Madonna’s curious meltdown
Concern is growing for injury-stricken Madonna as lockdown bites
SHE’S never been one for half measures, has Madge. But even by her own standards her recent behaviour is out of character. There’s still the overthe-top exhibitionist Madonna, who thoroughly enjoyed shocking fans with a picture of herself reclining in a chair in barelythere lingerie that shows her toned physique off to perfection.
“And for those of you offended by this photo I want to let you know that I’ve successfully graduated from the University of Zero F*^ks Given. Thanks for coming to my Graduation Ceremony! Class of 2020!” she wrote in the caption on Instagram.
She’s as saucy as ever, sharing a picture of her perky derrière, which prompted a flurry of comments about whether she’s had butt implants (YOU, 28 May).
And fun, still? You betcha, as she proved when belting out an improvised version of her classic hit Vogue with a hairbrush and the lyrics reworked to centre on eating fried fish.
But this time there’s also a darker, more melancholy Madge. In a video that had fans worried about her mental state she can be seen sitting with thick glasses in front of a typewriter in a gloomy room.
“Quarantine diary No 9,” she says. “The burning spear makes its way into the core of me and slithers down my leg, and I can concentrate on nothing except the idea of a fix, and I wonder what form that will take.”
She then speaks about three people she knows who’d died in the past 24 hours, though she doesn’t say whether their deaths were related to coronavirus.
In another video she can be seen sitting in a dark room, her face puffy. “I didn’t sleep last night, not one minute,” she declares forlornly. “I just need to, want to, have to get out of my body.”
But her health issues seemed to be her main preoccupation. “If my son says I have a broken hip one more time I might implode,” she rants.
Madonna (61) has two sons with her second ex-husband, film director Guy Ritchie (51) – Rocco (19) and David (14) – but it’s not clear who she’s referring to.
“If someone says you’re broken so many times a day, you do start to feel that way,” she continues.
THINGS have been looking bleak for Madge for a while now. Before the lockdown the Queen of Pop suffered a string of hip, spine and knee injuries – the re sult of the demanding dance moves she treated audiences to during her Madame X tour. And yet, although in agony, she was determined the show must go on. She ditched
stilettos in favour of flatter shoes and, setting aside her vanity, used a cane for support.
But her run of bad luck continued. At a show in Paris in March the audience was aghast as she took a nasty fall that left her in so much pain she started sobbing inconsolably.
“A chair was pulled out from underneath me by mistake and I landed on the floor on my tail bone,” she later explained.
She described herself as a “broken doll held together with tape and glue” but after taking a few days off she felt ready to get back on stage.
Coronavirus quickly put a stop to that though. She’d only just returned when she was forced to cancel the remaining three shows as the French government announced a ban on large public gatherings to curb the spread of Covid-19.
By this point the Material Girl and some of her back-up dancers were feeling pretty sick themselves, but they all just thought they’d caught a bad flu, as she put it.
She underwent testing that showed she had Covid-19 antibodies in her system, suggesting the reason she was so sick was because she had the virus. Could this be why she thinks she now has the licence to flout social-distancing rules?
Even though scientists have warned that having the antibodies doesn’t necessarily guarantee immunity, she’s been out and about. At the end of April she told fans she was “going to go for a long drive” to “breathe in the Covid-19 air” in Lisbon. The mom of six has been living in the Portuguese capital for the past three years so David – a keen soccer player – could train at SL Benfica’s youth academy.
A little while later she provoked fury as pics emerged of her having a blast at photographer Steven Klein’s birthday bash in Bridgehampton, New York state.
It seems nobody there bothered to wear masks and Madge and the birthday boy were even snapped hugging.
But what really riled fans was a video shot at her 18th-century mansion outside Lisbon that showed her in a marble bath surrounded by rose petals.
As she soaked in the tub, she shared some pearls of wisdom about the virus, describing it as the great equaliser.
“Are you struggling with unemployment, too? Stop!” one infuriated follower responded.
“I love you, my queen, but things outside your mansion are very different from what you think,” wrote another.
SHE was once the biggest trendsetter in global pop culture but in recent years the seven-time Grammy winner has had her work cut out for her matching younger stars in terms of high-energy performances and album sales.
After her Madame X album debuted at No 1 on the Billboard 200 in June last year, it quickly plummeted to 77 – the fourth-steepest slide in chart history.
Some suspect it’s this fear about relevance that might be at the heart of her weird behaviour.
She’ s been spending lockdown with boyfriend Ahlamalik Williams (26), her sons and three of her daughters, Mercy (13) and twins Estere and Stella (7), who like David were adopted from Malawi. Her eldest daughter, Lourdes Leon (23), is in New York, where she’s also drawn criticism for wandering around without a mask.
Despite a 35-year age gap, Madge and back-up dancer Ahlamalik still seem to be going strong. Towards the end of April she posted a gushing Instagram birthday message to her toyboy, whom she’s reportedly been dating since 2018.
“Happy birthday, my love,” she wrote. “I couldn’t think of a better person to be in quarantine with.”
Wonder if he feels the same. In between video rants, 3am singalong sessions and exhibitionist photoshoots, she can’t be the easiest person to live with right now.