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I don't know about this at all. Madonna at fifty seems to be making the same point about her sexuality that Mick Jagger was trying to make about his in the late Eighties, during the disastrous 'Let's Work' period. There's the same iffy styling - going to the the gym may be necessary, but it's not cool - the same signs of a mid-life crisis spiralling out of control. See also Bowie going jungle. It's something that has to be worked though, I suppose, but it's best done in private.
Madonna at fifty could walk into pretty much anywhere and leave with whoever she wanted, as Jagger could have done, even in the doldrums of his career, and as Sting could, as we speak. So please, let's not get into the idea that the media's current reluctance to take Madonna seriously has got anything to do with society's approach to women over fifty in general. Like Mae West or Tallulah Bankhead Madonna will be able to score in a night club until she's rather old, and there's nothing particularly new or original about any of this.
Basically, Madonna has asidiously courted the public eye for twenty five years, and the public eye is now feeling sick. I'm sure the new album's all right, but I'm equally sure that, given the money and production talent that's been thrown at it, my parents' dog, or even I, might score a couple of hits if kindly treated barking over the backing tracks.
She's hardly the first sex symbol to turn fifty, but, as with Jagger ('Let's Work' is on youtube somewhere I'm sure, as is the godless abortion that was Bowie and Jagger doing 'Dancing In The Streets') Madonna is now just naff. Even if she does do ninety hours of pilates a week, or whatever it's supposed to be. She can go on about not letting her children watch television, and her spiritual beliefs, and all the rest of the junk she's rarely directly interviewed about (but which we all have to skim over in the paper in any case - how does that happen, I wonder) but the question remains: Who. F***ing. Cares?
Plus, she does need a new stylist.
Boy George is another one, as is Morrissey*; just when you think they're settling down into a quiet life of middle-aged debauchery, one more career revival appears on the horizon. And all the reasons why you never liked them that much loom sharply back into focus.
*Admittedly, it was good to see Morrissey back after a seven year hiatus, but one album was enough. |
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