Clad in the traditional black cape and spiky circlet of mourning, Madonna appeared at last night’s MTV Video Music Awards to pay tribute to Aretha Franklin. The show’s producers, we assume, wanted to memorialize Franklin, marking the loss of a musical icon by having another famous singer reflect on a remarkable career.
Instead, well, they got Madonna just sort of talking about herself for a little while.
[pm_embed_youtube id=’PLZQfnFyelTBOQ15kmHSgEbdjzLMWzZpL7′ type=’playlist’]Vulture compiled a set of clips that neatly compartmentalizes a speech meant to remember Aretha Franklin by talking about the Queen of Soul’s most remarkable achievement: performing a song that Madonna sang one time at an audition. Early in her career (Madonna’s, not Franklin’s, of course), “a French disco sensation was looking for backup singers and dancers for his world tour.” Madonna, in the sedate deadpan of a chemistry substitute teacher, recounts how she auditioned because, even if she didn’t get the gig, she would just go back to a life of “getting robbed, held at gunpoint, and being mistaken for a prostitute in my third-floor walk-up that was also a crack house.”
[pm_embed_youtube id=’PLZQfnFyelTBOQ15kmHSgEbdjzLMWzZpL7′ type=’playlist’]Madonna auditioned by announcing she was going to sing Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” She recounts the skepticism of the French producers, including an unproductive callback weeks later (quoted in a shitty approximation of a French accent), and says she knew she wasn’t being taken seriously because she was a “skinny-ass white girl” taking on Aretha Franklin.
If this is starting to feel a bit meta in the context of the presumably Franklin-themed tribute, don’t worry: Madonna then declares “bitch, I’m Madonna” as part of her story. It’s a decent summary of her attitude toward the memorial, too.