Madonna 6.0: millionaire, influencer and gay icon
The most influential woman in pop culture, the one who has best capitalized on the instinct of transgression, turns 60
'Playlist': Madonna turns 60
It's summer, it's night, and you're watching TV with your mom. You are 10 years old and you are swallowing whatever they broadcast on Spanish Television, because private television has not yet reached your city. In this that the live broadcast of a Madonna concert begins: the singer performs in Spain for the first time with her Blond ambition tour and the media have been heating up the atmosphere with images of nuns dancing or the corsets with pointed tits that she wears in on stage. Constantino Romero broadcasts the show and translates what Ciccone says, until there comes a time when it is not necessary, since the star addresses the audience in Spanish: "Where are the guys with cocks?"
This isn't like one of those awkward moments when you're watching a movie with your holy parents and a racy scene appears. It is something much more violent and, at the same time, revealing. You understand what John Lennon felt when he met Elvis. Or when Patti Smith saw Mick Jagger, also on TV, and wet her underwear. Or what Madonna herself experienced when attending a Bowie performance. Only this time it's a woman who poses the challenge and handles the provocation. Perhaps the first to do it with such an exercise of power: "I'm an aunt and I want sex; just because, because I feel like it, because I feel like it."
Similar scenes were repeated all over the world, to the point that, who more who less, have all had a story with Madonna. Millions of homosexuals found a goddess to adore, who understood what they felt and who they could take refuge in when things got ugly or when they couldn't show themselves as they really were. Future stars like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus and Rihanna found a role model to get on stage. Not to mention the moments that he has left for the annals of popular culture, from that interview on Tuesday and the 13th, ground gold in the history of the media, to the scene at the beginning of Reservoir Dogs and the trillions of hours that His music has been played at baptisms, communions, weddings and funerals.
A decade ago, we were celebrating the fact that the triumvirate that ruled the music of the 80s (Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna herself) reached half a century of existence at the same time. The happy coincidence of the three of them being born in 1958. Today only she is left alive, and the fact that she turns 60 this Thursday and is heading towards old age makes us reflect on what remains of that star that blew the heads off a couple of generations, forever changed pop and upended established ideas about femininity, sexuality and music marketing.
Ahead of analyzing the icon, a book: Bitch she's Madonna. The queen of pop in contemporary culture (DosBigotes) brings together several essays on aesthetics, identity, sexuality or feminism coordinated by Eduardo Viñuela, from the University of Oviedo. The same institution where in 2015 the first university course dedicated to blonde ambition in Spain was launched. The fact that such varied topics are dealt with gives an idea that music has become too small to talk about Madonna. And it is precisely music that has been missing lately (three years since his last album, Rebel Heart, and its corresponding tour), although as he reveals on social networks, he is putting his batteries together and recording with former collaborators, such as Mirwais, to publish a new album in the coming months.
Waiting for her to say what she has to say in those songs, Madonna sets out on her sixties showing herself on Instagram as a crazy old woman who seems to give a heave that her latest plastic surgery operations have had a result unequal. On her previous album there is a song called Unapologetic bitch (Zorra without remorse, with her head held high) and another in which she talks about her vaginal discharge comparing it to holy water (Holy water). Madonna knows that the second sexual revolution that she herself led has made everyday what was previously forbidden. But she also knows that there are still many areas that remain taboo (sexuality in elderly women, female arrogance) and that is where she sees room to continue stirring up the public. Two years ago, at the Billboard Women in Music Awards Woman of the Year Award, she thanked the award like this: “Thank you for recognizing my ability to continue my career for 34 years in the face of blatant sexism, misogyny, constant harassment and relentless abuse." For the British writer Bidisha, it is proof that the myth is still alive: «When people say they want Madonna to age gracefully, what they really mean is: turn gray, shut up and go to a corner. And she refuses to do that. Instead, he continues to produce brilliant, captivating and thought-provoking work."
During these days we will read many times the idea of reinvention related to Madonna. Sometimes it will be to refer to the different look changes that he has gone through over these three decades and other times it will be to influence his good sense of smell to track trends and recycle his own brand, in the same way that the big companies do. publicly traded companies. And perhaps we forget what Thurston Moore, guitarist for Sonic Youth and his neighbor in that New York of the 80s of Basquiat and no-wave (Madonna herself became part of one of those groups) commented in an article for The Guardian. For Moore, she not only managed to bring gay culture out of the catacombs and make it mainstream, but she also did the same with Latino and Afro-American artistic manifestations: «It was very significant to give them a voice and, moreover, to do it constantly. I never had the feeling that I was doing it as a nod to what was fashionable. I think he was a really very caring person towards people who had historically been disenfranchised by society."
And maybe we'll forget about the music again, which seems to be the least important thing in Madonna in the end. But there are the playlists fuming: the start with Holiday (1983), the birth of the techno-pop star with Like a virgin (1984) and that sensation of being "touched for the first time", the initial approaches to the disco with Into the groove (1984), the mischievous grace of La isla bonita and True blue in contrast to the debate surrounding abortion in Papa don't preach (1986), the scandal of kissing with the black jesus christs in Like a prayer and the discovery of house with Express yourself (1989) before the definitive surrender to dance with the choreographies of Vogue (1990) and Erotica (1992), the transformation into Evita (1997), the rebirth at the turn of the century with Ray of light ( 1998) and Music (2000)... He assured it 10 years ago, when he turned 50, and it seems that he continues to subscribe to it: the beat continues to beat.
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