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Tag: Madonna I Will Survive

  • Madonna and Kylie Minogue Cause the Gays to Short Circuit

    Madonna and Kylie Minogue Cause the Gays to Short Circuit

    Talk about “being in your head all weekend.” For the image that Madonna and Kylie Minogue have left behind in the wake of performing “I Will Survive” (the gayest of the gay anthems by none other than Gloria Gaynor) and “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” is something that has caused many an older gay gentleman’s synapses to short circuit. The performance in question occurred when Minogue joined Madonna onstage at her March 7th date of The Celebration Tour at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum. (Unsurprisingly, Madonna timed her rash of L.A. dates to coincide with when the Academy Awards would be taking place [March 10th], for it’s no secret that M and her manager, Guy Oseary, are beloved for the Oscar party they’ve been throwing since 2008.) Fittingly, their long overdue public union onstage (and in life) would serve as something of a nod to March 8th’s International Women’s Day (or at least that’s how the duo is billing it). And what could be more inspiring than two such women supporting one another?

    The genesis of that support really began on November 16, 2000, when Madonna performed “Music” at the MTV European Music Awards whilst wearing a black tank top with Kylie Minogue’s name shinily emblazoned on it (along with a pair of then-fashionable very low-rise pants). Incidentally, Minogue was also at the same awards show, and performed “Kids” with Robbie Williams. While on the red carpet afterward, Madonna was asked about her recent predilection for wearing tees of Britney and Kylie, to which she replied, “Well, it’s really my celebration of other girls in pop music, basically. I had to give a big-up to Britney and then I had to give a big-up to Kylie… I think they’re the cutest.” And yes, Spears, too, has famously joined Madonna onstage during one of her tours before—once again, at an L.A. date (so don’t try to say the NY shows have superior celebrity cameos ‘cause they don’t). Specifically, the November 6, 2008 one at Dodger Stadium, where Spears cameo’d for “Human Nature” (appropriate, considering its “Piece of Me” vibe and the fact that Madonna used backdrops of Spears pacing around in an elevator for it). 

    This cameo by Minogue, however, appears to be more deeply felt. Not just by the audience of swooning gays, but by Madonna and Minogue themselves. Accordingly, Minogue posted a video of herself dancing on the floor of the arena as Madonna performed “Ray of Light” in the background, captioning it, “MADONNA It’s been a long time coming. LOVED being with you!!!! Celebration Tour AND it is now International Women’s Day …. THANK YOU and LOVE LOVE LOVE.” Madonna was slightly less gushing (she’s still a tough-talking, brass balls-packing Midwestern girl, after all) with her own caption beneath a high-quality video of their performance together: “Couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate International Woman’s Day…………………Then to Sing with @kylieminogue.”

    In fact, wearing that instantly iconic ensemble back in 2000 was part of Madonna celebrating women outside of “just one day out of life.” At the time, while being interviewed on a 2000 episode of Celebrity!, Minogue said she was “chuffed” about seeing M wear the shirt. Right after her assessment, the host passed Minogue a gift containing a riff on that top bearing the name “MADONNA” instead (an uncanny foreshadowing of twenty-four years later, evidently). Although Minogue has been asked countless times since the beginning of her career about 1) what she thinks of Madonna and 2) how she feels regarding being so often compared to Madonna (with Minogue’s responses being gracious…most of the time), the two never seemed to align—meeting or collaboration-wise. 

    In 2011, she told an interviewer for The Sydney Morning Herald, “I’ve only met her briefly [backstage at the 2000 EMAs, as it were]. We have some friends in common and, you know, a message will go back and forth and she says, ‘Hi’ or I say, ‘Hi.’” And now they’ve said so much more—hopefully feeling comfortable enough at this point to message directly back and forth. A newly-established dynamic that many are likely hoping could lead to the frequently teased potential song they might make together. 

    Minogue’s own talk of wanting to do a collaboration with the woman she, too, calls “the Queen” has been repeated more than once over the years, including during an interview for HuffPost UK when asked if she would be interested in doing a song with M, to which Kylie noted, “Maybe the world would stop mid-orbit or something.” For about five minutes in Inglewood on March 7th, it kind of did. 

    But, as Minogue herself said, it’s been a long time coming. Indeed, over the past year, Madonna and Kylie have been dancing around each other (no pun intended) more than usual. That dance started around the time Minogue released “Padam Padam” in the spring of 2023. Mainly because said lead single from Tension was an instant chart-topping success despite the then fifty-three-year-old (she was eight days shy of fifty-four when the song was released) reciting lyrics that many (chiefly Republicans) would still deem age inappropriate, regardless of the numerous strides that have supposedly been made when it comes to not judging women through an ageist lens.

    In contrast, Madonna, in later years, has rarely received so much attention or praise for a song (save for, oddly enough, her collaboration with The Weeknd and Playboi Carti on “Popular”) featuring her own similar use of “youthisms” in lyrics (hear: “Candy Shop,” “Girl Gone Wild,” “Some Girls and “S.E.X.,” among others). 

    Granted, she’s never really gone so far as to say something (at least not in what her critics would call her “geriatric phase”) like, “I know you wanna take me home/And get to know me close…/I know you wanna take me home/And take off all my clothes” or “This place is crowdin’ up/I think it’s time for you to take me out this club/And we don’t need to use our words/Wanna see what’s underneath that t-shirt.” And, in spite of being a notoriously ageist community themselves, the gays probably did wanna see what was underneath Minogue’s Madonna t-shirt last night, so obsessed can they be with aesthetic appraisal. But that might have been the thing that truly caused a short circuit from which none of them could ever return. Besides, maybe Madonna casually dry humping Minogue was enough.

    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)

    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.

    Genna Rivieccio

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