Madonna Talks Ageism & Album Leaks In ‘New York Times’ Profile

Mike Wass | June 5, 2019 1:20 pm
Madonna & Maluma's 'Medellín' Video
The Queen of Pop's blockbuster 'Medellín' video is a rousing act of rebellion.

With the release of Madame X a little over a week away (June 14, to be exact), Madonna is in full promo mode. As such, the Queen of Pop sat down for a New York Times magazine profile and — you guessed it — was asked a lot of questions about aging and ageism. It turns out that she sees the hateful comments on social media. “It’s not that I engage with it, but it ends up going in front of your eyes, and then when it goes in front of your eyes, it’s inside your head,” the pop icon explains.

“It comes up in your feed, and then you get pulled into it whether you like it or not,” Madonna continues. “So it’s a challenge to rise above it, to not be affected by it, to not get frustrated, to not compare, to not feel judged, to not be hurt.” However, she’s not about to stop being a controversial queen any time soon. “Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you stop fighting against it or defying it or refusing to be pigeonholed or put in a box or labeled or told you can and can’t do things,” the 60-year-old emphasizes.

While most of the interview revolved around the aging process and motherhood, Madonna did speak about the botched rollout of Rebel Heart. “There are no words to describe how devastated I was,” the “Medellín” hitmaker says of the album leak. “It took me a while to recover, and put such a bad taste in my mouth I wasn’t really interested in making music.” Another topic of conversation was hearing her music on the radio. “If I’m in a car or I go into a restaurant, I’m out somewhere, and one of my songs starts playing, I just go, ‘Ugh,'” she admits. “Probably because I’ve had to hear it five billion times already.”

Read the full profile, which includes commentary on Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein, here.

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