Does Madonna Still Matter?

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I've just watched the new Madonna video, named after my home-away-from-home, Medellín (Colombia), and frankly I'm not quite sure what to make of it...

The song itself sounds like many other Latin songs on the radio, with her Colombian collaborator, Maluma, rapping in Spanish (Reggaeton style) and Madonna sprinkling an 'ay ya yay' here and there. Basically, nothing special that has not been done or bettered by say a Shakira or even Jennifer Lopez. Truth be told, it's been some years since Madonna has lost the musical plot, around the time she began to take the cue from her successors, who are initiating her--the likes of Britney, Kylie, Katy, Ariana or Taylor Swift--in a bid to stay relevant and cutting edge.

But, because this is Madonna, her new song and album (out in June) are preceded by tremendous hype, and MTV launched her first music video in a few years with a 90's style premiere, featuring an akward, out-of-synch interview where she spoke of the album's influences: living in Lisbon, Portugal, etc...

While I've never believed Madonna to be the best singer or dancer around, even in her heyday, I attended a concert of hers as a young man and recognize her power as a performer.

Yet, instead of appreciating her latest offering, I found myself meditating on vanity and aging. Art is, of course, ageless and artists can be, too--maturing and improving with time.

Still, it was difficult to willingly suspend disbelief and take this trip with her, now, that she is 60 years old and expecting us to accept her flirtation with the 25 year old Maluma and, by association, Latin culture.

Am I being unfair, sexist, ageist? Or is it cringe-worthy to see a woman her age, desperately, refusing to grow older, gracefully, and basically remaining a one-trick pony, still selling sex?

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When I was younger I might have gone so far as to say that an artist like Madonna represented a type of Freedom, but I’ve come to see things, differently, as I've gotten older.

I've come to view someone like Madonna as the opposite of freedom — enslavement to body, physical appetites, and symptomatic of a kind of Pornification of Popular Culture: https://truthout.org/articles/the-pornification-of-popular-culture/

I think that her version of what she terms as 'freedom-fighting' is something of a joke. Madonna, after all, has only cared for Madonna. Everything else, religion, other cultures and their traditions, is just a prop for her, promptly adopted and abandoned.

As a case in point, take her so-called solidarity with the long-suffering people of Gaza. Despite her showy sympathy for Palestinians (and lip service to human dignity and such) she is happy to pose with her friend, Bibi Netanyahu, the butcher of Israel and turn a blind eye to the apartheid's state's human rights violations. Recently, following the announcement of her participation in the Eurovision contest in Tel Aviv, legions of her fans (some famous) have urged the amoral artist to boycott the event based on Israel's cruel treatment of Palestinians, but the material girl is not persuaded to take a stand.

Despite her superficially spiritual poses every now and then, the values she promotes are a great disservice to true liberation and have done harm to the feminist movement, for example, by taking women backwards not forwards. Madonna seems to be an attention-hungry, yet mediocre artist (her greatest talent being self-promotion). Also, at heart, a rebel without a cause, always looking for the cheap (sexual) shock and to ride the latest trend—basically, all (borrowed) style, little substance.

Whereas this might have worked for her when she was younger, now, it’s embarrassing seeing an older woman clinging to youth and pretending she’s a teenager—through plastic surgery, raping black culture (gold mouth grill, butt implants, twerking) while competing with younger pop culture figures like Kim Kardashian, Miley Cyrus, etc...

Okay, rant over!