Ethnic Electronica...

Madonna and her production teams have been working on the next album – her first with Live Nation as a record company – for a few months now. Their goal: Create some killer innovative electro-pop!

The Sound: A modern and mostly upbeat sound. The blend of electronica informed by ethnic influences such as oriental music will be compelling as well as memorable. Each song is expected to be catchy, powerful with a fantastic selection of trippy and hazy electronica tingles. After all, William Orbit, responsible for Madonna’s impeccable Ray Of Light as well as some of Music, is all about the subtle little details that make his work quite unique.
The Lyrics: Madonna has been working on those for quite awhile. We can expect some personal lyrical content, as well as the “fun and dancing” recurrent theme. William Orbit also co-wrote a few tracks and we all know how consistent and funny our favorite Englishman can be.

So how is is all coming together? Basically, Madonna’s working on this album the same way she did with Ray of Light and Music:

1. She gets a basic instrumental demo from a composer or producer… Sometimes, the producer uses a demo vocalist to give more coherence to the instrumental, turning it into what could be a song.
2. Madonna starts to imagine melodies that could go with the instrumental demo (humming on the music) and starts writing ideas for the lyrics
3. She then discusses the instrumental with the producer/composer and the structural changes she’d like to add or remove.
4. Once both Madonna and the producer are on the same page, she starts writing the lyrics, sometimes with the help from others for inspiration. William Orbit is also co-writing the lyrics with Madonna.
5. Once the lyrics are finished, they meet up in a professional studio, so they can forge ahead with recording the instrumental version in a professional setting. Finally, the vocals are recorded.
6. Madonna might later decide to make some small changes after getting feedback from her record company, friends, manager or other musicians.

Right now, she’s between the 4th and 5th stage of this process

Demo vocalist Charlene Ava was involved in the very first stages of the creation of the album. Most of her work took place in July and early August during the early pre-production stage. Using a demo vocalist, like all big producers and artists do, has absolutely no influence on Madonna’s involvment. It’s just the opposite: all the different versions of the same song mean that Madonna is willling to try a lot of different directions. And finally: Jean Baptiste Kouamé is not working as an independant producer for the album. He was recuited by William Orbit and works closely with his production team to develop Madonna’s new music.