Madonna Returns as Queen of the Club

When Madonna’s new album, “Confessions II,” dropped in early July, it went straight to the top of the Billboard 200 ( her 10th No. 1 album ). Many of the 16 tracks plumb her own history for lessons learned along the way.

On “Bizarre,” the blue Shelby Cobra she gave her first husband, Sean Penn, “ wasn’t meant to last .” On “The Test,” she tells her daughter Lola Leon, with whom she sings: “I wish I knew the pain I’ve caused.” And on “Danceteria,” she takes us to the New York City clubs of the 1980s and the moment when a D.J. “ played my tape ‘Everybody’ ” and launched her career. Wesley Morris describes the album as “post-nostalgia,” with Madonna using an idea of her past as a slingshot into some kind of future. “Confessions II” is also a dance record that reminds us of the impact she has had on club culture and gay culture.

Wesley sits down with one of the biggest Madonna fans he knows — Jacob Bernstein, a writer for The Times’s Styles section and a former club kid in New York City — to talk about her new record and the immense influence Madonna has had on their lives. Subscribe today at or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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