The Madonna Bowl: our thoughts

You may have noticed that it’s taken us a while - at least in comparison to most ‘media outlets’ and/or blogs - to publish our official opinion on the Madonna Bowl. You know, that event we’ve been posting frenzied updates on for the last few months in which the foam seeping from our slack mouths could be practically felt on your computer screens. The event in which the Queen of Pop would perform to the single largest audience of her career, between two halves of incredibly uninteresting sport. From quite early on, it seemed there was potential for the twelve minute performance to be the crowning live exhibition of talent for her career; rumours suggested the contracting of dancers from the House of Ninja to choreograph an explosive new routine for “Vogue”, while the Indianapolis Gay Men’s Chorus were to be brought in for a dazzling “Like a Prayer” finale. In the past month, the news leaks began to sour with the disheartening news that in fact, Cee Lo Green and LMFAO would be sharing a stage with Madonna. Nevertheless, it turned out none of the above appeared to be too far from the truth when it came to the actual performance on Sunday evening.

The symbolism and importance of this performance was not lost on many. It has been acknowledged that traditionally the Super Bowl is the mainstay of ‘heritage’ performers - in other words, acts who had long since seen better days and were usually content to tour the world peddling their tired greatest hits. Madonna goes out of her way - to both good and not so good results - to prove she is anything but, so it was interesting to see how she would treat her opportunity to prove her relevancy. Secondly, this was not a crafted performance to an arena of fans who had paid upwards of $100 for their chance to view Madonna - it was a stadium of football fans and a global audience of almost one billion sports enthusiasts. There had to be a reliance on her internationally known golden standards, but with a touch of new material to promote her upcoming record. We’re not going to pretend that the eventual outcome was entirely flaw free, but it wasn’t far from. Madonnapatra entered the Lucas Oil Stadium behind a parade of Roman centurions, and was revealed from enormous royal plumes to be astride an exquisite Egyptian throne. Confusions over aesthetic appropriation of ancient cultures aside, it was visually breathtaking. Never before has Madonna commanded such an enormous troupe of dancers clad in elaborate costumes.

"Vogue” was a feast for the eyes, with deliciously camp choreography taking centre stage amongst spine-tingling ancient heralders welcoming the Queen to the pitch. The marvellous - and probably incredibly expensive - video screen stage erupted in a festival of colour and must have been even more breathtaking to behold in the flesh than on television. Inevitable crowd pleaser “Music” followed, with the expected LMFAO guest appearance, before segueing into a rowsing cheer-laden performance of “Give Me All Your Luvin’”. Cee Lo lead a marching band through several stirring lines of “Open Your Heart” (BITCH PLAY IT ON YOUR NEXT TOUR) and “Express Yourself” before the stadium was hushed by an, again, visually stunning “Like a Prayer”. It was a triumphant display of exuberance and life, one that we know blew people away and incurred a great deal of jealousy along the way. Job done.

What would we have done differently? Well, this is an issue that unfortunately exposes Madonna’s growing self-esteem issues with her age, as confident as she may appear to be. Her continuing reliance on younger, ‘hip’ artists has exploded since “4 Minutes” and Hard Candy, and sadly doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. Behind her excuses of wanting to work with the people she listens to - great, good for her - it reeks of desperate clinging to relevancy that saddens us to observe, no matter how much we may defend her to other people who point it out. We love Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. unimaginably more than Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, but it was clear from their input on both “Gimme All Your Luvin’” and the performance that their jobs were to prove Madonna is still ‘with it’. LMFAO’s appearance on “Music” wasn’t as horrific as we expected, and in fact we felt the sampling of their ‘hits’ as the song’s backing track was actually quite enjoyable. Nevertheless, they were still unnecessary. She does not need to employ Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., LMFAO and Cee Lo Green (who was the most unnecessary of the bunch - “Like a Prayer”, of all songs, is one that she and she alone must carry), she’s Madonna! She isn’t still, after thirty years and an incessant conveyor belt of increasingly talented and improved Mini-Madonnas, lauded as the Queen of Pop by international media for no reason. She retains the title through displays such as the Super Bowl, but her credibility may have remained stronger rather than weaker without the inclusion of guest appearances. The musical arrangements, despite supposedly having been taken care of by Stuart Price, remained unchanged from their studio incarnations; something Madonna has never done. We understand that middle America would not be familiar with a radically different incarnation of “Vogue” or “Like a Prayer” but we’ve become used to a fresh new take on classics with each new tour. And as thrilling as it is to be reminded of a 53 year old woman’s athletic prowess and what the body can do after decades of excellent care and treatment, it does nothing but expose her to scorn and tiresome ‘granny’ remarks when body manipulating choreography is taken to the extreme. Oh - and the ‘WORLD PEACE’ thing at the end? No.

So what are the repercussions of the performance? Well we expect that tickets for her forthcoming world tour - hideously titled ‘Madonna World Tour’ for that matter. We expect a hell of a lot better from the woman who has tours titled ‘Blond Ambition’ and ‘The Girlie Show’ in her archive - will be in higher demand than ever, after an incomprehensibly huge audience were privy to her talent and eye for spectacle. Furthermore, we hope it will lead to even higher standards of production - not to say her tours are ever less than visually incredible, but after proving what can be done in twelve minutes, we hope it will encourage her to step up her game even more. Sadly, we spent much of the following day in an irate daze at the onslaught of atrociously misogynistic and ageist comments flooding Twitter and newspaper comment sections. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again - the likes of Prince (born in the same year as Madonna), Bruce Springsteen (older than Madonna) and the Rolling Stones (older than everyone in the universe) failed to attract more than a few off hand comments about their age at the times of their Super Bowl appearances.

Part of a much bigger problem which has haunted Madonna since the days of Erotica and expressed and dissected elsewhere much more eloquently than in this blog, is that there are many who simply refuse to allow a strong, unapologetic woman midway through her sixth decade perform with increased confidence, energy and prowess than she possessed thirty years previous. How dare she not give a fuck about how old she is? How dare she have a greater body - and let it not be forgotten, she makes no bones about having cosmetic surgery - than many of her naysayers in their twenties have now? It gets to us even more that most of the scorn comes from women themselves. To provide a balanced argument, many of the girls we watched the performance with were clearly impressed and stated that their opinions on Madonna had been improved, yet many stood by their opinions that she should ‘retire’, ‘move on’, ‘give it a rest’. Why? Because everyone else before her has? Why doesn’t she just ‘put some clothes on’ (in fact her costuming was the most conservative it has been since the early years of the millennium) and pack off to Las Vegas where she can end her career performing “Borderline” every night to Japanese tourists? Fantastic articles have been written acknowledging this travesty, yet the comments which follow are filled with the same offensive vitriol. She would simply not be treated this way if she had a penis, but like the rest of her career, she is still smashing ceilings and breaking barriers - even if she feels more comfortable with Nicki Minaj on stage giving her an unneeded hand.

We’re not placing our expectations for the new album too high after leaked snippets and the disappointing lead single (do not confuse that opinion with that of the video) but if anything we’re confident her summer tour will stand amongst the triumphs of her past. We hope to catch her in Barcelona or Milan, where are you seeing her?

Madonna performed:

• “Vogue”
• “Music” with LMFAO
• “Give Me All Your Luvin’” with Nicki Minaj and M.I.A.
• “Like a Prayer” with Cee Lo Green