{"id":764268,"date":"2026-06-27T07:53:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T07:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/764268\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T07:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T07:53:12","slug":"should-we-be-rooting-for-madonna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/764268\/","title":{"rendered":"Should we be rooting for Madonna?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Holding Space is a joint column by Anne T. Donahue and Peter Knegt that “holds space” for something or someone in popular culture.<\/p>\n

Peter: I need to make a confession, Anne.<\/p>\n

Anne: Talk to me.<\/p>\n

Peter: Despite the many, many reasons she has given us not to, I am still rooting so hard for Madonna. And I genuinely could not be more excited for Confessions II, her new album\/sequel to 2005\u2019s Confessions on a Dance Floor. Am I OK?<\/p>\n

Anne: Peter, I will never tell you who you can and can not champion. (Unless it\u2019s Gwyneth Paltrow. Yikes.<\/a>) But I need to hear more. Revering the Madonna of old is something I deeply understand. You had a huge part in me embracing 20th-century Madonna! Remember our roundtable about Truth or Dare<\/a>? She was an artist! An advocate! An outspoken critic of the fascist state that is Toronto! (If you\u2019re under 30, watch this video to get that reference<\/a>.) Also, her music up to and including Confessions on a Dance Floor is unparalleled. But Madonna post-2005 is a different story. There\u2019s a lot to unpack there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Peter: A lot. But before we get to that, here\u2019s the thing: even if so much of what Madonna has done in the past 20 years has been a mess, she\u2019s still here, giving it everything she\u2019s got. Look at the months of promo she\u2019s been doing for this new album. She held her own against Sabrina Carpenter at Coachella! She dangled herself from a giant billboard in Times Square while she performed for thousands of gay guys! She released a (legitimately awesome) 14 minute visual companion to the album that reunited her with Debi Mazar!\u00a0<\/p>\n

WATCH | Watch Madonna’s Confessions II – The Film:<\/p>\n

The fact that Madonna did all this while being nearly 68-years-old is undeniably awe inspiring. And so is so much of the story of how she got here. (Have you listened to Bandsplain\u2019s 6 part, 20 hour podcast miniseries on her<\/a>? It\u2019s incredible). This is a woman who, for the last 30 years of her career, has been told she\u2019s too old to be doing it anymore \u2014 in a way that was unquestionably based in ageism and misogyny. And for the most part, she\u2019s proven them wrong at every turn. But I was a little worried she might have hit a wall simply too high even for her in the leadup to the 2023 Celebration world tour, a retrospective of 40 years of Madonna\u2019s career. When she ended up postponing the tour several months because she had ended up in intensive care with a bacterial infection I just thought, \u201cthis is it.\u201d But no! She recovered, completed 81 sold out shows all around the globe \u2014 one of which I witnessed, and it was glorious\u2014 and once again was, against all odds, on top of the world. That could have been a monumental way to go into retirement. Instead, Madonna decided it was time for a whole new era, or at least a sequel to a previous era: Confessions II. And I am finding myself kind of riveted watching her pull it off, even if a lot of what she\u2019s doing is absolutely ridiculous. Madonna has never been shy to pander to her gay fans, but this promo tour has been next level. Anne, she literally took over Grindr so that when you open the app Madonna is there, telling you you\u2019re gay. Not to mention when she turned up at famed West Hollywood gay bar The Abbey shouting things like \u201cMother is here to save you\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t let me down, gays!\u201d at the crowd. That\u2019s too much pressure, Madonna!\u00a0<\/p>\n

As someone who is not being yelled at to not let her down, what do you make of all this, Anne? And how do you feel about this umpteenth resurrection of Madonna in general?<\/p>\n

Anne:I promise none of my Madonna hesitancy is due to her age. What is age? Keep going until you\u2019re long dead, that\u2019s how I see it! I will never throw side-eye at someone doing their thing at any age.<\/p>\n

And for the record, the Sabrina Carpenter\/Madonna Like a Virgin moment needs to be uploaded to streaming services ASAP because I must play it loudly from my car as I convince myself I can sing like Sabrina. Her Times Square moment? My brother in Christ, I couldn\u2019t have done that when I was 20, let alone now, let alone 68. Also, everybody just needs to calm down regarding her aesthetic evolutions and how old she is while executing them. If someone gets work done, they get work done. Not my face, not my concern.<\/p>\n

For me, the problem is the cultural appropriation she seems hell-bent on committing to. We saw it during the Ray of Light roll-out (cut to: Nothing Really Matters<\/a>), She compared ageism to racism, she used photos of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. for her 2015 album roll-out and replaced those figures with images of herself.. I could go on. It\u2019s not good. Which I know might be considered an extension of \u201cpushing the boundaries,\u201d but no. Not these ones. There are other boundaries that need to be pushed. Especially by a white woman. We have influencers romanticizing being a \u201ctrad wife,\u201d for heaven\u2019s sake. Madonna circa 1989 would shock the shit out of those people.<\/p>\n

My understanding of Madonna and her consistent resurrections has, like her public image, evolved. I grew up Catholic, which means that at school we were taught that \u201ccontroversial\u201d equaled \u201cbad.\u201d My 13-year-old self judged her hard for the abundance of sexual imagery. But as an adult? Hell yeah, Madonna! She grew up Catholic too, so I get why she called out so many religious ideologies and norms and really rejected the shame being projected onto her. I love the way she embraced new incarnations of herself and the music that accompanied those selves. Reinvention is tried by many and achieved by few. I\u2019m so here to see her channel the Confessions era, but I hope she uses this rollout not to \u2026 do whatever she was doing in the 2010s. That really bummed me out.<\/p>\n

\"MadonnaMadonna in a scene from Confessions II – The Film. (YouTube)<\/p>\n

Peter: OK, so in this era where we quickly forget any problematic thing a celebrity has done 10 minutes after they do it, these are very important reminders for those among us who have been overeager to give Madonna a full pass. She is undeniably the queen of cultural appropriation<\/a>, and that\u2019s been constant throughout her entire career. Although she does seem to have taken the notes this time around. The only stealing happening from this era seems to be from previous self and the wallets of gay men.<\/p>\n

We should also get into the music itself, which also has been a bit of a problem since the post-Confessions era, in that most of it hasn\u2019t been very good. There\u2019s certainly a few exceptions. All four of the albums she\u2019s released in the last 20 years\u00a0 \u2014 Hard Candy, MDNA, Rebel Heart and Madame X \u2014 have a song or two that I love, but mostly they\u2019ve lacked cohesion. At times, a lot of the music has felt pretty desperate. Remember when she teamed up with Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. for the bubblegum pop cheerleader anthem Give Me All Your Luvin? Literally everything about that has aged unbelievably poorly. Which makes the choice to now return to her last legitimately great album, Confessions of a Dance Floor, almost feel like Madonna admitting that everything since then has sucked. Does that make sense?<\/p>\n

Anne: It does! I really checked out after Confessions which, to me, is a perfect pop album. But I figured she was Madonna so regardless of what I thought about her, I assumed that she\u2019d still be raking in the big bucks and maintaining her fanbase. Which I wasn\u2019t wrong about!<\/p>\n

I want to see her release music that reminds anybody who didn\u2019t grow up listening to her that she was crowned the Queen of Pop for a reason. The \u201880s, \u201890s, and the first half of the \u201800s were a marathon of hits. Even Don\u2019t Cry For Me Argentina stood the test of time once it was remixed. (At least in my opinion, as a person who loves both dance music and showtunes.) She was a cultural phenomenon! She really did change the conversation regarding what could and could not be done in mainstream music. If this new album can work as a testament to legacy over novelty, it could introduce her to a Gen Z audience who will be inspired to acquaint themselves with singles other than Vogue.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Your relationship to Madge is a lot different than mine. I like her music, but your love runs deep. Tell me more about that and whether it\u2019s even exciting to find out about new music, or if it\u2019s just stressful since you don\u2019t want to be let down. I mean, everybody was relatively psyched about Harry Styles and Drake this spring and, well, they weren\u2019t The Immaculate Collection, that\u2019s all I\u2019m going to say.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”:<\/p>\n

Peter: Seeing her release music that reminds people who are unaware why she was crowned the Queen of Pop is, to me, the ultimate thing Madonna could do at this point. My love for her is complicated, but it certainly does run deep. Like a Prayer was my all time favourite song from age 7, and will be until whenever I die. And I want Gen Z and Gen Alpha and Gen Beta and Gen whatever comes after that to all be well aware that once upon a time there was a woman named Madonna Louise Ciccone and the collections she released were indeed immaculate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Do I think that\u2019s going to happen with Confessions II? Probably not! The fact that she reteamed with the OG Confessions producer Stuart Price felt very promising, and I\u2019m very into some of what I\u2019ve heard so far (I Feel So Free, Danceteria). But I\u2019ve also been less impressed with others, including the underwhelming, nonsensical Sabrina Carpenter duet \u2014 if you can even call it that \u2014 Bring Your Love. It seems to me that she\u2019s mostly playing hard to her most devoted fanbase, gays over 40. Which doesn\u2019t feel desperate to me, it just feels natural.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I do think what it\u2019s really going to take to bring Madonna to the younger masses is something she has not quite been able to pull off: a biopic movie. We\u2019re well aware she\u2019s been trying to make one herself for ages, and she just told Interview magazine<\/a> these plans are now indefinitely on hold because she had a falling out with Universal Pictures. I can\u2019t quite land on whether I\u2019m relieved by this or not. On the one hand, I generally despise music biopics for watering down the truth into a whitewashed oblivion. On the other, I am obviously deeply curious to see what a Madonna biopic directed by Madonna would look like. It could be the most glorious mess we\u2019ve ever seen on screen, Anne.<\/p>\n

Anne: The fact that Julia Garner was going to be playing Madonna, too! It was lining up to be a biopic that would actually be compelling and interesting and, dare I say, good. But alas, nothing gold shall stay.<\/p>\n

That said, I think a documentary in the style of with Truth or Dare would reel in a younger audience. Or a memoir. And not a \u201cdictated to a writer\u201d memoir, one that she actually writes that embodies the best parts of Madonna the performer: honest, strong, bold, extremely human. I feel the same way about Bring Your Love as you do, but because I think it lacks Madonna\u2019s full Madonnaness. I Feel So Free certainly nods to it, but when I listen to Rescue Me or Erotica there\u2019s something so present in her voice. Like immediately you know why those songs transfixed the masses, for better or for worse.<\/p>\n

I just hope Confessions II is the former.<\/p>\n

Peter: Shall we have, like, a prayer for that?<\/p>\n

Anne: Only if you call my name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Holding Space is a joint column by Anne T. Donahue and Peter Knegt that “holds space” for something…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-764268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}