Following the leak of more than 10 unreleased demo recordings, Madonna and her team have been working day-in and day-out to try to recover the stolen songs. The songs were from sessions for her upcoming 13th studio album, which at the time had yet to be announced and is still unfinished. To combat the damage of the stolen work, Madonna sped up the official release. She announced that her new album, Rebel Heart, would drop March 10 through Interscope Records and made six of its tracks immediately available for purchase. Among them was the Diplo-produced "Living For Love," the album's lead single, which according to Billboard wasn't supposed to premiere until Valentines Day.
In a new interview with Billboard, she spoke about the new album, how things have changed since the leak, her relationship with Diplo, a possible Grammy Awards performances, and more. Here's what she said:
On how she's dealing with the leaks:
"Well, we don't put things up on servers anymore. Everything we work on, if we work on computers, we're not on WiFi, we're not on the Internet; we don't work in a way where anybody can access the information. Hard drives of music are hand-carried to people. We don't leave music lying around. We have photo shoots or video shoots, and everyone has to leave their phone at the door. I mean, unfortunately, it sucks, but that's the way it is. That's how leaks happen."
On her reaction to the situation:
"I said, 'Sh*t, this is the age that we're living in.' It's crazy. I mean, look at what's going on with Sony Pictures. It's just the age that we're living in. It's crazy times. The Internet is as constructive and helpful in bringing to people together as it is in doing dangerous things and hurting people. It's a double-edged sword."
On a potential Grammy Awards performance of "Living For Love":
"That's possibly something that's gonna happen."
On the original pre-leak concept of the album:
"Originally I wanted to put everything out together. I have an overabundance of songs, and actually, the reason I wanted to call the record Rebel Heart was because I felt like it explored two very distinct sides of my personality. The rebellious, renegade side of me, and the romantic side of me. In my mind, it was almost like I wanted to do a two-record set. So you get this chunk of songs, and that chunk of songs. That was my original goal. But then all the demos leaked and I can't really go down that road anymore. ...they'll just get my rebellious and romantic side all mixed in together."
On who's featured on "Living For Love":
Alicia [Keys] plays the piano, and then the female voice is Annie [Brewster]... there are versions...that MNEK is singing on, and those will be coming out, but just not yet.
On another new song "Ghosttown":
"So this one is about the city after Armageddon. The burnt out city, the crumbling buildings, the smoke that's still lingering after the fire. You know what I mean? There's only a few people left. How do we pick up the pieces and go on from here?"
On the status of the record being finished:
"I am done writing. I'm almost done recording. Almost done. Got just few more little tweaks to do. But first I had to get those six songs out."
The upcoming album, which features a collaboration with Nicki Minaj, is now available for pre-order.
