Bitch,” and four collaborations with rapper and producer Kanye West.
“We both like to push the envelope, stir things up. Wake people up, shake things up,” she said of West
“Living for Love,” the lead single has a thumping disco beat with lyrics about the heartache of a parting and picking herself up to find love again.
Madonna returns to themes of sex and religion, which she said she finds infinitely interesting topics.
“As important to people as they are misunderstood they are used to spread love and unity as much as they are used to destroy. So they both bring a lot of light into the world and a lot of darkness. So for those reasons I like to explore them.”
The mother of four said she played the album for her children and said they objected to her song S.E.X.
“They’re like, ‘Mom really.’ They didn’t really approve of that, but that’s okay, I’m an artist and I get to do what I want. I’m an adult and ‘Bitch, I am Madonna,'” she said referencing track six on the album with rapper Nicki Minaj.
Although the singer is known as a carefree artist who breaks the rules, when it comes to raising her children she is all about discipline.
“I’m more interested in them treating each other with kindness and being generous I mean that I don’t like it when my kids are rude not grateful don’t show appreciation for things stuff like that so if I censor them, it’s like, ‘Wait a minute, you need to say thank you for that.'”
For “Rebel Heart,” Madonna collaborated with Swedish DJ and producer Avicii, American producer and songwriter Toby Gad, among others. West, rappers Nas and boxer Mike Tyson also lent their vocals on tracks.
The singer said her and Tyson are both fighters.
“The song iconic is about believing in you. And that anybody can be an icon if they have fearlessness and they have a drive and they believe in themselves. And I believe that he represents that.”
Madonna will support “Rebel Heart” with an international tour beginning in Miami, Florida on August 29 after her successful and high octane MDNA tour in 2012.
“It was pretty dangerous I got punched a lot,” she said referring to the choreography.
“What’s a little fall off the stage after you did my last tour,” she joked referencing her fall at the Brit Awards.
“Rebel Heart” will be released in the U.S. on March 10.
(Reuters)