Madonna’s new album, Confessions II, exists because she kept on getting blocked from telling her life story.
As she tells Interview magazine, her planned biopic, for which she spent two years writing the script, fell apart because the studio wouldn’t give her the money she wanted. “I’ve had an extraordinary life. I’ve had a huge life, so I needed a big budget,” she says. “They couldn’t get their heads around it.”
As a result, she says, “I was in limbo … and then Netflix reached out to make a series [about my life].”
“That was a whole other long process, because I couldn’t use the script I had with Universal unless I bought it from them for an extortionist’s price, even though I wrote it,” she continues. So she spent “eight or nine months” trying to find a writer, with no success.
“I was like, ‘Good thing I have another job because I need to work, I need to create. I need to do what I was put on this earth to do,'” she tells Interview.
She reached out to Stuart Price, who produced her 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor, because she felt that “people need to dance.” At the same time, there were several deaths in her family. “So I wrote about a lot of family trauma, and then we started making dance music,” Madonna says.
In the middle of the process she found a writer for the Netflix series, but she felt, “I can’t turn back now.” Plus, her daughter Lourdes Leon wanted to collaborate with her.
“She approached me about writing a song together as a way to heal our relationship,” Madonna says. “It was a really important moment, and it solidified the idea that now is the time to make this record.”
Confessions II is due out July 3.
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