FEATURE:
Still the Queen of Pop
Madonna and the Madame X Revolution
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THERE are other artists I love more…
than Madonna, but there are few I have greater respect for. Interestingly, I am writing two pieces this weekend that relate to illness/injury and the demands of the stage; both artists involved (the other is Sam Fender) have been met with a lot of press coverage and some criticism. In the case of Madonna, she has been battling through a lot of pain lately. Back in November, she announced some cancellations:
“Madonna has cancelled three dates of her Madame X tour dates in Boston, saying she was experiencing "overwhelming" pain.
"Please forgive this unexpected turn of events," she told fans on Facebook.
"Doing my show every night brings me so much joy and to cancel is a kind of punishment... But the pain I'm in right now is overwhelming, and I must rest and follow doctor's orders."
The star did not specify the cause of her injury.
However, earlier this month, she told fans in San Francisco she was suffering from a "torn ligament" and "a bad knee".
After her most recent tour date in Los Angeles, an Instagram video showed her taking "my usual ice bath for multiple injuries". In an earlier video, she displayed a painful bruise on her right thigh.
The reason I did not want to put her and Sam Fender together is that I want to talk more about Madonna and her latest incarnation, Madame X. Madonna is no stranger to adopting different looks but, not since Erotica in 1992 has Madonna taken on this new guise and character.
Madonna is currently in London, and the demand has been huge. She did have to pull her first night at The London Palladium earlier in the week due to ill health/injury, but there is this sort of defiance and strength you get from Madonna that means she cannot be put down too long. She is also cancelling two future shows, but is defying doctors’ orders whilst doing so! I think there is this assumption that, when an artist gets to a certain age, they need to scale down live performance and are unable to cut it with younger artists. The fact of the matter is that touring is grueling, and an artist like Madonna puts on a huge show! Even though she is playing in a smaller venue than she is used to at the moment, it seems like she is packing an enormous show in. The Guardian caught her in London and had this to say:
“Madonna plays up her proximity to the audience: usually seated in a different postal district to the stage, today they are within touching distance. She talks about the venue’s wonderful intimacy – a speech she delivers, oddly, while hidden behind a black wooden screen with only her feet visible, which feels a little like talking about a breathtaking view when you’ve got a paper bag over your head. She gamely interacts with the audience, up to and including stealing first a punter’s seat, then his beer, occasionally scuppered by the fact that the people she interacts with are too overawed by her regal presence to make any kind of sense.
Otherwise, the performance doesn’t really do low key: it feels like an arena show crammed into a smaller space, with suitably eye-popping results. There are a series of tableaux that suggest Madonna is an ungovernable force of insurrection oppressed by shadowy forces – soldiers, trench-coated private eyes and indeed actual shadows. There is an appearance by Cape Verde’s Orquestra Batukadeiras, whose performance is so gleeful you scarcely notice Madonna herself, respectfully seated at the side of the stage. There is a fake riot, a moment where Madonna unexpectedly starts playing the bongos, a moment where Madonna is bundled across the stage shouting “fuck the patriarchy!” and a flatly brilliant staging of Frozen, accompanied by a sensuously choreographed video that initially appears to feature Madonna, but turns out to be her daughter Lourdes.
There are also points where the show feels slightly scrappy and disjointed, and points where it sags – you really do get an awful lot of Portuguese fado for your buck – but it’s hard to feel short-changed. There’s such a lot going on over the course of two hours and it’s hard to imagine another star of her stature even thinking about trying anything as clearly experimental as this. The gammy hip that’s dominated headlines in recent weeks doesn’t seem to have much impact on her dancing, and she’s genuinely funny about both the price of tickets for the show and the bizarre moment in the early 00s when, living in Britain, she suddenly developed an English accent: “Why did you let me do that? I’m from Michigan.” Whether it’s really giving you a more intimate glimpse of Madonna is a moot point – physically closer to her fans or not, it’s still a show, not an evening of unvarnished soul-baring. But the racket they make when she finally leaves the stage suggests that, quite understandably, none of them care”.
Madonna is still thrilling her fans, and it is great to see her produce such a big and varied show (Will Gompertz reviewed Madonna at the Palladium). Sure, the routines and energy is not the same as her Blond Ambition World Tour of 1990, but that was three decades ago now. On 13th April, it will be thirty years since that tour began. On 27th March, it is thirty years since Vogue was released. One looks back of the Madonna of 1990 – having released the acclaimed Like a Prayer the year before - and matches her with the Madonna of now. She still has the same verve and passion for performance and holds her fans in high regard. Madame X is her latest album – released last year –, and I think it is quite underrated. It is an inventive record, and I actually like the heroine; this idea that Madonna is a spy-cum-teacher-cum-everything. Some turned their noses up at the idea, but who wants an artist who writes the same albums and never pushes themselves!? Apart from the fact Madonna has to wear an eyepatch for live shows and shoots – which must be a pain in the arse! -, she has crafted this really interesting figures. I did not get a ticket for her London shows, but it seems her wit is sharper than ever. Whether joking about curfews, or blaming Guy Ritchie for her English accent, there are few performers like her! There are some great Pop artists now, but few that can ever compete with Madonna. It is important to look at the present and her Madame X revolution, but there are reasons to look back and respect the durability and continued popularity of an artist who has moved with the times yet retained her independence and own sound.
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1998
I grew up listening to Pop music in the 1980s and 1990s, and Madonna was a big part of that. I caught the video for Material Girl when I was seven or eight, I think, and I followed her career. I think my favourite album of hers is 1998’s Ray of Light - but I do love her latest album. It is the way she manages to stay with the times and adapt that is amazing. Although, as we see in this interview from last year, the modern landscape is something that she is not a huge fan of:
“Sometimes when she talks, she unmistakably sounds like a pop star forged in a different era. She is “dizzy” at the sheer turnover of pop in the digital age – “There are so many distractions, so much noise, so many people coming and going so quickly, it takes away the artist’s ability to grow” – and says the modern way of writing pop songs, where artists are thrown together with a rotating cast of random star producers and writers at songwriting camps, didn’t suit her at all. “Oh, I tried that on MDNA and Rebel Heart. I worked with a lot of talented people, but it’s too hard to have a vision when you work with so many people: there’s so much input. I didn’t enjoy the process at all. Sometimes it was great, but it’s very weird to sit in a room with strangers and go: ‘OK, on your marks, set, write a song together!’ You have to reveal yourself, you have to be vulnerable, and it’s hard to do that right away.”