Dumbing Down The Sound Introduction™: Madonna's Disastrous Effect on Women's Music and Culture

In the States circa 1984 at least, once Madonna arrived Cyndi Lauper, Jody Watley, Heart, Tina, Pat Benatar and others were all effectively marginalized and shelved by the media within two years although they still had many fans. Anyone who came after Madonna was comparatively ignored. Whitney Houston sold huge records and was the top US Box Office ACTRESS for TWO years with "The Bodyguard" and "The Preachers Wife" (not a feat madonna has even come close to accomplishing) but appeared on no major fashion magazine covers nor was granted huge media buzz. NOT ONE of those singers received a vanity fair, vogue, bazaar or other major fashion mag covers Madonna was clearly all the press wanted. That has NOT made her a powerful woman only a very lucky and coddled one. It took the obliteration BY THE MEDIA of an entire generation of other, much more talented female singers to keep her famous.

So who did madonna have to fight over the pop charts in the mid 80s to mid 90s? NONE of the gals who charted back then received the career longevity they deserved or made anywhere near the money they should especially compared to who is on the charts currently. (Brickell, Suzanne Vega, Sinead, Natalie Merchant, Lisa Stansfield, Taylor Dayne) were NOT given ANY media attention at least in the states. The media just wanted madonna. that was ALL you got. It was 24/7 in every magazine, entertainment news show, news paper
Post Mtv in the 80s meant if you were a female singer who was not Madonna you stood way behind in line with the media. Before the internet that meant you could go from headlining stadiums to half empty clubs in a few short years like all the hair cut metal guys did post Nirvana or Debbie Harry, the genius, who was playing movie theatres in the 90s.

No media buzz no fanbase back then. Once madonna got too "Bang Bus/JackAss porno" and the media was turned off THEN you saw the Lilith Fair women, (Sarah M, Jewel, Alanis, Fiona Apple, Paul Cole, Shaun Colvin, Dido) emerge and new superstars like Shania and Mariah. For a moment it looked like things might go in a singer songwriter direction but the media was not having any of it. Thus Britney and the Bush era Pop tarts arrived and seemingly overnight, the Lilith Fair gals vanished. Madonna "reappeared with a comeback" (she never went away) and now it is just an army of singing madonna spawns apart from Adele, Lady Gaga (who is an accomplished musician) and a few others. Women's pop music is now at its lowest point in history.

Madonna now has to compete with about TEN other huge female stars. Taylor Swift, Adele, Katy Perry, Nick Minaj, Beyonce, Rihanna, Spears, Clarkson, Cyrus, Lady Gaga and other lesser ones like Pink, Jessica, Christina, Gomez (less meaning buzz, all three are still worth millions upon millions) etc yet many I named are all going into their SECOND decade of VERY high profile careers.

Lady Gaga who is often accused of copying the Queen of copies, has to at least compete with others on a level playing field. She may not retain mega status she has had since 2008 but if Britney and pink are still high profile after 12 plus years which they are she will be too and so will Katy perry. The message in US women's Pop music is clear-be a brand like Madonna, be corporate like Madonna and sell like her. Music is almost an afterthought now.

Madonna never took a rest these past few year she had her feature turkey, gyms opening in impoverished Mexico City, made in China clothing lines and tons of media space as always. She has never ever really left the public eye and retreated. Ever. And we all know why. It would be like Murdoch taking two years off to go and live on a desert island alone.

M.I. A. : latest victim of The Madonna Hypocrisy Curse

I've never been a fan of M.I.A.but am actually not surprised that one the most out-spoken people in a female POP climate of bobble-head apolitical robots has now been cowed into apologising. M.I.A. might not work again if she did not. Much of the media and her fellow Pop stars have conveniently forgotten Madonna's foul-mouthed and totally out of context introduction in Hyde Park at Live 8, shouting motherfucker and the Turner Prize award show and being a finger flipping idiot countless other times.

And of course she threw MIA under the bus-no surprise. Because she and Minaj are the only reasons Madonna will even chart with that crude bubblegum Nicola Roberts/Dandy Warhols mash up. Madonna must feel very unhappy being on such a short teen demographic leash. As it is the recent round of generic "controversy" has been plumbing the depths of sewage at this point-even for her. Calling Lady Gaga "reductive", insulting her body eg "she's not built like Britney , like brick shit house" (as if Madonna is one to judge) and claiming all and sundry who have called The Windsors Nazi sympathizers are "liars and libellous" just seems so sad and sick. That's the best she can do; controversy that is only "controversial" beacuse it is so abysmally  cheap.

One Guardian commemorator wrote:I think she was just pushing for very lame "street cred." Sad comment on the woman (mia) and her culture or rather lack of culture.


And where do you think MIA learned raunch culture from? There is a pay off ( a huge one) if you have no class-that's Madonna's message so why would MIA who idolizes her not want to try too, with the same crudeness? All the girls and women in the Pop industry want to be madonna. That's all they've been told TO be. You need to veer into hypocrisy and snobbery and ideally be white like Madonna to make it seem less "trashy" and "street" but try anyway. Is what it is and a Vogue covers and some chesseball Givenchy cult robes don't white wash it unless you're an idiot.

Response to Naomi Wolf 's Ultra Pro-Madonna Guardian Piece- Part Two

Oh please! Madonna has been shoved in our faces by the media from day one. In the states she was the only female singer whom the media cared about. Unlike today where eight or nine multi-million dollar brands female Pop bands who vie for and share the light, madonna was held up BY THE MEDIA and shared it with no one from about 85 to 95.

1.First of all, which HITS of Madonna's have challenged ANYTHING political or cultural? What political issues did she vocally and radically stand up for at the height of her fame? Did she ever lead a rally? Go to Washington? Go on a major march? NO. Madonna became fashionably political after she was well safe and moneyed into the multi-millions. She PERSONIFIES materialism and corporate capitalism/outsourcing from her H&M tracksuit down to her daughter hawking paraben lotions and clothing made in China. Firestone Tires in Liberia? 90 plus years of severe human rights abuses. They sponsored the half time show. Ok to "Raise" Malawi but not Liberia I guess.

2. I recall a Spin Magazine interview in the mid-90s where she very pointedly called Black men "the most sexist men I've ever been with" and stated "I've never been treated worse by any other race then Black men". Bell Hooks noted how Right wing and foul the comments were ESPECIALLY given Madonna's perennial thievery of Black culture.(See "Bell Hooks on Madonna" You Tube). The rest of the press and white Madonna style feminists conveniently ignored her remarks. The truth of the matter is that it was her white ex-husband who had been beating her up in the past NOT Black men. Not seeing how that "set America forward". Could ANY star get away with saying that in this era? . Simply because someone is Pro-Gay and is raising money for an AIDS cure does not make them progressive or Left.

3. Like XXX Harcore porn star Sasha Grey at a kindergarten reading books, hardcore porn chic does not work for women. You also seem to think that women walking around naked, (those who can't afford body guards or limos to stay safe in) have benefited from "Girl Gone Wild Culture" and Porn chic that Madonna main-streamed? There was PLENTY of hardcore sex and BDSNM in the 70s long before Madonna (Andrea True Connection? Hello?) it just had its place AWAY from Wal Mart and Mass branding. It was innocent, underground and mysterious. Madonna is sadly cultural break point where hardcore pornography and BDSNM went into the commercial mainstream. Prior to Madonna, no super star public figure had ever been remotely and graphically as sexually explicit (certainly no star with a global fan base of millions of very small children). How has that helped women?


Contributor
naomiwolf

10 February 2012 6:59PM
I did not say that I 'think that women walking around naked..have benefited from Girls Gone Wild' culture.' I don't think that at all. I do think women have a right to express themselves about their sexuality in their art or work on their own terms, and that willl look like all kinds of things, but I don't think the cultural trends you have identified in point number three are good ones.

Response to Naomi Wolf 's Ultra Pro-Madonna Guardian Piece Part One

Moviegoer: Response to naomiwolf, 10 February 2012 6:18PM

...I value the sense she (Madonna) gives us that we have the right to try on different identities and I do think the concept of identity has become much less fixed in the last two decades partly because of her...

Can you expand this?"



10 February 2012 6:54PM
"sure. in the eighties you were 'straight' or 'gay' or 'black' or 'white.' or 'male' or 'female'. Today in a lot of places there is a ,much more 'postmodern' or to be less pretentious fluid idea of what identity is and that it shifts -- you might be straight but fall in love with your best friend or you might think you are black but turn out to be really mostly Scottish or you might be one of the four per cent of people born with indeterminate genitals -- etc etc. And we are more open to men who don't 'act like men' in a rigid way or biracial people who question fixed categories etc etc" - Naomi Wolf




Super Amanda: I've been thinking about this and trying to wrap my hard around it. I find it very disturbing that Naomi Wolf, a wealthy white American feminist with a very prominent platform in the media (including the UK media) and academia is giving massive credit to madonna for breaking down racial, class and gender barriers AND creating a more "tolerant" society. This house of cards needs to come down now as it frankly becoming absurd!

1. The US is about 30 years behind the UK in race relations. I grew up in the SF/Bay Area about a generation after Wolf did as an Italian- American who looks Latino or mixed race to many Americans and unlike her I have seen it and DEALT with it first hand. It is a messed up part of the collective American psyche and one of the reasons I moved to the UK. Despite the race problems here, UK people have been defining and redefining racial identities for quite sometime and it is not Madonna's doing to even a vague extent!! She is not even REMOTELY responsible for the fact that a Black identifying person born to Scottish parent or simply born in Scotland can embrace both cultures!! In the US anyone Black embracing their European ancestry is still an almost outlandish and offensive concept. The arcane "one drop rule" is still the defacto law upheld by Whites, Latinos, Blacks and even many Native Americans. I'm not saying that Wolf is like David Duke or Henry Louis Gates who is running around changing peoples' birth certificates from "white" to Black as soon as they (or he) find one Black ancestor, not at all, in fact I actually think Wolf made a good point about Bi-racial people now defining themselves out of fixed categories-but madonna is not part of that!! What I'm saying is that Wolf is displaying an abject ignorance of reality, racial pain, the history of the US color line etc etc when she says Madonna has been part of altering that for the better!!! Madonna has done ZERO for race relations. I repeat -ZERO.

Go to 2:40 if you still need convincing and please watch this.


2. I have never heard madonna talk about or sing about transgender rights or inter-sex people in any capacity. If she has it was quiet. The long road to acceptance is finally opening due to the hard and often deadly work of those who actually were brave enough to step up like the late "John Joan", Wendy Carlos and Tula the model etc etc plus transsexuals who shared their stories with their world as early as the 1960s. Being an ally is great and but that does not mean she should get so many cloying plaudits and even an IOTA of credit for the ground work and the pain that built the transgender movement. Wolf seems to give Madonna FAR too much credit for the work of others. Very sad and scary given the power both of them have.

Madonna: Cheat This Way List

Please go here to see over eighty people that Madonna has copy pasted /plagiarised with more to be added soon. Updating this blog is boring for me but eventually I'll have the Listal list transferred here. My main blog with profiles of artists who are ORIGINAL is HERE.

Super Amanda Blog

Madonna is a Copy Paste Queen of Rip Offs on Listal

"But Madonna's movie is silent on whether Wallis and Edward were Nazi sympathizers, despite the historical record plus the FBI reports and film of the couple meeting Hitler in 1937, shaking hands while wearing sunny smiles. "Libel," Madonna says in interview after interview"