Being around Madonna can be dangerous to your health.
We were in the same room during her Ray Of Light tour and it was a scary experience. She completely sucked the energy out of the place, so much so that being in her orbit was a completely debilitating experience.
She still has that vampire-like quality – and showed it again as she sucked the life’s blood out of two brilliant younger artists during her halftime show at Super Bowl XLIX. Give her credit for choosing cool talent to perform with. Too bad genius Nicki Minaj and red hot MIA didn’t do much during a performance of Madonna’s latest release, Give Me All Your Luvin‘.
Doubtless, Minaj and MIA couldn’t resist the chance to perform in front of billions of eyeballs, especially as they appear in the new video as well. But there is a supreme irony in the fact that these two radical, sometimes challenging artists had to sacrifice themselves to the Material Girl’s personal vision – although MIA apparently gave the camera the middle finger at one point.
And on a new song that’s all about Madonna. I mean, “Madonna” is the central lyric in the chorus, for god’s sake. Both guests artists performed on their own for maybe eight bars each. Even Britney Spears got more out of her brief Madge moment.
Super Bowl half-time shows are always larger than life, and there’s nothing bigger than Madonna’s ego. Only she would make a tribute to the late Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra look like an exercise in self-aggrandizement.
It would have been fine, maybe even fun, had Madonna done something other than jump around for most of her 12-minute performance. Visuals by Cirque de Soleil collaborating technical team Moment came across as muddled and confusing – at least on TV – during a performance of Vogue. Madonna added nothing as she leapt about in one spot looking like a nine year-old.
The only artist able to stand up to Madonna’s cannibalistic/vampiric dynamic was Cee Lo. But then again he got to perform on Like A Prayer, one of the great pop songs of all time. To paraphrase one tweeter, all that was missing on that one was Tim Tebow. Hell, that’s never going to happen: Madonna really does not like to be upstaged.
