Madonna has revealed she's back working with Stuart Price, the collaborator who enabled what many consider her most recent creative peak, 2005's Confessions On A Dance Floor.
Posting on Instagram this week, the star wrote "Back in the Stu with Stuart Price" and shared a series of photos of the pair at work, as well as footage of a day out watching Chelsea FC.
Price first met Madonna when he played keyboards in her band, but this didn't work out exactly as intended. "It wasn’t working and I was going to leave because they were struggling with the direction," he told Music Week last year. "But then she shifted it around and said, “As you understand electronic music, can you help with the direction of the show?
"That segued into another tour a few years later, which kind of remixed her songs, and afterwards she said, “We’ve reworked so much old music together, why don’t we rework something new? Let’s start writing!”
Later that year, "Radio 2 was on and Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! started playing, and in that dream state I thought, ‘Wow, that would be a really good sample for a song.’
"I quickly hacked the sample into a track that I could play in my DJ set. It was immediate – the whole room felt pretty special. I played it for the next couple of months, but like most DJs, I wore out my records and moved on. So when Madonna mentioned ABBA, I suddenly went, “Well, there is one thing...”
Price, the highly sought-after pop mastermind behind massive tracks by the likes of Dua Lipa, The Killers, New Order and Kylie Minogue, told the BBC the duo reconnected when Madonna announced her Greatest Hits mega-tour.
“When she announced the tour I called her to say, ‘Congratulations, I think this is a great idea’,” he said. “And she said, ‘I was just thinking about you, and I thought you’d be the perfect person to work with on this.’"
It's now five years since Madonna's last album, 2019's Madame X, and in 2023 she posted snaps of herself working with another acclaimed hit-maker, Max Martin. “When in doubt go to work,” she wrote at the time. “Nothing shuts down the noise or the naysayers more then [sic] being in the creative process.”
When in Doubt go to Work ……….. Nothing shuts Down the Noise or the Naysayers More then being in the Creative Process !! ✍️🎼 🎧🎤🤍 #maxmartin pic.twitter.com/CoFDDDzd0wMarch 20, 2023
We haven't heard any fruits from those sessions, but that was just months before the star, now 66, suffered a serious bacterial infection which saw her in a coma for 48 hours last June. She later recovered and completed the Greatest Hits Tour, and now she seems to be back to work.
