She's never been one to shy away from a candid interview or photo shoot.

And Madonna has stayed true to form with her latest chat and revealing set of editorial images in Interview magazine.

The 56-year-old pop icon has yet again crossed boundaries in the issue, with one of the more risqué shots fully showing her bare breasts.

The striking images, taken for the publication by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, show the singer contorting her body into various positions in boudoir-style underwear, basques and other sexually suggestive garments by Alexander McQueen.

Speaking to interviewer David Blaine for the magazine's 'Art issue', the outspoken star discussed her views on drug use, admitting that it's often a spiritual thing for people.

'It's about how people take drugs to connect to God or to a higher level of consciousness,' she said.


'I keep saying 'Plugging into the matrix.' If you get high, you can do that, which is why a lot of people drop acid or do drugs, because they want to get closer to God.

'But there's going to be a short circuit, and that's the illusion of drugs, because they give you the illusion of getting closer to God, but ultimately they kill you.'

She added that she herself had dabbled over the years: 'I mean, I tried everything once, but as soon as I was high, I spent my time drinking tons of water to get it out of my system.

'As soon as I was high, I was obsessed with flushing it out of me. I was like, Okay, I'm done now.'

Madonna also told her famous interviewer about her deep connections to the concept of mortality.

'I became very obsessed with death, and the idea that you never know when death will arrive, so one has to do as much as possible all the time to get the most out of life,' she admitted.

And of course there was her famous coffee table book entitled Sex, which saw her reveal herself fully in the tome which was released alongside her raunchily-titled album Erotica in 1992.

She's no stranger to revealing herself, and certainly looks youthful in the images, with her blonde locks coiffed into a retro 1940s housewife style, juxtaposing with the provocative nature of the styling.

Madonna recently hit the news for her visit to Malawi along with her adopted children Mercy James and David Banda during which she was appointed Malawi’s Goodwill Ambassador for Child Welfare.

But as well as her philanthropic ways, she's still at her core an artist, and discussed her feelings on being creative and also learning to fail.

She told Blaine: 'I'm not saying I'm great at failing, but if you're an artist and you're in the learning process, you accept that you're going to suck at things.

'We're all good intrinsically, just covered sometimes in filth and darkness, and our job is to get rid of it, to peel back the layers and reveal our goodness.'

As a woman who has been heavily focused on her career for the past three decades plus, she was asked what the most important profession is, in the world.

'Prostitution, of course,' she revealed.

(dailymail.co.uk)