Madonna returns to form with dancefloor filler "Confessions II"

Madonna released her fifteenth album on Friday, "Confessions II", with many critics calling the 16 tracks of feel-good club vibes and classic dance music sounds her best release in decades.

The Queen of Pop, 67, has reunited with British producer Stuart Price, whom she worked with for "Confessions on a Dance Floor" in 2005 which was a global success driven by the hits "Sorry" and "Hung Up".

Many music critics from Rolling Stone, Variety to The Guardian newspaper agreed that the Confessions follow-up was her best work since then, following the lacklustre response from fans for her most recent releases "Rebel Heart" or "Madame X".

Rolling Stone called the latest release 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".

The Guardian said that even though it was "not quite as good as Confessions on a Dance Floor", it was unequivocally Madonna's best album since.

"Everyone was expecting an album of ballads, something Broadway-inspired, but not at all," said Patrick Thevenin, a journalist at French music magazine Les Inrockuptibles and an expert on the artist.

- Madonna x Sabrina -

Released by record major Warner, the album is more than a string of potential dancefloor fillers. 

It occasionally shifts towards pop, includes folk influences and ventures briefly into reggae with Colombian singer Feid. 

It also features a collaboration with Dutch DJ Martin Garrix, a duet in which Belgian star Stromae delivers a spoken-word performance, and a track recorded with her daughter Lola Leon.

The most-talked about collaboration is with Sabrina Carpenter, who joins Madonna her on "Bring Your Love", a song the pair performed together at Coachella festival in April in a performance that quickly went viral.

The song "Danceteria" pays tribute to the legendary club where Madonna once worked in 1980s New York. 

The new album has also been accompanied by an aggressive promotional campaign that included a surprise mini-concert in New York's Times Square in early June to launch Pride Month, the annual celebration of LGBTQ rights.

She is also due to perform at the half-time show of the Football World Cup final on 19 July alongside Shakira and K-pop sensations BTS. 

"There is a genuinely aggressive strategy compared with the last album -- a whole battle plan has been orchestrated. She's leaving nothing to chance," Benoit Clerc, an author whose book analysing her 305 songs will appear in October, told AFP.

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© Agence France-Presse