Madonna: The Rise and Fall

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Interscope Records refused to re-ink Madonna's huge contract, meaning that the "Material Girl" is perhaps finished as a singer.

Her last three albums, “MDNA” in 2012, “Rebel Heart” in 2015 and “Madame X” in 2019 were all apparently massive flops.

For most of my life Madonna was a hit-making machine. This is a real turning of the guard moment, and a reminder that I have one foot in the grave.

I've had friends who were huge fans of hers, but I've never really cared for Madonna.

She never had the talent to justify her fame.
She always was a manufactured celebrity.
She used people and threw them away when she had gotten all she could.
She has enough $ to live on the rest of her life; she had her fame, now it is over.

She had a good run. She burst upon the scene about the same time as Cindi Lauper (similar in both look, and in sound), back in the mid Eighties.So I would think of both them in same train of thought back then. Lauper fell by the wayside before the Eighties were over, but Madonna was still a mega star during the Nineties, and the two thousands, and the 2010s. A run several times as long as the eight or nine years that the Beatles managed to stay together. And her downfall, if it you can call it that, was partially caused by performers largely imitating her (like Beyonce, and Miley Cyrus, and Lady Gaga).

More thoughts on "Lady Madonna"


---Her success was more connected to the music video than more talented artists. When the video declined, we were left with dozens of her tinny-voiced hits. Few stand the test of time.


---She "got airs": a not credible accent, moving to England, fancying herself a movie star

---Her chasing youth trends became pathetic. Like Prince, she has recorded some tragic hip/hop tracks.


---She kept herself in the fray, so that her decline was obvious to all. Plastic surgery has made her into a golem.

But having said all of that, she seems to be in fairly good condition despite the grind of dancing and the temptations of more wealth than Croesus. Mimi is fat and often drunk, and Whitney Michael and Prince are all dead. She can sleep on piles of money in her choice of castles with her choice of catamites.

Hardly the worst fate