A worldwide radio premiere yesterday heralded the arrival of Madonna's new single, Hung Up - the first stage in a rumoured £5m campaign to promote her forthcoming album Confessions on a Dancefloor.

Her last album, 2003's American Life, was the worst-selling of the 48-year-old singer's career. Hung Up certainly represents a departure from its ungainly blend of solipsistic lyrics and bungled efforts to court controversy: a video for the title track was withdrawn because its anti-war imagery was "inappropriate" in light of the US invasion of Iraq.

A brash, superbly constructed pop track, it eschews lyrics about the perils of materialism and aims squarely at the dancefloor and radio. Based on a sample from Abba's 1979 hit Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight), it manages to further camp up one of the campest tracks recorded.

Employing her musical director, Stuart Price, as producer seems to be a masterstroke. Madonna has always been most potent when translating cutting-edge club music into mass-market pop - her early hits were based on the electro-funk of mid-80s New York clubs, Vogue on house music and Ray of Light on trance techno. Price is at the cutting-edge of club music and as been responsible for a series of superb remixes for the Killers, Gwen Stefani and New Order.

Her recent years have been far from vintage ones: American Life's lacklustre sales, the failure of her cinematic collaboration with husband Guy Ritchie, and bad publicity surrounding her involvement with Kaballah. These three elements suggest a career on the wane. But between 1992 and 1994 she brought out the excruciating erotic thriller Body of Evidence and the patchy Erotica. She shook off that period with the hugely successful Ray of Light album. Hung Up suggests Madonna is about to pull off the same trick again.

· Alexis Petridis is the Guardian's pop critic