Madame X: The Mojo Interview
The much anticipated August 2019 issue of British music magazine Mojo is now out. It features a great interview by Danny Eccleston and the enthusiastic 4 star review of Madame X by Lucy O’Brien, that says that Madonna’s 14th studio album fuses political intent with world pop disco and adds, among other things:
The real treat on this album is Madonna’s vivid, dramatic work with Mirwais. They send the disco ball spinning on French house tracks like God Control and the very fine I Don’t Search I Find, while Dark Ballet is rococo brilliance, sounding like a deranged Nutcracker Suite. Where 2015’s Rebel Heart seemed like a record made by committee, this album reflects Madonna’s life in Lisbon – laid-back, curious, and intensely creative – absorbing influences ranging from percussive Moroccan gnawa to melancholy Portuguese morna.
The Danny Eccleston piece is a great six-page spread that we particularly love because the most of it is made of Madonna‘s own words – as every good interview should.
They discuss the new album, the Lisbon influence in it, working with Mirwais, several in-depth looks at some of the Madame X tracks, but also Madonna’s vocal range and the way she uses her voice in this album, the first piece of music she heard that really moved her, her connection with David Bowie, how much she’s thinking about the tour when making a record, which old songs of hers resist reinvention, and much more, including bits of what the two talked about when Eccleston last interviewed Madonna 21 years ago.
Danny Eccleston: Twenty-one years ago when we last sat in a room together, you said to me that it hadn’t been much fun being a rebel.
Madonna: Ha! Well, nothing’s changed.
The article is illustrated with two great pictures by Steven Klein – including a previously unseen one – and ten archive images for a Body of evidence: Madonna as icon feature. It is accompanied by a boxed quote by Nile Rodgers on Madonna’s depth and vision, and Eccleston‘s take on three great Madonna albums from her past.
Everything would have been perfect – and it would have helped Madame X in the UK album chart – is the magazine had Madonna on the cover (and if it came out ten days earlier), but, with some sort of dark British humour, the one on the front is last weeks’s album chart topper himself.
