This snippet of the speech does the rounds every few months on social media, as proof of Madonna\u2019s self-aggrandisement. But in context, it\u2019s quietly brutal: three of the names she mentioned hadn\u2019t stood alongside her during her imperial phase (though she did, of course, date Tupac in the early Nineties), but the rest very much had. In fact, they were a quartet: Prince, Madonna, Whitney and MJ, four icons of the Eighties who invented the modern pop star, all but one now felled by addiction and mental illness. Madonna had outlived, and she was proud to have outlived. In pop music and beyond, it\u2019s been the story of her life<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even before the release of her death-tinged new record<\/a>, Confessions II, I\u2019d been thinking a lot about Madonna herself dying. It always seemed sort of unfathomable. Madonna has embodied an indestructibility \u2013 whether fuelled by ambition, spirituality, or some expensive Beverly Hills aesthetician \u2013 that seemed to say such mortal nonsense would never touch her. But then she nearly did die, in June 2023, from a bacterial infection so bad that her doctors placed her in a 48-hour coma. <\/p>\n From there, the hits kept coming: her stepmother died from cancer in September 2024, then her brother Christopher \u2013 a funny, sassy gay man who was by turns her best friend and her mortal enemy \u2013 died from cancer, too, a month later. Madonna\u2019s older, more troubled brother, Anthony, had also died a few months before her own brush with death. Rumours surfaced last year that her 95-year-old father was terribly ill as well, but they proved unfounded.<\/p>\n Today, Madonna is 67. She is 11 years older than Abraham Lincoln was when he was shot. Cher kicked off her first farewell tour at the age of 56. Confessions II is not the work of an artist on the wane \u2013 it is full of urgent, glittering, often incredibly intimate disco-pop that neither panders nor cringes. It is, as has been written all over the place this week, her best album in at least 20 years. But Madonna herself is more fragile now, less steady on her feet. At a mini-gig in New York\u2019s Times Square earlier this month, she slung her leg over a plastic barrier 30ft above the ground \u2013 but only after nervously jutting it back and forth to make sure it was safe. The Madonna of old wouldn\u2019t have cared, gravity be damned.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m tired as f***,\u201d she told Interview magazine<\/a> last week, admitting (gasp!) that she hadn\u2019t worked out that day. \u201cI have a bad knee now. I have no cartilage in it, thanks to dancing for so long in high heels and running on pavement and doing Ashtanga yoga. Up until a year ago, I was jumping on trampolines and doing dance cardio and doing a lot of what a doctor would call loading on my joints. Can\u2019t do that any more.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s been strange hearing her talk this way. While promoting her 2019 record Madame X, she rebuked the New York Times journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis for asking her about ageing<\/a> (\u201cI think you think about growing old too much. I think you think about age too much. I think you should just stop thinking about it\u201d). She later condemned Grigoriadis on her Instagram, writing: \u201cI\u2019m sorry I spent five minutes with [her]. It makes me feel raped.\u201d Thank God Grigoriadis didn\u2019t ask her about menopause, as she had intended to. Madonna probably would have shot her.<\/p>\n The defensiveness was understandable. The press began spitefully dissecting Madonna\u2019s appearance for signs of ageing in the early Nineties, then for signs of augmentation to conceal the signs of ageing in the Noughties. It\u2019s slightly coloured how we talk about her age, as if to mention it at all is to jeer at it. But Madonna\u2019s age \u2013 and her growing acknowledgement that she\u2019s far closer to the end than the beginning \u2013 is rich subject matter, both in how she navigates pop stardom and in how it\u2019s reflected in the music itself.<\/p>\n Madonna\u2019s 2023-2024 Celebration tour was a rare exercise in looking back for a star who once said she hates hearing her old tracks on the radio. It was a retrospective event filled with the original mixes of songs, many of which she hadn\u2019t performed in years, and saw her properly cement her legacy on her own terms. She\u2019s never liked other people doing that for her \u2013 just look at her cold and unsmiling reaction to Kylie Minogue handing her a vinyl of her first record last week on Graham Norton<\/a>. \u201cI look like I have a headache,\u201d she complained of the artwork. <\/p>\n There was also her (now sadly aborted) film biopic, which seemed designed to contextualise her story and the sheer breadth of her involvement in art, music and pop culture over the last 50 years. Remember when she dated Basquiat while recording her first album? All of a sudden, Madonna seems eager for people to know how much she has mattered, as if she\u2019s no longer confident we\u2019ll memorialise her adequately ourselves.<\/p>\n![\"Madonna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/M_ARTWORK_Credit-Rafael-Pavarotti_k0qdo2pk.jpeg\")
Madonna in artwork for her new album \u2018Confessions II\u2019 (Rafael Pavarotti)<\/p>\n![\"Madonna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-1140680.jpeg\")
Madonna performs in 1985 (Getty)<\/p>\n
![\"Madonna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-468077216.jpeg\")
Madonna in 2015 (Getty)<\/p>\n