Madonna – Madame X
Interscope/Maverick

Not many people remember it now, but 30 years ago senior Catholics were calling for Madonna to be excommunicated. Her controversial album Like A Prayer went on to sell 15 million copies (and a lot of Pepsi), somewhat, if not entirely, on the back of a video that had her disporting with a re-animated black Christ.

Almost nobody remembers that the video also touched on sexual violence, Klan-style burning crosses and police harassment of young African-American males. So it is not such a surprise to find the now 60-year-old singer not so much turning serious in her middle age as returning to some of the political themes and urgencies that have been with her pretty much from the start.

Her new album – the fourteenth since 1983’s heartlifting debut – is called Madame X (Interscope/Maverick) and Madge has been touring the studio couches wearing a piratical eyepatch and corsetry which, though no expert, I’ll bet doesn’t come from M&S. It’s absolutely in the line of later-career albums – Springsteen, Dylan, McCartney – that against the odds turn out to be very good indeed, mining something intimate and personal as well as socially aware. After even a couple of listens to the new CD, you sense that you know her better than before, and that the costumes and posturing have been camouflage for some essential shyness and vulnerability.