The devil in her soul

MADONNA IS BACK bolder and “badder” than ever with a brand new album that showcases her rebellious and romantic sides and sees her collaborate with such luminaries of the entertainment world as Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, Nas, Chance the Rapper and even Mike Tyson. With hot singles like “Living for Love” and “Ghost Town” climbing music charts all over the world, Madonna recently announced the schedule for her “Rebel Heart” tour, which gets underway in August.
The 56-year-old singer took time out to chat about the year’s most anticipated album.

WHAT’S THE STORY BEHIND “REBEL HEART”?
I had intended just to sit with various songwriters and write songs. That was my goal. I wanted the songs to be something that I could sit and strum a guitar to and sing from top to bottom without any other people involved. After I had written a few of the songs, I chose my favourites and started going out to various producers. Sometimes I would get together with producers, like Diplo for instance, and they would have ideas for songs that I hadn’t written. That is how “Bitch, I’m Madonna” came about.

HOW DID IT START TO COME TOGETHER AS AN ALBUM?
It started off as just an exercise, an experiment, so to speak, in song writing with lots of different people – to see what would come out of it. Then I started to pick up steam with sounds and producers. I started going in different directions while I was |still in song-writing mode. And then I brought in songwriters I really love working with like Toby Gad and Mozella. After that it was the producers. So, it was like a train – people getting off and getting back on the train, until the very end. I didn’t have a specific vision except I wanted to explore the duality of my personality, which is renegade – romantic. And I wanted to |write good songs. That’s it.

WHAT IS YOUR SONG-WRITING PROCESS LIKE?
I write songs that reveal my feelings but sometimes I don’t like to be so literal or so specific. I like to be more mysterious, so I guess it depends on the mood I’m in.

FOR A LOT OF US MADONNA IS ALWAYS ABOUT SPIRITUALITY, RELIGION AND SEX.
I think they are all subjects that beg to be challenged and dissected. I’m constantly trying to come to terms with the ideal of spirituality, religion and sexuality. These are topics that are very prevalent in society, that are taken out of context and misrepresented and are used to help people grow and feel self-empowered. They are also used to keep people down and imprison them. So for me, they’re topics you can never exhaust.

ARE YOU NOT AFRAID THAT YOUR MESSAGE WILL BE MISINTERPRETED?
I think if people are looking for something bad, they’re going to find it. As I’ve said before, we’re living in a fundamentalist, literalist society where there can’t be any duality to something. No one has an understanding of the meaning of irony. No one has a sense of humour. There’s no complexity to things. Everything is just surface value. Does is bother me that people will misunderstand my songs? I like to think that my songs will find the audience that they are meant to find. And the people who can’t understand them or can’t connect to them, well, they’ll find something else that they like.
 
TO YOU, WHAT IS A REBEL?
A rebel is someone who asks questions. You know that Shakespearean line “(the lady) doth protest too much”? A rebel is someone who protests too much, or maybe not enough, who questions convention, who thinks outside the box, who doesn’t take the road most travelled. At the end of the day, it’s the rebels, like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley and John Lennon, who changed the world. They went against the grain. They took the road less travelled and that’s what made all the difference.

HOW SHOULD WE LISTEN TO THIS ALBUM?
Loudly and often.