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Tag: Madonna Music

  • 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”

    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?

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna Ushered “Yeehaw Culture” Into the Mainstream

    Madonna Ushered “Yeehaw Culture” Into the Mainstream

    While the term “yeehaw culture” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) has only recently become a “trend” (along with the phrase “yeehaw agenda”), Madonna was embodying it decades ago, with her 2000 album, Music (the vibe of which was presaged by her early 2000 cover of Don McLean’s “American Pie”). In fact, it seemed Madonna intuited George W. Bush’s presidential “win” in November months before (with Music being released on September 18th of that election year). For she had already decided on cowboy hats and other assorted “western regalia” for her first reinvention of the twenty-first century. Or rather, her photographer, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, talked her into it. The result was an instantly iconic, instantly recognizable identity from her many eras (back when people weren’t using the word “era” to describe phases of people’s careers). 

    And arguably the best part about Madonna’s so-called country era was that she didn’t actually try to sing country music at all. Apart from hints of it on “I Deserve It” and “Don’t Tell Me,” the latter co-written by her brother-in-law, Joe Henry. A country musician who had envisioned it as a “torch song” until Madonna decided it was much better to, like, invent the country-dance genre. Something that, of late, Beyoncé seems to think she created. Worse still, so do the legions of listeners obsessing over the “brilliant” “innovation” of Cowboy Carter. An album that, in every way—sonically and aesthetically—owes its debt to Music (just as the visuals from Renaissance do). A record that so astutely managed to anticipate the arrival of the “yeehaw president,” therefore the rise of conservatism yet again (evidently, eight years of a Democrat in the 90s meant the pendulum needed to swing the other way). Except that, in Madonna’s campy hands, those cowboy aesthetics associated with machismo and narrow-mindedness became, well, super gay. Ultra kitsch. As though Madonna was preemptively thumbing her nose at the repression and oppression that was to come with the Bush presidency. As usual, she was being ironic. 

    That much was made crystal clear on her album cover by pairing her “butch” denim jeans not with cowboy boots, but with ruby-red sequined high heels that riffed on Dorothy Gale’s a.k.a. Judy Garland’s famous ruby-red slippers in The Wizard of Oz. Because if anyone supports “friends of Dorothy,” it’s Madonna. And Lawd knows Dubya (and his entire administration) wasn’t going to during his two long terms in office. In this way, too, Madonna predates Beyoncé (and everyone else) in subverting/“perverting” the semiotics of western culture (a.k.a. “yeehaw culture”) in order to make it more accessible to groups (like the gays) who were typically marginalized from “participating” in it (read: being able to freely dress up in the sartorial trappings of a cowboy). One could even argue that Music was influential on spurring (no pun intended) the screen adaptation of Brokeback Mountain, released in 2005. Forever to be known as the “gay cowboy movie.” But who made it safe for cowboys to be gay five years earlier? Madonna. The Mondino-directed video for “Don’t Tell Me” solidified that fact as Madonna “bucked around” with some very fey cowboys as her backup dancers. 

    In fact, the only “pure archetype” of a straight cowboy is the man shown toward the end of the video, who eventually endures the humiliation of being thrown from his horse (meanwhile, Madonna relishes her seamless “ride” on a mechanical bull). After getting up from the ground, it’s obvious his pride has been wounded. And it’s also obvious that Madonna’s underlying intent is to wound the conventional straight male ego with this symbolic image. Taking it down a peg, as it were. 

    In addition to the album artwork and the “Don’t Tell Me” video, Madonna spent the majority of the Music promotion cycle dressed in her cowboy attire (often of a “ghetto fab” nature, like the style displayed in the video for “Music,” directed by another go-to of M’s, ​​Jonas Åkerlund). Whether performing at the Brixton Academy or the MTV EMAs, Madonna was committed to lending a flamboyance to the conventional cowboy look that no one else before her—least of all a pop star—ever did. Here, too, one can make the case that she was even a blueprint for the fusion of pop and country that Taylor Swift would become known for by the time 2008 rolled around. And all without Madonna ever having to prostrate herself to the genre of country at all. In this regard, too, she set a new precedent for solely culling the images of western/country/Americana without feeling the need to back it up with some claim of “deserving” to wield this imagery (e.g., the way Beyoncé and her supporters keep being sure to tout how she’s from Houston and spent her childhood at rodeos). 

    Granted, Madonna has far more working-class roots than most of the people who have dabbled in country of late, with her salt-of-the-earth Midwestern background also being an indication of “country-ness” beyond the South. But needing to insist she was “worthy” of being deemed country was never part of her game plan for Music. Instead, she wanted to play up the idea that artifice is a key aspect of the personas people try on. Even “real” cowboys who, sooner or later, have to take off their costume at the end of the day. The “Don’t Tell Me” video amplifies this concept of western culture and lore being a construct by briefly deceiving the viewer into thinking Madonna is walking on a real deserted road in the heart of the West before Mondino pans back to reveal that it’s nothing more than a screen projecting the image while Madonna walks in front of it. 

    Unlike the proponents of “yeehaw culture” in the present, Madonna never felt obliged to make some grand claim about her “legitimacy” as a “country western star.” The point, instead, was to lightly poke fun at the hyper-masculinity of the “culture” and put her own feminine (/homo) stamp on it. Alas, it seems many people have quickly forgotten her major contribution to the mainstream-ification of cowboy chic. In such a way that she did make it safe for non-white male conservatives to want to partake of it. Though not everyone might be thanking her for making this style extend beyond the backwater roads of the West, Midwest and South. 

    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?

    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. 

    Genna Rivieccio

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