"Let them listen to me play guitar"

The Queen of France met her downfall with her careless suggestion of cake instead of bread. The Queen of Pop will meet her downfall with her calculated and horrendously irritating INSISTENCE on playing guitar in her live tours. We swear.

Ms. Ciccone-Ritchie first picked up the guitar during the album sessions for 2000's Music, hiring instructor and player Monte Pittman to help add another ill-advised string to her bow. Surprising gays and Bon Jovi fans (don't tell us those two demographics have a grey area) alike on the Drowned World Tour in 2001 with her... good effort playing the Spanish guitar on one of the few pre-Ray of Light songs on the tour, "La Isla Bonita", most fans took the performance as a one-off exploration of an area of music other than warbling. How little we knew.

Flash forward to the Re-Invention Tour, 2004. Rumours have leaked beforehand, featuring well-received news that Madonna will be dragging out fan favourites "Burning Up" and "Material Girl" amongst others. Great. Hang on... "Madonna will be performing some of her best loved hits on the guitar." WHAT? Okay love, you got the crowd going with a bit of "Bonita", but THAT'S BECAUSE YOU HAD STARVED EVERYONE OF ANYTHING SLIGHTLY WHIFFING OF THE IMMACULATE COLLECTION. Whatever. We watched, we enjoyed, but it was still vair cringeworthy. She's standing there in army drag, playing a guitar with the force of pilled up lesbian, singing "Some boys kiss me, some boys hug me, I think they're okay." No, love.

Inevitably, she dragged the guitar back out for 2006's lauded Confessions Tour. However, we'll give her her due - she used the instrument to her advantage. Her performance of "Ray of Light" was, let's face it, amazing, while "Paradise (Not for Me)" was miles ahead of it's studio counterpart, mostly due to it's re-invention as an acoustic lament. Bitch is determined to show she can do more then sing... story of her bloody career.

We are now in 2008, ladies and gentleman. If you're a card-carrying homo, and play for the Madge Not Mariah team, you will be looking forward to the Sticky and Sweet Tour more then you looked forward to seeing if you got a Barbie instead of an Action Man in your youth time Christmases. We've just accepted that Madge will be dragging the guitar out again - she chose to play the instrument on the album the tour was mounted in support of, and performed "Miles Away" on the Hard Candy Promo Tour with strings in hand. However, it was also on this Promo Tour that Bitch chose to re-invent an "oldie" - please, Madonna. Please. WHAT ON EARTH POSSESSED YOU TO PERFORM THE GAYEST SONG OF YOUR CAREER - okay, tied with "Vogue" - ON THE GUITAR. "Hung Up" was meant to be, from the point of it's creation, the anthem of all homonosity. Why the fuck did you slap an ABBA sample on it if it wasn't. Do you really expect us to get into it if you're standing there, lipsyncing mind, playing fucking rhythm guitar to it?

Madonna will, unfortunately, be reprising her Iggy Popped "Hung Up" on the Sticky and Sweet Tour, along with 'transforming' her anthem of defiance "Human Nature" with the help of the instrument. Why? What on earth possesses her to believe that people would rather watch the Queen of Pop stand there tossing off a guitar, then watch her gyrate with her dancers in S&M costumes? Of course, none of us have seen or heard the performance yet, but we for one, am not waiting with baited breath. We're hoping she chooses not to perform any more songs on the tour on guitar - "Miles Away" is a definite as well but that's tolerable - really, we are. She's just not meant to be a guitar player. She's meant to rub her vajayjay on crucifixes, she's meant to stimulate masturbation with animals, something like that.

'I'm not your bitch, don't hang your shit on me'.

PS. We're sure we'll follow this post up with a reply following our attendance at her Wembley gig. We're praying we enjoy it, because we really cannot be bothered to write another essay on how appalled we are by her. God love her.