In the end, it was only a matter of time before Madonna’s firstborn should fully take advantage of the womb from whence she came. Sure, Lourdes Leon has already done so by becoming something of a part-time model/dancer in between being a garden-variety Bushwick scene queen. But that’s nothing compared to taking up the mantle of “chanteuse” from her matriarch. And it seems all too apropos that Leon should opt to release her first single at the age of twenty-five, just a year after Madonna hit the semi big-time at twenty-four with her debut, “Everybody” (it wasn’t until her second album, however, that things would really take off). And, of all the stage names Leon could have chosen, Lolahol feels like possibly the worst. Is it pronounced “hole” or “hall”? Either way, it doesn’t matter.
In fact, “Lolahol” could probably release anything she wanted to, and it would be deemed “talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping, spectacular, never-the-same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it.” This quote being one of many interviews from Lady Gaga that has been turned into a meme.
Which brings us to the fact that Lolahol felt obliged to reference (or not reference), of all people, Madonna’s long-standing nemesis, Lady Gaga, in her own single. Because let’s not pretend Madonna hasn’t been irked by all the times Lady G has copied her so blatantly (“look it up”). There’s “homage” and then there’s ripping off, after all. But perhaps Lady G speaks much more to Lourdes’ generation than “Queen Mother” Madonna. After all, Leon would have been between twelve and fifteen when Gaga first rose to prominence and started garnering early comparisons to Madonna for her “bold” style.
It was also around the moment of Lola’s teen years (2011) that Gaga provided fodder for another commonly-used meme via an interview with Fuse during which she said, “No sleep. Bus, club, ‘nother club, ‘nother club, plane, next place, no sleep, no fear.” To the point of that last phrase, Lolahol shows up in one scene from the video sitting on a car with a windshield sticker that reads: “Team Never Scared.” Maybe that’s one aspect of how the Lady G quote trickled into the lyrics of “Lock&Key” by osmosis. The title not being inspired by the graphic novel or show, but possibly Lola’s own mother via her 1986 single, “Open Your Heart,” wherein she sings, “Open your heart to me, baby/I hold the lock and you hold the key.” The phrase “you hold the key” would also reappear on Madonna’s 1998 ballad, “Frozen.” And, to be frank, “Lock&Key” does sound a lot like an unfinished demo from Ray of Light.
Even so, it’s been automatically branded by Billboard as a “seductive club anthem” (as though it’s “Everybody” or some shit) by sole virtue of the specific mouth it’s coming from. Because no one seems to want to point out that this sounds like either that aforementioned demo style from a very particular Madonna era or something that just about any aspiring musician living in Brooklyn on their parents’ dime could come up with. And yes, the music video does have a decidedly film school quality to it (directed by Eartheater, who also produced the song), complete with one of the filming locations being Machpelah Cemetery, where Houdini is buried (needless to say, his grave features prominently). For where Madonna was a Lower Manhattan rat in her pre-fame days, Lourdes has followed the post-2008 trend of the “outer boroughs” being “everything” for “artists” (who can afford to be).
Another Lady G correlation is the Giuseppe Zanotti shoes Leon sports, Zanotti being a designer Gaga famously “adores,” and even calls out in her 2011 video for “Marry the Night.” But it’s not all traitorousness on Lola’s part. There are obvious moments when Lolahol pays tribute to her mother—first and foremost by constantly flashing the “MOM” tattoo on her left hand (whereas we never see the “DAD” tattoo on her right one). Then there are the final scenes during which Lola is on the beach giving all kinds of Madonna-in-the-“Cherish”-video vibes.
Before that moment, however, the clouds keep appearing overhead with a lock-shaped slit in them as the sun cracks through, indicating some portentousness prior to Lolahol taking over the night and using Lady G’s interview quote as the lyrics, “No sleep, next plane, no sleep, makeup, next club, next car, next plane, no sleep, no fear.” Saying this in a silver shimmering jumpsuit with matching pasties, Lolahol then changes costumes to appear in a car on the Kosciuszko Bridge (with her head out the passenger side, “scrub-style,” obviously) next to a masked “Ghostface Driver” at the wheel (the car is also complete with the warning, “NOFUXGVN” on the windshield). And this is the segment of the song both lyrically and visually that most harkens back to 2011-era Lana Del Rey as well (a famous “competitor” of Lady Gaga’s circa the period they were both trolling the Lower East Side for gigs and glory). For it’s easy to imagine her then New York-centric aesthetic flavor melding with this one. Not to mention the fact that Del Rey would have no problem singing the lines, “Gimme that street rat diamond black car, white trail, chemtrail, white linе/Rub me like a geniе, you’re a genius, and I need that.”
We then see shots of the Team Never Scared car transporting a coffin on top of it because Lolahol clearly also wants to serve Wednesday Addams realness. And, of course, it can double as a metaphor for Lolahol’s sudden rebirth as she pops out of the giant heart-shaped locket we saw at the beginning of the video. Only now, it’s on the beach where she’ll emerge, like Gaga bursting forth from her egg at the Grammys performance of “Born This Way.”
Except that, as we all know, Lola was hardly “hatched,” so much as given life to create through the undeniable benefit of being Madonna’s daughter. And by the end of being “emitted” from the giant locket, Lola appears spent, yet content splashing around with it in the ocean. Almost as if she had put in as much work as Madonna herself to become famous. A woman who once said, “If it’s bitter at the start, then it’s sweeter in the end.” Unless it’s sweet from the start by winning the birth lottery…
