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Madonna · S7 E4
Lourdes
Becoming a mother at 38, the shift in how she talked about herself publicly, and what didn't change
A rehearsal space in Lisbon's Alfama district, 2018. Madonna sits cross-legged on the floor watching her son David Banda play football with Portuguese kids through the window, and realizes she has not felt this creatively alive since Ray of Light.
"Medellín" (2019). The lead single from Madame X, featuring Colombian singer Maluma over a reggaeton beat produced by Mirwais. Madonna sings in both English and Spanish, switching languages mid-phrase as if borders don't apply to her. It is the sound of an artist who moved across the world and came back with different ears.
Madame X
Madonna moves to Lisbon in 2017, following her son David Banda who has been recruited to train at the Benfica football academy. She falls into the city's music scene and discovers fado, Afrobeat, and baile funk in the clubs of Bairro Alto and Alfama. The album she begins writing is the most globally minded record of her career, and the most willfully uncommercial.
“Madame X is a secret agent traveling the world, changing identities, fighting for freedom. She is a dancer, a professor, a head of state, a housekeeper, a prisoner, a student, a mother, a child, a teacher. She is also me.”
— Madonna, introducing the Madame X concept (2019)
TAP TO REVEAL: Why did Madonna actually move to Lisbon?
Medellín, Madonna (2019)
"Medellín" is built on a reggaeton beat that immediately signals Madonna is not making another dance-pop album. Maluma trades bilingual verses with her, and the production by Mirwais blends Latin rhythms with the same electronic textures he has been building for Madonna since 2000. Listen for the way she switches between English and Spanish mid-phrase, letting the languages blur together. It is the sound of someone who has been living outside her own culture long enough to absorb new ones.
Bairro Alto, Lisbon
The hilltop neighborhood in central Lisbon where Madonna discovers fado bars, Afrobeat clubs, and a music scene that nobody in the American or British press is paying attention to. The creative energy of these narrow streets feeds directly into the Madame X album.
Madame X in Focus
Batuka
From Madame X (2019). The track that sounds like nothing else in Madonna's catalog. "Batuka" features the Batukadeiras Orchestra, a traditional women's percussion group from Cape Verde, chanting and drumming over Mirwais's electronics. The Batukadeiras' presence gives the song a weight that no studio production could replicate, and it is what happens when Madonna stops looking at pop charts for inspiration and starts listening to women drumming in a Lisbon courtyard.
Batuka, Madonna (2019)
Read the lyrics while you listen. The Batukadeiras' voices are woven through Madonna's verses, and the two musical traditions never fully merge. They coexist, which is the entire point of Madame X: not fusion, but collision.
What was unique about the Madame X Tour compared to all of Madonna's previous tours?
In June 2023, Madonna is found unresponsive in her New York apartment and rushed to the ICU. For the first time in forty years, the question is not whether she will make music again, but whether she will survive the night.
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