If all the hype about Madonna's new album Ray Of Light is true, then motherhood seems to have re-invented (yes, once again) the once-outrageous shocker - or perhaps, vice versa. After all it was the birth of her daughter, Lourdes, two years ago that led her to discover yoga, which led to her re-examining her life, that led to her studying Sanskrit . . . well, you get the picture.
'I would say the beginning of my search, my spiritual journey kicked into first gear with the impending birth of my daughter,' says Madonna. 'I came to the realisation that I didn't really know that much at all. I started asking myself the most elementary questions: What's really important about life? Why am I here? 'What it provoked was for me to really start searching and reading. I started reading the cabala and practising yoga and reading different types of literature.' All of that has converged in the outpouring of emotions on Ray Of Light which Madonna calls her 'most personal album' - one of the songs is Shanti/Ashtangi which is part-yoga chant, part-dance beats.
Other singers have made similarly 'most personal' claims but when Ms Ciccone warbles on about the 'mother who haunts [her]' and 'smelling her burning flesh, her rotting bones, her decay', the references are deeply personal: Madonna's mother died when she was five.
'It all kind of happened together. I don't think there are accidents. It happened for a reason,' she says.
Pop's 'Material Girl' views the past years as a process of self-discovery. 'People have always had this obsession with me, about my re-invention of myself,' she told The New York Times recently. 'I just feel like I'm shedding layers. I'm slowly revealing who I am.' Undeniably, the album and the birth of her daughter - fathered by a lover, Carlos Leon, whom she met while jogging in New York's Central Park - have been cathartic experiences for her. In hindsight, the singer says it has unconsciously led to a strong imagery of water in Ray Of Light with songs such as Drowned World, Swim, Mer Girl and Frozen, and as many reflections of life and death.
'I didn't realise there was so much [water imagery] in the record until I got to the end of it,' she says. 'It sort of made sense because working on the album was a cathartic experience and a healing experience and giving birth to my daughter was a healing experience. It made me look at life in a completely new way and it made me appreciate life in a way that I had never done before.' This is hardly the kind of comment one has come to expect of the icon of rebellion who gave us songs such as Like A Virgin and Papa Don't Preach, and who made notoriety her claim to fame. But fame, like everything else in her life, also comes under her scrutiny in the new album. In Drowned World/Substitute for Love, she sings 'I traded fame for love . . . got exactly what I asked for'.