Why I love Madonna
Let me start with the negative first, because that’s how I roll. I believe that Madonna is a mediocre talent. She’s not a good singer, (a majority of the songs in her live performances are auto-tuned), she’s not a particularly memorable dancer, she can’t play a musical instrument, and her songs are typically co-written with four other people. Trust me, you don’t need a group of songwriters to rhyme “mad” with “sad”, but then again writing songs is not easy, and few people can do it well.
Despite this knowledge, Madonna holds a special place in my heart. Her work ethic is notorious, and I believe it plays a large role in her success as a musician. But it’s also her ruthless ambition, the stubborn streak to succeed at all costs, that fascinates me most.
Madonna’s career has thrived, even though little emphasis has been placed on her music. In the beginning the focus was on her clothing, then by the late 80s and early 90s, she delighted in shocking people by talking openly about sex, and refusing to play the typical submissive female role in her relationships. This came at a time when bubblegum pop ruled, and yet it’s surprising to see how little we’ve evolved since then. In North America, we’re still obsessed, and shamed by sex.
Maybe that’s why for so long Madonna was only attracted to South American men, a region where sex is celebrated, and openly discussed without childish giggles.
In a commencement address that Madonna gave to a group of university students a few years ago someone asked her why she has been so successful, in an industry that chews and spits people out. Her answer is something that I still remember to this day.
“A lot of people told me that I wasn’t very good. I just didn’t listen to them.”
How many of us have never reached our goals because we believed and cared so much about what other people thought of us? Madonna refused to listen to her critics. It’s a quality that I rarely have the courage to emulate.
At 54 the conversation now revolves around how old she is. People are angry that she’s still trying to be sexy at her age. I often hear people criticizing her physical appearance. But then again, they’ve always done that, as though it’s perfectly appropriate; I guess that’s the shallow world we currently live in. My response to this criticism is simple: “You be 54 your way, and she’ll be 54 her way.” It’s worth noting that she is in better physical shape than most 25-year-olds.
Madonna refuses to be an old lady, and because her critics can’t control how she behaves, what she wears and says, they lash out. I’m looking at you Elton John.
When she recently slipped an Italian audience her nipple, the media, and social networks went crazy. How dare she make us look at her old boob?
But then again, no one asked them to look or read about her. It seems sport to beat up on Madonna and to say horrible things about her. Her MDNA Tour was marred by controversy, the media claimed that her shows were not selling. In the end it was revealed that each of her 88 performances sold out, making her the top earner in music for 2012 by grossing $305.2 million.
As a gay kid in the suburbs of Toronto I looked to Madonna as an ally. She supported gay people at a time when it was dangerous to do so. She challenged societal norms around sexuality, provoking responses from people, and then asking them why they felt so strongly opposed to something that didn’t affect them.
During this time in the early 90s, when AIDS was used as a tool to repress gays, she stood up in concerts and informed the world that AIDS was not a bad person’s disease. I felt safe. I remember thinking that perhaps I wasn’t as innately disgusting as everyone was telling me I was.
I’m not always drinking the Madonna Kool-Aid. I see how fame has terribly affected her. For example she speaks with a faux English accent, when everyone knows she’s from Detroit. It’s annoying, and I hate it. But she can talk however the hell she wants to.
I enjoy Madonna because she succeeds in an arena full of detractors. There are so many people who want her to fail, and who get angry because she doesn’t.
It says more about them, then it ever does about her.
I possess great compassion and seek to be of service to others. 
Not a huge Madonna fan (although I have a greatest hits-type CD) but this was really a wonderful post. I wish I could persevere in the face of detractors and be wildly successful. Madonna is not afraid, while I struggle with self confidence. I also wanted to say that I was listening to Peter Murphy’s “Cut You Up’ as I was reading this, and had a synchronicity. As I read the line about the music industry chewing people out and spitting them out, I head the lyrics
“You know the way it throws about.
It takes you in and spits you out
It spits you out when you desire
To conquer it, to feel you’re higher”
Just wanted to share
Awesome!
erm Cuts, even…
I understood!
I really like your blog posts and articles. I appreciate what you wrote about Madonna. I think she deserves everything she has because of her hard work. Also, I do believe that her artistic merits are many. She is a under-appreciated songwriter. If one looks at the writing credits of her songs, I’d say that an important chunk of it was written by her and someone else only. The 4 to more co-writers is more of a recent thing, and was not that common before Hard Candy. Madonna is more of a lyricist, but she is also known to come up with melodies, or modify them, like she did with Joe Henry’s “stop” , which was a tango before Madonna turned it into the more interesting “don’t tell me”. And for every silly rhyme and lyric, Madonna has also a poignant one. Just pay attention to the lyrics for Spanish Eyes (about a Jesus-like rebel figure in a latino ghetto), Live to Tell (child abuse?), Like a Prayer (religious and sexual ecstasy?), mer girl (a poem about her mother’s death and her own mortality), waiting (a hidden gem in erotica), rain, or even recent gems like the clever play on words in I’m addicted and Love Spent, not to mention Falling Free (well, with this one she probably wrote the lyrics with Joe Henry). I guess it is a matter of taste, but I find much depth in her songs and I think she is a solid, very good studio singer and an occasional good live singer. her delivery is strong in emotions, however limited her vocal range is. I am a frequent concert goer, and I believe Madonna sings during most of her songs, lip-syncing to only a few numbers. Whatever post-production work they do on her vocals when they come up with the tour dvds is another story. In her latest tour she sang totally live 14 of the 19 songs she performed, and she gave me the chills with her raw performance of ballad versions of Like a Virgin and Love Spent when I saw her last October. Yes, she wouldn’t even be pre-selected for American Idol these days, and her lyrics are sometimes silly, but her creativeness seems bottomless to me. When I saw her MDNA tour concert, I just couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. That she is trying this hard and pushing herself this far to put on a dazzling show, more than 30 years into her career.
Yeah, I enjoy some of her lyrics, but I had to write something negative about her! I have been to all of her tours and she puts on the best show there is. BTW I love the MDNA record and Love Spent is my fav song. The lyrics to Mer Girl from Ray of Light are pretty terrible though, opening with “My mother who haunts me, even though she’s gone.” Ummm… yeah, that’s obvious. She’s definitely not a lyricist like Tori Amos, but they exist in different genres of music.
Hahaha! Yeah, the opening verses (and other verses) in Mer Girl need an editor… but I like the story the song tells and its spiraling melody; I think it is her hyper-ballad and an older sister to the recent “Falling Free,” which is more polished lyrically and melodically.
Yeah Falling Free is a great song.
I love Madonna, but have not seen her live so don’t know for a fact if her singing is truly not that amazing, I do think shes a good dancer though, having been a ballerina growing up. She does play some guitar & like what someone said above, alot of her songs she did pen most of it:) Shes such an artist, really; The SEX book? Her videos? Awesome!!!:)
Okay okay, she’s an artist!