How Madonna Got Her Groove Back

"It was the most painful thing that ever happened to me in my life, but it was a great learning experience," she says. She is sitting on a private plane that is taking off from a Royal Air Force base south of London. Its destination is Germany, where the members of Green Day will soon experience a Madonna moment of their own.

Madonna version 2005 is a woman in flux. She is part spiritualist, part narcissist; part provocative sex symbol, part children's-book author; part artist, part mother; and, thanks to her new aerobi-disco look, she is part retro, part futuristic. She doesn't even live in one place; she spends most of her time in London and has homes in New York and Los Angeles. She is a contradiction. And she will always be one. This is because her true genius is a facility for learning. She is a quick study. One of the only things consistent about her career is her ability to absorb and incorporate knowledge at an alarming rate, allowing her to stay one step ahead of critics, competitors, fans and trends. Some accuse her of being pretentious since she started speaking in a British-tinged accent, but rather than being an affectation, it is simply further evidence of her adaptability and spongelike nature. Before I leave her presence, she will actually count on her fingers the things she's learned from me. I've served my purpose.

Her new album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, integrates the lessons she learned from her previous album, American Life. Perhaps her most poorly received album (unjustly so), this was Madonna restyled as a pop-culture Che Guevara and anti-materialist girl, brooding about her life and the culture she's part of. It is her folk album. Confessions on a Dance Floor is the antithesis.

If American Life was for the head, Confessions is for the feet. It is pure groove. It is her equivalent of a mash-up album. It takes snippets from forty years of dance music (Giorgio Moroder, Tom Tom Club, Abba, Pet Shop Boys, Stardust, the Jacksons), mixes in snatches from her own back catalog ("Like a Prayer," "Papa Don't Preach," "Die Another Day") and filters it all through club-cool electronics in a nonstop mix. At the helm is Stuart Price, who in addition to being the musical director on Madonna's last two tours is an English DJ, remixer and recording artist (known as Les Rhythmes Digitales) who is equal parts Beck and Daft Punk.