Madonna at 60: Still desperately seeking attention
As Madonna marks her 60th birthday by posing for the iconic magazine, our writer gives thanks that the Queen of Pop is still trying to hog the limelight – and still gloriously bonkers!
Stop all the clocks – because she certainly has. Madonna turns 60 in just over two weeks, but judging by these pictures, wrinkles, restraint and the passage of time are concepts that settle around the crepey necks of mortal women – never hers.
Here, the utterly fabulous Queen of Pop still looks as magnificent as she did in her distant youth – and as ageless as a boiled and peeled egg snapped behind a wafty filter of five-ply muslin.
How does she do it? It’s one of the mysteries of the universe.
The twice-divorced multi-mum has celebrated the advent of her seventh decade with an eye-popping photo spread and interview in Italian Vogue.
Sex? Drugs? Rock ’n’ roll? Sorry to disappoint, but no. Between the glossy pages and the fabulously bonkers pictures, we discover that the woman once blamed for everything from the decline of teenage morality to the rise of the female bicep is now just another ‘soccer mom’, fretting about domestic timetables and weekend fixtures.
‘You have no life, in a way,’ she confides in the Vogue interview, which, I presume, is also exactly what she tells her household staff.
We learn that for the past year, Madonna has been living in Lisbon with four of her six children – David Banda, 12, Mercy James, also 12, and the five-year-old twins Stella and Estere.
All four were adopted from Malawi and all are now in Portugal because, says Mum Madonna, David has wanted to ‘play soccer professionally for years’.
With sporting facilities in the US not up to scratch and the mandatory celebrity Trump disapproval tacitly expressed (‘This is not America’s finest hour,’ she sniffs), they have decamped to Portugal.
Here, David attends a soccer academy and Madonna and her brood revel in the history, architecture and horses. ‘One of my favourite things to do is to ride,’ she says.
Indeed. One of the Vogue photographs finds Madonna showing off her equestrian skills in a Driving Miss Daisy-meets-Boudicca mash-up, as she stands up to muster the mounts pulling her carriage. However, note the whip in her hand, which shows there is life in the old girl yet.
In another snap, she lies on a lawn swathed in black lace and sheer hold-ups, as though she had collapsed en route to a goth-themed Saga sex party in the dungeon of Dracula’s castle. Look at her in another snap, skipping through a mini-maze with three of her girls, everyone dressed in ring-a-roses white.
In yet another striking photo, the music star appears to be teaching a hunky youth group how to play the ukulele – is there no end to her philanthropy and goodness? Now she smokes a cigarette in a holder like a Forties femme fatale. If there is a message to be gleaned from this glamorous but crazy spread of jumbled images, it is this: Madonna is still in charge, she is still the centre of attention and she is still in possession of a nicely burgeoning God complex, praise the Lord. Speaking of which... ‘Portugal is a very Catholic country, which suits me just fine,’ Madonna told Vogue, perhaps forgetting all that Kabbalah stuff – or that in 1989, she was condemned by the Vatican for burning crosses and dancing seminaked with a black Jesus in the video to promote her single Like A Prayer.
However, Madonna’s ability to reinvent herself no matter what – facts, fantasy, self-delusion – remains an inspiration to us all.
By the age of 40, she had published an X-rated book full of explicit photographs of herself, boasted about her lesbian affairs and performed fellatio on a bottle during Truth Or Dare, the 1991 documentary about her Blond Ambition world tour.
At 50, she was the poster girl for the kind of superior, celestial anti-ageing that only fame and money could provide, while her reputation as the envy of the perimenopausal set was undimmed.
Now, at 60, she remains a glorious, terrifying physical benchmark for women; a reminder never to go gently into that dark night of Country Casuals, waterfall cardigans and ‘yes please, I’ll have another slice’.
Vamp, tramp, diva and unlikely virgin – we have been through the Madonna mill over the decades.
These days, she seems keen to present herself as a cross between an earth mother and a mother superior, complete with sexy stockings.
I don’t mind any of that. After all, she could be just another ageing starlet, self-medicating in a mansion, mainlining vodka and compliments as she withers away to nothing. Here, she is being strong, recording yet another new album while urging her children ever onwards, like any tiger mum worth her stripes would do.
She says of David: ‘I want my son to be a loving human being.
‘If he happens to be the next Cristiano Ronaldo, that’s just the cherry on the cake.’
No pressure there, then. After all her adventures, Madonna seems to have concluded that if you have to exist, you have to excel.
And surely that’s not such a terrible message, for her children – or for anyone else.