{"id":11528,"date":"2015-03-13T22:39:58","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/?p=11528"},"modified":"2015-03-13T22:42:38","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:42:38","slug":"madonna-interview-with-noisey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/2015\/madonna-interview-with-noisey\/","title":{"rendered":"Madonna interview with Noisey"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Noisey<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Bitch, I’m Madonna: “I want to live forever and I’m going to”<\/h4>\n

Madonna<\/strong> is not yet in the building, but Interscope\u2019s nondescript New York City HQ is primed for her arrival\u2014the lighting is soft, the hallways are specially perfumed, and my palms are already moist. I\u2019m sitting in the green room with four members of Madonna\u2019s team\u2014all of them bubbly, chatty women\u2014but apart from that it\u2019s a total sausage fest: 15 male, mostly gay journalists, and me. When word reaches us that she’s made an entrance, banter ceases and we all stare silently at the questions in our laps. I inhale two glasses of white wine to calm my nerves and become very aware that I need to pee, but I\u2019m too scared to get up in case my name is called when my overalls are round my ankles. My father is already texting me excitedly, \u201cWell???\u201d<\/p>\n

My dad is particularly invested in how my 20 minutes with her Madgesty will pan out because back in \u201987 he took me to my first ever concert: Madonna on her Who\u2019s That Girl Tour. I was only six years old but flashes from that night remain in sharp focus, like my pale pink ra-ra skirt, my mom\u2019s lace gloves, and the strings of pale plastic pearls I looped round my neck. I remember the enveloping applause, too, and that point in the set when the then 28-year-old singer dedicated \u201cGet into the Groove\u201d to San Francisco and plucked a skinny Chinese guy from the 22,000-strong throng to dance with her. My Madonna moment, his Madonna moment, they\u2019re just one among millions.<\/p>\n

Rebel Heart<\/strong><\/em> is Madonna\u2019s thirteenth studio album, and since half the record was leaked this past December, the singer\u2019s been on a media blitz. Right now she\u2019s everywhere\u2014talking to all the major media outlets, floating through the air at the Grammys, falling on her ass at the Brits. Although you could argue she\u2019s been pretty much everywhere since her 1983 hit \u201cEverybody\u201d saw her side-to-side shimmying out of the Lower East Side, onto dance floors, and into the charts. For the subsequent 30 plus years she\u2019s been making waves and generating headlines whether it be thanks to game-changing albums or image reinvention, infuriating the Vatican and outraging prudes, or fighting for self-expression, gay rights, and human rights in general. Most recently Drake dedicated an entire song to her.<\/p>\n

The mercurial multihyphenate is a pop culture pioneer, an exhaustively snapped and scrutinized mega-watt celebrity\u2014which is a subject she examines in new song \u201cJoan of Arc.\u201d It\u2019s easy to assume that harsh words and romantic bust-ups have no effect on Madonna, but sandwiched between the party cuts and big-balled bluster there have always been songs that reveal chinks in her armor and never more so than on Rebel Heart.<\/p>\n

At 56 years old, Madonna\u2019s sold 300 million records making her the top selling female artist of all time. Of all time. Which brings us to Kanye West, just one among the fleet of collaborators Madonna\u2019s cherry-picked to assemble this record. Alongside West her roll call includes Diplo, Ariel Reichstadt, Blood Diamonds, Nicki Minaj, Chance the Rapper, Nas, DJ Dahi, Avicii and his troupe of Scandi songwriters. Oh, and Mike Tyson. As such it\u2019s a pin-balling record, clocking in at 14 tracks, (with the deluxe edition and the super deluxe edition offering 19 tracks and 23 tracks, respectively). It\u2019s a hefty amount of new material to serve up when modern day music fans are thirsty for single smashes rather than cohesive collections, but in fact Rebel Heart services this very generation. It is not a well-plotted journey, but a feast of contrasts. She follows \u201cJoan of Arc, with the big-yourself-up club banger \u201cIconic;\u201d the air horn-blasted, reggae-pop of \u201cUnapologetic Bitch\u201d is brassy by comparison to the terse-yet-tender kiss off of \u201cHeartBreakCity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBitch I\u2019m Madonna\u201d has Diplo-writ large in every clipped smack and booty-bass beat with Nicki Minaj adding extra sass, and of course what Madonna record would be without her favorite juxtaposition\u2014the frisson between religion and raunch. On the panting, pouting \u201cHoly Water,\u201d she orders the listener to their knees, \u201cKiss it better\u2026 \/ Make it wetter,\u201d she orders before asking \u201cDon\u2019t it taste like holy water?\u201d Well, Madonna\u2019s innuendos have never been an exercise in subtlety. Does she always succeed in creating music that\u2019s cool, effortless, and of the moment? No. The aforementioned \u201cHoly Water\u201d is a tad jarring and sorry Kanye, \u201cIlluminati\u201d is among the weaker works here, but Madonna continues to keep us on our toes like no other performer in the history modern music.<\/p>\n

The week before we meet she held court with journalists, junket-style at Sotheby\u2019s, against a backdrop of Keith Harings and Jean-Michel Basquiats. Beside her stood a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses\u2014the challenge being if an interviewer asked a question she deemed dumb, they\u2019d have to take a shot and if they hit one out the park, Madonna would knock one back. Today there\u2019s no tequila as Madonna\u2019s feeling a tad under the weather and I\u2019m ushered into a room that smells like eucalyptus and scented candles. She stands up from the white leather couch to greet me, a slight five foot five upped a few inches thanks to black bejeweled heels. She\u2019s immaculate in a semi-sheer, intermittently beaded silk Pamella Roland dress that hangs modestly below the knee. Still, it\u2019s slit in all the right places, at the arms and the d\u00e9colletage, her black lace bra playing peekaboo. She looks astonishing\u2014even with that gold and diamond grill\u2014her eyeliner impeccably flicked outlining watchful blues eyes. They assess me. \u201cI like your overalls,\u201d she says. I dressed like a 12-year-old to meet the Queen of Pop. We sit down and get to it.<\/p>\n

Noisey<\/strong>: Your list of collaborators on this record is really a who\u2019s who of the current music landscape. Of course you\u2019ve been collaborating for years, but songwriting is so personal\u2014particularly on this record\u2014and it always strikes me as such an intimate space to invite what is often times ostensibly a stranger into the room to work with. Is it ever hard to bare your soul to these producers\u2014who are often men? Does that ever get easier? How do you break down those barriers?<\/p>\n

Madonna<\/strong>: It is all about chemistry. Some people are easier to open up to, and feel comfortable around than others. I did work with some women, MoZella was around a lot for many of the songwriting workshops that I did. She was great and we hit it off immediately. Also Natalia Kills I got along really well with. Diplo is really easygoing and fun, so is Toby Gad, and all of Avicii\u2019s songwriting team, I call them my Viking Harem\u2014wonderful, funny, smart, easygoing, warm, intelligent people, so I was lucky. I would say 75 percent of the people I wrote with immediately made me feel comfortable and at ease so I could not be afraid to make a fool of myself, which is inevitably how you feel when you\u2019re first writing.<\/p>\n

Noisey<\/strong>: Sure. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s part of the process, though. You call Diplo kindred spirits. How so?
\nMadonna<\/strong>:I think we have a lot of the same references. He\u2019s interested in a lot of the same things, like he\u2019s a big fan of Keith Haring, for instance, so am I. He has a child that goes to the Lyc\u00e9e Fran\u00e7ais, so do I. We like a lot of the same music. He loves fashion. He has a quirky sense of humor. I feel like he\u2019s my long-lost naughty brother. I love him.<\/p>\n

Noisey<\/strong>: He is a bit naughty.<\/p>\n

Madonna<\/strong>: Oh my God. He\u2019s so naughty!<\/p>\n

Noisey<\/strong>: Did he act up in the studio with you?<\/p>\n

Madonna<\/strong>: No, no\u2014he was always respectful to me, but I mean, he did tend to run around a bit more than I wish he would have.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read the full interview on Noisey.vice.com<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lates Rebel Heart<\/strong> interview comes from Noisey – Music by Vice. Kim Taylor Bennett spoke to Madonna<\/strong> at Interscope\u2019s New York City headquarters. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[28],"tags":[321,324],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/rebel-heart_11.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5eFGP-2ZW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11528"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11531,"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11528\/revisions\/11531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.madonnatribe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}