Candy girl
Interview: Danny Scott & Theinterviewpeople.Com She’s topped every chart, broken every record – and every taboo – and still continues ringing the changes, as her London concert this month will show. But, as her 11th album hard candy fights for attention amid press headlines about the state of her marriage, is life still sweet for [...]
Interview: Danny Scott & Theinterviewpeople.Com
She’s topped every chart, broken every record – and every taboo – and still continues ringing the changes, as her London concert this month
will show. But, as her 11th album hard candy fights for attention amid press headlines about the state of her marriage, is life still sweet for
Madonna?
AS BEFITS THE QUEEN of pop, Madonna has spent most
of this summer firmly under the media spotlight. Her latest
album, Hard Candy, which was released this April, has sold
several million copies and is a high-energy dance party with
a string of A-list guests, including Timbaland, Kanye West,
Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams. She’s followed that
with the Sticky and Sweet concert tour, which brings her to
London this month at Wembley, and will travel around the
globe for the rest of this year.
She hit 50 on 16 August, but it seems Madonna Louise
Veronica Ciccone Ritchie is nowhere near ready to loosen her
vice-like grip on the famously fickle world of pop music.
A quarter of a century after her debut album – yes, Madonna
was released way back in 1983! – she is still the Guv’nor.
“I wanted to make a very danceable record,” she says
of Hard Candy, her eleventh album, which has topped the
charts in 37 countries, including notching up her tenth UK
number one. Stats aside, musically it’s even more upbeat
than her Confessions on a Dancefloor, her famous 2005
return to her New York disco roots.
alt="Madonna always liked hard candy">
“How can you make a record with Justin and Pharrell
and not make dance music? I love their records. I’ve been
a big fan of Pharrell and the Neptunes for years, and I
loved Justin Timberlake’s last album.” As for Timbaland’s
production: “Every time I heard a song on the radio over
the past year or two and loved it, I said: ‘Oh my God, who is
that?’ and then I found out it was Timbaland. So it was just
really because I am a fan more than anything.”
No prizes for guessing who wanted to be the boss once
they were in the studio, though. “Well, we sort of took
turns,” she offers. “Sometimes, they influenced me and,
sometimes, I influenced them. I think that happened more
with Pharrell, ’cause with Pharrell I’d say, ‘Let’s do some
more up-tempo stuff’. Give It 2 Me and Beat Goes On were
more my idea, whereas Incredible and Spanish Lesson were
more his idea. I did get into an argument with Pharrell in
the very beginning, but it wasn’t anything big. We all had to
make compromises.”
alt="Iconic since the 1980s: Two cones please">
Madonna describes Give It 2 Me, the album’s second
single, as “like an anthem, like the ultimate inspiration
song, like you can never give up, you just have to keep
going and we are all winners”. She’s certainly got the track
record to be able to sing it. Does she feel she’s a winner?
“Absolutely.”
Despite being an album full of what she calls “big
bass sounds and fat beats”, Hard Candy has its
thoughtful moments. 4 Minutes – the Timberlake
collaboration that was a number one single earlier
this year – is Madonna in eco-warrior mode, railing
against our apparent disregard for the sad state
of the planet. “It was probably inspired a little
bit by Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, as
well as doing the Live Earth concert. I also did
a lot of my own investigations and spent time
in Africa, and it made me realise that we are
living in a world that is filled with chaos. We
all need to wake up, take responsibility.”
alt="Madonna and Guy with children Rocco and Lourdes">
Does writing a pop song really change
anything? “I try to do as much as I
can – whether it’s something like Live Earth [a series of
worldwide concerts last year] or being involved in projects
that help raise awareness. I made a documentary about
children who have been orphaned by Aids in Malawi [I Am
Because We Are, which was premiered at the Tribeca Film
Festival in April]. Things are beginning to look up over there.
Attention has been focused on Malawi in the last couple of
years. I hope I have something to do with that.”
Madonna has, indeed, focused attention on Malawi,
but some might argue that it had nothing to with her
documentary. Journalists and news crews have been
flocking to the troubled African republic because
Madonna wanted to adopt two-year-old David
Banda, unleashing what even her fans had to admit
was a tidal wave of bad publicity.
For years, Madonna has slickly controlled
media coverage of her life, whipping those
naughty Fleet Street boys and girls into
shape with a style and guile that would
turn Gordon Brown green with envy.
What the world got was a Madonna
who had been sanctioned, shaped
and airbrushed by Madonna Inc. An
extraordinary, super-real Madonna
that was reinvented and rebuilt
for every new album and tour – the lippy, girl power
troubadour for Like A Virgin, the dominatrix for Erotica, the
psychedelic dancefloor and yoga guru for Ray of Light. “I
think I have always had a sense of irony in my work,” she
explains. “Whether people got it or not is another story. But
humour is very important to me.”
While other pop stars came and went, often
disappearing after barely a single or two, Madonna became
the undisputed mistress of reinvention, setting new trends
that the younger generation of entertainers could merely
dream of. She has always appeared to be the one in control.
But this year has been different and the wheels came off
the bandwagon. The media haven’t been interested in her
new album (unfairly, as it’s very good) or its glamorous
guest list. They haven’t been as respectful of her sinewy
arms (several hours a day of dedicated exercising), choice of
religion (kabbalah), her 50th birthday or any of the stories
that we’ve pored over for the past three decades. Instead,
the tabloids have gone for the jugular, sinking their teeth
into her eight-year marriage to the one-time bad boy of
British film, Guy Ritchie, 39.
alt="From dominatrix to New Age hippy chick and screen siren, Madonna has rewritten the book of reinvention">
Recent times have seen relentless ‘exclusives’, from
‘Madonna and Guy in crisis talks’ to ‘No plans for divorce’.
Yet ‘insiders’ reveal that ‘It’s over’, while convenient
paparazzi shots show cinema outings en famille. Even
Madonna’s younger brother Christopher Ciccone has
written a book about her private life. And there’s the matter
of Madonna’s friendship with New York Yankees baseball
star Alex Rodriguez – a man whose Stateside profile is
bigger than Beckham, Rooney and Ronaldo put together,
and whose wife has just filed for divorce.
Madonna’s team played down the Rodriguez connection
– not to mention reported sightings of the 32-year-old
sneaking out of Madge’s apartment in the early hours.
“They know each other,” we’re told. “They share the same
manager.” But the headline writers aren’t buying it. What
with all the pictures of Guy Ritchie looking miserable, we’re
almost in danger of forgetting that Madonna is actually a
musician at all.
alt="Madonna generates some heat with Justin Timberlake">
At the time of going to press it was impossible to say
what’s round the corner for the couple. Madonna appears to
acknowledge that their respective workload has made life
difficult. The song, Miles Away, talks of long-distance love,
fading dreams and uncomfortable silences. “I think it’s a song
everyone can relate to,” she says. “Especially when there are
two people that work… and you are always travelling and
you don’t see each other all the time.”
alt="Classic Hollywood beauty or ever-youthful vamp">
So, has her relationship with Guy changed at all. “Oh
yeah! How could it not? I’ve changed. He’s changed. We
have three children now [the couple’s seven-year-old son,
Rocco; 11-year-old Lourdes, fathered by fitness trainer,
Carlos Leon; and two-year-old David]. Our life experiences
have changed.” For the better? “Yeah. I think we have just
grown up more. We don’t have that same kind of idealistic
expectation of what I think the perfect
husband is, of what he thinks the perfect wife
is. I think we are less judgemental of one
another and… we have more compassion for
one another. You become friends, but it takes
a while. You could fall in love with
someone right away, but it takes
a while to really like them.”
Is having three young
children a handful?
“They all get along fine.
They are all unique in their
personalities, but I think it
makes for fun in the house. When I
leave the studio I don’t really think
about work, I am too busy thinking
about, did my daughter get her
clothes for school, did my son brush his teeth…” How does
Lourdes deal with having a mother who is a role model to
so many other women? “Well, she is not stupid either, so
I met my match, ha ha. She has her moments of rebellion.
She doesn’t listen to me, like most 11-year-olds.”
You’ve had an important birthday yourself, this year.
“No, it was important for everybody else. For me, it was just
another year. No different to 49 or 51.”
alt="Madonna is in a class of her own">
Whatever tabloid storms are brewing, Madonna is still
in charge. Even the smooth-talking Warner Bros lawyers
– her record company since that very first album – were
unable to get the better of her. When they didn’t offer the
right record deal, she walked, and signed with the Live
Nation label.
Madonna doesn’t quite see it like that. “I am
not leaving them,” she insists. “My contract ran
out. I could have renewed it, but they didn’t
offer me as good a deal as Live Nation.”
Surely it was a huge blow to Warner?
“They’ll get over it. Record companies
have changed. Who knows if record
companies are even going to be around in
a couple of years.”
But it’s a safe bet that Madonna will be around
for a long time yet.
Hard Candy is out now.
Madonna plays Wembley
Stadium on 11 September
as part of the Sticky and
Sweet tour, and cities
including Las Vegas and
Chicago next month.
www.madonna.com
