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'Bitch, I’m Madonna' is the latest tone-deaf music video out of the Tidal exclusive vault

'Bitch, I’m Madonna' is the latest tone-deaf music video out of the Tidal exclusive vault

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I am so tired of celebrity 'squads'

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There are a lot of reasons to be nauseated by the video for "Bitch I'm Madonna" — she dresses a bunch of six year-old girls up in "Like a Virgin" costumes, there is a bathtub girl fight involving pasties, Madonna uses a broom at one point because, lol, cleaning your own home — but perhaps the biggest reason is the people who are in it.

beyonce gif

beyonce gif

nicki minaj gif

katy perry gif

"Bitch, I'm Madonna" is rife with guest appearances from musicians who have recently been behaving with questionable artistic integrity. Beyoncé (prepare for sacrilege) and Nicki Minaj shared an exceptionally lazy music video through Tidal last month, for which the theme seemed to be a giant "fuck you, you love us, you'll watch us eat cheeseburgers or make duck faces or just do nothing, even."

beyonce gif

It's not as though glamour and excess are a new presence in music videos from major pop and hip-hop artists, it's just that for this particular group of pop and hip-hop artists, it seems like a particularly tone-deaf choice. Tidal's biggest PR problem is that it's message of "by artists, for artists" is corrupted by the general perception that the only artists it is directly benefiting are already super rich and super famous.

Putting all of these people into one room/video only makes things worse. Having rich friends is like the next level of conspicuous consumption, and Tidal's talentless production team does nothing to save the video from looking tacky and pandering (forget how lame it is to superimpose Kanye's face, it doesn't even look well-done).

the glamourous excess is a particularly tone-deaf choice

Cameos in music videos used to be kind of cool — it was exciting to find out that two of your favorite artists had overlapping interests when it came to the making of music/art. Now the excess of cameos feels cheap, the collaborations feel like a lie — a lie in exchange for more money for artists who are already the most profitable in the world. Were Katy Perry, Kanye West, Beyoncé, or Miley Cyrus even at the shoot for this video? They're ghosted over the main action for approximately two seconds apiece, essentially showing up just to give out so many stamps of approval from big names. Katy Perry I assume, is also in this for some pretty obvious Taylor Swift-related reasons.

And if "Bad Blood" went up against "Bitch, I'm Madonna," which #squad would win? Are we really not supposed to be asking this question? As petty as it was, "Bad Blood" tried to find some kind of loose narrative justification for parading around all the people that are on Taylor Swift's "side," and I suppose Madonna's choice of jam-packing the celebs has thematic consistency too — bitch, she's Madonna. Rich, famous, Kanye-endorsed, Madonna.