Madonna – Veronica Electronica (Warner) (13th Floor Album Review)
More than twenty five years after it was first spoken about in fan circles and record label corridors, Madonna’s Veronica Electronica an alter ego as well as a collection of remixes from Ray Of Light was finally released in July of this year.
Now aged 67 Madonna is showing no signs of slowing down, playing safe or going away!
This isn’t Madonna reinventing herself again, it’s her revisiting a version of who she was when everything still felt charged with possibility. These tracks are reminiscent of that late nineties pulse when dance music was more than rhythm, it was ritual. The names say enough…Rauhofer, Orbit, Sasha, BT, Calderone, the alchemists of dance music of the time which turned emotion into motion and set dance floors around the globe on fire!
The remixes feel familiar but newly awake, like they’ve been quietly breathing all these years waiting to awaken to be heard again And right in the middle of it all is Gone Gone Gone, a forgotten demo with Rick Nowels, Fans have waited a long, long time to hear this remixed album, which Madonna wanted to release after Ray Of Light, but for whatever reason it was put on ice until now.
The album opens with Sasha and BT’s Bucklodge Ashram New Edit of Drowned World Substitute for Love. It moves like meditation, slow, spacious, hypnotic. Synths rise and fall, percussion circles itself, everything dissolving into something almost sacred. It doesn’t comfort, it invites you in. Even all these years later sounding “New”
Then comes the unforgettable Ray of Light Sasha Twilo Mix Edit, all heartbeat and electricity. The energy shifts from physical to emotional without warning and before you realise it, you’ve moved from the centre of the club to the edge of memory.
A personal favourite, Skin follows, Peter Rauhofer and Victor Calderone’s collaboration. The bassline lifts, the percussion sharpens, and Madonna’s voice drifts in like smoke. “Do I know you from somewhere? Why do you leave me wanting more?” She’s not leading here, she’s haunting. The track isn’t about structure or story, it’s about atmosphere and energy.
The Club 69 remix of Nothing Really Matters and the rework of Sky Fits Heaven don’t quite catch fire. They’re fine, they function, but they feel like placeholders, reminders that not every moment of reinvention is perfection. Then Frozen arrives, and everything breathes again. It blurs genre lines, tribal, ambient, pop, until they stop existing altogether. The Power of Goodbye follows, soft but sure, folding the emotional weight of Ray of Light back into something more human.
And then comes Gone Gone Gone. The long lost demo that maybe should have been released as a single after Ray Of Light’s success! No gloss, no filters. Just Madonna, bare and unguarded. It sounds like a page torn from a diary she never meant to share. Vulnerable, simple, real. it just tells the truth. That’s what makes Veronica Electronica so quietly powerful. It’s not about rewriting history, it’s about releasing it.
In the end, it doesn’t sound like resurrection. It sounds like acceptance.
This latest release from Madonna has what it takes to get the younger generations on the dance floor, or the older ones like me dancing in my lounge whilst cleaning house!
Julie Collins
Veronica Electronica is out now on Warner Records
