Playground magazine

These are times of change. There is a war underway between the great stars of consumer pop: the drawings on the board look more like the strategies in “Game of Thrones” than the old commercial manoeuvring and marketing within the heart of the record industry (which tended to be more direct and not as sibylline and Machiavellian as they are now). The competition is fierce and current promotional techniques - which have seen a lot of budget cuts compared to what used to be spent, as this is a miserly moment compared with the multimillion budgets spent on campaigns in the 80s and 90s - only understand the language of media immediacy. In short: brute force to achieve a goal, the quicker the better, and by any means necessary. In this war there are women avid for fame, money, and power, supported by their labels, and all of them have one goal: to wrestle the crown away from the queen. They want to take her place. The place where Madonna’s royal behind has been sitting.

How? When the music channels stopped being a playlist of videos (favouring a programme of reality TV), the clip - as a work of art - became confined to the computer screen, via the internet; that private, democratic corner.  What matters is right now. There is no longer any patience for letting an album sit for three or four years; spacing out the singles within a constant stream over several months, enough for them to be heard a lot on the radio and to be on the charts. Now, to make a real impact and reach the public, someone who aspires to the category of pop royalty cannot rest and has to make noise every week, harassing fans (convinced or potential) with new promotional videos - which at this point can be low-cost - a B-side leaked on the internet, a teaser of some future event, or the typical “featuring” credit on another artist’s single. Rest is costly: if you don’t keep up this frenetic pace, the public repays you with oblivion. And with it, the possibility that if you aren’t careful, a family of midgets might spring up behind you in a matter of days.

This is what has happened to Madonna. Until now she was the untouchable queen of pop, but now Ciccone has run smack-bang into her realm. We didn’t see it coming because over the course of her decades of cruel dictatorship, she has left a string of cadavers behind her - from Cindy Lauper and Paula Abdul in her early years of stardom, to the voices of the 90s, Mariah Carey, Céline Dion and the recently departed Whitney Houston. This has merit, knowing as we do that her vocal chords are nothing out of this world. She also acted as the matriarch of the princesses of the “2000 effect”: Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, way before they could suffer the dark side of fame for themselves years later. Madonna’s shadow was long. She smashed her rivals effortlessly, playing the game in her own territory like a croupier at her table. Her throne was invulnerable and never suffered. However, everything changed when a new generation of artists arrived who also had an enormous ego. They weren’t going to let the setback of “Hard Candy” (Warner, 2008) slide, an album that should have been a big hit, and which against all odds, failed. It was Timbaland’s funeral as a producer, but it was also a chink in Madonna’s protective armour. The queen was vulnerable and many fans had lost faith.

Far from earning the sympathy of the teenage target, a sensitive age group that always needs to idolize someone, Madonna - as also happened at a certain point to Kylie Minogue - didn’t know how to connect with the generation born in the 90s. You only have to attend one of her huge concerts to see: the average age is 25 and up, just starting with those who saw her resurrection as a modern diva with “Ray Of Light” (Warner, 1998) and “Music” (Warner, 2000). Obviously, any release that she puts out will reach the top of the charts thanks to what she’s already got in her pocket, the fans that have been faithful for decades and who support any step - or misstep - in her career. For example, this is what has happened with “MDNA” (Interscope-Live Nation / Universal, 2012) in its first week of sales. But it is noticeable that in its second week, at least on the American Billboard, sales of this latest pseudo-bling creature have dropped by 87%. We might think that the pre-orders on iTunes were a mirage.