Speaker 1: Hey everyone, This is part two of our episodes about
Speaker 1: Madonna's iconic performance at the first MTV Video Music Awards.
Speaker 1: If you haven't listened to part one yet, I recommend
Speaker 1: starting there.
Speaker 2: Welcome to mcvly Music Television.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, the launch of MTV, a new
Speaker 1: twenty four hour music channel, changed cultural history forever. By
Speaker 1: captivating teens across the country and pushing.
Speaker 3: Boundaries, you'll never look at music the same way again.
Speaker 1: Enter Madonna, a scrappy twenty somethingter singer who also loved
Speaker 1: challenging the status quo and was ready to become a star.
Speaker 2: What are your dreams to rule the world?
Speaker 4: There you go, ladies and gentlemen, this is Madonna.
Speaker 1: When MTV gave her the chance to perform at the
Speaker 1: first Video Music Awards, Madonna did what she does best,
Speaker 1: scandalized the audience, and for better or for worse, stole
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 5: After I got off stage during that performance, my manager
Speaker 5: was white as a ghost, and he looked at me.
Speaker 6: He said, do you know what you just did?
Speaker 2: Your career is over, but her career was just beginning.
Speaker 2: I'm Susie Bannacharum and.
Speaker 1: I'm Jessica Bennett, and this is in retrospect, where each
Speaker 1: week we revisit a cultural moment from the past that
Speaker 1: shaped us.
Speaker 4: And that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: Today, we're talking about one of Madonna's iconic early performances,
Speaker 1: one that was so scandalous many predicted it would end
Speaker 1: her career. But we're also talking about the rise of
Speaker 1: MTV and how together MTV and Madonna became a force
Speaker 1: that would define eighties pop culture.
Speaker 2: This is Part two.
Speaker 3: The year is nineteen eighty four and Madonna, who is
Speaker 3: not a huge star yet, has just performed like a
Speaker 3: vision at the first ever Video Music Awards. I am
Speaker 3: dying to know what happens right after the performance, because,
Speaker 3: as we talked about in part one, all the overt sexuality,
Speaker 3: the writhing around on the ground Madonna did that really
Speaker 3: shocked audience.
Speaker 4: You could say it even had the.
Speaker 3: Potential to put her budding career in jeopardy, except, of course,
Speaker 3: we know that it didn't. So what actually does happen
Speaker 3: after that?
Speaker 1: So what happens right after is despite the fact that
Speaker 1: the audience and the other performance are clutching their pearls,
Speaker 1: you know, this performance does what Madonna wanted to do.
Speaker 1: It gets her name out there, and teenagers and new
Speaker 1: fans who see her, they all go running to their
Speaker 1: local music stores trying to buy you know, this song,
Speaker 1: but it's not available yet, so they buy whatever other
Speaker 1: Madonna music they can find. And at this point that's
Speaker 1: just her first album, and that album, which was released
Speaker 1: a year before this, suddenly jumps to number eight on
Speaker 1: the Billboard charts.
Speaker 4: It's so funny.
Speaker 3: I can just imagine all these teenagers like rushing to
Speaker 3: Tower Records where we used to go to get their
Speaker 3: hands on Like a Virgin. This, of course was back
Speaker 3: in the day when you had to literally like get
Speaker 3: in a car or walk to the record store to
Speaker 3: get the album, not just downloaded on your phone.
Speaker 4: So when does that album finally come out?
Speaker 1: So this performance at the VMA's the Like a Virgin performance,
Speaker 1: happens mid September, and Like a Virgin the album is
Speaker 1: finally released in November, and it's followed by the video
Speaker 1: for Like a Virgin the day after, and the song
Speaker 1: itself shoots to number one in the US, in Australia,
Speaker 1: in Canada and stays there for six weeks. The album
Speaker 1: is also a number one hit in the United States
Speaker 1: and by February it goes triple platinum. So within just
Speaker 1: a few months and more than three million albums are sold.
Speaker 1: So Warner Brothers executives are thrilled, right, they are absolutely
Speaker 1: thrilled with the performance. And in the end, all of
Speaker 1: the scandal and the handwrigging around the MTV performance have
Speaker 1: actually done exactly what she believed they would do, which
Speaker 1: is bringing her more and more attention.
Speaker 4: And brought a ton of attention to MTV two. I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: In fact, Bob Pittman, who who was one of MTB's
Speaker 1: founders and I should mention also runs iHeart Are Producers Hi.
Speaker 1: Bob said after this that the first year it was
Speaker 1: everything we could do to get some talent to come
Speaker 1: to the event and fill seats, and by the second
Speaker 1: year everyone wanted to be in the show. Right, So
Speaker 1: she really makes it clear that being part of the
Speaker 1: show can be good for your career and in fact,
Speaker 1: as I've said, it boosted her album sales.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I remember at this time, weren't there
Speaker 3: the wannabes who were the Madonna superfans basically in the
Speaker 3: way that we have the beehive or swifties today.
Speaker 1: Yes, her fans were called the Madonna wannabes, or more
Speaker 1: often the press would just call them the wannabes.
Speaker 4: And tonight she winds off a twenty six city concert
Speaker 4: tour which has been completely sold out, largely to teenage girls,
Speaker 4: many of who might be called Madonna wannabes.
Speaker 1: She was such a figure of delight for young girls
Speaker 1: and young women that they really emulated her. In fact,
Speaker 1: people wanted to look so much like me Madonna that
Speaker 1: within two years of that album coming out, The Like
Speaker 1: a Virgin Album, a flagship Macy's store in Manhattan held
Speaker 1: a Madonna lookalike contest in Midtown Manhattan.
Speaker 7: Hundreds of Madonna wanna be He's packed into the Madonna
Speaker 7: Land shop.
Speaker 6: At Macy's department store for a Madonna lookalike contest.
Speaker 2: And Andy Warhol was one of the judges. I'm amazing.
Speaker 1: They opened a department called Madonna Land and so wow,
Speaker 1: they buy all the clothes to make you look just
Speaker 1: like Madonna.
Speaker 4: Incredible.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's different.
Speaker 2: It's nobody else does it.
Speaker 5: She's pretty and I like her.
Speaker 2: It's the only one that we can look up soon. Nowadays,
Speaker 2: she doesn't condemn femininity.
Speaker 8: And anywhere madonnas well, everybody looks at you her style,
Speaker 8: her look, the sort of like rag in your hair
Speaker 8: and the plastic bracelets and the lots of jewelry that
Speaker 8: really became the look of the eighties.
Speaker 1: Like when people do eighties parodies now they dress like
Speaker 1: Madonna dress. And in fact, she has said since that
Speaker 1: at some point she stopped dressing like that because it
Speaker 1: didn't feel unique, became spacial anymore. Like she's like, I
Speaker 1: would walk down the street and see a million versions
Speaker 1: of myself, and so it's one of the reasons she
Speaker 1: starts to reinvent herself over and over again, because she's
Speaker 1: so commonly emulated. And you know, she's not just a
Speaker 1: pop star, right, she's really, in her mind an artist,
Speaker 1: a person who is making statements about what a woman
Speaker 1: can be and should be in the world. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is just a perfect example of another time in
Speaker 1: her career where people told her that her career was
Speaker 1: over and she overcame. That's going to happen in her
Speaker 1: career over and over and over again, and every time
Speaker 1: the people who said she couldn't rise above whatever the
Speaker 1: scandal was have been proven wrong.
Speaker 3: What do you think gave her that confidence, Like, are
Speaker 3: there any hints or has she spoken about her upbringing
Speaker 3: or where she came from and how it contributed to
Speaker 3: where she would ultimately go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think Madonna's background, her childhood is
Speaker 1: really interesting and really speaks to why she ends up
Speaker 1: being the way she is. And I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: nothing but Madonna for three weeks, So I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you a little bit more about her, just her
Speaker 1: history so that we have that context. So Madonna was
Speaker 1: born in Detroit. Her full name is Madonna Louise Chacone.
Speaker 1: A lot of people think Madonna is a stage name,
Speaker 1: but she was actually named after her mother. She grew
Speaker 1: up in a very middle class Italian Catholic family and
Speaker 1: she is one of eight children, four brothers and three sisters.
Speaker 1: And the thing she often talks about in terms of
Speaker 1: why she's so independent and confident and keeps her own counsel,
Speaker 1: is that her mother died of breast cancer when she
Speaker 1: was just six years old. And this just had a
Speaker 1: profound impact on her in the way that you would expect.
Speaker 1: And she's talked about this loss over the years, and
Speaker 1: she has said that the reason why she was so
Speaker 1: focused on running away from that part of her life
Speaker 1: is because it really gives her this sense that you
Speaker 1: can lose everything in an instant, your sense of security,
Speaker 1: and so she's tried not to rely on other people.
Speaker 1: Here she is talking about it in a nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: five interview on ABC's Primetime Life.
Speaker 3: I really did feel completely abandoned at that point in
Speaker 3: my life and sort.
Speaker 5: Of left me with a hungerl a longing, a feeling
Speaker 5: of emptiness.
Speaker 6: You sort of grow up being afraid to love things.
Speaker 1: So she ends up kind of keeping her own counsel,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better way of putting it. You know,
Speaker 1: she has this huge family, there's all these other kids.
Speaker 1: She ends up having a step mom she really doesn't like,
Speaker 1: and so she kind of just withdraws into herself in
Speaker 1: a way and decides that no one is ever going
Speaker 1: to make her feel that unsafe and insecure again. And
Speaker 1: that is I think the inherent origin story of Madonna.
Speaker 2: She is this girl, this.
Speaker 1: Little girl who lost her mother and had to kind
Speaker 1: of raise herself in a way.
Speaker 2: And she loves her father. She sings about her father.
Speaker 1: She's very close to her family, but losing apparently I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I lost my dad when I was young.
Speaker 1: It really does end up being kind of a defining thing.
Speaker 1: You never really feel whole again in some fundamental ways.
Speaker 1: And you know, the interesting thing about Madonna is that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's kind of this assumption that she's a
Speaker 1: high school dropout. And in fairness, that assumption comes from
Speaker 1: the fact that in early interviews that I've watched, she
Speaker 1: actually said she was a high school dropout.
Speaker 3: Oh really, I'm a famed high school dropout.
Speaker 4: So I don't believe anything they tell you.
Speaker 3: I think I read once she used to make up
Speaker 3: stories like this when she talked to the press because
Speaker 3: she thought it was funny.
Speaker 1: Yes, a friend of hers told a story in this
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one profile in New York magazine I found
Speaker 1: about how she would make up outrageous things to tell
Speaker 1: reporters just because she thought it was hilarious, and then
Speaker 1: they would laugh about these pieces when they came out.
Speaker 3: That's so funny and also so different from the carefully
Speaker 3: curated things that celebrities say now.
Speaker 9: But she did actually go to college, right, She got
Speaker 9: a full scholarship to the University of Michigan. I mean,
Speaker 9: she's incredibly smart, and she was in the dance program there.
Speaker 9: She always wanted to be a dancer, and at some
Speaker 9: point during her first two years, she does an internship
Speaker 9: in New York and she gets really restless, and she
Speaker 9: does drop out of the University of Michigan and she
Speaker 9: moves to New York in nineteen seventy eight, and she
Speaker 9: says in an interview, you know, it was the first
Speaker 9: time I'd ever taken a plane by myself, because she
Speaker 9: drove when she came to New York the last time.
Speaker 9: And it's the first time I'd ever gotten a taxi cab.
Speaker 9: And I came here with thirty five dollars in my pocket.
Speaker 9: And it was the bravest thing I'd ever done.
Speaker 1: Wow, And when you think about it, it was really brave,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, nobody in her family wanted her to do this.
Speaker 1: Her father was dead set against it, and she just
Speaker 1: really believed that she would be able to find her
Speaker 1: own way. So she shows up in New York. She
Speaker 1: doesn't actually know where to go, so she asks the
Speaker 1: cab driver to take her to the center of everything.
Speaker 1: So funny, and he drops her off in Times Square
Speaker 1: because I guess he's like I guess this is the
Speaker 1: center of everything. And then there is this crazy story
Speaker 1: and she has told it a few times, so I
Speaker 1: think this is really what happened, but it's wild to
Speaker 1: think about.
Speaker 2: So she's wandering around, she doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 2: She finds like a market and she's sort of roaming
Speaker 2: around this mark, this fair or market street fair, and
Speaker 2: this random man comes up to her and is like,
Speaker 2: why are you walking around with your suitcase? And she says, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I don't have a place to live because I just
Speaker 2: got here. And he's like, well, do you want to
Speaker 2: stay with me now?
Speaker 1: Any other person would be like no, because you're probably
Speaker 1: like an ex murderer. Yeah, but she says yes, and
Speaker 1: she stays with him for two weeks and he's actually
Speaker 1: really nice to her and like makes her breakfast every
Speaker 1: day and does.
Speaker 2: Not make a move on her.
Speaker 1: And what's so crazy about this is, she says in
Speaker 1: an interview in nineteen ninety one, she doesn't even remember
Speaker 1: this man's name.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's so insignificant, dirt.
Speaker 4: I mean, he must remember her name.
Speaker 1: I mean one would think, right, But also just like
Speaker 1: he must be kind of an odd guy because he's
Speaker 1: just like going around letting random people stay with him.
Speaker 1: And it's probably worth noting that New York at this
Speaker 1: time was pretty dangerous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean getting dropped off in the middle of
Speaker 3: Times Squares, not like getting draped, having the middle of
Speaker 3: Times Square to die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a wild thing that she sort of just
Speaker 1: like accepted the kindness of this stranger and it worked
Speaker 1: out for her. Eventually, she does find her own place,
Speaker 1: but she's often kind of living, you know, hand to mouth.
Speaker 1: Her first job is at the dunkin Donuts across from Bloomingdale's.
Speaker 2: She has no money.
Speaker 1: So when I say she finds her own place, I
Speaker 1: mean she's often just like staying with people or like
Speaker 1: you know, couch surfing, and she does a lot of
Speaker 1: odd jobs. She has so little money. And Mary Gabriel,
Speaker 1: who just wrote this amazing biography of her, it's called
Speaker 1: Madonna a Rebel Life. She describes how scrappy this time
Speaker 1: was in her life.
Speaker 7: She was so broke, and you know, people who want
Speaker 7: to denigrate her story or say, oh, it's a myth,
Speaker 7: you know, she was absolutely strong, broke, not once, not
Speaker 7: for a little while, but for years. And you know,
Speaker 7: friends who knew her at the time were appalled by
Speaker 7: the way she lived. She would eat out of the
Speaker 7: garbage if there was some fresh French fries in there
Speaker 7: that somebody else hadn't eaten. It wasn't a big deal.
Speaker 7: She stole a lot, you know, and she freely admits
Speaker 7: all this stuff. She was a street kid. I mean,
Speaker 7: she was borderline homeless, street kid for many years.
Speaker 4: What area of the city did she live in when
Speaker 4: she first got here.
Speaker 1: Well, so she mostly lived in Alphabet City, which even
Speaker 1: when I was in college in the nineties was no
Speaker 1: man's land. People were like, don't go down to Alphabet City.
Speaker 1: It started to gentrify, you know, in the years after
Speaker 1: I graduated. But it was a really rough time, as
Speaker 1: I said, in New York. You know, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of poverty. It was a high crime era. And
Speaker 1: you know, Madonna was really trusting, as this story that
Speaker 1: I just told about this random guy proves, and she
Speaker 1: says that that often worked in her favor. But she
Speaker 1: has also said that, you know, a couple times during
Speaker 1: this air she was sexually assaulted because she was living
Speaker 1: in really broken down places. And there's a story in
Speaker 1: the book where one of her friends from college who
Speaker 1: lives in New York goes to visit her and is
Speaker 1: afraid to touch anything because it's so disgusting. In the
Speaker 1: apartment building where she lives. There was just this sense
Speaker 1: that New York was kind of a dystopian nightmare. When
Speaker 1: you would come to New York, the police department would
Speaker 1: hand out, you know, public service announcements telling Taurus not
Speaker 1: to leave their hotels after dark.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good evening. We're coming off the bloodiest year in the.
Speaker 2: History of New York. Well, how bad is crime on
Speaker 2: the subways today? Police said the robbers were getting robbed.
Speaker 7: Nineteen eighty one is less than twenty four hours old,
Speaker 7: and another nine people have been killed.
Speaker 2: It makes you feel very helpless.
Speaker 1: So it's just this kind of unsettling time, but it
Speaker 1: was also a really fervent time creatively. Here's Mary Gabriel again.
Speaker 7: When Madonna arrived in New York, she began hanging around
Speaker 7: with people who introduced her to the pop world, and
Speaker 7: that was really the beginning of Madonna, because suddenly she
Speaker 7: realized that she didn't maybe want to dance to music exclusively,
Speaker 7: she wanted to actually make music. And the timing was
Speaker 7: so incredible because at that moment there was a revolution
Speaker 7: in pop culture. The entire scene was about experimenting, and
Speaker 7: that's really at the core of Madonna as an artist.
Speaker 7: I mean, she thrives in an experimental environment. She took
Speaker 7: every possible chance, artistically, personally, professionally, throughout every rule in
Speaker 7: the rule book, and created herself and an entire genre
Speaker 7: which we're now seeing, you know, we now take for
Speaker 7: granted in the Beyonces and the Taylor Swifts of the world.
Speaker 3: That's a really interesting point Mary's making because in large part,
Speaker 3: wasn't this creative artistic time in New York also a
Speaker 3: reaction in some ways to the Reagan era or the
Speaker 3: conservatism of the Reagan era we talked about in Part one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. The larger conservative movement is really giving
Speaker 1: rise to this really creative and unique scene in New
Speaker 1: York for artists especially. And here's Mary on that.
Speaker 7: After Vietnam, after Nixon was the beginning of the Reagan years,
Speaker 7: there was a real artistic backlash. I think for some
Speaker 7: artists it was conscious, but I think it was a
Speaker 7: matter of survival. For others, you know, they had something
Speaker 7: inside themselves they wanted to express, and they knew that
Speaker 7: they would never be able to do it in the
Speaker 7: mainstream because they were gay, because they were black, because
Speaker 7: they were a woman who actually wanted to express herself,
Speaker 7: not what a guy told her to express. So they
Speaker 7: found a refuge and it was this you know, crazy
Speaker 7: dangerous world that hadn't yet been developed by the likes
Speaker 7: of Donald Trump and you know, the developers of the
Speaker 7: eighties in Lower Manhattan, and it was highly political but
Speaker 7: highly personal. So it's that, you know, the like what
Speaker 7: the early feminist said, the personal is political.
Speaker 6: They lived that life.
Speaker 7: And they had no one there to criticize them because
Speaker 7: nobody was paying attention to them. Is so they had
Speaker 7: the freest kind of existence where anything you wanted to do,
Speaker 7: as long as it didn't hurt someone was okay. Anything
Speaker 7: you wanted to be was okay. It was the absolute,
Speaker 7: utter expression of freedom.
Speaker 1: So this point that Mary is making about how much
Speaker 1: the people who Madonna is surrounded by sort of feel
Speaker 1: outside of the mainstream is also really emphasized by the
Speaker 1: AIDS crisis and how much Madonna is surrounded by the
Speaker 1: AIDS crisis while she is in New York in the eighties.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the reasons Reagan is so
Speaker 1: despised by liberals of that era is how slow he
Speaker 1: was to respond to that. And Madonna is really deeply
Speaker 1: impacted by that, and that really informs the political identity
Speaker 1: that she will be known for for the rest of
Speaker 1: her career. You know, a lot of artists sort of
Speaker 1: shy away from that. But she is entering New York
Speaker 1: at this time where she wants to pursue dance and
Speaker 1: she wants to pursue music, but she is also surrounded
Speaker 1: by a lot of crisis and sadness. So what she
Speaker 1: says about that is that she wanted to put something
Speaker 1: into the world that was the opposite of that, that
Speaker 1: was happy, that gives people hope, and that's why she
Speaker 1: decides in the end that she is going to pursue
Speaker 1: this really creative artistic existence.
Speaker 4: Okay, and so how does she do that well?
Speaker 1: And so initially she comes to New York to pursue dance.
Speaker 1: She thinks she's going to be a dancer. She dances
Speaker 1: with Alvin Ailey for a little bit, but she realizes
Speaker 1: that she's a bit old to be a dancer in
Speaker 1: New York, which is crazy because she's in her twenties,
Speaker 1: and that she's just not as talented as the other dancers.
Speaker 1: She really can tell for herself that she doesn't have
Speaker 1: what they have, so she starts to pursue music. She
Speaker 1: has a boyfriend who is in a band, and so
Speaker 1: she hangs out with him. So there are really these
Speaker 1: two things that push her into a music career. At
Speaker 1: some point, she auditions to be the backup singer for
Speaker 1: this European disco star and his French record producers see
Speaker 1: her and they sign her and they take her to
Speaker 1: Paris and they're like, we're gonna make you into a star.
Speaker 1: And initially it's kind of like a fairy tale. Even
Speaker 1: when she talks about it, you're like, that's kind of great.
Speaker 1: She arrives in Paris in nineteen seventy nine. She's given
Speaker 1: this fancy apartment. She has a chauffeur and a maid
Speaker 1: and a vocal coach and this like unlimited wardrobe budget.
Speaker 1: And they tell her they're going to turn her into
Speaker 1: the next Edith Poff with just like a crazy comparison.
Speaker 1: And you know, you would think that this girl who
Speaker 1: was essentially borderline homeless would look at this and be like,
Speaker 1: my life is exactly what I want. This is amazing
Speaker 1: but instead she hates it. She's bored, she feels creatively stifled.
Speaker 1: She doesn't feel like they understand her and the story
Speaker 1: she wants to tell. So she stays in Paris for
Speaker 1: just a few months and she's like, no, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go back to New York.
Speaker 2: I didn't like what.
Speaker 7: I was doing when I got there, so I left
Speaker 7: and I never did a record there.
Speaker 3: I feel like this says so much about Madonna and
Speaker 3: also goes against this notion that we've talked about that
Speaker 3: she was somehow made or created by like some music executive.
Speaker 3: In fact, she literally refused to be someone else's vision.
Speaker 3: So I love that about her. What happens when she
Speaker 3: gets back to New York.
Speaker 1: When she gets back to New York, she had met
Speaker 1: this boyfriend right before she left who's in a band,
Speaker 1: and she asks if she can stay with him, and
Speaker 1: she decides she's going to be a pop star. She
Speaker 1: just sort of decides because she's had this experience in
Speaker 1: Paris and it's taught her that it's possible, but she
Speaker 1: just doesn't want to do it the way they want
Speaker 1: her to do it. She asks him to teach her
Speaker 1: an instrument and he eats like, the only instrument I
Speaker 1: could imagine Madonna learning first was the drums.
Speaker 2: So he teaches her the drums.
Speaker 1: And she literally sits in his apartment, which is, by
Speaker 1: the way, an old synagogue that him and his brother
Speaker 1: have converted into it loft I mean converting in quotes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like very much like a bohemian existence. And she
Speaker 1: just listens to Elvis Costello records and she tries to
Speaker 1: emulate the drumming. That's how she teaches herself to drum.
Speaker 1: But she does it all the time. Like when she
Speaker 1: does things, she does not do them by half. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's just like really intense about it. And at first
Speaker 1: she joins her boyfriend's band, and she quickly realizes though
Speaker 1: that she wants to be driving the vision. She wants
Speaker 1: to be writing the songs. She wants to be the
Speaker 1: lead singer. And you know, the boyfriend's brother who's in
Speaker 1: the band with him, is like, why is this woman
Speaker 1: like suddenly in charge? So eventually she's just like, this
Speaker 1: isn't gonna work. She's incredibly ambitious. And the other thing
Speaker 1: that they say about her, the people who are around
Speaker 1: her at this time, is that she was always pursuing
Speaker 1: music commercially. She was never like, you know, I just
Speaker 1: want to sing and like, yeah, play in bands like
Speaker 1: for these like little venues. She was always like calling
Speaker 1: record producers, she was calling agent. She was constantly trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how she was going to be a
Speaker 1: huge success because she knew that's what she wanted. She
Speaker 1: didn't want to just be in the indie scene. And
Speaker 1: this era is also kind of defined by the fact
Speaker 1: that she just leaves behind this string of broken hearts.
Speaker 1: You know, there's always these men who help her in
Speaker 1: some way. Her boyfriend who helps her get into the
Speaker 1: band and teaches her to play music. There'll be another
Speaker 1: ex boyfriend who moves to New York and becomes her
Speaker 1: songwriting partner for a number of years, who's like very
Speaker 1: integral to her success.
Speaker 3: Waita, you said she did Basquiacht too, right? That feels
Speaker 3: like so perfectly New York of the early eighties.
Speaker 2: Yes, And actually there's a funny side note.
Speaker 1: There's a painting of best yachts from nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: called a Panel of Experts, and it actually depicts a
Speaker 1: fight between Madonna and one of his.
Speaker 2: Exes whose name was Venus. Randomly, so you might think
Speaker 2: it's not about actual people.
Speaker 1: But the funny thing is that Madonna's name has a
Speaker 1: copyright symbol on it, which you know, many have interpreted
Speaker 1: as his awareness of how famous she.
Speaker 4: Would go on to be so interesting.
Speaker 1: And in fact, he supposedly told art dealer Larry Gagoshian
Speaker 1: that Madonna was going to be the biggest pop star
Speaker 1: in the world, so he must have really believed.
Speaker 4: That, h okay.
Speaker 3: And it's because of Oscot that she has her graffiti
Speaker 3: tag right, yes, boy toy, yeah, which is funny because
Speaker 3: clearly she's none of these men's toy.
Speaker 2: No, she is very much nobody's toy.
Speaker 1: And you know, she very actively owns her sexuality, and
Speaker 1: that's another sort of big thing that is different about Madonna.
Speaker 1: Up until Madonna, you were allowed as an artist to
Speaker 1: be sexy. You were supposed to be beautiful and sexy
Speaker 1: as a female artist, but you weren't supposed to be sexual, right,
Speaker 1: You were an object And the music industry was very
Speaker 1: much a male oriented industry, was like a very rock
Speaker 1: and roll industry for men by men, and the we're
Speaker 1: supposed to be men, So as a woman, you were
Speaker 1: supposed to appeal to men, but Madonna always refuse to
Speaker 1: accept that. Like she was like, I want my fans
Speaker 1: to be women. I want my fans to be queer.
Speaker 1: I sure, fine, if men like my music, that's fine.
Speaker 1: But I'm not making music for men to enjoy. And
Speaker 1: so even her first single, which she ends up releasing
Speaker 1: in eighty two, is a dance single, right, it's for
Speaker 1: the gay clubs that she hangs out in, and within
Speaker 1: a month it's number three on the Billboard Dance Club Charts.
Speaker 1: And that's because she's literally going to the clubs where
Speaker 1: she hangs out, and she's making friends with the DJs
Speaker 1: and sometimes dating them, and she is getting them to
Speaker 1: play her songs. You know, she is like doing what
Speaker 1: we now call retail marketing. Yeah, she's an absolute operator.
Speaker 1: She is not leaving her success up to chance. She
Speaker 1: is incredibly ambitious and she is going to make sure
Speaker 1: that her music gets played. And once it's played, people
Speaker 1: love it and they start requesting it, and that that's
Speaker 1: why it becomes so popular.
Speaker 3: Obviously, she goes on to have this incredible, incredible career
Speaker 3: that could be many many podcasts devoted to that, and
Speaker 3: probably are some, yes, but what are the moments we
Speaker 3: should remember or highlight in terms of just what a
Speaker 3: huge impact Madonna had and has on music and culture.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think there's just so many things
Speaker 1: you could say if you were trying to convince someone
Speaker 1: who didn't understand how big an impact Madonna had, that
Speaker 1: would tell you who she was in the space of music.
Speaker 1: You know, she's widely referred to as the Queen of pop,
Speaker 1: and that's because she is to this day, the highest
Speaker 1: charting female musician. She's the highest grossing female touring musician
Speaker 1: in history. She's the first woman to ever accumulate one
Speaker 1: billion dollars in concert revenue. Madonna has thirty eight top
Speaker 1: ten hits on the Billboard Charts. The Beatles are behind
Speaker 1: her with thirty four, you know. I mean that is
Speaker 1: just incredible when you think about it, Like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: look at Taylor Swift this year, and I remember being
Speaker 1: at a dinner party recently where someone said, and everyone
Speaker 1: agreed with them, that Taylor Swift is the biggest musical
Speaker 1: act in history, and I was just like, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know that, Yeah, because Madonna exists in over decades, over.
Speaker 1: Decades, and she's done so many of the things that
Speaker 1: we look at Taylor doing and we're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's incredible. Madonna did these things in the eighties and
Speaker 1: nineties when there were no you know, mentors, there were
Speaker 1: no women you could look to and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a career I could have. You know, she was
Speaker 1: really inventing the space of being a superstar pop icon.
Speaker 1: And you know, she has sold four hundred million records worldwide.
Speaker 1: She is certified by the Guinness World Records as the
Speaker 1: biggest selling female recording artist of all time. You know,
Speaker 1: more than Taylor Swift, more than Beyonce, more than Rihanna,
Speaker 1: more than Mariah Carey and that Christmas song I think,
Speaker 1: but sell a bajillion records over Christmas, and I you know,
Speaker 1: love all those artists.
Speaker 2: I think they're amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm not taking anything away from Taylor or Beyonce, but
Speaker 1: I do think sometimes the absolute legend of Madonna, just
Speaker 1: what a legacy she has left in music for these
Speaker 1: other artists, is sometimes kind of forgotten. Yeah, because now
Speaker 1: everybody just talks about, you know, her age and what.
Speaker 10: She looks like, and how laid her concerts starts and
Speaker 10: how late her concerts start exactly like it's just I
Speaker 10: think easy to see her as tabloid fair now, but
Speaker 10: Madonna is so much more than that, you know.
Speaker 1: Her legacy has been studied by sociologists and historians. There
Speaker 1: are college courses were being taught about Madonna long before,
Speaker 1: long before Taylor's Swift, you know. And to give you
Speaker 1: an idea of her cultural references, there are so many
Speaker 1: separate Wikipedia entries for the cultural impact of Madonna.
Speaker 4: Oh that's it.
Speaker 1: I could not count them all, Like, I can't tell
Speaker 1: you how many there are, because every time I would
Speaker 1: look for one, I would find another one. There's separate
Speaker 1: entry from Madonna and sexuality. There's a separate entrance from
Speaker 1: Madonna and religion. There's a separate entrance from Madonna as
Speaker 1: a gay.
Speaker 3: Icon like that even like a fun marker for our times, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And not to mention, there's a Wikipedia entrance for every album.
Speaker 1: There's a Wikipedia entrance for many of her songs. Like
Speaker 1: she's literally too much.
Speaker 2: To encapsulate in a single web page, you know.
Speaker 1: And in that era of the eighties and nineties, really
Speaker 1: she's often mentioned with Michael Jackson and Prince as the
Speaker 1: three main stars of the eighties. You know, they were
Speaker 1: really considered almost like a trinity, and they defined the era.
Speaker 1: And when she topped the Billboard charts with Like a
Speaker 1: Virgin in eighty four, there was an eight month period
Speaker 1: where she and Prince and Michael Jackson just kept switching
Speaker 1: off between Like a Virgin, Purple Rain, and Thriller. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that all three of those artists were
Speaker 1: born in the same year. They were all born in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, and they were all born in Middle America.
Speaker 1: And they would really, these three people, these three amazing artists,
Speaker 1: rewrite what it meant to be a musician and to
Speaker 1: be a success in the music business because obviously Prince
Speaker 1: and Michael Jackson, as black men, also really fought against
Speaker 1: a lot of tides and were very much not seen
Speaker 1: as mainstream when they entered music.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, in some ways, what Prince and Michael Jackson
Speaker 3: did for black musicians, Madonna really did for women.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she did. And you know, this is another thing
Speaker 1: I talked to Mary Gabriel about. Here she is again.
Speaker 7: At that time in the pop world, women were not
Speaker 7: taken seriously. They were almost like the performers of the fifties,
Speaker 7: you know, female singers who sang lyrics that men had
Speaker 7: generally written in front of a band of men, So
Speaker 7: they were just an ornament and usually had to be
Speaker 7: a sexy ornament. And their audience wasn't girls. Their audience
Speaker 7: was men, and so everything was designed to titillate the
Speaker 7: male universe. And I think that's what's critical to Madonna's story.
Speaker 7: There were female artists who were strong and wonderful, like
Speaker 7: Chrissy Hind, but they were always on the cutting edge.
Speaker 7: They were in the avant garde, and Madonna took that
Speaker 7: all of that information and made it mainstream and brought
Speaker 7: it to pop.
Speaker 3: I think what's so cool in retrospect is that, especially
Speaker 3: in those early years when Madonna broke all of these
Speaker 3: barriers to make it into the mainstream, the music that
Speaker 3: she was making and sending out into the world really
Speaker 3: was for the girls who loved her and wanted to
Speaker 3: be her, and the gays who adored her.
Speaker 2: Yes, those girls want to bees.
Speaker 1: They were really her first fans, and she gave them
Speaker 1: a sense that they could feel free, that they could
Speaker 1: be as free as she was.
Speaker 6: And here's Mary again on that. In her first years,
Speaker 6: up until I would say about eighty six eighty seven,
Speaker 6: she was singing to young women, and what she was
Speaker 6: saying to them in really the most direct language possible.
Speaker 6: You know, I have had the dreams that you have.
Speaker 6: I know who you are, sitting in your suburban bedrooms,
Speaker 6: dreaming big, but knowing because you were born a girl,
Speaker 6: you're never going to have the opportunities your brother did.
Speaker 6: I know because I was you and look what I did.
Speaker 6: And so that was Madonna's message. It was at the
Speaker 6: doctrine of liberation. According to Madonna.
Speaker 7: You know, there was second wave feminism, which had been
Speaker 7: in the seventies and was dead by that time. Madonna
Speaker 7: really did in every way introduce third wave feminism with
Speaker 7: her early performances in the early eighties, because it was
Speaker 7: absolutely about freedom. It was about have no fear, break
Speaker 7: through rules, be who you want to be, you know,
Speaker 7: and if you need help, I'm here.
Speaker 3: I want to bring us back to the original moment
Speaker 3: we started with, which was on that stage, that VMA
Speaker 3: stage in nineteen eighty four. Madonna, the wedding dress and
Speaker 3: the seventeen footcake and the way that she pushed boundaries
Speaker 3: and as a product of that really redefined what it
Speaker 3: meant to be a star and also what was possible
Speaker 3: as a star.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really true. I think the thing about Madonna
Speaker 1: that is really interesting and very unlike almost any other
Speaker 1: artists operating today, is that she never separated her work
Speaker 1: from her politics. Everything she did, every controversial stand she
Speaker 1: did while also being a commercial artist. She wasn't trying
Speaker 1: to just push boundaries. She was trying to push boundaries
Speaker 1: into the mainstream.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 1: She wanted the success because she felt like that spotlight
Speaker 1: helped her. And the first sort of great example of
Speaker 1: that is that at the height of her fame, she
Speaker 1: really embraces and celebrates queer identity because she feels that
Speaker 1: the queer community is what helped her become a star.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: She became rest star in those dance clubs where queer
Speaker 1: and black kids were finding a way to feel safe
Speaker 1: in a world that didn't feel very safe for them
Speaker 1: at that time. You know, it was the middle of
Speaker 1: the AIDS crisis. And so when she becomes a start,
Speaker 1: right from the beginning, she's making sure that people know
Speaker 1: that she is very much supporting that community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean worth noting that she was talking
Speaker 3: about it in a way that, you know, it's far
Speaker 3: different from the way that a lot of artists kind
Speaker 3: of pander or perform their allyship or their wokeism today, Like,
Speaker 3: she was not queerbaiting. She was genuinely being political and
Speaker 3: what she was talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, celebrating and embracing those issues was just fundamental to
Speaker 1: who Madonna was, right because, as Mary Gabriel says, those
Speaker 1: early years in New York, the gay community was her world.
Speaker 1: They were her best friends. That's who she was spending
Speaker 1: her time with. Those were the people who were celebrating
Speaker 1: and supporting her. So Madonna was really deeply affect by
Speaker 1: what happened with AIDS.
Speaker 7: By nineteen eighty three, it was undeniably murdering tens of
Speaker 7: thousands of men, and she was saying her best friend's dying.
Speaker 7: And so rather than run away from that, she embraced
Speaker 7: the cause. And it was for if you can imagine,
Speaker 7: for a rock pop world, which is actually based on
Speaker 7: the idea of sexuality, to associate yourself with a sexually
Speaker 7: transmitted disease is suicide. I mean, rockers wouldn't go near
Speaker 7: it because they were all about dicks and you know, screwing.
Speaker 7: You know, young women didn't go near it because to
Speaker 7: be talking about homosexuality or gay sex in Ronald Reagan's America,
Speaker 7: when he didn't even mention the word AIDS for five
Speaker 7: years as it decimated a huge part of the population,
Speaker 7: was just a no go in his Christian world, his
Speaker 7: Christian political world. So for Madonna to come out and say,
Speaker 7: I'm going to talk about it, I'm going to sing
Speaker 7: about it. I'm going to have safe sex, you know,
Speaker 7: unadorned safe sex brochures in my albums, and she talked
Speaker 7: about anal sex. She talked about hardcore stuff that most
Speaker 7: people didn't go near. You know, if they didn't talk
Speaker 7: about AIDS, they definitely didn't talk about the particulars of
Speaker 7: how you get it.
Speaker 2: And so she was.
Speaker 7: Fearless with that, but because it was because she knew
Speaker 7: it was a matter of life and death. And so
Speaker 7: throughout her career she's done that. She's waited deep into
Speaker 7: battles that other people didn't want to go near because
Speaker 7: she frankly thinks that the causes are more important than
Speaker 7: her career, and she also knows from experience that there
Speaker 7: are enough people who will appreciate the bold stand she
Speaker 7: takes that she has nothing to lose, and at a
Speaker 7: certain point she had nothing.
Speaker 1: To lose because she was so powerful, and that power
Speaker 1: that Mary is talking about, you know, she is always
Speaker 1: using to kind of further the conversation. So in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, she makes her groundbreaking documentary Truth or Dare,
Speaker 1: which just FYI was produced by Harvey Weinstein because every
Speaker 1: time we do one of these stories, some horrible man
Speaker 1: has to it here and here he is. And that movie,
Speaker 1: you know, was meant to be just like a concert film,
Speaker 1: but instead it ends up being really about her life
Speaker 1: and her backup dancers. And it's one of the first
Speaker 1: times that a mainstream film, documentary or otherwise really shows
Speaker 1: gay people sort of just living their lives in a
Speaker 1: happy and care free way. And it's considered, you know,
Speaker 1: a little political, even though it's not intended in any
Speaker 1: way to be a political movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's actually quite powerful in its subtlety, especially in
Speaker 3: an era when there was so much homophobia and fear
Speaker 3: around AIDS. So it's quite subversive in how ordinary she's
Speaker 3: treating it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very much, and I think, you know, she continues
Speaker 1: to do that. Her current tour celebration feels like it's
Speaker 1: very much a statement in support of the LGBT community.
Speaker 1: Her current show just really makes queer and transcultural the focus,
Speaker 1: and she's really doing that so that she can support
Speaker 1: and affirm LGBTQ.
Speaker 3: Writes, and which honestly isn't a small gesture right now
Speaker 3: with what's happening politically, but it's actually making me think
Speaker 3: that what feels even more radical about Madonna is the
Speaker 3: fact that she is doing all of this and just
Speaker 3: continuing to exist and perform at the age of sixty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this, and sometimes she's
Speaker 1: talked about this, right. One of her greatest frustrations is
Speaker 1: that instead of talking about her art now, all everybody
Speaker 1: does is talk about her age. And that's because in
Speaker 1: our society, women over a certain age are expected, in
Speaker 1: some ways to go away quietly and accept that they
Speaker 1: no longer have anything to offer, and Madonna just refuses
Speaker 1: to accept that. The fact that she chooses to keep
Speaker 1: making music and touring and living loudly and embracing the
Speaker 1: issues she cares about is huge. What has she said
Speaker 1: about this, well, Interestingly, a few years ago, when she
Speaker 1: was receiving the Billboard Women of the Year award, she
Speaker 1: essentially said that her very survival and endurance is probably
Speaker 1: her most revolutionary act, and I think this is a
Speaker 1: really good place to end it, with her having the
Speaker 1: last word.
Speaker 11: People say that I'm so controversial, but I think the
Speaker 11: most controversial thing I have.
Speaker 2: Ever done is to stick around.
Speaker 4: To the doubters, the naysayers.
Speaker 11: To everyone who gave me hell and said I could not,
Speaker 11: that I would not, that I must not.
Speaker 5: Your resistance made me stronger, made me push harder, made
Speaker 5: me the fighter that I am today, made me the
Speaker 5: woman that I am today.
Speaker 2: In Retrospect, Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
Speaker 1: about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Speaker 1: Email us at Inretropod at gmail dot com or find
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Speaker 3: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
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Speaker 1: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 1: and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist,
Speaker 1: Fike Club, and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 3: In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Speaker 3: Lauren Hansen is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 3: engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronov is our producer. Sharon
Speaker 3: Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer from the Media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stemp and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is from Pentagram. Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Speaker 1: Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary we are your
Speaker 1: hosts Susie Bannoncarum and Jessica Bennett.
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