She’s Madonna, the queen of pop, material girl and mistress of reinvention also known as Madonna Louise Ciccone – or, in British tabloidese, as Madge – and she’s back. Confessions II, aka Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II, will drop on Friday, July 3rd, marking the arrival of the superstar’s 15th studio album and her first for seven years.To honour her return, I’ve gone deep into the pop mines to reassess her previous releases, weighing up their heavy lifters and best-skipped tracks, their creditable detours and unwise follies, their killer and filler.I’ve excluded soundtrack albums, remix records and anthologies, which means no spot for the likes of I’m Breathless (home to the peerless Vogue) and Veronica Electronica (the Ray of Light remix album finally released in 2025). And I’ve changed my mind about the top five lots of times.But here it is. Get up on your feet and step to the beat of this entirely scientific ranking of her 14 studio albums so far, veering from “hard no” to pretty much immaculate.14. MDNA (2012)“If you’re gonna act like a bitch/Then you’re gonna die like a bitch,” Madonna snarls on Gang Bang, the unlistenable, whip-cracking nadir of her most charmless album. Even those in possession of the relevant kink would struggle to get anything out of this aural torture.Nothing much works, not even the handclaps. Give Me All Your Luvin’ (featuring Nicki Minaj and MIA) is awful, despite revolving around the usually reliable pop pleasure of a cheerleading chant. Superstar revels in vapidity. Masterpiece and Falling Free might be tolerable in another context, but here, with zero goodwill established over the course of the record, these closing ballads come off as cold, limp efforts. This is the way MDNA ends. Not with a Gang Bang but a whimper.13. American Life (2003)Madonna’s ninth studio album hasn’t aged as badly as some, but then it wasn’t that great to begin with. It doesn’t help that the title track is a dud and the second single to be released from it, Hollywood, is also far from golden-age material. Listening to Love Profusion, you wonder if it’s good or just exponentially better than the track that proceeds it, I’m So Stupid.With its belatedly introduced choral backing, Nothing Fails serves as the inessential centrepiece of American Life, which then muddles along before finishing on two low points – a poor Bond theme, in Die Another Day, and the dour Easy Ride. It all leaves the impression that this album should have been an email.12. Rebel Heart (2015)Living for Love and Devil Pray, the half-decent opening tracks, signal that Rebel Heart is already an improvement on MDNA, its chronological predecessor, but it’s still an uneven listen – unsurprisingly, given its long list of collaborators. The gorgeous standout is HeartBreakCity, a piano ballad on which Madonna’s voice has a deeper register than usual.But there’s also a tedious sense of treading water. Unapologetic Bitch is the kind of Madonna song title a random generator might conjure up, Joan of Arc is seemingly tepid by design and Holy Water unwisely harks back to Vogue. Bitch I’m Madonna (featuring Nicki Minaj), meanwhile, is a festival of vocal treatments and squelching synth noises – an acquired taste I personally feel is not worth acquiring.11. Hard Candy (2008)Madonna recruited The Neptunes, Timbaland, Nate “Danja” Hills and Justin Timberlake to produce this dance-pop record, on which she also strikes something of a hip-hop pose. The bouncy Give It 2 Me is great fun, but there’s not enough here to differentiate Hard Candy from the output of her prolific collaborators.[ Madonna, the highest-grossing female artist of all time, is back in the news. Here is whyOpens in new window ]Do Madonna albums need famous male guest stars? By 2008 they apparently did, with Timberlake and Timbaland all over 4 Minutes, her uncomfortably busy UK number one, and a Kanye West rap breaking the infectious spell cast by Beat Goes On. That 1970s-tinged track encapsulates the problem. It’s not Madonna but Pharrell Williams, one-half of The Neptunes, who gets to do the best bit, his beep-beep backing vocals joyously recalling Donna Summer.10. Music (2000)The frustrations triggered by Music are summed up by its sonically vibrant but melodically limited title track, which bores a hole in my brain, and not in a good way. Its follow-up singles, Don’t Tell Me and What It Feels Like for a Girl, also disappoint, while the inclusion of her American Pie cover on the international edition is superfluous.But, to quote another of Music’s song titles, Nobody’s Perfect. This album, mostly produced by William Orbit and Mirwais, is an otherwise pleasant beast that intermittently flirts with glorious edges. I Deserve It is more lovely than saggy, Amazing has just enough oomph and Paradise (Not for Me) is a seductive six minutes of electronica that has Madonna singing in French. C’est cool.9. Like a Virgin (1984)This is peak Madonna, but it’s peak Madonna as a singles artist. Its twin heights are Material Girl and Like a Virgin itself, both of which offer a dream package of synths, beats and lyrical wit that combine irresistibly with Madonna’s chutzpah and the sleek production of Nile Rodgers.But marks must be subtracted for providing an early example of the great bane of my music-buying life: reissue drama. Having first gone on sale in November 1984, Madonna’s second album was re-released in Europe in August 1985 to include her July number one, Into the Groove, at the start of side two. Subsequent reissues have left it off, however, and its absence serves to hasten this album’s alarming slide into mid-tempo also-rans.8. Ray of Light (1998)Outrage time now as the album many fans would place in top spot shows up mid-table. There’s no doubt that Ray of Light is one of Madonna’s most coherent records, but its ambient, Orbit-produced sound is far too sombre and muted for me. Is this a dance album or meditative background music for an aquarium? The watery motifs on its tentative openers, Drowned World/Substitute for Love and Swim, make it hard to tell.The title track and Nothing Really Matters are classy triumphs, yes, but Candy Perfume Girl and Skin are sludgy, The Power of Good-Bye is chilly and Frozen, the lead single, is a numbfest that goes nowhere. Ray of Light is ultimately a spiritual record. If you’re not a spiritual person, that’s not ideal.7. Madame X (2019)Madonna makes good use of featured artists here to create a kaleidoscopic, multilingual and delightfully idiosyncratic manifesto of a record, on which occasionally semi-ridiculous vocal effects take the edge off weighty lyrical themes.Medellín, the danceable opening track, sets the tone with its whispered “cha cha cha” refrain, reggaeton influence and contribution from the Colombian artist Maluma, with other highlights including the catchily optimistic Future (featuring Quavo) and Faz Gostoso (featuring Anitta), a cover of a hit by the Brazil-born Portuguese singer Blaya. [ Madonna: Madame X review – Big, ballsy and more than a bit bizarreOpens in new window ]This expansive, global record has momentum where others don’t. The one mistake is Dark Ballet’s foray into The Nutcracker, which people of a certain age in Ireland and Britain will inevitably associate with an advertisement for Cadbury Fruit & Nut.6. Bedtime Stories (1994)This at-times underpowered album takes a handbrake turn near its death as Bedtime Story, a Björk-cowritten track foreshadowing of the ambient direction taken on Ray of Light, is succeeded by Take a Bow, a melancholic ballad that briefly signified the advent of a “mature” Madonna.The peaks come earlier. “Happiness lies in your own hand,” from the restrained Secret, is an underrated Madonna lyric, while Human Nature is a funny, throbbing R&B earworm. “Oops, I didn’t know I couldn’t talk about sex,” she claps back. Elsewhere, the Spanish guitar on Love Tried to Welcome Me makes it sound like the regret-filled sequel to La Isla Bonita. It would, I imagine, be best heard in a forlorn lounge bar populated only by crestfallen people.5. Madonna (1983)This album is a vibe – a shallow, inconsequential vibe. And since when has that ever been a bad thing in pop? The New York wannabe’s voice is all yearning and striving, but its club beats sound effortless. Indeed, if her debut hadn’t been as cool as it was, we wouldn’t still be talking about Madonna today.As the saxophone blast on Think of Me and arcade-game thrills of Everybody indicate, this record couldn’t be more 1980s if it tried. Through the lens of 2026, it exudes a simultaneously youthful and vintage feel. As for its most famous singles, Madonna’s sparky defiance permeates Borderline, while the pro-holiday Holiday is more contentious than it seems. “Just one day out of life,” it pleads. Just one day? So American.4. True Blue (1986)The orchestral strings that introduce the star’s third studio album signal drama, rebellion and a statement of intent from an artist smack in the middle of her imperial phase. This is Papa Don’t Preach, a god-tier story song that exemplifies the best of Madonna, vocally and lyrically – although I had no idea what she was on about in 1986.The haunting middle eight of Live to Tell, the retro girl-group stylings of the title track and every tropical note of La Isla Bonita are True Blue’s other glories, and this album would be ranked even higher were it not for the way it tapers off. Still, maybe it’s my age, but I can’t help feeling residual fondness for one of those late filler tracks, Jimmy Jimmy.3. Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005)Madonna has reunited with Stuart Price for Confessions II, and why not? The producer’s work on the original Confessions on a Dance Floor delivered a solid, bop-filled record that gave robotic synth-pop the intensity a superstar demands.The Abba sample on Hung Up is too obvious, but her homage to the pioneering disco classic I Feel Love on Future Lovers – cowritten and produced by Mirwais, not Price – is suitably hypnotic, and there’s a subtle Pet Shop Boys reference on Jump. “This is who I am/You can like it or not,” she sings on Like It or Not. The album has lost some steam by this closing track, but along the way we’ve been treated to Sorry, the best Madonna single (and bassline) of the 21st century.2. Like a Prayer (1989)With this album’s gospel-powered title track and lead single, Madonna confirmed she wasn’t merely a commercially stratospheric pop star but also an important, influential artist with a capacity to rile the Vatican. There are no other anthems to match it, but her wrestles with her Catholic upbringing surface throughout the album, culminating on the psychedelic Act of Contrition. This ends with an unamusing punchline, as Madonna discovers that her reservation in heaven is “not in the computer”.But there’s so much to like here, from the celebratory Express Yourself to Oh Father, a look-at-me-now song with a melody that opens up beautifully, while Cherish and the lullaby-adjacent Dear Jessie reveal that Madonna is in no mood to abandon the musical serotonin of bubblegum pop just yet.1. Erotica (1992)It could be a form of Stockholm syndrome, but about halfway through my experiment of listening almost exclusively to Madonna for a month I fell in love with Erotica, an album I had planned to downgrade purely for the gall of being 75 minutes long.Her status as a controversy magnet around the time of its release suggests a brash, crude record, and maybe time has softened it, but it’s nothing of the sort. Instead it manages to be both thoroughly early 1990s and totally representative of Madonna. After the stall-setting title track – she only hurts the ones she loves, she tells us – the mildly provocative pleasures just keep on coming, among them a house reworking of the 1950s standard Fever, the jazzy Where Life Begins, the speak-singing slow burn of Waiting and, best of all, the open-hearted euphoria of Deeper and Deeper, which has always been an absolute banger.This album, which Madonna recruited Shep Pettibone and André Betts to produce, is the sensuous, shimmering sound of a lazy summer – it even comes with a little cleansing rain (on, er, Rain). She moans, broods, pleas for respect. She grieves for friends who have died of Aids (on the sweeping In This Life). She explores metaphors amid the languid grooves of Secret Garden. She says she would like to put us in a trance, then does exactly that. Erotica is such a sultry record, it’s easy to miss that it’s also a soulful one.