What It Says That Both Madonna and Lady Gaga Are Feeling the Push to “Return to Their Musical Roots”

When Confessions on a Dance Floor came out in 2005, it was preceded by Madonna’s big announcement that she was going “back to her roots” (i.e., the dance floor). Some of the more cynical critics (and even fans) speculated that her sudden “rediscovered” affinity was a result of American Life failing to garner the reaction (both critical and commercial) she had hoped for in 2003 (side note: the world wasn’t ready for the daringness of her anti-war sentiments during a period when, incredibly, George W. Bush got the majority of the population on board with invading a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks). 

Taking the gamble on appealing to the nostalgia of her past specifically and the past in general, it paid off big time, with “Hung Up” becoming one of her most iconic singles in the next century of her career. And so, Madonna, aware that, with each passing year, she falls prey to becoming the increasing victim of ageism, de facto “irrelevance,” has decided that she will be reverting back to Confessions of a Dance Floor—which itself was already a reversion back to Madonna’s early club days in New York. What’s more, she’s going so far as to have dubbed it Confessions II (though, no, that’s not the “official” name of the album…yet), reteaming with COADF’s lead producer (and Madonna fan favorite), Stuart Price. 

At the same time that Madonna has been working on this, Lady Gaga, too, has been wrapping up production on her eighth album (if one includes her collaborative records with Tony Bennett), Mayhem. An album she’s assured her “Little Monsters” is a return to the era during which they first fell in love with her: The Fame and Born This Way. This is largely because, during the period after Born This Way (starting with Artpop), Gaga’s output proved to be largely disappointing to those who had “fallen in love with her” based on the image and music presented during the first two album cycles. And while part of Gaga’s shtick has been, effectively, to imitate Madonna’s by constantly “reinventing” herself (though LG comes off as being musically schizophrenic more than, let’s say, merely “rebranding”), her all-over-the-placeness hasn’t been as much a part of her image as those very first two records (along with the reissue of The Fame in between, The Fame Monster). To boot, Harlequin, the album she made as a companion piece to her much-maligned movie, Joker: Folie à Deux, wasn’t exactly “delivering” on what fans wanted to hear either, offering instead more “show tune” and “American standard”-type music à la Cheek to Cheek and Love for Sale. 

However, despite the lack of enthusiasm on her fans’ part vis-à-vis the musical directions she’s taken post-2011, it was ultimately Gaga’s fiancé, Michael Polansky, that essentially shook her by the shoulders to say, “Make a decent record, bitch.” Or, as Gaga told it, “Michael is the person who told me to make a new pop record. He was like, ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music.’” This “driving force” being, automatically, another key distinction between Madonna and Gaga: the former doesn’t need a bloke to set her on any path. She has always done exactly what she wanted (even during her unusual “English missus” phase with Guy Ritchie—in fact, continuing to do just as she wanted was a contributing factor in her divorce). This includes, out of nowhere, opting to do a reissue of Bedtime Stories in lieu of other more “iconic” albums (e.g., releasing a reissue of Like A Virgin in time for its fortieth anniversary). Pushing this instead of, say, Like A Prayer (which would also coincide with the song of the same name finding a new audience post-Deadpool & Wolverine), Madonna has proven, yet again, that she doesn’t typically do things on the creative front that are designed to “please.” Indeed, her entire raison d’être has always been to go against the grain, to aggravate and agitate. Even in terms of releasing music that doesn’t necessarily appeal to every fan. Gaga, in spite of often releasing albums that don’t appeal to every fan, is not as intentional about it. 

Thus, for Madonna to feel she’s at a stage where she needs to make a “return to her musical roots” (let us please refrain from calling it “reheating nachos”) album is a testament to her fear that any other kind might not do as well. And while, of course, certain fans would say (and rightly so) that Madonna doesn’t “have to” prove herself in that way anymore, it still doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to. Especially with Taylor Swift having surpassed some of M’s most important musical milestones lately (for example, being the female artist with the most number one albums in the UK). With Madonna’s inherently competitive nature and long-standing drive to be the “best,” it isn’t a wonder that she’s going with a tried-and-true formula. In Gaga’s case, the motive is similar. Particularly after the career blow of Joker: Folie à Deux. In other words, it’s obvious she wants to be “lauded” again by her fans—in the way that she was at the beginning. 

At the same time, Lady G acknowledged, “The album started as me facing my fear of returning to the pop music my earliest fans loved.” Because what if returning to it didn’t meet the ever-mounting high expectations? So it was that Gaga also compared the endeavor of her “return to form” as being like “reassembling a shattered mirror: even if you can’t put the pieces back together perfectly, you can create something beautiful and whole in its own new way.” A quote that feels like a pointed reference to the “Telephone” video, when Beyoncé turns to LG and remarks, “You know Gaga, trust is like a mirror. You can fix it if it’s broke.” To which LG replies, “But you can still see the crack in that motherfucker’s reflection” (an appropriate aphorism in terms of the Mayhem album cover). As many are liable to see in terms of comparing Mayhem to The Fame/Born This Way or Confessions II to Confessions on a Dance Floor (with anticipation for “C2” already building to the point where COADF has reentered the UK dance chart). 

And so, at the end of the day, maybe what it really says about Madonna and Lady Gaga both reverting to earlier periods in their career is that, in the current climate, no matter how much of an icon/“legacy artist” you are, everyone needs a reliable gimmick to drum up continued intrigue/devotion in an increasingly “fractured interests”/ADHD-inducing world.