Songfacts®:

• "Medellín" is a breezy electronic Latin pop track that opens with Madonna whispering:
  
  1... 2... 1... 2... 1... 2... cha cha cha
  
  The song was released on April 17, 2019, as the lead single from Madonna's Madame X album. The Queen of Pop teased the track by taking on the role of the mysterious Madame X, who she described as being a secret agent of many identities ranging from a dancer to a professor. On "Medellín," she's a cha cha instructor.
• The first verse finds Madonna in a reflective mood.
  
  I took a pill and had a dream
  I went back to my seventeenth year
  Allowed myself to be naïve
  To be someone I've never been
  
  Madonna recalls being just a teenager in Detroit, dreaming of making it big.
• Madonna is joined on the track by reggaeton star Maluma, who first met the Queen of Pop after he performed at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards. The pair flirt with each other throughout the song in sensual Spanglish lyrics. Maluma's vocals are all in Spanish.
• Medellín is the second largest city in Colombia and the birthplace of Maluma. The song finds Madonna recalling how as a teenager she once dreamt of waking up in Medellín where "the sun was caressing my skin." Maluma, meanwhile, calls on "his queen" to take a trip with him to home city.
• The song finds Madonna back in the studio with French producer Mirwais, who co-produced Music and American Life.
• This isn't Madonna's first dalliance into Latin pop. Her best known dabble in the Spanish language would be her 1987 single "La Isla Bonita."
• Allowed myself to be naïve
  To be someone I've never been
  
  Madonna explained the lyric during a live Q&A in London: "What I mean by that line is naive in terms of not caring what people think. I feel like when I started my career, as an artist, I was naive. There was a good thing about being naive because you don't think about judgment, you don't think about what people are going to say, or think about what you're doing, and you're free and pure in your expression.
  
  I wanted to be able to go back to that time in my life when I was just starting out in New York and I didn't care what people thought and my music really came without listening to all the noise or recommendations or suggestions, or whatever. That is also the time in my life, when I was 19, when I was given the name Madame X. So the whole story comes full circle."
• Filmed by two Spaniards, photographer Diana Kunst and creative director Mau Morgó (A$AP Rocky, FKA Twigs, Rosalía), the raunchy video begins with Madonna explaining how she became cha-cha instructor "Madame X." When Maluma shows up to one of her dance classes, the two embark on a steamy romance culminating in a colorful outdoor wedding.
  
  "I wanted this video to look like a painting," Madonna said. "[Kunst] is influenced by a lot of the same painters and filmmakers that I'm interested in."
• Madonna and Maluma performed the song live for the first time during the Billboard Music Awards on May 1, 2019. The Queen of Pop delivered a pioneering Augmented Reality performance, which featured extensive motion capture technology that seamlessly blended real and virtual content. It was the first time it's been used on US network TV.
  
  Madonna told Billboard that she came up with the concept "many, many months" before the award ceremony and it required weeks of rehearsals to properly configure her multiple avatars for the green screen.