March 31, 2008
Madonna Thinks NYC is Boring
Coming to a newsstand near you this Wednesday: Madonna's hate mail to New York City. Well, sort of. In this coming month's issue of Vanity Fair the material girl says New York has lost its magic.
"It's not the exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn't feel alive, cracking with that synergy between the art world and music world and fashion world that was happening in the 80s. A lot of people died."Odd, wasn't one of her last videos for a track called "I Love New York"? Guess we shouldn't expect any love songs on her upcoming release, Hard Candy.
When Madonna first came to New York in 1977, she worked at Dunkin' Donuts while dancing in modern dance troupes. She said of that time, "When I came to New York, it was the first time I'd ever taken a plane, the first time I'd ever gotten a taxi-cab, the first time for everything. And I came here with $35 in my pocket. It was the bravest thing I'd ever done."
We're guessing the excitement wears off as you near 50-years-old and have enough money to buy your former employer out. Either that or, as NY Mag says, living in "Marylebone, London is so CBGB circa 1983." Chances are she'll frequent the John Varvatos boutique that took over CBGB more than she appeared at the venue itself.
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Well, in some ways, maybe she's right?
or maybe she needs to get out of manhattan more
Once people start using the word synergy to describe something they need to return to the mergers and acquisitions boardroom. 50 year old women in Addidas jumpsuits=65 year old men in 1/2 shirts (Mick Jagger)
madonna's BORING, and so is anything she says or does
I think she's right, she's not comparing nyc to other cities, but simply saying it's not the same energy. I don't think it's just having more money that makes the city boring. I think manhattan's one big predictable country club being filled with regulations. Maybe it's age? I've been here 11 years and I'm looking for an energy too.
Being old and rich and surrounded by sycophantic employees is boring Madonna. Get used to it; 'cause you are there.
After the nightlife crackdown, she is totally right.
Being old and rich and surrounded by sycophantic employees is boring Madonna.
Dude, that sounds like Manhattan!
Can you people get with it? Even LCD Soundsystem hates on NYC.
I agree it's hard to be original in Bloombergs NYC
which is getting like any old newly developed Toronto type montage. When you killed off the old neighborhoods
you also rid the people who could not afford million
dollar condo's,they were the colorful people who
had the synergy and were the artists.
Her new song is boring too. Poor Guy.
I totally agree with her. New York definitely feels different to me than it did.
I mean: I know I've changed, Madonna's changed, and we've all changed and all gotten older but I think the city has also changed to become something a little less "edgy" and "inspiring."
Having just left, I don't know if I recommend moving or not. I've been exploring the West Coast and everyone everywhere is complaining about "gentrification," "condo people," and "reurbanization." I'm really curious about what the (possible) recession is going to do to all of this. Will it bring low cost housing and creative ghettos back or will high gas prices push artists and other poor people into the countryside?
"It's not the exciting place it used to be...in the 80s. A lot of people died."
What do you think killed them Madge? Drugs, AIDS, guns...eating disorders? Stop wasting your time with myopic sentimentality.
Who cares!! Why does anyone take what she says seriously?!?!
Anyone who relies on a city for "energy" is lost, pure and simple.
Wow, even Madonna thinks Con Ed's service sucks!
Manhattan is over. O.V.E.R. Deal with it.
is this a problem of the finger being old or the socket?
"madonna's BORING, and so is anything she says or does"
Ah, the voice of jealousy. How cute!
there will always be art and music, there will just never be cool after hours clubs anymore like save the robots and the body heat.
NYC is always boring to people who were around 20 years ago and knew what it was "really" like. In 2028 we all can bitch that in 2008 it was a REAL city, man!
[18] umm, not
"Ah, the voice of jealousy. How cute!"
Saying someone is jealous when they complain about something is such an tired-ass comment. Jealous, really? Are you 12 years old?
We're giving her a lot of snark for such a mild comment. Saying that the city isn't quite as exciting as it was in the 80s is not the same as saying it's boring. Touchy touchy.
My reaction is "sure," both for Madonna as a person, and *partially* for the city, which is obviously way different than it was 25 years ago.
One difference - the decline of the pop art mentality. If Keith Haring ran around making inflatable bears over subway grates, that might have been perceived as exciting and vital, despite its cheapness and ephemeralness. Now it's just a cute idea by some dude. I'm no expert on contemporary art, but popness seems to be no longer exciting in itself.
Similarly, becoming a new kind of pop star is just not exciting either. It's like "OK, Feist, that's cute." People are more excited about weirdos like Animal Collective, or Johnny Greenwood's side experiments with an orchestra. It's an introspective, navel-gazing time.
if Madonna calls, I'm not here.
Well, NYC is boring.
Then again, so is Madonna.
Translation "I miss the olden days when people still found me culturally relevant."
Everyone things that "things aren't the way they used to be" when they start getting older.
Yeah, seriously, here you go - now pop art is Jeff Koons suspending a train over a museum entrance or some shit (and using millions of institutional dollars to do it.)
Yup, she's right.
Our culture is getting a bit boring and repetitive. I can't even name musicians on the radio anymore; they all sound the same to me.
I first wanted to say something defensive like "Madonna's old!" Maybe she's right, but does her opinion matter? I enjoy New York.
1977 was a great time to be in New York
As far as Madonna is concerned she should bugger off back jolly old England if she can't get 'juiced' here or maybe shes dryin up and doesn't know it?
i blame the brits.
"Saying someone is jealous when they complain about something is such an tired-ass comment. Jealous, really? Are you 12 years old?"
And complaining about someone else pointing out someone's obvious jealousy (otherwise, why say anything at all?), must make you about 6 (which would also explain the grammatical mistake of using the article 'an' instead of 'a').
The reason I said she was jealous is because the comment that was left did not even address this article, but instead attacked Madonna at a baser level and with a generalized statement (everything she does or says is boring?).
She is right. NY (Manhattan) has lost some of its edge.
But it has gotten more competitive. Finding a job, renting/buying an apartment, making a living, meeting someone, earning enough to stay, the crowding, the traffic, the weather....all make it an inhospitable place.
everyone's entitled to their opinion. i can understand her point, even if i don't have the benefit of nostalgia that comes along with her 1980s reference point, and even though i wasn't as young or broke at the time. however, it's not just the city. it has just as much to do with the city as it does with where one is at in one's life and what one's priorities are. for many people NYC right now is, in their world, as exciting as it's ever been. it's all relative.
Could someone like Madonna fly in from Detroit and make it today?
Isn't the club scene more exclusive (ie, expensive) and harder to get a break? Isn't it just harder to get a chance from fading record companies, radio stations playing the same junk and an audience that's passionless? Madonna had thousands of girls dressing up like her on the streets in the early 1980's. Who's doing something like that today?
Unless she has client #9, I don't think she could afford to hang on long enough.
I don't love Madonna -- but she is so right. The place is a big snore compared to the 70's and 80's -- best suited for us 50 year olds!
Why is this a story? Oh, yeah, it is Madonna.
Christ, she moved here from Detroit/Ann Arbor, fakes a "real New York" Accent. Gets all clubby, etc... Becomes mega-Diva. Marries Guy Ritchie, Brit Film Director of the moment (at the time) whose parents apparently hate her, moves to the UK and fakes a Brit accent. Now, London hates her and NYC hates her.
Ah, who cares?
She's right that the city has lost some of its magic. But come on, does anyone over the age of 40 still have the innocence needed to see the world with fresh eyes? To paraphrase Ol' Blue Eyes, if she can be bored here, she'll be bored anywhere.
Madonna = Courtney Love with the fungus.
Shes such a PriMa donna
Madonna is right. It is boring for her. This is what happens when you get old. You stop being hungry and creative. And of course money and fame glosses over the dirt, scum, and fun. Your friends are no longer one step away from drug dealers named Apache; they are art dealers named Francisco who wear funny ascots.
The city will always renew itself. There will always be young people. They will have fun. The old folks go home to die. And on their way they'll times they pass some gas called their opinions.
London is edgier...always has been for 30 years now...closest you get here is a rapidly yuppifying Brooklyn...but then again the grub is better here...
I have to completely disagree. How has NYC lost its 'edge' (whatever that vague buzzword means anymore)?
Any night of the week there is at least one of each of the following:
1.)Multiple amazing bands playing, some really famous, some obscure
2.)An exponents worth of restaurants where you can have the best meal of your life, some very expensive some a few dollars
3.)Go to a gallery that will give you free booze and food while you get to see brilliant art (sure, there's a lot of crap but there is some devastating art on display in this city not even bring the museums into it)
4.)See a brilliant writer read in a space as large as someones living room, it might be Philip Lopate or Frank McCourt, or some girl from Jersey with a Bon Jovi tattoo, people in NYC still read a lot, and people go out and see it
Yes, the city has gotten pretentious, expensive, white collar and whatever else, but the bottom line is; cool people still come to NYC and do cool stuff. Everyone else is just a humbug.
Madonna is a slut. Always was, always will be. Where are the whore chasers now that we need them. With all her money why doesn't she get her teeth fixed?
The city was a lot better in the late fifties and early sixties where groups sang on the corner and made some fine music, not like that slut crap her and her grungy friends made a generation later.
I hope her daughter gets knocked up by some grunge band wannabe.
Madonna should take cues from Michael Jackson and move to Dubai.
Dubai is the new Manhattan, circa 1977, for the filthy rich. Or maybe it's rich and filthy? Whatever...
Rock On!
I think she's partially right. Back then SoHo wasn't a suburban shopping mall. Gentrification has sucked the life out of NYC.
This is so lame. Greenwich Village went from squalor to arthouse bohemia, to a parody of bohemia where hucksters would show uptown residents faked coffee shops where fake writers and fake artists faked hanging out for the benefit of gullible upper-class rubes. Finally, it became fully gentrified. The same can be said for any NYC neighborhood.
"Creative" neighborhoods contain people who can't wait to sell out (i.e. succeed) and become the filthy rich people who initially came to currently gawk at their "authenticity."
30 years later they'll revisit the old hood and sniff at how it's not as credible as it was before they themselves ruined it. Madonna deserves a beating in my opinion. Then again, that's pretty much the NYC dream.
I've lived in SoHo since 1973 and it was never what everyone thinks it was. There were no places to buy food except some poorly stocked bodega places. And the Spring Street bar along with Ken's Broome Street bar were the only "things happening." The only thing good about it was there were loft parties going on all the time. Large spaces with people drinking and dancing to the wee hours of the morning were great. That hasn't happened for a long time. Actually it was done by the time Madonna the slut came on the scene.
There is still some life out in the periphery, but it's being pushed away pretty rapidly. Gentrifiers go into some poor neighborhood, set themselves up in little pockets, and breed like rats. In a way they're worse than rats -- rats don't run your rent up.
"CBGB circa 1983." hardcore?
it costs $250 to blow your nose in london. not that things are cheap here ...
E.D. has it right. keep your finger fresh, and the socket will take care of itself.
NYC may be cool to someone who just arrived from Ohio or wherever, but to us who grew up/lived here during the 70s/80s, this decade makes us feel like we're almost in another US city than ever before. Thankfully, this city always changes and a bad change may be a good change.
or maybe the tired old crone is just projecting...
Madonna is absolutely right. The city has lost it's edge. You could once find so much diversity between neighborhoods but it has become more and more homogenized. Even American Gangster had to go deep into the Bronx to find the real NY City. Manhattan is well on it's way to becoming a gated community filled with corporate entities on every corner.
This sounds like a headline that The Onion might write:
"Middle Aged Person Starts Tirade with the Words: 'Back in my day...'"
#53: No kidding. I returned to NYC--after a 14 year hiatus--in 2005 and, after two months, I thought to myself, "this is not the city I remember." (i.e. 1979-1991). Despite all of the gentrified hullabaloo, as someone pointed out, (and as a Harlem native) NYC is a city that constantly renews itself almost every decade. If you want to explore authentic New York, go to outer limits of Brooklyn (i.e. Bay Ridge or Sheepshead Bay or Bensonhurst).