Create Now, Eat Later: Madonna and Stuart Price in the Studio

Madonna reclining on stage in silver as a dancer points towards her

Create Now, Eat Later: Madonna and Stuart Price in the Studio

2020s, 2026, editorial

Nov 3

For more than forty years we have heard the finished thing. The track arrives polished, the video arrives styled, the record arrives sequenced and certain. What we almost never see is the bit in between: the room, the hours, the false starts, the moment a song stops being an idea and starts being a record.

Then, in October, Madonna opened the door. Confessions II Studio Sessions, a new playlist on her YouTube channel, goes behind the scenes of this year’s album, and the episode with Stuart Price is the one to start with. Filmed by Ricardo Gomes, it catches the two of them at work on Love Without Words and Love Sensation.

Confessions II Studio Sessions: Stuart Price

For the first time, I got to watch how Madonna actually works. This isn’t the Madonna of the photo shoot or the press junket. It’s Madonna the songwriter and producer: listening, testing, adjusting, deciding. She is so often discussed as an image that it’s easy to forget how much of her career has happened in rooms like this one, with headphones on.

What I loved most was watching Stuart guide her. He hears things first, the shape of a part or where a track could go, and then patiently brings her round to hearing them too. It isn’t instruction. It’s more like someone holding up a light so the other person can see what’s already there. You understand very quickly why she trusts him, and why, after fifteen years of silence following Confessions on a Dance Floor, she picked up the phone again.

Then there’s Stuart’s philosophy, which is simple: keep creating, never stop. When the music is coming, you don’t break the spell. At one point Madonna mentions food, and he gently pushes back. Not now. Be creative now. Don’t thwart the process.

It’s a lovely piece of studio wisdom, and Madonna, being Madonna, listens politely, calls time and goes home to eat.

That small moment says a lot about the partnership. He brings the devotion of a man who would happily stay at the desk all night. She brings the discipline of someone who has been doing this for four decades and knows the song will still be there in the morning. Confessions II is the sound of those two instincts meeting in the middle.

MADONNA | Stuart Price AKA Les Rythmes Digitales and Jacques Lu Cont.

The rest of the playlist is just as rewarding, with episodes featuring Andrew Watt and Cirkut, Stromae, Arca, Parisi and Feid, including a glimpse of a song that didn’t make the album. But start with Stuart. Watch the room, watch the listening, and keep an eye on the clock. Dinner is waiting.