Icon #34 - Madonna: 2 Blonde 2 Ambitious - The Daily Zeitgeist

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You might be my lucky star.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
That's such a good one.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
That's so good, so many fucking crazy.

Speaker 4 (00:10):
That's like literally the first song on the album, isn't it.
That's as far as I got.

Speaker 5 (00:16):
But so she's got other songs too, Because that first one.

Speaker 6 (00:20):
I heard, there are a few others. There are a
few others.

Speaker 4 (00:25):
All I like what I'm hearing. I like what I'm
hearing so far.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Now.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
There were so many times during this where I would
like be doing research and like read a song title
and be like, oh, well, that's one.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
That like didn't reach me.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
And then I would go and search that song title
and play it and be like, oh, this song is
like of course in my bones, like I've heard this
song a thousand.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
A thousand times.

Speaker 6 (00:47):
Yeah, and Holiday, Yeah, yeah, that's on that album.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
That's her her debut album.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
That song.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
In the I was like, Yo, that's mad Madonna.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
In life Madonna, Tony Braxton, they.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Said Madonna's wiped, she's done. That was Madonna.

Speaker 6 (01:11):
That's what she was doing exactly. All important things to
keep in mind.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
And that's a cold open for you right there. You
didn't need but you got one. Anyways, That's how we would.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
Do that song Frozen too.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yes, oh yeah, yeah that's her.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Also let It Go, I know, hung Up. The one
was like, oh.

Speaker 7 (01:35):
Yeah, yeah got Madonna.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah she invented.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Errors, she invented All Right, here we go. This is
week I get into this.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to the spin off episode
of Guys, which we call the Iconograph. Instead of looking
at the zeit guys through current events on Monday morning,
we're looking at the guys through the powerful pop cultural
deities that are our icons. And this week we're doing
probably like a first ballot icon like first like, this

(02:11):
is one of the names that popped into our head
when we were first started discussing icons, and I'm so
happy our guests recommended doing her on a regular TEDS
episode when she was on recently. Today's icon probably inspired
more haircuts in the eighties than anyone. I remember my
cousin coming back looking like her and being like, damn,

(02:34):
Melissa is so cool.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
She did that.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
It was just like so one of my first memories
being in at a preschool playdate dancing like a fool
to material girl. This was this research made me nostalgic
for a time when artists made the Pope furious for
the reason you're supposed to make the pope furious, right,
not for trying to enslave humanity to robots, but for

(02:58):
being too cool. Pope John called the Blonde Ambition Tour
one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
Ambition.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, she wasn't satanic at all.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
That is just such otherwise such a self like just
so revealing how horny he was, Like how horny that
ship made.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Him immediately know the devil was blonde.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
It's like she's plugged my brain directly into the devil's
mouth via my penis. That's my impression of John Paul.
The second we're talking motherfucking Madge as the British caller.
For some reason, Madonna her music's iconic, her images, iconic,
her pop cultural impact. Tarantino's first movie opens with a
group of murderers dissecting her songs with academic rigor. I'm

(03:52):
throwed to be joined as always by my co host.
He started speaking with a British accent for no reason
in nineteen ninety seven. It's Miles gra It's so great.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
To be thank you so much for having Thank you
so much.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
It's like every time someone's like, look at this clip
of her speaking in a British accent, it's like, yeah,
I mean.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
She she's not like hello, Hello, She's like it's a touch.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Baby, yeah if she if someone traveled, she.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Speaks like she's from Middle Earth, you know, like it's
just like vague.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Middle Earth. Michigan in our third seat.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
A brilliant actor, comedian, writer, podcast host, pop culture expert
who you've read in places like The Cut, Vulture, av Club,
The Good Ones, the Good Places. Her former publicist once said,
she smells fear like a Dog's Ashley, Right, that's a
that's a fact about Madonna that not everybody knows. But

(04:58):
I just liked that this led it in. Earlier her
publicism was like, yeah, she could smell your fear like
a dog.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
I believe that. I absolutely believe that.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Incredible.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
The research for this one was so fun, So thank
you Ashley for suggesting it.

Speaker 6 (05:18):
Yeah, she just seems like such a clear choice. Oh yeah,
Madonna is incredible, right.

Speaker 5 (05:24):
Because I think you brought it up as maybe like
maybe you're underrated or something.

Speaker 4 (05:27):
It can't I think underrated.

Speaker 6 (05:31):
You know, Madonna is a pop star who managed to
stick with different times she changed, and with that kind
of comes a dismissal. I think, you know, you can
have the Michael Jackson impact where you die, and so
people just get to enjoy your hits forever, or you
stay alive and keep making music and you're not as popular.
You're seen as like an older people's artist. And I

(05:53):
think that's where Madonna is. And I think a lot
of people underrate her because they go, Okay, Lady Gaga
is new and doing it better, and it's like, no,
there's a reason they all copied Madonna. They're just like, yeah,
like your history.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
She's like, you know, you like go back and it's
like Shakespeare invented the word eyeball and shit like that,
and you're like, what, No, he didn't. Like That's how Madonna.
She invented like huge chunks of culture that we just
take for granted today, like Taylor Swift having different eras
and aesthetics for different albums is all Madonna enormous globe

(06:31):
dominating tours. She was the first woman to headline a
stadium tour. That's what, Like, how's that possible?

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (06:41):
She created the phrase blonde ambition for the Blonde Ambition tour,
and she also like embodied it the little Madonna Mike
that was, that was her. Nobody was using that in
pop pop music prior to.

Speaker 4 (06:54):
Like the headset.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
I didn't know it's called the Madonna mic, so forgive it.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
For a while it was I remember it being killed
Adonna Mike in the nineties. But and then just she
also graces us with a like she's so good at
serving kunt like she's There's a scene in Truth Day
Jack tell them where Kevin Costner comes by after a
show and it's the peak of Kevin Costner's career. He's

(07:22):
coming off of a run that goes Untouchable's Bull Durham,
Field of Dreams, wins the Oscar for directing dances with
Wolves like crazy heat Check. Everyone's like, what is this
guy doing? And he wins the Oscar, is about to
do Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, And in between those
movies on his Wikipedia filmography is Madonna Truth or Dare
Himself because he shows up backstage and he is so

(07:45):
starstruck and he's like flummixed, and he's like keeps finding
himself saying neat. He's like the show was neat. I
just found it all very neat, and she's like, well,
I'm glad you found it neat and turns her back
on him and makes the gag gesture to the camera.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
That is the queen.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
About about like the biggest movie star in the world
at the moment.

Speaker 6 (08:13):
Yeah, she probably wanted to go like fuck Tupac or
something like she just.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Another moment that I loved is so there's that iconic.

Speaker 8 (08:23):
I'm just watching him going oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it
was really neat, turns around like, oh fuck.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
I could not wait to get away from him.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
So there's another iconic moment where she goes on The
Letterman Show and it's famous for it's like the one
where she says fuck thirteen times and Letterman's like, boy,
you know, we're on network TV. So I went back
and watched it and she's high, which is evident in
watching it. We learned after the fact she had just

(08:59):
smoked with Tupac before coming out.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
But she's like backstage, like, yeah, she had smoked.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
The last thing she asked David Letterman is Dave, have
you ever smoked endo. He's like, yeah, we're gonna move
on conversation. Yeah, how about we endo this conversation, but
she's basically calling him a bitch the whole interview, being like,
you used to be funny and have an edge, and

(09:28):
now you like kiss celebrity asked for a living, which
was like, like I loved the Letterman Show, but like
the early day, it was like a debt, like that
had to have hurt his feelings, and she like.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
He wasn't that wacky guy.

Speaker 6 (09:41):
And Madonna is this pop star who had to call
him out, Like can you imagine Olivia Rodrigo being like, hey, Jimmy,
fallon you fucking suckut man.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
That would be amazing when you started, except you didn't really.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Did you know?

Speaker 6 (09:55):
When he put out that album, The with Idiot Boyfriend
that that was like a I think the one boy
seemed happy, it was fun.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
I think that was it for him.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
She knew that, Layne.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
Yeah, and then that Taxi that was fun.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, that was good.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
That actually wasn't good.

Speaker 6 (10:10):
I don't think I never saw it, but yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
I love talking about the cultural, the collective unconscious on this.
There's a book from nineteen ninety three that a folklorist
put together compiling people's dreams about Madonna it's called I
Dream of Madonna, and it's just like hundreds of different
women's dreams of Madonna. She keeps like showing up in
people's dreams as like their best friend, and uh, they said.

(10:39):
The most common fantasies Turner recorded were of being friends
with the singer, although water, which apparently has deep erotic symbolism,
also snaked its way through the dream lives of her respondents.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
But yeah, there's me and Madonna.

Speaker 5 (10:51):
We were both soaking wet from a rainstorm or something.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
I don't know where to put the parts of.

Speaker 6 (10:57):
Everything, and my best friend Madonna was with me as
the hurricane game.

Speaker 4 (11:01):
Yeah, okay, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
She's a powerful figure. So I'm not going to question
that for people, you know.

Speaker 5 (11:08):
Yeah, do you think that's still possible now because of
like just the lack of like the monoculture is monoculture, Yeah,
you know what I mean, because I think we had
no like not that we had, but I mean because
of the monoculture, Like we were saying before we started rolling,
like passively, Madonna is like just genetically encoded into your bones.
Because if you're like born, you know, like especially millennials

(11:29):
and older, it's like, I don't know, dude, just hit
by Osmosis.

Speaker 4 (11:33):
It's in me. I don't know what else to say.

Speaker 6 (11:35):
It's just yeah, it was everywhere. That's how the radio was,
Like have you seen the documentary? I think We're alone
now it's about.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
Yeah yeah I like that. So it's about people who
are obsessed with it's Tiffany though specifically yeah yeah, yeah
it was it was about Tiffany, yeah yeah.

Speaker 6 (11:55):
And it's so weird because she was not a huge
figure in pop culture.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
So it's a little like why was Why did that
click with people?

Speaker 6 (12:02):
And I don't think you get that level of intensity
these days, like people are going to stand like you know,
pop star one, two.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Three, it's like pick your lane? Are you Sabrina? Are
you Olivia?

Speaker 6 (12:12):
And back in the day, you have people who are
just like I dream about Madonna every day and I
found five other people who are willing to start a
chat room about it, and we're so in.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah right they Tiffany's name came up, Debbie Gibson's name
came up, and Cyndi Lauper's name came up. As people
who were like, as they were rising, They're like, this
is she like on par with Madonna, this is the
new Madonna, and they would just fall away, fall away,
and she just has this amazing I mean, she has
like so many different skills, Like she is an incredible actress,

(12:47):
like just like always just appearing exactly as she wants to.
She has an amazing knack for like knowing what's going
to hit, like Nile Rogers, the legendary producer produced just
like all sorts of classics and producers like a Virgin,
And he was like, what are you talking about? Are
you crazy? This song sucks about like a Virgin? And

(13:09):
she was like, no, this is gonna be my hit.
It's like my sensibility and also I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Make it work.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
And he was like, no, no, you don't understand, like
this song sucks like you're you're making a huge mistake,
and she knew, like she just knows like that. That's
a question that came up for me, is like how
does someone who doesn't write all of her own songs
like just have hit after hit after hit after hit.
So we'll get into all that.

Speaker 5 (13:34):
I can't believe she, like Nile Rogers, one of those
goaded producers, like working with Diana Ross, like everybody and
he's like, no, no, that's She's like, you don't know
what you're talking about, Nile Rogers and yeah, that's heavy.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
And guess what she was.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Right he but he got it.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
So at first when he's starting the album, he's like,
I don't know if I want to work on this
whole album.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
I don't want this job.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
And by the end he changed his rate so that
he was like, all right, so the standard is I
get three percent of all album sales. Here's what I'm
gonna do for you. I'm going to lower my rate
on the first two million albums sold. If we sell
more than that, I want like six percent of like
three through like beyond. Because he knew it that like

(14:24):
a Virgin was going to sell crazy numbers of it,
so he like at first when he first met her
was out and by the end of working with her,
I was like, this is going to be a like legendary,
era defining album, and like negotiated on like in order
to make it so.

Speaker 4 (14:42):
That era too is like he just done, like let's
dance with David Bowie too.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Yes, you know, so that Bowie is also Bowie is
the other eras person that you know before Madonna. Yeah,
and like I think she takes a lot of inspiration
from him, but like she takes it. She takes a
lot of things that are like percolating, not in the mainstream,

(15:06):
and like brings them to the mainstream right in a
big way. Just one one quick dream. This is from
by the way. This is from the Pitchfork review of
the album Erotica, which gets a nine point zero. But
they open with this thing about the dream book. Madonna
appears to the Dreamer an essentual, lacy black outfit. She
stands beside a sofa upon which a naked figure lies

(15:26):
covered by a sheet. Wordlessly, Madonna lifts the cover to
reveal the dreamer's father's penis. Madonna says nothing, but it's
clear from her silence that she registers just how shameful
and titillating this whole experience is. Suddenly, the man's body ages,
and in an instant his genitals are withered. Madonna had

(15:49):
something to do with the transformation the dreamer. Barbara thirty
four reported, she seemed to be having fun teaching me
whatever the lessons were in this situation, basically that it
was all right for me to have have all my
sexual feelings. They didn't need to be acted on, but
should all at the very least be acknowledged. This is
why we do icon episodes, because these are our like

(16:11):
spirit guides. You guys, it's like to watch your father's
penis wilt like a like a dying.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
Flower whither away to dust. These they are so Madonna
the power.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
So all right, we're going to start from the beginning,
which I did not know Madonna Luis Chaconi.

Speaker 4 (16:36):
Is her name? I did?

Speaker 3 (16:37):
Did you guys both know Madonna was her real name
and that she also she's a junior.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
She's Madonna Junior.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
I didn't know the junior, but I didn't know. Yeah,
that's her real name. That's just how cool she is.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
I know it fits perfectly.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
I thought it was like Bono, like I thought it
was just a one name thing like she gave herself
because it's like so perfect for the Catholic, uh, you know,
like a virgin thing.

Speaker 6 (17:04):
It turns out she's your daughter, Madonna. You want her
to be a star, Yes, you want to get like
you're going to.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
Yeah, just the most appropriately named person of all time.
It's not really nominative determinism because Madonna didn't exist before.
But it's it's pretty cool that she was just given
this name by her super Catholic parents. Tony and Madonna
connected over those are her parents connected over their pious

(17:32):
Catholic backgrounds. And her mom used to pray kneeling on
uncooked rice to like.

Speaker 5 (17:38):
Give her pain, so they, oh, that's okay, So we're
talking about the real the.

Speaker 4 (17:48):
Monk.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
And then she goes on to like take all these
different elements of Catholicism and uh, you know, blend them
with like s and m like sexual pain and suffering
and people, you know, fetishes. Like she's working at a
deeper level than I think most people are giving her
credit for.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Throughout right.

Speaker 5 (18:08):
I mean I didn't even I mean I knew she
was Catholic, so I knew she was drawing from that.
But I for somebody who grew up around Catholics like that,
I'm like, oh, so that was the version of So
that's why you have such a sort of yeah perspective
on Catholicism like that to like want to critique it
in your thing rather than being like, I'm being edgy
man because they say you shouldn't do like church shit

(18:29):
with your like imagery. But it's okay, okay, I didn't
realize her mom was and.

Speaker 6 (18:33):
She sees her mom, yeah, being that devout and her
mom died when she was pretty young.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yeah, I can only.

Speaker 6 (18:40):
Think we can imagine cancer, Like you see her mom
devoted to church and praying on rice and then God
gives her the disease that just strikes her as it
like down and kills her. Right, of course, you're going
to be like I'm gonna fuck across on stage.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yes, another another issue. Her mom dies, her dad hires
a series of housekeepers and marries the last one, which
is like such a like to lose your mom at
five and then have your dad like audition replacements by
hiring them until he finds like an employee. He like, like,

(19:19):
that's just a very like acquisitional, transactional way to approach
you know, uh, sexuality, like.

Speaker 5 (19:29):
Too, like comparing it makes your mother seem completely disposable.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, it's like women as domestic cattle type shit.

Speaker 6 (19:37):
Yeah, he was just trying out housekeepers to you know,
see which one would be the best wife.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
It reminded me that, like Marilyn Monroe was married off
to an older man when her mom was like no
longer able to take care of her. Like I feel
like it's having that early experience of like men just
being the worst and like that, you know that they're
both iconic for the way they use like sex and

(20:02):
men's attraction. Like I feel like it's like the way,
like an acrobat would use the laws of gravity as
just a thing that is there that you can like
kind of push against and you know, interact with in
creative ways, and like I feel like she's in touch
with that from a very early age.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
I do want to talk.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
So one of one of our pet theories in these
icon episodes is the axial age, which is this theory
of history where like Buddha, Confucius, Plato, lots of the
Old Testament prophets all lived around the same time, and
so it's just like a theory that's like it's not
saying like there's magic or like there's something in the water.

(20:43):
It's just that there is Like you know, we tend
to view history as like the great Man theory of history,
where there's like a protagonist and you know, like Edison
invented the light bulb, and it's actually no, the light
bulb was a thing that was invented by multiple people
at the same time around the world. And sometimes it's
just like time for a thing to happen. I bring

(21:04):
this up because so Madonna was born August sixteenth, nineteen
fifty eight, in Bay City, Michigan. Lived in Pontiac, Michigan.
They were on vacation when she was born in June
of that same summer, So seven weeks earlier, also in
a midwestern city, so far away from the culture defining
hubs of New York and La Prince Rogers Nelson was born,
like seven weeks before, less than two weeks after Madonna

(21:27):
is born. Also in a midwestern city of Gary, Indiana,
LaToya jack No Michael Jackson is born. So they're all
born within weeks of each other.

Speaker 6 (21:39):
Janet, I don't know, Janet, but I'm just I'm not
really problematically so but you know, you go with your face.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
But it's I don't know.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
I don't think there's anything magic, but I do think, like,
it's interesting to think about them growing up. They grew
up in even more of a monoculture. You know, they
grew up hearing all the right melodies at the right
time in their men development from like both motown and rock,
and there is a point that like liz La Bonita
was a rejected Michael Jackson instrumental, so there are like

(22:12):
kind of ways that they overlap later. So I don't know,
it's just it's interesting that they're all like Midwesterners born
at the exact same time, and I West is.

Speaker 6 (22:23):
Sort of the best place in the country. So this
doesn't shock me personally. We kind of created all of
the art that this country has the best of it. Yeah,
that's not even hitting like the Chicago people. I'm from Rockford,
which we have cheap trick. They they're a great band.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
Do associate Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna as like the
three people who like dominated the eighties, you know?

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Oh yeah, all right, let's take a quick break. We'll
come back.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
We'll talk more about her upbringing, how she dated Basquiacht
all bunch of bunch of cool shit. She's just around
the coolest shit at exactly the right time. We'll be
right back, and we're back. So I'll say she's another

(23:17):
icon with solidly blue collar roots. Her dad has a
job as like a defense engineer for Chrysler. She is
noticeably less wealthy than her classmates. There's one point where
she has to like take a job cleaning the houses
of her classmates. Damn, And so I think, you know,

(23:39):
I feel like that's one of those moments for someone
who's like extremely bright and alive and competitive and ambitious,
like that must have been tough for her to take.
And she does talk about it like as being a
formative experience.

Speaker 4 (23:51):
How could it not?

Speaker 3 (23:52):
She has a point, This is like one of those
things that if it was in a biopic, you'd be like,
come on, that's a little bit on the nose. A
school talent show when she's twelve, she dances to the
Who's babo O'Reilly? Wearing tight clothing covered in fluorescent body paint,
and her dad has a video camera and like puts

(24:13):
it away and is like you're grounded and makes her
like eventually makes her like move out of the house.
And her brother in his book describes people coming up
to him after this performance and being like, your sister's
a slut.

Speaker 5 (24:27):
Wow, yeah, she you said made her move out of
the house.

Speaker 4 (24:31):
What does that mean? That is that you?

Speaker 1 (24:34):
I think for a little while, yeah.

Speaker 7 (24:36):
Oh, because of the supposed controversy of that performance.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, I think He's like, she's on the wrong track.

Speaker 4 (24:43):
Yeah, yeah, he's not.

Speaker 5 (24:45):
I wonder what he says now because I was he's
still alive, I know. I'm like, yeah, I saw you
feel now.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
Silvio probably the same way, probably the same Probably video
he wants to show you would be my guest.

Speaker 6 (25:01):
It's like the money makes it easier to know she's
gonna spend eternity in hell right, justifies.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
That random but interesting so that one of the first
like videos you can see of her is she's a
freshman in high school starring in a short film called
Egg where she eats a raw egg. It's made by
a classmate named Wyn Cooper, who goes on to write
a poem called Fun that is the basis for the

(25:29):
Cheryl Crow song All I Want to do is have
some fun. So just she's just like surrounded by people
who are doing doing stuff.

Speaker 6 (25:39):
You know, I feel like I really want to read
this poem. I'm like, how deep can this poem be?

Speaker 3 (25:44):
All I want to do is have a little fun.
There there's that part I go like, Cheryl, you really
snapped on that one, The part where she he says
the match burns down to his fingers before blowing and
cursing it out.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
I'm like, that's kind of literary.

Speaker 4 (25:58):
Cheryl Crow. Okay, damn.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
The lyrics to that song.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
Oh yeah, one of the great I feel like that
song was just constantly on the radio when I.

Speaker 5 (26:06):
Was Oh it was. It got to the point such
a big hit. I remember in LA when it played
on Kiss FM. Ryl Crowe did a remix where she said,
all I want to do is have some fun rather
than I got a feeling. She goes Kiss FM, the
party is just begun, and you're like, wow, we had
had their remix that yeah.

Speaker 4 (26:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
So this is when she finds this teacher, Christopher Flynn,
who teaches dance at her school, and she says he
was my mentor, my father, my imaginative lover, my everything.
He was a gay man, so like the very imaginative lover.
But he would like take her to gay clubs and

(26:50):
like you know, she she would dance, and this is
like when she discovered kind of what she wanted to do.
He sounds like real talk, like he would hold a
sharpened pencil between people's like colarbone and neck to keep
their head straight.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
So it's a bit of a hard.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
Ass, yeah, i'd say, she said.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
In school, I felt like such a misfit. I kept
seeing myself through macho heterosexual eyes because I was a
really aggressive woman. Guys thought of me as a really
strange girl. I know, I frightened them. I didn't add
up for them. They didn't want to ask me out.
I felt inadequate. And suddenly when I went to the
gay club, I didn't feel that way anymore.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
I just felt at home. I had a whole.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
New sense of myself, so which I feel like translates
to her career, you know, right, Yeah, she's kind of
like a trojan horse for like queer culture despite herself
being like coded as a SISHT woman or like, because
you know, she can like kind of get through as mainstream.

(27:55):
But then you know, brings a lot of different aspects
of kind of.

Speaker 6 (28:00):
Bring that on herself with the like becoming that white
lady who adopts African children things.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean they're all there's a
part in truth like truth or Dare is pretty problematic
because she like keeps talking about how she views the
dancers as her children, and she's like very kind of
patronizing or matronizing to them. And then like three of
them suit her after the fact for like being kind

(28:27):
of exploitative in her relationship to them. One of them
she outed like they were not out, and she included
like a kiss that like basically alted them. And so yeah,
there are definitely some problematic aspects to her relationship to
gay culture, but I feel like it also helps mainstream

(28:49):
things that like make drag race possible eventually, is like,
you know, the mainstream culture kind of being exposed to
voguing and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
For sure, we're smart.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
She graduated high school a semester early, got straight a's,
gets a scholarship to University of Michigan UH and stays
there for a year and then moves to New York.
She gravitates to a more bohemian style. She said, I
ended up being the weirdo. I was interested in classic
ballet and music, and the kids were quite mean if

(29:22):
you were different. I was one of those people that
people were mean to When that happened. Instead of being
a dormat, I decided to emphasize my differences. I didn't
shave my legs, I had hair growing under my arms,
or refused to wear makeup or fit the ideal of
what a conventionally pretty girl would look like. So of
course I was tortured even more, and that further validated
my superiority and helped me to survive and say, I'm

(29:43):
getting out of here, and everybody is a heathen in
this school. You don't even know who Maller is. I
was like, yeah, you idiots, Yeah, you don't even know
who Maller is.

Speaker 4 (29:54):
Gustav Mahler, is you fucking ingry school? I love it?
Fuck yeah, this is great man.

Speaker 5 (30:05):
I'm again I have such a maybe I'm truly superficial
understanding of Madonna outside of like what I've seen come
through MTV, Dick, Tracy Austin Powers music videos and things
like that, and like and knowing certain things like that.

Speaker 4 (30:21):
But I knowing all.

Speaker 5 (30:23):
Of these things is so fucking It's just I love
getting the complete picture of Madonna now because it's like,
I think it speaks to actually why I would underrate Madonna,
because like I'm like, yeah, yeah, the pop star, and
I'm like, god, damn bro.

Speaker 4 (30:38):
Like she's fucking she's she had to talk to yeah,
had to work.

Speaker 6 (30:43):
So hard, had to work so hard, and people they
dismiss her Now because she's been around for so long,
they don't remember. They don't remember that weird little lonely girl.

Speaker 7 (30:53):
Yeah, they only remember the World Cup halftime show now.
And there's more than that. I want to say, there's
more than that.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
There's the super Bowl halftime show, which was also disappointing. Yeah,
I do feel like that is one of the when
we talk about, like why is she not as as
respected as she should be today with younger people. I
feel like the super Bowl halftime show was a missed opportunity.
Like she used two of her songs on like LMFAO

(31:20):
cut like coming Out, and it was like a new
song from an album that she was debuting. That Like,
I just feel like if she had gone full classics, right,
it could have maybe broken through a little bit more.
But I mean, who knows what the NFL would have
let her do, like like a prayer or something, right, Yeah,

(31:41):
post Janet era where yeah.

Speaker 7 (31:45):
You're gonna have Pope's sixty nine ing in the background.
Yeah yeah, no, this is no way CBS can show this.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
Her early style is like bringing like art world fashion
art rock punk rock. Like there's a band called The
Slits that their guitarist has basically the style that Madonna
ends up adopting that she used to like go and see.
But yeah, I always associated her as being a sex symbol.

(32:13):
That's kind of how she was packaged. And but like
she had like bohemianism was like a real part of
her image early on, especially like she had Harry Armpits
in desperately seeking Susan, Like her character was like you know,
somebody who didn't shave their armpits. This is a quote
from the first kind of major producer who worked with her,

(32:35):
Reggie Lucas, who wrote Never Knew Love Like This Before
for ROBERTA. Flack, and he said, when Warner Brothers called
me about working with Madonna, I was the big score.
It seems ridiculous. Most of the people around Madonna at
the corporate level did not get her and for the
most part did not like her. You could see them
recoil from her bohemianism. Everybody thought she was crazy and

(32:58):
gross o my god, which is weird. But like also
when Letterman's like struggling through the thirteen F bomb interview,
He's like, thanks for coming by and grossing us out.
So like that word comes up for people who are
like I don't know. I feel like it's the mainstream.

Speaker 5 (33:19):
It makes sense, like in such a sanitized sort of
like one like one note form of femininity in like
the eighties, especially for like pop stars or musicians like that.
Like then it's like, well, then this one's like gross.
I guess right, why don't you look like a smooth
marble Barbie doll?

Speaker 6 (33:37):
Right, Yeah, Madonna's just gross and super super sexual.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
And I even ways that. I'm like, girl girl, we
were good.

Speaker 6 (33:49):
Like I like it does. There are some points like
she we mentioned Tupac. She also dated DiAngelo, and like
he talks, She's like, oh, he was so great. So
I was the one who convinced him to just be
naked in that video, And the way he describes it
is like she would not stop touching me.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
I felt like I was just a sex toy. I
felt horrible.

Speaker 6 (34:10):
She made hate my body and hate being seen as
a sex figure.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
And it's like, okay, girling baby.

Speaker 4 (34:17):
Yeah, relaxed.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
She does.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
She has like Warren baby, like the way her age,
the age of the people that she dates these days
is always like thirty years younger than her. At the
at least she keeps it young so good for her.

(34:44):
She a big part of her origin story. She arrives
in New York City in nineteen seventy seven with thirty
five dollars in her pocket, just wants to be a
professional dancer. And she's like her early job she worked
at Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, the Russian Room, works as
an art class nude model. She really liked, you know,

(35:07):
Like we talk a lot about how like CEOs invent
stories for themselves of humble origins that are like always
you look at them and they're bullshit, but like true
icons actually like live them, you know. She's literally when
she goes to New York at age nineteen, it's her
first cab ride and her first airplane flight, and she

(35:30):
literally tells the cab driver take me to the middle
of everything, and he's like here you here you go,
miss and drops her off in Times Square.

Speaker 4 (35:38):
All right, fair, yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Is the like the actual Kidney Schmidt.

Speaker 6 (35:44):
Oh when the girl comes and she's like, I gets
off the bus and is like, I'm here to be
a prostitute, ma'am.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
She starts going to clubs like the Roxy, Dance at
Teria and the Fun House, so Dancitaria is like, uh,
this crazy scene she uh, Mark Carmen's is the dju
He's like Madonna's just one of the personalities. She had
a very unique fashion style. So just this is this

(36:16):
is what that uh specific club was like. Ll cool
J was the elevator operator, the Beastie Boys worked maintenance,
Keith Herring was a bus boy. Uh, and Shade was
a bartender at Austria.

Speaker 4 (36:31):
What is this a stefan bit from this club has
everything with the just icons and disguise.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
Yeah, it's kind of like it's like, uh, the the
like American Pie where it's like I met a girl
who said, like it's just like all these like people
like are represented by the greatest musicians of their generation,
except literally you're like walking around and like get get
the maintenance crew in here. They're like, he is a little.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Story I got to tell, Like, wait a second, the fuck?

Speaker 5 (37:09):
So what what's the moment she she leaves Michigan because
ultimately she sees herself as a dancer, right, yeah, what
then gives her like what turns her head into being like,
oh maybe it's not just about dancing, Like maybe now
I'm something else.

Speaker 4 (37:24):
Maybe there's another form of express that I'm in.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
Nineteen seventy nine, she starts dating this guy, Dan Gilroy
who's in a band, and she starts playing the drums
for his band just like kind of picks it up.
And then she's like, I kind of feel like I
could sing a song or two. And so she like
kind of comes to singing and music fairly late, but like,
once she sings a couple of songs and writes a

(37:47):
couple of songs, She's immediately like, now this is what
I want to do. And she gets picked up pretty
quick by like various managers who like become her business
partners and then claim that she fucks them over, and
she's just like, well, I was ambitious one of them.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Barboni.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
I hate to see a woman Wina.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
There's this one woman something Barboni. That last name just
sticks in my mind.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
But she.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
Kept trying to turn her towards like a Pat Benatar,
like rock mold, and she Madonna's like, God, damn it,
stop doing this. But so this is the thing that
keeps coming up in the early part of her career,
Madonna isn't sure whether to promote her to a black
or white audience, and so they like they actually hide

(38:43):
her image for a while because they're like, we're gonna
do both, but we don't want anyone to know that
she's white, and so we're going to like not let
anybody see this like beautiful, beautiful woman who like seeing
her is a whole huge part of her appeal and
like what drives her to become a huge success. They're

(39:06):
like actually sitting sitting on it just based on you know,
perceived racism that you know, they're like, yeah, the same
thing that MTV at the time, you know, refusing to
play Michael Jacksonville. No one had, like not because they
were racist, because the people they are be able to
handle this siler stuff.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
It's not going to go over come on.

Speaker 6 (39:29):
And it's interesting because I don't like my older siblings
were you know, teenagers during this period.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
They are black. I don't remember them.

Speaker 6 (39:36):
They did not care about Madonna Prince my sister obsessed
with I don't think until she had the like black
choir in uh, like like yeah that that black people
were like oh okay, all right, okay, So.

Speaker 5 (39:50):
It's not like yeah that like they were hiding her
and like it was like a surprise Bobby called well
for black audiences, like.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
We were like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
Nile Rogers thought she was Puerto Rican when he first works,
He's like, to be a Puerto Rican girl.

Speaker 5 (40:09):
It's dated, weird, like a weird thing to be Like,
I thought she was Puerto Rican based off of whatnot.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
I feel like that's just New York r.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:19):
Yeah, it felt like a degree or two off black.
Definitely not white, right, I call that Puerto Rican.

Speaker 6 (40:28):
And Italian Puerto Rican probably the same area, sure box pretty.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Much, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
This is when she starts dating Jean Michel Basquiat, and
there's an anecdote where he's like going to a He's
kind of a big deal at this time, and he's
like going to a show and people are like, who's
this woman that you brought with you? And he's like, oh,
that's my girlfriend Madonna. She's going to be huge, So
he like kind of already knew. She said he was

(40:59):
an amazing and deeply talented I loved him. When I
broke up with him, he made me give all his
paintings back to him and then.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
He painted over them black damn.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
But it was basically his drug use was like not
a fit for where she was at at that point
in her life, So I.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Think that's fair.

Speaker 4 (41:15):
Yeah, I'm not going to say it's easy dating.

Speaker 6 (41:17):
Yeah, you know, it's hard to find someone who's like,
I'm at a point in my life where I'm good
with someone's drug use.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
I actually I am where I could date a heroin attict.

Speaker 4 (41:28):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (41:29):
Hey man, you just don't say any ship about what
I got going on. And I'm not going to call
your ship out, all right, happy, Okay.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
If I say antil three, I'm watching Fiance and you I.

Speaker 4 (41:38):
Don't want to hear about it, you know.

Speaker 5 (41:39):
H And I don't know if Mito is wearing a
two pay Okay, I haven't looked closely enough.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
When she first moves to New York, her roommate's dad
is an actor and takes her and her roommate out
with al Pacino, and uh, they they this is just
a random anecdote, but like when they dropped Madonna off
at the end of the night, al Pacino turns to
them and was like, your friend kept sticking her tongue

(42:08):
in my ear. So the cerpaco era.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Patino, So it's kind of.

Speaker 4 (42:16):
Wait her roommate's dad was her friend.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Dad was an actor who was friends with Pacino.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
So they went out together and Madonna kept sticking her
tongue in al Pacino's ear like seventy eight.

Speaker 4 (42:28):
I think this is like the most forest gumpy icon.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
Already, Isn't it crazy? Like how many people?

Speaker 6 (42:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (42:36):
Just yeah, they gated basket? Yeah, I was, I was
at dancing to it was the bartender. I'm linking al
pacinos ear holes.

Speaker 3 (42:45):
We've got a maintenance problem that's really driving me crazy.
The Beastie boys aren't fixing it. Another drink? Yeah, please shade?

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah, thanks so much.

Speaker 5 (42:55):
What do you call that thing? Yeah, we'll give me
another sweetest taboo.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
Let's take one more break. We'll come back and we'll
finally get to her recording career.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
How about that.

Speaker 4 (43:19):
And her back and.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
So Madonna does become a musician eventually.

Speaker 4 (43:24):
Okay, Yeah, it's just like the coolest kid in New York.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Lucky Star is on the Madonna album, the first, the Titular.
She like drops a couple of songs that are like
club bangers essentially, and then gets a recording career and
her first album, she doesn't really stand by it. But
you know it has Lucky Star borderline. She doesn't stand
by that album.

Speaker 4 (43:48):
She's like cy she cllls.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
It a aerobics record or has called it an aerobics
actual I mean, friend Madonna, Okay, Madonna.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Okay, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 4 (44:03):
That's so funny.

Speaker 5 (44:05):
I mean because even if you said that, you're like, Okay,
well then you made the aerobics album.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
It's superlative Holiday on it.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
So Lucky Star borderline and Holiday is pretty good, like
pretty good opener.

Speaker 4 (44:20):
I love Lucky Sar.

Speaker 5 (44:21):
There's something about it, Like, I it's funny that she
calls it an aerobics album because that first Madonna album to
me is like is like Valume for the mind, Like
it puts me at ease, like I'm transported to the eighties.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
Like when I hear that in.

Speaker 5 (44:35):
A way that not other songs, like not other albums
quite do, like I can just easily be.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
Like yep, she created in all that such a vibe
like that just everything. It was just like so comprehensive
like the videos. Her songs I think are more like
kind of enmeshed with their videos than I think any
other artists, with a possible exception of Michael Jackson, but
like I can't really think of like a prayer without

(45:02):
seeing like that video, you know, her material girl, and
to that end, this is something we talked about in
the Buick episode. But she is really good at in
addition to like knowing what songs and like what sounds
are going to be, you know, all time timeless classics,
she's good at spotting directors.

Speaker 4 (45:24):
She works with.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Mary Lambert on Borderline, who she goes on to direct
like a virgin material girl and like a Prayer. She
also directed pet Cemetery Ever Heard of It?

Speaker 1 (45:37):
But she also.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Works with David Fincher before he's made a single movie
film before Alien three, he directed Vogue, which still might
be the best thing he's ever directed, and then James
Foley who directed Glengarry Glenn Ross and like a bunch
of the Fifty Shades movies. Talent just finds her, well, Yeah,
and I think she had Like I think a lot

(45:59):
of talent finds her, and she's good at picking out
the best ones, you know, she just has a great sense.

Speaker 4 (46:07):
Latter day guy Ritchie not the best pick though, I'd say,
what's this creative out work?

Speaker 6 (46:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (46:13):
Yeah, she was late to that party. She was late
to that party.

Speaker 6 (46:16):
Yeah, she's with saw On Penn. That was yeah, but
I mean talented, but I'm.

Speaker 4 (46:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, yeah, I do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
I feel like she has bad tasting. Guys generally like
that her like that. Another thing, like she came up
in the Carrie Fisher episode where she was like talking
to Carrie Fisher about her time, like her debut movie
as that when she was I think like seventeen years old,
maybe even younger, and she's like, oh, did you fuck Warren?

(46:45):
And Carrie Fisher's like, no, he tried. He certainly tried.
He was trying to convince me to let him like
take my virginity, and like she's like, oh yeah, that's Warren.
It's just like Jesus christ Man, like it's tough to
you know, tough to be around men at this time.

Speaker 5 (47:05):
I feel like, oh yeah, and it just has to
be so normalized or you just have to go, oh
yeah that predator ye oh yeah, that's it.

Speaker 4 (47:10):
That's born like a fucking monster you want to stay
away from.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
So this is next album. I mean, she's putting albums out,
like eighty three is her debut album. Eighty four is
like a virgin. And this is when Nile Rodgers is like, no,
that song sucks and eventually is like, you know what,
I'll only take two percent of the first two million,

(47:36):
six percent. After that, her record label was so like
so that her record label is like sure, the album
ends up selling, yeah, nineteen million records, and her record
label so pissed. They try to take the money out
of Madonna's cut and she does not let them because

(47:56):
by this time she has good.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Lawyers, good lawyers.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Yeah, but yeah, the album debuted at number one on Billboard.
So like second album and it's like, oh, she's already
a massive star. Went to number one. She's huge everywhere,
like Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, the UK,
where she's still really big.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Like I feel like.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Her music does better in the UK now than it
does in the United States.

Speaker 5 (48:24):
Well, yeah, I think she definitely too. Like later in
her career she gravitated towards more like electronic.

Speaker 4 (48:29):
Producers too that she was working with.

Speaker 5 (48:32):
I think just that by that, like those sort of
collaborations kind of made her music a little more.

Speaker 4 (48:37):
Like instantly like easier to receive, like in Europe and
in the UK.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Material Girl is one that she again regret,
like she regrets it. I think it's a great song.
She learned to sing in a higher register for the song,
like the song is a work of satire. Like this
is the thing that annoys her is she's like singing

(49:03):
like Betty Boop. If you listen to the song, that's
not how Madonna usually sings. She's like singing in like
like a Santa Baby kind of voice, and like it's
supposed to be ironic. And everybody from that point forwards
like and here she comes the Material Girl herself Madonna.

(49:24):
She's like, fuck man, like not who I was supposed
to be. But yeah, I think just generally everybody takes
her wants her to be taken seriously, like she so
like in the David Letterman thing, she had to like
come out later and be like I was very angry
at that point in time, and you like go back

(49:46):
and watch and you're like, no, she's just like high
and having a good time. But like they like want
her to like have to have sex. The book Sex,
which it is like a big that that's seems to
be where a lot of the mainstream like kind of
gets off, like it stops gets off maybe uh in

(50:06):
many ways, but also it's like we're no longer fucking
with Madonna in.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
The same way. But that was like supposed to be
kind of satirical and you know, not not to be
taken seriously, and everyone was like, what is this mind?

Speaker 5 (50:22):
I remember I had we had a family friend who
had that book, and.

Speaker 7 (50:26):
Boy, when I opened that ship, I blew me away
to the point where I remember I there was like
a bookstore because like usually that ship was wrapped at
a bookstore, like you could not. There was a bookstore
that had that ship unwrapped, and I remember I would
always be like yeah, Mom, like we're gonna go look

(50:46):
at like because that was like the one thing my
parents be like you could get you can get if
you want something, you get a book, okay, not buying
like games and shit.

Speaker 5 (50:54):
All the time, Like if you want a book and
get a book. So I'm like, okay, I want to
get a book. My ass would run to the fucking
like picture book section and just like thumb through the
fucking open sex book like ah and put it away
like all right, Mom, I'm getting this peewee Scouts.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Uh yeah, let's do this.

Speaker 5 (51:11):
But yeah, that was a definitely a definitely a moment
because I remember even at our school people talked about
that book.

Speaker 4 (51:17):
Because I went to luther In school, and how I
was like, it's like a h and it's called sex.

Speaker 5 (51:23):
It was like I remember the thing that, which is
funny now in retrospect of like knowing what the intention
of that was. It was just purely it being called
sex already like melted people's brains.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Yeah, I remember being like is this legal? How can
how can you do this?

Speaker 4 (51:37):
Like right, but you're famous?

Speaker 1 (51:39):
What is this?

Speaker 3 (51:42):
I mean it happens like around the same time as
like Janet Jackson like kind of having her like Sexual
Awakening album, and people were very on board with that.
But like I think the Madonna thing was like two
on the nose and like people were just I think
it's like the thing that you know, the producer was saying,

(52:02):
like people were gross like the record producers were grossed.
I think people were like, this is this is too much,
this is me uncomfortables.

Speaker 6 (52:10):
And it was also super gay that part.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
You know, Janet was keeping it sexy coy and.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Straight hands over her boobs.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yeah, you know, and Madonna was getting real gay with it.
She's pegging.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Yeah, yeah, sure, they're like, gee, but this I back to,
you know, like a virgin. This is when she goes
on the very first she opens the very first Video
Music Awards. So the very first shot you see of
the MTV Video Music Awards is her on top of
a wedding cake. Kind of looks like shit, not gonna

(52:46):
like you know, the it's a it's a man. There's
a mannequin in a suit like next to her, and
she just gives an incredibly iconic performance. She claims that
she like lost her shoe and that's why she like
got down on the ground at the end and her
like skirt flips up.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
But again I think that's like people being like, what
was that all about?

Speaker 3 (53:10):
She gets off stage, So this is like her Elvis
on TV, Beatles on Ed Sullivan, like Michael Jackson, Motown Awards,
like mo.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
This is like the thing where like.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
Everybody sees her, everybody knows about this, everyone's talking about it.
I'm pretty sure in all those cases, their managers, like
they came off stage in their managers eyeballs had literally
turned into dollar signs. Madonna comes off stage after the
VMA and her manager's like, well, your career's over, like literally,

(53:41):
is like you you fucked up big time.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
He was like you you literally just ruined your career.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
And then of course she's overnight one of the most
famous people in the world because of it.

Speaker 6 (53:56):
And again, believe women, Yes, right right, that's what we're learning.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
Prince tried to date her at this time and he
rented out a Japanese restaurant and didn't eat.

Speaker 4 (54:09):
She was like, fuck this, something's wrong with this dude.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
But yeah, she eventually hung out with everyone who was
ever cool in the eighties. This is when she marries
Sean Penn. Their wedding is crazy. There's it's like the
first wedding that where the paparazzi invades via helicopter. He
starts firing a gun at the helicopters because he's like

(54:35):
a Sean villain, shooting up at the helicopter.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
She was with him, like peak coke us, I think.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Cocaine, alcohol, his like one of his good friends was Bukowski.
It wasn't he was reading like friends.

Speaker 6 (54:50):
With wilding out with Bukowski. Didn't like chain her to
a radiator or something.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
She like denies.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
There were a lot of stories of the time, Like
there definitely was a time when she had to flee
the house and like go to a police station. She
now claims, like all the stories of that are overblown.
But I don't know if that's just her being a
good friend to her ex.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
Yeah that's them, you know.

Speaker 5 (55:18):
Yeah, it could be the Omerica gotta gotta keep your
mouth shut. Yeah, God change her delight. So there are
multiple that, like that was just like a things that
were out there supposedly about their relationship.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Yeah, supposedly.

Speaker 4 (55:30):
And then so then she what date of Vanilla Ice
after this?

Speaker 3 (55:32):
I mean that was that was a while later. We're
still eighty five? Like when they get married, Yeah, they're
married for a while. Like a Prayer is her divorce album?

Speaker 1 (55:41):
Essentially?

Speaker 4 (55:42):
Does it new era? New era?

Speaker 1 (55:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (55:45):
True Blue is her I'm in Love with Sean Penn album,
And that might be True Blue is not not like
the first album that comes to my mind when thinking
about Madonna, but it is her best selling album of
all time.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
It is good.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
It is good.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Yeah, it's really unbelievable.

Speaker 6 (56:02):
I mean, Papa don't preach right, what more do you need?
Liz La Bonita.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Ah, yeah, yeah, made up my money keeping the baby
all right?

Speaker 6 (56:11):
Yeah, thank god she didn't have his baby though, Oh
thank you Madonna.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
Uh. This is when desperately seeking Susan comes out and
is like sort of her purple rain. When they're screen testing.
They're screen testing like Melanie Griffith and Kelly McGillis from
Top Gun, and Madonna shows up to the screen test
and is let to the producer. She's like, I don't
have cab fair can you guys cover this? And it's

(56:36):
just basically this this character to a t. So she
she gets the role. It's I think seen as her
best movie or her best performance. One of the producers said,
I've never seen her nervous. First call for the actors
would be around six point thirty in the morning. Madonna
was picked up even earlier. Before she showed up on set,
she'd get up about four am to swim laps at

(56:58):
the YMCA. She had a ising self discipline. She also
suffers from insomnia and seems to be like a person
who doesn't need as much sleep as other people. One
of those but between production and the film being released,
she is when she becomes a superstar. They have a tour,
the Virgin Tour, that starts in April nineteen eighty five.

(57:21):
The Beastie Boys open for her. Fans are like, boo,
these guys suck shit, and she has to come on.
They were the janitors at the club I used to
work at. They're a great maintenance crew, and I think
they're onto something. But this is like we talked about
in the weird al episode that like he's touring in
a station wagon with a trailer hitch on the back

(57:44):
when the edit video comes out and suddenly he's mobbed
like that. It's like that but times one hundred. Like
they they start in Seattle, playing to two thousand people
and then by the end they're playing Madison Square Garden
in New York with a capacity twenty two thousand on
this tour.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
But yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
Feel like that's again. It's like I'm tired of biopicks too.
But her life is a fucking buy. Like there's so
many parts of her life, like from like cleaning her
classmates houses, like to you know, the eighty Like some
of it is just like so crazy that it might
be hard to believe. But right, yeah, you know, like

(58:24):
the tour that like starts with two thousand booing fans
and by the end she's playing Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 6 (58:31):
This is what makes her the pop star that convinces
every girl who grew up in a cornfield like, oh,
I can go to New York and make it because
look at Madonna.

Speaker 5 (58:41):
Right, Yeah, it's I mean, I think, oh, you know,
I feel like this is how we start talking about it.
On the episode the Main Show when you came on, Ashley,
that inspired this.

Speaker 4 (58:50):
Maybe because you're talking about like with.

Speaker 5 (58:51):
Biopics that you have to chunk them out, like that's
the I feel like that's really the only way you
if you did anything about Madonna or anyone huge or like,
you can't just do the entire career of fucking like
fucking you know, one hundred and twenty pages like you
could probably get and the studios take note.

Speaker 4 (59:08):
I say, you could do probably fucking fourteen movies that
people have been like yo, bro universe.

Speaker 6 (59:14):
Now yeah yeah, or two movies about Michael Jackson.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Is that what you're referring to, Miles.

Speaker 3 (59:21):
I watched Michael jacks movie and I got to tell you, guys,
he seems like a great guy.

Speaker 4 (59:28):
Michael.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
This one that just came out.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
The Summers came out.

Speaker 4 (59:31):
Oh I haven't seen it, dude.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
So everything people are like, he's weird with kids. He's
hanging out with kids who.

Speaker 4 (59:37):
I don't see any in the hospital.

Speaker 2 (59:40):
He's the story.

Speaker 4 (59:44):
Being weird.

Speaker 6 (59:46):
They cut it up because like they're not allowed to
basically mention anything with the lawsuits because of how they
were settled. So they had to cut off the entire
end of the movie and have it end with thriller.
And then the second part is going to be like
after the act.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
It says Michael will return at the end of the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 5 (01:00:07):
Wow, And they're like, say, you saw some stuff happened,
and then anyway here so where were we?

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
But like that next movie, like, who the fuck's gonna
want to be? Who's going to want to see that?
It's going to start off not the fans of the
first one, I'll tell you that much.

Speaker 4 (01:00:19):
The title card at the Beautie says, so where were we?

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
True Blue comes out next. It was the number one
album of nineteen eighty six and the best selling album
of the nineteen eighties by a female artist, which there's quite.

Speaker 4 (01:00:34):
A few of those, but a few good ones. That's
her best selling album. I had no idea.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Yeah, I mean it's got papait on Preach, True Blue,
Lie Slabonita, which is to this day like when like
across streaming platforms, Lia Slabonita is one of the most
streamed songs. Laura Stefan not a fan. She said Madonna's
a bit confused about her Spanish. She mentions a tropical

(01:01:00):
island in the sun that's Puerto Rico, than samba that's Latino,
and then flamenco guitar that's Spain. There's a mishmash of
everything in the song. Huh yeah, No, you're right.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
You're.

Speaker 6 (01:01:12):
It's like, yeah, fucking Italian, Okay, I speak.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
At a romance a language. But yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
This is when she becomes the first woman to headline
a stadium tour. One point five million people attend the tour,
the highest earning female entertainer at the time. She earned
more pro concert than any preceding act. It's first woman
to headline a stadium tour is so crey is so
bonkers to me? Anyway, Who's that girl comes Along?

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Not a beloved movie.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
The person who directed it said, I remember the first
time I saw her after it flopped. I was in
the lobby of a hotel in Paris and saw her
with her movie agent. She was about to walk in
the elevator when she said, so it's a flop. Right, Hmmm,
that's the only time she had mentioned it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
Wow, So it's a flop.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:02:04):
Cool.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
She wrote four songs for the Who's That Girl soundtrack,
which sold six million copies, So it's just like people
are like, yeah, that that part.

Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
Yeah right.

Speaker 5 (01:02:14):
Also got what a time when there were soundtracks six
million real million, moving a movie soundtrack, movie movie best soundtrack, dude, Yeah,
six times platinum.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
She stars on Broadway and David Mammott's Speed the Plow,
which is a is Mammott's first play after Glengarry Glenn Ross.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
So like, that's I think she's.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
Like had definitely had some missteps as like her in
terms of her movie career, but I think she's like
an underrated actress and like could have that there's an
alternate universe where she's like a beloved actress if she
had like kind of focused on that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
More of their own. Oh yeah, she's so good. I
love that movie. First of all, it is about Rockford
Rocker Peaches, where I'm from.

Speaker 6 (01:03:03):
But she's so good in it. That's when she's like, oh,
this cool, tomboyish kind of character.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
She's sexy. Yeah, I think she really could have.

Speaker 6 (01:03:13):
She could have gone the acting route and just leaned
into those kind of roles.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
She could have pulled a share.

Speaker 5 (01:03:19):
The last thing she acted, she acted like recently. I
feel like it's been it's been a while.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
And she's directed her own movies that didn't really hit,
but she she hasn't acted in a while.

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
Yeah, it was like that.

Speaker 5 (01:03:34):
If I look at the film Margerite, it's like stuff around,
like it's more documentary stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
So maybe yeh.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Her film career was iconic, sure.

Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
But her video her music video performances, which require like
a great deal of acting, I feel pretty incredible. Yeah,
there's a point where people like she sings the theme
for a Bond movie in I think the late nineties,
early two thousands, and like makes a cameo in it

(01:04:06):
and she gets the Z. Yeah that another day she
gets the Razzie for like just appearing in it for
one scene, and it's just like all right, guys, Like
people were just it was like cool to hate on
Madonna at that point. But so this one, like a
prayer comes out. It's massive. The video is very controversial

(01:04:29):
for a number of reason. It's got a lot of
burning crosses in the background.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
Yeah, how would that be a controversy?

Speaker 4 (01:04:35):
Well, it was in America. I thought people liked that
in America. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
She also kisses a black man in the video, which
I think is probably an underrated part of people being
out on Madonna is that, like, there is a lot
of racism around black men dating white women in the country.

Speaker 4 (01:04:56):
I don't know if you guys have heard about this. No,
I never heard of that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
She was always, you know, dating black men, and she.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Went with it, she said, loving the Virginia. Ever heard
of it?

Speaker 3 (01:05:07):
Yeah, yeah, And I'm leaning in she's dating like Tupac
and Dennis Robman around the time that people are like.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
You know what, I think we've had enough of her.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:05:17):
It could be also that the Jesus in that video
was black. Yeah, remember, isn't that isn't the Jesus in
the video?

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Saint like.

Speaker 4 (01:05:26):
Behind it?

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Whatever?

Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
But I'm some people to be like, what the fuck
is this?

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
Like thirty times a day?

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
Right? Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
MTV played it somewmer, so it was so cold that
Pepsi did a thing where she debuted the song Like
a Prayer in a Pepsi commercial. Pepsi paid ten million
dollars for this like commercial that was like a short
film where it's like Madonna as a child seeing herself.

(01:06:02):
It's not the music video that we all know and love,
and they so they paid ten million dollars of air
time to play this like art short film version of
Like a Prayer that you know involves a lot of
drinking Pepsi in there. It's kind of part of this,
Like it's around the time of the movement of art

(01:06:22):
and advertising, where like Warhol made the those first Absolute
Vodka ads right in nineteen eighty five, and like Spike
Lee is making the Jordan Eds and so this is
Pepsi's attempt to get involved with that. And then the
Like a Prayer video comes out and they pull the
commercial and they also pull out as sponsors for the

(01:06:45):
Like a Prayer tour, which is why the Like a
Prayer tour doesn't happen, Like they just like there's no
tour for that album.

Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
That's crazy because Pepsi was in the business of I remember,
like they were. They sponsored MC Hammer's tour too.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
Oh yeah, that was how we get in until fairly recently,
Like they always did the Super Bowl halftime show, right,
they're like, when you think.

Speaker 4 (01:07:07):
About Pepsi, you think about pop generation.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Like a Prayer was included in Deadpool
and Wolverine and experienced a four hundred and fifty percent
jump in sales in one week.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
I do think.

Speaker 6 (01:07:24):
I just say it's very annoying because like, if you
say play that song, Spotify and Apple Music will automatically
play the mix from that fucking movie. Really goddamn, yeah,
how is that one? There's like a whole it's like
a like a fucking Wolverine singing or something, and like.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
There's a battle. I don't like, it's the whole thing
from the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:07:45):
And then you're just like dead Pool version.

Speaker 6 (01:07:47):
You're like no, yeah, yeah, and I'm like, no, the
Deadpool version block this version.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
I do prefer madonna songs to have a running commentary
from Ryan with his face under seeing Reynold's being a
smart us.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
That does really add a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
I will say, I feel like she has one of
the like if I was in charge of like the
soundtrack for mainstream movies I would be plundering the shit
out of Madonna's Like they're they're well known songs, but
they're like not overplayed as much as they could be
because they are just so many, just fucking great songs

(01:08:27):
in there. And I think Ashley to your point, there's
definitely something that's happened where it's kind of like Lebron,
where Lebron has been so good for so long towards
the end.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
Of his career that people are just like, yeah, he's good.

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
It's like, no, he's the he was like one of
the best ever, and now he's been good for a
long time, you.

Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
Know, sensitized to the goat, the goadiness, the goadedness.

Speaker 6 (01:08:52):
Yeah right, But like then she puts out Confessions and
it's so fucking good.

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
Which one Sessions and Confessions Too is the new one?

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Her new one?

Speaker 4 (01:09:03):
Yeah, that's the one where she's like that on the
album cover.

Speaker 6 (01:09:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:09:07):
Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm trying to like a like an
older like an elderly death.

Speaker 4 (01:09:11):
Drop kind of thing. She's sort of doing.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
Just like comfortable death drop.

Speaker 5 (01:09:16):
Yeah, like I don't want to break it here, yeah,
palliative care drop.

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:09:22):
Yeah, it's the one where they'd be like, okay, if
you want to you know, if you have shoulder or
like back modifications, this is the death drop because.

Speaker 5 (01:09:33):
We can't all get get down like that, So just
ease yourself down this, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
I'm just there.

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
We go and this is so this is when she
does Dick Tracy directed by warm Baby. She plays breathless, mahoney,
great name. Uh And Vogue is a song on like
a song on the Dick Tracy sound. For some reason,
I thought was like an entire era of like I

(01:10:00):
thought it was an album because it like has so
much like you know, I thought it was an album
a tour, and it's just a song on the Dick
Tracy album with an incredible video.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
But it was like so major.

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
Her performance where she's like dressed as Marie Antoinette at
the VMA's performing Vogue is like an indelible moment from
the early nineties.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
But yeah, I mean the Vogue video is.

Speaker 4 (01:10:28):
It's from the Dick Tracy song.

Speaker 6 (01:10:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right how they used to get down
with soundtracks.

Speaker 5 (01:10:37):
I had no fucking clue that Vogue, the Vogue. Vogue
is so critical to like culture that that's like, yeah,
that was just some shit on the Dick Tracy soundtrack.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
That's because what was the album?

Speaker 5 (01:10:50):
Like I thought it was like on Erotica or some shit,
but that's not even the case.

Speaker 4 (01:10:54):
That's just if you want Vogue take.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
Care of.

Speaker 6 (01:10:59):
Tyrack to take soundtracks seriously.

Speaker 3 (01:11:03):
And the lyrics inspired by the Harlem drag ball scene
as like the connection to Dick Tracy in some way,
But it's like, no, you just had an amazing song
and you were like, I gotta got this one burning and.

Speaker 4 (01:11:17):
A hole in my pocket.

Speaker 5 (01:11:19):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
This is when the cone bra first appears in the
in the Vogue video, So like, the video's incredible, the
dancers are all amazing, and like it's just like very
evidently you know, queer and gay in a way that
like I feel like wasn't in the mainstream prior to that. Yeah,

(01:11:42):
but it's just like so beautifully executed that like it's undeniable.
But yeah, this is also a time when people are like, Okay,
so you're.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
A bit of a culture vulture.

Speaker 4 (01:11:53):
Is that fair to say?

Speaker 3 (01:11:55):
This is around the time of the Blonde Ambition tour
and Truth or Dare and her being sued by her
back up dancers who she is like I view them
all as my children, you know, so, but it is
an indelible moment.

Speaker 7 (01:12:10):
I'm honestly, I don't understand how Vulgue is part of
the Dick Tracy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
Isn't that.

Speaker 4 (01:12:16):
I'm just like you, Jack, I'm like, well, that was
like a whole.

Speaker 6 (01:12:18):
A whole moment, Like, yeah, the whole video. This was
like a big moment, and it's like, oh yeah, the
video for the movie Dick Tracy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Right, you know the Dick Tracy song.

Speaker 6 (01:12:32):
Yeah, you know, I'm still not connecting Vogue. Yeah in
Dick Tracy. I guess shadows that's the only.

Speaker 4 (01:12:41):
Place.

Speaker 5 (01:12:43):
Yeah, oh no, there was that one ballroom scene where
prune Face was battling Willy Ninja.

Speaker 4 (01:12:52):
Yeah yeah, and Flat Top was the EMC.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
This is Yah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:58):
Bell Hooks writes an essay around this time, Madonna Plantation
Mistress or soul Sister that is pretty uh withering and
on point, she writes an intruther dare Madonna clearly revealed
that she can only think of exerting power along very
traditional white supremacist, capitalistic, patriarchal lines. So why did so
many people find it cute when Madonna asserted that she

(01:13:20):
dominates the interracial casts in her film because they're crippled
and she likes to play mother. No, this was not
a display of feminist power. This was the same old
phallic nonsense with white pussy at the center.

Speaker 9 (01:13:33):
Oh okay, bell hooks, gosh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:13:40):
I mean it's a pitfall that I feel like inevitably,
so many white artists end up intersecting with like you are.
There's especially as musicians, you take things from other cultures
and sometimes you have no concept of what that looks like,
you know, based on race, and you know how our
culture is too.

Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
Yeah, it does a lot of activism for AIDS and
you know, gay rights at this time. So like there,
that's the other side of it. But she definitely could
have treated those dancers, Like there's a scene at the
end of the documentary where she's saying goodbye to them,
and it's like the implication is like, you're like, these

(01:14:22):
people are forever friends, They're going to be in each
other's lives forever, and the dancer are like, we never
saw her, and so that's the thing, you know, she
could have And they also didn't get paid for being
the best part of the movie, you know, other than
her telling Kevin.

Speaker 4 (01:14:39):
Coster that part you gotta do that part yea, that
ended up out of courts.

Speaker 5 (01:14:47):
Just so you know you're white and you're not playing
paying your black employees.

Speaker 4 (01:14:51):
There was a historically there's kind of a thing there
paying people for their labor cross the board.

Speaker 1 (01:14:58):
I was also was this so the Vogue video?

Speaker 3 (01:15:02):
Rewatching it, there's a lot of rave hands in the video,
and I was like, there's obviously voguing, you know, but
like there's also some shit that I was like, that
looks like the Viking, that that rave Viking guy, you
know I'm talking about Hell yeah, yeah, Like I'm just wondering, like,
was that also started in the Vogue video?

Speaker 5 (01:15:24):
I mean, I so much of like electronic dance, club culture,
intersex with gay culture. So yeah, it doesn't soem right,
what's the thing You're like, what what what's the exact
move you're talking about?

Speaker 9 (01:15:35):
It was just like the oh oh yeah yeah yeah
just kind of hands. Yeah yeah, they're just hitting it.
I don't know, yeah yeah, fast hands, fast hands.

Speaker 3 (01:15:45):
So she she starts her own production company called uh Maverick.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
She signed I didn't realize.

Speaker 3 (01:15:51):
She produced Jagged Little Pill. She discovered a lot us
more so that and produced Jack Little Pill. This is
around when a League of their Own comes out, uh,
and the Sex Book comes out and everyone's like boo
and h yeah, and then you kind of get into
the later career of Kabbala and Guy Ritchie.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
And yeah, you thought hit so after.

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):
So the sex Book comes out as part of like
the release of Erotica. Erotica is like a very respected
album that nobody bought because they were like so scandalized
by the sex Book is the going theory. The next
one is I think Bedtime Stories. That's the one with
like Babyface, and people are like this feels like this

(01:16:42):
is the first one that feels like she's chasing the
music industry instead of like setting the president of like
what comes out like these sound like good songs that
came out last year by Tony Braxton kind of sure,
and then she drops Ray of Light in nineteen ninety
eight and it's like it's sold seventeen million copies and

(01:17:05):
it's like she like kind of enters this like electro
dance era. Then she's been in ever since and has
been like killing.

Speaker 5 (01:17:12):
It because she had to get trippy bro like the
beatles Man, you should have get on some Buddhism shit
and then she was.

Speaker 4 (01:17:19):
Music without drugs is how she described it. Is this
the Kabbala era for her too.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
This is yeah, Kbala is Kabala is like.

Speaker 4 (01:17:27):
The searching in between these eras.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
I think.

Speaker 4 (01:17:30):
Yeah. So she's like, all right, so bedtime stories are
l bro, you need to falk them, you need to
dig deep. Madonna.

Speaker 6 (01:17:36):
I thought they really talked a lot about the Kabbala thing.
It was like every celebrity then was doing it. It
was like, oh wow, they all do Kabala. And now
it's like it doesn't really exist or something, or it's
yoga now.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:17:48):
Yeah, I just forget though too, Like Kabbala was a
thing because I mean to my memory because Madonna and
they're like, why does she have that red string on
her wrist and like it's called Kabbala and it's the
hottest new religion, the hottest is this man?

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
Yeah, the like the number of people who the number.

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):
Of celebrities who fucked with Kabbala are like, I have
the list here somewhere. It was a lot of very
famous people and that I had no idea, Like it was,
you know, Michael Jackson and all these people, but she
was the face of it. Lindsay Lohan, Demimore, Michael Jackson,
the Beckham's and Britney Spears were all involved. But people

(01:18:33):
love to hit on Madonna, so they're like, boo, fuck
you Madonna. But play those songs that we love to
dance too.

Speaker 4 (01:18:41):
Play Frozen again. Yeah, I love that fucking song.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:45):
There's so many good songs later career Madonna, songs that
I didn't really remember, but yeah, like Beautiful Stranger from
the Austin Power.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
She loves to drop a great song on a.

Speaker 4 (01:18:57):
Ridiculous movie Empowers The Spy who Shagged Me.

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):
Is so good, so good.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
Strange, but yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):
She adopts a child with Guy Ritchie from Malawi and
it is uh.

Speaker 1 (01:19:17):
Kind of a weird it's kind of a weird one.

Speaker 3 (01:19:21):
Where the child's mother had died and her the father
was like I didn't really know what was happening, and
and then Guy Ritchie, who they they just got married,
comes out and is like, I don't know why she's
like taking all the credit for this, This was my
So he's like, of who is going to be out

(01:19:42):
of the massive humiliation and shit eating ritual surrounding the
adoption of our child.

Speaker 4 (01:19:48):
I'll take this one, honey. I was actually the one
that came up with this.

Speaker 1 (01:19:51):
Yeah, White, Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):
Is around the time that she's supposed there's a lot
of rumored affairs with major League Baseball greats Jose Canseeko
earlier and Alex Rodriguez. This is her statement on Alex Rodriguez.
This is I feel like this is the Kabbala talking.
I know Alex Rodriguez through Guio Siri, who manages both

(01:20:14):
of us. I brought my kids to a Yankees game.
I am not romantically involved in any way with Alex Rodriguez.
I have nothing to do with the state of his
marriage or what spiritual path he may choose to study.

Speaker 4 (01:20:25):
What Wow, I found some red string on the bedside table.
What the fuck is this?

Speaker 3 (01:20:34):
When divorced his wife, her attorney claimed A rod had
an affair of the heart with Madonna, which is so funny.

Speaker 4 (01:20:42):
Heart okay, what is that?

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
An emotional affair?

Speaker 4 (01:20:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):
But yeah, I don't know that.

Speaker 3 (01:20:48):
Like, she's created so many great songs after her peak,
she and before and like during her peak is probably
the number one hit maker of my lifetime.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
I think so.

Speaker 3 (01:21:03):
I think there's more there than like like obviously she's
a household.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
Name and like very well loved.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):
But I think there's like a biopic or like something
that's coming down the pike in the next like ten
years that is going to make people reckon.

Speaker 6 (01:21:21):
They tried, Yeah, remember they tried to make one, and
like every actress was fighting to play Madonna, and they
went with Julia Delpi, the girl from a Julie Delpy,
and she was supposed to play Madonna. And then they
were like, actually, never mind, it's not happening. We're not
making this movie. And it was like she would have
been perfect. What happened the world?

Speaker 2 (01:21:43):
Is it ready? I think I think that's what they decided.
Were ready.

Speaker 6 (01:21:46):
Yeah, they said they took a look outside and went
they're not ready.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
They don't deserve it yet, right.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
I think that might be right.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
I can think of no other reason they would have
paused production.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
I think she was also like she was very involved.
Is that right?

Speaker 6 (01:22:02):
Oh yeah, she was like I will be picking who
plays me like she they had to go through. I
think they set a Madonna boot camp in order to audition.

Speaker 3 (01:22:11):
Oh, just the producers are like up at four in
the morning, doing fast feet.

Speaker 4 (01:22:17):
Wait, what kind of like what was in? What was
part of the boot camp?

Speaker 6 (01:22:20):
I think they had to like redo some of her
famous dances. They had to like redo the like a
virgin VMA performance, you know, proving you can do Madonna.

Speaker 4 (01:22:29):
Right right right?

Speaker 1 (01:22:30):
She was a very entertaining. But I've chosen not to
go for it.

Speaker 7 (01:22:35):
Yeah, but all of you are actually beneath me and
couldn't honor me properly?

Speaker 4 (01:22:41):
Is do you think anyone is.

Speaker 5 (01:22:42):
Even close to being able to to portray her in film?

Speaker 4 (01:22:45):
Ashley?

Speaker 6 (01:22:46):
I think the Ozart girl would have done a good
jobs good.

Speaker 3 (01:22:51):
Yeah, get a good looks like Madonna. Don't do it
based only on looks, and I think.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
Will be good.

Speaker 4 (01:22:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:23:00):
But Julia Gardner, she did a wonderful job playing that
liar lady Anna whatever her name is.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
So yeah, yeah, that played her. So I think she
could handle Madonna.

Speaker 4 (01:23:14):
Yeah, that's good. She's got the good face, shape for
it and everything.

Speaker 2 (01:23:18):
She can handle some weird accents.

Speaker 5 (01:23:20):
Julia Garner is the Garner I could say, like Julia Delbi,
I was like, she's fifty six crazy. It was Julia Garner,
Anna del Vi, Julie, Julia French actress.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
That's how there, How I got there?

Speaker 5 (01:23:38):
See everybody's screaming in their car be like they're fucking
they don't know what the Oh thank god, yes, someone correct.

Speaker 3 (01:23:47):
Oh, Julia Garner would be good because she's like got
that sort of like she's beautiful, but like in a
way that's like sort of you.

Speaker 6 (01:23:54):
Know, you believe her when she said I wasn't popular
in high school.

Speaker 4 (01:23:58):
It's like, that's it.

Speaker 5 (01:24:00):
That she got the eyebrows too, Like she's got the.

Speaker 3 (01:24:05):
Eyebrows real quick, because her eyebrows are fucking that's.

Speaker 5 (01:24:08):
Isn't that another episode we're doing eyebrows?

Speaker 4 (01:24:13):
Yeah? Yeah, Yeah, she.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
Makes interesting choices there.

Speaker 6 (01:24:18):
I think recently she's been doing the like bright blonde hair,
dark eyebrow move, and you know I respect it.

Speaker 4 (01:24:25):
I do too.

Speaker 3 (01:24:26):
Yeah, I mean that she was originally blonde hair, dark
eyebrow person like that was kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:24:32):
Her original link bringing it back.

Speaker 3 (01:24:34):
She also was doing the dyed eyebrows that you can't
even tell her there.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
For a little while, which really before a lot of
people were doing that.

Speaker 6 (01:24:44):
Yeah, she going back to that one then, Yeah, she
does that when she like does her like I think
she does probably every two year facelifts.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
So yeah, I mean they're working.

Speaker 4 (01:24:58):
She doesn't.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
They really are.

Speaker 6 (01:24:59):
She's got a great system down where she like lets
the skin extend a bit with filler, and that gives
them something to pull.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
Back when she does. She's she's a genius with Oh
so she.

Speaker 7 (01:25:10):
Yeah, I mean like when you've been in the game
that long, you gotta know that. Yeah, just all the
ins and outs.

Speaker 4 (01:25:15):
I can't believe. I was just looking up that her daughter.
Lord this is almost thirty years old.

Speaker 7 (01:25:20):
I thought you were say thirteen, No, no, no, no, she's
twenty nine.

Speaker 4 (01:25:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:25:24):
Yeah, but I'm like, lordless, I remember when that child
was born, and you are about to be thirty years old.

Speaker 4 (01:25:31):
Yeeah.

Speaker 6 (01:25:32):
She like went on tour with her mom too, I think,
and was like doing some poking.

Speaker 4 (01:25:37):
Almost thirty.

Speaker 1 (01:25:38):
Come on, everybody, take your heavy thirtieth in October.

Speaker 4 (01:25:42):
Happy birthday, LRD. This Maria CHICONI leone, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
That was.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):
I still remember like the stories when she had a
child and people were like she actually like is just
using men. She just auditioned men for their sperm as
like like you know, yeah it is, I mean right,
making her into this like you know, uh sort of
calculating person. People were so scared of.

Speaker 2 (01:26:08):
Her, they really were.

Speaker 6 (01:26:10):
And it's like I think most women are, you know,
hoping to get sperm from a good place.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
They want the good.

Speaker 5 (01:26:16):
Stuff typically, Yeah, you don't. You don't hear people off
and be like, I want the worst sperm out.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
Give me your worst New York City.

Speaker 3 (01:26:22):
Yeah, Ashley, it's been such a pleasure of having you
on the show.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
This episode.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
I'm glad I could tell people about Madonna.

Speaker 1 (01:26:34):
Where can people find you?

Speaker 4 (01:26:36):
Follow you?

Speaker 1 (01:26:37):
Hear you all that good stuff?

Speaker 6 (01:26:38):
Yeah, you can follow me at the Ashley Ray. That's
where I'm doing everything on all the things.

Speaker 2 (01:26:43):
I'm at the Ashley Ray.

Speaker 6 (01:26:44):
And if you're in La, you can come to my
weekly show every Sunday in silver Lake at Kosta Cheetah.

Speaker 1 (01:26:51):
There you go, go check it out. Miles Where can
people find you?

Speaker 5 (01:26:56):
Find me everywhere at Miles of Gray talking about ninety
four twenty dance and then check me out talking about
English football, European soccer on at a footy with Jamel
Johnson and Chris Martin.

Speaker 3 (01:27:08):
All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and then
we're gonna come back and do the notebook. Don't we'll
talk to you in a minute.

Speaker 4 (01:27:20):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):
That was our Madonna episode. Thanks to Ashley Ray for
being a great guest as always one of the great
podcast guests, a great suggestion from her to do Madonna.
Thank you to Miles Gray as always, and thanks to
Meredith Danko for doing the research on this one, pulling

(01:27:42):
from various biographies and online profiles. I also listened to
the Ban Displain podcast on Madonna, which had some good stuff.
They had a series of I think three or four
episodes I listened to mainly the first couple. Also, between
the recording you just heard and what I'm recording now,

(01:28:05):
Madonna's brother's book became available for me on Libby. Shout
out to the Libby app from which is like the
public Libraries app. But yeah, I was finally able to
dig into that book, and I gotta say we're two
for two in terms of books by the family members

(01:28:26):
of icons, Steve Jobs's daughter wrote a book that's beautifully written,
contained some amazing insights about him, and this one is
a treasure trove of just backstage intrigue. Christopher Chiconi is
this talented designer who dresses Madonna, hangs with Gwyneth Paltrow

(01:28:49):
and Demi Moore. Demi Moore keeps trying to fuck him
even though he's obviously gay. But yeah, he's just you know,
doing drugs with famous people throughout and you know, talk
shit about them. And Madonna's various boyfriends and husbands doing
drugs with people who aren't Madonna. By the way, Madonna

(01:29:10):
is very anti drug for the most part. The details
that you get about Madonna kind of the surprising details
make her sound boring, like she goes to bed most
nights at eleven, like almost religiously, and doesn't believe in
air conditioning like my grandfather. The funniest scene from that book,

(01:29:30):
I've got to say is when she's dating warm Baby,
he meets Christopher for the first time, and Christopher is like,
I immediately got it right, Like he gives me this lingering,
warm handshake and like kind of looks me in my
eyes and immediately like starts asking me about myself and
very quickly gets into what it's like to be homosexual

(01:29:55):
and do I feel I had a choice or was
I homosexual from birth? And like the sorts of things that,
like if it was coming from an elderly relative you'd
be like Jesus Christ, but it's Warren Baty, and he's
just like so charming, and just like in minutes, they're
in this really deep intimate conversation about Christopher's sexuality. And yeah,

(01:30:21):
if it had been anyone else, he would have felt invaded,
he said, it would have felt invasive. But somehow he's
disarmed and he's immediately like, I get why you know
thirteen thousand women slept with this guy or whatever it is,
the next time they hang out, Warren Bady just shakes
his hand in the exact same way and ask the
exact same questions. He's like, wait, what the fuck? And

(01:30:46):
the third time they hang out, same questions, and he's like,
is this guy like he only knows how to talk
to people about sex. Maybe he's like a weird charm automaton,
But I just find that so funny regardless of the content,
Like the weirdness of Warren Baty grilling him about his
homosexuality is its own thing. But even without the concept

(01:31:07):
of someone like nailing their first conversation with someone and
then seeing that person again and asking them the exact
same questions, like they've just got one gear in this case,
it is the gear seems to be talking to people
about sex in a way that disarms them. That's also
the story we got from a seventeen year old Carrie

(01:31:28):
Fisher that on the set of Shampoo he wouldn't stop
asking her to let him take her virginity, which, yeah,
not she should have been offended by that. The late
seventies man really fucked up time, as we keep coming
back to. Not that it changed, but it was very,
very out in the open. Go see go look at

(01:31:51):
the preview or the trailer for Manhattan if you don't
believe me. Weirdly, Warren Batty comes off the best of
Madonna's famous love interest Champenn is weird and violent guy
Ritchie is a douche and a homophobe in these stories,

(01:32:12):
and so Christopher and Madonna definitely have a complicated relationship.
He's seen every different step of her evolution, so he's
not like blinded by her force of personality like literally
everyone else on the planet.

Speaker 1 (01:32:28):
There are moments that are.

Speaker 3 (01:32:30):
Either brutally honest or a bit axe grindie throughout the episode.
I think I mentioned my theory that Madonna is joking
a lot of the time, but people don't get that
she's joking, or they like won't allow her to be
doing satire because she's a woman like material girl. I
mentioned in the context of like she's if you listen

(01:32:51):
to the song, she's doing a Betty Boop voice and
it's supposed to be satirical, and people for the rest
of her career are like, here she comes, the serial girl,
and then the sex book. She said she was it
was meant to be heightened and you know, not meant
to be taken seriously, but people took it very seriously

(01:33:13):
and we're basically out on her from that point forward.
In his book, which is called Life with My Sister Madonna,
which is a tough time, like I blame the publisher
for that, but he speculates it's the reason for this
dynamic of her trying to do things that are like
making a commentary and nobody really getting it is because

(01:33:37):
she's bad at joking around, like bad at comedy, and
she's like been doing this their whole life of like
trying to do something to make a point and people
just it not landing. And he's like, it's because she's
bad at comedy. I think there's probably some sexism in there.
But Christopher also notes that Guy Ritchie and Sean Penn

(01:33:59):
are both kind of fake street guys. They're like kind
of blue collar guys, but they're actually both raised comfortably
upper middle class. I mean, Guy Ritchie's parents divorced in
like both of them marry people in the House of Lords,
I think, but he like pretends to be tough and
from the streets, and his wedding like all his friend's

(01:34:21):
wedding speeches are very homophobic and about how like masculine
he is. But he Christopher speculates that that's why Madonna
was attracted to them, because she's also overstating her blue
collar roots, not that she was like a trust fund kid.
But he's also like, she didn't only have thirty five

(01:34:43):
dollars in her pocket. Her dad knew like that their
father knew where she was going and wouldn't let her starve.
So like, yeah, she may have lived off popcorn and
yogurt and dated guys for their showers, but she didn't
maybe totally have to do that. I don't know, that's

(01:35:04):
his contention. The book is definitely worth thumbing through if
you found this episode interesting and want to keep doing
your own research. All Right, some other things from the
research in terms of appreciating Madonna's amazing career, one cop
that came up in a couple different places was Katie Perry.
Katy Perry was definitely, very evidently modeling some aspects of

(01:35:28):
her career off of Madonna. She started with a song
called I Kissed a Girl and I liked it to
like get people's attention. She was like doing the religious
but also wore cone bras and revealing clothing on stage.
And you know, an amazingly successful career that fell off

(01:35:49):
around I guess when you'd expect a pop stars career
to fall off, you know, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:35:55):
It might not be over.

Speaker 3 (01:35:56):
She just had like a couple albums that didn't Hitana
though still putting out hit album like She just released
a critically acclaimed album, Confessions Too, that went to number
one in July of this year, forty one years after
Like a Virgin went number one. I will just reiterate
the fact that Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson were born

(01:36:18):
within weeks of each other in the Midwest is at
least a very cool coincidence. There's just something about the
eighties and the Midwest that's also when John Hughes movies
are set in the suburbs of Chicago. Like that, that
is the time, Like when I picture if when I
close my eyes and picture the eighties, I'm picturing John

(01:36:40):
Hughes movies in a lot of cases. Next Week's Icon
is a comic strip that was created by somebody in Indiana.
And yeah, it was supposed to be a time of
conservative values. Time magazine had a cover story saying the
sexual Revolution was over, and I think that's where a
lot of people place the Midwest and thing. But Madonna

(01:37:02):
was not conservative. Madonna was not evidence pointing to the
sexual revolution being over. It kind of makes it all
the more impressive that she's able to come in at
this time and be like, I am a woman, I
enjoy sex at first, I don't shave my armpit here
watch me enjoy sex in a way that makes the

(01:37:23):
Pope call me satanic during the Reagan eighties. There are
all these moments in the research where I had to
kind of do a double take because it's it's just
like so much later.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
Than I thought.

Speaker 3 (01:37:37):
For Like the detail that she's the first woman to
headline an arena tour is was shocking to me, Like
a Virgin is the first album by a woman to
sell five million copies. I guess I just like didn't
fully appreciate that she invented this version of pop diva
dum you know, Like I said, my first memory of

(01:37:59):
dancing is too girl, So I just kind of took
it for granted that pop stars like her had always
had this level of success. Also for True Blue to
be the top selling album by a woman of the
entire nineteen eighties, but the top selling album of nineteen
eighty six that year had like bon Jovi Slippery while Wet,

(01:38:19):
which I always remember.

Speaker 1 (01:38:21):
People being like this. You'd be shocked how many albums
was sold.

Speaker 3 (01:38:25):
Whitney by Whitney Houston, controlled by Janet, licensed to Ill
by Best Boys, Master of Puppets by.

Speaker 4 (01:38:32):
Metallica.

Speaker 1 (01:38:32):
I believe it is the name of the band.

Speaker 3 (01:38:36):
And yeah, just a huge album in a huge year
for music. According to Christopher's book, she never wanted to
be like Marilyn Monroe, but just kept finding herself in
these parallel moments Playboy finding old nude photos and printing them.
Playboy was actually, if you didn't listen to our Marilyn

(01:38:57):
Momroe episode Playboy was actually launched by doing that to
Marilyn Monroe. They found these old calendar photos of her
opposing the nude and were like, well, buy those four
eighty dollars or you know, something cheap and launch a
multi billion dollar brand. Madonna actually explicitly was like, is
this too Maryland coded? When she was dating JFK Jr.

(01:39:20):
Which I'll just say JFK Jr. Was a level of
attractive that like broke people's brain at that time. I
don't think we have a modern equivalent. There's there's a
Seinfeld episode about it where about Elaine being obsessed with him.
But I remember there there's a profile of JFK Junior.

(01:39:41):
I remember Lyra Smith, former producer on iHeart sent me
this is like a pet topic of hers about how
like weirdly obsessed people were with JFK jor. But this
profile is just like it's impossible to concentrate when you're
in a room with it, Like everybody else turns into
blurry background characters. It's pretty pretty wild. So for Madonna

(01:40:05):
to fuck him and break up with him because he's
bad in bed his crazy work. Another eighties New York
social lite she had to run in with is Donald Trump.
Trump's publicist John Miller, which, as we all know by
now much suspected to be Donald Trump himself, told a
People magazine reporter that she called and wanted to go

(01:40:26):
out with him. That I can tell you speaking very
much in a Trump's voice. Madonna said that she never
asked him out, but she remembered him calling often when
she did a Versace campaign at his house in Palm Beach.

Speaker 1 (01:40:39):
I'm assuming mar A Lago.

Speaker 3 (01:40:41):
According to her, he kept going, Hey, is everything okay?
Finding yourself comfortable? Are the beds comfortable? Is everything good?

Speaker 1 (01:40:47):
Are you happy? Which?

Speaker 4 (01:40:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:40:49):
It just reminds me of other stories where he will
like get in a room with someone just so he
can like brag about having sex with him later, and
the person's like he just watched TV. He just like
wants to have the appearance so he can then like
spread the rumor. So he calls Madonna repeatedly so he
can later claim that she called him to ask him out.

(01:41:12):
One last thing that I feel like it is starting
to become a trend in these Icon episodes is the
icon needing less sleep. And I just want to talk
about that briefly like in her brother's book. He says
she went to sleep at eleven almost every night, but
that she was an insomnia I can like barely could sleep.
And his explanation is the one I think that most
people have, which is them being ambitious and smart causes

(01:41:36):
the insomnia.

Speaker 1 (01:41:37):
I think.

Speaker 3 (01:41:37):
He says her visions of world domination were incompatible with sleep,
like she's too ambitious and focused on success to sleep,
and I feel like the number of icons who don't
need as much sleep as everyone might suggest the causation.
Arrow might go the other way, like not needing as
much sleep gives a person more time than the average
person to achieve things and therefore makes the I'm more

(01:42:00):
likely to succeed.

Speaker 1 (01:42:02):
So anyways, curious.

Speaker 3 (01:42:03):
If anyone has any research or just anecdotal evidence on
that one. But all right, that's gonna do it for Madonna.
Just a colossal icon up next to another colossal icon
if you're attending the Macy's Day parade. Until then, more
episodes about the news. I hope we all have a
great week, and we'll talk to you next Monday.

Speaker 4 (01:42:25):
The Daily Zeit Guist is executive produced by Catherine Law,
co produced by Victor Wright

Speaker 3 (01:42:30):
Co written by j M McNabb and edited and engineered
by Brian Jefferies.

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Icon #34 - Madonna: 2 Blonde 2 Ambitious

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Icon #34 - Madonna: 2 Blonde 2 Ambitious