The first introduction to Lourdes Leon a.k.a. Lolahol as a singer was 2022’s “Lock&Key.” More to the point, that introduction revealed Lolahol’s unexpected preference for one, Lady Gaga (via incorporating a very specific Gaga quote into the lyrics). The other pop star often cited as being rebellious, unafraid to push boundaries and a constant LGBTQIA+ ally. Needless to say, Madonna was all of these things decades before Lady Gaga came ‘round to continue the “trend.” And yes, it could be said that Madonna did make all of those things “trendy,” during a time when everything she stood for was branded as terminally taboo or, quite simply, uncool. Even her children took a while to come around to her music, with Madonna citing on more than one occasion that they didn’t really like it. Or would simply tell her when a song she was making rubbed them the wrong way.
However, one song that only the most heartless of fools would try to deride as anything less than extraordinary is Madonna’s 1998 track, “Frozen.” And, boldly enough, it served as the first single from Ray of Light. For not every pop star would be so willing to set the tone for a record with something as “moody” (a.k.a. not Top 40 radio-friendly) as this. But then, Madonna had never done anything by the book before that point, either. In choosing to “update” this video for her new song, “Spelling” (a witchy reference, not a language arts one), Lourdes Leon invites further automatic comparisons to her mother (so much for wanting to stand apart as one’s own artist). And, in that spirit, the “Frozen” video, directed by Chris Cunningham, must be mentioned before even bothering to unpack the visuals of “Spelling.”
Opening on the cracked ground of the Mojave Desert (“Can’t take the heat in a desert dream,” Lolahol sings at one point), “Frozen” is quick to show us a witchy, Elvira-like Madonna suspended in mid-air as she tells us, “You only see what your eyes want to see/How can life be what you want it to be?/You’re frozen.” These lyrics, of course, are leaps and bounds above Lolahol’s patchier offerings on “Spelling,” including, “You stay in the water/Remind you/Followin’ in black, whatever/Cyclical, bicycle, oh, yeah.” In a way, it comes off trying to sound like a “classier” version of Nicki Minaj rapping, “Wrist icicle, ride dick bicycle/Come true yo, get you this type of blow/If you wanna menage I got a tricycle.” Apart from that, it’s obviously just Lolahol grasping at straws for a word that pairs well with “cyclical.” And yes, that’s what “Spelling” is, one supposes. Proof that, as Madonna says on “Extreme Occident,” “Life is a circle.”
That seems to be why, just three days before her twenty-seventh birthday (with “Spelling” released on October 11th), Leon says goodbye to twenty-six (the age Madonna was when she rose to meteoric fame with “Like A Virgin,” complete with that iconic MTV VMAs performance) by saying hello to her inner Madonna. Something she appeared to have been fighting for a while in her bid to become “her own person.” Yet perhaps the wisest thing she could have done is realize that trying to run away from a juggernaut like Madonna is impossible. Especially when she’s your mother. Plus, Leon is no stranger to “Frozen,” aware of its every sonic nuances after making a dramatic choreographed video to accompany Madonna’s live performance of the song during the Madame X Tour. Shot in black and white, the video’s presentation makes it so that Lourdes is larger than life behind Madonna, holding her literally in the palms of her hands at the beginning. Superimposed over one another throughout, this moment on the tour was consistently singled out as a highlight by many critics. And when Madonna sings, “Give yourself to me,” it has an eerie effect, as though she’s asking Lourdes to be “hers” for all of eternity.
In effect, that’s what a child is (read: property) to a parent in general. Unless, like Madonna, you suffer the blow of losing your mother too soon. As many know by now, Madonna was just five when her mother, Madonna Sr., died of breast cancer, creating an emotional void in the singer’s life that she would seek to fulfill until the birth of Lourdes in 1996. And yes, her name does refer to being something of a miracle to Madonna, who perhaps never thought she would find a love so fulfilling. Enter the cheesy headline that some magazine (in this case, Vanity Fair) was bound to use right after Lourdes’ birth: “Madonna and Child.” This was a far cry from a 1991 Vanity Fair cover story on Madonna called “The Misfit.” In it, Madonna mentions a palm reader who came to a New Year’s Eve party at her house on that last day of 1990. According to M, “She looked at my palm and she said I’m never going to have any children.” So much for being prophetic. And yet, knowing Madonna, she probably set out to have as many children as possible after hearing a fortune teller insist that she wouldn’t. For Madonna’s entire drive in life has been to prove people wrong when they tell her she “can’t” do something.
This can be attributed to her oppressive patriarch, Tony Ciccone, who gave his eldest daughter a strict Catholic upbringing. One that, without the gentleness of a mother, likely seemed particularly stifling. As Madonna said, “When you grow up without a mother… you are on a mad search for love. Unconditional love.” Madonna’s comments on mothering (long before the overused “mother is mothering” phrase came along) also stood out in Truth or Dare, during which she discusses her maternal feelings toward her dancers, noting, “I think I have unconsciously chosen people that are emotionally crippled in some way. Or who need mothering in some way. Because I think it comes real natural to me. It fulfills a need in me to be mothered.” That more than slight tinge of non-altrusim in Madonna’s motives for wanting to “nurture” would come across in later interviews after she had Lourdes.
For instance, in a 2003 interview with Megan Mullally called “Madonna Speaks,” she once again mentions how the birth of her daughter was the beginning of her losing her sense of narcissism (timed to coincide with her study of Kabbalah). She adds antithetically to that declaration, “My children help me see myself… I see my daughter being, you know, reacting to things and I get kind of anxiety-ridden watching her do it and I go, ‘My god, that’s me.’ It’s kind of like a mirror thing that happens… ‘cause your children really are mirrors of you, they’re sparks of your soul. And when you learn to embrace your children for all of their shortcomings, in a way, you’re doing that to yourself.”
Phrased like that, Madonna comes across as one of those parents who definitely relishes having children for the benefit of making a “carbon copy” of oneself. This only adding to Madonna’s legacy—one that assures she will live on long after she’s left this Earth. Not just through her work, but through her children. After all, Madonna has called them her greatest work of art (more property allusions), not any of the music or other media she’s put out into the world. And Lolahol’s tribute to Madonna and “Frozen” builds on that secured legacy.
In the post that accompanied Lolahol’s announcement of the video’s release, she wrote, “This piece is very special. It’s an homage to my mother’s timeless piece of art ‘Frozen’ [obviously]. That piece has come up countless times in my life, connecting the two of us. I would be nothing without the woman who brought me into the world. I revere her, and hope that this translates.” This feels like a far cry from previous, less than reverent statements Lourdes has made about Mama Madonna. But maybe with age comes wisdom. Or a “softening.” That’s what happened to Madonna much later in life, circa forty, with Ray of Light marking her complete transition into “Ethereal Girl” in lieu of “Material Girl.”
Claire Farin, the director of “Spelling,” seeks to bring the same hard edge to that softening that reveals itself in the “Frozen” video (swapping out the desert in favor of a quintessentially creepy woods setting). Which is why her interpretation of the latter echoes something more tantamount to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina meets the witchy scenes in Lana Del Rey’s “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” video. After all, this is still a Gen Z project. Or “piece,” as Leon kept repeating. Such deliberate use of that word also calls attention to her “weird art kid” status. That same phrase being used by a Madonna fan after seeing the Madame X Tour. Madonna then promptly reposted the comment in her story. And yes, of late, Madonna is being re-evaluated as someone who has always been more “pure artist” than pop star. At least, this is the approach Mary Gabriel takes in the latest biography about the star, called Madonna: A Rebel Life. And maybe Leon finally saw some of that rebellion as being worthy of deference.
Even if her single cover smacks more of Evanescence’s Fallen than it does Madonna’s “Frozen.” The point is, Leon is trying. To “do homage,” that is. She even nods more subtly to another video of Madonna’s, “Die Another Day,” by wrapping black bands around her arms, tefillin-style. Another American Life-era track that seems to have an influence is “I’m So Stupid,” with Lolahol singing, “Everybody’s looking for something” in the same tone as Madonna when she declares, “Everybody’s lookin’ for somethin’/Everybody’s stupid, stupid.” Lolahol instead accuses herself of stupidity by remarking, “I was stupid and it doesn’t work like that.” Whether she meant to reference “I’m So Stupid” or not, it’s clear Leon has been paying more attention to her mother’s work (even if only through osmosis) than she might have previously let on.
Though she’s vague about the “it” in “doesn’t work like that,” maybe what Lolahol is referring to pertains to the presumed ease with which she could kick start her own career by sheer virtue of being Madonna’s daughter. To that point, Madonna said of Lourdes in 2019, “She doesn’t have the same drive [as me]—and again, I feel social media plagues her and makes her feel like: ‘People are going to give me things because I’m [Madonna’s] daughter.’ I try to give her examples of other children of celebrities who have to work through that ‘Oh yeah, you’re the daughter of…’ and then eventually you are taken seriously for what you do.”
This seems to be gradually happening to Lourdes. But it might actually be a detriment to call further attention to her nepo baby status by emulating such an iconic visual of her mother’s (as we also saw in the video for Go’s “Cuntradiction”). At the same time, if anyone “deserves” to emulate, who else but Lourdes ought to? (But don’t try telling that to a drag queen.) It’s something she’s been doing since at least 2009 (or 2003, if you count her cameo during the Britney/Xtina performance of “Like A Virgin”), when she appeared in Madonna’s “Celebration” video dressed in M’s “Like A Virgin” regalia, complete with wedding dress and “Boy Toy” belt. At the time, she was just shy of turning thirteen. In the years since, Leon has proven to be a quick study in the ways of her mother, even going to the same university Madonna dropped out of (University of Michigan) before herself “dropping out” to transfer to SUNY Purchase. Pursuing the same love of dance that Madonna possessed when she went to college (indeed, there are moments during the aforementioned Madame X Tour performance of “Frozen” where Lourdes becomes U of M-era Madonna), Leon has been quoted as saying of dance: “You’re using your body to define the space around you—to change it. That’s a very naked form of expression.”
Nakedness becomes more literal in “Spelling,” with Leon opting to differentiate her version of “Frozen” from Madonna’s by entering into a body of water wearing only her birthday suit. As though baptizing herself a fully-formed star. Something Madonna also did by choosing to move to New York and reinvent herself for the very first time. Having schooled both Lourdes and several generations of women on not being ashamed of nudity (see: Madonna declaring, “I’m not ashamed” when her pre-fame nude photos were leaked to Playboy and Penthouse), Lourdes pointedly chooses to “sex up” this “Frozen” homage with one of her mother’s tried-and-true shock value staples. Except that, as a direct result of Madonna, women who are comfortable with their sexuality are no longer even half as shocking.
In 2019, Madonna gave an interview to iHeartRadio, during which she was asked if she thought any of her children would follow in her footsteps. She replied, “Following in my footsteps? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” Yet it seems as though, suddenly, Lourdes wants to do something like that, or as close to it as someone from Gen Z (bordering dangerously on millennial) can get to imitating Madonna. With imitation still being, so they insist, the sincerest form of flattery. Not, instead, the greatest sign that there is nothing original left to do or say.
Genna Rivieccio
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