Beyond the Singles: Madonna’s best album tracks, ranked – from ‘Isaac’ to ‘I Don’t Search I Find’

Unpopular opinion: ‘I Feel So Free’ from Madonna‘s upcoming Confessions II is better than her duet with Sabrina Carpenter, ‘Bring Your Love’. (Better still, though, is the pair’s Coachella duet of ‘Like a Prayer’ – is it too late for this to be an official release, we wonder?)

Could a promotional single come to define an entire Madonna era? Or could some of Confessions II‘s curiously titled album tracks (‘Danceteria’, ‘My Sins Are My Saviour’) pull mass focus?

These are questions that have inspired this feature: a rundown of 10 of our favourite Madonna album tracks, from the Confessions-esque ‘I Don’t Search I Find’ from 2019’s Madame X to ‘Swim’ from 1998’s Ray of Light. (Let’s get one thing straight: every ROL song could have been a single – ‘Sky Fits Heaven’ is sublime – but we only had so much time…)

10 ‘Devil Pray’ from 2015’s Rebel Heart

Madonna’s inner child has been more apparent than ever this century, but ‘Devil Pray’ is loaded with worth-its-weight-in-gold wisdom of a showbiz survivor – if you can maintain a sense of humour long enough across her listing of substances to grasp her point. (“We can sniff glue, and we can do E, and we can drop acid.”) The point being, we assume: shortcuts to creativity come at a cost. The country flavour recalls American Life and the religious aura Like a Prayer.

9 ‘Thief of Hearts’ from 1992’s Erotica

The frantic, tinny percussion and the crash, bang and wallop sound effects of smashed glass give modern-day Charli XCX at her most confrontational, as do M’s chanty, knowingly schoolyardy lyrics shooting down a love rival. (“Bitch! He’s mine!”) Some are unprintable!

8 ‘Impressive Instant’ from 2000’s Music

Special shoutout to the wonderfully bizarre ‘Nobody’s Perfect’, but we’ve chosen this as Madge seems to playfully challenge the very essence of music on it: a zany disco stomper full of sonic frenzy and incomprehensible, even macabre vocal distortions that wouldn’t sound out of place on The Fame Monster or Mayhem. She narrates an extreme high (“cosmic systems intertwine”) on the verge of terrifying spiralling collapse. MDMA’s ‘I’m Addicted’, more on which later, revisits the intoxicated vibe.

7 ‘Nobody Knows Me’ from 2003’s American Life

An even more discombobulated cousin of the underrated ‘Die Another Day’, full of static and unwieldy electronica, this chaotic top-tapper is admirably direct about the path to self-improvement: “Won’t let a stranger, give me a social disease” is our new comment section mantra.

6 ‘Devil Wouldn’t Recognise You’ from 2008’s Hard Candy

Another devil reference. Timbaland’s squelchy, stuttered beats sounded fresh in the ’90s (Missy Elliott, Aaliyah), were all-powerful by the mid-’00s (Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado) but were old hat by the time of Hard Candy – a first for trendsetter Madonna. Still, his signature dark R&B production perfectly fits this anomaly: a sad but menacing mid-tempo number about a toxic man.

5 ‘Swim’ from 1998’s Ray of Light

Trance-laden guitar weaves around the upward reach of M’s crystal clear voice on the word ‘carry’ (“we can’t carry these sins on our backs”): every Ray of Light song is amazing, but this is the epitome of grown-up radio-friendliness… even if the comfort conceals unease, with bold observations about the world’s horrors (“children killing children, students rape their teachers … churches burn their preachers”) that hit you like lightning. 

4 ‘I’m Addicted’ from 2012’s MDMA

After the coldly procedural vengeance theatre of ‘Gang Bang’ on the MDMA track list, more pummelling beats and robotic vocals fizz with euphoria as the LP’s love-as-drug metaphor hits its peak. A flood of video game arcade sounds seems random but on closer inspection are meticulously designed. Nothing’s an accident with Madonna!

3 ‘Till Death Do Us Part’ from Like a Prayer

This is a solemn title for such a lively, almost eccentric production; drum machines are in overdrive over soft rock acoustics and breezy ’80s synths as Madonna mulls over a pending divorce. (Her marriage to actor Sean Penn hit the rocks that same year.) Her voice is airily detached, but the lyrics are brutal (“turn your back in my hour of need”). She was turning 30, and you can almost sense her bidding adieu to the froth of the ’80s and welcoming the depth to come.

2 ‘I Don’t Search I Find’ from 2019’s Madame X

A gleaming, golden slab of disco pop perfection that’s like a lost Confessions single, on which M waxes lyrical about confidence and optimism. Utter sophistication.

1 ‘Isaac’ from 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor 

The rapturous chants of Yitzhak Sinwani in biblical Hebrew layered across mysterious, tensely plucked strings? Enough to make the heart skip a beat. It’s an ancient, monumental tension that’s almost undermined by Madonna’s comparatively earthbound vocal, which occasionally recedes into a mere hum – but her uncharacteristic modesty works, especially when used to deliver profundity: “Remember, remember, never forget, all of your life has all been a test,” she declares, revelling in the spirituality she discussed this year on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast to headline-generating effect. This giant, urgent, sacred-sounding swing from Madonna sparked accusations of religious appropriation at the time. Indeed, perhaps releasing it as a single would’ve been too risky. For our money, it is one of the best album tracks of all time.