I have to agree with most of it!
Sarah Crompton on Madonna at 50
Once upon a time, Madonna was a force of nature.
In my mind's eye I can see her still, a blue light behind her, hair raggedy and frizzy, hands covered in lacy, sawn-off gloves, pouting and preening and singing Holiday. As she sang, she skipped - like a child, full of joy at her own cleverness and power.
It was the skip that did it. From that second on, I was a fan. And 1984 was a fantastic time to love Madonna. As Like a Virgin and the movie Desperately Seeking Susan followed her first success, the ambitious little dancer from Michigan became a symbol of something far beyond herself, a beacon of self-fulfilment to women around the globe. As she changed, like a self-adoring chameleon, we followed each move. As she instructed us, we moved with the music, shedding the gloves for a fine manicure, the street-urchin rags for pointy bras.
In truth, Madonna was always an unlikely role model. It is easy to see why gay men idolise her: she is the camp pinnacle of the disco culture. But for women, who look for guidance from their heroines, she hardly comes up trumps on the lyrics front.
"When all else fails and you long to be/Something better than you are today/?I know a place where you can get away/?It's called a dance floor, and here's what it's for". As advice goes, it's not Simone de Beauvoir, or even the Little Book of Self. But those lines from Vogue define Madonna's long-lasting appeal: she has never provided the soundtrack to women's lives, but she has given us our dance track.
Over the years, her self-belief blazed like a beacon over our lives because the triumphant music she made gave us something to dance to. When we were happy, we danced to Madonna; when we were gloomy, we did the same.
Four years ago, when she put on her pink hot pants and set off on tour again, we metaphorically and literally danced along, filling stadiums to sway to the sounds of our receding youth, to wave at our heroine from afar and remind her what fun we have all had along the road.
Why, then, as she hits 50, has Madonna lost her touch, her instinctive ability to be cool? She may be number one, but when she bumps and grinds on stage with Justin Timberlake (as she did in New York earlier this month), she no longer stands as our representative in the Hall of Fame; instead, she looks like the mum who has had one too many and wants to snog her teenage daughter's handsome friend.
She hasn't grown up, that's for sure. But I don't think we want our idols to grow old. What we want is for them to preserve their ability to define themselves.
It is Madonna's self-belief that has ebbed away as she has grown older. Suddenly she looks like everyone else, desperate to stay young, to stay in touch. That girl who skipped on to a stage three decades ago didn't give a damn what anyone else was doing. She was going to do it her way.
If I had one birthday wish for Madonna, as she gets ready to cut that cake in August, it would be that the woman who has done so much to create a culture in her own image would reinvent herself once more, step out on the dance floor, and just be.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml.../bmmadge117.xml oh, she haven't lost her touch! Everytime she seems to release something poorer or less brilliant some people just claim she's over.
But it's true that she is losing her esence by trying to keep hip and young. This article has very interesting parts, very simmilar to what Fuckbuddy said in another thread.