Madonna‘s new album Confessions II arrives on Friday (July 3), and fans are wondering if one particularly pointed song is about her late stepmother.
“Betrayal” is featured on the deluxe edition of the record, and the lyrics are sparking speculation about whether it has to do with Joan Ciccone, who passed away after a battle with cancer in 2024.
“This is a story of betrayal / You couldn’t see your fall from grace / So take the hammer, hit the nail / You’ll never take my mother’s place,” Madonna declares.
Joan married Madonna‘s father Silvio Ciccone after her mother passed away.
“I mean, my mother died when I was little, and that was difficult for me for a while,” she recalled in a Larry King interview in 2002.
“I mean, truthfully, I didn’t accept my stepmother when I was growing up. In that retrospect I think I was really hard on her…and I’m very close to my father, and I didn’t want to accept change.”
“I was almost 9 when my dad remarried,” she also reflected on The Howard Stern Radio Show in 2015.
“We were really shocked by it because we were still mourning and grieving my mother’s death, which my father never spoke about.”
“I had a father, I had older brothers. I did have a stepmother, but I didn’t have any relationship with her. So there was no role model for me,” she also said at one point to Rolling Stone.
Listen to “Betrayal”…
Read the lyrics to “Betrayal”…
Listen to more songs from Confessions II and find out the meaning behind the music.
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