I was never a fan. But anyone who knows anything about Madonna’s singing career knows that it has always been more about theatrics than music. It speaks volumes, for example, that she won more critical acclaim for Sex, a 1992 coffee table book of soft-porn photographs, than she has for any of her albums.
This explains why she chose to generate buzz at the 2003 Video Music Awards by staging a kiss with (then ingénue) Britney Spears, which she knew would upstage the performance of her iconoclastic song, “Like a Virgin.” Sure enough, the only thing anybody remembers about her performance is that kiss. Which, perhaps, explains why she kept doing it.
Therefore, it was hardly surprising that: Oops! … she did it again at the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Sunday. But the young performer this time was rapper Drake, arguably the most popular artist in the music industry today. Never mind that this kissing schtick makes her look like a pitiful, Norma-Desmondesque vampire squid sucking fame from rising stars to vivify her own….
Unfortunately for her, instead of pretending to be aroused by the kiss (i.e., according to the script), Drake retched in apparent disgust.
His ‘horrified’ reaction to Madonna making out with him onstage during a performance at Coachella caused a media storm…
What the single mom didn’t see was that when she was finished, the musician looked horrified, even wiping his mouth.
(Daily Mail, April 14, 2015)
Mind you, I suspect Madonna wouldn’t have been too bothered if the twits who trolled her about this had ridiculed her about having bad breath or being a sloppy kisser.
But media reports indicate that most of them ridiculed the 56-year-old singer for behaving like a perverted, sex-crazed chaperone at a high-school prom.
I shan’t dignify any of their tweets by quoting them here. Besides, as I seem to be of a dying breed – who avoids social media, well, like a vampire avoids daylight, you probably know more about their profane and puerile tweets than I do.
Alas, the greater shame is that Madonna responded … in kind. No doubt she was humiliated by the impression that her kiss stimulated nothing in Drake but acid reflux. And Drake only compounded her humiliation by insisting that his reaction reflected nothing but shocking delight.
But this serves her right. Because she should’ve known that it was only a matter of time before her all-about-sex schtick began repulsing rather than arousing….
Which is why it behooves young female performers – who seem hell-bent on following Madonna’s career path – to take heed. Indeed, I even gave Madonna fair notice four years ago – in “MTV Video Music Awards,” August 30, 2011 – that it would come to this.
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Most performers seem to think the key to success is looking and behaving in a way off stage that makes what they do on stage seem almost irrelevant: Exhibits B: Nicki Minaj (or, for you older folks, think of all of the off-stage exhibitionism that rendered the music of artists like Grace Jones and Madonna irrelevant).
By sterling contrast, Adele not only sings like an angel, she might just be the music industry’s saving grace. Unfortunately, this industry has so little to do with musical talent these days that Adele performing on any music awards show is rather like Andrea Bocelli performing on So You Think You Can Dance.
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To be fair, though, some twitterers are defending Madonna against what they decry as sexist/ageist abuse. Except that, if Mick Jagger ever detracted from his performance of “Brown Sugar” by making out with a Taylor Swift, I’m sure twits would troll him in similar fashion.