Madonna was ‘jealous of Kylie’ – and more things we learned in her Graham Norton interview

Madonna has confessed to being jealous of Kylie Minogue, and hinted she’ll headline Glastonbury in a wide-ranging interview with Graham Norton.

The revelations came in an almost hour-long discussion about her forthcoming album, Confessions II, which finds the pop star in her natural habitat of the dancefloor.

“That’s how I started,” she told Norton. “I was a dancer. Dancing is in my DNA. It just creates community – and sometimes relationships.”

The record reflects on her origins in 1980s New York, but also features a duet with her daughter, Lola, addressing strains in their relationship. Another track, Fragile, mourns her brother, Christopher, who died of cancer in 2024.

Madonna said she was excited for fans to hear the record, “because it’s a whole story… I can’t just make dance music about nothing.

However, she admitted that “nobody ever wants to dance with me” because she tends to get carried away by the music.

“I just go crazy. I think I irritate a lot of people.”

Here are seven highlights from the interview, which was broadcast on BBC One, and is available to re-watch on the BBC iPlayer.

Madonna was widely rumoured to headline Glastonbury in 2024, before negotiations fell apart. Ever since, fans have been hoping she’ll ascend to the top of the Pyramid Stage.

Discussing plans for touring with Norton, the star suggested 2027 could finally be the year.

“I think I’ll do promo tours for a while, then in the summertime something bigger,” she said.

“Oh, that sounds really exciting and good, ” Norton replied. “I think I know what you’re talking about.”

They shared a long, knowing look, before Norton sought confirmation.

“Is it in this country?”

Madonna gave a sly grin.

“It could be. Why do I have to tell you everything?”

Kylie Minogue popped into the interview, posing as a barmaid and serving Madonna a grapefruit cocktail.

It came 26 years after Madonna wore a bedazzled “Kylie Minogue” tank top at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Sweden: A gesture of solidarity that took the Aussie pop star by surprise.

“There was no warning,” Kylie recalled, saying she “probably stopped shy of fainting” when she saw Madonna’s outfit.

Then Madonna had a little revelation.

“I was actually a little bit jealous of you,” she told Kylie.

“Why?” asked Norton.

“Because she was so cute.

“I think my ex-husband at the time [Guy Ritchie] had a crush on her, and I was like, ‘I’ll never be as beautiful as Kylie’.

Madonna’s eldest daughter, Lourdes “Lola” Leon, has largely forged her own path as a model, musician and performer – but the 29-year-old appears on Confessions II, duetting with her mother for the first time.

“She approached me,” Madonna said of the track. “She’s been very reticent to work with me. She doesn’t want to be perceived as my daughter taking advantage of her privilege.”

“She’s been very stand-offish, working at her own pace, and I respect that deeply.

“But then one day she came to me and she said, ‘You know what? I’m holding on to something and maybe it’s a kind of… I don’t want to say anger… maybe resentment?

“Because at the end of the day she didn’t ask for this [life]. She had been through her adolescence struggling with those feelings for a long time. Then she came to me and she said, ‘Let’s write a song together, I think it’ll be a very healing experience.’

“I was like, ‘OK, you’re on. Let’s do it’.”

The first taste of Madonna’s 15th album arrived in April – with a quote from the song One Step Away.

“People think that dance music is superficial, but they’ve got it all wrong. The dance floor is not just a place, it’s a threshold: A ritualistic space where movement replaces language.”

Madonna called it a “manifesto” for the record – a spiritual sequel to 2005’s Confessions on a Dancefloor, which spawned hits like Hung Up and Sorry.

But her producer, Stuart Price, revealed the lyrics were written “in a flash of light”.

As he played the instrumental at the end of a session, Madonna said, “Just switch on the microphone, I think I’ve got an idea,” he told Norton.

“That whole vocal performance comes out in one stream of consciousness. The lyrics, the melody, the whole thing happens in a moment.

“It’s kind of like I get possessed,” Madonna said. “It’s weird. The ideas come when I don’t try too hard.”

The song Danceteria was more deliberately crafted. It’s named after the feted New York club where Madonna got an early break by persuading DJ Mark Kamins to play her debut single, Everybody.

In the lyrics, the star namechecks her then-roommate Martin Burgoyne, the club’s doorman Haoui Montaug, and actress Debi Mazar, one of Madonna’s oldest friends, who she first met at the club.

One of the album’s highlights, it’s essentially the Madonna origin story – and one of her fondest memories.

“There will never be another time like that,” she told Norton, describing Danceteria as the “Mecca of music and dance and fashion”.

The only problem? She felt totally out of place.

“Everybody was cool. I wasn’t cool. I was very awkward and I didn’t fit in.”

As a struggling artist, she couldn’t afford the elaborate outfits and “cool hair” of her fellow clubbers.

But, ever resourceful, she turned those limited resources into an advantage – creating her iconic fishnet gloves from rags and cast-offs.

“Tights [were] all the clothes I had,” she told Norton. “I was a ballet dancer so I just took my dance clothes and reinvented it. Hunger was the best sauce.”

For years, Madonna’s younger brother was one of her closest confidantes. He was a background dancer on her first UK TV appearance, and later become her tour director.

But they fell out when Madonna appointed a different director – the choreographer Jamie King – for her Drowned World tour. Things got worse when Christopher wrote a tell-all book, Life With My Sister Madonna, in 2008.

The star has previously said that “for a really long time” she had perceived Christopher as one of her “biggest enemies” – but they reconciled before his death.

“It was him being ill and reaching out to me and saying, ‘I need your help’,” she told the podcast host Jay Shetty last year.

“I felt so relieved. It was such a load off my back, such a weight that was removed, baggage that I could put down to finally be able to be in a room with him and holding his hand even if he was dying and saying, ‘I love you and I forgive you.'”

Speaking to Norton, Madonna said she had written Fragile after Christopher called her in the studio.

“He was in a lot of pain, on the phone, and he was not in a good place. I knew it was close to the end. And then I went upstairs and wrote a song.”

Called Fragile, it looks back to their childhood and makes the promise: “We’ll find each other on the other side.”

“It’s cathartic,” she said of the song. “To let go of somebody you love, the best way to do it is to write about it. It’s like an exorcism.”

Madonna was the surprise guest during Sabrina Carpenter’s headline set at the Coachella Festival in April.

The duo, who first connected over an Instagram DM, performed Vogue, Like A Prayer and a brand new song called Bring Me Love – later released as a single.

The performance came exactly 20 years after Madonna’s Coachella debut – playing the original Confessions album in the festival’s dance tent.

In a call-back to that performance, Madonna wore the same boots, corset and jacket for her set with Carpenter.

“I like to prove to myself that I can still fit into my clothes,” she told Norton.

But after the performance, her outfit – along with other items from Madonna’s archive – went missing.

In a statement, the Indio Police Department said the clothes and jewellery were last seen “on a golf cart” on the festival grounds at 01:30 local time on Saturday.

Speaking to Norton, she confirmed the “costume hasn’t come back”.

“I was very disturbed by it for a couple of days. They’re historical.”