Perhaps because of the pandemic and the long-standing existence of the internet, people, specifically “youths,” forgot all about words like “club” and “subculture.” The latter being all there is on the internet anyway. And perhaps because Madonna wants to reassert herself as the true club queen after the release of Beyoncé’s Renaissance (which she got to be a part of by pandering to The Queens Remix of “Break My Soul”), she had a little photo and video shoot done for Paper Magazine (as “retro” at this point as “the club”) to coincide with the release of her compilation of fifty number one dance hits, Finally Enough Love.
Channeling the look she served from her Pride performance at the Standard Hotel in June of ’21, Madonna once again donned a similar wig in pink to show up for New York City—her “true love,” apparently. For Madonna’s in a particularly nostalgic mood about it after working on the biopic of her life that focuses on a time in New York that didn’t blow quite so hard. Or, at least if it did, the douche scene wasn’t so concentrated.
Enter Paper Magazine to provide an interview with M and Nile Rodgers that paints the “spell it out for the dolts” portrait, “In an era when everyone has instant access to every subculture at the tapping of a screen, it might be easy to forget that Madonna’s artistry was formed in the analog cauldron of New York City nightlife in the ’80s, at a crucial time when disco and punk were clashing, freestyle was emerging and dance-pop was just beginning to form its own postmodern identity—one Madonna herself would be at the forefront of establishing.” Here we have the usual style of writing that overly glorifies and romanticizes the “majesty” of New York, all based on nostalgia for the past… because, well, the present is flaccid as fuck. This includes a photo session that patently ignores the current implications of class when it comes to club-going. And Madonna, being rich as all get-out, would naturally choose to sidestep that conversation in 2022. Even though, if she were the same twenty-something back in 1982 faced with the cost of drinks and “entry fees,” Madonna would surely have plenty to say about it as her broke-ass self as opposed to her one-percent self. For the club, more than anywhere, has become an ultimate symbol of classism—from being judged by how one dresses in order to get in to the requirement of drink minimums to bottle service price tiers. In short, these ain’t the “egalitarian” days of Madonna’s pre-fame era that allowed her to traipse into da club wearing literal rags.
Another aspect the interview seems to ignore is that, while Madonna wants to disseminate her dance music to a new generation (read: Z), the club is not a space they’re even comfortable in. With a large bulk abstaining from alcohol entirely and/or having too much anxiety to willingly enter such an environment, Madonna’s audience has effectively “aged out.” And yet, that doesn’t mean these songs might not still find their way onto the “TikTok space” (as though that’s real). In fact, that’s what Madonna wants to ensure. With previous success on the app thanks to Saucy Santana’s “reworking” (ripping off) of “Material Girl” into “Material Gworl,” Madonna also found Sickick’s abridged version of “Frozen” having “a moment” long enough to prompt her to create a slew of other remixes for it featuring the likes of FireboyDML and 070 Shake. But it was landing that fiftieth number one (“I Don’t Search I Find”) on the Billboard dance chart that inspired Madonna to release another compendium of her hits (for we already have The Immaculate Collection, GHV2 and Celebration).
Plus, it’s been almost a whole thirteen years since Celebration came out, and one can never wait too long when there’s more money to be made on what is ultimately the same product, repackaged. Like Celebration, Finally Enough Love’s primary cover has a pop art feel, with an image taken from Madonna’s first album photo shoot and subsequently stylized for good measure. And also similarly to Celebration, the point of Finally Enough Love is to make people marvel at the extensive breadth of her work, this time with a dance remix-oriented theme (it’s basically like if 2003’s Remixed and Revisited had been an LP instead of an EP—which it technically was supposed to be before Madonna kiboshed plans to release a box set to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of her debut record).
That said, Madonna wants to take us back, at the bare minimum, to 2005, when club culture in NYC was still “fabulous” as opposed to simply another way to project a false image on social media. That’s why this photo shoot for Paper feels reminiscent of her Confessions on a Dance Floor era, namely when she made a cameo at a Misshapes party with Stuart Price or gyrated with a crowd of her dancers at the end of the “Hung Up” video. The point being, Madonna has always asserted herself as the Queen of the Dance Floor—it is, after all, “a place where you can get away.” And yet, because the dance floor has effectively become everyone’s own room, Madonna’s dance-oriented stylings have become more than somewhat diluted with the loss of her preferred medium: the club. As Rodgers phrases it in the interview, “We’re artists who come from this real, tactile world. It was sort of like the Roman Colosseum, thumbs up or thumbs down. People responded to your music by coming onto the dance floor or leaving, or staying on the dance floor. And you knew right away. If you can’t satisfy the people right away, chances are…” Madonna chimes in, “It wasn’t going to happen.”
Rodgers said it all right there by noting that he and Madonna came up as artists in a “real, tactile world” (#materialworld). One where drinking, drugging and rubbing up against each other was the main concern, as opposed to, say, how one looks on camera while doing it. This opening up the twenty-first century fear of “embarrassing videos” living forever on the internet (and now, the fear of contracting any number of rampant diseases from COVID to monkeypox to polio). That Madonna’s entire “shtick” was instead founded on carefully crafted artifice makes her something of a trailblazer in the art of social media, and yet, her twentieth century media manipulation ways haven’t always translated so well to modern mediums (see: her first Instagram post ever or her much maligned “kissy face” TikTok).
At that aforementioned 2021 club performance for Pride, everyone took out their phone to film and photograph Madonna writhing around on the bar (writhing being something that helped establish her in the music industry). Very few people were actually “present in the moment” (which is part of the reason why Madonna banned the use of phones at her Madame X Tour, much to the dismay of many fans). Images of Madonna standing or lying on the bar as hordes of people stood over her with their phones held up to record (thus, prove they were there) hardly harkens back to the glory days of Studio 54 or even the glory days of Michael Alig’s reign at The Limelight. And yes, Alig might even have crossed paths with Madonna during his stint at Danceteria as a busboy or when he was being introduced to “nightlife” in the first place by Keith Haring’s boyfriend. After that, Alig, who died on Christmas Eve of 2020 (of, what else, a heroin overdose), saw no shortage of scenes, becoming something of a “party expert.” It incited him to transform into a “performer” himself, what with having histrionic personality disorder (a condition M herself might have a light touch of as a Leo).
But his antics (including, of course, that illustrious murder) would definitely be deemed “too much” in the New York of now (and were even viewed that way then), where the only reason to “party” is for the cameras. For the magazine shoot that will just be posted on Instagram. So maybe it’s good for Madonna, now more physically and vocally limited, that performance is so secondary to aesthetics (billed as being enough on their own to qualify as “performance”) in the current landscape. Maybe that’s why she felt this shoot would be the best approach to “evoking the vibe” of her compilation. Especially since very few members of the “youth culture” are “down” for seeing live performances anyway.
Smoking a cigarette in her shirt emblazoned with the words “New York” (which she’s taken a shine to since appearing on Jimmy Fallon) and kissing “random” (a.k.a. curated) people, Madonna tries to transport us back, back, back. To a New York clubland of a Golden Age (though that would mean doing the shoot in Manhattan instead of Brooklyn). But if Alig could see these ersatz snapshots (especially without his presence in them), he’d likely be of the Shania belief: “That don’t impress me much.”
