Madonna Mailbag With Fattaneh Salek and Patrik Sandberg

Madonna Month (OK, six weeks) is coming to a close, and it’s going out with a bang! First, Yasi is joined by the original Madonna influence, her mom, Fattaneh Salek! It all started here, from picking Madonna favorites while still in a stroller to transcribing lyrics for future sing-alongs. Then, Patrik Sandberg is back to help Yasi answer all your burning Madonna questions. What was Madonna’s best hair era? Who would the dream Madonna alt-rock collab be? And most importantly, why isn’t Gen Z properly celebrating Madonna?! Plus, they rank their top five Madonna songs (but we still don’t agree with rankings)! Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuests: Fattaneh Salek and Patrik Sandberg @patriksandbergProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:05Speaker 02

  What's with this band, anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really like this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. Bandplain!

• 1:45Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is usually a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is a little different. Today is a listener mailbag about Madonna Month. Madonna, six weeks, if we're being honest. And very shortly, I will be joined by our guest from episode three, Patrick Sandberg, to answer your burning Madonna Month questions. But first, I have a very special guest joining me for a quick little conversation about Madonna and the origins of another. Material girl, myself. And it is my mom, Fatana Salek. Welcome to the show, Mom.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 2:29Yasi Salek?

  What a treat, what a delight. Can you believe it?

• 2:31Speaker 04

  I can't. It's unbelievable. I'm so happy to be here.

• 2:35Yasi Salek?

  Mom, do you know what I do for a living?

• 2:37Speaker 04

  Yes, I do.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  I do talk about famous bands that I don't know any of them.

• 2:45Yasi Salek?

  Yes, okay, that's about right. That's so right. Mom, before we get started, tell me about how you first found Madonna. Because for those of you who don't know, if for whatever reason you didn't listen to any of the Madonna episodes, I don't know why you would just randomly listen to the mailbag, but it's, you know, your body, your choice. My mom is the reason that I was like a Madonna fan at one years old because she was obsessed with Madonna. She was always playing it in the car, around the house. And it was like the first artist I was ever even aware of as a tiny child with a forming frontal lobe. So now that we have that, Mom. How did you, how did you find Madonna?

• 3:27Yasi Salek?

  Because you had only lived in America for a couple of years at that point.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. And only probably, yeah, two years. She was exceptional artist to me. She was a phenomenon to this day. I think she was very special. She was beautiful and she was creative. And I liked her. I liked her.

• 3:53Yasi Salek?

  Just the moment you, okay, well, you, I think, I remember you telling me that maybe the first thing you heard was Dress You Up? Is that true?

• 4:01Speaker 04

  No, not Dress You Up. Dress You Up, I, I heard years after, you know, since, let's say, eighty-seven, eighty-eight. Yeah, and like, until then, I, I saw it in a movie preview, not a preview, but it was the whole song before the movie starts. And I, I love that, that song. I didn't know why it become one of the best ones.

• 4:26Yasi Salek?

  I agree. Um, there's a whole, there's a whole contingent of Madonna fans that agree that Dress You Up should be held in high regard. What was the first Madonna song you ever heard? Do you remember?

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Like a Virgin.

• 4:36Yasi Salek?

  Oh, where did you hear it? Did you say on TV?

• 4:38Speaker 04

  Radio, radio, radio. I was listening to radio in the car and at home and Like a Virgin and I, VH1 was...

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Started around those days, I think, or MTV.

• 4:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it was like, I think it was like eighty one.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  And I was watching it on TV as well, all the.

• 4:57Yasi Salek?

  So, so you heard the song and then not long after you also saw the videos, you saw what she looked like.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and that's the video where she's in Italy.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  Italy, yeah, on the, in Venice.

• 5:08Yasi Salek?

  In Venice, yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  In Venice with the bridal dress and everything. And I liked her from, from now on, I liked her. I listened to her any

• 5:21Speaker 04

  time I had, you know, listened to radio and it was unavoidable, you know.

• 5:26Yasi Salek?

  Right, like even if you didn't like her, she was everywhere.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  She was everywhere, she was everywhere. And then something funny that when we were in the mall, you were like eight and a half old in this roller and we were shopping and then, and then they were playing her song all the time. And you like Lucky Star and every time it's like, mommy, it's Starlight, it's Starlight.

• 5:51Yasi Salek?

  See you guys, you think I'm not a real fan?

• 5:53Speaker 04

  A year and a half.

• 5:54Yasi Salek?

  I'm a year and a half years old identifying Starlight, Starlight.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:58Yasi Salek?

  It's a good song for a kid, too.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  It, it was, yeah.

• 6:01Yasi Salek?

  Mom, you loved Gugu, or still love Gugu as well.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  I'm in love with her.

• 6:07Yasi Salek?

  For those of you that don't know, Gugu is basically Iran's Madonna. She is, right? She's one of the biggest and most successful and most glamorous.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Only.

• 6:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, pop stars from Iran. Do you feel that you saw any similarities between Gugu and Madonna?

• 6:24Speaker 04

  In a lot of, uh, in a lot of ways.

• 6:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 04

  But not in all the ways. Because Madonna was really daring and she did things that nobody has done it until then. And Gugu was, you know, compared to the society that we were living in Iran and all the closeness that we had. Uh, she was, she was the same and she still is, you know. I look at her, Gugu's, um, video from fifty years ago.

• 6:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  And however she fixed herself and whatever she wore, it's good to this day.

• 7:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 04

  She was so advanced, yeah. So advanced.

• 7:08Yasi Salek?

  Mom, do you think you have this blonde hair now because of Madonna?

• 7:12Speaker 04

  No.

• 7:13Yasi Salek?

  Even a little bit.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  No, I have blonde hair because all my hairs are turned gray. And I'm sick and tired of coloring it every two weeks.

• 7:22Yasi Salek?

  Should I go blonde?

• 7:24Speaker 04

  Yours is not all white. Mine is all white.

• 7:27Yasi Salek?

  It's getting there.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  The minute you get all white, you have to do it.

• 7:30Yasi Salek?

  It's your genes.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  Because it's so much easier and, you know, keep her, your hair healthier.

• 7:38Yasi Salek?

  I agree. We'll see you next week when I'm blonde.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 7:41Yasi Salek?

  Mom, I do have one listener question for you.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 7:46Yasi Salek?

  Mrs. Salek, assuming you didn't keep your maiden name, apologies if not. Good job being a mom and teaching Yasi about Madonna. Now, I'm sure you have played other tunes over the years. And I want to know what music you like or had on during Yasi's youth that you see as influential to her.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  Michael Jackson.

• 8:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, big time. We loved Michael Jackson in our house.

• 8:09Speaker 04

  I, the first album I bought in America was Michael Jackson.

• 8:13Yasi Salek?

  Was it Thriller?

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Do you remember, Mom, we used to put the VHS on and put on VH1 and MTV and tape the videos?

• 8:21Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:22Yasi Salek?

  So that we could, also you guys, I've talked about this before, but I need to report it to the authorities, Child Services, because my mom put me to work, labor laws.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  What? When?

• 8:33Yasi Salek?

  Um, when you would be like, I, this is obviously before the internet. There's no genius.com to look up lyrics and my mom wanted to sing to the songs. So she would sit me in front of the tape player and be like, you sit and write all the lyrics onto a yellow pad of these songs that I like. So I would have to sit there with a pen and pad and pressing stop every line.

• 8:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:54Yasi Salek?

  Kansas Dust in the Wind, all of these songs. I'll never forget it.

• 8:58Speaker 04

  Yes, you're right.

• 8:59Yasi Salek?

  It's illegal to make your child work like that.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  It wasn't because your English was better, your understanding was better and you were faster than me. For me, it would take for weeks to write on one song because I, I like to learn the lyrics.

• 9:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  And sing along.

• 9:14Yasi Salek?

  We like to sing along. Do you remember anything else besides Michael Jackson and Madonna?

• 9:20Speaker 04

  One more thing, uh, one song from Fame.

• 9:24Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I'm gonna live forever.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  At, at the house, I would play that. I think I, I had this record as well, all the. Tape. And during the day, I would dance with that song.

• 9:39Yasi Salek?

  Like, like Irene Cara did in the thing?

• 9:42Speaker 04

  Yes. And then, one day, one Saturday that daddy was home, radio was playing that song. And you said, mommy's dancing, mommy's dancing.

• 9:54Yasi Salek?

  That's right.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  And I wasn't.

• 9:56Yasi Salek?

  But you were in your mind.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  Washing dishes.

• 9:59Yasi Salek?

  In your mind, you were dancing. And that's, maybe that's why I wanted to be famous and live forever.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:05Yasi Salek?

  So, yeah, these are right. Okay. And then before Mommy let you go, Patrick and I are doing this, actually Patrick's making me. Um, so I'm gonna make you. Can you list your top five Madonna songs of all time?

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Dress You Up?

• 10:20Yasi Salek?

  Okay, number one for you is Dress You Up.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  And the one that you gave me, I forgot it, the slow song.

• 10:25Yasi Salek?

  Oh, La Isla Bonita?

• 10:27Speaker 04

  No, no, no, La Isla Bonita is one of them, that is slow song.

• 10:30Yasi Salek?

  Uh. You'll See?

• 10:32Speaker 04

  You'll See.

• 10:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I know you love that one.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  I love that one also. And, um, that's on top of my mind. Because I haven't listened to radio for so long now.

• 10:44Yasi Salek?

  What about Cherish? Not really one of your favorites. Nobody likes Cherish but me.

• 10:50Speaker 04

  No. Vogue.

• 10:53Yasi Salek?

  You love Vogue. Okay, Vogue is in your top five, that's four. What about one more?

• 10:58Speaker 04

  You name it.

• 10:59Yasi Salek?

  We really, okay, we really liked the Material Girl video. I don't know if you love that song.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  Oh, Material Girl was the other one.

• 11:04Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Okay, so that's your top, not, Like a Virgin is not in your top five?

• 11:08Speaker 04

  Like a Virgin, no.

• 11:08Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 11:09Speaker 04

  I mean, it could be, I like all her songs.

• 11:11Yasi Salek?

  But I, you like.

• 11:12Speaker 04

  Top five is those.

• 11:13Yasi Salek?

  I know for you, for sure, you love La Isla Bonita. You listen to it like every day of my life.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  We dance in the parties.

• 11:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  With that song, all of us, yeah. As when we were younger.

• 11:22Yasi Salek?

  And if anyone's curious, also later on, my mom became deeply obsessed with La Bouch, Be My Lover. And, um, that Hathaway song that, um, is on SNL, Night at the Roxbury.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, these are, these are good, yeah.

• 11:33Yasi Salek?

  I know, you have a. Because you're a gay man in your heart.

• 11:38Speaker 04

  Probably.

• 11:39Yasi Salek?

  Probably. Well, Mom, thank you so much. This has been a real honor for me to have you at my job on this program. I did okay in the end, right? I know you were worried for a little while.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  You did better than okay. You did fine. Thank you so much for having me. I am really beside myself to be here. I'm gonna brag to my all of my friends and they asked me to send them this video. They did.

• 12:04Yasi Salek?

  Well, we'll send it to them. They all better post it. They better help with the marketing.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna ask him to do that. Okay, yes, June. Love you.

• 12:12Yasi Salek?

  Love you, Mom.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  Goodbye.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected. Powered by Verizon's 5G network. And no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month. Or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code "HACK". Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.

• 12:49Speaker 05

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• 13:18Yasi Salek?

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger: Fresh for Everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details. Okay. Thank you to my mom, and now Patrick is here, my other mom. Welcome, welcome back, Patrick.

• 13:56Speaker 06

  Can't stay away. You know, I think you're actually having trouble letting go.

• 14:02Yasi Salek?

  Well, of course, it happens to me every time. It's like, I won't say Stockholm syndrome because I love it. Like, this morning, I was prepping again for this thing, and I was like, listening back to True Blue and Immaculate Collection. And I was like, could listen to this every day of my life till I died, no problem. Not an issue.

• 14:19Speaker 06

  It's not like that I think you aren't a Madonna fan, because I know that you are.

• 14:22Yasi Salek?

  Some people have accused me.

• 14:23Speaker 06

  But in our, in our lives before, in the before time.

• 14:27Yasi Salek?

  It's true.

• 14:28Speaker 06

  You weren't like, talking about her all the time.

• 14:30Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 14:30Speaker 06

  You definitely seem more obsessed now, and I think that's like.

• 14:33Yasi Salek?

  It's a, it's a side effect of my job.

• 14:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I think it's the listeners as well.

• 14:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 06

  Which we found out from some of these letters are really getting into the groove, so to speak.

• 14:46Yasi Salek?

  My greatest happiness is the comments that are like, hello, 54-year-old death metal fan here. Have never listened to Madonna in my life. I'm riveted. I've listened to every minute of every episode, and now I love her. That's, that's the Lord's work that I'm doing in these streets.

• 15:04Speaker 06

  For me, it's the young people who are like, I never knew who she was.

• 15:08Yasi Salek?

  I know. It's a, it's a thing. There's a question about that, which we'll get into. Patrick, you, because you, A, you have Stockholm syndrome of being on this show.

• 15:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 15:18Yasi Salek?

  You've volunteered to run right back.

• 15:20Speaker 06

  I'm having trouble letting go.

• 15:22Yasi Salek?

  You're having trouble.

• 15:22Speaker 06

  I just wait in the parking garage for you to call me.

• 15:25Yasi Salek?

  And you're a masochist, and because you're like, oh, we need to list our top five Madonna songs, which, yes, you made a good point. We have, throughout the episodes, perhaps said, this is in my top five 22 times.

• 15:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 15:38Yasi Salek?

  And that the math is not mathing there.

• 15:40Speaker 06

  It's like, every song we mention, we're like, it's, it's a top two.

• 15:46Speaker 06

  You can't have 60 top twos, so.

• 15:48Yasi Salek?

  Well, I don't believe in ranking per se, but I'll do it for the purposes of this exercise, but you have to go first.

• 15:53Speaker 06

  Should we count down from five?

• 15:54Yasi Salek?

  Like, go back and forth? I didn't make a list that way. I'm like, flying by the seat of my pants.

• 15:58Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 15:59Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 16:00Speaker 06

  Well, my number five was Get Together.

• 16:03Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 16:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:04Yasi Salek?

  Interesting. Okay.

• 16:06Speaker 06

  Um, I didn't get to talk about Confessions on my episode. It's a very important album to me. Get Together, for some reason.

• 16:18Speaker 06

  You know, as the singles came out from that album, like Hung Up and Sorry and Jump and all of that. I love all the songs. I'm a huge Stuart Price fan. I was a Stuart Price fan before Confessions. That was not my gateway drug. I was a huge fan of Zoo Woman, his band.

• 16:32Yasi Salek?

  Correct.

• 16:33Speaker 06

  And also like a big fan of everything that was going on during like Electro Clash and Blog House and all his Jacques Lucant remixes that I would download from like, I want to say, Matthew Perpetua's Flux Blog. I don't know if people remember this.

• 16:51Yasi Salek?

  I think people, people who listen to this show know about Matthew Perpetua's Flux Blog.

• 16:55Speaker 06

  Uh huh. This was like, maybe it overlapped with the LimeWire era. It was not the Napster era.

• 17:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 06

  And like the Hype Machine.

• 17:05Yasi Salek?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:06Speaker 06

  So I was very into all of that, like French House stuff that was going on and, Get Together for me is sort of like the emotional high point of the album.

• 17:16Yasi Salek?

  Hmm. Not Jump?

• 17:18Speaker 06

  No, but I'll, I do, I'm gonna get into Jump later.

• 17:21Yasi Salek?

  Love Jump.

• 17:23Speaker 06

  It's a very simple song, but it just has this like very sweeping emotional quality that reminds me of all of her best songs.

• 17:30Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 17:30Speaker 06

  I had to include it.

• 17:32Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's in your top five?

• 17:33Speaker 06

  That's number five.

• 17:35Yasi Salek?

  No, Ju- not Jump?

• 17:36Speaker 06

  No.

• 17:36Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 17:37Speaker 06

  Get Together.

• 17:38Yasi Salek?

  Get Together, got it, yes.

• 17:39Speaker 06

  Can we get together?

• 17:40Yasi Salek?

  It's gorgeous. Okay. And now I have to do my fifth?

• 17:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:44Yasi Salek?

  This is so stressful. Okay. My number five is Cherish.

• 17:48Speaker 06

  Love.

• 17:49Yasi Salek?

  I love Cherish. I don't care what anyone says. I'll die on this hill. It, give me faith, give me joy, my boy. That's how it makes me feel. It gives me faith and it gives me joy. I don't know if you're saying faith, actually.

• 18:00Speaker 06

  It's a low ranking for you considering how hard you go for Cherish.

• 18:03Yasi Salek?

  I don't believe in ranking, so I'm just saying stuff, doesn't matter. These are all in a good place in my heart. It's like Madonna's.

• 18:11Yasi Salek?

  Knack for writing a perfect pop song. It has an incredible little bridge, which we'll get into because we have a great question about her best bridges. It's buoyant, it's like a little desperate, which also all of her best love songs are a little desperate, like. It's fantastic. Love it.

• 18:27Speaker 06

  That was the one we talked about when she was doing Speed the Plow, right?

• 18:32Yasi Salek?

  It was her like last dish.

• 18:33Speaker 06

  I'm delusional on Broadway and I'm in love.

• 18:35Yasi Salek?

  I think I can make Sean Penn and I work the great love of my life. Like, who hasn't felt such a thing?

• 18:41Speaker 06

  And I mentioned another episode as well, that meandering kind of verse melody I'm so obsessed with. You can just keep going and going and going.

• 18:48Yasi Salek?

  Even though you don't like that song.

• 18:49Speaker 06

  I love that song. I love that song.

• 18:52Yasi Salek?

  Now everyone's Johnny come cherish lately over here.

• 18:55Speaker 06

  No, no, no. My real rec- my real record killer is gonna, I'll talk about it later.

• 19:01Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so what is number four for you?

• 19:04Speaker 06

  Number four for me is Crazy for You.

• 19:06Yasi Salek?

  Ah, such a fucking banger.

• 19:07Speaker 06

  It's like, it just fucking, it's, it's not like the most obvious Madonna ballad. I don't know if it was her biggest one.

• 19:14Yasi Salek?

  Ever? No, I don't think so.

• 19:15Speaker 06

  It just kills me. What, like, when you hear it, you're like, almost like, I forgot about it and how good it is. It's so eighties. It's like the mu- it's like eighties power ballad heaven to me.

• 19:26Yasi Salek?

  It has like such like a sticky nostalgia heartbreak feeling for me. Like, I always have this, this category of songs that are Sunday afternoon songs. You know the feeling of Sunday afternoon if and when we had real jobs and when you're like.

• 19:41Speaker 06

  I'm like, oh, real hangovers. That's where I went.

• 19:43Yasi Salek?

  Kind of. Yeah, where it's like, you're like, oh, like, I'm still in this, I'm still in Sunday, which is great, but Monday is coming and I have a bit of dread, but like a bit of beauty, like, oh, it's just, it's a Sunday afternoon song.

• 19:56Speaker 06

  It has a lot of like, it also has desperation. All the best pop songs do. It's like, it's just like so emotional and like so histrionic in its own way.

• 20:06Yasi Salek?

  That's Vision Quest?

• 20:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 20:10Yasi Salek?

  I watched it in preparation.

• 20:11Speaker 06

  A perfect song.

• 20:12Yasi Salek?

  A very bizarre movie, but I did enjoy it. Really eighties. Talk about fucking real.

• 20:17Speaker 06

  I skipped that one.

• 20:18Yasi Salek?

  Matthew Modine, babe. Again, the type of, the type of leading man we don't have anymore.

• 20:23Speaker 06

  True.

• 20:24Yasi Salek?

  No. Um, all right. What is my number four? My number four is Ray of Light, titular track. Kind of like cherish, just like God is flowing through me. Namaste, namaste techno. Like I, it makes me happy when I put it on. I have like a playlist of five songs that are like Prozac. Like when I'm like really in need of like, we're gonna feel good right now. And that's on there. Don't laugh. Blues Traveler, Run Around.

• 20:56Speaker 06

  Uh huh.

• 20:56Yasi Salek?

  Carly Rae Jepsen, Call Me Maybe.

• 20:59Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 21:00Yasi Salek?

  Swallowed by Bush randomly makes me happy. I don't know why. Um, and there's another one that I can't remember. So it's on there.

• 21:06Speaker 06

  Machine Head by Bush makes me happy.

• 21:08Yasi Salek?

  That's interesting. Got a machine head.

• 21:11Speaker 06

  It's like, it has a like driving intensity.

• 21:13Yasi Salek?

  It's true, it is, it is a joyful song.

• 21:15Speaker 06

  Ray of Light to me was always very like smoking pot in Golden Gate Park situation.

• 21:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it reminds me of high school. It reminds me of like probably doing ecstasy. So maybe that's why I think it's a happy song, like doing ecstasy and going to like nightclubs in Singapore. My mom's gone now. Um, where they would like play music like this and, and like the, the meme, by the way, that the man made of Madonna doing the Ray of Light dance in the back rooms.

• 21:42Speaker 06

  She's, she was really ahead of her time with that. It felt really of the moment when it came out, like it was very trendy. It was sort of like what, like with the neo-spiritualism that was happening in the late nineties.

• 21:55Yasi Salek?

  Prayer flags, yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 06

  You know, I told you that I hated Ray of Light when it came out and I thought it was an Oddwala album.

• 22:02Yasi Salek?

  You were wrong. Um, is Oddwala still around? I think it went out of business.

• 22:05Speaker 06

  No, but that's like a niche ref.

• 22:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you guys real heads would know.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  If you were there.

• 22:09Yasi Salek?

  Berkeley Bowl.

• 22:10Speaker 06

  I of course came around on it later and also like, but that has never left, like.

• 22:15Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 22:15Speaker 06

  The kind of eastern spiritual.

• 22:18Yasi Salek?

  Well, of course, because it, it.

• 22:20Speaker 06

  Coaching.

• 22:20Yasi Salek?

  It tied in directly with like.

• 22:24Yasi Salek?

  The erasure is not the right word, but the like waning in popularity of actual religion in our culture, which happened, you know, starting at the top of like 1990, around the turn of like 1991 and just kept plummeting down. And there is a vacuum. Like people, this is one of my greatest beliefs, people need to believe in something or to feel something.

• 22:45Speaker 06

  Heaven's gate.

• 22:46Yasi Salek?

  Most people, yeah.

• 22:46Speaker 06

  People needed to ascend.

• 22:48Yasi Salek?

  So they took away, you know.

• 22:49Speaker 06

  Take me to the spaceship.

• 22:50Yasi Salek?

  And they were like, well, in, in the absence of regular Judeo-Christian values, we're gonna put up some prayer flags and do some yoga and sort of like mishmash a bunch of.

• 23:01Speaker 06

  Henne tattoos.

• 23:02Yasi Salek?

  Is it lightly culturally appropriate? A little bit.

• 23:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:08Yasi Salek?

  Is it a little disrespectful to those religions that have been deep in, in, you know, long culture? Yes, but.

• 23:13Speaker 06

  I'm gonna say no.

• 23:14Yasi Salek?

  Was it fun?

• 23:15Speaker 06

  Because I think those religions want new recruits.

• 23:19Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 23:20Speaker 06

  So you're, it's more like, are you falling into their trap? Should be the question.

• 23:24Yasi Salek?

  I don't think Buddhism is like a recruiting religion, nor do I think it takes itself too seriously. You know, they're like, go off, go off, sis. Do your ray of light dance in the back rooms. So anyways, that's a long story short.

• 23:35Speaker 06

  Um, number three, we don't need to talk about it at length because we have lived to tell.

• 23:40Yasi Salek?

  That's my number three also.

• 23:42Speaker 06

  Wow. Okay. Perfect. We're speeding through.

• 23:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. God tier song.

• 23:46Speaker 06

  It's a perfect, it's beautiful.

• 23:48Yasi Salek?

  Seven minutes of pure bliss.

• 23:50Speaker 06

  Kills you every time.

• 23:52Yasi Salek?

  I think it's the episode, the film's episode. We, I talked about how, and, and in me and Paul's episodes, we talked about Evita, how the reason that, um, not Andrew Lloyd Webber, but Tim Rice, Sir Tim Rice of Evita said of Madonna.

• 24:09Speaker 06

  Didn't he run with Hillary? Tim Kaine.

• 24:11Yasi Salek?

  Tim Kaine. Wow. We're really, the amount of brain damage in this room.

• 24:16Yasi Salek?

  When Tim Rice was like advocating for Madonna to be cast as Evita, his thing was that she is such an-

• 24:24Speaker 06

  Too Latina.

• 24:24Yasi Salek?

  She's so Latina. She's spiritually Latina. No, that she's such a good actress within her songs. That she makes the lyrics so believable because she is both singing them and acting them. And I feel like Live to Tell-

• 24:39Speaker 06

  She believes them. She feels them.

• 24:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and Live to Tell is such a good example of that because Live to Tell is sort of a cinematic, I mean, obviously it was for a film, but past that, like, the lyricism is very cinematic. It feels like this drama unfurling in front of you and the way she sings it, like, you're bought in.

• 24:57Speaker 06

  It's also like a requiem for her career that she put out at the beginning, which is the most dramatic thing you can do.

• 25:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 25:04Speaker 06

  You know, it's like she put out this song and I think on some level she must have known that she would be singing it for the rest of her life and that it would take on like added meanings. I mean, like, there's a question about grief that we got that we'll talk about later, but on the celebration tour, she did Live to Tell and it was like this giant AIDS memorial. And it was like, so, like, it's like this idea of like, of, you know, we talk a lot about her being relentless and her persistence and surviving in this field where no one's really done it like her before, like the way that she keeps pushing forward. And it's this notion of it's like, I have to do it so I can tell the stories that no one was around to tell.

• 25:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 25:45Speaker 06

  And she like knew that in some, you know, in some way so early on. But I just love that song. It's so, it's high drama, of course. So I love it.

• 25:55Yasi Salek?

  It's perfect. We got a little bit of pushback when, from the social clip of episode one where Mel says that like her first major stylistic transformation was in Poppin' Don't Be Shit. People were like, actually, it was Live to Tell. And I just want to say that's not entirely correct because that was not like, I think it was a-

• 26:17Yasi Salek?

  Signifier of the transformation. But that video, I'm sorry, did you ever see this woman put on a knee-length floral collared dress again? No, that was simply a playing a role in this moment of the thing.

• 26:30Speaker 06

  I agree.

• 26:31Yasi Salek?

  Papa Don't Preach was like, this is what I look like now.

• 26:33Speaker 06

  It wasn't heralding like, this is who I am now.

• 26:35Yasi Salek?

  So, sorry, because I didn't want to fight in the comments.

• 26:38Speaker 06

  And you know, I think a lot of times musicians do that with soundtrack songs. It's like, if you have a song and it's not necessarily like the direction of the next record. It's a really good way to put something out.

• 26:50Yasi Salek?

  It was the lead single.

• 26:50Speaker 06

  And to try something, yeah.

• 26:52Yasi Salek?

  She put that as the lead single?

• 26:53Speaker 06

  Well, if it does well enough, it ends up on the record, doesn't it? But.

• 26:56Yasi Salek?

  The label was like, why are you putting out a seven-minute sad song as the lead single of True Blue? And she was like, I do what I want. Um, okay, what's your number two? I'm stressed now because I'm running out of slots and I have like eight more songs that I need to put in this top five.

• 27:09Speaker 06

  This is when we're getting down to brass tacks. This is like, let's talk about the most important songs that Madonna's ever made.

• 27:15Yasi Salek?

  No, that's not the exercise.

• 27:16Speaker 06

  That's to me, two and one. I'm ranking.

• 27:18Yasi Salek?

  For me, this is my top five, for me personally.

• 27:20Speaker 06

  Well, no, for me.

• 27:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  These are my favorites.

• 27:22Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 27:23Speaker 06

  But like, if I were listing like her most important songs or her biggest songs more critically and objectively, I would have different ones.

• 27:30Yasi Salek?

  It would basically be her Super Bowl playlist.

• 27:32Speaker 06

  These are my subjective favorites. Number two is Into the Groove. It's so interesting to me that it was a B-side of Angel.

• 27:38Yasi Salek?

  It was like only hurriedly put out because it only existed in the movie.

• 27:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 27:45Yasi Salek?

  She, she had this demo that she made with Stephen Bray in his apartment. And the thing that we hear today is the demo, they never did it again. And just like, she was like, oh, I have this song for Susan Seidelman for the dance scene. Susan Seidelman was like, I need to have that song in the movie. And then people were like, literally DJs would like tape it from the movie or from the music video. There was a music video that was based on the movie. They would tape it and then go play it in the club. And then so they were like, okay, we need to release it. But it didn't have an album place, you know?

• 28:14Speaker 06

  It was like a parody of a song that turned into a song? I don't know, but like it, like, look at the legacy of that song and her body of work.

• 28:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 06

  Like, she's still, she was dancing to it yesterday with someone on like a live stream somewhere. I didn't watch, but you know, it's like she, she's never gotten tired of it.

• 28:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 06

  And it has become like the refrain of her whole career. She'll shout it out in other songs, obviously causing a commotion. She name drops it.

• 28:41Speaker 06

  We got the Chacona Youth Into the Groovy song, which is also a really important

• 28:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 06

  song for me. I just think it's like a maybe her most classic early tune.

• 28:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Number two for me, even though Into the Groove is obviously in my top five, because I'm not insane. Um. Is Like a Prayer.

• 29:03Speaker 06

  There.

• 29:04Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry, like, I think Like a Prayer suffers, maybe not for anybody else, but like, I think sometimes for me, it suffers the fate of like, it's so major and so iconic that you forget until you sit and intently listen to it again, how fucking incredible of a song it is.

• 29:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:22Yasi Salek?

  Do you know what I mean? Because it gets flattened by the repetition or whatever.

• 29:25Speaker 06

  The chorus is just like

• 29:27Yasi Salek?

  When the gospel choir comes, it's just like.

• 29:30Speaker 06

  When you call my name. It just does something to you.

• 29:33Yasi Salek?

  It does something to you. Like, do that at karaoke. That's a spiritual healing. That's a cleansing. Um, yeah, and I love it. And also, it's like, everything that comes along with it.

• 29:42Speaker 06

  Iconic for a reason.

• 29:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I bet.

• 29:44Speaker 06

  And my number one is Vogue.

• 29:46Yasi Salek?

  Oh, okay.

• 29:46Speaker 06

  Uh, I think

• 29:48Yasi Salek?

  He is like other girls.

• 29:49Speaker 06

  Yeah. I did want to put What It Feels Like for a Girl in here somewhere, because I do love that song so much. And that's like

• 29:57Speaker 06

  a vibey song that I have on.

• 29:59Yasi Salek?

  I felt I had an alternate top five where I was like, what if I want to seem cool? Not seem, but like, what if it's like

• 30:04Speaker 06

  More idiosyncratic and weird.

• 30:06Yasi Salek?

  What if it's like Candy Perfume Girl and like, um, you know, the other ones that are in that

• 30:11Speaker 06

  Impressive instant.

• 30:11Yasi Salek?

  Bedtime Story. I love them. Ecstatic Cross is actually kind of like a little bit better than Impressive, but yes, that's like its own sort of category, but we're talking like straight down the middle. Jen, we're talking popular.

• 30:23Speaker 06

  I went off about Vogue in our episode. I don't know if I'm going to do justice to what I said before, but to me, it just feels like it was It's her most important song to me for like every conceivable reason.

• 30:36Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I think my number one, although I like, I want to be a troll and say like rain or something, but I'll put rain in my honorable mentions. It's open your heart.

• 30:44Speaker 06

  I'm so happy you said that.

• 30:45Yasi Salek?

  I ended up like landing. I remember Mel said it was his favorite and I was like huh. And then I was like, man, in my mind, like a prayer is my favorite album and I think for reasons it is. But I listened to True Blue the most like that is so emotionally evoc- they're both. I think they both hold the number one spot for me, but just.

• 31:07Speaker 06

  I know. And that video is so cinematic.

• 31:11Yasi Salek?

  Talk about desperation. You know, like.

• 31:14Speaker 06

  Chair dancing.

• 31:15Yasi Salek?

  Stalking like it's, it's such a good song. Um, few honorable mentions.

• 31:21Speaker 06

  I didn't make any, but go. I agree with them all.

• 31:25Yasi Salek?

  No, you might not agree with this one. I would have honestly, if, if we were going by how many, which song I listened to the most. Mine is love song.

• 31:35Speaker 06

  Interesting.

• 31:35Yasi Salek?

  I love that song. I wouldn't have said it maybe because it's not a prototypical Madonna song. And I think it would have felt really in place in my other top five that we said like the cool ones or whatever.

• 31:50Speaker 06

  Nobody knows me.

• 31:52Yasi Salek?

  I just love it. I just, I think it's so sexy. It's so vibey. Obviously there's fucking princes on it. But it's like, it's still very her because it's this like girlish sexuality.

• 32:02Speaker 06

  It's also a little smoking pot in Golden Gate Park.

• 32:04Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 32:05Speaker 06

  It has, you, it's very your vibe. I totally get it.

• 32:10Yasi Salek?

  I love it. And then I said rain because I love rain. And then I think, no, this is one for both of us, but like bad girl, babe.

• 32:15Speaker 06

  Bad girl's huge.

• 32:16Yasi Salek?

  Bad girl was fighting for a spot on the top five, but we had to, you know, we had to name some other names.

• 32:22Speaker 06

  You know what my honorable mention will be? Because I was surprised it wasn't my number one song, because forever, for a million years, when people would ask me what my favorite Madonna song is, I would just say it. And

• 32:34Yasi Salek?

  It was "Bitch, I'm Madonna."

• 32:35Speaker 06

  No, it was "Borderline."

• 32:37Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 06

  And I feel like after doing this podcast and listening to the other episodes that I wasn't on, and reappraising all of her work, I feel different about "Borderline" now. And it's not that I don't love it as much, it just doesn't feel like the most Madonna song.

• 32:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 06

  Because she didn't write it.

• 32:54Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 32:54Speaker 06

  And it was originally for another artist. I just love it as a song.

• 32:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 32:59Speaker 06

  And I love how she performs it. And it is one of my, like, most sentimental favorite Madonna songs, but I couldn't rank it with these ones for some reason.

• 33:10Yasi Salek?

  I feel, yeah, for me, that would be "Burning Up," maybe, also in that category a little. This is a fake exercise for me, because that was my mom's number one, by the way.

• 33:19Speaker 06

  Really?

• 33:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. That's her number one.

• 33:20Speaker 06

  Fashion song, of course, I love it.

• 33:22Yasi Salek?

  And just so you know, I don't stand behind any of this, because I don't believe in ranking.

• 33:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, don't yell at me, "Deeper and Deeper" is in there somewhere, too.

• 33:28Yasi Salek?

  Every Madonna song has a different time and a place and a special usage, except for some of the ones that we won't talk about here, that I'll never listen to again.

• 33:38Speaker 06

  My least favorite Madonna song ever, I'll come out and say it.

• 33:41Yasi Salek?

  Go off.

• 33:42Speaker 06

  Is "Incredible," which is on Hard Candy. That song is disgusting. It makes me sick when I hear it. I don't know how she even allowed it to exist.

• 33:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 06

  She must feel so cheesy. Well, she doesn't perform it for a reason.

• 33:58Yasi Salek?

  It sounds a little like the music that, like, a team of songwriters writes for a reality show.

• 34:05Speaker 06

  It was written for, like, a bad rom-com or something.

• 34:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 34:07Speaker 06

  It was like for, it's very "Suddenly I See" vibes to me, from Devil's Brata, another song I hate. It's very, this is my fight song. It's very, to me, it's very like Sex and the City, the movie two, or something.

• 34:21Yasi Salek?

  When they went to the Middle East.

• 34:25Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I don't have a least favorite. I mean, I'm sure I could pull one up, but... Nothing is coming. I didn't like heavily engage with the last three albums until I did this podcast, so.

• 34:38Speaker 06

  There's some good songs on there, though. "Make the Devil Pray."

• 34:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I love "Make the Devil Pray." I went off on a whole thing and you guys could already hear it in episode four, but like the Avicii Madonna album that we didn't get is like one of the biggest tragedies because like I think Joe Henry and her were like such a magical collaboration. Jump and, you know, her brother-in-law. She does great with like a little bit of guitar and a beat, you know, like these are good Madonna songs and I feel like Rebel Heart could have been mostly those and it just wasn't. And that's fine.

• 35:09Speaker 06

  It's okay.

• 35:10Yasi Salek?

  That's okay. And famously, I like Madame X.

• 35:13Speaker 06

  I think those songs could get another life. I think that they could end up like remixed or done live somehow and fit right in.

• 35:21Yasi Salek?

  I agree. And I love Isaac too. And I'm, and when I talked to Karen about it, I was like, well, I'm Middle Eastern. And she was like, oh, now I feel bad. No, I'm racist for not liking Isaac.

• 35:33Speaker 06

  Isaac is not one of the ones for me, but maybe I need to revisit.

• 35:36Yasi Salek?

  I just find it enjoyable. Okay, let's get into the mailbag.

• 35:39Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 35:40Yasi Salek?

  Hi, Ossie and Patrick. My question is, if you had to choose any 90s alternative rock band to collab with Madonna, which would it be? This is from Olivia.

• 35:49Speaker 06

  Of course, this question sent me into a spiral.

• 35:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, same. I was like, not this being the first question.

• 35:55Speaker 06

  Because what is an alternative rock band and what is the 90s?

• 35:58Yasi Salek?

  Should we, well, I think the 90s at least has a shape and a contour, but should we like put some parameters around what an alternative rock band is?

• 36:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. So the way I did it was I was like, I know my answer.

• 36:12Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 36:13Speaker 06

  A lot of my favorite bands in the 90s were also active in the 80s. They're also active after the 90s. They're not just 90s.

• 36:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 06

  And then also like, I don't know what an alternative rock band is, or like how electronic it's allowed to be.

• 36:27Yasi Salek?

  Right. Like, can it be Portisone?

• 36:29Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 36:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 06

  Is that your answer?

• 36:31Yasi Salek?

  No, but I mean, it was definitely in my top three. Yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 06

  And so, and there's like people that I've always wanted her to collaborate with, who I think she still could. And then there's the ones where it would never happen, that's super confined to the 90s, that could have been cool, but never would have happened anyway.

• 36:47Yasi Salek?

  Well, this isn't, this is like, you know, you're having dinner with people, dead or alive. You can do whatever you want. The rules don't apply.

• 36:54Speaker 06

  I've always wanted her to do something with New Order.

• 36:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 06

  I've always wanted her to do something with the Pet Shop Boys.

• 37:00Yasi Salek?

  Pet Shop Boys is my number three. Or whatever in my.

• 37:02Speaker 06

  And I know there was like a Pet Shop Boys remix.

• 37:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, where, um, what's his name sings on it because he said he always wanted to do a do out with Madonna.

• 37:10Speaker 06

  There's something very simpatico with them.

• 37:13Yasi Salek?

  Right. Although those are, I will say explicitly pretty eighties bands.

• 37:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:17Yasi Salek?

  I mean, they did have like a life in the nineties.

• 37:19Speaker 06

  The Pet Shop Boys, and so there's also like a thread there. But for the sake of going nineties, alternative rock band, my immediate thought was Nine Inch Nails.

• 37:29Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 37:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:30Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 37:32Speaker 06

  Cause I like what Madonna, I like Madonna as an electronic artist. And obviously Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross now are like electronic giants.

• 37:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 06

  And it's something that could still happen. I would still like to hear it. And I just think it would have blown my young mind if like pop star Madonna and like coolest band in the world, Nine Inch Nails. Did some, had done something.

• 37:56Yasi Salek?

  So are, I guess, are we trying, we're imagining right now?

• 38:00Speaker 06

  I'm doing it all kind of like back then it would have been cool and but now it would still be cool.

• 38:04Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 38:05Speaker 06

  But if I'm doing just back then, like if I was gonna put her with a rock band, like an alternative rock band, it would be Elastica.

• 38:12Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 38:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:13Yasi Salek?

  I love that.

• 38:15Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 38:15Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I know this is a crazy chaos, but my, my first immediate thought was Hole. I was like, maybe the, maybe the fabric of the universe would tear.

• 38:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:24Yasi Salek?

  But I would like to see it tear.

• 38:26Speaker 06

  I knew you were gonna say that. And I think it gives us an opportunity to, to speak a little bit about what we were texting about of Courtney and Madonna being almost like this, like yin and yang.

• 38:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 06

  Funhouse mirror for each other in the nineties, because I also wasn't here to talk about the VMA incident, which. Is so formative.

• 38:44Yasi Salek?

  Which could have its own episode, to be honest.

• 38:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly.

• 38:47Yasi Salek?

  Could have 90 minutes on that.

• 38:49Speaker 06

  And I brought up how David LaChapelle created this MTV promo ad a year later that was like actresses playing Madonna and Courtney Love as old women doing whatever happened to Baby Jane, which you can go look up as part of MTV Raw, whatever that is. And like, they have, they're an interesting case study because I think that the two of them have like, sort of circled each other. I don't think they've ever been enemies, but they've like been friendly and then, you know, they're not, but they're not super close. But I think that it's because they see things in each other that remind them of things that they don't like about themselves.

• 39:26Yasi Salek?

  Well, that's true of everybody, right?

• 39:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:28Yasi Salek?

  That's like, anything, anytime you are like triggered by anyone, it's because something in them is reflective of something you don't like about yourself. Because if it wasn't, you wouldn't give a shit if they lived or died, you know?

• 39:41Speaker 06

  Or it makes you a little insecure in some way.

• 39:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because it's something.

• 39:46Yasi Salek?

  I, yeah, I wanted to bring that up so we could talk about Courtney and Madonna, but to be honest, my answer is one that almost happened but didn't, which is Massive Attack. Portishead's a great answer, but Portishead doesn't make as much sense because they really just had, it's like Beth Gibbons, you know, like, but Massive Attack constantly featured a different female singers. You know, Tracy Thorne, Sinead O'Connor.

• 40:11Speaker 06

  One song with Massive Attack.

• 40:12Yasi Salek?

  She, they did, yeah, it doesn't count because they did a cover of the Marvin Gaye song, I Want You. Yeah, okay, that doesn't count because it actually did happen.

• 40:22Speaker 06

  It is an example of like what she would do on a Massive Attack song.

• 40:25Yasi Salek?

  Can I still say it even if it happened? I would want it to happen again in an original track.

• 40:30Speaker 06

  I also said Aphex Twin.

• 40:32Yasi Salek?

  Really good.

• 40:33Speaker 06

  Which would have been like a Chris Cunningham Aphex Twin Madonna video would have been insane. And I had another thought actually on the way over here, which is the Beastie Boys?

• 40:45Yasi Salek?

  I mean, long and storied history.

• 40:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's something spiritually Beastie Boys about her. She has that in her. Like, I would have liked to hear her do a Beastie Boys rap on a Beastie Boys song.

• 40:54Yasi Salek?

  Took them on their first tour.

• 40:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 40:56Yasi Salek?

  So, they go way back. These are all good answers, I think. Okay, you read the second question.

• 41:04Speaker 06

  Okay, this one I think is more for you. Yasi and interns.

• 41:08Yasi Salek?

  You're interns.

• 41:11Speaker 06

  Well, I took this one as not for me, so I didn't even look into it.

• 41:13Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 41:14Speaker 06

  Uh, just curious if during your deep dive into Madonna, if you looked into the Blossom, season two, episode rockumentary, uh, which if I remember correctly, has a dream sequence like Truth or Dare, Justin?

• 41:25Yasi Salek?

  It's funny, because I definitely watched Blossom. Did you watch Blossom, like, in real time?

• 41:29Speaker 06

  No.

• 41:29Yasi Salek?

  But I had no memory of this episode, and I did watch chunks of it on YouTube, and it absolutely does have... So the premise is that Blossom is sick with the flu, and her dad, coolest dad ever, rents her some videos, and he brings her, like, Truth or Dare, The Last Waltz, like, a couple of, like, iconic music documentaries. And I think, you know, in her fever dream, she starts to, like, imagine her... It's actually a genius premise for a sitcom episode, and there are some really cool black and white sequences of her, like, as Madonna with the thing. I'm like, it's, it's pretty good. I don't have...

• 42:00Speaker 06

  That's funny. So that was maybe a gateway drug for some people, even knowing that this was the thing?

• 42:05Yasi Salek?

  Totally, because Blossom was so, like, general interest, you know, like, sitcom on, on national television.

• 42:11Speaker 06

  I think there was a lot of parodies of Madonna.

• 42:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 06

  At that time. There was a French and Saunders, um, special that they did in England, those where they... It was a parody of Truth or Dare, and they named her Medusa, but it was a similar...

• 42:28Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 42:29Speaker 06

  Definitely go find that.

• 42:31Yasi Salek?

  Well, just like that one was more for me, I'm gonna go ahead and say this one is more for you. Did Madonna make more men discover they were gay or straight? Casey in Minneapolis?

• 42:39Speaker 06

  Okay, gay. And, um, the reason is that straight is already the default.

• 42:45Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 42:46Speaker 06

  So I don't think men or boys need to realize they're straight.

• 42:50Yasi Salek?

  Right. I... Maybe he's saying more, like, was she there, like, sexual awakening or whatever?

• 42:55Speaker 06

  I'm gonna get cancelled for saying straight is the default.

• 42:57Yasi Salek?

  I don't think so. I think that's kind of... Oh, right, because, no.

• 43:01Speaker 06

  No, like socially, and back then, it's like, it would be assumed that you would be straight unless you had to, like...

• 43:05Yasi Salek?

  I still think even to this day, probably, like, that's the case.

• 43:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, demographically, it's like 95% or something.

• 43:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 43:12Speaker 06

  Um, but also, you know, women are a dime a dozen, and it's like, you know, boys are also looking at, like, Pamela Anderson and...

• 43:19Yasi Salek?

  Women are a dime a dozen.

• 43:20Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, there's a lot of you out there.

• 43:22Yasi Salek?

  It's about 50%. Think, I think roughly.

• 43:26Speaker 06

  So, there are, there are a lot of beautiful women that boys can be attracted to, but there, for gay boys, there weren't a lot of, there weren't a lot of them wearing Jean Paul Gaultier.

• 43:34Yasi Salek?

  Right, iconic divas, if you will. That wasn't yours, though.

• 43:39Speaker 06

  What do you mean?

• 43:39Yasi Salek?

  Madonna didn't make you realize you were gay.

• 43:42Speaker 06

  Susan Lucci, maybe, when I was like one.

• 43:44Yasi Salek?

  I loved this, that we just, we talked about this when I was at your house, because you had the fake Susan Lucci book, which is not fake, it's a real book.

• 43:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. It's a fake, it's a Erica Kane, her character, wrote a book called Having It All.

• 43:57Yasi Salek?

  All My Children, which another woman that my mom, my mom laughed when I said she was a gay man, but my mom was literally a gay. And these are also her favorite people.

• 44:04Speaker 06

  I was raised on soap operas and there were all kinds of glamorous divas on those and Susan Lucci, very important to me.

• 44:12Yasi Salek?

  Okay, next question. Yasi, I'm a little hung up, I see what you did there, on the fact that you've never seen Madonna perform live, not even during the Celebration Tour. Respectfully, how did this happen? And for Patrick, have you seen her perform and can you please speak on that? Thank you. Bye bye baby, love Courtney. Okay, I will go ahead and address this, even though it feels like a weird allegation. Okay, so when I was younger, we didn't go because that's not what my family did. We didn't have a ton of money, we didn't go to concerts. Like, my mom remembers going to Michael Jackson, which is so amazing and major, but that was because my aunt worked at his dermatologist. No, I was like one, you know?

• 44:49Yasi Salek?

  But how cool is that? So she worked for Dr. Klein, who was famously his dermatologist and where Debbie Rowe worked. And so, got tickets through that. Anyways, but we didn't-

• 44:57Speaker 06

  LA, LA baby.

• 44:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but we didn't go to concerts. So like, that didn't happen. And then, I moved to Singapore for high school. In like 94-ish, 95? Okay, I'm not gonna see Madonna in Singapore. And then when I got back to America, I was like broke. And in college, it was like, I couldn't afford to go to the Drowned World Tour. Those were like stadium concerts, they were expensive. And then, if we're being, keeping it 100 and I'm totally, it's okay if people are like, you're not a real fan, I pretty much checked out, like, right after music. Like, I remember a little bit of our American life, like I remember hearing, you know, Hollywood and stuff, obviously, but at that point, I was like, I'm listening to the Smiths and doing drugs.

• 45:42Yasi Salek?

  So, that's so cool for you guys, I don't know what's happening here. And then by the time I was like, kind of back in the mix, I'm like, able, Celebration Tour was very, maybe I'm bad. It was very difficult to get tickets to, and famously Karen Gans was supposed to take me.

• 45:57Speaker 06

  So I was on the VIP list for the Celebration Tour.

• 46:00Yasi Salek?

  Patrick, you know what? You could have taken me.

• 46:04Speaker 06

  Who should I go with?

• 46:05Yasi Salek?

  Obviously not me.

• 46:06Speaker 06

  Well, anyway, I want Cody.

• 46:07Yasi Salek?

  Okay, that's a good.

• 46:08Speaker 06

  As God intended.

• 46:09Yasi Salek?

  That's a good one, but I'm just saying I would have loved to go. Actually, someone really came for me in the comments like, she's seen Gaga, but not Madonna. She's clearly like, as if I'm like a CIA operative here, sent by Gaga's team to like, we went to Gaga because my mom's friend had tickets. By the way, we had, we had a ball. My mom wore tutu.

• 46:27Speaker 06

  Which Gaga show?

• 46:28Yasi Salek?

  Monster Ball.

• 46:30Speaker 06

  Oh, fab.

• 46:30Yasi Salek?

  I wore fucking Diet Coke cans rolled up in my hair and we had the time of our lives because my mom and I also really like Lady Gaga. But again, that was full happenstance.

• 46:38Speaker 06

  Yeah. I've seen Gaga way more. I threw Lady Gaga shows, like.

• 46:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that was like more like in your.

• 46:45Speaker 06

  It was my job.

• 46:45Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so.

• 46:46Speaker 06

  We won't get into all that.

• 46:47Yasi Salek?

  To your question, can you speak to, was Celebration, that wasn't your first time seeing?

• 46:51Speaker 06

  No, so I also didn't grow up going to arena shows at all. My parents weren't into it.

• 46:59Yasi Salek?

  Same.

• 47:00Speaker 06

  So they would have never brought me. And then when I was old enough to want to go, I would have had to like find someone older to take me. And that was like a huge chore. We didn't have cell phones back then. You know, it was like, can you imagine the hoops?

• 47:11Yasi Salek?

  I had a Motorola P20, I was clear.

• 47:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I was going to local punk shows.

• 47:15Yasi Salek?

  Exactly, like, yeah. Also, we didn't have, like, these are very cost prohibitive events.

• 47:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, you would do like a couple a year or something. I would go to the Fillmore and see like Rancid or No Doubt or something.

• 47:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, which wasn't at like a massive stadium.

• 47:33Speaker 06

  No, it was at the Fillmore. And then the, the bigger shows even were at the Warfield. This is all in San Francisco.

• 47:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 47:38Speaker 06

  And then I would, I would go in the summer to BFD, which was the Live 105 Music Festival, which is at the Shoreline Amphitheater, which would have like 30 bands playing.

• 47:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 47:48Speaker 06

  Or I'd go to Warped Tour in San Francisco. Um, so I went to like big concert events, but I, it was never like stadiums to see pop stars. Also, it didn't really feel like. That was such a thing growing up in that era for some reason. Like it wasn't pop star centric, like the music that we were.

• 48:07Yasi Salek?

  By the time I was out of high school, and this may speak to like her career. It's just like the career wasn't giving in a way that I was like, I need to go see like, whatever tour followed Hard Candy, you know, and it's a Candy and Sweet Tour or whatever. And that's my bad because the tour looked amazing like and I watched them all and they're fucking incredible.

• 48:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're all really good. But so my first Madonna show that I went to was the Confessions tour.

• 48:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 48:34Speaker 06

  And it was not even my doing. My friends were like, do you want to go? And I was like, yeah. And I was sort of like, I couldn't believe I had never seen Madonna before.

• 48:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 06

  Um, and that album really got me back into Madonna because I had a fallow period of sort of ignoring her.

• 48:48Yasi Salek?

  Many, many such cases.

• 48:49Speaker 06

  Um, for similar reasons you mentioned, it was just like not my vibe at that time. I'd grown up on Madonna, so I was like, you know, then I went into a punk phase and then post punk and then electro clash. And I was like, I was like too cool. And then, I mean, I obviously paid attention when she kissed Britney Spears at the VMAs during Hollywood. Like that got my attention.

• 49:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 49:10Speaker 06

  Um, then when Confessions happened, I was like very much into gay adulthood. So it was like, it hit in a different way for me. And I'm so happy that was the first tour of hers I saw because it's like, I think it's her second most iconic tour behind.

• 49:27Yasi Salek?

  Again, I've now watched them all. Um, it's so, it's so.

• 49:32Speaker 06

  It was incredible. It was insane.

• 49:34Yasi Salek?

  I think we have plenty of representation on this podcast of all, there can be all different kinds of Madonna fans. We were, Patrick and I were texting me about this. I hate stand-ums because I feel like they like embody like Nazi Germany levels of like rules and fascism amongst themselves. And I'm like, it's, we're all on the same side here, babe, you know?

• 49:54Speaker 06

  You know what though? Like in terms of stadium tours and things like that, I'm not such a big fan of them as an experience. Like I can admire them artistically, but there's something about.

• 50:06Yasi Salek?

  Fun. It's hell. You have to like drive an hour. It's like going to a theme park to park. Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 06

  And you sort of are like, okay, they're doing this every night. It's very like.

• 50:18Speaker 06

  Militant.

• 50:19Yasi Salek?

  It's like going to see like a musical or something.

• 50:21Speaker 06

  Spontaneity, you know, it's not like going to a normal show.

• 50:24Yasi Salek?

  Which is good, I would have loved.

• 50:24Speaker 06

  But I did go to see three, four Britney Spears tours. Because I thought, because there was something, there was an X Factor with Britney Spears where you're like, this is gonna be crazy and insane.

• 50:35Yasi Salek?

  Something's gonna, something's gonna happen.

• 50:37Speaker 06

  And those were the most fun shows I've ever been to in my life. Because I think that Britney has a really special audience of like slutty drunk girls. And there's, there's just a vibe, like I remember when Britney played Madison Square Garden. And we were walking down the street to go to the show, this is for the circus tour.

• 50:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 50:57Speaker 06

  Like a pink limo drove by with like wasted, like topless girls in it. And they were screaming out of the car, it's Britney bitch. And we were like, oh my God, I'm so excited. This is gonna be the best night of my life.

• 51:09Yasi Salek?

  Really sound amazing.

• 51:10Speaker 06

  And it really was like, I'm so happy I did that. But, um, and then Madonna, I've seen live a bunch since then.

• 51:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, all that being said, I'll go to the next tour and I can't wait.

• 51:21Speaker 06

  And she's always really good.

• 51:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I didn't watch one single one, even like tours that were attached to albums that I wasn't like the biggest fan of. I was like, it doesn't matter, it's a tour, fucking tour. She's amazing. At every turn, she's amazing. Um, okay.

• 51:36Speaker 06

  If you had to put three of Madonna's work, works into a time capsule, what would they be? Album or song, video, movie, book, photo shoot, et cetera. So it seems like kind of open ended.

• 51:46Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 51:47Speaker 06

  Anything from the oeuvre. In a time capsule, what is a time capsule?

• 51:51Yasi Salek?

  This ruined me. You didn't make time capsules when you were, when you were in like elementary school?

• 51:55Speaker 06

  It's like when the world ends, they'll dig it up and it'll be like, it will show them. Okay. Do you do what is like, um, academically rigorous?

• 52:05Yasi Salek?

  Do we need to collaborate? Like, do we, do we have one time capsule and the two of us have to agree? Or do we each have our own time capsule?

• 52:12Speaker 06

  Well, I wrote three.

• 52:14Yasi Salek?

  I wrote three as well.

• 52:15Speaker 06

  With a bonus.

• 52:16Yasi Salek?

  Okay, you have an honorable mention.

• 52:18Speaker 06

  So. Let's see how much they sync up or don't.

• 52:22Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 52:22Speaker 06

  And then let's choose three from both of ours.

• 52:24Yasi Salek?

  Do you have Truth or Dare?

• 52:26Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 52:27Yasi Salek?

  Okay, great, because I feel like that, it's a little cheating, but also it's like one of her most iconic, let's be honest, her most iconic film work. It features music.

• 52:37Speaker 06

  Her most iconic tour.

• 52:38Yasi Salek?

  Her most iconic tour, it features music, it features her personality, it's, it's got looks, it's got, like, you get a lot bang for your buck.

• 52:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 52:48Yasi Salek?

  Even if you didn't, I think it's like-

• 52:49Speaker 06

  It explains a lot.

• 52:50Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 52:51Speaker 06

  I also, I also put the sex book.

• 52:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so I had that, but then I was like-

• 52:56Speaker 06

  I know what you mean, you don't even have to say.

• 52:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I was like, you could put Justin, my, my love, video.

• 53:03Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:04Yasi Salek?

  And cover a lot of the same ground.

• 53:08Speaker 06

  Also, like, it's a little like, um, Truth or Dare, because it is also sort of a document.

• 53:13Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 53:14Speaker 06

  It is an artwork, I think.

• 53:16Yasi Salek?

  I do too.

• 53:17Speaker 06

  For me, it's a stand-in for her fashion work, you know, like campaigns.

• 53:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 06

  It's Steven Meisel, it's Naomi Campbell, it's Tony Ward, like, there's a lot happening there. And we, but I'm okay for it to not make the cut, but it was one of my three.

• 53:31Yasi Salek?

  It was, it was definitely one I was brainstorming was up there. I have True Blue as the album. I don't, we don't have to have an album, but I just feel like that album-

• 53:38Speaker 06

  I like it.

• 53:39Yasi Salek?

  Or, but, or should we cheat and put Immaculate Collection?

• 53:43Speaker 06

  That was my fourth one of like, do we just put Immaculate Collection? Is that cheating?

• 53:47Yasi Salek?

  No, I mean, you could put anything, right? We're trying to, we're trying to teach the aliens as much as possible. Okay, so we have two agreed upon, Immaculate Collection and Truth or Dare. We have to round out with a third.

• 53:59Speaker 06

  Okay, my third thing is the like a virgin performance at the MTV Video Music Awards.

• 54:05Yasi Salek?

  That's really good.

• 54:07Speaker 06

  How, come on. Changed everything. But-

• 54:12Yasi Salek?

  Are we too, are we too like back half of career heavy? But yeah, definitely. It changed everything.

• 54:17Speaker 06

  We can put Swept Away in there if that's what you're hinting at.

• 54:20Yasi Salek?

  We're not putting Swept Away. Swept Away is not coming anywhere near my ten capsule. Shout out Stephen Weber, by the way, who did get in touch and said that it was his idea for them to do Swept Away. And I said, so that's your fault then.

• 54:33Speaker 06

  And Ariane Phillips got in touch and said, I love what you said about Swept Away. You are one of one with that one.

• 54:39Yasi Salek?

  That included herself, by the way. She was like, not even me can ride for this film.

• 54:44Speaker 06

  Exactly. She's just, she had fun making it.

• 54:47Yasi Salek?

  We just name dropped and I'm sorry because this is the perks of, of the coal miner.

• 54:55Yasi Salek?

  Living experience of my job is that every once in a while, when I come up for a breath of air, I get a DM from Stephen Weber and I'm like, Wings? I love you so much.

• 55:04Speaker 06

  Incredible.

• 55:05Yasi Salek?

  This is really hard. Should we, I mean, I guess.

• 55:08Speaker 06

  What other ones did you have?

• 55:09Yasi Salek?

  I had the Bad Girl video.

• 55:11Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 55:12Yasi Salek?

  I think, I think like, like a virgin. Express Yourself video is also so major. And like the David Fincher of it all and like the, I don't know. This is so hard.

• 55:25Speaker 06

  It's very hard. So we have Truth or Dare.

• 55:29Yasi Salek?

  And Immaculate Collection.

• 55:30Speaker 06

  Immaculate Collection.

• 55:32Yasi Salek?

  Immaculate Collection's great because I think it really covers so much ground.

• 55:36Speaker 06

  I'm sticking with VMA performance.

• 55:37Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I can get behind it.

• 55:39Speaker 06

  Even though Truth or Dare contains live performance.

• 55:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but that, that was singular. That was like, I don't know. I'm like, what about the Marianne Twinn up?

• 55:49Speaker 06

  And well, Like a Virgin, I think, made her a huge star. It made the VMAs a must see event.

• 55:55Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 55:56Speaker 06

  It like, kind of changed MTV, which changed everything. So.

• 56:03Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I'm with it. I can't think about it anymore. So it's a, it's a fake question. So.

• 56:08Yasi Salek?

  Dear Yossi and Patrick, writing in as one of your clergy listeners. Hell yeah, brother. I guess maybe I shouldn't have said hell yeah.

• 56:14Speaker 06

  Father?

• 56:14Yasi Salek?

  Hell yeah, or heaven yeah, father. We love to have you here. Second favorite demographic, whatever. Top three favorite demographic is my clergy listeners.

• 56:23Speaker 06

  Catholic schoolboy over here.

• 56:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 56:27Yasi Salek?

  He said, yes, it's true.

• 56:28Speaker 06

  Don't touch me.

• 56:30Yasi Salek?

  At one point amidst the many hours of Madonna discourse, you questioned whether we were out there listening, and I'm here to confirm that we are, or at least I am. God?

• 56:39Speaker 06

  God?

• 56:40Yasi Salek?

  I like Madonna, but would never have called myself a huge fan until I read Mary Gabriel's book a couple of years ago on a whim. It actually inspired me to write a sermon about Madonna during Advent, no less, which perplexed many of my congregants and made a handful of them very happy.

• 56:53Speaker 06

  We are sermonizing about Madonna. It's such a coincidence.

• 56:56Yasi Salek?

  Reverend Hillary, if you have this on video, this sermon, I would actually love to see it. Please send it over on email. Two questions, maybe one will pique your interest. First, you touched on Madonna's activism and experience through the AIDS crisis a bit in the series, but I'm wondering. Madonna had so many beloved people in her life die from AIDS, almost all of them at one point. Her grief must have been so overwhelming, not to mention what that level of sudden, unceasing loss did to her psychologically as she was also dealing with... being Madonna. We see where she provoked the anti-gay puritan Catholic system, where she raged against the machine and where she showed up as an ally. But where in her work do you see her grief? Live to Tell and Keith Haring homages? Do we ever just see or hear Madonna grieving or even just being sad? Okay, let's answer that before we go to the next question.

• 57:41Speaker 06

  I think that grief is an interesting subject in her work or in anybody's work because it's not like anything else.

• 57:50Yasi Salek?

  Okay, go on.

• 57:51Speaker 06

  Just as an experience. It comes and it goes.

• 57:53Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 57:54Speaker 06

  It hits you and it subsides. It happens in waves.

• 57:56Yasi Salek?

  It has different contours, has different ways that it actually feels.

• 58:01Speaker 06

  It lasts forever.

• 58:02Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 58:02Speaker 06

  So you feel different ways about it over time.

• 58:05Yasi Salek?

  I would make the argument that grief is actually the main emotion of Madonna's work because her entire shaping of it as an artist...

• 58:15Yasi Salek?

  Is sort of centered around the loss of her mother at a young age. And she's talked about this at length. And it's what fueled and motivated her to make art and to become an artist. Promise to try, babe. And so you could almost make the argument that any art she's made has been maybe not about grief, but powered by grief, you know? It's like powered by the need, and she's said this, so I'm not putting words in her mouth, the need to find love from the world because she lost the love of her mother.

• 58:45Speaker 06

  So it's like a driving engine.

• 58:47Yasi Salek?

  Yes, but.

• 58:48Speaker 06

  That's underneath everything, but even like on the surface.

• 58:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:52Speaker 06

  I think very crucially for me is like she often puts forward this notion of like catharsis and escape on the dance floor of like, kind of dancing through tragedy. And you can, it's interesting because you can single out like, you know, literally what you were saying, you could like single out any random song of hers and you can kind of find it in there sometimes.

• 59:19Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 59:20Speaker 06

  Like Vogue to me is a song about grief, which is so like kind of under talked about maybe, but you know, it literally starts with look around everywhere you turn is heartache. It's everywhere that you go. You try everything you can to escape the pain of life that you know.

• 59:35Yasi Salek?

  Holiday, holidays, we could take a holiday, take some time to escape like the pain of the world. It's what holiday is about, right? But I think also even more just like surface explicitly, like she has a lot of really deeply sad songs. She said, he said, oh, father is why don't you take a fucking butter knife and spoon my heart out? Promise to try, she said, that song fucks me up. Even like this used to be my playground, mare girl, ecstatic process, the power of goodbye. Miles away, I find rain actually to be quite beautiful and moving and have like a through line of grief, you know?

• 1:00:11Speaker 06

  Mm hmm. It's similar to Vogue because it's sort of about like moving through it. It's like the catharsis after it. It's like that you're going to keep living.

• 1:00:19Yasi Salek?

  It's also, um. That song off erotica, which is explicitly about losing people to AIDS in this life. And isn't Spanish Eyes also less explicitly, but sort of in a like a fable way about losing friends to AIDS? So she's also channeled it into a lot of her work in that that specific loss of friends to AIDS.

• 1:00:41Speaker 06

  And that's the cool thing about pop music. You can take a song and it can mean anything to you that doesn't necessarily reflect what the artist even intended. You know, like there's songs that are about grief to me that I know are not, were not written with that. But it's because it reminds you of something or you think of something. But with Madonna specifically, she's always been kind of a genius with her lyrics and with everything she does in the way that she kind of puts forward this concept of like self exposure. And she hides her personal, her private emotions in plain sight on all of her songs. And she confronts her audience with it, but more pivotally, more pivotally, I think she confronts herself with it.

• 1:01:25Speaker 06

  The video will be out at this point. I'm excited for people to hear

• 1:01:29Speaker 06

  this song on her new record called Dance Etiria, which it's like an upbeat club song. But she's looking back at her early days as an artist and her friends from back then. And telling the story of how she made it. And she does it through this like rap and she name drops like Martin Burgoyne and Debbie Mazur and all of her friends. And it's like.

• 1:01:53Yasi Salek?

  Kind of like the rap that I wrote.

• 1:01:57Speaker 06

  Great minds.

• 1:02:01Speaker 06

  And it's a fun song, but there's something that is so also sad and grief laden about it, but it's beautiful because it's like, even after all this time, she's never forgotten everyone who helped her. And it's, I think if people got into Madonna from listening to these podcasts, they're going to hear that song and they're going to fucking love it.

• 1:02:18Yasi Salek?

  Right. Because it's like.

• 1:02:19Speaker 06

  They're going to know all the references and be like, oh my God, this is amazing. Yeah.

• 1:02:24Yasi Salek?

  You're welcome, Madonna, that I did, I laid the groundwork for you.

• 1:02:26Speaker 06

  We teed it up. Stream it, get it to number one.

• 1:02:30Yasi Salek?

  As the people would like. Broadly speaking, though, to answer your question, like, how was she able to take on so much grief while being Madonna? I think she's, I think she's so successful because of what we said a little bit earlier in this question. Like, she is able to transmute grief into ambition, into creativity, into art. And like, not many people can do that. And like, because she can, the more she got, the more she was able to put it into her work.

• 1:02:56Speaker 06

  And the more she talks about it.

• 1:02:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 06

  Because she's like, this works. This is how you do it.

• 1:03:00Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:03:00Speaker 06

  You know? It's like, Vogue is like a triumphal song of gay survival.

• 1:03:06Yasi Salek?

  Gay resistance.

• 1:03:07Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. In the, in the face of cultural genocide.

• 1:03:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Speaker 06

  You know what I mean? It was like, she was building up gay culture at this time because it was literally being.

• 1:03:15Yasi Salek?

  Which is why it's so annoying. People are like, oh, she just took this and like.

• 1:03:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Yasi Salek?

  It's like, oh, okay. Okay. The second question from Reverend Hillary is, given her icon status, her talent, her radical activism, her love of provocation and her one of a kind persona, is there anyone out there who you would say is currently carrying forth the torch Madonna lit? The answer is no.

• 1:03:35Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:03:35Yasi Salek?

  For me, yeah. I'm really sorry, but the answer is no.

• 1:03:38Speaker 06

  I wanted to be careful how I say this because I understand.

• 1:03:41Yasi Salek?

  Not because I don't think anyone's like, great. It's just, he just listed so many things and I'm like, I don't see that in any one pop star right now. Like, someone wrote us an email that's not in this because it wasn't really a question, but they were like, saying that like, they think the, the closest comp for Madonna now is Taylor Swift in terms of complete cultural dominance. Yeah, which, sure.

• 1:04:04Speaker 06

  Uh-huh.

• 1:04:04Yasi Salek?

  I can, I can see that. But like, provocation, activism, they don't live there.

• 1:04:11Speaker 06

  My thing is more that, like, the time we live in is so different now.

• 1:04:16Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:04:16Speaker 06

  So we often talk about these artists from the past.

• 1:04:20Yasi Salek?

  To have a provocative pop star, now they would have to be like, fully right wing.

• 1:04:25Yasi Salek?

  It would have to be springtime for Hitler.

• 1:04:27Speaker 06

  You know what I mean? We can only dream. I mean, where, where is she?

• 1:04:32Yasi Salek?

  I'm sure there is, there is some countries.

• 1:04:34Speaker 06

  Her name's Lana Del Rey.

• 1:04:37Speaker 06

  But, you know, it's like, I think that there's like a kind of, um, we sort of put halos around these musicians from the past who are really bold and brave and spoke up.

• 1:04:49Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:04:49Speaker 06

  And were activists in their time when nobody else was doing it. And we now live in a time where everybody's doing it and it's kind of like, it makes you a little suspicious at times. At least I do, I am, because it just feels like, you know, it can feel really performative or prescriptive or like cynical.

• 1:05:06Yasi Salek?

  Because we live in like a post woke timeline, you know?

• 1:05:10Speaker 06

  And like, I, which isn't to discourage people from speaking up about serious issues, but there's, it's a little bit harder to parse and then, and maybe it's also just a symptom of like the world going to shit, that there's like so many more causes and reasons to speak up now that everybody, of course, does it a lot more.

• 1:05:27Yasi Salek?

  But on the flip side, there's so much less taboo. Because people like Madonna and many other people like systematically work to dismantle it. And so we don't like provoke against almost what, you know, like, what are the last existing taboos? Incest? You know, like, you know, there's a few hanging on, but like,

• 1:05:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:49Yasi Salek?

  I'm not sure a pop star is gonna come out and be like, guess what I do? I fuck my brother. You know, like, I'm not really sure that would work.

• 1:05:55Speaker 06

  Angelina Jolie, um, not kidding.

• 1:05:59Speaker 06

  But like, you know, it's,

• 1:06:01Speaker 06

  it's like Billie Eilish.

• 1:06:04Yasi Salek?

  I'm sick. I'm well.

• 1:06:05Speaker 06

  More on the activism side of things.

• 1:06:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Speaker 06

  It's like, it's just very ubiquitous now and for all sorts of reasons, not even just Madonna's influence. But I think that the way that Madonna did it back then was very frank and no bullshit and honest. And it wasn't like, insincere or coming from a place of like, I want to be like a politician. It was coming from like, she was sort of telling it like it is.

• 1:06:31Yasi Salek?

  I do think Gaga did.

• 1:06:35Yasi Salek?

  Do a lot of this.

• 1:06:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Yasi Salek?

  She's the last pop star I can think of and point to that like provoked a next level in in her own way like.

• 1:06:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:50Yasi Salek?

  People did like, you know, were like, what the fuck is this bitch wearing me dress? You know, like, there was definitely like, she was able to like stir up controversy in a way that I don't. And you know what?

• 1:07:01Speaker 06

  But she's not doing it now. And I think that there's a difference between when she started and now even because.

• 1:07:06Yasi Salek?

  Cause that was quite a, quite a decade.

• 1:07:09Speaker 06

  What made Madonna so magnetic and why it was such a big deal was because it was so

• 1:07:16Speaker 06

  candid and it was like not rehearsed.

• 1:07:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:19Speaker 06

  And it was, she was always very spontaneous in the moment. She was very funny. She would kind of give it back to journalists when they would talk to her.

• 1:07:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Speaker 06

  And people just don't speak like that anymore publicly. Everyone is very careful about what they say.

• 1:07:31Yasi Salek?

  Except for Chappelle Rohn.

• 1:07:35Speaker 06

  But her activism is about herself.

• 1:07:37Yasi Salek?

  Or yeah, whatever.

• 1:07:38Speaker 06

  So it's a little different. It's like Leave Me Alone, My Personal Space, Celebrities Have Rights. It's like Celebrity Rights is a little.

• 1:07:44Yasi Salek?

  I mean, she does, you know, she's very vocal about, um, I think LGBTQ stuff and whatever.

• 1:07:51Speaker 06

  Of course. So are all the Real Housewives. It's like, it's not special anymore.

• 1:07:54Yasi Salek?

  It's just, yeah, I, I think Patrick.

• 1:07:55Speaker 06

  Sorry.

• 1:07:56Yasi Salek?

  I think what you're trying to say, and I think what the answer to this is, is it's not possible.

• 1:08:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's just a different ecosystem.

• 1:08:02Yasi Salek?

  To be this person anymore. Yeah. And then our favorite line from Reverend Hillary, great pod series. Thank you. Much less traumatizing than the one about Alice in Chains. Um, I don't know if you listened to that one, Patrick. I cried while we were recording it. Like, I started crying telling the story.

• 1:08:17Speaker 06

  Many, there are many tales of woe.

• 1:08:19Yasi Salek?

  That one is rough.

• 1:08:20Speaker 06

  In the rock world.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

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• 1:09:26Speaker 06

  Hi, gang. Any thoughts on Linda Perry's latest comments? "It did get me thinking about all the near collabs or shelf projects Madonna has worked on. In today's musical release landscape, what is the direction that could make Madonna, make a Madonna album relevant?" Rude question. "I'm old enough to have worked in record stores when Ray of Light came out and I saw what a huge impact that had. The last couple of albums almost came without me noticing, but perhaps that's more to do with the current climate." I do kind of agree with Linda Perry, though. A new Madonna album should be an event from Passan.

• 1:09:58Yasi Salek?

  Honestly, fuck Linda Perry, first and foremost. No, just kidding.

• 1:10:02Speaker 06

  Okay. Linda Perry, like with all due respect, is not someone who should be working with Madonna, in my opinion.

• 1:10:11Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:10:12Speaker 06

  I understand her comments and why she feels the way that she feels, and she's not wrong from her perspective, but I think from a sonic perspective, her production is not what Madonna should be doing. And also, I think her comments kind of negated or ignored the primacy of dance music in Madonna's work.

• 1:10:34Yasi Salek?

  Totally, because that's not her thing.

• 1:10:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, and it is possible to have like a very beautiful, powerful ballad in the mix, as Madonna always has, but I don't think we need a four non-blond Christina Aguilera beautiful, whole nobody's daughter type of vibe.

• 1:10:54Yasi Salek?

  I kind of honestly, I just think her, I think her premise is wrong. Like, she says that she feels like Madonna's a follower, that, these are her comments, by the way, because we didn't say them. She's following trends, she's trying to compete with Charli XCX and this and that, which I don't, I mean, first of all, I think Madonna's always... Been looked at the field of competitors, you know, like, and that's

• 1:11:17Speaker 06

  I don't think it's she even sees them as competitors.

• 1:11:20Yasi Salek?

  Or whatever, of like, other chess pieces.

• 1:11:21Speaker 06

  Of what's happening.

• 1:11:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, other chess pieces. But yeah, I don't think she's trying to compete. I don't think she's following trends. I think she's had a feature of another very popular artist on her songs for the last like, five albums, you know, like, or four albums, like, starting with Hard Candy, you know, this is like a thing she's done. So I don't think that's weird for her to do that. Um, I don't find, we've heard some of the music. I mean, I think you've heard all of it.

• 1:11:50Speaker 06

  I mean, she did the Prince song. She's, she likes working with people.

• 1:11:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and like, this music to me, that anyways, what I heard, doesn't sound anything like it's chasing a trend. It's like, if you were chasing a trend, this is not the music you would make, you know, you would like, try to write like, maybe like a Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams ass song.

• 1:12:08Speaker 06

  Like a Billie Eilish song, or.

• 1:12:09Yasi Salek?

  So I, I just, I think the premise is incorrect. And in terms of like,

• 1:12:13Speaker 06

  I'm not, and like, who knows, maybe Bad Bunny is on the record. I don't know if he is or not, but like, that wouldn't surprise me.

• 1:12:19Yasi Salek?

  Y'all mind if a white girl speak a little Espanol? This can't be a Madonna album if there's all Espanol. She had Maluma on that other record.

• 1:12:25Speaker 06

  He's hot. She's not gonna meet him? She's not gonna shake his hand, say hello?

• 1:12:29Yasi Salek?

  There's nothing weird about that for me.

• 1:12:31Speaker 06

  Also, like, this, this factors into the fact that Madonna still goes out.

• 1:12:35Yasi Salek?

  She's out.

• 1:12:36Speaker 06

  She's in the clubs.

• 1:12:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's also just not, to answer more Payson's question, the last couple albums came without you noticing because we don't live in a monoculture anymore. You know, like, even Madonna, who's one of the biggest artists that's ever existed, does not have a grip on the entirety of culture's attention. Nobody does. Depends what your algorithm looks like. Like,

• 1:13:01Speaker 06

  And that's fine.

• 1:13:02Yasi Salek?

  And that's fine.

• 1:13:03Speaker 06

  Not every album has to hit. I feel like Confessions 2, for whatever reason, is hitting more, or it's gotten more attention.

• 1:13:10Yasi Salek?

  I can't know because I live in my own algorithm. What can I know? Attention from who? Yes, my whole algorithm is Madonna, but obviously it is. I don't know what it is for, like, for like,

• 1:13:17Speaker 06

  Maybe not streams, but I feel like it's, people are excited about this record.

• 1:13:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Speaker 06

  And I think a lot of that has to do with how the record is being packaged and promoted and like, she's changed up how she's dressing. There's like all sorts of things going on that are exciting and feel new about it.

• 1:13:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Hey queens, gay ass question here. She's had every hairstyle known to man. Blonde, brown, black, long, short, straight, curly, et cetera, all combined in different ways. What's your favorite Madonna hair era? Personally, mine is Blonde Ambition. Not from the show per se, but all the public appearances surrounding it. Slightly brassy blonde, above shoulder length, varying styles. Kind regards, Connor. This ruined me. Yeah. This is 1991.

• 1:14:03Speaker 06

  She's revisited it though at times. She's done this kind of look.

• 1:14:06Yasi Salek?

  She's got the hyaluronic acid.

• 1:14:08Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 1:14:11Yasi Salek?

  This was really hard for me, honestly.

• 1:14:13Speaker 06

  It was easy for me.

• 1:14:14Yasi Salek?

  Was it? What's yours?

• 1:14:16Speaker 06

  I have three answers.

• 1:14:18Yasi Salek?

  I do have multiple answers as well. Okay, go ahead.

• 1:14:20Speaker 06

  One is that Connor has the correct answer.

• 1:14:22Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:14:23Speaker 06

  It's the 1990, 1991, bleach blonde, Blonde Ambition era. You and I talk about how that's her best look with the ripped up jeans, the leather jackets.

• 1:14:33Yasi Salek?

  But to me, it's not that hair.

• 1:14:35Speaker 06

  No, no, no, but it is. That's just very done. But when it's undone.

• 1:14:38Yasi Salek?

  When it's undone, it's great. When it's very done, I'm just like, well, okay, well, that's just like old Hollywood. That's just Jean Harlow, you know, or Marilyn Monroe or whatever.

• 1:14:46Speaker 06

  And then my runner up for my answer is 1986, Papa Don't Preach, Italians Do It Better.

• 1:14:56Yasi Salek?

  That's the third.

• 1:14:56Speaker 06

  The blonde short.

• 1:14:57Yasi Salek?

  Third on mine, like kind of punk, the blonde punky short.

• 1:15:01Speaker 06

  That was like, like you well said, it was a big change from her previous look. They also did, they blew it out into the kind of Marilyn hair and the dancing sequences of that video. So you get it two ways. To me, that was like, it cemented her as a pop icon, of course, but it would, it would become very influential for a certain type of blonde woman in the 90s.

• 1:15:23Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:15:23Speaker 06

  To have that like stick, straight, short, shaggy.

• 1:15:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Speaker 06

  It was called the garçon, that hairstyle.

• 1:15:32Yasi Salek?

  Did not know that.

• 1:15:32Speaker 06

  And.

• 1:15:33Yasi Salek?

  Like The Waiter?

• 1:15:34Speaker 06

  You would later see it on China Phillips of Wilson Phillips.

• 1:15:37Yasi Salek?

  Sure, of course, famously.

• 1:15:38Speaker 06

  Uh huh.

• 1:15:39Yasi Salek?

  Hold on for one more day.

• 1:15:40Speaker 06

  Josie Bissette on Melrose Place. It's in, it's, everyone, the. Z kids, go Google this hair.

• 1:15:45Yasi Salek?

  Do you know what it reminds me?

• 1:15:46Speaker 06

  It's an incredible hairstyle, if you can pull it off, which no one can.

• 1:15:49Yasi Salek?

  But that's what I'm saying, no one can pull it off. Also, it's very much what you just described is like, you know that meme that's like, the sign becomes the signifier, becomes the whatever. I'm like, Madonna is like the actual, and then by the time you get to like, the Melrose Place girl, it's like lost all meaning. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm like, okay, it's not. Also, Madonna's so fucking annoying because she's so beautiful and such a perfect, like, Fibonacci sequence, you know, whatever face that any hair looks good on her. Like, if I had that fucking Papa Don't Preach hair, I would look like Nick Nolte.

• 1:16:20Speaker 06

  But it's also a texture thing.

• 1:16:22Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:16:23Speaker 06

  Your hair wouldn't move like that. It's like, it's, it's a whole, it's so.

• 1:16:26Yasi Salek?

  Keratin.

• 1:16:27Speaker 06

  That's why it's so like elite, that hairstyle.

• 1:16:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she actually has curly hair, or like wavy. That hair, the hair from.

• 1:16:33Speaker 06

  They treated the fuck out of that.

• 1:16:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but the hair, when you bleach your hair, it loses its curl. I don't know if you know that. That's like, that's like a very, when I bleached my hair, like, most of the curl fell out. Okay.

• 1:16:43Speaker 06

  Okay, the real answer, that I'm giving.

• 1:16:45Yasi Salek?

  This is the fourth answer.

• 1:16:46Speaker 06

  No, this is three. Three was his was right.

• 1:16:49Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:16:49Speaker 06

  Shout out to Papa Don't Preach.

• 1:16:51Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:16:53Speaker 06

  The fashion answer is the sex book, because that's her most flawless that her hair has ever looked, and it's because Garen did it.

• 1:17:00Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:17:01Speaker 06

  It's like, it's the Steven Mizel, and it is like, it's like glamorous old Hollywood, but it's messy and slutty. And that's like what's so cool about it. Bad Girl was like that a little bit.

• 1:17:11Yasi Salek?

  So my answer is Bad Girl video, because of the eyebrows. I know it's not the question, but I think like, the.

• 1:17:17Speaker 06

  Eyebrows are hair.

• 1:17:19Yasi Salek?

  Our hair, yeah. I just feel like it's not that different, like, basically like Bedtime Story's era in general. Is it for me? Because she has the bleached blonde hair. It's a little less brassy. It's a little more white. And it's the same kind of length, but she has it with the super thin eyebrows and the makeup is like, I'm also just partial to that because it's so 90s, but like, I think she just looks so perfect in the Bad Girl video.

• 1:17:44Speaker 06

  I know, the Bad Girl hair might be her best hair, actually.

• 1:17:47Yasi Salek?

  But my, my, my like secret in my heart? The Rain pixie. I think it's really slept on that Rain pixie.

• 1:17:54Speaker 06

  It's really good.

• 1:17:55Yasi Salek?

  Wasn't her real hair, right? It was a wig, right? But it just, she looks so good with that hair.

• 1:18:01Speaker 06

  And we got the voice note from Chelsea Fairless.

• 1:18:04Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:18:05Speaker 06

  Saying that she's single white female, that hair from Lori Petty.

• 1:18:08Yasi Salek?

  This is a beautiful way to bring that in.

• 1:18:09Speaker 06

  Who she had just met because they shot A League of Their Own together.

• 1:18:12Yasi Salek?

  Right. And like, listen, unfortunately, it's not where you take it from, it's where you take it to. As Jim Jarmmer said, and Lori Petty, we have all the respect for you in the world, tank girl, but Madonna did it better.

• 1:18:20Speaker 06

  But she had the hair and the eyebrows, it is true.

• 1:18:22Yasi Salek?

  Eyes popping like that with the like.

• 1:18:25Speaker 06

  But one last thing.

• 1:18:27Speaker 06

  Part of the reason why I brought up the sex book is because I love when Garin would do that thing with Madonna where he would do the like high ponytail with the fall, the kind of like Brigitte Bardot, Sharon Tate, like big hair, like it was a little like the hair she had at the 96 VMAs, she did that?

• 1:18:43Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:18:44Speaker 06

  Then?

• 1:18:45Yasi Salek?

  Honorable mention is the hair from the Brit Awards.

• 1:18:49Speaker 06

  Ooh.

• 1:18:50Yasi Salek?

  The like, super long, like crazy extension blonde hair, where she did Bedtime Story, is that what you? That hair is crazy. Okay, so we had several.

• 1:18:59Speaker 06

  So yeah, her hair's always, her hair always looks good, sorry.

• 1:19:02Yasi Salek?

  Also, again, like, original E-girl hair was also really cool when she briefly had that like.

• 1:19:07Speaker 06

  Pepsi commercial.

• 1:19:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, blonde bangs, but brown hair, looked really fucking good on her.

• 1:19:12Speaker 06

  And this is the thing with Madonna, you can't pick one thing, you can't pick five songs, you can't pick the best hair, it's like, there's too much.

• 1:19:18Yasi Salek?

  There's too much.

• 1:19:19Speaker 06

  Hi, Ossie, I've been reading Mary Gabriel's tome on Madonna for months now. Admittedly, I'm a slow reader and can never focus on one book at a time, but when you announced Madonna Month and seeing your dedication to deep research, I knew you, that you'd read this book, and you did. So my questions are, how long did it take you to read this book? Did you, with an exclamation point in that question?

• 1:19:38Yasi Salek?

  It's really long, this book is like 900 pages long.

• 1:19:40Speaker 06

  Yeah. Did you enjoy the read, or is it more like prepping for finals? Most importantly, what are you reading as a palate cleanser? Thanks for all you do, really appreciate, enjoy your podcasts and all your guests.

• 1:19:50Yasi Salek?

  Did you read it?

• 1:19:52Speaker 06

  The book?

• 1:19:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Okay. Um, thank you for seeing me, by the way, and seeing the toil. It took me about two weeks, but I'm a speed reader, and I don't always apply it, but I apply it for research because.

• 1:20:07Yasi Salek?

  Even Mary Garble with love and respect is a good writer. I don't care about the writing. I'm not like reading this for pleasure. I'm like laser beam searching for facts. So I'm speed reading and I'm like with my little book flags, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And I read every night before I go to bed for like an hour. And I took this book to the Korean spa for an eight hour day of just sitting there and reading it. And so I powered through. So no, I don't enjoy reading it. It's really like more like prepping for finals, but I gotta do it.

• 1:20:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:20:36Yasi Salek?

  I didn't really enjoy reading Christopher's book.

• 1:20:38Speaker 06

  A wealth of riches. Well, Christopher's book has a tone of voice that is just makes it special.

• 1:20:43Yasi Salek?

  I read like four books for this, so I had to like get through it. Thank you for asking about my palate cleanser. I had exactly a little bit less than two weeks where I didn't have to read a book for work. And I squeezed in quite a bit. I read Ali Robottom's new book, Lovers XXX, which is, you would actually really like it, I think, Patrick. It's set in eighty, the world of eighties porn in Los Angeles.

• 1:21:05Speaker 06

  Fab.

• 1:21:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's really, it's a great, amazing summer beach read. Mary Choi's book, Pool House, which is incredible. And I'm doing, actually, I think when this comes out, I'll have already done it, but anyways, I'm doing a conversation with her, so I had to read it. And this is my, my fucking love of my life. There's a new Eve Babbitt's book of her unsent letters and journals called To L.A. That the New York Review of Books put out and kindly sent me. Thank you, New York Review of Books. I really appreciate it. And it's just delicious. It's just like everything you want from Eve Babbitt's. Like, she's so fun. She's like so gossipy, but like in the smartest, cuntiest, funnest way.

• 1:21:48Yasi Salek?

  Every person mentioned is someone that's like opens up another world of like, I need to go look into this person. Like, just magical, magical. I implore you, if you like are into Los Angeles in the sixties and seventies. If you're into like a fun party girl who was the Mario to Joan Didion. This is my, or the Wario, however you want to see it. She was like if Joan Didion was fun and liked to fuck.

• 1:22:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:22:17Yasi Salek?

  And did drugs. And that's what I read. Okay. Um, next question. Who should Madonna get to produce her next album? And who should be the features and genres?

• 1:22:28Speaker 06

  It is a good question, and it's my favorite topic. I've, I talk about this a lot.

• 1:22:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:34Speaker 06

  So I know what my answer is.

• 1:22:35Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:22:36Speaker 06

  But I also have a lot of answers.

• 1:22:37Yasi Salek?

  I know. Well, I think this is like, this is like a fun exercise where you could be like, I'm, maybe I'm the producer in a broader Rick Rubin sense, and then you get to kind of handpick like all of the parts of it, you know?

• 1:22:48Speaker 06

  Yeah. And I have tried to push some of this.

• 1:22:51Yasi Salek?

  My-

• 1:22:51Speaker 06

  On her.

• 1:22:52Yasi Salek?

  My biggest one and like, most important to me would be I really want her to work with Patrick Leonard again. I know it's like, maybe some would see it as like going backwards in a way, but I just think like, it doesn't have to be for the whole album, you know, it doesn't have to be an entire like wall to wall 12 songs by Patrick Leonard, but I just feel that there's such a magic when the two of them got together and like, I would, I would welcome a twen- like this decade version of what a song they would make, or a couple of songs they would make together would be like, I would just really love to hear that.

• 1:23:26Speaker 06

  Yeah. There's a question coming up later where I want to get back into that, actually.

• 1:23:30Yasi Salek?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:23:32Speaker 06

  So, you know, keeping in mind that I really love and respect and admire Madonna's stature in electronic music

• 1:23:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:40Speaker 06

  and keeping it a little bit dance floor oriented. I've always really wanted her to work with Jamie XX.

• 1:23:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Which, you know, she's tied with Romy, like maybe it's, you know?

• 1:23:51Speaker 06

  It feels right to me.

• 1:23:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Speaker 06

  I also just love the way that he can kind of like,

• 1:23:59Speaker 06

  take old records and work them in and make them feel new. Like I think he would have a lot of fun with her archives, like discovering things and flipping them and-

• 1:24:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Speaker 06

  It just feels like it would be spectacular. So I hope that happens. I was a little bit expecting that he might do something with her coming up.

• 1:24:22Speaker 06

  But the thing is, it's like, when it comes to Madonna and producers, like, I don't need her to be working with like, the hottest new

• 1:24:29Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:24:30Speaker 06

  person, or whoever's the coolest new thing.

• 1:24:32Yasi Salek?

  I would love to hear, like, just for my own personal pleasure, like, her work with, like, Dream Gang. Like, a Madonna Blade song. Like, I'm seated.

• 1:24:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, the dare.

• 1:24:42Yasi Salek?

  I don't think that's the coolest. I just think it's like, they're so kind of in a weird, occupy a weird space, and I feel like hearing those worlds come together, which is something she's done so amazingly throughout her entire career, is like, what if this but with Madonna? And then you're like, oh, it like, opens up a whole new thing.

• 1:24:58Speaker 06

  Exactly. So, there's like, I've had conversations with friends, we've had really silly names come up sometimes, like, what if she made a record with Richard X?

• 1:25:07Yasi Salek?

  Why not? Features-wise, I mean, the one that came to mind, and I would still really love to hear, is Rihanna. I would love to hear her do, like, something with Rihanna.

• 1:25:15Speaker 06

  Okay, okay. This is also, I have a whole Rihanna speech coming up later.

• 1:25:20Yasi Salek?

  I just think it could be really cool.

• 1:25:21Speaker 06

  We're so, you keep spoiling

• 1:25:23Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry.

• 1:25:23Speaker 06

  topics to come. But yes, that would be incredible. Features I didn't really think much about, I got very hung up on the producer part, but

• 1:25:32Yasi Salek?

  Well, because it's obviously so important.

• 1:25:33Speaker 06

  You know, I'm like vaporwave Madonna, is there Dan Lowpattin Madonna, is there George Clanton Madonna?

• 1:25:39Yasi Salek?

  George Clanton Madonna.

• 1:25:41Speaker 06

  Is there FC UKers Madonna?

• 1:25:43Yasi Salek?

  Or like Nina Giorachi, like, I think there's like, there's so many nowadays, there's like

• 1:25:47Speaker 06

  Or like, Jay Lloyd from Jungle would feel very Madonna.

• 1:25:51Yasi Salek?

  There's so many incredible young artists doing like, cool things with just like a laptop and the, I mean, I'll say it, I'm brave. Grimes.

• 1:26:03Speaker 06

  Grimes Madonna would be very

• 1:26:06Yasi Salek?

  Again, could go either way.

• 1:26:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. It could be very wrong, or it can be right.

• 1:26:10Yasi Salek?

  Or it could be really right.

• 1:26:12Speaker 06

  And then my other idea, I know they're broken up.

• 1:26:17Speaker 06

  Daft Punk?

• 1:26:19Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 1:26:19Speaker 06

  Why not?

• 1:26:20Yasi Salek?

  That seems like more like down the line.

• 1:26:22Speaker 06

  How bad could it be? You know, it's like-

• 1:26:24Yasi Salek?

  Could be good.

• 1:26:24Speaker 06

  Could be an opportunity to get Nile Rodgers back.

• 1:26:26Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:26:27Speaker 06

  Doing something.

• 1:26:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:29Speaker 06

  Would be pretty major.

• 1:26:31Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:26:31Speaker 06

  It couldn't be bad.

• 1:26:33Yasi Salek?

  Well, you never know, babe.

• 1:26:35Speaker 06

  True.

• 1:26:37Yasi Salek?

  Hi, Yasi and Patrick. Yastrick? He gave us a- he gave us a couple names.

• 1:26:44Yasi Salek?

  This is for our, for our, who's that gay? Uh, that will be our wedding, our wedding invite, the... Okay, my question is, after 63 years on the planet, the only Madonna- He's, this is a 63-year-old man listening to our- amen, brother. "The only Madonna albums I own are Like a Virgin, The Immaculate Collection, but it is the Royal Box version with CD, VHS, and postcards." Hell, yeah.

• 1:27:04Speaker 06

  Amazing.

• 1:27:05Yasi Salek?

  And Songs to Remember. I was not prepared for that. It was a random third one. "If I could only have one more to make my collection more immaculate, what should it be?" I think we're gonna have different answers.

• 1:27:16Speaker 06

  Well, thank you for still buying albums.

• 1:27:17Yasi Salek?

  Yes, totally. And like, the Royal Box version sounds incredible.

• 1:27:22Speaker 06

  This, I think, is, it's like, are we judging based on like, what is an important vinyl?

• 1:27:27Yasi Salek?

  Or what sounds good on vinyl, which I don't know anything about that, honestly.

• 1:27:31Speaker 06

  Which vinyl has the craziest packaging? Is like, do you need the patchouli from Like a Prayer?

• 1:27:37Yasi Salek?

  But they don't have that anymore.

• 1:27:38Speaker 06

  I don't know why I said this. I just said Confessions on a Dance Floor.

• 1:27:41Yasi Salek?

  I knew you were gonna say that.

• 1:27:42Speaker 06

  And Confessions Live.

• 1:27:43Yasi Salek?

  Mine is erotica.

• 1:27:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:27:47Yasi Salek?

  Interesting. It's a fucking cool, it's like, a cool and weird album that isn't in the vibe of the things that he already has.

• 1:27:54Speaker 06

  Great.

• 1:27:54Yasi Salek?

  But there's no wrong answer.

• 1:27:55Speaker 06

  Get both.

• 1:27:57Yasi Salek?

  There is a wrong answer. It's hard candy.

• 1:28:01Yasi Salek?

  Just kidding.

• 1:28:02Speaker 06

  Yasi and Patrick, your deeper and deeper PhD-level dives on the Madonna epics have been giving me life. "One hour of viewing every night before bed has been like the sweetest candy syrup treat." Oh my gosh, I don't even know if I read this.

• 1:28:16Yasi Salek?

  It's sticky and sweet.

• 1:28:17Speaker 06

  "I've been a Madonna forever acolyte for over 40 years, and this has been like reliving these formative years through a shadow biography." Thank you. Question?

• 1:28:26Speaker 06

  Madonna returned to collaborate with Patrick Leonard for Frozen, but she rarely goes back as she has with Stuart Price. How do you explain this? Simply the triumph of his work on the Celebration Tour? Or a return to her last significant commercial and cultural success? I like how Patrick referred to Erotica being the prequel to Confessions albums. How does he feel about the styling and couture of the Confessions 2 epoch? Again, she's returning to previously worn looks. I don't think she's ever done that before. How would you either advise mother on which creative direction to take after Confessions 2? Oh, my God. With endless gratitude and your tremendous scholarship, sham. P.S. Could you please tackle Janet? And she gave us so much this has been erased. I agree.

• 1:29:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, don't worry about the P.S. I think we will probably do that. Now that I, now that I feel like I could do a pop star. Like, I was worried that I couldn't do a pop star. But I feel like if it's the right pop star, I could. Because I do love Janet and I have a history, you know?

• 1:29:20Speaker 06

  For sure.

• 1:29:21Yasi Salek?

  Lot of questions in here.

• 1:29:22Speaker 06

  OK. So let's talk about Madonna and Stuart. I think his music with her is just incredibly significant. It's very significant to the fans. The Confession Tour is like a full remix album that is like, holds up equally with Confessions. Like, if you're into Confessions, Confessions Tour is a big deal to you. I would tell everyone to go listen to the Confessions Tour version of Erotica. It's like a really important remix that was just for that tour. It's so fucking fab.

• 1:29:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:54Speaker 06

  So Stuart came back and did the music for the Celebration Tour, where he kind of reworked her whole catalog. And that was sort of the beginning of them coming back together to do Confessions 2.

• 1:30:04Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:30:06Speaker 06

  So they have done a lot of music, even if it's not all, like, multiple albums, like she's done with some others. But what's interesting is she does go back to people, you know? Like, she went back to Mirway from Adam X.

• 1:30:17Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:30:19Speaker 06

  Which was like 15 years after their work together on American Life. And then William Morbid came back for M.D.N.A.

• 1:30:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:26Speaker 06

  After Ray of Light. And that's like, she takes these big stretches and then it's kind of like, what if I tapped him again?

• 1:30:33Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:30:33Speaker 06

  And like, that's what I think is so interesting about what you were saying about Patrick Leonard, because I can see it happening.

• 1:30:37Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:30:38Speaker 06

  She kind of like... She moves around and then she comes back to people.

• 1:30:42Yasi Salek?

  I think this was so smart to do this Stewart thing now. Like you said, the Celebration tour obviously like kind of set the stage and tone for it. And Sham, I think, alluded to this, but like Confessions was her last great masterwork, you know? And it makes sense that she'd want to sort of like, be like, hey, remember this, you know? But I, for me personally, I think if I was the creative director, it would make so much sense for the next thing to be then, okay, but remember, like, remember, remember, like, remember what I'm like, really, like, the bread and butter Madonna? And go back, because also it's like, I think, like, how cool would it be to have like those two next to each other? It's like, back in the dance floor, the club, whatever, and then back to like basics, like,

• 1:31:26Yasi Salek?

  reminding us of like the OG Madonna with the Patrick Leonard music. And maybe it's a little updated. I think I, I just want to hear a little more like pop, straight up pop Madonna.

• 1:31:36Speaker 06

  Well, it's interesting to invoke Frozen because my thought on this was that now that she's revisited Confessions, and she did put out the Veronica Electronica compilation of Ray of Light era songs and versions, but almost revisiting Ray of Light the way that she's revisiting Confessions now.

• 1:31:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:58Speaker 06

  Like, going from like, the clubbiness of Confessions to a more kind of like spiritualized.

• 1:32:06Yasi Salek?

  That would be a good collaboration, too.

• 1:32:08Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. It would be great. Do you know what I'm saying?

• 1:32:11Yasi Salek?

  So maybe she gets the, the gang back together, William Orbit and Patrick Leonard, and like does something with that.

• 1:32:18Speaker 06

  And some new people, but just like kind of doing a similar, a similar Ray of Light vibe. Because Ray of Light is like, we think of it as being this like, kind of techno record and this like euphoric kind of.

• 1:32:32Yasi Salek?

  No, it has.

• 1:32:33Speaker 06

  You think of the song where I have like, you know what I mean? It's really stands in there, but it has like just straight up pop songs that are bangers on it.

• 1:32:39Yasi Salek?

  Ballads and like, yeah. I do still, I'll triple down on my thing, which is I think that the best Madonna songs are made when it's just her and one other person. Just like, time and time again, that's like hung up. I mean, all of, you know, like it's by and large.

• 1:32:56Speaker 06

  But my advice is also call Jamie XX.

• 1:32:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, right, okay.

• 1:33:00Speaker 06

  You know, do a new record, new direction.

• 1:33:02Yasi Salek?

  He also asked you how you feel about the styling and couture of the Confessions 2 epic.

• 1:33:10Speaker 06

  I support it.

• 1:33:12Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:33:13Speaker 06

  It's, it's, you know, there's some things that are coming out soon that people will see more that will be very surprising, which I'm excited about. I feel like she's taking more, I'm not gonna say risks, but it's a bit of a departure.

• 1:33:26Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:33:26Speaker 06

  For the last several albums, it's a, it became a little predictable, like she likes to wear all black. You know, she had the grills happening. She was, she likes to look like tough and hard and like badass. And she's like, she's comfortable being with these very like kind of strong looks. She likes a strong shoulder. She likes gloves, you know, it's like, there's like things that you expect. And what I really loved about the Confessions 2 imagery was that she was going back to the sort of confessions look, but doing an updated version of it. And it was like pinks and purples, but she's doing it in this way that still feels cool. And it's like, I'm looking forward to people seeing the things that I know are on the way.

• 1:34:07Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:34:07Speaker 06

  Because she dips into, you'll see that it's like, she's not abandoning any of those things like that make up her personal style. They do come back. She is wearing black a lot. There's like some very exciting, very pop star.

• 1:34:19Yasi Salek?

  Are there any fingerless gloves?

• 1:34:20Speaker 06

  Breastplate type things going on.

• 1:34:22Yasi Salek?

  Fingerless gloves?

• 1:34:23Speaker 06

  You know what? I don't, I didn't fixate, so I don't remember.

• 1:34:27Yasi Salek?

  I love when she wears fingerless gloves.

• 1:34:28Speaker 06

  She has a really fun fashion editorial coming out that's like a complete left turn from all of this that I think is gonna be a conversation starter. Yeah, I think that it, to me, it feels like she's branching out more. And maybe she's being more collaborative with her stylist Rita, who styles her. She's also working with some other stylists here and there.

• 1:34:49Yasi Salek?

  Okay, great.

• 1:34:50Speaker 06

  I've probably said too much. I know too much.

• 1:34:52Yasi Salek?

  I can't wait to see it. I've been enjoying the looks that I've seen so far, which is again, this is June 1st when we're recording this.

• 1:34:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:34:58Yasi Salek?

  I think she looks cool. And you know what? I'm gonna say it. I'd like to wear fingerless gloves on this podcast. Do you think I could pull it off?

• 1:35:05Speaker 06

  Why?

• 1:35:06Yasi Salek?

  I just really like how they look. I think they're cool.

• 1:35:08Speaker 06

  See, when I see them, I'm just like, someone doesn't like how their hands look and they're covering them.

• 1:35:11Yasi Salek?

  Well, yeah, I'm 44, so I'm also, but I just, I don't know, they-

• 1:35:15Speaker 06

  We need like moisture gloves.

• 1:35:17Yasi Salek?

  There's, you know, the Michael Jackson of it all.

• 1:35:21Speaker 06

  I love a glove.

• 1:35:22Yasi Salek?

  I love a glove. Okay, the next one. First of all, thank you for the Madonna deep dive. It did for me what the Bible probably does for born again Christians. I'm 45, so I feel like Madonna's always been there, but except for a few moments, like in 2005, when I happened to be at the Roxy, Madonna does surprise appearance, hung up.

• 1:35:41Speaker 06

  With one Karen Gans.

• 1:35:42Yasi Salek?

  With one Karen Gans. I've never been a student of Madonna, but your podcast has converted me into an obsessive. I'm revisiting old albums, movies, etc. I even got a vinyl of Like a Virgin. Hell, yeah. Support physical media. My question is, if, what if any TV or cinema treatment of Madonna's life or career would you like to see? As I was listening, I couldn't help thinking this would make for an amazing 10-part Ken Burns-style documentary. Thanks, Alex. Well, famously, I am the Ken Burns of dumb bitches.

• 1:36:10Speaker 06

  Um, I've already pitched that documentary, of course.

• 1:36:13Yasi Salek?

  That's what I think it should be. I'm like, real like, please don't make a biopic.

• 1:36:19Speaker 06

  I'm okay with all of it. I'm like, I'm like a glutton for punishment with Madonna. I will take it all, anything I can get. I love the like, old, straight-to-video Lifetime movie about Madonna starring an actress who I'll never forget, named Tarumi Matthews, whose career was built upon her impersonating Madonna back in the 90s. It was crazy.

• 1:36:38Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 1:36:39Speaker 06

  I'll watch it all. The unauthorized documentaries, just like, bring it on.

• 1:36:43Yasi Salek?

  You just want as much content as possible.

• 1:36:46Speaker 06

  I will always be amused by it.

• 1:36:48Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:36:50Speaker 06

  For me, it's like, I would like to see a sort of traditional music documentary series about her in the style of like, if you've ever seen Spike Lee's documentary about Off the Wall, the Michael Jackson album.

• 1:37:03Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:04Speaker 06

  It's so spectacular and like, I want that, but I want it for every Madonna album.

• 1:37:08Yasi Salek?

  I think like, just a massive docu-series would be so cool because I just, the thing about Madonna is kind of a little bit like what- I said about the Michael movie when I went on the big picture, which is like the best parts of the Michael biopic are the cosplay recreations of the performances. But we just, the original ones are better.

• 1:37:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:30Yasi Salek?

  So it's like, I don't need to see cosplay. Like, I don't want to see cosplay of Truth or Dare. I don't want to, I want to, I would like, I want to sit there and see the real old footage, you know?

• 1:37:40Speaker 06

  There's a Kylie Minogue doc that just came out on Netflix. It's really beautiful. That is another kind of example of how to do it, I think.

• 1:37:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:48Speaker 06

  I really, and this was crazy at the time because I didn't even watch basketball back then. But I kind of became so obsessed that I became interested in basketball, watching the ESPN,

• 1:37:59Speaker 06

  the Last Dance documentary series about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Because all of that old footage was so fucking stunning.

• 1:38:08Yasi Salek?

  I loved it.

• 1:38:08Speaker 06

  And it had this incredible back and forth happening because they're all being interviewed for it.

• 1:38:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:14Speaker 06

  And you would want to see all of Madonna's collaborators being interviewed. But what I love is like, you know, Michael Jordan wants to tell his version of the story.

• 1:38:21Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:38:21Speaker 06

  But then you have Scottie Pippen over there being like, that's not what happened.

• 1:38:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you could have like everyone in here.

• 1:38:26Speaker 06

  It cuts back to Michael Jordan and he's like, what did he say? And like, you kind of get them fighting over like, what happened? And like, I want all that drama.

• 1:38:33Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:38:34Speaker 06

  Uh, with Madonna.

• 1:38:35Yasi Salek?

  But you know what? I'm going to pitch something off dome. If anyone here has a lot of money and wants to invest in Yasi and Patrick films. I haven't briefed this with Patrick, so maybe he doesn't want to be involved. But if I were to make a biopic, if they were like, Yasi, here is a bunch of money, gun to your head. You have to make a biopic. I would a hundred percent, I would just need licensing of one song, please, just Holiday. I don't need anything else. And I would do her life from the day she arrives in New York.

• 1:39:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:39:02Yasi Salek?

  Till the day Holiday comes out. That would be my biopic. Because A, you can't do a fucking cradle to grave biopic. They're stupid. They don't work.

• 1:39:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 1:39:11Speaker 06

  There's too much.

• 1:39:11Yasi Salek?

  B, you don't have the uncanny valley of like, the actress, you know, like, it's like, this is a, this is a sort of an unseen era of Madonna, like, obviously pictures of surface and stuff. B, it's a fucking really cool period piece where like, a lot of the stars of that biopic, not stars of people, but could be like, what was New York like back then? And you have Dan Sateria and you have like little cameos like Futura and the Beastie Boys and Jelly Bean. And like, I just think there's, that's such a rich part of her history that's actually really underexplored.

• 1:39:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:39:42Yasi Salek?

  Because it wasn't overlapping with her fame.

• 1:39:46Yasi Salek?

  And I just think it could make a really cool visual story. So if anyone wants to produce.

• 1:39:53Speaker 06

  It should be directed by Sean Baker and it should star Talia Ryder.

• 1:39:58Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:39:58Speaker 06

  I've already.

• 1:39:59Yasi Salek?

  We're in it. We're doing it.

• 1:40:00Speaker 06

  You know, call my agent.

• 1:40:01Yasi Salek?

  The church babe, like we like, we like show that whole, like, we get the Breakfast Club songs. We get Emmy and the Emmys, like, she's fucking opening for, uh, David Johansson of the.

• 1:40:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:40:12Yasi Salek?

  There's so much cool stuff.

• 1:40:13Speaker 06

  Movie about Madonna.

• 1:40:14Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 1:40:15Speaker 06

  Perfect. Solved it.

• 1:40:16Yasi Salek?

  Get in touch, you guys. We'd like to do that.

• 1:40:19Speaker 06

  Um, okay, this one we're gonna talk about for a while, I think. So I think we should just go straight into it. One of the songwriting things that Madonna is best at, in my opinion, is bridges, modulations and solos. There are some super iconic ones, the rap in Vogue, the jet sound and key changes in Rain, the cherished bridges and breaks, the dramatic break in Live to Tell, all the modulations in Like a Prayer. Do you have a favorite deeper cut example of these kind of secret sauce things that take songs to the stratosphere of pop?

• 1:40:49Yasi Salek?

  Well, yes.

• 1:40:50Speaker 06

  So let's, let's stop there, cause it gets into Kenny Loggins.

• 1:40:53Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:40:53Speaker 06

  And we don't need to get into that. Um, from Adam.

• 1:40:55Yasi Salek?

  I get what you mean, so. It's funny, cause this, this question is coming in before we do the film episode, but we actually totally talked about that in the film episode, how she was the Kenny Loggins.

• 1:41:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, fully.

• 1:41:04Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:41:05Speaker 06

  So someone came to work today with this question.

• 1:41:08Yasi Salek?

  I don't like to pick favorites, but this might be my favorite question.

• 1:41:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. There's so many specific ones because it is a hallmark of what she does.

• 1:41:15Yasi Salek?

  Patrick's not gonna like this, but this will be a part where I'll be doing a lot of singing and I'm sorry.

• 1:41:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know. I know. I already know. I already know.

• 1:41:22Yasi Salek?

  You came prepared.

• 1:41:23Speaker 06

  When I came, I was like, here we go. She got me.

• 1:41:26Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Well, for me, number one, first and foremost, that comes to mind, I don't know if it's like my number one favorite, but it might be because it's the first that comes to mind. The bridge in True Blue. No more sadness. I kiss it goodbye. The sun is bursting right out of the sky. I searched the whole world for someone like you. Don't you know, don't you? It's just, it's that no, it like bursts. It's like, it does what it's saying.

• 1:41:55Speaker 06

  Let's also just say these are not deep cuts. It's like.

• 1:41:58Yasi Salek?

  Did he say we had to do deep cuts?

• 1:41:59Speaker 06

  He said deeper cut and it's like, but you know what?

• 1:42:02Yasi Salek?

  I don't want to.

• 1:42:03Speaker 06

  Let's just talk about the best ones.

• 1:42:03Yasi Salek?

  Let's talk about the best ones, yeah. That one is, that one's really, when I'm walk, I already said this on the first podcast, when I'm walking my dog and this comes on, I'm literally, people are like, oh, there goes that crazy lady, like, my arms out.

• 1:42:14Speaker 06

  You, you have a certain, like, deep-seated love for, like, the shoe-bee-doo type Madonna song.

• 1:42:24Yasi Salek?

  I do.

• 1:42:25Speaker 06

  Do you want to know what song came to mind first for me, and I can't even believe it, and I don't even know why, is Jump.

• 1:42:30Yasi Salek?

  Oh, okay, so that's why you were saying before, um, I mean, it's a fucking banger.

• 1:42:36Speaker 06

  Cause you, it's like, and it's so simple, it's very simple songwriting, but she introduces in the first verse, there's a lyric where she's like, "I'm going down my own road and I can make it alone." And then the second verse, she goes, "I learned my lesson from the star, my sisters and me." And then, like, there's that bridge toward the end, where she goes, "I can make it alone, I can make it alone." And then the vocoder comes in going, "My sisters and me." It kills me.

• 1:43:04Yasi Salek?

  It's so cool. Are you, that song is so fucking good.

• 1:43:09Speaker 06

  It's so good. It's like...

• 1:43:11Yasi Salek?

  Give Joe Henry his flowers.

• 1:43:13Speaker 06

  It's a big one for me.

• 1:43:15Yasi Salek?

  That's a really good one. Okay, what do I have next? Well, he said the dramatic break in "Live to Tell," which, yes, got to hear it, but the bridge of "Live to Tell."

• 1:43:22Speaker 06

  If I ran away, oh, come on.

• 1:43:25Yasi Salek?

  I'd never have the strength to go very far. How will they hear the beating of my heart?

• 1:43:38Yasi Salek?

  And then with the way she's like, "Will I grow cold?"

• 1:43:40Speaker 06

  I know, this is what I was saying about the melodrama. It's crazy. Will I grow old?

• 1:43:48Speaker 06

  Okay, but then...

• 1:43:49Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:43:51Speaker 06

  Since we're on the topic of ballads.

• 1:43:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:54Speaker 06

  All the world is a stage to take a bow.

• 1:44:00Yasi Salek?

  You are.

• 1:44:01Speaker 06

  Take about bridge into final chorus as she cuts the chorus short to be like, guess you've always known.

• 1:44:09Yasi Salek?

  I literally just got the chills.

• 1:44:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. Un-fucking-believable.

• 1:44:14Yasi Salek?

  Okay, here's a left field. Light up my life.

• 1:44:18Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:44:19Yasi Salek?

  So blind I can't see. The bridge from Who's That Girl?

• 1:44:24Yasi Salek?

  That's a fucking good one.

• 1:44:25Speaker 06

  That's a really good bridge.

• 1:44:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:26Speaker 06

  That's like a lifetime bridge.

• 1:44:27Yasi Salek?

  Can't help me now. Who's that girl? Kianis Estaninia.

• 1:44:34Speaker 06

  We take these things for granted.

• 1:44:35Yasi Salek?

  It's just, exactly.

• 1:44:36Speaker 06

  It's like, and you know, a lot of people need more bridges like that.

• 1:44:40Yasi Salek?

  I agree.

• 1:44:41Speaker 06

  Some of you could use a bridge, some of you couldn't even find a bridge.

• 1:44:43Yasi Salek?

  The one that-

• 1:44:44Speaker 06

  You couldn't cross a bridge.

• 1:44:45Yasi Salek?

  Maybe you should jump off of one.

• 1:44:46Speaker 06

  Pay the toll.

• 1:44:49Yasi Salek?

  This one, which I read that she like fully ad-libbed in the moment, many such cases, into the groove bridge.

• 1:44:55Speaker 06

  Ooh.

• 1:44:55Yasi Salek?

  Live out your fantasies. Here with me. Just let- That's one of the greatest bridges of all time.

• 1:45:02Speaker 06

  Now I know you're mine, now I know you're mine. Come on. It's just me screaming, actually, this whole section. Okay, and I want to say about Vogue, because I can talk about Vogue for a hundred million years. The Vogue rap, obviously, we've discussed. It's the bridge, though, not the rap. Beauty's where you find it. Not just where you bump and grind it. Soul is in the musical. That's why I feel so beautiful. Magical. Life's a ball. Come on. And then it goes into that chorus.

• 1:45:45Speaker 06

  That chorus on the song is where the song, because this is what I wanted to talk about. It's not just about the bridges or the modulations. It's about, and this is a dance music concept.

• 1:45:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:54Speaker 06

  It's about the build.

• 1:45:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:55Speaker 06

  The way that the song builds and then breaks. And so like, that chorus, of course-

• 1:46:00Yasi Salek?

  Which is what a bridge is for, right?

• 1:46:02Speaker 06

  Is the chorus in the video. Or Madonna and Ali Kroom's the third, the two of them are cutting a fucking rug. And changing the world forever and ever, and we're never getting over it as long as we live.

• 1:46:15Yasi Salek?

  As long as we live. And you know, I couldn't let this question go by without me, the world's leading Cherish fan, mentioning the interlude in Cherish. Given it. Giving it to me, boy.

• 1:46:27Speaker 06

  Crazy.

• 1:46:27Yasi Salek?

  Keep giving me all, all, all your joy.

• 1:46:29Speaker 06

  She snapped.

• 1:46:30Yasi Salek?

  I also really like, I don't know what this is called, but like her like sexual scatting in, in burning up.

• 1:46:40Yasi Salek?

  You know, that's, I don't know if he meant something like that, but I just, I, yeah. Like she's, she went crazy. I like, I think, uh, what's his name? Reggie Lewis felt uncomfortable.

• 1:46:55Yasi Salek?

  In the room.

• 1:46:55Speaker 06

  Sometimes you gotta take it there.

• 1:46:57Yasi Salek?

  And she didn't, she's amazing. Um, I don't, I, I'm stupid, so I don't totally know what a modulation is.

• 1:47:04Speaker 06

  A modulation is like key change.

• 1:47:06Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Yeah. So when I say a key change, I'm doing theater because I also don't know what, I like, I obviously I know in theory what it means when a key changes.

• 1:47:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:14Yasi Salek?

  Could I point it out for you? Probably not.

• 1:47:16Speaker 06

  A, a bridge tends to fuck me up more than a key change personally. Key changes are high drama and they're really good for live performance. Like, cause you really wanna like bring it home. You do the same chorus three times in a live show. It's like, you wanna kind of.

• 1:47:28Yasi Salek?

  Do something a little.

• 1:47:29Speaker 06

  Give the people a little drama.

• 1:47:31Yasi Salek?

  But bridges, man. Yes, she really is one of the best to ever do it. Um, okay. The next question.

• 1:47:37Speaker 06

  This is such a Yasi question. I'll read it to you so you can answer.

• 1:47:43Speaker 06

  Yasi, love the show. Thanks for everything you do. After listening to your brilliant Madonna mini series, I've been going back and re-listening to songs I hadn't heard in years. As someone who listens to a lot of trip hop, caveat, I know everybody hates the term trip hop, but it's a useful phrase for categorizing a certain sound. I was surprised to notice that justify my love contains a lot of the musical elements associated with that subgenre. Slowish breakbeats, sultry vocals, et cetera. Making this connection leads me to some questions I'd love to hear you explore. Do you consider justify my love as proto-trip hop? Did Madonna inadvertently create slash influence the genre? Related, do you consider cruel by Tori Amos to be trip hop?

• 1:48:24Speaker 06

  Are there any other trip hoppy songs from non-trip hop artists that you can think of? Thanks, Liam O'Donohue. Hi Liam.

• 1:48:30Yasi Salek?

  Hi Liam. Um, well, no. Okay.

• 1:48:37Speaker 06

  My answer was yes.

• 1:48:37Yasi Salek?

  No, yeah, like, okay, the, sorry, let me, I'm like, I'm like melting down. It's not proto-trip-hop because it does not predate trip-hop.

• 1:48:46Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:48:48Yasi Salek?

  I think that was kind of what he was getting at, but pre- but trip-hop is like 88, really. If you're, if you're gonna like, again, trip-hop doesn't exist, but like, The Wild Bunch, which was the DJ group that yielded Massive Attack, put out their first single, actually, maybe I want to say 87, and that's kind of like a place that I would pin as like one of the earliest versions of what has been come to call trip-hop, even though nobody likes to associate with that.

• 1:49:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:49:24Yasi Salek?

  Term or whatever. And also, the first Massive Attack single came out in 1990, but that's, so that's almost contemporaneous, you know? But I do think it is.

• 1:49:34Speaker 06

  It is.

• 1:49:35Yasi Salek?

  Trip-hop.

• 1:49:36Speaker 06

  I mean, I'm like a trip-hop neophyte. I like never got into it that deeply. I kind of, I don't dislike it. It's in my vocabulary of music I listen to, but it would always kind of sneak in the side door for me, you know? Like,

• 1:49:50Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:49:50Speaker 06

  These Madonna songs are, they give me that vibe. I was listening to modern rock radio when the sneaker pimps were big.

• 1:49:57Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I'm gonna blank, but there's, there's a sneaker pimp's remix of a Madonna song that I really like.

• 1:50:01Speaker 06

  I was watching MTV AMP when like, they were showing like, Tricky and Goldie videos and Portishead and all that stuff, but it's, it's not like my thing, so I, I myself don't always know when something is trip-hop.

• 1:50:15Yasi Salek?

  I think it's definitely like, obviously sounds like it to me for sure, but because of the, the breakbeat.

• 1:50:24Speaker 06

  Uh huh.

• 1:50:25Yasi Salek?

  And the fact that she's essentially rapping.

• 1:50:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:50:28Yasi Salek?

  So those are kind of the elements, right? Like, it needs to have a bit of like a hip-hop influence, and that's there. Andre Betts, though, like, was not a trip-hop person, right? Like, that's not, but yes, if we're just talking.

• 1:50:44Speaker 06

  But also, that sound became so ubiquitous. It was like, everyone was using those sorts of beats on songs. Like, the Smashing Pumpkins were doing that on Adore, you know? It was like.

• 1:50:54Yasi Salek?

  I love Adore.

• 1:50:56Speaker 06

  But you know what I mean? It became like, kind of, just a new sound that flooded the marketplace.

• 1:51:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:04Speaker 06

  And I thank you for bringing up From the Choir Girl Hotel in this chat. I love that Tori Amos album. It's my favorite Tori Amos album. I love the production on it. Cruel is an incredible song. If anyone doesn't listen to Tori Amos, go listen to it. It's good.

• 1:51:19Yasi Salek?

  This is like, really got me spinning. This Joseph, this Joseph Mylove question, because I'm like, Madonna's so tapped in. This is kind of something I wanted to say earlier, when the person was talking about Linda Perry's comments, where like, oh, she's like, chasing the trends, or whatever. I'm like, Madonna has always been so tapped in and interested in what's going on in subculture and in the zeitgeist, you know, like, back to this. It's like, I, you know, like, you know that she knew about, I'm sure, what was happening, you know, like?

• 1:51:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:51:48Yasi Salek?

  And like.

• 1:51:49Speaker 06

  Of course.

• 1:51:50Yasi Salek?

  Trip hop comes from the same shit that she came from, which is like wild style type music of like, early, you know, like, that, that was like, that was what spurred that off, granted, in England, but like, she also, so it makes so much sense to me. Then there's like, a bit of a Prince of it all, you know, like, because Joseph Myloves comes from Ingrid Chavez's letter to Lenny Kravitz, and it was supposed to be like, a song that like, Prince was gonna work on, but never did. And then she's got with Lenny Kravitz, and Lenny Kravitz took her, like, it's a whole, it's, this whole thing is like, the red string. But yes, the answer is yes.

• 1:52:30Speaker 06

  She's not like, a static person.

• 1:52:32Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:52:32Speaker 06

  You know, and it's like, I think that there, there are conversations that have happened around her, for sure, but also other artists that are really big of like, oh, you're like, being a vulture, you're like, taking from these cultures, you're doing this and that. It was all coming from a place of like, genuine enthusiasm and fascination, and like, also proximity and access.

• 1:52:51Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:52:51Speaker 06

  It's like, she knows who all the, these producers are. She meets them all. It's like, she's in the scene, she hears the music.

• 1:52:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:57Speaker 06

  And like, she's always looking for like, a new sound that excites her, that she hasn't heard before. And so that's like, kind of the spaces where that happens. What's really interesting is that I have a lot of friends that are songwriters and producers. And they, when they talk about Britney Spears, they talk about this. Cause they're just like, Britney's always ahead. Like of electronic production, of dance production. Like her records, when they come out, sound weird because no one else is doing what she's doing. And it's because like, her stature in the industry is such that when producers are doing something really groundbreaking, they'll bring it to her first.

• 1:53:33Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 1:53:34Speaker 06

  So she kind of hears it before everyone too.

• 1:53:36Yasi Salek?

  And has the taste to... I just, this just like cement, Justify My Love, like, just cements for me how much like Madonna is in the same river of influence as a Massive Attack was, right? It's just expressed differently. Like she's also knows about like the, you know, these are the breaks and Curtis Blow and the Afrika Bambaataa and stuff. Because she was like partying with those people.

• 1:54:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:54:02Yasi Salek?

  And, and so she's obviously gonna end up having her version of that because she's tapped into the same inspiration sources that Massive Attack was. She may not have been a crate digger herself, you know, but I think it was a good question. I mean, I don't think she created trip hop, but I do think she was, and also...

• 1:54:18Speaker 06

  But she was there when it happened.

• 1:54:19Yasi Salek?

  She was there when it happened, and it never ceases to blow my mind that 1990 is a psychotically early year that this song came out. Cause no matter what, I have a...

• 1:54:27Speaker 06

  It does sound so ahead of its time.

• 1:54:29Yasi Salek?

  I have a Mandela effect where I'm like, this is on erotica and it's not.

• 1:54:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:54:32Yasi Salek?

  It's not. It's a song that she stuck on Immaculate Collection. It was the single off of Immaculate Collection, which is so crazy. Okay. Bon Jovi, Yasi and Patrick, Bon Jovi.

• 1:54:42Speaker 06

  Bon Jovi.

• 1:54:42Yasi Salek?

  I'm a huge Bansleyan fan and Madonna Month has been my favorite thing since the episode about the replacements way back in the early days, JK. But also please do another maths episode. Like a lot of elder millennials, Madonna is one of the formative pop culture figures of my life. But I've noticed over the last 10 to 15 years that while Gen Z has embraced lots of acts before their time, ABBA, Fleetwood Mac, et cetera, they don't seem to revere Madonna. Quick question, does Gen Z revere ABBA? I might just not know about this.

• 1:55:09Speaker 06

  I know. You know what? I just took that completely at face value and was like, if you say so.

• 1:55:13Yasi Salek?

  Flew in Mac, I remember because of the guy's skateboarding video that like made it go viral on TikTok. Yeah, cranberry juice, exactly.

• 1:55:19Speaker 06

  Or like Kate Bush Stranger Things.

• 1:55:21Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. Abba, I'm not, I trust this person. I just don't know about it. He said, they don't seem to revere Madonna. I'm sure her appearance at Coachella with Sabrina Carpenter and her upcoming album will change that.

• 1:55:31Speaker 06

  I don't know if it will.

• 1:55:31Yasi Salek?

  I'm not sure. I was gonna be like, I'm not sure it will, but would love to hear you all discuss why Madonna has not caught on yet with young people. Do they find her cringe? Has she just not had her moment with them? Or have I got this all wrong and they love Madonna? I don't think they love Madonna.

• 1:55:44Speaker 06

  Question. They don't.

• 1:55:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:46Speaker 06

  And we got some letters that were not questions. I don't know if we're gonna read them because they're a little.

• 1:55:53Yasi Salek?

  Just to like gas ourselves?

• 1:55:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:55:56Yasi Salek?

  They're all just so nice. Yeah.

• 1:55:57Speaker 06

  Um, they're too complimentary, but we, there were letters from Gen Z listeners who really had never engaged with Madonna's music before and were not familiar with most of her work.

• 1:56:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:08Speaker 06

  So that's real.

• 1:56:09Yasi Salek?

  I have some working theories.

• 1:56:11Speaker 06

  Me too.

• 1:56:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:13Speaker 06

  Okay. Well, I think they do think she's cringe.

• 1:56:16Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:56:17Speaker 06

  Like, or a lot of them do, or some of them do, or there's a fear that she might be, so they don't want to go near it.

• 1:56:22Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:56:22Speaker 06

  Like, she's someone that is like, uh, I think every pop star has spoken about Madonna's influence or paid homage to her. The way Sabrina Carpenter is doing now, there's like, I think there's an awareness that she's a big deal. But they think that she's old.

• 1:56:39Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 1:56:39Speaker 06

  And they think that she's like, maybe trying to stay relevant and that it would be corny to get into her current music.

• 1:56:47Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:56:48Speaker 06

  Because this is the thing with Madonna, she stays current.

• 1:56:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:52Speaker 06

  Like, there is a new Madonna record. Before that, there was this Madonna tour. There was like remixes dropping. There are songs that go really viral on TikTok, like Frozen had those remixes that were really big. Like, she does have these moments where these old songs come back and these things happen. There hasn't been like a wholesale embrace of her.

• 1:57:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:10Speaker 06

  I think because there's some kind of, uh, there's like a lack of understanding and maybe like a little bit of hesitation and fear associated with it. But also it's like, if they really knew, they would not be embarrassed to.

• 1:57:23Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:57:24Speaker 06

  And. They just don't know because no one's telling them. There's not like a moment that happens to look back at Madonna's career because she hasn't died. The 10 part docu-series that we just pitched hasn't come out.

• 1:57:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, there hasn't been like some unifying cultural moment.

• 1:57:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:57:39Yasi Salek?

  It's also like, I guess, my theory is like maybe twofold. One is that like, I think a good counterpoint back to our favorite yin and yang is Courtney, right? Because Courtney Love is very much in the zeitgeist. Gen Z does think she's cool.

• 1:57:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:57:54Yasi Salek?

  And I think it's because she pretty much only existed in the forefront of culture in the decade of the 90s. Right? Like she kind of didn't put much.

• 1:58:08Speaker 06

  There's less work to parse.

• 1:58:09Yasi Salek?

  There's less work to parse. And she's, it's legible because it's just this one thing, this one version of her that was so cool. And like, changes a little like from the beginning from, you know, but not that much. And obviously she has so many amazing soundbites and stuff, but so does Madonna. But Madonna, just the dearth, like, you know, she spans.

• 1:58:29Speaker 06

  It's more pronounced recording because it's more focused.

• 1:58:31Yasi Salek?

  It's more focused, it's more dense into one thing. Madonna spans four decades, you know, like it's impossible. And the second thing is that she kept going. And if she had not kept going, she might exist in that space of nostalgia where people are like, man, how cool? And she would be frozen in amber as like, whatever, bad girl video, as expressed yourself. But she's not because she has, and fucking God bless, and she should. She has continued to be visible in public in every iteration and every age. And that is a difficult thing, I think, for Gen Z or any like generation that's like three generations behind you to be like, that's cool.

• 1:59:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. And it's interesting that we got so many letters bringing up Janet Jackson. And I think because that is starting to happen with Janet Jackson, there's like a reappraisal going on. She's had little ones every few years, like when people re-interrogate the Super Bowl incident or what happened to her career. But like. None of them have so far been like, really like, her work is so spectacular and special and meaningful.

• 1:59:36Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:59:36Speaker 06

  You know, it's like, it's been really more focused on like, this was unfair.

• 1:59:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:40Speaker 06

  But like-

• 1:59:41Yasi Salek?

  The classic apology tour, which like, we don't, we don't need it.

• 1:59:43Speaker 06

  But now, now I think people have a genuine interest in her sound and her look and what she was doing through all throughout the 90s and the early 2000s. And I can feel the Janet wave coming a little bit. But that's also because Janet is a little less visible.

• 1:59:58Yasi Salek?

  A little bit less visible, also a little bit less deep and long of a career, still, compared to Madonna, you know, like, 2000s?

• 2:00:06Speaker 06

  Well, long, maybe, yes, but dense, no.

• 2:00:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. So, I, but I agree with you. I think like-

• 2:00:14Speaker 06

  I'm also surprised no one's reevaluated Aaliyah, really. I think there was like, when Aaliyah died, it was so sad.

• 2:00:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:23Speaker 06

  And then there was like, a long period of time where her music was not available, it was on streaming, and there was like, all this, these sorts of things.

• 2:00:29Yasi Salek?

  It was like the R. Kelly of it all.

• 2:00:30Speaker 06

  There's an Aaliyah resurgence that needs to happen too, because she was such a huge deal.

• 2:00:35Yasi Salek?

  Incredible.

• 2:00:35Speaker 06

  I mean.

• 2:00:37Yasi Salek?

  But I think we answered that okay. I don't know that like, I don't know what's gonna happen with it. Like, I don't know that like, this album will, you know, bring all the boys to the yard or whatever, all the Gen Z to the yard, but-

• 2:00:50Speaker 06

  Listen, she's always gonna do huge numbers. Her old songs continue to do big numbers, like-

• 2:00:55Yasi Salek?

  I think I saw something on Twitter, but you know what, I don't know if it's real or not, it could be AI, that, I'm a boomer, but that was like, she's the number one top-selling female artist of all time.

• 2:01:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:01:05Yasi Salek?

  Which, it sounds right, because if you, if you're counting tours and stuff, like, you know, every time she did a tour, it broke a record of like, that was the biggest tour.

• 2:01:13Speaker 06

  Mariah Carey always had some record like that, though.

• 2:01:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:16Speaker 06

  So I am curious.

• 2:01:17Yasi Salek?

  She was on the list. It was like-

• 2:01:18Speaker 06

  I'm curious about the fine print.

• 2:01:20Yasi Salek?

  Again, I didn't look into it. I said, yes, yes, AI image, whatever you say.

• 2:01:24Speaker 06

  But like- You know, like lately, I've noticed Beautiful Stranger getting traction.

• 2:01:29Yasi Salek?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:01:29Speaker 06

  It's been going viral and not like we talked about it or you and Paul talked about it. But even apart from that, it's been kind of brought back because people are like, look how amazing she looks. The song is so good. Like she does have these songs that kind of get dug back up.

• 2:01:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:45Speaker 06

  Die Another Day needs to happen soon, I think, because that song is so good.

• 2:01:51Speaker 06

  Hollywood has had a little bit of a resurgence. Like these songs do come back in an interesting way, and that will continue to happen. There will always be like randomly a Madonna song goes viral on TikTok and starts charting again. Like it's almost like she has too many hits for that not to statistically be the case that that will keep happening.

• 2:02:10Yasi Salek?

  I guess I just like, I'm like, I don't know what Gen Z likes because I'm too old. So I'm like, is it, are they just used to a different kind of pop star? And this is like outside of the, outside of that understanding. Does Gen Z like Lady Gaga?

• 2:02:23Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 2:02:24Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:02:25Speaker 06

  We'll get, let's get into it with the next question because this topic continues for a minute. But you know, do you want to read this one?

• 2:02:31Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Hi, I'm Sam Patrick. First things first, as a 24 year old capital G gay guy, I'm equally ashamed and thrilled to admit this podcast was my entry point into Madonna world, which is, I know, I don't, this is gonna sound not homophobic, but something next door to homophobic. It blows my mind when I'm like, okay, Gen Z doesn't like it, but Gen Z gay guys don't like Madonna?

• 2:02:52Speaker 06

  This is what I'm talking about and it's not their fault.

• 2:02:55Yasi Salek?

  Right. Okay.

• 2:02:55Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 2:02:56Yasi Salek?

  I'll keep reading the thing. I'm equally ashamed and thrilled to admit this podcast was my entry point into Madonna world. The song snippets would play while y'all talked and suddenly I was sitting at my desk doing a full listen of True Blue, adding almost every song to my playlist and calling my mom, so cute, to ask her opinion on Papa Don't Preach. With that said, my question is twofold. I have so many questions. I'm like, how did this 24 year old gay guy get to banter to begin with? Because it's like, I'm not a Madonna guy, but like Pearl Jam got me. I don't, okay.

• 2:03:21Speaker 06

  Don't ask how it happened. Just smile because it happened.

• 2:03:26Yasi Salek?

  With that said, my question is twofold. Number one, I'm both a pretty online person and pretty enmeshed in real life gay circles. But I feel like my generation is not exclamation point talking, exclamation point about, exclamation point Madonna, exclamation point enough. Three exclamation points.

• 2:03:41Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 2:03:42Yasi Salek?

  I wonder if you have a theory as to why. I don't want to act myopic. I know people talk about her, but I basically had to beg my algorithm to start showing me Madonna content. I wonder if you share the same feeling that young people have lost these ancient texts, so to speak. They've opened the fucking schools, is what I keep saying.

• 2:03:56Speaker 06

  Beautifully put.

• 2:03:58Yasi Salek?

  Does it have to do with the streaming hell we live in, or is it simply because the pop girls ripping from her playbook aren't citing their sources? Why is it that Joni Mitchell, Fiona Apple, and Courtney Love, all mothers to be clear, are referenced in interviews and not Madonna? Kind of like what we were saying before, right? Should we answer that one first and then get to the second question, so we don't get too confused?

• 2:04:14Speaker 06

  Women are vicious. Okay, like, there's a, there can be a fear. I mean, you definitely saw it with, like, Nicki Minaj and Lil' Kim.

• 2:04:23Yasi Salek?

  Sure, sure.

• 2:04:24Speaker 06

  Nicki Minaj versus the world. It's like...

• 2:04:27Yasi Salek?

  You don't want to be supplanted.

• 2:04:28Speaker 06

  You don't want to say, "This person influenced me and is a big deal to me," and then they're not nice to you, or they don't embrace you.

• 2:04:33Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:04:34Speaker 06

  So there's like a lot of that that happens. But then there have been girls who are very open about it, and Madonna does end up embracing them one way or another. Addison Rae is a big Madonna, huge Madonna fan. I think of Ariana Grande back in the day because she was a big Madonna fan as well, and she, there was like, I remember she like got on stage and performed with her at some concert because Madonna invited her to, but then Madonna kind of like said something bitchy to her or something that like went viral. But she loves Madonna, you know, it's like...

• 2:05:04Yasi Salek?

  I would have loved an Addison feature on this album.

• 2:05:07Speaker 06

  On the next, like, Ray of Light revamp.

• 2:05:09Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, that's actually perfect. Better for the Ray of Light one.

• 2:05:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:05:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:05:14Speaker 06

  So, like, and it's interesting because I don't occupy necessarily just like the spectator position because of

• 2:05:22Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:05:22Speaker 06

  where I am in the world and who I talk to and what I know.

• 2:05:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:25Speaker 06

  So... I can be a little bit oblivious to that. Like, I think that they all do talk about Madonna, or I assume that they do, because it just seems so clear. But maybe they aren't.

• 2:05:35Yasi Salek?

  But the thing is, like, I, I don't know that they talk about her, but because I know the ancient texts, I just see it. I'm like, Madonna, that's Madonna. That's your inspiration. That's your influence. But yeah, if you didn't know the ancient texts, you just think they made that up.

• 2:05:50Speaker 06

  And maybe it's just too obvious. Like, it's cooler to be like, oh, I'm into this niche person.

• 2:05:56Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:05:57Speaker 06

  So I seem not so obvious that I'm obsessed with Madonna, but everybody should be obsessed with Madonna. It seems to be the, the message of this podcast.

• 2:06:05Yasi Salek?

  It shocks me that young gay men don't love Madonna. Like, it's like, they don't know what they're missing.

• 2:06:11Speaker 06

  I mean, I guess it is the streaming hell. Like, if he's not being served Madonna content, that's one thing. But I think that, going back to what we were saying about the breadth and the scope of her work, that it can be a little bit like, where do you start?

• 2:06:23Yasi Salek?

  Which is why we did this podcast.

• 2:06:23Speaker 06

  And then this podcast, I think, for people like Kyle, it is like, here, we're introducing you. Let us lead the way. Yeah, we'll show you everything, and it will all make sense.

• 2:06:34Yasi Salek?

  I did like a little thing with this, like, music, TikTok journalist-type person, game man, young, Gen Z. And we were talking about Rosalía, and he was like, you have never in my life seen, like, Catholic imagery embraced to that level. And I was like,

• 2:06:57Yasi Salek?

  my neck vein? I was like,

• 2:07:04Yasi Salek?

  okay, so I don't know if we really answered that question, because I'll be honest, I just don't know. It makes no sense to me, but also, like, how can you know what hits it? I just, I don't know what it's like. I have no understanding of what it's like to grow up in this world of culture. Whereas, like, I grew up with a monoculture. I grew up with MTV. Like, I know how things were fed and farmed to me. Like, I don't know how, I don't know how things are fed and farmed to young people.

• 2:07:25Speaker 06

  The ancient texts are not being lost. There's a lot of preservation going on. She did her whole reissue project. The videos are now on YouTube in 4K. It's like, there's no excuse. But... It does take a little bit of enterprising spirit to like go back probably and dig through it. I would equate it with like, you know, I don't know, growing up, I knew Liza Minnelli was a thing or like Barbra Streisand.

• 2:07:49Yasi Salek?

  That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's like generation way back.

• 2:07:51Speaker 06

  Or Cher.

• 2:07:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:52Speaker 06

  Like, I knew Cher because she was in movies and she was still in the culture, but it was like, or Elton John, you could say, someone like that. It's like.

• 2:08:00Yasi Salek?

  No, but he's 24, babe, 10, 10 years ago. Where were we at? Madame X is in the culture? Well, he's not knowing about that. He's not caring about that.

• 2:08:08Speaker 06

  When we were in our early twenties, we weren't maybe familiar with like all of Barbra Streisand's work or someone that was like a generation removed like that. You kind of, you find your way to it later and you're like, this is genius. Oh, this makes so much sense.

• 2:08:23Yasi Salek?

  Three generations removed. That's the thing, you know, it's not one.

• 2:08:26Speaker 06

  Right.

• 2:08:27Yasi Salek?

  Gaga is one.

• 2:08:28Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 2:08:30Yasi Salek?

  This is more than one.

• 2:08:31Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 2:08:32Yasi Salek?

  So I think that's what.

• 2:08:33Speaker 06

  But she's still, it's different if they're still active.

• 2:08:35Yasi Salek?

  Of course, of course. Yeah, you know, I just get involved.

• 2:08:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:08:41Yasi Salek?

  And he's right, like I, and you'll relate to this because you loved like punk and alternative music or whatever, like we learned about so much stuff because it was name checked by bands or in liner notes. So if the girls are not mentioning.

• 2:08:55Speaker 06

  But it was because of the radio too, NMTV. And it was a thing of like.

• 2:09:00Yasi Salek?

  TikTok is the radio.

• 2:09:01Speaker 06

  And I, I never thought of this until just now, but when I was in high school, my favorite band was The Cure.

• 2:09:07Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:09:08Speaker 06

  I was in high school in the year 2000. So it's like, this was not like The Cure's heyday. It's like you're listening to The Smiths in college, like this wasn't like.

• 2:09:17Yasi Salek?

  People don't do that with pop though. Like we did that with rock. We followed back to the ancestors because we were like, but I don't know that people do that with pop.

• 2:09:23Speaker 06

  On modern rock radio, you would hear a Sublime song into a 311 song into a Cure song, an old Cure song, you know, like they would keep it go like present. So it was sort of like, it felt current, even if it wasn't.

• 2:09:36Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Part two of this question is with that in mind, if you had to come up with an EP of Madonna for Dummies born after 2001, what would you put on it? I don't know if this question feels out of touch. I just find it interesting that a few weeks ago, I'd never had a conversation about Madonna with any of my queer friends and I still get blank stares when I try to bring her to the table. I used to think it would be a daunting task to do my Madonna homework, considering the depth of her catalog. It's been anything but laborious. Man, Kyle, the best Gen Z.

• 2:09:58Speaker 06

  I know.

• 2:09:59Yasi Salek?

  Kyle, the president. Um, this was, this was really hard.

• 2:10:03Speaker 06

  I, it was easy for me.

• 2:10:04Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:10:05Speaker 06

  Because.

• 2:10:07Speaker 06

  I'm not making an EP for him.

• 2:10:10Yasi Salek?

  You're handing him the Immaculate Clock.

• 2:10:11Speaker 06

  I'm giving him an assignment. And to everyone in their twenties who's just getting into Madonna, especially gay guys. This is where it's on you, it's your job to have your friends over.

• 2:10:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:24Speaker 06

  On a Friday night, getting drunk, doing whatever kids do now. I don't know if they drink these days.

• 2:10:30Yasi Salek?

  Crad- Cradham?

• 2:10:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, ayahuasca, uh, I don't know.

• 2:10:39Speaker 06

  Pull out your little jewel pens and puff on them and do what is colloquially known as gay guy music video night.

• 2:10:47Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:10:47Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 2:10:48Yasi Salek?

  YouTube surfing.

• 2:10:48Speaker 06

  You need to do a YouTube playlist of Madonna's, um, most iconic videos. It's more fun. It'll bring everyone into Madonna's world. It will check off many boxes at once.

• 2:11:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:01Speaker 06

  You're able to spot the visual influences and be like, oh, Lady Gaga never would have done this without this.

• 2:11:06Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:11:07Speaker 06

  You know, you can, Miley Cyrus is referencing this. Whoever you, you know, you kids like these days. And.

• 2:11:14Yasi Salek?

  You sound so old.

• 2:11:15Speaker 06

  So that playlist includes Open Your Heart.

• 2:11:20Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:11:20Speaker 06

  Express Yourself, Papa Don't Preach, Material Girl.

• 2:11:24Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:11:25Speaker 06

  Bedtime Story, Nothing Really Matters. Nothing Really Matters is a music video on gay guy music video night? Forget it.

• 2:11:33Yasi Salek?

  Especially on Cradham.

• 2:11:34Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. Oh, my God, on Cradham, crazy. Pull out the wigs while you're at it. Ray of Light, Music, Human Nature, Beautiful Stranger, What It Feels Like for a Girl, Vogue, Bad Girl, Hollywood, Deeper and Deeper. All the VMA performances.

• 2:11:46Yasi Salek?

  I like how you were like, EP, what I am giving you is a double album.

• 2:11:50Speaker 06

  It's a music video playlist. It'll give you two hours of.

• 2:11:56Speaker 06

  And arguing and talking shit and watching the video and talking about the video. Like, it's more engagement than just listening.

• 2:12:02Yasi Salek?

  Right, right. I think that's wonderful. I would also add that I think, this is almost where maybe I would do the five songs that we were mentioning earlier, that like, what's the cooler ones, that like, What It Feels Like for a Girl, that kind of stuff here. Also, I would be like, get into the fucking remixes, man. Like, if you don't, if you can't get into the remixes, especially around, I mean, they're all good, but like, Bedtime Story era remixes, erotica remixes, like, there is a dearth of like, the coolest shit you've ever heard. And like, if that can't get your friends involved, you know, like, if that, to me, like, that's like the clearest indication of how cool these Madonna songs are is when you hear them remix and you're like, Jesus Christ, you know, like.

• 2:12:46Speaker 06

  Put the Confessions Tour up on the TV when you're having a party in the background. Everyone will slowly just only start fixating on it, you know, that's what you do.

• 2:12:55Yasi Salek?

  Have a Madonna party. That sounds great. A Madonna education party.

• 2:12:59Speaker 06

  Hi, Yasi. Hi, Patrick. I'm Anna, Gen Z listener from Berlin.

• 2:13:02Yasi Salek?

  Love it.

• 2:13:03Speaker 06

  I only recently got into Madonna, like obsessively, also thanks to the podcast. I did attend the Confessions Tour because I felt like I couldn't miss out and it was incredible, although the Berlin crowd was super lame.

• 2:13:15Yasi Salek?

  She had to flex up me. She was like, I wasn't even a fan and I went to Confessions Tour.

• 2:13:18Speaker 06

  And you're Gen Z, did she mean the Celebration Tour?

• 2:13:20Yasi Salek?

  She must have meant Celebration Tour because she would have been too young to go to Confessions.

• 2:13:23Speaker 06

  As an infant, she went to the Confessions Tour. Number one, obviously Madonna is the most influential pop star of all time and her influence is everywhere, but I'm curious, and what current pop star do you see her blueprint the most? I'm vaguely aware of her beef with Gaga, and now that I'm more educated on Madge, I kind of see her artistry with a little less admiration because Madonna kind of did it first. Two, when it comes to the modern pop girl, Janet Jackson is often named with Madonna in tandem as the mother of all pop girls. I think that's especially evident in Britney. How do these two compare to each other? Did they ever interact? How do you think of their respective careers in terms of how similar and different they are? What's one aspect that one of them maybe had more influence than the other? Number three, do you have a favorite piece of Madonna memorabilia? What would you kill someone to own?

• 2:14:08Speaker 06

  Love the podcast, et cetera. Thank you, Anna.

• 2:14:12Yasi Salek?

  Thank you, Anna. Anna.

• 2:14:14Speaker 06

  Let's start with Janet.

• 2:14:15Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:14:16Speaker 06

  Janet is an interesting parallel to Madonna to me because they came up at the same time.

• 2:14:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Janet like slightly later.

• 2:14:24Speaker 06

  Later, she's younger, but she also started very young.

• 2:14:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:27Speaker 06

  But she didn't hit until.

• 2:14:28Yasi Salek?

  Right, like, like first it was Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson as like the top three of, of pop music. And then at, then as Janet came up, she kind of joined Madonna. Yeah.

• 2:14:39Speaker 06

  Cause the Jacksons had a whole like a system.

• 2:14:41Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:14:41Speaker 06

  Happening there. Star system, child star system.

• 2:14:44Yasi Salek?

  Factory.

• 2:14:44Speaker 06

  Um, factory. Okay, they invented K-pop. And I think Madonna and Janet are both in different ways byproducts of Michael. In terms of.

• 2:14:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:56Speaker 06

  Him setting this model for a pop star and them looking and seeing what he was doing.

• 2:15:01Yasi Salek?

  I think so.

• 2:15:01Speaker 06

  And applying it to themselves.

• 2:15:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And obviously Friday, the Friday demand of it all for Madonna.

• 2:15:06Speaker 06

  Brittany is very interesting to me because I think that Brittany almost is like a perfect hybrid of Madonna and Janet Jackson.

• 2:15:14Yasi Salek?

  Does, is that kind of what that person was saying?

• 2:15:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:15:15Yasi Salek?

  Cause I think that is like, that was, I never thought of it that way. And then once I read the sentence, I was like, damn, boom, that's so good.

• 2:15:22Speaker 06

  Like Brittany's personal style is more Janet. It's more like Janet influenced.

• 2:15:26Yasi Salek?

  And Janet is also a little more bubbly, like.

• 2:15:29Speaker 06

  Smiley.

• 2:15:29Yasi Salek?

  Smiley, like had kind of.

• 2:15:31Speaker 06

  Sexy. I mean Madonna's sexy, but.

• 2:15:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but Brittany is more in the like giggly, you know.

• 2:15:37Speaker 06

  It's more like, let me show you my abs.

• 2:15:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:39Speaker 06

  It's also like.

• 2:15:41Yasi Salek?

  Although Rhythm Nation was quite serious.

• 2:15:42Speaker 06

  She's a serious dancer, don't get me wrong, but Janet is a dancer and Brittany is a dancer in a different mold.

• 2:15:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:15:48Speaker 06

  Brittany's dancing is more Janet.

• 2:15:50Yasi Salek?

  Dancing style, yeah, they're like, they come from a different like.

• 2:15:53Speaker 06

  A more regimented.

• 2:15:55Yasi Salek?

  More of like a ballet and modern dance and they come from more of like a.

• 2:15:58Speaker 06

  Paula Abdul.

• 2:15:59Yasi Salek?

  Paula Abdul, like almost like drill march dancing. I don't know if that's a real thing I made that up.

• 2:16:03Speaker 06

  Kind of Michael. But Brittany's thing is that she. Also really loved Whitney Houston. And you can kind of hear that in her vocal performances and how she like, especially if you go to her early like Star Search.

• 2:16:19Speaker 06

  She was trying to belt it out and do like a Whitney Houston.

• 2:16:22Yasi Salek?

  Which she could, she had it.

• 2:16:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, and she like, there's, it's fun to like trace all these influences with these people. Um, in terms of like their interactions, Janet and Madonna, I feel like there were not any.

• 2:16:33Yasi Salek?

  I couldn't think of any. I was hoping that you might know one, but like I didn't come across anything in any of the books I read or any of the interviews that. I think I would have noted it down because I would have found it interesting and I didn't. I saw maybe a couple of comparisons being made, but nothing of them like talking or knowing each other. They must have.

• 2:16:53Speaker 06

  I mean, they were huge at the same time and they were definitely.

• 2:16:57Yasi Salek?

  And obviously Madonna was friends with Michael, so like she must have had some.

• 2:17:00Speaker 06

  They were coexisting and they had, I feel like they must have had some crossover. Did they have no crossover production wise? Did Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam ever do anything for Madonna? No.

• 2:17:10Yasi Salek?

  I don't think so.

• 2:17:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's really interesting and there, and there are so many parallels you can draw. I was saying to you the other day, like, I feel like the velvet rope is Janet's ray of light.

• 2:17:19Yasi Salek?

  A hundred percent.

• 2:17:20Speaker 06

  You know, it's like you can see their careers take similar trajectories and I think maybe they were just kind of mutually respectful and kept a distance from each other because they were both kind of serving a different thing.

• 2:17:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, maybe serving a slightly different audience, but also a lot of overlap. Like I love Janet, you know?

• 2:17:37Speaker 06

  I'm obsessed with Janet.

• 2:17:39Yasi Salek?

  I think also what, what's kind of nailed here and like the mother of all pop girls is they both came out of an R and B tradition. They were the first, Madonna was first really female pop star to kind of come, but obviously Janet the same and like all modern pop music is now rooted in R and B where it wasn't before them, you know? This is mirror the the blueprint, you know, like where do you what current pop star do you see? It's a bit mirroring the question that came before it. I just don't, I see shards of her in every pop star, obviously, like.

• 2:18:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:18:11Yasi Salek?

  Like pieces of her exist in every pop star, like, obviously, you can see what Sabrina took in terms of like the bomb Shelley, the lingerie, whatever. You can see even Rihanna.

• 2:18:23Speaker 06

  The kind of campness and theatricality and the winkingness and like.

• 2:18:26Yasi Salek?

  I think Rihanna took kind of the high fashion, the art, the art, kind of, you know, like, I look at like, even like Taylor, Taylor with the ambition and the world domination. And but Gaga for me, and maybe because she was, again, one generation closer, seemed the most in her footprints, but also still doing something different.

• 2:18:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, I think with the, I think Madonna's influence is very obvious and present in Lady Gaga, but Lady Gaga also really loved Michael Jackson.

• 2:19:00Yasi Salek?

  Wasn't she the first major pop star to emerge after Madonna's domination? Because when did Gaga come out, like, 2005, 8?

• 2:19:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, later, it was like 2008, maybe.

• 2:19:14Yasi Salek?

  And Madonna was.

• 2:19:14Speaker 06

  No, even, well, maybe on the early side, but she sort of broke through.

• 2:19:19Yasi Salek?

  The fame, was the fame not 2008?

• 2:19:21Speaker 06

  No, it was like 2008 to 2010, probably. That was sort of like that era, the fame era, before Fame Monster.

• 2:19:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that was 2008, the fame, and the fame was huge. I mean, that's Poker Face, you know, like. Prior to that, I feel like Madonna kind of had the fucking chokehold, you know, like.

• 2:19:36Speaker 06

  For white girls.

• 2:19:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, for white girls. I can't think of another, I'm sure they existed, but I can't.

• 2:19:40Speaker 06

  Britney.

• 2:19:41Yasi Salek?

  Britney, of course, yeah, Britney, duh.

• 2:19:44Speaker 06

  But even when Gaga came out.

• 2:19:45Yasi Salek?

  Christina, yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:45Speaker 06

  It wasn't clear that that's what Gaga was going for, though. Because there was something that was like. Different about it, and part of that is, I think that like, you know, Lady Gaga has a very big rock influence in what she does.

• 2:19:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally.

• 2:20:00Speaker 06

  Um, in a way that Madonna does not. And I know that Madonna loved Blondie and David Bowie, but Gaga's also very informed by Alice Cooper, Elton John, Judy Garland, Freddie Mercury, and like Ozzy Osbourne, so.

• 2:20:15Yasi Salek?

  She was obsessed with, and she's named after the Queen song, right?

• 2:20:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:20:18Yasi Salek?

  Radio Gaga.

• 2:20:19Speaker 06

  So it's like, I don't always love when people compare Gaga to Madonna, because I think they're both singular and doing something very different.

• 2:20:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:26Speaker 06

  And I think that when Gaga came out, these were these like, super electronic fun club songs, which is very Madonna, but they were very not Britney-ish songs.

• 2:20:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they were like way harsher. Harsh is not the right word, but you know what I mean? Like, had more edge.

• 2:20:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:20:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:39Speaker 06

  So, you know, I respect Lady Gaga. I think she's a unique figure in the gay imagination and the pop ecosystem, which is like worthy of her own curriculum. And I know she's not for everyone, but I think she's like a very layered and psychedelic type of pop concern in her own category, style. But I think that in terms of Madonna's influence, we talked about Addison Rae. There's like, I know Sky Ferrera loves Madonna.

• 2:21:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, there's just, there's just, it's not possible, I'm sorry. There's not one single pop star that has come in her wake that isn't influenced by her. I don't believe it.

• 2:21:14Speaker 06

  I have a whole list. I wrote a list. It's like Troye Sivan, Sabrina Carpenter, Chapel Rohn, Kim Petras. But then there's also Gaga and Britney, Katie, Nikki, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Beyonce.

• 2:21:29Yasi Salek?

  Even Charlie.

• 2:21:30Speaker 06

  Even Charlie, but you know what's, we'll talk about that later.

• 2:21:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but I just, I don't, maybe not.

• 2:21:35Speaker 06

  Not as much as people would think.

• 2:21:36Yasi Salek?

  Not in the most obvious ways, but like, more of like, walk so she could run kind of situation. It's like, having a, like, an overarching thematic campaign. That was Madonna, you know, like.

• 2:21:48Speaker 06

  Well, she changed like the model of what that type of artist does. You know what I mean? She like created the modern pop tour.

• 2:21:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:56Speaker 06

  Like, there's so many things that she pioneered that everyone does now that we just take them for granted.

• 2:22:01Yasi Salek?

  And, and I'll say it before, and I'll say it again. Charlie and Taylor are both like, I think, what, 30? They're around the same age. Taylor's a bit older. Taylor's like 37, I think Charlie's what, like 35? I don't know, something like that.

• 2:22:13Speaker 06

  Don't ask me to do math.

• 2:22:15Yasi Salek?

  That didn't exist. You didn't have a 35 year old pop star before Madonna. They were literally beating down her door, being like, you're too old, go away at 35. She made it so that you could, no one even, no one thinks one second looks at Charli and is like, she's too old to be a pop star. It's never crossed their mind. But that's because of Madonna.

• 2:22:31Speaker 06

  There's a whole like other side of it too, which is like alternative underground indie artists that are also very inspired by Madonna. Like you look at people like Roshin Murphy or Robyn or Arca, like all these like female fronted electronic projects.

• 2:22:49Yasi Salek?

  Imogen Heep.

• 2:22:51Speaker 06

  Imogen Heep. Fake Mink just put out an album and there's a song on it called Like a Virgin and another song called Hard Candy. It's like, she's everywhere. She's lurking behind every corner. Kanye West could probably lock you in like a geodesic dome somewhere in Calabasas and talk to you about Madonna for six days without giving you food and water. You know what I mean? It's like.

• 2:23:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she's.

• 2:23:11Speaker 06

  It's, it's the blueprint. It's the curriculum.

• 2:23:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, okay. In terms of.

• 2:23:15Speaker 06

  But wait, my big thing, my big one, I'm gonna do my big one, which is someone that I've always connected the most with Madonna.

• 2:23:25Speaker 06

  And I don't know why, and who I really feel like is the new Madonna, if anyone ever was, is Rihanna.

• 2:23:31Yasi Salek?

  Babe, I kind of feel the same way and except that she has not the ambition.

• 2:23:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:23:38Yasi Salek?

  And in the best way possible, I'm not saying she's like, like Rihanna's like, I'm so sad, babe. I'm a billionaire. I have a hot husband.

• 2:23:45Speaker 06

  But this is the thing about Rihanna that people now forget because she takes such long breaks between music. She has the most hits of everyone we just mentioned.

• 2:23:53Yasi Salek?

  No, she has the most hits. She, I'll say, I mean Gaga too, I think in a different way, but like, to me, Rihanna was the one that was like changing the game.

• 2:24:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:24:03Yasi Salek?

  As she was going.

• 2:24:04Speaker 06

  And it's about attitude and it's about style.

• 2:24:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, executing something like, yeah, and like her fashion looks that like the most, out of all the people we mentioned. Okay, and I'll, except for me and Gaga.

• 2:24:16Speaker 06

  She's the coolest one who's doing it the biggest, which is very Madonna.

• 2:24:20Yasi Salek?

  And has had the most memorable looks that are not memorable for the wrong reasons.

• 2:24:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:24:23Yasi Salek?

  Like, I'm sorry, Melbert Ottenberg, you fucking snapped in half with that CFDA look that I'll never, ever forget. That sheer, oh my god, with the head.

• 2:24:34Speaker 06

  Like, culture-defining moments.

• 2:24:36Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, like, yeah, like, I just like so much of like, I thought, just the way I thought Madonna was the coolest woman that ever existed when I was younger. When Rihanna came around, I was like, this is the coolest and most beautiful woman that's ever existed also, like.

• 2:24:48Speaker 06

  But also, if you look way back at when Rihanna was starting out, she had this kind of like, she wasn't like, cool yet, you know? But she had this, she did have the ambition back then, and she had so much like, energy and like, spark and was like,

• 2:25:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:00Speaker 06

  doing these like, fun songs and that, there's something about those old songs that do feel really Madonna-pawn to replay, I don't know why, like.

• 2:25:08Yasi Salek?

  Totally, totally. Also, I'll say it, it's actually provocative and edgy to not be ambitious in this day and age. Like, that's the opposite, like, her being like, I don't give a shit, I'm not doing that, or like, doing the Super Bowl pregnant?

• 2:25:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, but also like, kind of going away because you're having kids and like.

• 2:25:27Yasi Salek?

  That's a last taboo, but doing the Super Bowl pregnant, that's fucking cool.

• 2:25:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, she tore that.

• 2:25:31Yasi Salek?

  We never mentioned Beyonce.

• 2:25:33Speaker 06

  I did, but I just, it was in passing. But Beyonce's like, acknowledged Madonna, of course, and Beyonce's hugely influenced by Janet.

• 2:25:40Yasi Salek?

  And they have, they have a relationship. Okay, the last question is, do you have a favorite piece of Madonna memorabilia? What would you kill someone to own? I mean, listen, I obviously just started re-collecting Tiny Mylon.

• 2:25:52Yasi Salek?

  And thank you to Andrew Garrettson, once again, I'll thank you on every episode for the sex book and putting that in my hands, it's definitely one of my favorites.

• 2:26:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:26:01Yasi Salek?

  I just got that 2003 W Magazine with the 44-page Stephen Klein spread that they made the art show out of, and it's pretty phenomenal. I like magazines now, I think, just in general.

• 2:26:13Speaker 06

  For me, it's the Justify My Love VHS.

• 2:26:18Yasi Salek?

  Oh yeah, that you brought in here?

• 2:26:19Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm, because it was banned from TV, so you had to buy it.

• 2:26:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's really good, it's a good cover, too.

• 2:26:24Speaker 06

  I love VHS tapes, I love like, objects like that.

• 2:26:26Yasi Salek?

  Same, like, physical objects, and I have that, that other Madonna one that's like, the scandal, like, the maid for, you know, like,

• 2:26:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, the unauthorized.

• 2:26:34Yasi Salek?

  Page six, unauthorized, yeah. I'll take anything, I also have, I have a vintage poster from Bedtime Stories era that I got because some. Awesome gay guy on Twitter got one and posted it framed and I was like, I want one too.

• 2:26:48Speaker 06

  I will say my friend Nicole Albino and Erin McGee. I don't know whose it is, but Nicole wears it, has the best Madonna t-shirt I've ever seen, the coolest one. I would steal that from her.

• 2:26:59Yasi Salek?

  Does, I feel like they, oh Erin in particular has like an insane collection.

• 2:27:02Speaker 06

  She has great stuff.

• 2:27:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Hello friends, loved the Madonna month pods. I want to double click a little more into Evita. You guys talked about the film media adjacent acclaim and critiques on her performance in the film. On the soundtrack, what was the music media and music adjacent industry and Madonna fandom reactions to her work here? I think her Don't Cry For Me Argentina is hauntingly beautiful and doesn't deserve the hate given by artists like Patti LuPone. Thanks babes, Jennifer asked. I didn't know Patti LuPone hated, uh, is it because she was the original Evita and she's like, no one can touch me?

• 2:27:33Speaker 06

  I think Patti LuPone hating Madonna is like a great bit for her, you know? It kind of keeps her relevant and keeps her, it brings her back into the spotlight. It's fun for divas to feud.

• 2:27:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:43Speaker 06

  You know, it's harmless, pretty much. I think Patti LuPone is jealous of Madonna.

• 2:27:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, a Broadway star is just never going to be as big as a pop star. It's just not possible.

• 2:27:52Speaker 06

  Also, Patti LuPone was never considered for the film version of Evita, which I think is probably a bee in her bonnet a little bit. Because it was always supposed to be like Meryl Streep, I think.

• 2:28:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but they were, but they said she couldn't sing enough.

• 2:28:04Speaker 06

  It went through different iterations.

• 2:28:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:07Speaker 06

  And, uh, different people were in the mix, but, and even the original, the actress who originated the role of Evita was Elaine Page.

• 2:28:18Speaker 06

  In England, like on the West End or whatever it's called over there. I'm not a theater person.

• 2:28:22Yasi Salek?

  I think it is called the West End.

• 2:28:24Speaker 06

  And she won an Olivier for it. And when they first were going to make it into a movie with Ken Russell, he wanted Liza Minnelli. And the studio wanted Elaine Page, and so that's why Ken Russell dropped out of the film when it was first set up. So it was like, there's, it's gone through so many. If you go on the Wikipedia page of the Evita movie, the whole like decades of development section is insane.

• 2:28:48Yasi Salek?

  Madonna got in there like a decade before it even got made, like vying to be in the role or whatever.

• 2:28:53Speaker 06

  And she won the role over Michelle Pfeiffer, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, and Jennifer Lopez. In the Alan Parker version.

• 2:29:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:01Speaker 06

  Because Meryl was, Meryl was doing it. And then the project fell apart when Oliver Stone was directing it.

• 2:29:06Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:29:07Speaker 06

  And then when it moved studios and then Alan Parker took over. Meryl came back and was like, wait, I want to do it, but then they wanted Madonna. Allegedly, I wasn't there.

• 2:29:17Yasi Salek?

  Supposedly. I don't have a lot to say about this because I famously, I'm not like a big Evita fan.

• 2:29:22Speaker 06

  I will just say like in terms of the Madonna arc, I think Evita was very pivotal for her career. It was, you spoke about this on the Evita episode with Paul, but it was like. About like, oh, I finally got this thing I always wanted.

• 2:29:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like I.

• 2:29:37Speaker 06

  To be taken seriously to star in this big movie.

• 2:29:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:40Speaker 06

  She won her Golden Globe.

• 2:29:42Yasi Salek?

  She did, I mean, she did amazing. She was a great actress.

• 2:29:44Speaker 06

  And it cleared the decks for a ray of light in a way.

• 2:29:47Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:29:47Speaker 06

  And which you guys talked about a lot. What I think is like interesting about it for better or worse, a lot of the fans talk about this. That her voice changed after Evita because she did vocal training for it.

• 2:29:59Yasi Salek?

  Intensive vocal training.

• 2:30:00Speaker 06

  So she kind of never went back to her more like. She's doing it now. She does it sometimes.

• 2:30:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:06Speaker 06

  She didn't go back to her like nasally, like na na na, like pop voice she had before. Because she wanted to always be like, I can sing, like I'm a singer. And it works better in some places than others, but there's, it's a fun part of her biography to me. I always really like how in Hung Up, she says, don't cry for me in the song. Like she kind of references it. So.

• 2:30:27Yasi Salek?

  I, I, I think she did a good job on the songs. I just don't like the songs. I'm not a musical theater person.

• 2:30:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. So this one says. Have so loved Madonna month and wish it could just continue for the rest of the year. Quite honestly, same with Yasi, she's having trouble letting go.

• 2:30:42Yasi Salek?

  Patrick doesn't leave the studio at night. He just waits for me to come back and it's like, can we do one more Madonna?

• 2:30:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, when we leave, we keep talking about Madonna. It's just like, it's, it's never ending. Um, it has been a bomb during a weird time. Totally. My question. She's a living legend and icon and one of the last of that peak MTV generation of pop stars. And yet, why after all this time and all that she has accomplished, does it still feel like she doesn't get the general mainstream critical reverence that Prince, Bowie, Michael, et cetera get? Well, Michael, I don't know. I still feel like mentioning her in polite conversation with normies often prompts a cheap joke or an eye roll. Does she have to die?

• 2:31:20Yasi Salek?

  We all have to die, Richard.

• 2:31:23Speaker 06

  Is it ageism, sexism, her proximity to the queer community, all of the above? Oh, it's interesting. Or is it something else? I feel like people are much kinder to Beyonce and Gaga than they ever have been to Madonna, even though Madonna set the template. Thank you, love the pod, to listen to a podcast that has somehow referenced both Mandalay and Rachel Stevens in 2026 makes me feel very seen. Richard Gold. Madonna must die.

• 2:31:48Yasi Salek?

  For her to be critically reevaluated?

• 2:31:50Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 2:31:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, not to be like pink pussy hat right here, but yes, I hundred percent think it's largely because she's a woman. The people that were just listed, they're men. But secondly, I think it's because she didn't make like an entire like song and dance vaudeville act of I'm a songwriter like some other people do, which is great. Like some, some of these pop stars like need you to know and campaign nonstop that they write songs.

• 2:32:23Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 2:32:23Yasi Salek?

  And for that reason, they're taken more seriously. Madonna never did that.

• 2:32:26Speaker 06

  I am smart.

• 2:32:27Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. Madonna seemed to never have any interest in that, even though like every collaborator says it, like it's fact that she is a brilliant songwriter.

• 2:32:40Yasi Salek?

  Honestly, to the exact same extent, if not more than Michael Jackson. Like if you're, if you call Michael Jackson songwriter, you better call Madonna songwriter.

• 2:32:45Speaker 06

  Oh, of course.

• 2:32:46Yasi Salek?

  You know? Yeah, she prints? No, she doesn't play 22 instruments and like whatever, like, you know, but.

• 2:32:51Speaker 06

  I do put Mariah Carey in a special category as well.

• 2:32:55Yasi Salek?

  Sure, of course.

• 2:32:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. But it's a different thing.

• 2:32:58Yasi Salek?

  That's, that's, and even Taylor Swift, I'll say it. Okay, yes, Taylor Swift like does it in a little different way, but doesn't mean Madonna's not a songwriter, you know? I, yeah, I just think, and I hadn't thought about that, but like, is it that her fanbase is largely gay that doesn't?

• 2:33:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:33:13Yasi Salek?

  But people take Gaga seriously.

• 2:33:14Speaker 06

  I think that for like, um, like the general public, when something's gay adjacent, it becomes seen as like not very serious.

• 2:33:21Yasi Salek?

  Like frivolous, yeah, yeah. Again, except for Lady Gaga.

• 2:33:23Speaker 06

  Because we have senses of humor and we enjoy our lives and.

• 2:33:27Yasi Salek?

  We like to have fun.

• 2:33:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:33:28Yasi Salek?

  I mean, we don't ever want Madonna to die. I hope she lives forever. I hope she cryogenically freezes herself and brings herself back to life or whatever, but. In the instance that she does, God forbid, I do think there'll be like a massive sort of like re-reckoning of like what, how important she was in every sense of the word.

• 2:33:48Speaker 06

  I think it's also important to remember that at the time of Michael Jackson's death, and at the time of Prince's death, both of them were severely ridiculed.

• 2:33:59Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:34:00Speaker 06

  Ostracized.

• 2:34:02Yasi Salek?

  Maybe Prince not quite as much as Michael, obviously.

• 2:34:06Speaker 06

  Prince was like everyone.

• 2:34:08Yasi Salek?

  If Prince was gonna play a show again, even like the year before.

• 2:34:10Speaker 06

  Everyone would wanna go.

• 2:34:11Yasi Salek?

  Everyone wanna go. You know, Michael maybe not by the end of his career.

• 2:34:13Speaker 06

  But I think that he was seen as like an oddball.

• 2:34:16Yasi Salek?

  Michael Jackson was planning a huge world tour, right? Right before he died.

• 2:34:20Speaker 06

  No, it's not that they weren't successful, but it's like they definitely got made fun of. And like, people weren't super reverent toward them.

• 2:34:26Yasi Salek?

  I also, I do think when, I think if people have a really hard time taking things that are things, people that are positioned as sexual, also seriously. Like, it happens with actresses, you know? That's just the thing. Like, it's like somehow not possible to be like fun and, and down, DTF, and also like a serious artist.

• 2:34:51Speaker 06

  Yeah. I think Cher has the same thing happening. I don't think that's really a problem. Like, my argument is like, you don't have to give her like this reverence and this due because these people, this is like, maybe I'm being a little edgy with this, but they exist for our amusement, you know?

• 2:35:09Yasi Salek?

  You mean pop stars?

• 2:35:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. They're here to entertain us and we have fun with it. And it's like, making fun of them is sort of part of the like love affair of following someone like this.

• 2:35:17Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 2:35:18Speaker 06

  I think there's an element, at least on the gay side.

• 2:35:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:21Speaker 06

  I can't speak for like the wider world, but it's like, you know, if they weren't confusing and like bewildering us and like making us talk, they wouldn't be who they are. And so I don't think you ever really get that kind of full-scale like embrace of like what they did until they die. And I think that's fine. And I'm sure that they know that on some level.

• 2:35:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:44Speaker 06

  You know? Like, I feel like we kind of. They're like our punching bags and our pincushions and whatever these people because they exist there as like avatars. They reflect things about ourselves back to us. It's like, it's a very kind of tricky position to be in. And it's also not seen as cool, really, to like, give someone their props to their face all the time. It's like, people will praise you behind your back before they'll

• 2:36:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:09Speaker 06

  do it to your face. Cause also you're like, oh, you're a rich celebrity. You have so much.

• 2:36:13Yasi Salek?

  Right. That's what the money is for, as Don Draper would say.

• 2:36:16Speaker 06

  But mark my words, I think when, when Madonna goes, I think that she's going to be considered more monumental. Than any of these people.

• 2:36:28Yasi Salek?

  I kind of think so too. I mean, cause she had a way longer career. She did way more.

• 2:36:31Speaker 06

  And she was a woman.

• 2:36:32Yasi Salek?

  And she was a woman.

• 2:36:33Speaker 06

  She broke so many barriers. It's like, the, it's math.

• 2:36:37Yasi Salek?

  It's simply math. Also, like, I'll say, like, again, I don't know, I don't know.

• 2:36:41Speaker 06

  It's gonna be like the fall of Rome when she, when she dies.

• 2:36:44Yasi Salek?

  I don't know her heart and mind, but I think that if Madonna wanted to be taken more seriously, quote unquote, she would be because whatever she wants happens.

• 2:36:53Speaker 06

  She knows, she knows she's the shit. She knows what she has. She knows the numbers don't lie.

• 2:36:58Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. She's like, okay, well, I'm the highest selling, whatever. You know, like, all good.

• 2:37:02Speaker 06

  And the thing was like with Michael Jackson, I'm never gonna forget when Michael Jackson died because like I was, you know, I have a tendency to be fascinated by people and a bit of a grave digger in that way.

• 2:37:15Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:37:15Speaker 06

  So, you know, like.

• 2:37:16Yasi Salek?

  Ambulance.

• 2:37:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, like I went to this, um, there was, he was in a period of like desperation.

• 2:37:25Yasi Salek?

  That last nose was

• 2:37:28Speaker 06

  I'm not even talking about that.

• 2:37:29Yasi Salek?

  I've ever seen.

• 2:37:29Speaker 06

  I mean, seeing him, his court case.

• 2:37:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 2:37:32Speaker 06

  Dangling the baby in Berlin, like all the.

• 2:37:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, blanket, put it with some respect on Lincoln's name.

• 2:37:36Speaker 06

  The insane kind of circus around him

• 2:37:39Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:37:39Speaker 06

  was really riveting to me. I know a lot of people chose not to pay attention to it at the time. I couldn't look away, but he, there was a moment where he was selling everything he owns.

• 2:37:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:49Speaker 06

  And he had this massive auction in Beverly Hills. And then he decided to pull the auction, like the day before. He was like, wait, I'm not selling anything. But it stayed up for like one more weekend. And so I went and I got to look through all of Michael Jackson's possessions.

• 2:38:04Yasi Salek?

  That's amazing.

• 2:38:05Speaker 06

  Which was the best day of my life. I think about it all the time. And like, it wasn't because I was a huge Michael Jackson fan.

• 2:38:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:13Speaker 06

  But it was like, he was someone who I thought was so unique and fascinating and not like anyone else on earth. It was just so, I was so gagged by him. But then, when he died, I was stunned by my own reaction to it.

• 2:38:27Yasi Salek?

  Like your own, like.

• 2:38:28Speaker 06

  I was devastated.

• 2:38:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I was too.

• 2:38:31Speaker 06

  Deep and profound grief. And it wasn't like, because I think he was the greatest person, or like, like, without getting into the accusations and all of that, but it was just, it was the blunt force magnitude of him and what he was.

• 2:38:44Yasi Salek?

  It's about the cultural impact, like, how big of a place they occupied in our minds and hearts.

• 2:38:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, without, without us even realizing it sometimes.

• 2:38:53Yasi Salek?

  I, I agree with you. Um, I'll just read the nice P S, because it's really nice and we're not gonna read all the other nice ones. This is from Richard, who asked the above questions. Also, having just gotten to the end, I also want to thank you for having the balls to talk about her plastic surgery in a fair, honest, nonjudgmental way. These days I find that you either have the diehard Madonna fans who like to pretend she has never had any work done whatsoever, and that she's all natural, which feels delusional to me. Or more often, you have the critics who make fun of her or feign disgust at her appearance. Thank you for just having an objective and honest conversation about it, as it's hard to not think about as a Madonna fan in 2026. See also Tori Amos. And it's something I sometimes struggle with and go back and forth with, even though it's obviously none of my damn business. Thanks, Richard.

• 2:39:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:39:34Yasi Salek?

  Oh, that was nice. It was, it was.

• 2:39:37Speaker 06

  It's a tricky stuff.

• 2:39:38Yasi Salek?

  It's a tricky subject, but I also felt it was like, important to talk about, because it's like, very, I agree with, I think it's strange to completely ignore it.

• 2:39:45Speaker 06

  Uh huh.

• 2:39:46Yasi Salek?

  Um, but I also think there's ways to talk about it that aren't like, I think people don't, and I don't want to retread what we said, if you want to listen, it's in episode four, but like, I think people don't realize how much like, the patriarchy is coming from within, within the house. You know what I mean? Like, when they talk about that kind of stuff, like, how much they are being the cops of a beauty standard that has been imposed beyond their will. And that, and that only some people are allowed to do it, and some people aren't, and you can do it a right way and a wrong way, and all of that is sort of like, an extreme level of fucked up, that like, if you zoom out, that's, that's the thing to talk about.

• 2:40:22Speaker 06

  There's no option.

• 2:40:23Yasi Salek?

  There, and there's no.

• 2:40:24Speaker 06

  You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

• 2:40:26Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. I think like, honestly.

• 2:40:30Yasi Salek?

  I respect it because much like her whole life and career, she has provoked thought through it. Hopefully, I mean, except for the people that are just like, you know, gonna-

• 2:40:40Speaker 06

  But she also does what she wants and it's whatever makes her feel good.

• 2:40:44Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 2:40:44Speaker 06

  And she prioritizes herself and-

• 2:40:47Yasi Salek?

  Yes, she should.

• 2:40:47Speaker 06

  That's what she's doing and she looks great. This one's so much.

• 2:40:53Yasi Salek?

  It's like, okay.

• 2:40:54Speaker 06

  It's like, and so broad, but-

• 2:40:56Yasi Salek?

  I'll say it. The question is, and love to you, Eliza from Manchester, it's not that it's a bad question.

• 2:40:59Speaker 06

  It's the most important question, but-

• 2:41:01Yasi Salek?

  But I would, basically, the question is like, also another Gen Z listener, thank you, that what are the cornerstones of Madonna's artistry? What are the moments that shaped her as an artist? And I would say you just start at episode one and go through, because we do literally, that's basically what the Madonna series is about. We talk about-

• 2:41:20Speaker 06

  Endless cornerstones.

• 2:41:21Yasi Salek?

  It's the through line. The through line, I think, of the podcast Madonna Month, six weeks, is what are the cornerstones of her artistry? What are the major moments and what does she mean to culture? So there's no way to just like-

• 2:41:35Speaker 06

  If I had to like try and-

• 2:41:37Yasi Salek?

  Synthesize?

• 2:41:37Speaker 06

  Synthesize it and it becomes very broad. It's like expressing herself. I know, sorry.

• 2:41:46Yasi Salek?

  It's voguing?

• 2:41:46Speaker 06

  It's getting into the groove.

• 2:41:47Yasi Salek?

  It's being like a prayer.

• 2:41:49Speaker 06

  No, truly, it's like, she's always been very unapologetic in expressing how she feels, what she thinks. And even during times where people told her no or told her that she was wrong and she didn't listen and she kept going. Like, that's sort of it for me, like in the most broad sense of it. You can get into the degree, Catholicism, sexuality.

• 2:42:11Yasi Salek?

  I think you're right. I think it's, I think it's what we talked about before, transmuting grief into art and into career and into like fuel. And it's self-expression and it's reinvention. It's the continuous reinvention of the self, all of Frida Kahlo, to like continue to be every version of yourself that you have access to. You know, which I think is a really cool thing to be able to do and to give other people license to do.

• 2:42:39Speaker 06

  We spoke about that Norman Mailer quote in our episode, which go back and listen. I'm with Norman.

• 2:42:45Yasi Salek?

  I stand with Norman Mailer.

• 2:42:46Speaker 06

  I stand with Norman.

• 2:42:47Yasi Salek?

  Unless he was racist, I think, which I think he might have had some racial allegations, I don't stand with that part of Norman Mailer.

• 2:42:51Speaker 06

  I stand with Norman Mailer on Madonna at the time that they did that story at Esquire together. Also, The New York Times did this amazing feature on Madonna.

• 2:43:00Yasi Salek?

  The one Karen did, the 60 times she changed.

• 2:43:03Speaker 06

  Madonna at 60. Well, there was Madonna at 60, which was a profile by Vanessa Gregoriadis, who's a legend, who's incredible. Hi Vanessa, if you're listening. I hired Vanessa to interview Prince when we did Prince back in the day. And then 60 times Madonna changed our culture, which was edited by Karen Gans. It really gets into, it's a fun story. It's like interactive. It has everything. It's a fun thing to dig into. I would say it's like a little companion to this.

• 2:43:30Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And I think that's our, I think that's our last question.

• 2:43:34Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 2:43:36Yasi Salek?

  What a, what a time.

• 2:43:38Speaker 06

  How can that be?

• 2:43:39Yasi Salek?

  You know, I know yours, again, don't cry because it's over. Smile.

• 2:43:44Speaker 06

  Don't cry because it was weird. Smile because it happened.

• 2:43:47Yasi Salek?

  Was it, was it weird? I thought we had a nice.

• 2:43:51Yasi Salek?

  I thought we had a nice time.

• 2:43:52Speaker 06

  Such a nice time. This is like, I hope that everybody listens to these podcasts, I swear. After reading these letters and finding out how many people were not so familiar with the body of work.

• 2:44:03Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I, my, I'm just so happy that any young people, not because I like, not because I care that they like what I like. I don't care. It's, I don't need my own taste validated. It's that I think they would genuinely derive a great deal of pleasure and joy. Because it's so incredible.

• 2:44:22Speaker 06

  It holds up.

• 2:44:23Yasi Salek?

  Truly something, this is like Stephon voice. There's something for everyone here, you know? Like, she's done it all. And whatever kind of music you like, I promise you, there's like 10 Madonna songs you'll like. Or love, you know? And that's it.

• 2:44:36Speaker 06

  For real.

• 2:44:36Yasi Salek?

  Thank you. Patrick, thank you so much.

• 2:44:40Speaker 06

  Did it.

• 2:44:40Yasi Salek?

  Nothing's, nothing's brought me more joy than our movie posters that I made with my own hand with oil paints.

• 2:44:48Speaker 06

  You cast actors and shot them.

• 2:44:50Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:44:51Speaker 06

  Practically.

• 2:44:52Yasi Salek?

  It was beautiful.

• 2:44:54Speaker 06

  And we did it without Celsius.

• 2:44:56Yasi Salek?

  Today we did, yeah. Come back next week for a new episode of Vansplain, not on Madonna.

• 2:45:10Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandplain. Our guests today were my mother, Fatana Salek, and Patrick Samberg. This episode was produced by Rob Stunderman and edited by Adrian Bridges, with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Jacob Corbett. Executive producers for Bandplain are Gina Dalvack and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clayben, and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tubber-Rupert, and also Sean Fennessy and the television program Widows Bay. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 2:45:58Yasi Salek?

  Tim Rice, Sir Tim Rice of Vida Sed of Madonna.

• 2:46:01Speaker 06

  Didn't he run with Hillary? Tim Kaine.

• 2:46:04Yasi Salek?

  Tim Kaine. Wow, we're really the amount of brain damage in this room.

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