It’s been a huge couple weeks for Madonna.
The Queen of pop last month announced a new album, Madame X, and released the first single from it, “Medellín,” featuring Maluma. The pair stormed Las Vegas on Thursday night to perform the song for the first time at the Billboard Music Awards.
And now, a new track, “I Rise,” which arrived at midnight.
It’s a mid-tempo piece with touches of Autotune and, as the title would suggest, its all about self-empowerment. On it, Madonna sings: “There’s nothing you can do to me that hasn’t been done/ Not bulletproof, shouldn’t have to run from a gun/ River of tears ran dry, let ’em run/ No game that you can play with me, I ain’t one.” The song’s intro features a sample of Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor and gun control activist Emma Gonzalez’s signature exhortation, “[They say] us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS!”
Madame X is Madonna’s 14th studio album and it’s slated for release June 14.
Stream “I Rise” in full below.