Everything Everywhere All at Once: Why Madonna’s Fitbit stats must be off the charts, and will the oversaturation for new album ‘Confessions II’ pay off?

By creammagazine, July 3, 2026

Having grown up a good Catholic boy, and being an avid listener of pop music as a kid, I was infatuated with music artist Madonna from the moment I’d heard her name. It was a balmy Perth night in 1983 and I was returning home from work with my Dad, when my sister Melina said she’d recorded a music program that played the pop singer’s first single release in Australia, Holiday. “You’re going to love this new singer named Madonna,” insisted Melina. She was right, it was love and first. Love she awe.

“Stop right there,” I told my sis. “If that is her real name, this artist is going to be huuuuge.

Still not out myself at 13, in fact I never thought much of sex, I still stood on a soapbox for some things and I sensed Madonna’s gayness right away. I also knew it was high time for the Catholic church’s holier-than-thou reputation to start to be chipped away at, and with Madonna’s quasi-religious moniker – juxtaposed with a sexually intent image, she’d be the one holding the first chisel.

The hype around the artist – who would go on to release no less than four singles in the span of half a year (Holiday, Lucky Star, Burning Up, and Borderline) – was akin to the campaigning that is carried out by today’s pop starlings (some releasing just about every song from their albums as singles). But Madonna’s was more of an impressive brand of marketing due to the fact that all her promotion was carried out through analogue means: interviews and advertising, and literally spruiking her songs to DJs in person.

In the ’80s, getting a record out there to the public meant promoting it through slower, traditional media like television and radio, sometimes even bribing DJs. Often it also meant sleeping with them. Whatever which way was adopted, Madonna was indeed a leader in the field of music self-promotion – some might say a genius. Or a despot, depending whose telling the story, and whose toes she stepped on along the way to superstardom.

Always at the fore of reinvention, this ever-shining supernova would go on to unleash as many new looks and sounds as she did new LPs. You could say Madonna was the inventor of the ‘era’ concept in pop music – if only invention offered leniency to the cunning art of plagiarism in the oh-so intertextual world of pop.

Just as today’s mini music icons (history will show the likes of Sabrina Carpenter and Adriana Grande to be mere Pop! Vinyl in contrast to Madonna’s bronze solid presence in music’s hall of fame) have admitted to having been inspired by the Queen of Reinvention, Madonna herself is evidently taking cues from them in keeping on top of modern music marketing methods. In fact, you might say she’s gone over the top.

If you’ve scrolled through your phone even for a minute in the past month, you’d have come across a brief critique or a stack of j-pegs relating to the new album, Confessions II, a sequel of sorts to her successful LP of 2005, Confessions On A Dance Floor. The official release of the album is today, June 3rd, but visuals promoting it have seemingly been everywhere over the past few months. This week, every second post I’ve seen on Facebook has referenced the record, and I only follow three Madonna-related Facebook pages. She – and the name of the album – are literally all over the shop on social media, reaching audiences in the millions every minute of the day. Madonna has also kept busy trekking the globe it seems. One day sshe’s doing promotions and podcasts all across the US, the next she’s in a UK setting, showing what’s in her wardrobe to Vogue readers, or camping it up with Graham Norton and Kylie Minogue for the camera. And the Kylie collab is the one I’m truly waiting for. A song which either had the most production time spent on, or has been scrapped for a rainy day. The latter would be a dumb option.

If I were an Oura ring o Madonna’s finger right now, or a Fitbit on her wrist, I reckon my steps and other vital stats would be going through the roof!

Borrowing the slapped-together-in-a-couple-of-minutes aesthetic of Charli XCX’s brat era, the album’s artwork – in its tens of guises – looks like it could have come off a photocopy machine at Officeworks (wait, do they still actually have photocopiers?). Besides the cool album art at the top of this story – which was the first iteration of cover art we saw – there’ve been hundreds strewn about online, some official, many mocked up by super-fans – and it’s only making us all very confused. Which album variation has the greatest number of tracks? Which LP has the best tracks? Are the tracks all very good or meh? I’ve heard a batch of them, and so far the real standout is Danceteria – a love letter, you could say, from Madonna to the friends and fun times would have on the club circuit in New York when she was just starting to get into her groove. I’m guessing the lyrics to this song were being penned while the idea of a Madonna biopic was being bandied about. That particular production was scrapped, so why not use it for an album, one dedicated to the dance floor? Great idea. Good song.

But many of the other tracks I’ve heard sound a bit same-ol’, same-ol’. Several even sound like they’ve used the exact same backbeats. As for Madonna’s vocals, I don’t think I’ve heard so much Autotune on the one album. Basically, I feel Confessions II could have been a strong album, but to me it all sounds too rushed. There was no real reason to set a deadline sooner than later, and we didn’t have to see and hear so many odd fragments of the LP in the lead-up to its release. What might have been the wiser move would have been for Madonna to keep away from social media for a bit, and focus instead on quality studio time, interesting song structures, and awe-inspiring themes. But instead we get hype, acceleration towards the end project, repetitiveness, the odd bit of strings that sound tokenistic to the avalanche of club beats, and a record, that quite frankly, Ai could have whipped up in a couple of hours.

Hopefully, the remixes will be the saving grace for Confessions II. And let’s hope these will come from official producers and bedroom boffins alike, if only the masses could turn their attention to great mixed music platforms like Soundcloud and Mixcloud. It might even be a good idea if Madonna and Stuart Price were to give select music mixers the stems of particular songs, to see what magic mixes they might make of the tracks. Just sayin’.

Antonino X Kylie – Breathe (2026 Redux). Available to stream on Soundcloud, Mixcloud and YouTube (07/07).

But back to all the hype. Listening parties for Confessions II have been organised in pretty much every country. Impromptu live performances have taken place (from dingy nightclubs to the heart of Times Square). Forums have debated the album’s content and look. Celebrities have been roped in to cameo in music videos. And final-days countdowns have been rotating to keep up the marketing momentum. So much so, that if this record doesn’t achieve at least half a million sales globally, the income probably won’t cover the gazillions spent on marketing.

In 2026, a “successful” album is no longer judged by pure record sales but by equivalent units (a combination of pure sales and streaming). Achieving gold status (500,000 equivalent units) or Platinum (1,000,000 equivalent units) status remains the industry gold standard for mainstream commercial success – in the United States, at least. These figures don’t look too out of reach for Confessions II but methinks Madonna is after a heftier sales figure here. Indeed, forget the sales – for she doesn’t really need the money – what this icon of icons is clearly after is the number one status. A trip to the top of the charts again, like things used to be. Showing fans, followers and quick-to-critique media bitches (like me, I guess) that relativity is still in the artist’s reach.

In the end, what will really speak volumes is the music itself. Will the album be generally viewed and heard as good (perhaps even brilliant) or, in retrospect, will the full project look and sound like a blight on Madonna’s otherwise remarkable discography?

Although not as much a ceiling-shattering trailblazer in the lead-up to the release of this record as she proved to be in the countdown to previous releases – again, I reference Charli’s messy brat aesthetic-alike and ubiquitous online presence here – Madonna has still delivered another first, and that is even before Confessions II was officially released. She has shown the world in real time what insistent marketing in the modern media scape what consistent marketing can do for a record. It can either hook the masses in, or send them away in droves due to the oversaturation. Whether all the SEO tricks in the world will help sell a record or not… well, the tallying on this one has only just begun.

While Confessions II is cohesive to some degree – purely for the fact that a lot of the songs sound the same. Producer Stuart Price is a dab hand at getting super sonics and trippy, clubby effects into his productions. As have other previous collaborators with Madonna, like Pet Shop Boys and good ol’ Junior Vasquez (we’re going way back here).

As for the promotional music videos, please, please, please, no more green laser lights darting out of naughty bits. The kids are watching this.

Antonino Tati

Confessions II is out June 3rd.