Skipping a generation

As I was watching Madonna take to the stage on Saturday at 'Radio 1's Big Weekend', via the BBC's iPlayer - the oddly wrinkle-free queen bee of pop violently thrusting her groin at all and sundry as she performed a six-song set - a rather disturbing thought hit me.

I'd assumed that the middling reviews for Hard Candy were mainly due to it being a less-than-stellar release, which is frankly fair enough when you're 11 albums into your career. You're bound to have a few small blips here and there.

But watching the performance I realised that she's redesigned herself for an age group that - for the first time in my own experience - is younger than my own, meaning that more than likely I'm just not going to 'get it'. Instead I am left to gloomily mumble about how much better she was when Vogue came out, or when she had Sacha Baron Cohen starring as Ali G - you know, if you can cast your mind back to pre-Borat days - in the video for Music. By hooking up with Timbaland, Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams she's latching on to a previously clueless audience who would have little idea about her 80s, 90s or even early 21st-century heyday, and who might otherwise balk at the prospect of buying music made by a 50-year-old multi-millionaire mother, someone who has been performing for well over 25 years.

However, Mrs Ritchie's move is perfectly understandable in one sense, I guess she doesn't want to become irrelevant and long past her sell-by date, as Paula Abdul, Cyndi Lauper and so many of her former peers did long, long ago. Haggardly miming along to Holiday on one of those 'Stars of the 80s' package tours wouldn't bear thinking about, never mind trying to belt out Like A Virgin with any degree of sincerity. It's just a shame that instead of maturing and developing as an artist in a dignified fashion - while refusing to capitalise on her past glories - she's instead splaying her legs gracelessly and prancing about like a stroppy A.D.D.-addled teenager, all while pretending to seduce someone half her age. Not that I can really talk about such things, but I at least I need a good bottle of whisky first to get into that sort of state.