Mama
Don't Screech!
by Gretchen Federlein
Material
Girl Goes Tone-Deaf at MTV Awards
Now, I ain't one to
gossip, so you ain't heard this from me. But
Madonna's singing last night nearly shattered my
limited edition Run-DMC spectacles! But
Gretchen! I hear you protesting, how would
you know? Aren't you half deaf from that 1986 Midnight Star
concert? Well, yes, my
attentive ones, but bust this: my peeps and I
were breakdancing to the awards show, like we do
every year, when suddenly, BAM! The sound
of a car wreck kicked through my TV, talking
about "zephyr in the sky" or some
wack-ass shit. The whole room full of poppers and
lockers stopped in mid-break. Word to the Human
Beat Box, homegirl needed some cheese to
go with that whine! Was Biz Markie her
voice coach?
During
that crazy "Ray of Light" performance
last night at the MTV Music Video Awards, fly
guitarist Lenny Kravitz couldn't drown out her
wails; not even Madonna's perky nipples under a
transparent wife beater shirt could take away
from the horrible squawking.
Yo
Madonna! If you see a note out there, jump on!
All
right. I admit it, I've never been down with
Madonna, so I'm biased. To me, she's always been
a no-talent pop star preying on white folks' bad
taste. And a big fake. Kind of like Kathie Lee
Gifford, but that's another column. Madonna can't
sing and she dances like an aerobics instructor,
but that doesn't seem to faze her at all. She
goes on pretending she's good at these things,
hoping we'll believe it sooner or later.
"But
she's a brilliant marketer!" the masses
object. So was Milli Vanilli, but at least their
management had the good sense to keep them from
singing. The illusion of their talent was
thankfully kept up until it was exposed -- we
knew they were fluff, but at least they had
decent voices (or so we thought) and they can
dance. Madonna might have the good manners to
spare us her tuneless voice and jock stomping.
But nooooooo! We have to suffer through
performance after performance of the best
manufactured music and choreography money can buy
fronted by an entertainer that can't sing and
dance any better than me, and I'm a writer.
A brilliant marketer really should have something
to market, no?
But my
question is this: why can't anyone see through
her? She's an emperor with no clothes; there is
nothing real about Madonna. We pay so much damned
attention to her -- we fawn over her every
time she puts on a new leather muumuu or changes
her hair. At the Oscars, a People fashion critic
actually excused her latest fashion offense by
assuring us that Madonna wasn't just putting on a
pretty dress (we already knew that), but
she was "coming from a more spiritual
place." Hunh? What spirituality would that
be? The divine love of ugly clothes? You'd think somebody
would stand up in the middle of all this fawning
and say, "Um, excuse me. She can't
sing."
But what
the hell are we thinking, making this woman rich
when she's so damned BUTT? There's plenty of
other talented people out there who deserve it
more. And it's our own fault she's gotten this
far, to the point where she can croak through a
song in front of millions of viewers and people
still tell her she's the freshest. It's a damned
shame. But peep this: the Funk Chunk City
Breakers know she's just frontin'. And we don't
know how much more of this we can take. At least
we have another year to get some
earplugs.
Got any Sir
Mix-A-Lot lyrics?
Send 'em here!
mmslanty@nwlink.com
More Chunks of Funk:
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Funk Chunk #12 - I
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