Madonna has fallen from the tower of coolness and needs some new transgressions

There’s a video from 1982 of Madonna’s first performance, on the tiny stage of New York’s Danceteria, a venue as ramshackle as it is wonderful. It’s all cool. She’s 24 and singing “Everybody”, which would become her debut single, and the performance leaves no one indifferent thanks to her conviction, even though her pitch is a bit off. She sings to a backing track, accompanied by three lads in shorts, one of whom is Martin Burgoyne, the flatmate who would introduce her to Basquiat, Haring and Warhol – friendships that would transform her into the Big Apple’s ‘it girl’. Forty-four years later, Madonna – unrecognisable due to excessive plastic surgery – made a fitting entrance at the half-time show of the Football World Cup final, riding in a dune buggy, surrounded by a entourage of hipsters and belting out “Music”, one of her anthems, before taking a stroll across the pitch with Ronaldo and Ronaldinho as her escorts. There was something awkward about this appearance, but it’s not easy to put your finger on what exactly – perhaps it was a matter of shattered illusions.

Meanwhile, an album cover featuring Giovanni Strazza’s ‘Veiled Virgin’ has begun to appear online and in the last remaining record shops. This nineteenth-century marble sculpture depicts a transparent veil draped over a motionless face, creating the illusion of flesh carved from stone. This is how Madonna is promoting her new album ‘Confessions II’, a sequel, twenty years on, to ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’. Why that image, that reference to a half-hidden face? It could serve as a starting point for an examination of the ‘Madonna’ persona and its transformations – from the original embodiment of the sexy encounter between ‘art’ and ‘pop’ to a melancholic figure of camp-style public presence, the sort seen at fashion shows, VIP restaurant openings and stale showbiz award ceremonies. So much for the avant-garde… Yet one factor, however distorted, remains the linchpin of how she is perceived: her body, an eternal source of scandal.

In her early days, transgression was a central theme for Madonna: the crucifix as a stage prop, the brazen appropriation of Black and queer ballroom culture in “Vogue”, the landmark book entitled “Sex” (1992) which glamorised pornography, turning it into a living-room conversation piece. These were semi-educational provocations through which Madonna taught the American mainstream almost forbidden vocabulary: dance, at that time, was an instrument of liberation; on the dancefloor, the body defied morality and responded to the rhythm. This had implications: in "Erotica", sensuality was accompanied by a virtually academic conceptual framework, exploring desire as a political form.

And today? What remains? Certainly, the dancefloor remains a constant in a career that has often reinvented itself. ‘Confessions II’, produced once again with Stuart Price, brings Madonna back into the groove of her most beloved album, the 2005 release – a non-stop DJ set, spiced with Abba-style house. Some have dubbed it the “Godfather II” of album sequels, and indeed at times it works better than the original, even if it lacks a single capable of climbing the charts (though at least it features the track with Sabrina Carpenter, “Bring Your Love”, which, whilst it may not conquer the radio airwaves, places Madonna right alongside the 26-year-old who could well take her place).

Indeed: Madonna has to come up with some tricks, because she’s fallen from the pinnacle of cool and she doesn’t like it one bit. So, as always, she’s working hard – and this new album is proof of that – but she has to come to terms with the fact that her physical presence in the world has become a burden, at least as much as the lace corsets she wears, matching those of her daughter Lourdes, on the red carpets of the ready-to-wear fashion shows. Madonna is no longer the most interesting thing in the room; at best, she’s a guarantee that something photogenic is going to happen there.

Erotic provocation has been turned on its head: the taboo is no longer sex, but age. Every public appearance by Madonna is interpreted as a referendum on her features – not on her music, but on those reshaped cheekbones. And with her characteristic stubbornness, she fights this final battle, like a soldier on a mission: can cosmetic excess lead to a second phase – surgical repentance? And so those who criticised her for having had too much work done now see her returning – thanks to further procedures – to a more ‘classic’ look. Her transgression no longer lies in appearing young at all costs, but in refusing to apologise for what she has done to herself. The sarcasm with which she dismissed those who called her ‘ruined’ – poking fun at her post-operative swelling – is perhaps her final provocation.

One final detail to complete this cubist picture: several professional listeners have raised suspicions about the vocal performances on “Confessions II”: is it possible that her voice has been remodelled using an AI model of the young Madonna, to restore that timbre which maturity has rendered hoarse, almost baritone-like? It’s a plausible theory, and we shouldn’t succumb to trite criticism: Madonna may well have chosen to weave the synthetic voice she had in her twenties – a digital echo of the past – into her current persona. A face remodelled to radically alter her features, an artificial voice to defy the passage of time, the social calendar to remain in the public eye. A project of exhibitionism that evokes the planning of a performance. Or perhaps the hysteria of twilight years.

However, if something sacred has been lost, in what could be her swan song there are mysteries, red herrings and masks. Meanwhile, the album is selling well, because the girl knows her craft inside out. And, like that veiled statue, she takes us by surprise and confuses us. One might think that Madonna today has no desire to reveal too much about herself. She wants to be there and not be there, to remain immanent, finally giving a mystical meaning to that name she chose when the mountain to climb was towering. Almost impossible. Almost.