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Tag: Madonna Ciccone

  • Comparing Madonna’s “Right On Time” to the Nature of Some of Taylor Swift’s Recent Lyrical Offerings

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    At a time when Taylor Swift’s lyrics have never been so glaringly cringe, Madonna, funnily enough, chose to release one of her own “From the Vault” tracks (though, of course, that’s not what she calls them) from 1994’s Bedtime Stories. This in honor of the forthcoming EP celebrating the album’s thirtieth anniversary, Bedtime Stories: The Untold Chapter. And, of “all” the songs (though the word “all” makes it sound as if the album is far more robust than its mere eight tracks) Madonna might have chosen to release from it as a single, she opted for the hyper-mushy “Right On Time.” This being more than likely because the other songs on it have been released/heard before by the die-hard fans in some way or another, including the supposed fellow “rarities” on it: “Freedom,” “Let Down Your Guard” and “Love Won’t Wait.” And what all of these previously unreleased tracks have in common with the ones that actually made the cut for Bedtime Stories is that the overarching motif is one of love, amorousness. Which was very much aligned with the fact that she met Carlos Leon in September of ‘94, a month before the album would come out.

    So, although, logically speaking, Leon might not have been a direct influence on the lyrics of the songs seeing as how Madonna had been working on them prior to meeting him, it was almost as though she “conjured” him with such lyrics as, “Who needs the sun/When the rain’s so full of life?/Who needs the sky?/It’s here in your arms/I want to be buried/You are/My sanctuary.” Quoting Walt Whitman (for she was also doing that long before Lana Del Rey), Madonna speaks an intro to the track from “Leaves of Grass”: “Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow.” Evidently, it was Leon who spoke to her in the right voice that September day in Central Park. As the lore goes, he was on his bike and she was running. He had noticed her a few times prior to this day before deciding to approach her. Ah, the glory days of when a person could get cruised, with no apps to make it “easy” (though actually much harder) to meet someone.

    And perhaps in that instant, Madonna really did think to herself, “It seems like I’ve been waiting/All my life for you to rescue me [a blatant nod to her 1990 track of the same name]/And there ain’t no hesitating/This is right/Boy, I was meant to be/With you.” Which does somewhat beg the question of when “Right On Time” was actually written—perhaps not “tacked on” to the album because it was too rushed. Then again, the generic sentiments of the lyrics don’t necessarily mean Leon was the catalyst for them at all. Not like Swift being oh so specific about Travis Kelce’s supposed “redwood” of a wang on The Life of a Showgirl’s “Wood” (arguably the most challenging track to endure). Or just about any other over-the-top-in-its-corniness song that’s aimed at him.

    Even though, in truth, Kelce is ultimately a blurred-out shape to Swift, who can use just about any of the men from her past as a composite for describing “love,” whether in its “positive” state (e.g., “Lover”) or its heart-wrenching, post-breakup one (e.g., “All Too Well”). But with the content (and that is the word to describe it, for every song on the album sounds decidedly “churned out”) on The Life of a Showgirl, Swift is worse off for trying to be “specific in her generalness.” For example, the unfortunate part during “The Fate of Ophelia” during which she sings, “Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes.” The only thing “specific” about that might be alluding to, as usual, how Kelce plays football, but it’s certainly enough to amplify the ick factor.

    In (very slight) contrast, Madonna decides to keep her mawkishness more “catch-all” when she sings something like, “With you, you’re like a lucky charm that I just found/You, you’re like a ray of sunshine [so close to ‘ray of light’] on a cloudy/Day, you always make the darkness lighter/You, you’re right on time.” And yes, there’s no denying that if someone saw those lyrics without being aware that Madonna had penned them, they could easily attribute it to Swift. While some M fans might take that as an insult, perhaps it’s actually more of a testament to how underrated the Queen of Pop has been when it comes to writing “romantic” songs. Indeed, for the most part, she’s flown under the radar as a romantic because the majority of love songs by her that have been her biggest hits are more about unrequitedness and/or tragic loss (hear: “Live to Tell,” “Take A Bow” and “The Power of Goodbye”). It’s been very rare for Madonna to ever go totally “all in” on the saccharine front. Unless, of course, one is talking about her early 80s-era work, when she was more willing to play the “slighted ingenue” (case in point, “Burning Up,” “Think of Me” and “Pretender”).

    Yet such a “persona” never really “fit” Madonna to a tee the way that it has for Swift (and served her so well, too). Because Madonna’s message was always one that fundamentally traced back to empowerment. And for most women (who aren’t lying to themselves), a sense of true empowerment usually means being single. Or “going through men” the way that Madonna does now with her rotating crop of boy toys. This in itself being so much different that Swift’s “serial monogamy” style. And then, of course, when one thinks of Madonna’s most well-known hits, none of them are pining and whining anthems in the Swift vein. “Like A Virgin,” “Express Yourself,” “Vogue,” “Ray of Light,” and “Music” are just a few of the non-woe-is-me instances of Madonna’s typical form of chart success.

    And this is, in large part, what made (and makes) Bedtime Stories such a departure from most of the other work in her catalogue. One that is, inarguably, much more varied (both musically and lyrically) than what Swift’s usual themes have to offer. Yet with the release of “Right On Time,” it’s difficult not to feel as though this is one song that’s perhaps better left in “the vault.” For it doesn’t show off Madonna’s standard deviation from what pop stars like Swift tend to come up with when it comes to describing newfound love. In other words, listeners aren’t getting a track that innovatively compares this “tingly feeling,” as it were, to being “like a virgin.” Instead, the lyrics sound as though they were made to complement the possibility of Madonna synergistically promoting a watch brand. Which would also be very Swift-ish in nature.

    But, again, this is where it bears reminding that Madonna was doing “Swift shit” long before it all seemed to become attributed solely to said “Boring Barbie,” with M not only perfecting the art of marketing and PR, but also self-branding when it was still in its infancy for musicians (and celebrities in general). And, of course, commodifying something “underground” and making it mainstream (as Swift is trying to do with this whole showgirl shtick; granted, such a shtick is far less “underground” than vogueing was at the time when Madonna released the signature song paying homage to it).

    Perhaps by unleashing “Right On Time” just after The Life of a Showgirl, Madonna also wants to remind the masses that she was writing these types of mushy, “so in love” lyrics before her as well. Except, unlike Swift, Madonna had the good sense not to release the track until now. As a kind of afterthought. A “postscript” on her varied, typically overlooked range. But even Madonna wouldn’t have the audacity to put out the voice memos that Swift has for certain The Life of a Showgirl variants (oh so many variants) and sell them to an increasingly skeptical fanbase.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna Chooses the Right Time to Release “Right On Time”—Because It Would Have Been a Disservice for Her to Include It on Bedtime Stories in 1994

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    On the same day as announcing that her Bedtime Stories: The Final Chapter EP is actually real, and not just another tease (like, thus far, her much-talked about biopic, in all its various iterations), Madonna opted to casually drop one of the “rarities” from the record (of which there are actually none apart from this), “Right On Time.” A title that, in many ways, is only too appropriate for someone like her, who not only “burst onto the scene” just as the world needed/was ready for the first modern female pop star, but whose entire career has generally been guided by a “right place, right time” kind of luck. 

    “Right On Time,” however, seems to indicate that Madonna was aware it wasn’t the right time at all to release a track like this, awash as it is in the kind of syrupy lyrics that she might have been sooner caught singing in the early and mid-80s (e.g., the unbridled saccharineness of 1984’s “Shoo-Bee-Doo,” during which she sings, “Why don’t you dry your eyes, try and realize?/Love can open any door, and maybe/If you trust in me I can make you see/Shoo-bee-doo-bee-doo, ooh la la, come to me, baby/Shoo-bee-doo-bee-doo, ooh la la, don’t say maybe”). And although her intent with Bedtime Stories was to veer away from the oversexed aura that pulsated from Erotica’s very core, she probably didn’t really want to go this far on the other side of the spectrum. Hence, waiting only until now to show the extent of what she was willing to do in order to win back the favor of John Q. Public (namely, the type of people that could be classified as her own Midwestern brethren). Or rather, prove to the critics and the masses at large that, as she once pointed out, they couldn’t handle dealing with their own sexual fantasies, let alone talking frankly about sex at all. And so, as it was once said on VH1, Madonna, to paraphrase, simply picked up her clothes and put them back on. 

    And she did so, you guessed it, right on time. Because it just so happened that she wanted to embody a certain “softer” look and persona in order to throw her hat into the ring for the part of Eva Perón, writing an eight-page letter to Alan Parker in 1994 to express her ardent interest in portraying the simultaneously loved and hated Argentine political icon. To even more succinctly convey her acting abilities on that specific front, the concept behind the “Take A Bow” video would prove to be extremely instrumental. In it, Madonna goes for a 1940s-styled look (from the top [her hat with face veil] to bottom [her Christian Louboutin—then an unknown designer—heels]) meant to channel her inner Evita. A woman who could be both vulnerable, vixen-y and a little wrathful.

    That woman is nowhere to be found at any point during “Right On Time,” wherein Madonna is more unnecessarily worshipful than “vulnerable.” For example, “This is it, I know there’s so much more/With you, you’re like a dream that came true/Oh you, you’re like a fantasy that came into my life/And every day is so much brighter/You, you’re right on time.” And then, of course, there are the very “Till There Was You”-reminiscent lyrics, “Birds are singing just because they’re next to you/Bells are ringing, maybe you’re my dream come true/This groove keeps swinging, all the little things you do/The joy you’re bringing, maybe I’m in love with you.”

    Needless to say, a song like “Right On Time” does not possess the same subtlety or intelligence as some of the other love songs on the record (of which there are many), including “Inside of Me” (produced by Nellee Hooper), “Sanctuary” (produced by Madonna, Hooper and Dallas Austin) and, of course, “Take A Bow” (produced by Babyface, and who many said should have gotten a full-on “featuring” credit). In truth, it has all the lyrical subtlety of an anvil, which is out of character for the Madonna songwriting style of the post-early to mid-80s. And this is part of why “Right On Time” makes it more glaringly apparent than ever before that Bedtime Stories was M’s willful clawing back into the good graces of the public. This while, at the same time, proving her depth of range in musical styles. Glomming onto the R&B sound at a time when most (white people) remained focused on grunge, Madonna was also then still showcasing her ability to have her finger on the pulse of the next trend (meanwhile, Mariah was still either recording cheesy ballads or secret grunge albums). 

    To achieve that sound, Madonna turned to the likes of Dallas Austin to infuse the record with the, let’s call it, “flavor” she wanted (no doubt in part thanks to the influence of “canoodling” with 2Pac during that period). With the previously unreleased tracks from Bedtime Stories that have come out in the years since, it seems that Austin wasn’t in a musical variation kind of mood when it came to producing for M. At least if the backing track similarities between “Your Honesty” (which was unveiled on 2003’s Remixed & Revisited) and “Right On Time” are anything to go by.

    While Austin might have worked with her on this particular track, an official press release announcing the EP was sure to mention, “Madonna collaborated with Stuart Price to shape this EP, editing and mixing previously unreleased versions into a cohesive new chapter.” Price, a fan favorite producer, also worked with Madonna on Confessions on a Dance Floor, and now, for its “sequel,” slated for a 2026 release. And this is a reassuring piece of news, as one can’t help but get afraid when Madonna, who had once always stated that she hated looking back and only wanted to move forward, is in a “revisiting” mood like never before, having also released Veronica Electronica earlier this year. And, looking back on the record that came before Ray of Light, a track like “Right On Time” makes it abundantly clear that Madonna was still finding the “voice” for the next phase in her career. 

    Bedtime Stories was a through line to the recording of the Evita Soundtrack, the recording of which required Madonna to take some rigorous voice lessons in order to project in a certain way (hear: “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina”). Ergo, the noticeable and permanent shift that happened in the sound of her voice when Ray of Light came out. Marking the then longest period of time—four years—that she went without releasing a studio album (though she’s well surpassed that precedent as of 2025, with her last album, Madame X, being released in 2019). 

    That wait, too, was a matter of perfect and right timing on Madonna’s part, who tapped into the electronic music zeitgeist after already doing so with R&B in ‘94. Releasing an “untold chapter” of Bedtime Stories in honor of its thirtieth anniversary also feels like it could be “right on time” in terms of reminding listeners that songs by pop stars not only used to be musically layered and dense, but that they could actually go on for longer than three minutes. Though, fittingly, Madonna’s “Right On Time” is only two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Perhaps a testament, once again, to how she has her finger on the pulse, knowing full well that nobody, even “older audiences,” has the attention span for a “long” song anymore. Though she doesn’t seem to quite grasp that no one has the wherewithal for a schmaltzy love song either. 

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna’s Interview for On Purpose with Jay Shetty: A Reminder That She Considers Herself the Queen of Kabbalah Before the Queen of Pop

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    If Madonna has been consistent about one thing since 1996 (though, to outsiders, it’s more like 1998, when Ray of Light came out), it’s her commitment and devotion to Kabbalah. Through all the “reinventions” and various physical “adjustments,” she has continued to incorporate the “teachings” into the majority of her work. Especially her music. And, of course, in her interviews. In her latest, the one billed as not only her “first podcast interview,” but also her “first interview in nine years” (which, of course, doesn’t really track when taking into account all the promotion she did for Madame X six years ago in 2019), she continues to do the same. And yes, one can understand why Madonna being on a podcast is momentous, considering such things are a bit too “low-budget,” so to speak, for her usual tastes. At the same time, one of Madonna’s greatest skills as an entertainer has always been to find a way to disseminate her “highfalutin” ideas while still managing to appeal to the “lowest common denominator” (see: “Vogue”).

    This time around, Madonna is attempting to once again get people on board with Kabbalah, just as she was able to with the majority of celebrities in the early 2000s (e.g., Britney Spears and Demi Moore). Indeed, whereas many who glommed onto the “Kabbalah Centre trend,” complete with the “red bracelets” a.k.a. scarlet thread intended to ward off the evil eye (which, to be fair, many celebrities do have a hard time avoiding), left it behind by the end of the 00s, Madonna never abandoned it, diving in deeper as everyone else seemed to gradually pull away.

    Granted, the 00s saw one of the pinnacles of Madonna’s support for the philosophy cemented in the form of her 2005 documentary, I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, directed by one of her go-tos for music videos (including “Ray of Light”), Jonas Åkerlund. It is in this documentary that a large bulk of what Madonna mentions is also conveyed to Shetty during his On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast. This includes the notion of how forgiving someone who “fucked you over” is one of the most revolutionary teachings of the Zohar, “a kind of decoding of the Torah or the Old Testament.” In fact, it’s one of the elements of Kabbalah that Madonna most underscores whenever she talks about it, this time around using her recently deceased brother, Christopher Ciccone, as an example of someone who fucked her over (see: his “tell-all” memoir, Life with My Sister Madonna) and who she chose to forgive (though, conveniently, when he was already about to die).

    While other celebrities would settle for being paid by MasterClass to teach something, Madonna has opted to participate in a “pay what you can” operation, via Kabbalah.com, called “The Mystical Studies of the Zohar with Madonna and Eitan Yardeni.” It was the latter who also featured prominently in the abovementioned I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, and shows up once again toward the second half of the podcast. This further cementing the idea that he is Madonna’s proverbial guru.

    During the trailer for the class, it’s only fitting that a deep cut, “Has to Be,” from the Ray of Light album should play as Madonna talks about her first notable experience with “the muse” or “manifestation,” as they’re calling it. Once again trotting out the first time she ever wrote a song—while living in, only too appropriately, an abandoned synagogue—Madonna recalls how, afterward, she kept wondering, “Where did that come from?” Trying to tell viewers that she never had any intention of becoming a singer, and yet, somehow, the music and lyrics for her first song, “Tell the Truth,” just “poured out” of her, so to speak. Though, to tell the truth, they were lyrics partially extrapolated from her journal.

    What’s more, anyone who knows the story of pre-fame Madonna is aware that she did have the ambition to be a singer once she realized it meant she would be front and center, rather than any form of “backup,” as would have been the case if she had continued pursuing the original avenue of being a dancer or, after that, the drummer in a band called The Breakfast Club. A band that she finagled her way into as a result of her relationship with Dan Gilroy, who had started the group with his brother, Ed, a man far less, let’s say, “charmed” by Madonna than Dan. Especially as time wore on and Madonna made it more than fairly apparent she wanted to take over as The Breakfast Club’s lead singer (in the end, she went off and started her own band called Emmy and the Emmys).

    Alas, these are “uglier” details on Madonna’s road to fame that she would prefer to leave out of her “Mystical Studies of the Zohar” class, instead presenting her rise to prominence as more of an example of the divine rather than what Norman Mailer once called an example of her having the “cast-iron balls of the paisans in generations before her.” To that point, Madonna does bring up being Italian (because Lady Gaga isn’t the only umpteenth-generation pop star who can make that claim) in the interview with Shetty, citing it as one of the reasons she always had difficulty remaining calm (in addition to being a Leo). Therefore, yet another one of the reasons why Kabbalah has been so helpful to her in that it’s effectively “stamped out” the inherent choleric nature of being una donna italiana. And yet, what Madonna still can’t stamp out is the Catholicism that has remained far more inherent to her work than Kabbalah. Even now.

    Regardless, Madonna is all about incorporating a mélange of the different things she unearths in her studies as a student of life. So it is that Catholicism and Kabbalah have intertwined for her in many ways. Even in I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, during which Madonna is at her most markedly Kabbalah-centric on record (until the Jay Shetty interview came along), not only “subliminally” incorporating images and chants related to Jewish mysticism, but also offering such pearls of wisdom as, “If you want to read things literally, you read the Old Testament and if you want to understand the hidden meanings of the Torah, you read the Zohar.” Considering she was studying the Zohar at that point in time, in 2004 (when the Re-Invention Tour was in full swing), it is fair to say she could (and is now going to) effectively teach a class on the subject.

    Indeed, her entire purpose in coming on Shetty’s podcast was to reemphasize that she sees her purpose in life as being to share the wisdom she’s gleaned, in addition to her understanding of “the light” (as she keeps calling it, and also did in I’m Going to Tell You a Secret). This also being how she, at times, refers to God. Or what “God” is. During some of the interspersed footage and images in the trailer for her Kabbalah Master Class, the same footage of a POV shot that makes it look as though one is staring at the sky above, shining a bright light (a.k.a. the sun) through the trees is repurposed from I’m Going to Tell You a Secret. Which, again, was Madonna’s original master class on the philosophy. It is also during the documentary that she mentions, long before this podcast, that Kabbalah has changed her for the better, made her an inherently less selfish person. A person who now asks, “What was I thinking before I was thinking?” (and yes, she mentions to Shetty that this is something she still says often in reference to who she was before discovering “the teachings”).

    In I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, even her own father, Silvio “Tony” Ciccone, weighs in on the shift that has been palpable in Madonna ever since she had her first child and “got into” Kabbalah at the same time. Interviewed after going to see her show in Chicago (the closest city to their native Michigan where the tour was stopping) with his wife, Joan (RIP), Tony noted, “What I saw of last night’s performance was a more positive outreaching of her to the public. Her concern for the world, for people—to me, that’s maturity.” The couple is also shown watching Madonna during her performance of “Mother and Father,” during which her Catholicness flares up by way of the screens that showcase Jesus and Mary behind her. Something Tony is only too happy to see, regardless of what it “means” from Madonna’s perspective or whether or not she’s trying to “say” something else with these images. For Tony, Jesus and Mary being displayed without Madonna doing something blasphemous with or to their images—as she might have in the past (and still does when one least expects it)—is all he needs to see.

    He also mentions that even he hasn’t been immune to Madonna trying to spread “her” Kabbalah gospel, remarking that she gave him a book, but that, “To me, there’s nothing in Kabbalah that’s not in scripture… In the end, you know, we all believe in one God. I think most people do.” Ah, would that such a pretty thought were true—otherwise, there might not be half as many wars.

    I’m Going to Tell You a Secret is also the first time Madonna really tried to make her art serve as a “Trojan horse” for Kabbalah, or rather, a “tool” for those watching, commenting at one point (namely, in the segment after Michael Moore is interviewed), “I’ve always thought that my job was to wake people up. But it’s not enough just to wake people up. You’ve got to wake people up and give them a direction. You’ve got to wake people up and give them tools about how to deal with life. You’ve got to wake people up and give them solutions. Otherwise they’re gonna fall back asleep again.”

    Perhaps Madonna has seen people falling asleep again too many times in the past decade since the Orange Creature became the president, hence her seemingly sudden decision to pursue a “project” that never would have been on anyone’s bingo card up until now: teaching Kabbalah master classes (though at least M continues to set herself apart by not being paid by MasterClass itself to teach something like “marketing and self-promotion in pop stardom”).

    In the trailer for said class, there’s all kinds of hilarity ensuing. Including, first and foremost, that Madonna’s boy toy of the moment, Akeem Morris, is randomly sitting there for no apparent reason other than to look pretty while Madonna offers sound bites such as, “It’s, like, everything happens for a reason” (a cliche that Cher Horowitz would surely deem “way existential”) and “I don’t wanna do a residency in Vegas” (this said in the section about “False Gods”). During each divided scene, there are captions that mention the eight lessons that will be covered (should you choose to sign up): “Study the Art of Manifestation,” “Study Freedom,” “Study Reincarnation,” “Study False Gods,” “Study Chasing After What Doesn’t Belong to You” (during which a scene of Madonna revealing her pursuits of a married man [Antonio Banderas?] provides a bit of zest), “Study Desire,” “Study Forgiveness” and “Study Love.” It is during “Study Forgiveness” that, as previously mentioned, Madonna wields her recently deceased brother as fodder for how she’s managed to forgive someone who did her wrong. And surely, Christopher would be as delighted about this as seeing Madonna allow their visit to their mother’s grave be filmed for Truth or Dare.

    In this and a few other regards, it’s not difficult to be cynical about what Madonna is once more attempting: to convince people that Kabbalah is “the way, the truth, the life (or, in this instance, the light)” (if one will pardon the Christian parlance). Having long ago gone from the “Material Girl” to the “Ethereal Girl,” as it has already been said. And while that might remain a hard pill for many to swallow, Madonna is at least trying to use her pop star abilities as a force of good, a force of positive change. Which is more than can be said for, say, Sabrina Carpenter, who’s still emulating the sexually-charged portion of Madonna’s career (and not even with half as much shock value). Give this new crop of pop stars a bit more time, however, and they, too, will be offering pay-what-you-can master classes on spirituality. Just another way in which Madonna has blazed a path for them all.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • When It Comes to Her Father-Daughter Dynamic, It’s Just as Madonna Once Said: “Life Is a Circle”

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    There was a time in Madonna’s life when it probably would have been unfathomable (mostly for Madonna herself) to imagine having a close relationship with her father, Silvio “Tony” Ciccone. But it seems that, with time, not only has the Queen of Pop “softened,” but so, too, has her father. At least in terms of his erstwhile strict views on how his daughter should act. The very same views that forged Madonna on the path toward becoming famous as a direct result of her perennial rebellion, her staunch flouting of “the rules.” Or, as she once put it, “I wouldn’t have turned out the way I was if I didn’t have all those old-fashioned values to rebel against.” So yes, there’s no denying the masses that came to adore and admire Madonna have none other than Mr. Ciccone to thank. A man who was himself raised with some very strict, old-fashioned values. After all, his parents were of the Greatest Generation, and “Old World” Italian immigrants, to boot.  

    Part of the Italian diaspora that took place from 1880 to 1924, Michelina Di Iulio and Gaetano Ciccone settled in the Beaver County area (yes, of course Madonna’s roots would have such a suggestive name), with Silvio, their youngest son, being born in Aliquippa. Eventually, “Tony” as he came to be known, thanks to the Americanization of many Italians (whether genuinely dal vecchio paese or “first generation” and beyond), started working in a steel mill in Pittsburgh. It doesn’t get more working class than that. But Tony clearly wanted to transcend this status, to take advantage of the then still believable and achievable American dream that would allow him to have the better life his parents had immigrated to the U.S. for in the first place.

    As Madonna told Time in 1985, “My grandmother and grandfather spoke no English at all. They weren’t very educated, and I think in a way they represented an old lifestyle that my father really didn’t want to have anything to do with. It’s not that he was ashamed, really, but he wanted to be better.” And so, he became an optics engineer after serving in the Air Force, where his friendship with a fellow Airman led him to Madonna Fortin, a Bay City native, as her eldest daughter, Madonna Jr., would be. Though, of course, to her eventual fans, there was only ever one Madonna—theirs. MLVC: Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone. 

    To Madonna herself though, M Sr. would forever loom large as the idol of her own life, saying during Truth or Dare, “She seemed like an angel to me.” That opinion would only increase the more that time went on in the years after Madonna Sr.’s death from breast cancer when “Little Nonnie” was just five years old. And it was her mother’s death that seemed to harden Tony all the more, to reinforce that he had to be strict with his children. And that, furthermore, they needed a new mother figure to help light the way. Enter Joan Gustafson, the Ciccones’ housekeeper. In somewhat cliché fashion, Tony would end up marrying her because, hey, what is the ideal wife if not a housekeeper? He did so in 1966, three years after Madonna Sr.’s death. Obviously, Madonna was not a fan. Neither of Joan, nor of her father being so quick to seemingly “forget” all about his real wife.

    Besides that, it was apparent that Madonna was exhibiting some classic signs of the Electra complex, which she, for all intents and purposes, openly addressed in the abovementioned Truth or Dare. This when telling her then bestie, Sandra Bernhard, “I had those dreams for, like, a five-year period after that. That’s all I dreamed about was that people were jumping on me and strangling me and I was constantly screaming for my father, and no sound would come out.” Bernhard then asked, “And what happened when you woke up? Were you crying?” Madonna replied, “I’d just be sweating and afraid and I’d have to go to sleep with my father.” This “subconscious” word choice leaving it open to plenty of innuendo-laden connotations since she didn’t opt to instead say something more measured, like, “I had to go into my father’s bedroom and fall asleep there.”

    Even so, Bernhard practically invokes what follows when she further questions, “How was that when you slept with him?” Without missing a beat, Madonna says, “Fine, I went right to sleep—after he fucked me.” She starts laughing and quickly adds, “No, just kidding.” Though, of course, there was a small kernel of truth in what she said in terms of wanting to “possess” her father fully, to have ownership over all aspects of his love, in a way that she wouldn’t ever be able to from a romantic/sexual perspective. And certainly not after Joan entered the picture to kick Madonna out of Tony’s bed—literally. 

    The friction Madonna experienced with Joan, who she had nothing but contempt for as a teenager, based on comments about Joan making her wear the same exact dress patterns as her sisters and refusing to let her use tampons, only compounded the friction she already had with her father, who she undeniably resented for bringing a strange woman into their home. A woman who was now not only replacing Madonna Sr., but also Madonna, with the latter taking on the “wife role” as the eldest daughter. With Joan in the mix, it appeared as though Madonna’s drive to “get the hell out of Michigan”—or, for the time being, at least out of her father’s house—became only stronger. Breaking out of there at eighteen to attend the University of Michigan on a dance scholarship, Madonna dropped out after a year to answer the apparent call of destiny by moving to New York in 1978, a maneuver that caused a major rift between her and her father, who couldn’t understand why she would throw away a college education and a solid path to that “better life” his own parents wanted for him, and all because of some whim. A whim that even Madonna herself couldn’t fully explain, apart from taking Christopher Flynn’s advice to go where it was all happening, get on a faster track to becoming a professional dancer through Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. 

    Once she moved to the proverbial big city, Madonna’s ties to her father grew frayed, something she reflected on in that ‘85 Time article with the assessment, “When I moved away for a long time we weren’t really that close. He didn’t understand what I was doing when I first moved away. First I was a dancer and I would call him and say, ‘Well, I’m dancing.’ He never, well, he’s a sensible guy, and what’s dancing to him? He can’t imagine that you can make a living from it or work at it or be proud of it or think of it as an accomplishment. He could never really be supportive about it.” And yes, there were many times when he urged her to just give up and come back to Michigan, but the thought of doing that is what actually kept her going during some of her darkest days in New York, vowing that to return home would be the ultimate failure—the ultimate way to prove that her father was right. 

    After Tony started hearing his daughter’s songs on the radio, however, he couldn’t deny that it was Madonna who had been right. That she did “make something of herself” as she says in Truth or Dare. But as Madonna’s star rose, so, too, did her penchant for pushing buttons, for stirring up controversy. One of the apexes of that occurring in 1989, with the “Like A Prayer” video, which no doubt gave Tony a shock as much as any devout Catholic. And yet, despite stating, “More than anything, I want my father’s approval, whether I want to admit it or not,” that has never prompted Madonna to shy away from doing “scandalous” things, mainly of a sexually-charged nature. This infamously reaching an apex in the 1992-1993 era, with the back-to-back unleashing of Erotica, the Sex book, Body of Evidence and The Girlie Show. And yes, even before this point, Tony was obliged to ask his daughter of the Blond Ambition Tour, “You undress in this performance?” She balked, “No, of course I don’t.” But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t have other people undress later on in The Girlie Show. What’s more, Tony is also recorded asking Madonna if she would “tone down” her performance during the night he chose to come see the Blond Ambition Tour. She immediately replies, “No, because that would be compromising my artistic integrity.” 

    Her unwavering devotion to her craft, her work, however, is something that has always innately bonded her to Tony, who she credits for her incredible work ethic. And then, later on in life, when she had children, it seemed that she could better understand where her father had been coming from with all of his strictness. With Madonna herself turning out to be quite the “stickler” for the rules she made for her own children to abide (including, most illustriously, not letting them watch TV). 

    In more recent years, as Tony entered his nineties (indicating that Madonna, too, might have the same longevity—something she’s alluded to in her Madame X Tour, during one of the banter sections), it seemed that Madonna grew ever more protective of their relationship, of keeping him close. This even more important after the back-to-back deaths of Joan and Madonna’s younger brother, Christopher (at one point a frequent artistic collaborator of hers in the late 80s and 90s before the pair had a falling out), in September and October of 2024, respectively. This just a year after Madonna’s oldest brother (and overall sibling), Anthony, died in February of 2023.

    So yes, the sense of loss in the Ciccone family has been palpable of late. Which is surely part of why Madonna had a Thanksgiving with Tony at the table in ‘24, sharing pictures of her children and father, along with a caption that read, “Watching him cry in the cemetery when we buried my brother Christopher—right after he lost his wife—was a moment I will never forget. Spending time with him and all my children on Thanksgiving was Medicine for the Soul.”

    In June of ‘25, Madonna shared another post featuring an image of herself and Tony (plus Madonna’s current much younger boo, Akeem Morris, for an added bit of freaky-deaky cachet) in honor of his 94th birthday (June 2, 1931), captioning it, “Congratulations for riding the roller coaster of life with humor and sanity intact. Thank you for sharing your mantra in life with me, which is: ‘I’m gonna go until the wheels fall off.’”

    This year, as Madonna turns sixty-seven, not only does she herself continue to adhere to that mantra despite all the naysaying against her (she’s too “old” to keep putting out music, she should just pack it in, etc., etc.), but she also appears as in touch with her father’s Italian roots as ever, spending yet another birthday in Italy. The place that essentially helped give her what Norman Mailer called “a heart built out of the cast-iron balls of a hundred peasant ancestors.” Madonna’s own patriarch being a very integral one of those hundred “peasant ancestors.” For, yes, life truly is a circle, as M sings on 2019’s “Extreme Occident” (or, as she says in a different way on 2003’s “Easy Ride,” “I go round and round/Just like a circle/I can see a clearer picture/When I touch the ground, I come full-circle/To my place and I am home/I am home”). And it’s a circle that has led her right back to the father she once so vehemently rebelled against. But whose love and approval she still so badly wants.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna Endures a New Era of Survivor’s Guilt

    Madonna Endures a New Era of Survivor’s Guilt

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    Throughout her life, Madonna has frequently talked about having survivor’s guilt. Namely, when it comes to all the people she lost in the 1980s to the AIDS epidemic. And then, later on in life, as she pointed out somewhat “flexingly” during her 2016 Billboard Woman of the Year speech, her contemporaries started to die, too. Hence, her remark, “Michael is gone, Tupac is gone, Whitney is gone, Prince is gone, Amy Winehouse is gone, Bowie is gone…and I’m still standing.” Sure, Amy and Bowie weren’t her contemporaries (and Tupac was “just” a lover), but the message was clear: Madonna continued to have survivor’s guilt. Managing to outlive the majority of the musical artists she came up with, in addition to those who inspired her before and after she became famous.

    As for the “before” part of being famous, her younger brother, Christopher Ciccone was instrumental to this phase. Which is why, in the wake of his death—at just sixty-three years old—Madonna reflected, “He was the closest human to me for so long. It’s hard to explain our bond. But it grew out of an understanding that we were different and society was going to give us a hard time for not following the status quo. We took each other’s hands and we danced through the madness of our childhood. In fact, dance was a kind of superglue that held us together. Discovering dance in our small Midwestern town saved me and then my brother came along, and it saved him too. My ballet teacher, also named Christopher, created a safe space for my brother to be gay. A word that was not spoken or even whispered where we lived. When I finally got the courage to go to New York to become a dancer, my brother followed.”

    Christopher tells it somewhat differently in his 2008 memoir (though more “tell-all”), Life With My Sister Madonna, noting that Madonna was the one to lure him, “siren”-style to the big city, insisting, “Come to New York, and you can stay with me in my apartment. I’ll introduce you to people. I’ll take [dance] classes with you. I’ll get you into a company.” Christopher then does as he’s told only to be greeted by Madonna bluntly telling him, “‘Hi Christopher, you can’t live here after all.’ Straight and to the point, with no sugarcoating. ‘What do you mean I can’t live here? I just gave up my life in Detroit. My apartment, my job, everything.’ Madonna shrugs, ‘Whatever…’ Seeing my crestfallen face, she relents slightly, ‘You can sleep on the floor for a couple of nights but that’s it.’”

    Madonna’s reasons weren’t entirely callous, for Christopher later learns that the building owner supposedly found out about her intentions to have a permanent houseguest and put the kibosh on it. Or who knows? Maybe it was just Madonna’s fucked-up way of pushing her brother out of the Midwestern womb so that he could be born into his complete gay self. And, like professional dancing, Madonna was convinced New York was the only place to do that. Turns out, for Christopher, however, that it would be Canada, with an Ottawa-based company called Le Groupe de la Place Royale hiring him for three hundred dollars a week. A rather cush job (at least for a dancer) that Madonna ended up “siren-ing” him out of as well, promising him a gig as her backup dancer for the club performances she was planning to do around the state and nation in order to promote “Everybody” and her debut album, Madonna.

    Naturally, after Christopher already gave up his steady dancing gig, Madonna told him the day he arrived back in New York that the position was actually filled. But, as he said, that time, she let him live with her—so that was a step up. For a while afterward, Christopher got a job as a “card counter” at a greeting card company before Madonna finally decided she did need him to accompany her on this mini tour. One gets the sense that, through all the shade about Madonna’s blasély cold comportment, Christopher was always looking to her as the catalyst for what to do next in his life. And being a catalyst or galvanizer is what any older sibling worth admiring tends to embody.

    Still, that didn’t stop Christopher from a very pointed dedication at the beginning of the book that reads: “For my father, Silvio, and to Joan, who has always been a mother to me.” That latter part of the dedication was an automatic knife dig into Madonna, who never warmed all that much to Joan, painting her as the wicked stepmother early on in her career as she told stories of their housekeeper-turned-mother figure that depicted an oppressive portrait. Case in point, informing Carrie Fisher in a 1991 interview for Rolling Stone, “My stepmother told me I wasn’t allowed to wear tampons until I got married. Can you imagine?” Joan Gustafson (before she became Ciccone) also sewed the Ciccone daughters the same uniform clothing with no personality that Madonna despised. Prompting her to make distinct amendments in order to stand out. As she said in her 1985 interview with Time, “I really saw myself as the quintessential Cinderella. You know, I have this stepmother and I have all this work to do and it’s awful and I never go out and I don’t have pretty dresses. The thing I hated about my sisters most was my stepmother insisted on buying us the same dresses. I would do everything not to look like them. I would wear weird-colored knee socks or put bows in my hair or anything.”

    But if Christopher’s dedication to Joan at the beginning of his book is an indication, perhaps he never felt as hostile toward their stepmother as Madonna did (or, again, the effusive nod was just a means to goad Madonna). Maybe, like Silvio Ciccone, he was simply grateful to have a maternal replacement. Madonna, however, would not forget her real mother, her namesake. And she was determined to free herself of both Michigan and Joan when the time came. Ultimately, her freedom would extend to breaking Christopher out of the Midwest as well, taking him along for her crazy ride in New York and then into the moated world of fame and fortune. It was his attraction to this world, he admits, that inspired him to withstand so much abuse. Like anyone would be, he was seduced by this realm of privilege and influence, especially as a formerly middle-class Midwesterner.

    In many ways, Madonna seemed to “choose” Christopher as the lone member of her family to join her in this embarkment upon success precisely because he seemed so “malleable,” so willing to go with the flow. Alas, Madonna had another thing coming if she didn’t think Christopher, a Sagittarius cusping Scorpio the day before his birthday (November 22—also JFK’s assassination day), wasn’t going to say something eventually. Though perhaps she didn’t imagine it would be as public and immortal as a book.

    Whatever catty ills he speaks of her in Life With My Sister Madonna, though, he knows, in the end, that he would not “exist” without Madonna, his “maker,” of sorts. So it is that he states, “I finally understand and accept that one aspect of my life will never change: I was born my mother’s son, but I will die my sister’s brother.” Eerily prescient words considering headlines like, “Christopher Ciccone, artist and Madonna’s brother, dies at age 63,” “Madonna’s brother, Christopher Ciccone, has died at 63” and “Madonna’s Brother Christopher Ciccone Dies at 63, Less Than 2 Years After Brother Anthony’s Death at 66.” Indeed, Anthony Ciccone was the eldest of the brood, and, like Christopher, portrayed by the media as having a highly contentious relationship with his sister—that is, if and when they ever spoke at all.

    Around 2014, Anthony lashed out by telling the media, that his sister “doesn’t give a shit if I’m dead or alive. She lives in her own world. I never loved her in the first place, she never loved me. We never loved each other.” Harsh words, and something of an ultimate betrayal with regard to the Italian-American view of family as sacrosanct. At least Christopher had the decency to mention at the outset of his memoir, “…when all is said and done and written, I am truly proud that Madonna is my sister and always will be.” Just as Madonna will be of him, regardless of the rift they endured starting at the end of the 90s, just as Madonna was taking up with Guy Ritchie, a man Christopher has no problem mocking in the memoir and, in turn, his sister’s egregious mistake in marrying him. As Madonna put it in her “Instagram obituary,” alluding to the memoir, “I admired him. He had impeccable taste. And a sharp tongue, which he sometimes used against me but I always forgave him.” Even if it might have taken Christopher getting prostate cancer for her to do so.

    In another part of the book, Christopher corroborates some of Madonna’s contempt for her stepmother by illuminating some of Joan’s harshness toward the eldest female Ciccone in an anecdote that details her telling M, “Shut up and put it on” of the aforementioned banal dress she sewed from the same Butterick pattern for all the sisters. Even with Joan’s recent death of cancer at the age of eighty-one, it’s difficult to imagine Madonna forgiving her for that sartorial slight. No matter that it probably subliminally helped pushed her to be the style queen she is today. With Joan’s death occurring just weeks before Christopher’s, the tectonic shifts in Madonna’s family of origin are palpable.

    And while Madonna has endured a triple wallop of familial loss in the past two years, it is Christopher’s death that has undeniably affected her the most—thereby leaving her with that nagging sense of survivor’s guilt she’s long been known to possess. Further compounded by Christopher being her younger brother. His death before hers defies the “natural” order—even if Madonna has every intention of living until at least a hundred. Something her father is also hopefully poised to do, now currently ninety-three. Because, in truth, Silvio’s death anytime soon would be an emotional blow Madonna might not be able to take on the heels of all this loss.

    Whatever ill will this brother and sister duo had, Madonna was quick to commemorate Christopher’s life by additionally remarking, “We soared the highest heights together. And floundered in the lowest lows. Somehow, we always found each other again and we held hands and we kept dancing. The last few years have not been easy. We did not speak for some time but when my brother got sick we found our way back to each other. I did my best to keep him alive as long as possible. He was in so much pain towards the end.” This description evokes the image of 80s-era Madonna at the bedsides of her gay friends dying of AIDS, all while she funneled funds into keeping them alive (or at least comfortable) for as long as she could. Mercifully, Christopher was not lost to that epidemic—though Madonna’s ex, Sean Penn was sure to make him feel dirty anyway when he asked him if he had AIDS years after the two had apparently done a “blood brothers pact” at the behest of Sean.

    In some regards, the ire Christopher had for both of Madonna’s husbands was a sign of his fueled-by-protectiveness jealousy. After all, he himself once noted that their relationship oftentimes felt like a marriage—complete with all the bickering and fights that one entails. And maybe, in some sense, Christopher was the only man who ever could be “married” to her. For, to quote a Vietnamese proverb used in Christopher’s book, “Brothers and sisters are closer than hands and feet.” Christopher, indeed, always acknowledged his position as the “feet” a.k.a. “humble servant” to his big sister while working in such wide-ranging roles as dresser (during The Virgin Tour), tour director and set designer. Not to mention his interior design efforts on multiple Madonna abodes. And with each “auxiliary” role, he excelled as only someone who knows another person so well could. Maybe too well, hence Madonna eventually getting spooked by their closeness and pushing him out (as he also posits in his memoir). Only to let him back in when it was at the “too late” stage.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna’s “American Pie” Video Is the Closest She’s Come to Identifying With/Admitting to Her “Average Americanness”

    Madonna’s “American Pie” Video Is the Closest She’s Come to Identifying With/Admitting to Her “Average Americanness”

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    The Madonna we know today is one associated with glamor (and yes, that now extends to particularly expensive “beauty treatments”), with being “cosmopolitan.” Rarely, if ever, does she try to do much to actively remind people that she’s from the Midwest. Instead, she frequently cites New York as her “true home” because that’s the place she was really “born” as her real self (it’s more than slightly cheesy, yet she’s not the only “New Yorker” to tout this “chestnut” repeatedly). She’s also prone to straying as far as possible from anything “red state”-related.

    And yet, in 2000, Madonna was perhaps feeling motivated to “unite” the nation during an election year that had already started to stoke fears among liberals of a Republican win. After all, Al Gore still had the (cum) stain of Bill Clinton on him by default, and many voters didn’t see him as being charismatic enough for the presidency (little did they know, charisma would eventually be the last requirement on people’s minds, instead just hoping for their presidential hopefuls to stand upright and/or not spew the most toxic, baseless rhetoric). To boot, the election was still somewhat far-off in the minds of the American people when “American Pie” was released on February 8th. They had no idea that, almost exactly nine months later, on November 7th, the U.S. would be sent into its first political tailspin of the century as George W. Bush refused to cede the election when the networks started to call it in favor of Gore. Instead, he leaned on Florida, saying it wasn’t over yet. Hence, “recount” would become the word of the year so late into it. But yes, before all that, it was easy to wax poetic about America through a cover of Don McLean’s classic.

    To lend an even more personal touch to her William Orbit-ified version of the track, Madonna’s video was intended as a “slice of life” homage to “real” Americans. In other words, the bottom of the barrel people so often referred to derisively as “working class.” Even though Madonna’s own father, Silvio “Tony” Ciccone, was more on the middle-class side of things (he worked as an optical engineer for Chrysler and General Dynamics), it hasn’t stopped her from frequently identifying with the more “blue collar” ilk, at least for the purposes of her “working really hard to make her dream come true” lore. And she did work really hard (yeah, sucking cock!, the misogynists might say as a means to denigrate that hard work). While Tony was the height of the American dream when Madonna was a child and teenager, she then came along to top him (no sexual Electra complex reference intended) on that front. All because of the intense work ethic he instilled within her. A work ethic that one tends to see more in working-class people than middle- and upper-class ones, if only because they’re constantly saddled with more physical, grueling grunt work.

    So it is that “American Pie” pays tribute to this sect of the American population: cab drivers, construction workers, a mother with her daughters, cops, gun sellers… Yes, those last two groups sound decidedly un-Madonna. And they are. Which is part of what makes this video such a unique and rare part of her oeuvre. For, along with this walk of life, she intermingles her usual bread and butter: the gays. It seems to be a move, on her part, designed to show that America is filled with so many different kinds of people who can coexist. That is, once upon a time…

    Even though, looking back, the U.S. doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to showcasing “harmony.” And whenever there was, it was usually belied by the numerous “separate but equal” policies of the nation. For example, the treatment of the LGBTQIA+ community (long before it had that many-lettered moniker). In 2000, gay marriage still wasn’t legal. It wouldn’t be until 2003, and that was only in Massachusetts. As a result, Madonna including so many gay couples kissing in this particular video (one duo even does it front of a church, gasp!) intermixed with “red state types” (that might have later been disgusted to find that they were featured in the same “narrative”) was a big deal. Big enough for her to cop to her Midwestern roots for just four minutes and thirty-five seconds’ worth of time (hell, she even decided to dress “average” in a Charlotte Russe-looking tank top and jeans—though the label on the latter is Cosmic Wonder).

    What’s more, some of the lyrics, despite being written by McLean, are actually quite tailored to Madonna’s own story, including the lines, “I knew that if I had my chance/I could make those people dance/And maybe they’d be happy for a while.” This being the crux of what has driven her to make music for decades (well, that and an insatiable need to be loved and adored). There’s also the mention of how, “I was a lonely teenage broncin’ buck” (a play on “bucking bronco,” of course). A description that perfectly suits the teenage Madonna, who felt constantly out of place and was always rebelling in insidious ways (like wearing flesh-colored tights during a performance at school to make everyone think she was pantyless). Then there are the many allusions to religion that also speak to Madonna’s Catholic upbringing, such as, “And do you have faith in God above/If the Bible tells you so?” and “The three men I admire the most, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost…”

    But more than any lyric, perhaps the most fitting for how Madonna has lived her life is: “Now do you believe in rock and roll?/And can music save your mortal soul?” Even in the darkest hours of the past forty-plus years during which she’s been in the spotlight, Madonna has always seemed to believe that it can. Especially in 2000, when life seemed fairly sinister and uncertain (though no one had any clue that, in hindsight, 2000 would feel like a cakewalk compared to 2024).

    And so, perhaps in the name of “unity”—and setting it as the tone for the new century—Madonna conceded, for just one day out of life, to admit that her past was rooted in the lusterless nature of being an “average American.” Though Madonna never did look quite like any of this lot (maybe that’s why she still keeps herself separate from them via a splitscreen). Probably thanks to her strong Italian and French ancestry. But then, what’s more averagely American than being descended from immigrants?

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • As Usual, It’s Overblown News When Madonna Falls, But Her Latest Tumble Is Yet Another Metaphor for How She Lives (to Tell)

    As Usual, It’s Overblown News When Madonna Falls, But Her Latest Tumble Is Yet Another Metaphor for How She Lives (to Tell)

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    While some pop stars are “allowed” to trip or fall (e.g., Taylor Swift on the top of her precious “Folklore cabin” during The Eras Tour) without it making the overly judgmental rounds on multiple news outlets, Madonna has not been permitted the same luxury for quite some time. Certainly not when she took her last “international incident” of a tumble at the 2015 BRIT Awards (resulting in various ageist memes including the one about her needing a stairlift at her “advanced” age). A fall that was, once again, not something she herself was in control of, but rather, a consequence of an Armani cape tied too tightly around her neck so that it didn’t come off easily at the planned moment, prompting her dancers to whip her backwards like a ragdoll. 

    In the newest edition of “Madonna ‘falls,’” it was yet again a dancer-related mishap, with Daniele Sibilli as the “culprit” who actually stumbled (in extremely thin stilettos, mind you) while dragging Madonna across the stage on her “Open Your Heart” chair—this being the song she was singing for a Seattle audience at the February 18th performance of The Celebration Tour when it happened. Unlike during the “Living for Love” mishap at the BRIT Awards, Madonna wasn’t fazed enough by the fall from her chair to stop singing her verse, continuing on as she toppled from seat to stage, legs up in the air for a few seconds as she did so (something about it smacking of Guy Ritchie’s denouement for 2001’s BMW short, Star). 

    For a moment, she does try to go on singing as though nothing happened, thinking better of it and making a deliberate attempt to force out her laughter (after all, this is the same woman who had an early demo called “Laugh to Keep From Crying”). Because this is M’s way of publicly announcing that she’s fine, it’s all good. Of course, most fans know from her last majorly publicized fall that she doesn’t do too well with any sign of imperfection, least of all in her live performances, always rehearsed to the nth degree (this probably being why the protocol in place should she fall was for everyone else to just keep going).

    After the BRIT Awards debacle, when Madonna went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to promote Rebel Heart and its lead single, DeGeneres asked, “Can we talk about the fall?” (As was DeGeneres’ way with guests to kind of make them feel like shit.) Madonna was quick to point out, “I didn’t fall. I was yanked.” And it is important to make the distinction that in both of these highly publicized falls, Madonna was collateral damage in the error of something or someone else (a combination of both, if you will). In the case of that performance of “Living for Love,” her cape had been tied too tightly at the neck to be yanked off from her shoulders in the same way as was initially rehearsed. This resulting in her falling backward down some very steep steps. But even then, and for as much more drastic and potentially harmful as that fall was, Madonna still didn’t stop her performance. A consummate believer in the philosophy: “the show must go on.”

    After collecting herself, she then continued as though nothing happened, taking the opportunity to prove what a beautiful and well-choreographed piece it was (with the camera flashing to a then freshly married Kimye marveling at it for further proof). And ironically, right after the fall, she even had to sing the lines, “Took me to heaven/Let me fall down” and “Lifted me up and watched me stumble.” On The Jonathan Ross Show that aired a few weeks later, Madonna told him, “I’m never writing lyrics like that again!” Fearing she had somehow “conjured it.” 

    The one thing everyone who interviewed her about it could agree on, though, was that she damn well knew how to take a tumble, something she herself also noted with pride to Ross when she said, “I know how to fall. I’ve fallen off my horse many times and I’ve got good core strength.” This is why, as she told DeGeneres about the BRIT Awards, Madonna cried not because of being in pain, but because of humiliation. She also said her first thought was not even about her own well-being but, rather, “Shit, I made a mistake” and “I wanna start over.”

    Such devout commitment to the art and the work echoes the even more extreme example of her nearly dying over the summer of 2023 and waking from a coma with her first thought being (after her children, she says) the fans who bought tickets to see the show she had been rehearsing through for months. Rehearsals that, many say, she was pushing herself too hard in, leading to the fever that led to the ignored bacterial infection that led to her hospitalization. So yeah, being such a perfectionist to the point of compromising her health, these snafus known as falls could easily be glossed over instead of blown way out of proportion as an even worse media slight to someone who so rarely “fucks up” (which is why people are eager to see her do so). And again, these were not even her fuck-ups, the media just wants to paint it that way for the purposes of their tireless anti-Madonna campaign as related to her age. Spinning the story as though the fall somehow correlated to her being in her sixties. 

    So (un)naturally, every outlet from Us Weekly to Page Six to People to Entertainment Weekly to the Daily Mail had a headline to offer about Madonna’s fall-off from the chair. And of course each headline chooses to conveniently omit that she didn’t “fall”—her dancer tripped, causing the chair he was carrying to teeter and make M fall off of it. But no, that’s not the angle anyone wants to sell. Instead, an entity like The Blast wants to promote, “Madonna, 65, Suffers From a Chair Fall During Her Concert in Seattle.” 

    Despite these attempts at demeanment, she’s still going to, as she said in “Living for Love,” “pick up my crown/Put it back on my head.” Which is, as she’s shown the masses time and time again, what she will always do when she falls, whether literally or metaphorically. This being, in the end, the mark of a true success rather than a failure.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • 25 Years of Madonna Ciccone, 40 Years of Madonna

    25 Years of Madonna Ciccone, 40 Years of Madonna

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    It might prove a challenge to most to imagine a time when Madonna wasn’t, well, Madonna. When she was Madonna Ciccone or Madonna Louise or Madonna Louise Veronica or simply “Nonnie.” But for almost a full twenty-five years, she lived as a civilian before exploding onto the music scene like a supernova. And yet, unlike the supernova’s explosion marking the end of a star’s life, Madonna’s “Lucky Star” appropriately marked the beginning of hers. As a star, that is. Although Madonna would still remain known to a select demographic after the release of her self-titled debut on July 27, 1983 (just twenty-one days before her twenty-fifth birthday), it was only a year later, on September 14, 1984, that she would become a household name thanks to rolling around seductively in a wedding dress at the inaugural MTV VMAs.

    That happened a little over a month after her twenty-sixth birthday (though Madonna was able to fudge her age slightly in the earlier days…like during a 1982 audition for Fame, when she told the casting director she was twenty-one, or in a 1985 blurb in Time that cites her as twenty-four instead of twenty-six). Indeed, one might say she didn’t truly become “Madonna” until then. During that moment when she was twenty-six…accidentally writhing around in front of a live audience, not to mention the many cable viewers watching at home.  

    Up until then, it was arguable that some semblance of “plebeian Madonna” still remained. Complete with the “street urchin-y” aesthetic complemented by all that “junk jewelry.” That image—and the many accessories that went with it—being shed by 1986, with the release of her third record, True Blue. Another “summer record” that came out at the end of July, Madonna forewent her “vagabond chic” look in favor of a sleeker gamine one, most noticeable in the fitness regimen she had taken on to get rid of the pounds from what she called her “chunky” era. So it was that she was slowly but surely leaning further into what “Madonna” would mean: constant, ceaseless evolution. 

    The cynics, of course, would deride her “reinventions” (a word she hated so much she decided to reappropriate it for herself by calling her 2004 world tour the Re-invention Tour) as “gimmicks,” whereas Madonna described them as simply continuing to pull back the layers to reveal more and more of her “true self.” Or whatever was true of herself at a particular (impressive) instant in time. What remained steadfastly true throughout all the incarnations was her enduring level of superstardom. Despite most of the twenty-first century thus far consisting of critics and fans alike writing her off as being everything from “desperate” to “over,” the fact that intense analysis and dissection of Madonna has gone on unrelentingly should indicate how relevant she remains. Even in the various TikTok trends (as though it should require TikTok to remind people who already know that Madonna is unmatched for her tireless work ethic and trailblazing viewpoints) that have come to highlight her singular nature among the pop star crop. Take, for instance, the one that’s recently gone viral of her doing jump squats repeatedly during a musical breakdown on “Music” for 2001’s Drowned World Tour. Madonna was doing that shit at forty-three. 

    And, at thirty-four, she was already railing against the society that was going to try and “put her out to pasture” once she turned forty. As they did to any woman in the public eye (luckily for Marilyn Monroe, she didn’t stick around long enough to experience it). It seemed that it wasn’t until Madonna’s fifties that becoming a lone spokeswoman for ageism against women in entertainment (especially pop stars) really ramped up though (and has only continued to do so in her sixties). This shined through most markedly during a speech she gave while accepting the award for Billboard’s Woman of the Year in 2016, stating with her sardonic tone, among other blunt truths, “Be what men want you to be, but more importantly, be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. And finally, do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticized and vilified and definitely not played on the radio.” 

    A feat Madonna has miraculously managed to overcome with the release of “Popular,” a song she’s featured on with The Weeknd and Playboi Carti. Regardless of the latter two having an influence on why the song is being played on the radio, it nonetheless is. And the fact that it’s charted on the Billboard Hot 100 has put Madonna in the rare category of being among the few artists to chart one of their singles in five different decades. 

    And so it seems that, having evolved into the sixty-five-year-old Madonna as of August 16, 2023, one of her key purposes all along was not just to break down barriers for the LGBTQIA+ community, but also for any female musician who wanted to keep going past their thirties. In the future, when women like Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift are in their sixties and still releasing albums, they will owe a direct debt to Madonna for bearing the brunt of the abuse that has made the public more accepting of pop stars not having an expiration date (something Kylie Minogue, too, has recently benefited from with “Padam Padam”). 

    Although Madonna has been Madonna for far longer than she was Madonna Ciccone (at times wrongly spelled as “Cicconi”), perhaps the one thing that has always lingered from that pre-fame girl is the masking of vulnerability through a “tough-as-nails” persona. Rarely lowering her guard to let anyone see it after the trauma that would last her entire lifetime: the death of her mother when “Nonnie” was just five. It was this loss that also sowed the seeds for Madonna Ciccone to become Madonna. Driven to seek out the love she was craving from an absent mother (and that she couldn’t get enough of in such a big family where every sibling got lost in the shuffle) by eventually finding it in millions of worshipful fans that could still probably never fill that void.

    Even so, Madonna the Pop Icon has made do with her substitute for (maternal) love the best she can. And, like many women, no matter how old they get, she’s still just that “little girl lost in a storm.” Forever Madonna Ciccone at heart.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Why Does It Take A Video of Madonna Doing Successive Jump Squats From Over Twenty Years Ago To Appreciate Her?

    Why Does It Take A Video of Madonna Doing Successive Jump Squats From Over Twenty Years Ago To Appreciate Her?

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    Being that there’s really no rhyme or reason to what might “take hold” with regard to virality on TikTok, one supposes it should be no surprise that a very specific moment from Madonna’s 2001 Drowned World Tour has become a popular “challenge” on the accursed app. That “moment” being more like fifteen seconds of unheard-of physical rigor for someone of any age (let alone someone over forty) as she proceeds to do approximately sixteen jump squats in rapid succession right after screaming, “Ah yeaahhhh!” An utterance few people would exclaim with joy prior to having to do something so physically strenuous. But such is the nature of Madonna: equal parts endlessly driven and masochistic. 

    It was that sort of vigor that went into conceptualizing the tour, which itself wasn’t very appreciated in its time, derided for not having enough “hits” performed, for a start. To boot, Madonna’s own brother, Christopher Ciccone, would condemn it in his “tell-all” by saying that the “tree concept” he had originally come up with for the backdrops that would appear onstage became something darker and more sinister. As did the entire tour once it transformed into Drowned World. Originally, Madonna had planned to tour in 1998/1999 after Ray of Light was released, but life kept getting in the way and it was 2001 by the time she took her act on the road again. For the new millennium, Madonna had reinvented herself once more. This time as both a “ghetto fabulous” cowgirl for Music and as an English “missus,” married to Guy Ritchie. 

    But if Ritchie thought she was going to stay home and darn his socks, he had another thing coming. Less than a year after her marriage (and giving birth to a second child), she would embark on this world tour in promotion of Music. It was, indeed, the title track and lead single from that record which would serve as her pièce de résistance of a finale for the tour. A finale that, as stated, is suddenly attracting far more attention than it ever did before. Perhaps because, in the early 00s, women were simply “expected” to be that physically fit if they wanted to still be considered part of the game at all. Not that it stopped anyone from continuing to call Madonna “over the hill” at forty-three. Though, as it’s long been plain to see, Madonna could always outpace the pop stars half her age. 

    With her recent bacterial infection, however, the media has been quick to pounce on the narrative that Madonna got it as a result of trying to “keep up” with those pop stars half her age—Taylor Swift being one such name specifically mentioned despite the fact that Madonna has always been a more entertaining (and more political) performer. Anything to discredit not only what she’s still capable of, but what she’s already been doing consistently from the very outset of her live performance days. Which is, to reiterate: dancing her fucking ass off. This is probably why she needed to get ass implants to replace it. In any case, apparently even “TikTokers” (a polite euphemism for nitwits who don’t catch on to things until decades later) can’t turn a blind eye to the impressiveness of what Madonna was doing even then, at an age when she was already being branded as a “geriatric.” 

    Perhaps it took the passing of a couple decades to fully understand the grueling nature of the choreography on that tour. No matter how old one is. Even Britney Spears, who was in the “prime” of her pop stardom in 2001, would have admitted to its difficulty. Thus, maybe the one token of Establishment appreciation it got—being nominated for an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Choreography—was telling of just how elaborate those moves were. But, as Madonna declared long ago, “I got the moves, baby.” In addition to, “Only when I’m dancing can I feel this free.” In that respect, Madonna has said that she’s always associated movement with freedom. Freedom to flit from place to place, freedom to try new things. Thus, her phobia of being fat. Or “zaftig,” as she put it in a 2006 article for Elle. 

    And it’s a fear you can see in her determined eyes as she does those jump squats. Not just the fear of being “rotund,” but the fear of being told that she “can’t.” That because of her age, she should be limited by her body. Repeatedly, Madonna has defied everyone, including herself, to prove the contrary, going so far as to keep dancing as she would have in 2001 during 2019’s Madame X Tour, which resulted in her needing hip replacement surgery afterward. At present, she’s hell-bent on proving her body (and the masses) wrong again by not giving up on the idea of this new world tour, celebrating (ergo, its name: the Celebration Tour) forty years of hits, just because she may or may not have almost died due to a serious bacterial infection. Itself caused by ignoring any signs her body was trying to give her about slowing down. Maybe, for that brief blip when Madonna was on the other side, neither God nor the Devil wanted to allow entry to someone so persistently stubborn. 

    Stubborn enough to endure the wait it took for her to be vindicated as a “stamina queen” twenty-two years after doing those relentless jump squats at the end of her show. While, on the one hand, it’s nice to see her being appreciated in some way by those who might not have known the extent of her tireless commitment to pop music as theater art, it’s also total bullshit that it takes TikTok to justify the Madonna love. Or at least love for her fitness routine. 

    In that same aforementioned Elle article, Madonna remarked, “I hope by the time it’s my moment to leave the world physically, I’ll have gotten my head around the idea that life is an endless cycle.” If that’s the case, hopefully in the next matrix, the cycle of taking too long to appreciate Madonna’s physical (and mental) prowess won’t occur yet again. 

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Unlike Most Women in Music, Tony Bennett Didn’t Have to Constantly Change His Image In Order to Endure

    Unlike Most Women in Music, Tony Bennett Didn’t Have to Constantly Change His Image In Order to Endure

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    “I was like the Madonna and the Michael Jackson of my day,” Tony Bennett once told Conan O’Brien during a 1993 interview. The notable distinction between Madonna and Michael being that the former constantly changes her image. Jackson, like Tony, did not bother to do anything significant in that arena. In fact, he leaned into his image (awash with sequins, fedoras and exposed socks) all the more as the years went by: the very thing that can (and usually does) turn one into a caricature. The same went for Bennett, who stalwartly refused to update his look (a black tuxedo and bowtie) as the decades passed. Not even after he first “resurged” onto the scene in a big way at the beginning of the 90s. For Bennett had already capitulated to rebranding once before, at the height of the psychedelic rock craze. Or rather, just after it—releasing Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today! in 1970, complete with psychedelic cover art. 

    The so-called image change and attempt to do something different was immediately lambasted, and Bennett was soon after dropped from Columbia Records. An interesting reaction, when considering that most women who refuse to change their look or sound over time end up being cast aside and relegated to whatever time period they rose to prominence in (e.g. Nancy Sinatra with the 60s, Stevie Nicks with the 70s, Cyndi Lauper with the 80s, Alanis Morissette with the 90s, Britney Spears with the 00s, and so on and so forth).

    Mariah Carey, too, spoke of Columbia Records trying to “button her up with the 90s” by capping off the decade with a greatest hits album of hers. Carey wasn’t having it, and released 1999’s Rainbow the year after #1s came out. With “Heartbreaker” as the lead single, it served as a complete sonic shift into her artful melding of pop and hip hop, which she had already hinted at plenty with 1997’s Butterfly. An album, incidentally, she had to fight tooth and nail to secure some creative control over, made perhaps easier (or harder, depending on who you ask) as a result of being in the process of cutting ties romantically with Tommy Mottola, then CEO of Sony Music (a.k.a. her boss).  

    Carey has reinvented herself to a lesser extent than Madonna since the dawn of the 2000s, with the latter unveiling new “personae” as readily as a new outfit, ramping up what some critics would call her “shtick” with more intensity than ever at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Starting with Music in 2000, Madonna continued to reinvent herself tirelessly, with the glam cowgirl aesthetic giving way to a Che Guevara-inspired war rebel guise for 2003’s American Life. She then continued with a 70s-chic dancing queen image for 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, a sexy boxer for 2008’s Hard Candy, a molly fan on 2012’s MDNA and a romantic freedom fighter on 2015’s Rebel Heart.

    By the time 2019’s Madame X arrived, Madonna decided to roll all of her many personae into one with the marketing speech, “Madame X is a secret agent traveling around the world, changing identities, fighting for freedom, bringing light to dark places. Madame X is a dancer, a professor, a head of state, a housekeeper, an equestrian, a prisoner, a student, a mother, a child, a teacher, a nun, a singer, a saint, a whore…a spy in the house of love.” That last phrase being a clear nod to the Anaïs Nin book of the same name. For Madonna is nothing if not a bridge between high and so-called low art. All while also showing that to stay “relevant” in the music business as a woman, you have to be willing to shed previous images as willingly as snakes shed their skin in order to survive. Madonna being among one of the few women musicians to do that, therefore have a chance at competing with Bennett’s far more effortless longevity. And yes, even Lady Gaga (the best Madonna impersonator currently working today), Bennett’s “bestie” in recent years, is another example of a woman who has to reinvent. Even aesthetically static Taylor Swift (who can always be counted on for the same blonde hair and red lipstick) has chosen to perform this year under the banner of the Eras Tour…overtly wanting to highlight the notion that she’s reinvented herself repeatedly over her now decade-plus career.

    Then, of course, there’s Cher, who occasionally gets held up as an example of a woman who has “lasted” for decades, though she isn’t actually putting out any new material or bothering to tour anymore. Madonna stands alone in that category (even if her recent bacterial infection might have put a delay on her forthcoming Celebration Tour). And it’s precisely because she’s among the few to have put in the ceaseless work to remain in the spotlight that’s “required” only of a woman. This then getting branded as “desperate” or “gimmicky” as critics insist she essentially ought to put herself out to pasture…as she once phrased it during a 1992 interview with Jonathan Ross. And it was also in that interview that she herself called out Jackson’s total inability to reinvent himself now and again, telling Ross, “I really wanted him to cut his hair. Sometimes I think it’s good to cut your hair and start all over again.” She then added, “I wanted him to get rid of those loafers and the white socks. I just thought, you know, just try something new.” Clearly, there’s a reason their “friendship” didn’t last too much longer after attending the 1991 Oscars ceremony together. For no man likes to be reminded that his “look,” therefore his entire self, is “outmoded.” 

    Male musicians, instead, appear to prefer coasting on the laurels of what secured them their fame and accolades when they were younger, never needing to try anything else different afterward because society simply does not place that onus upon them. Nor does society judge men for continuing to pursue their art well past “middle age.” In point of fact, Bennett, like Madonna, referred to artists such as Picasso when he said, “Right up to the day they died, they were performing. If you are creative, you get busier as you get older.” Few people have been as willing to “grant” that to Madonna, who has also vowed to never stop (hear: “Like It Or Not,” with its lyrics, “You can love me or leave me/‘Cause I’m never gonna stop”). And yes, in 2015, she name-checked Picasso as well, stating, “I like to compare myself to other kinds of artists like Picasso. He kept painting and painting until the day he died. Why? Because I guess he felt inspired to do so. Life inspired him, so he had to keep expressing himself, and that’s how I feel.”

    Of course, when Bennett said it, it was fine. When Madonna said it, it was self-aggrandizing. Proof that she was conceited enough to hold herself in such high regard as a “master” like Picasso. Well, where’s the lie? Madonna is an undisputed master of pop music. And even Bennett conceded to that in 1996, when he presented her with an Artist Achievement Award at the Billboard Music Awards. To introduce her, he confirmed what most already knew: “She has consistently surprised and delighted us with her fascinating transformations, with a dazzling display of invention. She’s kept us on the edge of our seat—wait till you see what’s next.” 

    With Bennett and musicians like him, there’s never any such excitement or anticipation. Rather than consistently reinventing, they merely stay consistent. Nonetheless, their reverence goes unquestioned. And while Madonna is a master in pop music, Bennett, in contrast, was a master in “crooning,” specifically “American standards” (all well and good, but not exactly leaving much room for “originality”). This included covering work from Rat Pack staples like Sammy Davis Jr. And whenever Bennett sang the latter’s “I’ve Gotta Be Me,” it proved a telling anthem for a man who never had to compromise the way he looked or sounded (save for that one time in 1970 that put him off even the mere idea of experimentation forever).

    Not solely because of his vocal talent that didn’t need any additional “bells and whistles,” but because he had the luxury of being a male performer. A fact that meant alterations to appearance (and sound) were hardly “requisite” the way they tacitly are for women who want to enjoy the same longevity in the music industry. Which is perhaps why Madonna remains a rare example, with even Janet Jackson disappearing more than once or twice into the abyss and Kylie Minogue only happening to touch on the virality phenomenon with “Padam Padam.” But that, too, is a direct result of Madonna’s boundary-breaking for women in Minogue’s age bracket. Boundaries that, for men, do not exist at all.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna Is Immortal Regardless of Any Health Scares People Pounce On to Use Against Her

    Madonna Is Immortal Regardless of Any Health Scares People Pounce On to Use Against Her

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    If there is any star on this Earth who serves as an exemplar of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t, it’s one, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone. From the moment she burst onto the scene (and caused certain men to burst out of their pants), Madonna has been condemned for being either too this, too that or not enough of this, not enough of that. Too sexual, not talented enough. Too ambitious, not caring enough. Too caring (therefore “fake”), not focused enough on her career anymore. The pendulum-swinging list goes on. And in the wake of her health scare heard ‘round the world (indeed, not since Madonna fell off her horse in 2005 has her health had quite such a scare), the latest thing Madonna gets to be accused of after being “obsessed” with immortality is, in fact, being mortal.

    Although the media and hoi polloi have long demanded of Madonna that she “act her age” and “surrender to being ‘old,’” her “brush with death” has proven that no matter what she does, in the eyes of the public, they want her to be the exact opposite only when it’s convenient for them. And, at present, what’s convenient for them is wanting her to go back to “being her immortal self.” The one who would say (and mean) shit like, “So, how do I stay in shape? It’s all in your head… It’s called will, it’s called no one’s gonna stop me, and how I stay in shape is no one’s gonna stop me. And how I stay in shape is I don’t believe in limitations.” Alas, her body is apparently not in agreement with her mind at this juncture. And it likely has everything to do with her tendency to push herself to the physical limits whenever she’s about to embark on a world tour. For, despite having passed more choreography on to her backup dancers in recent years (like Kylie Minogue in the “Padam Padam” video), Madonna is still very much involved in all the dance numbers that go on. She is, after all, a dancer at her core. That’s what set her entire career into motion. So hell no, she ain’t gonna stop dancing. Regardless of so-called age limitations.

    That said, the likelihood of her getting a bacterial infection stemming from pushing herself to the brink while rehearsing is all but assured. Almost as much as the public suddenly using it as an opportunity to say either 1) see? We told you she was old and should slow down or 2) why can’t she prove herself to be the sole intstance of pop icon immortality like she always said she would be? Either way, the public wins by setting up Madonna to fail in one manner or the other. That her own family should take the chance to swoop in and further plant the seeds about Madonna’s frailty is also telling of what the pop star is up against. That is to say, being unable to trust even those theoretically closest to her to have a little faith and uphold her image of being physically “infallible.” Because for someone like Madonna to lose hold of that image is especially heart-wrenching when considering she came of age in an era of stardom when “presentation” and “illusion” still meant everything. When it wasn’t fashionable to “let it all hang out” with no sense of polish. In short, at a time when being a star meant never pulling back the curtain behind the Wizard of Oz. Not in the name of “inclusivity,” “body positivity” or anything else.

    So for an unnamed member of the Ciccone brood to come out (and to The Daily Mail of all places) with tidbits like how the family was “preparing for the worst,” that she “believes that she is invincible” and that she “has been wearing herself thin over the past couple of months” is only an additional blow to someone who already has to deal with the wagging tongues of so many non-family members as well. Except that, as is usually the case, only when she’s been felled do the masses finally throw her a bone with a touch of sympathy and appreciation (even if that wasn’t really what went down when she took a tumble due to a wardrobe malfunction at the 2015 BRIT Awards). Only then do they suddenly remember how bangin’ all her hits are, everything she’s achieved and all she’s done for the LGBTQIA+ community.

    To this point, it was during a 1995 VH1 interview with Jane Pratt that Madonna sagely remarked, “When I’m dead, they’ll finally kiss my ass.” That seems to be exactly what’s happening now, even if only with the “threat” of her death, as people start to realize just how valuable she is to pop culture. Nay, she is pop culture. Even more than a particular woman who came before her: Cher. An icon that, let it be known, likely hasn’t had any public health issues because she’s more or less been in retirement (at least tour-wise) since the 00s. A decade when Madonna, in contrast, managed to achieve some of her biggest successes, including major album sales from Music and Confessions on a Dance Floor, as well as entering the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest-grossing tour by a female artist thanks to the 2008-2009 Sticky & Sweet Tour.

    In the same aforementioned interview, Madonna reminded, “When Marilyn Monroe was alive, they were so vicious and cruel to her. They ripped her to shreds. They wouldn’t give it up to her in any way, shape or form. And then when she died, it was just like, ‘Oh, she’s a comedic genius.’ I mean, excuse me… They do that to everybody.” But Madonna definitely leads the pack on having such a thing done to her. And, in Marilyn’s favor, at least she was a star during a time when memes didn’t yet exist for people to so ruthlessly mock her (which they surely would have vis-à-vis her pill and alcohol addiction), or her own various health scares that she had throughout her career. But again, it was an era when any such “imperfections” of celebrities were protected under lock and key thanks to studio “fixers” and vague gossip column reverence. Not to mention an era when you were typically “put out to pasture” as a woman by the age of forty or sooner.

    What’s more, Madonna is a rare exception in the annals of most pop culture icons in that she never allowed any drug-related vices to get the better of her. Thus, outliving so many of her contemporaries—Prince and Michael Jackson included. But the older Madonna gets, the more likely she is to become extremely private about her health. After all, it’s something people love to use against her as a means to lord mortality over her, as though getting off on the fact that she’s actually human while, at the same time, treating her so inhumanely with their nonstop barrage of venomous comments whenever she reveals any modicum of weakness (whether physical or emotional). By the same token, they begrudge her for insisting that she is, in truth, immortal.  

    As she’s quoted saying in a 2015 Vice article, “I want to live forever and I’m going to.” Indeed, even if Madonna dies, she’s going to live on. And those either relishing her ICU stay or all at once getting the notion to appreciate her in lieu of joining in on the usual “shit on Madonna” parade would do well to remember that.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna Taps Into The Sentiments of Her Pre-Fame Drive on “Popular” With The Weeknd and Playboi Carti

    Madonna Taps Into The Sentiments of Her Pre-Fame Drive on “Popular” With The Weeknd and Playboi Carti

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    Like Madonna’s 2018 collaboration with Quavo and Cardi B on “Champagne Rosé,” “Popular” marks another unexpected trifecta in terms of musical partnerships for the Queen of Pop. And yet, as also indicated by “Champagne Rosé,” it’s clear Madonna wants to be more involved in the genre of music that tends to outshine pop in the present landscape. Because, save for Taylor Swift, it’s difficult for people to get “excited” about pop music anymore. Certainly not the way they once did when Madonna first rose to fame in the early 80s. Indeed, it’s easy to say that Madonna invented pop as we know it, itself a diminutive of popular. Which brings us back to the title of the song she’s featured on, along with Playboi Carti, by The Weeknd. As the second single from The Idol’s soundtrack, The Idol Vol. 1, it arrives just two days before the series’ official premiere on HBO. Those who have been following the drama of the series’ rollout are aware that it isn’t exactly “on-brand” with Madonna’s usual liberal-sanctioned philosophy vis-à-vis toxic masculinity. But the “brains” behind the show claim that parading toxic masculinity is the point. Or used to be before “it went from satire to the thing it was satirizing.”

    Unfortunately, speculation about the reshoots involved stem from how “the original version of the series…focused heavily on the ‘female perspective,’ which both The Weeknd and Levinson took issue with.” This was around the time writer-director Amy Seimetz bowed out of participating in The Idol when it was eighty percent finished. Who knows if that was before or after Madonna agreed to collaborate on a song for it (perhaps in part due to one of her go-to producers, Mike Dean, appearing on the show…in addition to co-producing “Popular” with Metro Boomin)? But either way, it’s clear that M might have been drawn to the story as a result of its own resonance with her pre-fame drive. And while, sure, everyone is making the automatic comparison between Lily-Rose Depp’s Jocelyn character and Britney Spears, the OG for fame hunger as a pop star will always be Madonna. As the now well-known lore goes, a nineteen-year-old college dropout Madonna moved to New York in 1977 with nothing more than thirty-five dollars in her pocket and a dream. She didn’t precisely know what shape the dream of being famous would take, but she knew it somehow involved “the arts.” Initially, she thought that meant being a dancer (not the topless kind, mind you), but soon realized that entailed blending in when all she wanted to do was stand out.

    Thus, her next foray into fame-seeking was being in a band…as the drummer. But it didn’t take her long to see that she was still in the background that way, too. She needed to be front and center. She needed to be a solo act. By 1982, she had betrayed many people along the way to get a record deal with Sire (Seymour Stein signed her while in a hospital bed, but Madonna couldn’t have cared less—she just wanted the contract, to make that Faustian pact, as it were). So if anyone can sing the lyrics to “Popular” (not to be confused with M.I.A.’s song of the same name) with conviction, it’s Lady M. After all, the chorus goes, “Beggin’ on her knees to be popular/That’s her dream, to be popular/Kill anyone to be popular/Sell her soul to be popular/Popular, just to be popular/Everybody scream ’cause she popular.” And everyone was screaming because Madonna was so popular by the time The Virgin Tour took hold of stages throughout the U.S. in 1985. In fact, no female artist until Madonna seemed to attract hordes that would scream so much. Before Madonna, such ardor was reserved solely for male bands and solo acts (see: Beatlemania). Hence, Madonna later reflecting on those “wannabes” as follows: “If I was a girl again, I would like to be like my fans, I would like to be like Madonna.”

    Britney certainly wanted to be like Madonna too, never hiding her love of Mother Pop Star as her career took off. It was in 2003 that the trio (a more logical trio than Madonna, The Weeknd and Playboi Carti) of M, Britney and Christina Aguilera took the MTV VMAs by storm when the Queen of Pop kissed both Princesses of Pop. But it was the beso with Britney that grabbed the most headlines, with splashy images of their kiss reprinted and replayed everywhere. Certain types might have likened it to some kind of “illuminati ritual,” while Madonna referred to it simply as symbolically “passing the baton” of pop stardom to a younger generation. And yet, Madonna would never “take a bow” regardless of such statements feigning that she’s “lost her influence” somehow. If anything, Madonna remains more relevant than ever in an era where the conversation about famous women aging while “refusing” to leave the spotlight has become, somehow, a hotbed issue. Enter the lyrics to the chorus that go, “She mainstream ’cause she popular/Never be free ’cause she popular.”

    But Madonna has never really wanted to be “free” from fame, despite recent posturings about family being her more valued focus. Because fame was always, whether she was fully aware of it or not, the only way she could fill the void where her mother’s love had been lost. Dead at the age of thirty, when Madonna was just five, the loss of Madonna Ciccone Sr. to breast cancer was one that the junior M would feel all her life. The type of black hole that would prompt a girl to seek out becoming the most beloved, famous woman in the world (until being beloved gave way to being constantly condemned). So when she opens “Popular” with the solemn lines, “I’ve seen the devil down Sunset/In every place, in every face,” she knows what she’s talking about.” Funnily enough, however, Madonna has never styled herself as much of a “Hollywood type.” Sure, like any famous person, she’s set up shop there via real estate (including her purchase of The Weeknd’s Hidden Hills property in 2021), but, by and large, she’s never really made it her home à la, say, Lana Del Rey.

    When she was first “initiated” into fame, she definitely spent more time drinking Hollywood’s Kool-Aid, complete with living in Malibu after marrying Sean Penn and taking a shine to L.A. life during her “movie star era” that consisted of dating Warren Beatty and being one of the leads in his 1990 comic adaptation, Dick Tracy. Yet Madonna seemed forever beholden to the opposite coast, constantly going back to it and eventually writing off Los Angeles as somewhere “for people who sleep.” Not to mention writing an entire song (called, what else, “Hollywood”) about the false seduction of the place formerly known as El Pueblo de Los Angeles. The Weeknd has expressed similar opinions in his music, including lyrics like, “This place is never what it seems…/Take me out of LA/This place will be the end of me.” This from a song entitled, appropriately, “Escape From LA.” Elsewhere on that After Hours track, The Weeknd also criticizes (despite insisting “I don’t criticize”), “LA girls all look the same/I can’t recognize/The same work done on their face.” On the same album, The Weeknd also declares on “Snowchild,” “Cali was the mission but now a nigga leaving” in relation to the epiphany that fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

    Madonna would explore that topic in detail on one of the first records of its kind, Ray of Light, particularly via the opening track, “Drowned World/Substitute For Love.” A song that began to bubble up after giving birth to her first child, Lourdes Leon, in 1996, at which time Madonna was suddenly in search of greater meaning in her life. Hence, turning to Kabbalah for spiritual comfort in her erstwhile material world. Eventually, Madonna would render Kabbalah into another trend as well, with many celebrities in the early 00s sporting the signature red string, from Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher to Angelina Jolie to none other than Britney Spears herself. This being one reason why Madonna chose to sardonically sport a “Cult Member” t-shirt while leaving the Kabbalah Center circa 2004 (L.A., to be sure, has just as many cult leaders doubling as members). For, after M and Brit performed together at the VMAs in ’03, the latter adopted the red string bracelet signifying her “Kabbalah commitment” as well, intended to ward off the “evil eye.” If that was the case, maybe Brit actually shouldn’t have taken it off so soon after declaring in 2006, “I no longer study Kabbalah. My baby is my religion.” Because it was 2007 when shit would really start to hit the fan for her. Indeed, that’s the period of Brit’s life that The Idol appears to be “inspired by,” with The Weeknd obviously playing the Sam Lutfi figure.

    Spears and Lutfi met at a nightclub at the end of 2007 and, fittingly, The Weeknd plays nightclub owner/“self-help guru” (a.k.a. cult leader) Tedros. Like Lutfi, Tedros seems to have a knack for “attaching himself to celebrities, often at vulnerable moments for them.” And no one was more vulnerable than late ’07 Britney (which is perhaps how Lutfi was allegedly able to feed her a steady cocktail of Risperdal and Seroquel). In this sense, Madonna stands out as a singular pop star for her strength and bulletproof nature, seemingly designed to endure media scrutiny and unremitting criticism without letting it get the better of her. As she says in her “Popular” verse, “I know that you see me, time’s gone by/Spend my whole life runnin’ from your flashin’ lights/Try to own it, but I’m alright/You can’t take my soul without a fuckin’ fight.”

    Madonna’s love of religious motifs in her lyrics continue with, “Put it in her veins, pray her soul to keep.” This fixation on praying and keeping one’s soul is also present on a song like 2015’s “Devil Pray,” during which Madonna sings, “But if you wanna save your soul/Then we should travel all together/And make the devil pray” and “Ooh, save my soul/Devil’s here to fool ya.” Devil imagery has also come up in Madonna’s recitation of the Book of Revelation on 1990’s “The Beast Within,” as well as 2008’s “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You.” Her frequent lyrical ruminations on a battle between good and evil is clearly culled not just from her Catholic upbringing, but her extensive time spent in a world where carnal temptations are the name of the game. And not everyone is able to resist (on a pertinent note, Madonna has always been well-known for her abstinence…from drugs).

    At varying points in the trailer for The Idol, Tedros says things to Jocelyn like, “You’re the American dream. Rags to riches. Trailers to mansions” and “You’re not a human being. You’re a star.” Both of these sentiments more overtly apply to Spears (though Madonna didn’t exactly grow up in “baller” circumstances either) as she’s been turned into tabloid fodder in a manner that Madonna wasn’t—not to the same extent, anyway—in her early career. For she came up at a time when TMZ-level shaming had not yet become a phenomenon. Thus, back in late November of 2021, Spears wrote on her always cryptic Instagram, “I just shot a movie titled “THE IDOL”… it’s guaranteed to have hits and a lot [of] bright pics to put in my beautiful family’s faces!!!!!”

    Months later, Spears appeared in a photo with Levinson and The Weeknd. It hardly seemed a coincidence. Nor does it that Madonna is involved in the soundtrack. For not only can she speak to the kind of fiendishness for fame that “Popular” dissects, but she also witnessed Spears breaking down and breaking free (showing up to her wedding as an honored guest to support that revelation) in real time. So from whatever angle one looks at it, no one has a better view on this subject matter than Madonna. Thus, even if the show isn’t “brilliant,” at least Madonna “joining the cast” on “Popular” is.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated Cover Is A Landmark Moment…But Also Presents a Double Standard in Terms of Praising a “Correct” Way for Women to Be Embraced As “Sexy” at Any Age

    Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated Cover Is A Landmark Moment…But Also Presents a Double Standard in Terms of Praising a “Correct” Way for Women to Be Embraced As “Sexy” at Any Age

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    There are “kinds” of women who get lauded for doing the same things that other women have already been doing for quite some time. Martha Stewart is just such a kind of woman to receive praise for things that women in the latter category would instead be (and are) maligned for. And while her Sports Illustrated cover signals what one can only hope is a greater shift toward acceptance of women being sexy and sexual at whatever the fuck age they want to be, it also serves to reiterate a double standard in our society. One in which “good,” “homemaking” women are more respected than women who have been associated with iconoclasm and shirking “conventional femininity.”

    Although Stewart was long ago forced to shed her impervious image of full-stop goodness after being sent to prison in 2004 for insider trading, securities fraud, obstruction of justice and conspiracy (oh my!), her reputation didn’t take long to bounce back. And, if anything, her time in prison only augmented the public’s fascination with her. All of the sudden, she was way more interesting once the veneer of “infallibility” cracked. She had “cred.” Even Snoop Dogg started to hang out with her after she got incarcerated. But it was just the “right amount” of an impish streak, one that still made the public see her as a generous, ultimately docile and obedient soul. Her appearance on the cover of the famed Swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated marks her, at eighty-one, as the “oldest” cover model. In fact, one might say that setting records for being the oldest to do something is a new trend of late—considering Joe Biden’s presidency. And it speaks to a larger trend about how the so-called elderly are no longer shutting themselves away inside to avoid being met with torches and pitchforks for their mere existence. This was something that would have been unfathomable in the Old Hollywood era, when stars seemed to retreat permanently into their mansions at a certain age or die in bleak obscurity after their drug/alcohol addictions got the better of them (e.g., Barbara Payton and Mabel Normand). Better than to be “caught” looking as they did in their “aged” state. Arguably the first actress to defy this tacit, Logan’s Run-esque Hollywood rule was Gloria Swanson when she played, in meta fashion, a washed-up silent movie star named Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. A faded star, as it were, who stays, as alluded to, shut inside her house to avoid the reality that the outside world might inflict.

    But oh how times have changed since 1950, with “old” women out and about parading themselves like it’s no big deal at all. And it really isn’t. Especially with all the advancements in anti-aging treatments. Ones that a woman like Stewart can afford with no problem. And yet, despite looking barely a day over fifty (hell, maybe even forty with the right airbrushing), Stewart is still having a “break the internet” moment by gracing this cover. For it pushes a new boundary and sets a new precedent. Except that, well, it actually doesn’t. Because there’s been a certain other woman who’s been rallying behind anti-ageist views and gatekeeping for some time now, only to be met with venom and vitriol as a result. That woman, of course, is Madonna. Who has appeared on countless magazine covers and within their “spreads” to show as much (usually more) skin as Stewart is in Sports Illustrated. And sure, Stewart is almost a full twenty years older than Madonna, so it is more noteworthy in that sense, but the real reason so much praise instead of acrimony is being hurled toward Stewart is because she represents what society views as the abovementioned “right” kind of woman. More specifically, the “right” kind of “old” woman. She is “tasteful,” “beneficent,” “not slutty.” Madonna, in contrast, has always wielded her sexuality like the key ingredient of her personality that it is. And, obviously, part of her hyper-sexed nature is a result of growing up Catholic, told from the get-go that sex was wrong, forbidden, sinful—but it was especially wrong for any woman to take actual pleasure in sex. An act meant solely for men’s pleasure…and for women to fulfill their “duty” as a birthing mill.

    Stewart herself is a symbol of that kind of conventional “domestic goddess” femininity that patriarchal society still champions and reveres. And, funnily enough, she was raised Catholic as well. But it seemed the indoctrination of that religion didn’t instill within her quite the same rebellious sexual exhibitionism that it did within Madonna. It did, however, perhaps make her appreciate the value of pageantry that extended into her various homemaking and entertaining endeavors. Yet, despite being a symbol of “domesticity,” Stewart is in direct opposition to that stereotype by capitalistic virtue of being one of the most successful businesswomen in history. Monetizing reproductive labor in a manner that few women actually performing it in their day-to-day lives can. Madonna, then, is her polar opposite—the “whore” (yes, it’s ironic considering her name) on the two-sided spectrum of things that women can “be” in the eyes of men. Who still dictate what we digest via media outlets like Sports Illustrated. And, like Stewart, she is one of the most successful businesswomen ever to have existed. Except what she’s selling is not “home and hearth” (even if she did appear on the cover of Good Housekeeping back in 2000, not to mention a cover for Ladies’ Home Journal in 2005).

    Though she did attempt to for about a five-year period during her eight-year marriage in the 00s. Indeed, while married to Guy Ritchie, Madonna did have something of her “Martha Stewart phase,” catering to tropes about being “the missus” and “the Guv’nor’s wife” and “Mrs. Ritchie” as she moved to the English countryside and dabbled in writing children’s books before soon restoring herself to her original hyper-sexual form after the divorce (see: the W magazine cover that immediately followed: “Blame It On Rio,” in which she was featured “canoodling” with her brand-new, barely-clothed boytoy, Jesus Luz, among other men with anti-British bodies). In the end, Madonna perhaps realized that she couldn’t sell conventional domestic life with conviction, which is why she’s done her own version of it by being both “mother and father” to her brood of six children, three of which (Mercy, Stella and Estere) were adopted from Malawi after her divorce from Ritchie.

    Stewart flies more under the radar for her unconventional femininity, also having divorced her husband, Andrew Stewart (whose last name would prove invaluable to Martha), long before her empire reached its apex. Even so, that she’s dated so minimally (with Anthony Hopkins and Charles Simonyi being about the extent of her romantic past) since the divorce has undeniably helped fortify her “homey” image. A virtuous nun worshipping at the altar of homemaking and entertaining.

    In May of 1995, Stewart was heralded by New York Magazine as “the definitive American woman of our time.” That hasn’t really changed, despite the illusion of the alleged changing face of the domestic sphere. One that hasn’t gone much beyond the “progressiveness” of a movie like Mr. Mom in 1983 (side note: “Mr. Mom” only conceded to step into that role because he lost his breadwinning job). With Stewart’s Sports Illustrated cover, it is encouraging that women are being shown (in a rare instance of patriarchal weakness) that it’s possible (with enough money) to be “sexy at any age.” But, by the same token, it’s not comforting to realize that the reason this is being conceded to is because the underlying message remains the same as it always has: so long as you’re the “right” kind of woman, who has long advocated for the “right” kind of values, you’ll be embraced.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Like A Surgeon, Letting Perfectionism Run Amok: On the Latest Backlash Against Madonna’s Face

    Like A Surgeon, Letting Perfectionism Run Amok: On the Latest Backlash Against Madonna’s Face

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    Anyone who sees Madonna rather regularly (perhaps better phrased as “any Madonna fan”) is likely wondering why people are acting as though this is the first time they’ve noticed that she’s had very noticeable plastic surgery. But then again, every so often, when Madonna makes an especially public appearance, as she did at the 2023 Grammy Awards, this usual, collectively expressed outrage about her looking like, apparently, Jigsaw from Saw comes about. And so begins the requisite news cycle about the alterations to her face (which once constituted being the emblem of an entire cover story for a 2008 New York Magazine article entitled “The New New Face”).

    This time around, though, something feels slightly different about the commentary. That is to say, more people (specifically, females) were inclined to come to her defense in the matter, with a slew of women commenting on how Madonna’s overwrought plastic surgery was a classic case of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t as a woman enduring the accursed aging process. This goes tenfold for women in entertainment, who are subject to unrelenting scrutiny that so often comes in the form of the public comparing images of their younger selves to their current selves (an entire TikTok trend, to boot). The commentary then becomes something to the effect of, “She used to be such a beautiful girl”—the implied follow-up to that statement being either, “She’s really let herself go” or, if she’s had the plastic surgery tacitly expected of her, “She doesn’t even look like herself anymore.”

    This is where Madonna’s face presents an even more philosophical question: what really is “the self”? Is it the carapace we walk around in, or is it so much more than that? Of course, celebrity culture and the society it reflects would like us to believe: not so much. And Madonna, for all her exhortations to be yourself and come as you are, has also fallen prey to that trap. Those who have come to her rescue in print, however, might offer up the notion that if this is what she wants to look like, that’s her right and prerogative. Except, what no one seems to want to acknowledge is that Madonna is suffering from some very overt signs of body dysmorphia, unable to see herself objectively at this juncture…as made evident by her over-the-top, smoothed-into-oblivion face filtering on Instagram. These being the “renderings” of her appearance that she wants to see herself as, in contrast to the other image—the one she accused of being merely a case of “close-up photos of me taken with a long lens camera by a press photographer that would distort anyone’s face!!” This written in an Instagram caption that felt obliged to address all the controversy directed at her after making an introduction to Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ performance of “Unholy” at the Grammys.

    Her intro speech for that duo was, alas, met with a leaden thud among the audience, whose lack of response evoked the crickets chirping effect when she asked in a half-hearted shouting voice, “Are you ready for a little controversyyyy?” The audience, it seemed, was not. Jaws ostensibly dropped to the floor in stunned silence as they watched a version of Madonna that was later compared to Miss Trunchbull from Matilda proceed to inform the masses, “If they call you shocking, scandalous, troublesome, problematic, provocative…or dangerous [this last word said as she lifted her skirt to the side to show off some leg], you are definitely onto something.” But none of that, least of all her leg showoff, seemed to resonate with audiences as much as her face. And to get back to that word, “problematic” (which is also what Kim Petras is despite many seeing her as a triumph for trans musicians everywhere), Madonna has become just that over the years not because she has had plastic surgery, but because she essentially refuses to have a truly candid conversation about it. Which would be far more in the spirit of the “rebel heart” she views herself as being (in addition to simply not kowtowing to the expectation that a woman should have any plastic surgery whatsoever).

    The only flagrant allusion Madonna has ever made to having work done arrived in the 2003 video for “Hollywood,” during which, to be on-brand with lyrics simultaneously extolling and deriding the vanity of Hollywood, Madonna is shown getting a series of Botox injections under duress. Though, clearly, she has been only too willing to go under the needle and knife in the two decades since that song was released. Which is why the most interesting thing about this entire “debacle” was that, at no point did Madonna address her plastic surgery at all… nor has she ever (though this addiction to the surgeon’s knife is an obvious extension of her perfectionistic nature). Instead, she wielded her go-to offensives in the aforementioned Instagram missive by saying, “Once again I am caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny that permeates the world we live in. A world that refuses to celebrate women past the age of forty-five and feels the need to punish her if she continues to be strong willed, hard-working and adventurous.”

    But ultimately, that’s not really what Madonna was being punished for in this instance. What she got punished for, as a few called out, was having the gall to “show her work” (a.k.a. “You’re Not Offended That Madonna’s Had Plastic Surgery, You’re Offended That You Can Tell”), which is how Monica Hesse for The Washington Post phrased it. This being a reference to a passage Hesse recalled from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, during which “the Bennet sisters are taking turns playing piano at a social gathering. Middle sister Mary ‘worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments’ and was the best player of the group, but Elizabeth, ‘easy and unaffected, had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well.’” Hesse’s point being that Madonna pulled a Mary (namesake-wise, that’s pretty appropriate) by quite literally showing her work. But again, that’s what she’s been doing for some time now, so it’s almost a source of confusion as to why this public appearance in particular was so jarring for people. Maybe the hairstyle she sported over-accentuated “the work.” Maybe the ensemble—intended to be a nod to her Erotica-born Dita persona—was causing a heightened awareness of her face somehow. Who knows? But even for all of Hesse’s well-meaning intentions to defend Madonna, there was still some insulting rhetoric at play when she said, “There was nothing subtle or easy about what had happened to Madonna’s face. There was nothing that could be politely ignored. The woman showed up as if she’d tucked two plump potatoes in her cheeks, not so much a return to her youth as a departure from any coherent age.”

    So much for solidarity in sisterhood. Which Jennifer Weiner also attempted backhandedly with an op-ed of her own for The New York Times in which she speculated that perhaps this is just Madonna’s latest “brilliant provocation.” Another calculated bid for stoking controversy and a “conversation,” if you will, therefore attention. And attention, in Madonna’s mind, has always gone hand in hand with relevance. For, like Oscar Wilde said, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Madonna has adhered to that aphorism repeatedly throughout her storied forty years in the music industry. This time around, however, there seemed to be no calculation on her part behind being talked about, but rather, it was a “happy” accident (via unhappy circumstances) that she could convert into yet another dialogue about ageism against women in particular and the patriarchal double standards about how a woman of “a certain age” should or should not look.

    But her attempt at that conversation fell as flat as her rapport with the Grammy audience when, in the same post condemning ageism, she not only didn’t acknowledge having surgery at all (which is what people were shocked by), but also opted to, once more, filter the shit out of her face as she announced, “I have never apologized for any of the creative choices I have made nor the way that I look or dress and I’m not going to start.” Again, the heavy use of filters sort of negates that assertion about not apologizing for how she looks. She continued, “I look forward to many more years of subversive behavior—pushing boundaries, standing up to the patriarchy and most of all enjoying my life. Bow down bitches!” That last Beyoncé-grafted quote is not only cringe-y because it further confirms Madonna feels she needs to rely on others more “relevant” than herself for legitimacy, but also reminds one of bell hooks’ essay, “Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister?” A merciless criticism of Madonna’s careful manipulation of the queer and BIPOC communities to further her own narrative that brings us to another question about using the critique of her face as a sign of misogyny. For if she feels the reaction to her visage is rooted in misogyny, then one must also ask: is getting massive amounts of plastic surgery really standing up to the patriarchy or simply continuing to work within it (and actually fortify it)? Something that Madonna has done for her entire career. A reality hooks touched on when she wrote, “Madonna [has] clearly revealed that she can only think of exerting power along very traditional, white supremacist, capitalistic, patriarchal lines.”

    Before Madonna would go so hard at the surgeon’s office, hooks was also apt in pointing out, “Madonna often recalls that she was a working-class white girl who saw herself as ugly, as outside the mainstream beauty standard. And indeed what some of us like about her is the way she deconstructs the myth of ‘natural’ white girl beauty by exposing the extent to which it can be and is usually artificially constructed and maintained.” If that was true in 1995, when hooks’ essay was published, it’s true on an entirely new, more sinister level now.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lolahol’s “Cuntradiction” Video: A Familiar Equine Scene

    Lolahol’s “Cuntradiction” Video: A Familiar Equine Scene

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    Seeming to no longer have any qualms about following in her mother’s footsteps, Lolahol—still better known as Lourdes Leon—has not only stepped up behind the microphone to record an album (okay, an EP) called Go, but she’s also shown that she takes no issue with emulating Madonna’s visuals either. And we’re not just talking about the “Like A Virgin”-esque writhing and general hyper-sexual image. No, Lolahol has gone into Madonna’s aesthetic vault to bring us a video concept centered on horses.

    To those who regularly see Madonna on Instagram, it doesn’t take long to realize that the video for the second single (after “Lock&Key”), “Cuntradiction,” makes optimal use of Madonna’s Bridgehampton realm. One in which we frequently see her feeding and riding horses in the various photos and videos she posts. But hey, why shouldn’t Lolahol make good use of that property? It is likely part of her inevitable inheritance, after all. However, more than just Madonna riding horses in her day-to-day life (even after falling off of one in 2005), she also long ago incorporated them into her work (the most current example being “Medellín”). This transpired rather notably in a Steven Klein (a fellow Bridgehampton resident) video and photoshoot that served as backdrops during Madonna’s 2006 Confessions Tour (specifically for the opening, “I Feel Love/Future Lovers”). As is to be expected, Madonna, at times, gets very suggestive in her interactions with the horse (tranquilized or not), with one image featuring her lying on top of its side smoking a cigarette. Lolahol furnishes us with a similar pose (minus the cigarette) via direction from Anna Pollack.

    A bed in the corner of the hay-filled stable lends added kink to the très Equus-oriented motif. Interspersed “disturbing” shots of horses filmed in black-and-white or nightshot mode are meant to lend perhaps a tinge of “horror” to the bestial flavor. And, speaking of, as Lolahol sensually sings, “I want it to last/But I want it to end,” she leans back while mounted atop a horse in “bondage”-y lingerie that Rihanna would surely approve of (and yes, Lola already made her debut as a Fenty model in the Savage X Fenty Vol. 3 show). And also, of course, her mother, who, like, invented such provocative scenes and maneuvers (see: Sex).

    While some children might have run in the other direction away from “that life” (kind of like Rocco Ritchie running into the arms of Madonna’s ex-husband back in 2015), Lola has very much decided to embrace it. Dare one even say, “carry the torch.” The very “fire” Madonna tried to symbolically pass on to Britney and Xtina at that 2003 VMAs performance… yet neither pop star has been able to fully embrace it in the long-run (Britney for obvious reasons). And, incidentally, since Lourdes “played” a flower girl at the beginning of the aforementioned performance and then graduated to full-on “Like A Virgin” bride regalia for the 2009 “Celebration” video, maybe all the writhing and gyrating she’s employing in the present was foreshadowed.

    More of which comes after the first round of “stable scenes,” when things start to get “impressionistic” as we’re shown images of Lolahol eating an apple (yes, how “profound” on the symbolism front) and other assorted fruits before we see her lounging sideways on a banquet table and then smashing some grapes… and, predictably, crawling/writhing (again, very Madonna) across it.

    Another tableau presents itself when Lola and a suspended rope appear in an empty barn as she proceeds to “do sexy shit” with it. This leads into another dirt-filled barn where horses run around amid mirrors that reflect their image back to them in a manner that, one would think, might cause an inevitable snafu. But anyway, that’s not the real standout of this portion, so much as Lola vaguely recreating the pouring of sand on her body the way Madonna does in the “Don’t Tell Me” video (the moment, it could be said, that M’s own fascination with horses first began). Implementing the dance moves she studied in school (as her mother did before dropping out), Lolahol does everything to give the most while pretending to do the least.

    In the final scenes, Pollack captures footage of a butterfly on Lola’s hand (cue Lana Del Rey’s “Happiness Is A Butterfly”), followed by the image of crushed grapes that remind one of what Caroline Polachek’s vibe was in “Billions.” It’s all concluded with a black-and-white image of a horse running away through the field. Likely back to Madonna’s crotch.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna’s Unwitting “Plastic Surgery Costume”: A Commentary on Class and Age

    Madonna’s Unwitting “Plastic Surgery Costume”: A Commentary on Class and Age

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    Just when you thought Madonna might not have any sense of self-awareness, she goes and does something all too meta: puts scar makeup all over her face as part of her Halloween costume. It’s unclear just what, exactly, she was trying to “be” with this look, apart from Someone Who Just Left the Plastic Surgeon’s Office. Unless, of course, she wants to say she’s going for a “scarecrow” aesthetic (some ageist areseholes would jibe, “Ha! More like scarecrone!”). Others have posited she was trying her hand at being a “sexy zombie.” In any case, maybe she actually didn’t know that putting scars on her face like that would draw the obvious remark from viewers that it looks as though she just got another touch-up at the clinic and didn’t bother to wait to show it off “casually,” better known as: acting like it never happened at all.

    Although making comments about people’s plastic surgery can be construed as a form of body shaming, the glaring spotlight on Madonna’s various procedures over the past decade have become difficult to ignore. Even in spite of the many filters she freely wields to make her face look somehow younger than it did when she was in her twenties (this being called “Madonna’s Face as Andy Warhol’s Philosophy”). And while some would say that her inability to “admit” her age by just “letting herself go” is part of the problem in terms of why women continue to remain obsessed with looking young by any means necessary (read: plastic surgery), what it really speaks to is the future of what “looking young at any age” will mean.

    Many will already take note that, since even as recent a time as a show like Golden Girls, when Bea Arthur was sixty-three playing a woman in her fifties, those in the same age bracket now presently look much younger. While certain researchers tend to offer the idea that, for women, this has become a phenomenon because more females are having children later in life or not at all—which means the youth and beauty sucked from them while nurturing that child in their womb is bypassed—a key factor is the more widespread ability of various beauty “procedures” and products. Especially expensive ones that only celebrities like Madonna can afford.

    Granted, Madonna likely wishes she hadn’t “needed” to start in the plastic surgery game until after the 90s, when even more modern advancements came along. Perhaps she would have preferred to wait for something less “invasive” like the vampire facial Kim Kardashian made notorious. Alas, Madonna received the pratfalls of being a baby boomer just as she received many of its benefits (e.g., the ease of climbing to the top without every pre-fame move being documented or, say, being positioned at a time in history when she could lay claim to doing everything “first”). And one of those cons, as it were, included subjecting herself to more “analog” beauty methods. Starting too soon, yet still seeking out nothing but the best money could buy (much like Elise Elliot [Goldie Hawn] in The First Wives Club, who famously stated, “It’s the 90s, plastic surgery is like good grooming”).

    And it served her well for quite a while, save for a strange awkward phase in 2001 (for the entirety of the Drowned World Tour) that magically disappeared in 2002. As though she’d “switched surgeons” or something. In any event, Madonna’s ever-changing face has long been a topic of discussion, often heated. Indeed, M was perhaps more called out than ever when she graced the cover of New York Magazine in 2008 with “The New New Face” as an accompanying title meant to refer to a plastic surgery procedure that was all the rage among celebrities at the time. But by and large, the discussion about her face is rather minimal considering how overt the changes to it have been. Maybe that’s just another aspect of being in the upper echelon financially: no one questions what you do to your body that much for fear of getting slapped on the wrist in some unexpected way. In Britney Spears’ case, that partially resulted in an all-out revolt against recording new music.

    While non-famous women have the advantage of looking younger for longer compared to their forebears thanks to a vastly increased quality of life (complete with regular dental care!), the fact remains that it is only celebrities and other assorted richies who will be able to truly buy their way out of the effects of time (and who knows, maybe even death at some point). Madonna might not be deemed the best example of this, but then, one can dredge up the insult-compliment, “You have to admit that she looks great…for her age.” And she certainly doesn’t look like Bea Arthur did in her sixties.  

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    Genna Rivieccio

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