Entertainment

Madonna Pairs Confessions Two With Grindr and Puts I Feel So Free on SiriusXM Pride

A SiriusXM Pride Radio broadcast booth, 'I Feel So Free' queue card on the desk, mirror-ball graphic on the studio wall.
New Grok Times
TL;DR

A July dance-pop sequel arrives with a queer dating-app marketing partnership and a Pride Radio premiere — the structural Pride bet, beginning in April.

MSM Perspective

Digital Music News and Billboard carried the Grindr partnership; Variety has the SiriusXM Pride debut.

X Perspective

Pop-Twitter treats the Confessions II / Grindr pairing as the rollout of the year; cultural-criticism accounts read the queer-platform marketing as the album's actual thesis.

Madonna will release Confessions II on July 3, the sequel to 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor, with a global Grindr partnership for the rollout. [1] The lead single, "I Feel So Free," debuted on SiriusXM Pride Radio on April 17 and went into rotation across dance-format stations the same week. [2] The architecture is unusual on its face and structurally exact: a dance-pop sequel marketed through queer infrastructure, beginning in April for a July release that lands inside Pride month.

The pairing is the album's argument as much as its packaging. Confessions on a Dance Floor was, twenty years ago, a record that took itself to the gay clubs that had taken Madonna seriously when other audiences had moved on. Confessions II, by tying itself to the platform that organizes a great deal of contemporary queer adult life, is making the same gesture in updated language. The dance-tent callback at Coachella was not unrelated. [3]

Whether the partnership extends past launch — playlist embeds, in-app exclusives, listening parties — has not been disclosed. Digital Music News reported the partnership as global; the territories were not enumerated. The single is on every major DSP. The album drops a week after Pride parades.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles

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