Madonna was, well, Madonna and made Aretha Franklin’s tribute about herself
When asked to give a tribute to a fallen artist, maybe don’t pull a Madonna. At the VMAs, the singer somehow made Aretha Franklin’s moment all about herself.
Someone made a huge mistake when they asked Madonna to be the one to honor Aretha Franklin at the MTV Video Music Awards. Walking onto the stage looking like a real-life Blair Witch, Madonna took it upon herself to honor the Queen of Soul.
How did she do that, you ask? By telling an insane story about a Carole King song that Aretha Franklin famously covered and making the entire moment about herself. Which, this is Madonna so are we really surprised?
She got up, said some weird La La Land- esque story where she just wanted to go to Paris and in the audition to get her there, she sang “A Natural Woman”, a song first written and performed by Carole King. The entire thing was a disaster and it doesn’t even make sense that Madonna was the one to honor Aretha in the first place.
If we can pick a best moment from this bitter disaster, it has to be for one audience member in the corner of the screen who just kept putting on his sunglasses and making faces as she would speak. In that moment, he was all of us and we were all him.
NEW YORK, NY – AUGUST 20: Madonna speaks onstage during the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall on August 20, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for MTV)
In the end, the tribute should have been better than this, especially since it was the first award show after Aretha’s death. Maybe the next time anyone, anywhere is honoring Aretha Franklin (heads up, upcoming awards shows), we should make it about Aretha.
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The Queen of Soul deserves so much more than a weird story from Madonna that doesn’t even really pertain to her legendary work as a music icon.