Watched Rage for the first time in a long time this morning and came across Madonna’s video for Love Profusion. It was all cities rotting and fish swimming and nature loving beach stuff. The song and the video didn’t seem that different to “Ray of Light” which was made 5 years ago. We used to expect a different look from Madonna every album and that was a large part of how we could differeniate her albums. True Blue had a completely different look to Like a Prayer and Erotica was completely different to her earth mother Ray of Light persona.
I have a theory that her career is waining ever since she became a mother.
She seems to have resigned herself to becoming the godmother to all pop girls – which is why she is kissing christina and britney and making videos with them. She has lost her drive to become the biggest and greatest and can be attributed to the birth of Lourdes.
Ok, so she has wanted a kid since she married Sean Penn but for various reasons it didn’t come about. Imagine if she did have a child to him and we missed out on important records like Like a Prayer, Erotica and Dick Tracy (ok, forget about Dick Tracy).
Would the world be different without Express Yourself?? I think so. Here was a feminine woman dressed up in a pinstripe suite lording over barely clad men working industriously and dirtily. This was the end of the 80s – an era when women were well and truly in the workplace. Yet her next single was Cherish – a video where she went all beachy and fell in love with a male mermaid.
Madonna taught us to tell off our dads, assert ourselves, be feminine yet firm and indulge ourselves sexually. She was controversial yet amazingly popular. Now she just seems bland, and I’m disappointed because she doesn’t even seem to be trying. She’s too happy living in london with her director husband and two kids. Which is great for her, but sucks for us.
I guess Madonna’s era of Queen of Pop is over and now she is just the Queen Mother.