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Madonna
Have Leotard, Will Dance
The Observer, November 2005
'Have you brought three machines?' asks Madonna as I get out my tape recorder.
No, why?
'In case they don't work.'
In fact, there is recording equipment everywhere. Madonna is sitting on a stool in her producer's tiny home studio in West Kilburn, London, her feet resting by cables, her hands within reach of the keyboards and guitars and microphones that made her new album. She can also touch Stuart Price, the English producer who converted his loft into this studio a few years ago with the money he got from a publishing deal. He says that the walls are so thin that Madonna's new record may accidentally contain the sound of a neighbour weeping.
Price is 28, 19 years younger than Madonna. They started working together four years ago, when Madonna was looking for a keyboard player for a world tour and heard the DJ/remixing work Price conducted under the names Jacques Lu Cont and Les Rythmes Digitales. He then became her musical director, rearranging studio tracks for live performances, and they wrote a song together, called 'X-Static Process', that appeared on her last album. 'Writing is a very intimate thing,' Madonna says, 'especially when you write lyrics and sing them in front of someone for the first time. It's like a really embarrassing situation. To me, singing is almost like crying, and you have to really know someone before you can start crying in front of them.' She looks at her collaborator. 'Before now I just didn't feel that I knew you well enough. I wasn't 100 per cent confident in your songwriting skills, if I may be so honest.'
Stuart Price: And you were right.
Madonna: I liked this space, but I didn't think you were ready. The amount that you've grown from that record to this one is huge. But I only intended to write a few songs with you. I intended to do the bulk of the record with Mirwais [Ahmadzai, the producer of her last two albums Music and American Life], and then it turned out to go in the other direction, because the first song resonated so monstrously.
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