My problem with Madonna has never been that she still wants to make music now that she’s 56 years old. If she wants to make music, good for her and God bless. My problem is that she wants to be as culturally relevant today as a Miley Cyrus or Rihanna. My problem is that she’s no longer the pop culture arbiter, she’s the follower, copying what “the kids” are doing to a point where I’m embarrassed for her. Some will point out, “Yeah, but Mick Jagger is still making music and fighting to sustain his cultural sustainability. What’s the difference between Mick and Madge besides gender?” Well, Mick Jagger isn’t getting a Justin Bieber haircut and trying to convince people he’s 22. Madonna doesn’t just want to create music. She wants to be 22 again.
Why discuss this? Because Madonna has a new interview with Page Six about her cultural and artistic relevancy and how she’ll still be creating art for years more to come. Like Picasso.
She’s still going to create: “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. I don’t think there’s a time, a date, an expiration date for being creative. I think you go until you don’t have any more to say.”
Amy Schumer is going to open for Madonna for three shows: “She’s a role model for women, and I am too, and I think it’s a good match… I love her and … I just thought, ‘That’s interesting.’ (I’ll) try something new and different rather than the usual run-of-the-mill — have a band, have a DJ. It’s definitely a new thing. I hope it works — fingers crossed.”
Picking and choosing songs: “I realize I have 32 years of other songs, so I have to pick and choose. I sit there for weeks and weeks and weeks trying to figure out which of my old catalog I want to do. It’s a puzzle that we have to put together ’cause thematically the songs — the old and the new — they have to go together; sonically they have to go together.”
As I said, if she wants to keep making music until she’s 90, go for it. I would imagine she’ll be on her 20th facelift at that point and they’ll just have to prop up her head with a little lollipop stick. The gloves will be to her elbows (like the kidz!) and she’ll be getting headlines by making out with Drake’s grandson. Aging is a bitch for everyone, but it really hurts for those artists who want nothing more than to be desperately, crazily young. Ask Madonna if she would give up music and creativity just to be young again and I bet she would take that deal.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.
That bottom picture is rough
By the looks of it, she’s 90 already.
She looks like Norma Desmond in that pic. Ugh!
This was actually a good interview, no shade from me.
+1 !!! Pleasantly surprised I am. Pretty interesting that Amy Schumer will open for her!!! Dayum that girl is making some major cultural waves
She had something done to her face….
This is someone who knows nothing about Picasso, clearly. Picasso’s desire to create wasn’t driven by life’s everyday inspirations, he was driven to create by a compulsion to erase.
This is the man who said “In art, one must kill one’s father” and it shows in his deconstruction, mimicry, and outright cannibalization of his artistic forefathers as well as his artistic peers.
I get that Madge probably name-dropped Picasso because artistically he’s produced the largest body of work but I’d wish she’d leave the master out of it.
Signed,
An Annoying Picasso Fanatic
+1000
It’s annoying as she has stated that she collects his paintings just proves you can be rich beyond means and still be a twit
Bravo Kitten. I remember seeing Picasso’s work for the first time. There was such a heighten emotion, something I never felt will going to museums and viewing others artwork.
Does Madonna think songs like, ‘Bitch, Im Madonna’ have the same effect on people.
I like to compare myself to artists like Madonna so that I can conclude yep, I’m not as big an idiot as she is. Of course she can make music til she’s 100, but as someone of around her age, I don’t find her attitude to ageing to be in any way empowering or liberating, quite the opposite, it’s treating the normal process of ageing as something so dreadful that it must be attacked as an intruder and resisted at all costs rather than be acknowledged and accommodated. You don’t have to be conventional- whatever that means – but just don’t be pathetic.
Thank you Kitten – Madonna likening herself to Picasso is like Mama June likening herself to Sophia Loren. Madonna is driven by nothing more than narcissism and a desperate hunger to stay in the spotlight.
Meh, I think she wasn’t literally giving a dissertation of Picasso’s internal motivation and she didn’t say that she matched his artistry, just that he worked well into later years. She sounds less pretentious in this interview, to me.
Ok, but MANY artists keep creating until they pass away. Picasso wasn’t really unique in that way.
She said she likes to compare herself to artists and then chose Picasso, an artist that she clearly knows nothing about—just strikes me as kind of dumb.
It’s also kind of ironic that she chose Picasso because towards the final years of his life, the artwork he created was generally dismissed as crap by the art world.
Awesome comment!
Well said!
Marry me Kitten. You said it way better than I ever could. I threw up in my mouth a little at her sad attempt at comparing herself to Picasso. I guess she thinks the rest of us know as much about the man/the artist as she does.
Disclosure: Picasso was one of my favorite tortured artists and I named my Boston Terrier after him.
(Applause)
And, Kitten, you may have nailed it on the head. Picasso would sign a doodle on a napkin for ‘fans’, because it was, you know, a ‘Picasso’ straight from the maestro. Unlike Titian, he began to cannibalize his own talent.
Oh, and compare Madonna’s efforts to stay relevant with say, Bowie or Prince…
Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Norma Desmond.
YES!
I was going to post, “Mr. DeMille, I am ready for my closeup!”
So scary.
I was going to post that too! Does she not have anybody who tells her the truth? She’s on a runaway mine train to Sunset Blvd.
Honestly, your comment made me feel a little sad for her. But, I can’t say it’s too far from the truth. The harder she tries to hang onto her glory years image, the more pathetic her struggle to stay young and relevant appears.
Thought exactly the same thing.
+1
I agree with Kaiser. I saw the Rolling Stones in concert for the first time last month and it was fantastic – a show of a life time. These old guys still put on a fantastic rock and roll extravaganza. They aren’t trying to be anything other then a group of guys enjoying their music with the fans. Madonna on the other hand….Picasso?
I’ve seen them over a dozen times and am always amazed at how hard they work and how much fun the show is. Once, Jagger complained that rain was blowing in his face; Richards leaned into his microphone and growled: “shut up! You’re getting paid!” Jagger then pranced about for two hours as if his life depended on it. And Lisa is everything
This is why they are r’n’r legend !
*like*
I felt embarrassed for her when I watched the Bitch I’m Madonna video.
Whatever work she’s had done, she’s looking better these days. Maybe she’s seeing a different doctor?
If she wants to make music into her 90’s and perform, great! However, don’t try and turn back the clock and act as though you’re as relevant as you were in your 20’s. Embrace your legacy of music and make new music. You don’t have to thrust your tongue down a 20-something’s throat or kiss yet another female pop star on stage.
I remember when I was in college, the theatre department shared the same building as the music department. One of the music professors was this hunch-backed woman with grey hair who was in her 70’s. One day she was walking in the lobby all dressed in black, including black leather pants. She looked cool and I found out she was in a Jazz band and still playing to local sold out crowds.
She was cool. Madonna, at this point, just looks like a desperate, middle-aged woman.
Yes, Madonna’s problem is not because of an age issue, it’s a dignity issue.
THIS! +100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
I compare her to Picassos, too.
Ha. Your comment made me giggle, thanks! 🙂
Mmm, especially that last photo.
Madonna has actually always been a copier, a follower. She has always found creative ideas from other, lesser known people and taken them mainstream. Her creativity has always been in marketing, not music
Yes! I have always said this. Madonna is not the best singer, dancer or songwriter in the world, but she is a master at marketing!
Yeah. She was the queen of cultural appropriation before it was in pop culture dictionary. Just think about how everybody associates voguing with her and not with the ball culture of trans and gays of color.
Exactly! She has always followed what the kids of the day were doing even at the beginning of her career. I wouldn’t mind it so much, everyone gets inspired by something, if she didn’t claim to inspire a movement. Anyways, this interview didn’t bug me as much as her previous ones.
She and Cyndi Lauper came up at the same time. Cyndi had more talent but Madonna had the better business plan. Which reminds me that I need to get tickets for Kinky Boots
Was she? Ahh that sucks. I used to love Madonna in the “like a virgin” days. I had the lace gloves, the teased hair and the giant scarf around it.
She looks like something Bosch would paint
She just insulted Picasso.
Oh, Madge— stop taking yourself so damn serious.
Just stick to what you do woman. Not sure why she constantly pressures herself and feels the need to keep re-inventing.
She has more than proven herself in her Industry–but I truly would enjoy a compilation of some of her lesser known and older music.
Im a huge fan of the Ray of Light years and the Album directly after that one.
And comparing her “art” to Picasso is typical her Madge-esty. She still puts on a great live show, even at her age and is in incredible
physical shape.
She wasn’t comparing her “art” to Picasso. She said she wanted to continue working into old age like Picasso.
There’s not a right age to be creative… Then be creative, damn it!
The odd thing is Madonna in her 40s never tried to look like a young thing. She looked amazing for her age and a little younger than her age. I found most of her music interesting during that period, Music, a lot even on American Life, Confessions on a Dance Floor. None of that music was trying to be down with the kids. It was interesting and not teeny-bopper. Her three tours during her 40s, Drowned World, the Re-Invention Tour, and the BRILLIANT Confessions Tour were inspirational to me. I didn’t always like Madonna, but I admired so much about her ballsy attitude and how driven she was and how amazing she looked on stage in her 40s.
What happened to her then, getting divorced, hitting 50, from then on is just inexplicable to me, and she’s gotten worse as she hit her mid 50s. I didn’t mind Hard Candy, nor her tour, which was kind of fun Madonna. But the plastic surgery was shocking. MDNA was shocking to me, minus some good songs, but the auto-tuned, generic vocals on even decent songs was depressing. I do enjoy a few of those songs. But she put no effort into that album and was following the youth. Rebel Heart has some great songs, but just as many that are cringeworthy or immature. The great ones, and there are quite a few, hearken back to when Madonna was great. But Madonna’s behavior and desperation this era, trying to be hip, cool, young has even ruined the music for me.
Madonna in her 50s, has been a huge disappointment to me and something, as a huge fan, I never saw coming.
I don’t disagree with her continuing on and expressing herself through music or whatever other means and get tired of comments about classic acts, like retire, stop putting out music. Madonna just needs to do it a little more authentically, not putting out immature songs and wearing grillz and sitting in her bathroom doing all those selfies with her boobs pushed up to her neck and photoshopping the hell out of the photos,
U2 is doing one of the most amazing tours around, innovative technologywise, has a theme, intimate at the same time, reaching all of the audience with the set design, selling their new songs live like nobody’s business, Bono’s vocals in the best shape they’ve been in years, and you read comments, oh, give it up, youre not relevant, blah, blah. Yet here they are putting on one of the best tours this decade with a hunger and drive still to deliver the best they can, and still all the ageists comment.
this comment so much. my mum used to be a massive fan, so I kinda grew up with madonna’s music. what she’s doing right now is super disappointing.
Best comment ever on her.
I am so disappointed too by 50’s Madonna.
I LOVE THIS….agree 100% with everything, including the U2 comment.
I’ve got just the subreddit for you, Madge: r/narcissists
That bottom picture hurts to look at and makes me want to cry for her, why do women do that to their faces! I think she would’ve aged nicely, in my opinion she’d be a better inspiration for women if she’d just age gracefully and say screw plastic surgery. She was such a badass back in the day, obviously she’s having a hard time letting go of those days.
If she gets anymore plastic surgery she might look like a Picasso – there the similarity ends.
I picture her all Cassandra-like “spray me… SPRAY ME!”
(I apologize for the Doctor Who reference.)
Have a comedian opening for a show isn’t new. Why must she always act like she invented the wheel?
@ FingerBinger— Thanks for the clarification… And why shouldn’t she?
the day she looks ridiculous on stage or when she needs a cane or wheelchair then… So be it….But– still puts on a great show.
Many go ballasted at all her T&A and antics of trying to shock and surprise….doesn’t bother me a bit. It’s just part of her stage persona.
Have also always loved her for being ballsy enough for,speaking her mind and not worrying about being PC at all. Whether you agree with her or not, the woman has Moxie.. admits she’s a control-freak who is obsessed witherfection and has raised some cool unpretentious children.
She will just always be the shit to me…..can’t help it even though sometimes she needs an ego check,,,she is what she is.
thanks again for pointing that out…skimmed the article too fast !
While she compares herself to other; nobody compares themselves to her. G’ma….you’re embarrassing the kids.
IMO….. Picasso like Andy Warhol are vastly overrated.