This week, Billboard is publishing a sequence of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years in the past. Our 2003 Week continues right here with a glance again on the controversial and in the end shelved Iraq Battle-themed video for Madonna’s “American Life,” a uncommon second of self-doubt and second-guessing from the Queen of Pop.
This summer season, Madonna will embark on her Celebration Tour — the promised showcase of her 4 many years as a hitmaker, a title she’s rightfully held onto since 1983’s “Vacation.” However whereas sure landmark songs from the icon’s discography are, like “Vacation,” virtually assured to look on the setlist, there’s one which looks like extra of a toss-up: the doomed title monitor from 2003’s American Life, which served as each midpoint and turning level in her profession.
Madonna is to some extent synonymous with the controversial lead singles (and particularly music movies) she launched on her rise to superstardom — from 1984’s VMAs-inaugurating “Like a Virgin,” to 1989’s Vatican-condemned “Like a Prayer,” to 1992’s NSFW “Erotica.” However 2003 was a uncommon case the place provocation didn’t fairly translate into gross sales. “American Life,” ill-timed for launch inside days of america invading Iraq, paired radio-unfriendly critique of Madonna’s house nation with an anti-war video designed to shake folks up. Her subsequent determination to tug the clip stays divisive even amongst her greatest followers, however its existence arguably foiled the album correct all the identical — certainly one of her most bold and introspective units, nonetheless idiosyncratic. And although the track and video have, for a lot of Individuals, aged about in addition to the Iraq Battle itself, the scandal of “American Life” appeared to drive a everlasting change to Madonna’s playbook as a provocateur.
Regardless of public-opinion speedbumps that led many to declare her profession over at numerous factors in her 30s, Madonna had in the end solid into her 40s with 1998’s Ray of Gentle, the blockbuster new-mom album thought of by many to be her magnum opus (and nonetheless her sole album of the yr nomination on the Grammys). Then got here 2000’s Music, which Encyclopedia Madonnica creator Matthew Rettenmund calls “the exclamation level on her salvation on this interval” — the primary Madonna album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in additional than a decade, having bought 420,000 copies within the U.S. in its first week. Critics and shoppers alike had clearly responded nicely to her pivot into religious techno-pop after which folktronica, forward-looking sounds that heralded her into the burgeoning TRL period. “It was cool to like Madonna once more, and to respect her,” says Rettenmund, “and motherhood was no small a part of the equation.”
By 2003, the “Materials Mother” — as she’d been nicknamed by the press — was elevating two youngsters with director husband Man Ritchie, and had settled right into a notably mature and reflective iteration of her ever-changing persona. However Rettenmund provides that the stage had in some ways been set for a bumpier interval, noting “some fatigue from all of the feel-good.” The brand new millennium had additionally introduced a string of poorly-reviewed performing performances on Madonna’s half, together with a dwell stint in London’s West Finish and a starring function in Ritchie’s panned 2002 movie Swept Away. In a March 2003 piece, The New York Occasions famous these failed forays into performing and her “considerably older viewers” — largely north of the 11-25 age vary most probably to purchase CDs — and concluded that the 44-year-old star “could also be wanting on the remaining levels of a protracted profession.”
Madonna had first began engaged on her ninth studio album, American Life, shortly after 9/11 — a interval that, as Rettenmund places it, “politicized the pop cultural atmosphere to the acute.” Whereas President George W. Bush initially targeted his retaliation efforts on Afghanistan, Hollywood edited the Twin Towers (and something that may evoke them) out of flicks, Disney Channel stars sat for weird PSAs extolling the American flag, and the nation music world mobilized to offer (sometimes questionable) consolation to a wounded nation.
Round this time, Madonna was apparently feeling let down by the priorities and preoccupations of her nation’s tradition. Reflecting on what she characterised as her comparatively immature previous selves, who’d been obsessive about issues like stardom and superficiality, she defined, “A whole lot of occasions, you undergo life in search of distractions to cowl up ache, when what you need to actually do is face the ache, and then you definitely don’t want the distraction.”
Teaming up once more with French producer Mirwais, whose sound had supplied the spine for Music, she unpacked these emotions over ten tracks — additionally throwing in “Die One other Day,” the theme from the 2002 James Bond movie of the identical title (which peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Scorching 100 in November of that yr). In all, American Life would see Madonna interrogate the American Dream, chide herself for each perpetuating and being conned by it, and spell out what she’d realized was necessary: love, household, and spirituality.
The mission was fairly cohesive, if typically abrasive — confidently leaping between acoustic-folk and Euro-techno sounds, and containing the odd decidedly wacky lyric. Penultimate monitor “Die One other Day” (“Sigmund Freud / Analyze this”), which some figured had been included principally to ensure the album successful, makes probably the most sense when learn exterior of its Bond context, as a type of refusal to vanish — tying it to American Life’s nearer, “Simple Journey,” the place Madonna directly expresses a want “to dwell without end” and “to work for it.”
Whereas the star had made artwork about being profitable however solely semi-happy earlier than, the album’s promo cycle turned issues into extra of a sweeping assertion about, nicely, American life. When journalists questioned whether or not Madonna was the perfect medium for that message, multi-millionaire and world icon that she was, she argued that it needs to be most plausible coming from her: “I do assume that we’ve develop into utterly consumed with being wealthy and well-known … I’ve all these issues and none of them ever introduced me one minute of happiness.”
This mindset was finest exemplified by American Life’s title monitor, a bitter but sporadically danceable lonely-at-the-top anthem that’s at the least 75% squelchy bassline. Its most notorious element is its rapped bridge, the place Madonna runs by the markers of her success — “Three nannies, an assistant, and a driver and a jet,” amongst different issues — that don’t really fulfill her. (The story goes that Mirwais had prompted her to improvise a rap within the studio, and whereas she was hesitant at first, they ultimately made issues work.)
There was nothing lyrically about “American Life” — or American Life, actually — that made express reference to the so-called Battle on Terror. However by the point Madonna was ending up the album in late 2002, there was speak of a looming invasion of Iraq. It appears to have been round then that the album’s visible aesthetics began to click on into place. In October, she appeared on the Craig McDean-shot cowl of Self-importance Honest, in a glance that nodded to a wartime Marlene Dietrich. She additionally premiered her six-million-dollar video (one of the costly of all time) for “Die One other Day,” which — whereas clearly an extension of the Bond movie — fused her Kabbalism with a storyline involving her character escaping a navy torture chamber.
Someday in November, Madonna acquired the concept to show a possible video for “American Life” into an anti-war assertion, what she’d later name a “last-ditch effort” to provoke folks to hitch the trigger. She reached out to Swedish director and fellow controversy-magnet Jonas Åkerlund, with whom she’d been working at the least as soon as per album as of 1998’s video of the yr VMA-winner “Ray of Gentle” — a price the 2 have roughly stored up since. (Madonna had first sought him out within the aftermath of his MTV-banned “Smack My Bitch Up” video for the Prodigy.)
Åkerlund says that whereas his aim as a director isn’t at all times to generate controversy, it was very a lot the intention behind “American Life.” “It was an entire plan,” he remembers of the considering. “We’re gonna wake folks up with the video.” Its idea, conceived with Madonna’s go-to choreographer Jamie King, concerned her and a gaggle of girls revolutionaries — forged particularly for his or her “actual” physique sorts — crashing a war-themed vogue present (actually, in a Mini Cooper). The present’s viewers, stuffed with fashion-world lookalikes, consumes this violent imagery as if it’s completely regular, and because the line between fiction and actuality will get progressively blurry. “We had been intrigued by vogue however then began to appreciate what a bizarre world we dwell in,” Åkerlund explains, “after which used the catwalk as a means of portraiting what was occurring.”
With issues in pre-production, McDean returned to {photograph} Madonna for the official American Life shoot, which French designers M/M (Paris) then transformed into its Guerrillero Heroico-esque album cowl and booklet. A lot was made from her uncommon return to her brunette roots — one thing she’s advised signifies a “extra grounded” way of thinking — and naturally her black beret and fatigues. Some instantly noticed Che Guevara, others Patty Hearst; stylist Arianne Phillips has mentioned she was impressed by each, moreover citing the Black Panthers.
Phillips’ “insurrectionist stylish” look was carried over to the video, shot in Los Angeles over just a few days in early February. Seemingly not delay by the fashion-world skewering, Jeremy Scott cameos within the video because the present’s designer, and, in accordance with Åkerlund, made the camouflage seems to be which might be despatched down the runway. The director additionally remembers the set being the primary he’d been on the place everybody needed to test their telephones; peer-to-peer file sharing was the massive factor conserving the trade up at evening, and Madonna had watched Music leak in its entirety on Napster in 2000. (Her camp would later add pretend American Life tracks to discourage piracy, together with one the place she requested, “What the f–ok do you assume you’re doing?”)
Instantly following the shoot, a press release was issued that Madonna’s upcoming video would “[depict] the catastrophic repercussions and horrors of warfare.” When accusations of ‘un-Americanism’ began to construct in response, she issued a first-person assertion: “I really feel fortunate to be an American citizen for a lot of causes — certainly one of which is the precise to precise myself freely, particularly in my work … I’m not anti-Bush. I’m not pro-Iraq. I’m pro-peace.”
All through the remainder of February and in the end March, many various variations of the video — “about ten,” Madonna guessed at one level, together with an extended reduce with automotive chases and dialogue — had been made, as issues progressed each behind the scenes and on the world stage. Although MTV ran a teaser forward of the February 23 Grammys, there was privately some type of back-and-forth taking place with the community, which was directly objecting to sure pictures and actively overlaying any cutting-room developments. Throughout these identical weeks, Bush moved from laying the groundwork to invade Iraq — together with delivering his well-known March 17 ultimatum — to formally starting the warfare on March 20.
With the “American Life” video set to premiere throughout networks in early April, the timing was lower than very best. One of many larger questions was tips on how to conclude it, since a number of choices had been filmed: “We by no means actually nailed the ending,” Åkerlund explains. The successful one, so to talk, had Madonna throwing a grenade at a Bush lookalike sitting among the many fashion-world ones. “Bush” coolly picks the weapon as much as reveal that it’s really a novelty lighter, and makes use of it to ignite a cigar. (Åkerlund occurred to seek out the lighter the opposite day, and demonstrates the way it works over Zoom.) At first, it wasn’t public data that Madonna could be throwing a grenade at Bush — simply that she’d be throwing one, and that its as-yet unknown recipient would “[take] the destruction out of it by turning it into one thing else.” In her view, it was a tongue-in-cheek means of asking for an alternative choice to warfare.
Åkerlund says that he and Madonna had been much less antsy concerning the video’s message — he stresses that they’ve at all times stood by it, and nonetheless do — and extra about its supply, which was studying in another way a season faraway from their ideation stage. “We’ve been planning the video for months and months,” Madonna mentioned whereas enhancing it, “and we didn’t know every thing that was going to be taking place on this planet.” Although Åkerlund advised in 2016 that it felt insensitive to launch the mission whereas mother and father had been sending their youngsters to warfare, he says now that the pair was principally targeted on the query “Is that this actually one of the simplest ways to show some extent?” He continues: “And it’s the primary and solely time I’ve seen her go, like, Nicely, possibly it’s not. Perhaps we’re fallacious.”
On the final minute — late sufficient that it had already began airing overseas, the Bush element by that time out of the bag — Madonna withdrew the video, writing on March 31: “As a result of risky state of the world and out of sensitivity and respect to the armed forces, who I assist and pray for, I don’t need to threat offending anybody who would possibly misread the which means of this video.” Moreover, she’d add within the coming weeks, the general public appeared to have already made their minds up about it. Writes Rettenmund within the 2015 replace of his guide, “Not solely was it a complete loss on a serious artistic assertion, it was a uncommon instance of Madonna flinching underneath a barrage of criticism.” Months of laborious work however, Åkerlund nonetheless believes pulling it was the precise transfer: “These weeks after we had been purported to launch the video, it actually felt fallacious … simply the means we did it.”
By the rest of American Life’s rollout, Madonna was cautious to not sound apologetic in discussing the scrapped video. As an alternative, she credited her determination to a too-tense viewing public, one which she typically implied lacked the mental maturity to grasp her intentions: “I feel that what folks would misconstrue was that I used to be slagging on President Bush, and I’m not … that I used to be making mild of what’s taking place to the troopers in Iraq, which I’m not … Issues are so critical and persons are so risky that they’re not gonna see irony, they’re not gonna see subtlety, they’re not gonna see the message.”
Nonetheless needing to ship a visible, possible in order that the only (launched within the U.S. on April 8) would have an opportunity, Åkerlund edited collectively one more model — this one nearly bizarrely inoffensive, the unique idea nearly non-existent. Launched because the official “American Life” video in mid-April, Madonna performs the track in entrance of quite a lot of flags, from Sweden’s to the Stars and Stripes. “That complete factor was like, What will we do now?” the director explains. He doesn’t bear in mind there being a lot intention behind the selection of flags or their placement, simply that he felt fortunate to have already got them readily available: “We wanted [the official video] quick … and we didn’t need to lose the momentum, so I bear in mind doing that video in a day or two.” Åkerlund admits that it isn’t terribly spectacular by itself, and doubtless solely flew on the time with the context of the pulled video behind it.
In some circles, the most important offense on this story was that Madonna had walked the unique again. Rettenmund argues in his guide that she’d changed “her most daring video” with “certainly one of her worst,” including now that the official model sadly “lends credence to the concept Madonna’s political revolutionary part was not grounded and well-conceived.” In a single April 2003 essay, author Heather Havrilesky voiced frustration that even America’s staunchest pop-culture provocateurs had been faltering at such a heated second: “It’s a very bitter irony that the disaffected, reality-averse tradition [Madonna] savages so nicely in ‘American Life’ appears to have persuaded her to shelve the video indefinitely.” (Numerous stations around the globe opted to play the unique anyway, with some overtly flouting the withdrawal.)
However there was additionally that different factor that had occurred in March: Every week earlier than the invasion, the Chicks’ Natalie Maines kicked off the group’s world tour by declaring that they had been ashamed Bush was from their house state of Texas. Turning into the topic of nationwide scorn virtually in a single day, nation radio stations ceased enjoying their music and former followers destroyed CDs on the street. The Chicks weren’t the one different Bush-critical American celebrities — it’s price noting that the president additionally had his share of worldwide movie star critics, together with George Michael, who’d ruffled feathers of his personal along with his 2002 “Shoot the Canine” video — however home nation listeners overwhelmingly supported Bush on the time.
“You already know, it’s ironic we’re combating for democracy in Iraq as a result of we in the end aren’t celebrating democracy right here,” Madonna mentioned. “Anyone who has something to say — in opposition to the warfare or in opposition to the president or no matter — is punished, and that’s not democracy.” Naturally, she was requested whether or not she’d been seeking to keep away from an identical destiny because the Chicks in scrapping her video. “I provide you with my honest-to-God promise that that’s not the explanation,” she insisted. Whereas she’d paid consideration to their (momentary) fall from grace, she maintained that she was fearful about that type of ire being directed not at herself however at her household. She implied that it would’ve been laborious on Ritchie’s profession, and at one level specified, “I didn’t need folks throwing rocks at my youngsters on the best way to high school … In the event you’re one particular person by yourself and you haven’t any accountability for folks round you then that’s one factor, however I had to consider the larger image.” (Whether or not these fears had been based mostly on any credible threats she’d obtained, as has lengthy been rumored on fan boards, it’s laborious to say.)
The monitor itself could not have been destined for something aside from infamy, thought of as it’s by many to be amongst Madonna’s worst, or on the very least her most inaccessible. From its uneven sound, to its expletives, to its inelegant rap — “I’m ingesting a soy latte, I get a double shoté/ It goes proper by my physique, and I’m happy” — it didn’t precisely scream radio smash. In the long run, the only peaked at No. 37 within the final week of April, staying on the Scorching 100 a complete of eight weeks. And whereas Madonna continued to advertise by the remainder of the spring, and would ultimately carry out it on 2004’s Re-Invention Tour, there was an ensuing stint the place it was unclear how she felt about it herself: In 2009, for example, she left it off her greatest-hits compilation, Celebration, the place “Hollywood” and “Die One other Day” had been American Life’s solely reps.
However maybe it was extra so the video’s message — and particularly who it was coming from — that had rubbed Individuals the fallacious means. “Madonna having something to say concerning the warfare was an irritant,” Rettenmund says, “and the truth that she was criticizing excessive vogue and the best way by which elites ignore world strife struck folks as disingenuous; they didn’t need the woman who confirmed her boobs to current herself, albeit in fantasy type, tossing a grenade at a wartime president.” It doesn’t really feel insignificant that the only carried out much better exterior of the U.S.: It was a No. 1 hit in Canada and a number of European international locations, and made the highest 10 nearly all over the place else, even when it didn’t at all times keep for lengthy.
In any case, the hiccup didn’t bode nicely for American Life as an entire. Launched on April 21, it bought 241,000 U.S. copies in its first week — not nothing, however an enormous drop on the heels of Music. By the summer season, Madonna was again to her blond ambition, hanging up her guerrilla-revolutionary guise till her tour. To advertise the album’s second single, “Hollywood” — its message not in contrast to that of “American Life,” although with a relatively accessible sound — she and Jean-Baptiste Mondino (one other frequent collaborator) reunited for a video that funneled concepts like conformity and cognitive dissonance by the work of vogue photographer Man Bourdin, leaving the warfare behind. Regardless of their efforts, the only utterly missed the Scorching 100.
At this level, it’s one thing of a aspect word that “Hollywood” is what the star was performing, alongside Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, when the three kissed onstage on the 2003 VMAs in August — the headline-making second that, for lots of people, overwrote anything Madonna did that yr. The efficiency, which technically commemorated her twenty years in music, noticed her willingly play the function of elder stateswoman for one of many first occasions in her profession — and to Aguilera, one of many “youthful feminine pop artists” the Occasions had named as threats to her relevance again in March.
Madonna’s subsequent collaboration with Spears that October, “Me Towards the Music,” landed her again on the Scorching 100 in time for the yr’s finish, since American Life’s remaining two singles — “Nothing Fails” and “Love Profusion” — couldn’t crack the chart (regardless of that “Love Profusion,” a starry-eyed earworm addressed to Ritchie, was given the album’s tamest video). Rettenmund factors out that American Life was principally a failure in accordance with Madonna’s personal hitmaking precedent: It did debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — “one thing even Ray of Gentle couldn’t do” — and was later nominated for 2 Grammys, even when each had been for “Die One other Day.” Consistent with many followers’ emotions on the album, the creator characterizes American Life as a cool-to-hate mission whose red-herring title monitor had kneecapped it: “No different track on that file has an overtly political slant, and lots of the songs are on par along with her finest work.”
However, whereas Madonna has continued to make daring and certainly inflammatory artwork — and is clearly not identified within the cultural creativeness for having light into unobjectionable obscurity — she’s opted to not lead with mentioned artwork in selling any of her post-2003 albums, arguably saving the majority of it for tried-and-true followers most accustomed (and beneficiant) to her M.O. She kicked off 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Flooring with “Hung Up” – a sure-to-please, ABBA-sampling disco monitor whose video paid tribute to John Travolta’s dance films – and was rewarded along with her first prime 10 hit since “Die One other Day.” (To see her flirt with blasphemy and BDSM, two issues that cursory listeners possible don’t affiliate with Confessions, you needed to catch the 2006 tour.) Madonna’s most controversial video since “American Life” is undeniably 2019’s gun-control plea, “God Management,” which she and Åkerlund made for a non-single from that yr’s Madame X earlier than merely importing it to YouTube — the appearance of the platform having been a godsend for artists who’d typically butted heads with MTV’s censors.
Going by the content material that didn’t survive even the unique reduce of “American Life,” evidently Madonna really acquired off comparatively simple in 2003. Relying on which since-leaked model you discover on-line, you would possibly see her throw her grenade indiscriminately on the crowd, or possibly the Bush lookalike cuddling as much as a Saddam Hussein one (footage that she included into tour performances of the track — not precisely an admission of guilt). Some vogue reveals are extra grotesque than others, the gang starting from complacent to actively amused. And although most cuts incorporate real warfare footage, it varies from blink-and-you-miss-it mushroom clouds and artillery to fairly graphic pictures pulled from information broadcasts.
Some would possibly as an alternative learn Madonna’s unique intentions extra charitably twenty years later, when current polling suggests that the majority Individuals assume invading Iraq was a mistake. The star, for her half, resumed performing “American Life” within the late 2010s, round which period the album itself was deemed “eerily prescient of Trump-era despair.” (A couple of months after Trump’s inauguration, she occurred to attend the Met Gala with Jeremy Scott, carrying one other of his camo designs.) On 2019 and 2020’s Madame X Tour, the track was even punctuated by a brand new twist: A number of dancers in uniform act as pallbearers for a fallen colleague, an American flag draped over the coffin. “I feel she returns to that track to double down on why she recorded it,” Rettenmund says of those more moderen performances.
In fact, the identical social media period that’s given Madonna a direct line to her followers has additionally seen a number of of her tasks re-evaluated and/or revived by most people — most notably 1998’s “Frozen,” which many youthful listeners found by Sickick’s viral 2021 remix of the track. Regardless of the reduce, uploads of the “American Life” video on YouTube are affected by feedback expressing admiration for it. “In a bizarre means,” Åkerlund says whereas watching certainly one of them on mute, “we type of at all times knew … Give it a beat, after which this video’s going to be seen in another way. I by no means actually feared that it wasn’t going to see the daylight.” The director provides that the video’s message is a depressingly timeless one: “There’s at all times a warfare. I can have a look at the execution and assume I might have achieved it in another way at the moment or no matter, however that goes with the style of issues we do. I’m nonetheless pleased with it. I’m pleased with every thing I’ve achieved along with her.”
Solely time will inform whether or not the star has plans to carry out “American Life” on the Celebration Tour; whereas we wait to seek out out, loads of followers have been praising it because it turns 20, and artists like HAIM have even posted TikToks utilizing its rap. However seeing as Madonna faces her greatest alternative but to recapture its narrative — and with the promise of lots of of 1000’s of devoted supporters there as witnesses — the track’s odds have maybe by no means been higher.
“I feel it’s to Madonna’s credit score that she tried,” says Rettenmund of the 2003 blunder. “And if it’s a uncommon instance of her waffling relating to her inventive integrity, it speaks volumes that in 40 years that is the one debatable instance that involves thoughts.”
