Madonna: 40 years scandalizing, and nobody is going to stop her

Madonna's Instagram account has a reputation for being an emotional slide for the digital snooper.

It does not disappoint.

Weeping Madonna;

drunk Madonna;

Madonna dancing

with Maluma;

Madonna filming how her family performs a choreography while she cooks;

Madonna kissing Britney Spears at her wedding;

Madonna showing a breast;

Madonna spread legs with a text that says: "I have something for you"...

The singer has few followers (18.4 million) when compared to stars of later generations such as Beyoncé (273 million), but offers better stimuli: seeing a pop star who has been everything (thanks to going further in morally and artistically) fight not to become a simply likeable character.

Madonna turns 40 in the world of music and still no pop star has proven to be more subversive and provocative than her.

He does so by releasing a remix album that sums up his career,

(on sale August 19), turning 64 (August 16) and accelerating the release of a film that tells his story. life, the real one.

Madonna, on the set of 'Body of Crime', directed by Uli Edel, in Washington, in the early 1990s.

The crazy use that the singer makes of her Instagram works perfectly as a symbolism of a career that has suffered worldwide scrutiny since the artist began in music, back in 1982, at the age of 25.

Surely Madonna has suffered all possible harassment that a pop star can endure: sexual, criticism of her physique

machismo, her classism;

accused of being anti-religious, sacrilegious, cultural appropriation, impostor for using

in concerts, unpatriotic, heretic, financier of an alleged sect (the Cabal), obsessed with youth... Yes, she has always gone too far in everything, and that, being a woman and also coming from the street, has not been tolerated.

In the eighties she burned crucifixes in the video of

in the nineties she published a book,

with the most explicit images of homosexuality and fetishism ever exhibited by a star;

in 2000 he had a passionate kiss with Britney Spears at an awards gala before millions of people who followed him on television... and he does nothing (on June 23), at the New York Pride party, he preferred the lewdness of a deep kiss to introduce her new friend, Tokisha, the 26-year-old Dominican we started to know because Rosalía shared songs with her like

or

.

Madonna, along with designer Jean Paul Gaultier, after the launch of the album 'Erotica', at a parade in Paris in 1992. Jim Smeal (Getty)

In a person so obsessed with continuously blowing it up, it must be frustrating not to penetrate among the young people of 2022. There, and because of the always search

of not being one foot behind, comes his exhibition with Tokisha and his desire to work with the greatest talent in current hip hop, Kendrick Lamar, as he confessed a week ago on the Jimmy Fallon show.

One consolation remains for Madonna: surely many teenagers today will always ignore the significance of the Beatles.

We don't think Paul McCartney cares much about that anymore, though.

More information

Photogallery: This is how we count the 60 years of Madonna

Madonna has 40 years of thoughtful provocation.

She in between she has recorded good albums with a limited voice.

She herself has confessed that the biggest challenge in her career was her preparation for the musical film

(1996),

where he had to work hard with the best singing teachers so that his vocal abilities were up to par.

In four decades he has released 14 albums, at least five of them essential: the first two

1983, and

1984), full of pearls that define the danceable pop of the eighties, songs that fit perfectly both in the gym as in the clubs, still exciting themes such as

or

;

Of course,

(1989), surely her best work, the one that escapes the context of the eighties to transcend the following decades;

(1998), one of the most valued of his career in terms of texts, his great avant-garde electronic work, both relaxed and partying, accompanied by producer William Orbit;

and

(2005), his reinvention, this time by the hand of Stuart Price, a facelift of the disco music of the seventies and early eighties, updating and sophisticating it, a path of enormous influence that has reached today with Dua Lipa as the clearest example.

The artist was always clear that her path to fame comes through musical pastiche: taking from here and there without being too noticeable and decorating it with her own contributions.

The singer in her iconic gold corset with spiky breasts on the 1990 'Blonde Ambition' tour.

Cord Press

Madonna has shipped 250 million records and is the best-selling female artist in history, which is not bad for a girl who was born in a Detroit suburb and saw her world shaken when she lost her mother at just six years old.

When she was 20 years old, she went to New York to do the opposite of what her strict father told her: she became a model and shortly after, she performed nude

in punk joints like CBGB.

When she began to transcend she found herself surrounded by successful men like Prince, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins, George Michael or U2.

Among the 25 best-selling albums of the eighties, the decade in which her career started, only two women sneak in, her (with

and Whitney Houston.

In this testosteronic context, Madonna used her own sexualization as an image, and also from the control that she herself exercised.

It was not a sexual entertainment for the male audience;

she was a powerful and challenging woman.

Madonna grew up listening to Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, and other Motown artists, learned to play drums on Elvis Costello's

records , was baptized as a concertgoer at a David Bowie concert, and had her first drink at 30. years, after her divorce from actor Sean Penn.

Restless and curious, she always sought out the company of daring artists, such as Keith Haring or Jean-Michel Basquiat.

With Maluma at a concert in Medellín, Colombia, on April 30, 2022. Freddy Builes (Getty Images)

She soon realized that she was living in a hostile environment that was not trained to tolerate an emancipated woman at the top.

In 1985, the erotic magazines

and

published nude photographs of her, images of her captured in 1979, when the singer was not famous and made a living by posing naked for photographers.

One of them took advantage of the fame of the singer in the mid-eighties to sell those old images.

Madonna took the incident as a warning.

“That was the first time I realized what I stood for.

And I said, 'Fuck you.'

They're trying to put me down for this.

I am not going to let public opinion dictate my own feelings, I am not going to apologize for anything I have done, ”she declared in the magazine

For history remains the speech against sexism, machismo and misogyny that she read when the

publication named her Woman of the Year in 2016: “If you are a girl, you have to play her game.

What game?

The one that dictates that you can be beautiful, adorable, and sexy, but don't act like you're smart.

Don't show that you have your own opinions.

You can allow men to treat you like an object and you can dress like a prostitute, but you are not the owner of your desires.

And then she added: “For those who denied me, for those who didn't help me, for those who said that I couldn't, that I shouldn't, that I had no right… thank you, because your resistance made me stronger.

It made me the fighter I am today.

She made me the woman I am today.

So for that, thank you."

Because Madonna, more than a pop star, is a concept.

The one that means rebellion, indiscipline and fighter against.

That is why she is an LGTBI muse and a reference for those who came later: Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Christina Aguilera, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Pink... Also for the current pop goddess, Beyoncé, who has recently published a version from her single

fused with Madonna's 1990 hit

.

“Tremendously grateful that you wanted to collaborate with me.

You have opened so many doors for so many women… You are a masterpiece,” Beyoncé posted about Madonna on her social media.

The artists that now stand out in urban music in Spanish also show this gratitude, such as the Argentine living in Spain Ms Nina: “She is an inspiration of an empowered woman.

Now people are shocked by our lyrics, but she was much more radical in the eighties.

People criticize her now because she has surgery, that if she is old... Let's see how those who criticize her are at 60 years old.

They are never happy.

But she will not be intimidated.

I love her".

Madonna with Michael Jackson at the 1991 Oscars. Cordon Press

Indeed, Madonna is not going to give up for many

who visit her Instagram.

In 2019, she released an album that passed the test of harsh critics.

was not enthusiastic, but convinced.

“What's the matter, that you can't make youthful, fun and sexy music if you're a certain age?

Whoever believes that is stupid, ”she said in 2019 in an interview with

about the goal of this album.

True to her commitment to the

a few days ago she released

a collaboration with gay rapper Saucy Santana where they remix their 80s hit

Three weeks ago the singer offered an interview to the publication

where she announced that she will direct the film about her life (Julia Garner will play her).

She and she argued it: “There are a lot of people trying to make movies about me.

Mostly misogynistic men.

So I put my foot in the door and said, 'No one is going to tell my story except me.

Once again, Madonna being Madonna.

Contacts from a Madonna photo shoot from December 1982. Peter Noble (Getty)