While someone Loena Hendrickx’s tender age of eighteen more likely relates to the term “Frozen” in pop culture pertaining to the Disney animated film, the Belgian figure skater nonetheless took to the rink for her short program to glide and twist to a melodic, ethereal remix of the Madonna song that, incidentally, caused quite a stir in Hendrickx’s home country of Belgium back in 2005 (the year Madonna had long ago moved on from being “Frozen” to instead being “Hung Up”).
For those not familiar with one of Madonna’s more memorable plagiarism lawsuits, Belgian composer Salvatore Acquaviva (don’t ask me how his Italian name makes him Belgian), little known for much of anything other than winning his case against Madonna, managed to guide a court ruling that banned the sale or distribution of the song in that country. Acquaviva’s song, written five years before “Frozen” came out, was called “Ma Vie Fout L’camp” (which, ironically, translates to “My Life’s Going Nowhere”–and clearly Acquaviva’s hasn’t since this legal battle).
Thus, the significance of Hendrickx performing to this track is not only rife with meaning because the lift on the ban only fairly recently occurred in 2014, when the ruling was finally overturned, but also because the album that it hails from, Ray of Light, will be turning twenty years old on February 22nd (fortuitously, Andy Warhol’s death day; Madonna has an unwitting thing with fellow icons’ death days, her own birthday coinciding with the day that Elvis croaked).
Arguably, this is the most “modern”Hendrickx has gotten in her showcase, in the past preferring the somewhat more random soundtracks of Alan Silvestri’s “Soapdish” from the underrated 80s movie of the same name (two years in a row, mind you) and, rather eerily, Ennio Morricone’s “Gabriel’s Oboe” from the score to The Mission. Hendrickx’s song choice this year, conversely, iterates that the women’s competition–at least when it comes to ice skating–is not only generally more interesting to watch, but apparently more classically gay in addition to being more classic–though, of course, it’s come a long way since Tonya’s days, now vindicated for making the then far too contemporary choice of skating to ZZ Top, which, though such boldness has paved the way for Madonna to make a sonic cameo in the formerly stodgy world of skating, has also presented the drawbacks of Ed Sheeran and Coldplay being permissible as well.
Oh. My. God. pic.twitter.com/FnsiaJYtMd
— Joe Lynch (@branniganlynch) February 21, 2018
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