The other day my friend Joey, a rabid Madonna fan and firm believer that the pop icon only gets better and better with age, called me all excited and told me that he found all the new titles from the as of yet unreleased Madonna LP on Kazaa and downloaded them, thinking, “yippee, I’ve got the whole new Madonna album for free and even before it’s official release date.” When the songs finished downloading and he went to play them, thinking he had just pulled a major coup on the music industry and Madonna fans around the world were eating his dust, the only sound he heard was silence, followed by the voice of the brilliantly aging wunderkind, the foremost outspoken pop star icon billionaire mother and wife who still owns and defines and holds the reigns on the world of superstardom, asking the simple question, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
He checked every song and they all said the same thing. He told me about it and I tried to download one to see and sure enough, there she was giving a personal message to myself and anyone trying to download her new album on the Internet: “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” We both thought it was pretty hysterical, and while it thwarted plans to hear the new material, in some ways it actually made us feel special, closer to Madonna than ever before. She humbled us but in a humorous way, making a point that a number of other artists have been making lately regarding the downloading and circulating of their music online. It seems many newer releases by popular artists have proven difficult to download and even impossible to reproduce on your computer. I’ve noticed while trying to download anything from The White Stripes fourth record Elephant prior to its release (and debut on the billboard hot 100 at number 6!), I downloaded copy after copy of the discs 14 songs only to find the files turned out to be 30 seconds of the song, looped over and over. I also found that I was able to download everything from the latest Massive Attack LP, 100th Window yet when I burned the songs on to a CD the end product was a completely full yet silent disc. As I understand it, sometimes the artist themselves will have individuals actually flood the popular media trading programs like Kazaa with bogus files which people will waste their time downloading and storing on their drives just to find they aren’t the real deal. I believe I’ve even heard that in the near future it will be legal for record companies to introduce files to the trading realm that will have actual damage inducing virus-like components to wreak havoc on the millions of tune wranglers worldwide. So it seems the hallmark days of endlessly downloading any and every song you might ever want to have on your hard drive for free are slowly coming to an end. Just in the nick of time too, huh? I mean the entire music industry ended up so perilously close to certain death over the past few years didn’t it? A real touch and go situation, artists literally hitting the soup kitchens due to flagrant online theft of their music. Yeah right! We’ve all seen Alicia Keyes, Norah Jones, Missy Elliot, 50 cent, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, and Britney Spears waiting in line at the welfare offices. The reaction to online file trading was so completely over-wrought and highly dramatized by industry moguls with their claims that downloading music was such an evil act, brazen thievery, literally stripping the artists of their livelihood. It was all so transparent, just who was worried about what. At one point we stood on the verge of a huge revolution for the stodgy old corrupt major label system, artists quite possibly could have at long last gained personal autonomous control and distribution of their product, but it has become clear that the industry will fight such change using all the money they have (think Sony = more-money-than-God) for technological advancements to safeguard the music and of course litigiously, where we all know how far the long green will take a person or corporation no matter how guilty or corrupt. So it looks as if the big wigs have maintained the control they feared losing in this situation. I hope performers and artists don’t buy into the thought that the majors are looking out for their best interests and protecting the fruits of their creative efforts, because as I see it, the only force that has consistently raped artists of ownership rights and royalties they deserved are indeed those sleazy industry executives in the boardrooms at Sony, Capitol, Warner Bros, and all the rest. So it seems that the carefree days of downloading music files from the internet could be coming to an end, although one can anticipate innovative efforts from cyber outlaws to always get around these new obstacles one way or another. I wonder if people are downloading files like crazy in anticipation of more serious regulations, continued difficulties in finding the latest releases from the more popular artists without them being deliberately incomplete or fucked with, and admonishments from Madonna herself, complete with dirty words. Ultimately I was amused by Madonna’s way of making her point, and besides, she is her own fat cat boardroom executive, no one is pulling her strings. I doubt there is another force in popular music more in control of her own career than Madonna.
Take for instance her latest video, American Life. Produced back in February, the video depicts a fashion show in which all modeled creations are done in camouflage, a requisite amount of cross gender mix and match apparel, accessories including gas masks and weapons, an assembled audience of some vague celebrity look-alikes, then a big screen of Madonna looking very much like der Fuhrer or a modernized spy from Hogan’s Heroes with large firey orange explosions going off in the blue sky above her head as she sings, “American life/I live the American dream/ you are the best thing I’ve seen/ you are not just a dream.” Then it cuts away to the ugly tough dykes wearing camouflage and men’s underwear all in separate bathroom stalls, hitting the walls, acting agro and undulating or in Madonna’s booth she’s carving something on the wall with a knife, the message being “Protect me”. Then it cuts away to the fashion show again in time to show a little Israeli boy wearing peach and a belt of bullets over his shoulder then two young girls in burqua’s, then its back to the march of the dykes in formation (towards battle?) interspersed with lots of military film clips of bombers and missiles and explosions and provocative dance moves as they get in a car and start to drive fast (the token Guy Ritchie touch) then back to the fashion show, Madonna on the big screen says “Fuck it,” then the car crashes through the screen and onto the runway and Madonna does something she has never really done before, she raps…sort of I guess. She busts out a rhyming litany of all the things she has at her disposal, luxuries from double lattes to yoga and pilates and all of the servants and nannies and bodyguards with a repeated refrain of “…and you know I’m satisfied,” which becomes the question “Do you think I’m satisfied?” Back to der Fuhrer image with the American flag waving behind her she spits out acapella, “I’d like to express my extreme point of view/ I’m not a Christian and I’m not a Jew/ I’m just living out the American dream and I just realized that nothing is what it seems.” She then takes to the vehicle she rode in on and drives forward spraying the crowd and paparazzi with a water cannon. She then pulls the key from a grenade and tosses it into the crowd. It flies into an open hand and is grasped tightly and magically turns into a zippo lighter and the person who caught it, a George W. Bush look-alike lights a cigar with it. There’s one last shot of Madonna, driving and laughing in that Faster Pussycat Kill Kill way. The End.
Madonna held the video back from its official release date for airing in the U.S. in light of the War and the themes being inappropriate or possibly interpreted as anti-American. She also edited the original ending, in which the George W. Bush look-alike uses the grenade/lighter to ignite the cigar of a Saddam Hussein look-alike and then his own.
In short, Madonna has perfected her incredible relationship with controversy. With this one she didn’t even need to rely on the press or other authorities to get the ball rolling. She held back the release in America herself, of course making the video available for eventual sale as a DVD about one week after the release of her Album. She is so masterful at this by now. I’d say generally she is at the top of her game with this song and video as an artist and provocateur, and thus far there have been no demonstrations or boycotts like Dixie Chick CD bonfires. Then again, perhaps the bulk of America hasn’t seen the video. I can bet if they had, it wouldn’t simply be interpreted as meaning what Madonna has stated about the piece, “I have written a song and created a video which expresses my feelings about our culture and values and the illusions of what many people believe is the American dream — the perfect life.” She also claims it’s more of a commentary on materialism and an exercise in what she loves about America, the First Amendment. “I don’t expect everyone to agree with my point of view. I am grateful to have the freedom to express these feelings, and that’s how I honor my country.” Madonna hasn’t been this exciting since the press conference in Rome where she made the “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” speech addressing the popes opposition to her tour touching down there. Face it, the world is a better place with Madonna in it, and if you are wondering how I was able to see this video, I downloaded it on Kazaa about two weeks ago. It has become the most frequently uploaded file from my shared file collection ever. What the fuck do I think I’m doing? Exactly what I should be doing—talking up Madonna.