Continuing down the path of intricate minimalism following “I Rise,” Madonna’s latest single offers a sweeter sort of yearning and burning than the one presented long ago on “Justify My Love.” With lyrical material providing yet another opportunity for some male energy as it did on Medellín, M trades out Maluma in favor of Rae Stremmurd’s Swae Lee (these days more distinguishable from the group itself, much like Offset and Quavo from Migos, the latter of which Madonna has yet another collaboration with on Madame X‘s “Future,” following last year’s “CHAMPAGNE ROSÉ” from Quavo’s Quavo Huncho album).
Lee, just shy of twenty-four (the same age as M when she first rose to fame) in June delivers rich, smooth vocals that seamlessly complement the rueful intonations of Madonna as she warns, “Ooh, my cravings get dangerous/Ooh, I don’t think we should play with this.” Bearing an equivalently forlorn quality to 2015’s “HeartBreakCity,” Madonna alludes to being jilted by the object of her affection in the line, “Love you like a fool/Put my trust in you.” At the same time, recalling the themes of 2008’s “Miles Away,” M knows she’s at least partially to blame for having stayed away. Perhaps referencing her Portugal period, she admits, “I’m tired of being far away from home/Far from what can help, far from where it’s safe” (as if the U.S. is that).
Combined with producer Mike Dean’s stripped back arrangements (exhibiting sonic interpolations of “I Rise”), the earnestness in Madonna’s voice is palpable as she declares, “You know I just can’t change, this is how I’m made/I’m not afraid, take me to that place.” That place being one of vulnerability–not just to the risk that comes with opening one’s heart, but also the risk that comes with wielding a word with long-standing connotations of being a pregnant woman.
Luckily, Madonna can carry it off as she’s more associated with adoption than natural childbirth these days. And yet, speaking to un certain qualité of maternalness, echoes of “Mer Girl,” the 1998 track from Ray of Light Madonna wrote about being haunted by her mother’s death, pervade in the image conjured by, “Ran so far to try to find the thing I lacked and there it was inside of me/Ran and ran and ran so fast, a thing to last, and there it was.” It smacks of “Mer Girl’s, “I ran though the forest, I ran through the trees, I ran and I ran/I was looking for me.” And yet, for a woman constantly running from the agony of remembering her past, she is at her best when confronting it in song. Painful though it may be to admit wanting, needing and waiting for someone to justify your love (the aesthetic of which M is very much repurposing for promos of this single).
