In Madonna and Stuart Price’s manifesto for the singer’s forthcoming record, CONFESSIONS II, the duo has tapped into the transcendental properties of dance music. “Sound, light, and vibration/Reshape our perceptions/Pulling us into a trance-like state,” the pop legend elucidated in a press release, “The repetition of the bass, we don’t just hear it, but we feel it. Altering our consciousness and dissolving ego and time.”
This conception of dance music as channeling an elevated presence of mind in an unbound flow state (or whatever) is both galaxy-brained and complete nonsense. But what has always separated Madge from reams of cheap rave garbage is exquisite taste and sheer star power. Even when what she’s singing about never quite adds up, she still sounds great doing it. The struggle that Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter join forces against on “Bring Your Love,” the second single from CONFESSIONS II, is extremely vague and nonsensical—but damn if it isn’t fun. Taking a fragment of Inner City’s “Good Life” and buffing it into a constantly peaking staircase of a beat, Price constructs an elegant platform for both Carpenter and Ciccone. In the proud lineage of pint-sized blonde women who’ve held their own against Madonna, Carpenter acquits herself quite well. Even if house music isn’t her natural wheelhouse, “bless your heart” bitchiness certainly is, and she sells the song’s unwieldy barbs to the best of her ability.
“Bring Your Love” (and lead single “I Feel So Free”) operates on the idea that the dancefloor is a contested space where Madonna isn’t fully welcome, a premise that gay clubs and the entire nation of Brazil would be among the first to dispute. But this lack of detail leads to other distortions. “I know where the bodies are buried,” Madonna sings in an airbrushed purr, giving the track an unexpected jolt of neo-noir. “Don’t try to distract me with numbers,” Sabrina follows up, as if the door policy hinged on answering an algebra problem. Even if you can never quite get to the bottom of “Bring Your Love,” in the interplay between its lyrical confusion and musical certainty, it has the funny effect of re-shaping your perceptions and pulling you into a trance-like state.
