Nuevo Single "Ghosttown"

"Ghosttown" es el segundo single de "Rebel Heart".

Madonna ha cantado la canción en muchas de las paradas de la promo televisiva del álbum y este fin de semana está grabando el vídeo para la canción en Los Angeles.

¿Qué se sabe hasta el momento?

- El single se envió a radios el 13 de marzo y, aunque de momento la respuesta ha sido tímida , ha tenido un principio prometedor en airplay.
- El director del vídeo es Jonas Akerlund, antiguo colaborador en vídeos como "Ray Of Light", "Music", "American Life " y "Celebration".
- El actor Terrence Howard, de la serie televisiva "Empire", será el co-protagonista y acompañante de Madonna en el vídeo. Curiosamente, es la BSO de "Empire", fenómeno televisivo de la temporada en EE.UU., la que le ha quitado el #1 en USA a "Rebel Heart".
- Se espera que el vídeo, al igual que la letra de la canción, tenga una temática apocalíptica. Hoy mismo Madonna ha subido la imagen que veis debajo, con la cara manchada y la frase "es el fin del mundo, chica".
- Aunque no hay confirmación oficial, el vídeo podría estrenarse alrededor de mediados de abril.

Bitch! I Interviewed Madonna

It's been one hell of a week for Madonna. More than three decades into her phenomenally successful, exceptionally prolific music career, the undisputed Queen of Pop and Dance Anthem Enchantress officially released her 13th studio album, "Rebel Heart," to critically acclaimed reviews.

Ticket sales launched for her next concert series, presumably entitled "The Rebel Heart Tour," which is scheduled to kick off in Miami on August 29 and will continue worldwide through at least early 2016. This of course also means the Marketing Girl has embarked on one of her legendarily calculated full-court-press media tours, which, naturally and luckily, included several gay publications.

EDGE witnessed the media mayhem that only the Material Girl can create firsthand last Monday night when Madonna sat down with select members of the gay press at the Midtown Manhattan offices of her record label, Interscope. 

The album is arguably Madonna's best effort in years. From the first single's deep-house, gospel-infused empowerment anthem, "Living For Love" (her record 44th number-one hit on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Songs chart) to moody and mature ballads like "Devil Pray" and "Joan of Arc," the hauntingly redemptive "Ghosttown" (the likely next single), and just about every other genre in between, the album fully embraces its diversity.

Among the many standouts in the epic 19-song set (just 14 are featured on the standard album) are the ridiculously over-the-top "Holy Water" ("Whenever I write about sex, I always do it tongue-in-cheek," she recently told Rolling Stone. "[This song] is obviously meant to be funny.") and the girl-done-been-wronged track "HeartBreakCity." And then there's the deluxe album's fierce finale, the Avicii-produced, rock-tinged title track "Rebel Heart" (oddly not included on the standard album).

Mondays are almost always a drag. Except on the rare occasion when Madonna offers to sit down, face-to-face, with an intimate group of gay journalists to talk about her new album, her favorite collaborators, her favorite carburetors, and, well, just about anything and everything -- except what she has planned for her next tour.

They say you should never meet your icons or heroes, because you'll likely be disappointed if they don't live up to the pedestal upon which you've placed them. In this particular case, though, speaking as a hardcore, decades-long loyal fan, I am thrilled to report that "they" were wrong. The meeting, interview and brief impromptu photo shoot that followed were everything for which any gushing fan could hope.

As polite and professional as any superstar you'll surely ever meet - it's quite obviously not her first time at the rodeo - Madonna went out of her way to personally greet and shake hands with all of her would-be questioners, not just with intent eye contact, but also a seemingly genuine interest in actually hearing who we were. Perhaps her Stevie Nicks-inspired flowing black gown with black chiffon half-cape and black lace gloves helped balance an ethereal yet affable grounding that encouraged her casual kindness and candidness. Or maybe it was the eucalyptus oil-scented humidifier situated by her side that delicately lubricated not only her vocal chords but the all-white-embellished ambiance as well? We may never know, and, honestly, it does not much matter.

Here's a taste of what the gorgeous, golden-locked goddess had to share.

EDGE: I'd like to ask you about the process of the album -- it is a great album, by the way -- I know that you've generally stuck with one producer on the last few albums --

MADONNA: Thank you. I try to...

EDGE: And this time you just let it rip with multiple producers. How was it different approaching it this way?

MADONNA: I didn't mean to work with so many different producers. First of all, I didn't know that Avicii was going to have a life-threatening illness and disappear. So a lot of the songs that I wrote with him or his songwriting team, I ended up having to go out and find other producers to work on them, to finish the songs with me.

And then Diplo came along and I very much wanted to work with him, and he also wanted to work with me, but I didn't know that he also was working with 5,000 other people and had to get on a jet and go to the other side of the world to play festivals and then go here and play that and then go here and do that -- just getting him to sit still for a couple of days to finish a song was a challenge.

So I ended up working with a lot of young DJs and I naively didn't think it through. Oh, it's summertime -- it's the festivals, and they're on tour, and I'll be lucky if I get them for three days, so a lot of that had to factor in. OK, I can't wait for three months for this dude to come back. I have to find somebody else.

EDGE: Was it ultimately satisfying? Or you wouldn't do it that way again?

MADONNA: Ultimately satisfying...? [Long Pause] If I had my way and I could do it again, I would make people sign an iron-clad agreement that they would stay and ensure they would not leave me until all the songs were finished.

ROUNDTABLE # 2: You were forced to change album release schedule because of the leaks that happened last year. The next time you go to create a new album or film, is your practice going to change because of the way these new tracks [were leaked]?

MADONNA: Well, I'm never going to put anything on a server and send information back and forth as had been done. That was the first mistake. That's when we first realized that the music was being hacked on the server. But then the last leak came from a mastering lab and that was just a technician's oversight. After everything had happened and everyone knew we had to crack down and be really super secure, someone sent the record on the server - AGAIN! My hacker's very clever, obviously. It was not up for very long, but it was snatched. So I would never do anything like that again. Hand delivery.

ROUNDTABLE # 3: Did it change anything about the way the album was -- like how the tracks were sequenced?

MADONNA: It changed EVERYTHING. First of all, it drove me insane and made me feel an overwhelming sense of anxiety, and it made me second-guess everything, because suddenly I thought, "Oh God, everyone's heard all these demos" -- because there were some demos that I actually liked the demo version of and I thought, well, they've heard the demo and now they're going to be expecting other things. Then they heard the next level of versions and it kept making me think, "Should I change it or should I just leave it how it was?" I was second-guessing everything, rather than just choosing for myself and putting it out as I would normally, as an artist. It started making me think, I don't even know which version I should be putting out!

Because some people were like [of the demos], Oh, I love it, I love it. And I was like, No, don't love it because it's not done. So it made me crazy.

ROUNDTABLE # 3: It was devastating as somebody who has always admired your work, too, I thought, wow, what a horrible thing to do.

MADONNA: Yeah, and also very confusing. Because a lot of these things were being shared on my supposed "fan sites," and I was thinking, "Well, my fans should be supporting me and protecting me." So I don't know -- the whole thing confused me...still does. And what [the hacker] did -- he's in jail in Israel -- what he's done is considered a white-collar crime, so I don't even know what's going to happen to him. I hope he goes to jail for a long time. But let's not dwell on that stuff, though [smiles and laughs].

ROUNDTABLE # 4: Of all the collaborators you worked with on this album, who was the biggest surprise -- or was there a particular track that you felt was the most unexpected?

MADONNA: Hmmm...I felt like I wrote a lot of good songs with Avicii's writing team, and I didn't expect that, because I ended up writing a lot of personal and very soulful songs with them, whom I refer to as my Viking Harem, who are all really wonderful, intelligent, soulful people, and they made me feel really comfortable. So I guess I felt like I was safe enough to write those kind of songs, and that surprised me.

EDGE: We're all very excited about the upcoming tour. Can you give us a preview of what you have planned?

MADONNA: No. [GROUP LAUGHS] Now why would I do that? I want it to be a surprise for you.

[Editor's Note: With some floor seats selling as high as $860 at Madison Square Garden - and others legally "reselling" as high as $8,155 at the same venue - without any arenas sold out or second nights announced thus far, perhaps a little teaser may have been wise and helpful?]

EDGE: I'll accept that. Getting back to the collaborator issue, who do you feel -- over the years you've worked with so many people -- who's pushed you the furthest as an artist, a writer, and a performer? Who challenged you the most?

MADONNA: Well... [long pause]...I would say as a songwriter, working with Toby Gad -- he really pushed me a lot. He was constantly questioning my choice of words and sometimes I would get really irritated with him. "Just because I like it, okay? Just leave me alone. The song is finished. Stop." And then we'd be done and he'd send me an email, What about this one little word? He'd just drive me crazy. I'd be calling him an SS Officer, which he's clearly not -- he's the sweetest, most lovely guy ever. He really pushed me.

And Diplo really pushed me. As crazy as everybody thinks he is - "he's a fun party boy," whatever -- he really was particular about lyrics and praising me on my vocal performances. He pushed me a lot, too. Of course I don't like it, but it served me well on this record.

EDGE: DJ Paulo, who did a remix of "Living For Love" --

MADONNA: Yeah, yeah, he's amazing!

EDGE: He's going to be playing at Viva [at Stage 48 at 48th St. & 11th Avenue in Manhattan] in a couple weeks. If you want to go, just let us know. [GROUP LAUGHS]

MADONNA: Is he really? What date?

EDGE: Black Party weekend, which I believe is March 21st, Saturday night?

MADONNA: [To Publicist Liz Rosenberg] Am I here that weekend?

LIZ: Yeah, you may be.

EDGE: He is so amazing live! [The party is produced by] John Blair, who used to do Roxy Saturdays.

MADONNA: Well, [Paulo] better drop "Living For Love" ... or I'm not coming! [GROUP LAUGHS]

ROUNDTABLE # 5: Thematically and lyrically, I would say "Rebel Heart" is a lot more self-referential than you've been in the past. During the process of the writing and the production, was that something you did maybe intentionally, or was it just part of the process, like you're looking back on your career now?

MADONNA: I don't know, is the only answer I can tell you. I didn't set out to write certain kinds of songs, I just set out to write GOOD songs, and that was the mood I was in and that was what I was channeling. Sometimes I was in nostalgic moods and looking back; sometimes I was in the mood to write a song as I was writing in my journal, and reveal certain parts of myself that I was ready to reveal.

ROUNDTABLE # 5: You've talked in interviews about the way you approached this album was that you wanted to go about it in a singer/songwriter approach, and a lot of the songs are like that -- without the production, all the [bells & whistles] -- you could perform them without all that.

MADONNA: Like when we run out of oil, and then we run out of electricity, I can just light a candle and strum my guitar and sing you a song, yeah.

ROUNDTABLE # 1: I wanted to ask you about one of my favorite songs on the album, "Body Shop" --

MADONNA: YAY!

ROUNDTABLE # 1: What I love about it is that the method of music is folksy, like you said, and maybe a little bit like a lullaby, but then you listen to the words and they're --

MADONNA: Sexually provocative.

ROUNDTABE # 1: Was that your intention to contrast the instrumental and music with the lyrics?

MADONNA: No. Again, it just happened. I was working with Toby Gad who spent a lot of time in India, and actually there's a sitar -- the song has a very Indian flavor to it -- and I liked the idea: a car -- the body of a car -- it's a kind of sexual metaphor -- what you do TO a car, what you do IN a car -- DRIVE. Lots of innuendos, lots of fun. I mean, we all love a really cute mechanic, right?

ROUNDTABLE # 2: "Body Shop" is also one of my favorite songs. If you were a car, what type of car would you be?

[GROUP LAUGHS]

MADONNA: [Long pause] ... that's a good one ... I'm probably a Bentley.

EDGE: I was going to say Lamborghini.

MADONNA: Lamborghini...But I might be an Aston Martin. And then I might be a Jaguar. And then I might be a Cadillac. So it depends on what day it is. I'm not a Smart Car.

[GROUP LAUGHS]

ROUNDTABLE # 5: Back to the "Living For Love" video, is [this] going to be something we're going to get to see again?

MADONNA: You mean the cinematic aspect of it, and the storytelling aspect of it? I guess so. The thing about that song, it's such a passionate song. I had to present it in a passionate way, and I used mythology to tell the story, with the story of the Minotaur - the matador - fighting for love. And the color red. And flowers. Horns, and death. And naked men. You know, the important things in life.

I don't know. I don't want to make every video the same. But I did love the richness of that video. To me it felt like a painting that came to life. That's what I was trying to do. But I wouldn't want to do that for every video. Like when I do "Bitch, I'm Madonna," it's going to be a whole different aesthetic.

ROUNDTABLE #5: Well, I'm glad that one's getting a video! [GROUP LAUGHS]

MADONNA: If Diplo has his way, there will be one.

EDGE: Last year when you dressed up as the Mother of Dragons for Purim, you looked amazing!

MADONNA: Thank you.

EDGE: Do you watch "Game of Thrones?"

MADONNA: Of course. It's a family ritual. Besides "Game of Thrones," which I watch with my kids -- we all watch it together -- it's like a family bonding thing. The only other TV series I watch are "True Detective" and an Irish series called "The Fall."

ROUNDTABLE # 1: I wanted to ask you about Vene Vidi Vici -- somebody talked about referencing your earlier work. Was it a trip down memory lane for you, or were you trying to make a statement of moving past some of those places where you were in the past, and are in a different place now?

MADONNA: It was a trip down memory lane. To be honest, to be in this business for over 3 decades is -- I don't actually think about it that much. But a lot of the people that I worked with were asking me so many questions, like, What was it like -- What was Keith Haring like? What was this person like? What was that person like? In a way, sometimes, I think I underestimate what I've been through, and what I've witnessed, and I think it was just important to do that.

ROUNDTABLE # 2: At this stage in your career, what still frightens you?

MADONNA: Ignorance.

ROUNDTABLE # 3: Do your kids have a favorite song of yours?

MADONNA: They really love "Bitch, I'm Madonna." [GROUP LAUGHS] That's my teenagers' favorite song. My son David's favorite song -- he plays guitar -- and he likes "Devil Pray," that's his favorite.

EDGE: With Truth or Dare, you kind of revolutionized reality TV. Any regrets about that?

MADONNA: No, I don't regret doing Truth or Dare. I guess people show what they want to show. What kind of life you are leading.

[AS THE INTERVIEW ENDS, LIZ PROCEEDS TO CALL IN ASSISTANTS FOR PHOTO SHOOT.]

MADONNA: Should we stand up on the stage?

[MADONNA GETS MAKEUP TOUCHED UP]

LIZ: [TO ROUNDTABLE] You guys are not getting touched up, I'm just telling you.

“Rebel Heart” Promo Pictures

Madonna Instagram Q&A #askmadonna

zizibello: Which song do you want to sing most on tour?
 Madonna: I’m really looking forward to Holy Water.

Alinattybee: Can you incorporate yourself in one word?
 Madonna: I can incorporate myself into three words: Bitch, I’m Madonna

@katerina_mandarina: What sort of question about Russia would you raise if you had a chance to meet with Vladimir Putin?
 Madonna: Bitch get off my pole.

jayjaywilson_76: Can you please replace the speakers on my car? I’ve been playing Rebel Heart too loud.
 Madonna: Depends on how much it costs, what will you do in return? Earn those speakers bitch.

madonnasfffu: If the world would really turn to dust tomorrow, what would you do today?
 Madonna: Chatting with my fans

_malin4ik_: Do you remember you kids’ fist words or just some other funny words they’ve ever told you?
 Madonna: “No” is the first word my daughter said to me and she’s still saying it.

billyasksmadonna: You say New York city was more fun in the 80s. What’s something that’s actually better about New York today?
 Madonna: THere are more vegan restaurants, more whole foods… thats it.

1ofdem: I want to know if you regret not releasing a song as a single from any of your previous albums? In my case I wanted “Thief of Hearts”
 Madonna: Thief of hearts is too submersive, it would never get played on the radio.

impossiblehoney: Why did you leave tragic girl off of rebel heart?
Madonna: I ran out of space
Madonna: And why are you listening to leaked demos

lucerogabrielhernan: Hola #madonna choose 3 songs of #rebelheart 1) To make love 1) To fuck and 1) to say good bye #AskMadonna @madonna @guyoseary
Madonna: Best Night to Make Love, Holy Water to f*ck and Unapologetic Bitch to say goodbye

coryk85: What does a guy have to do the dream come true and to meet you?
Madonna: Do something remarkable...
Madonna: And then get in touch with me

sujismundos: Just say YES!
Madonna: Well if you put it like that a girl can't refuse!

kenny_des_choses: what is your guilty pleasure?
Madonna: I don't have any guilty pleasures I don’t feel guilty about anything.

jamesbermudean: Look at me
Madonna: I'm looking at you okay I'm looking at you! you got my attention

rebelheart_123: Where do you get the inspiration to write your songs?
Madonna: By living. Just living (and dating the wrong men...)

mayiasd: Madonna, do you remember your kids' first words or just some other funny words they've ever told you?
Madonna: "No" is the first word my daughter said to me.
Madonna: And she's still saying it.

jerichoaudio: What are some of your favorite prayers?
Madonna: Hail Mary and Ana Be'K'oach.

olga_coolova: My name is Olga, and your dog's name is Olga☺ How did you decide to give your dog such an unusual name?
Madonna: By being an unusual person.

erebelheartg:  I noticed that sock bitch gets really close to when talking, does he have sock breath?
Madonna: She has some kind of an odor, probably related to athlete's foot.

raphaelmakeup: Hi Madonna, in Graffiti Heart Lyrics you talk about Frida Kahlo and I know you're a huge fan of her work. What paint of her is your favorite?
Madonna: The one that I have. Self Portrait with Monkeys.

shycharles: Do you like the harp? Ever tried to play? Apart from Cherish in Blonde Ambition and Lament in Reinvention, have you used #harp anywhere in your work?
Madonna: There is a live harp playing in Messiah, and I love it.

radekjoszua: Hi Madonna, I would like to know what book you've read recently?
Madonna: I have read the biography of Bob Bossi.

Madonna Opens Her Heart To Howard Stern

Howard Stern was audibly thrilled to finally have Madonna on his SiriusXM radio show – to the point that the live Wednesday broadcast was moved to the afternoon to accommodate her schedule.

In their 90-minute interview, Stern, who is unequivocally the best interviewer currently on the air in any medium (it also helps that he can ask questions uninterrupted by commercials), probed into her childhood, her relationship with Michael Jackson and her thoughts on drugs. They also, naturally, chatted about her new album, “Rebel Heart,” out now.

Here are some excerpts.

Stern asked about being a mother since she didn’t have one growing up:
 “I try to be the mother that I didn’t have, I try to be all of those things that I wanted…sometimes I make mistakes, sometimes things don’t go the way I planned. I ask my sister for her advice because she was raised by my grandmother and she’s a good mother.”

To Stern’s query of “Are you happy?”
 “I am happy at times. There are lots of different gradations. Happy is a big word…When you get exhausted and get in the cycle of HAVING to do things, sometimes you get tired, sometimes you don’t feel well, but there are 20,000 people waiting for you in a sports arena, the show must go on… I wouldn’t say I’m miserable, but I do feel trapped sometimes. When you go on tour and sell tickets, you have to show up and give people the greatest show.”

On her relationship with Michael Jackson:
 “I could certainly relate to him on many levels, but he was also a very shy person. He was famous since he was a child and didn’t really have a childhood. He was painfully shy. We didn’t really have a relationship about me revealing myself to him, but making fun of the crazy world we were living and working in. We didn’t talk about our childhoods…I think he felt eternally tortured. It was hard for him to look into people’s eyes.”

Her thoughts about drugs:
 “I don’t like being stoned, I don’t like that fuzzy feeling you get. I’m not an herbalist and I never will be.” She also recalled that she left Jean-Michel Basquiat because he wouldn’t stop doing heroin. “We always think we can fix people and we can’t…just change yourself.”

On songwriting:
 She wrote “Vogue” in a couple of hours. “I had seen people ‘voguing.’ Warren (Beatty) asked me to write a song for ‘Dick Tracy’ and I was thinking about all of the movie stars. Warren grew up in that era and he dated all of Hollywood, basically.”

When Stern sidekick Robin Quivers interjected to inquire whether Beatty was as sexually adept as his legend suggests, Madonna responded, “Yes, he was (an incredible lover). I’m not going to lie.”

She also revealed that the new song “Ghosttown” is about the end of the world and she’s shooting the video for it next week. “It’s a post-apocalyptic love song.”

And “Joan of Arc” – “This is me wishing I could be as impenetrable as I perceive Joan of Arc to be…she’s always been a female hero in my life.”

On her racy new song, “Holy Water”:
 “I think my son likes the beat of ‘Holy Water.’ They like the music. They did roll their eyes a little bit, but they’re used to it. I’m their mom at this point. They separate it.”

On performing live:
 “If someone I know is in the audience I would get a little nervous.”

She also expounded on her Super Bowl performance – “You have eight minutes to build the stage in the middle of the stadium and the NFL hires locals to do that, so you have locals building your stage, (and you start to worry) what if it starts to break down? (You’re) so out of control. Live TV is crazy anyway. Whatever happens, happens, you have to roll with it.”

On what happened at the Brit Awards that caused her widely publicized tumble:
 “I rehearse everything to death. I never do anything live that I haven’t rehearsed…I had a long beautiful cape made for me by Armani, I was walking down this long runway to the stage at the O2 in London. I entered in the middle of the audience and had to walk up these steps, the cape was placed on me at the bottom of the stage. I had two Japanese girls holding the train of my cape and I could barely see. We rehearsed this 1,000 times. And how the cape is secured, I had magnets going all the way up but the one at the top kept coming undone because the cape is so heavy and I wanted to be obscured. So I tied it with a silk string, we rehearsed in 20,000 times…I pulled the string that time (during the show) and it didn’t come undone, it turned into a knot. (What happened was that) the director or stage manager of the show at the last minute said you can’t walk out in the middle of all these people. So now I had to walk farther so my stylist said, I’m worried that the cape isn’t going to stay on your neck, so let’s tie it tight.”

After she fell, “Honestly, I was in shock. I had so much adrenaline pumping through my body. The first thing that flashed through my mind was I have to start this all over again and then I realized it’s live TV…then I just danced like an angry matador for the next 30 seconds…No one beats up on me more than me, I have a lot of pride in doing shows well and not messing up and I did and that’s really what I did, beat up on myself. That lasted pretty much the week.”

Caring About What People Think Is The Death Of All Artists

Madonna opens her strong new album with “Living for Love,” a jubilant house jam about moving beyond a debilitating breakup. But love, of course, is only one of the things that pop’s most paradoxical superstar is living for these days.

On “Rebel Heart,” released Tuesday after a batch of unfinished songs leaked online in December, Madonna, 56, mingles feel-good dance tracks like “Living for Love” with bitter recriminations such as “Unapologetic Bitch,” in which she tells an ex, “When we did it, I’ll admit it, I wasn’t satisfied.” Elsewhere, declarations of her continued relevance (“Iconic,” “Bitch I’m Madonna”) sit next to “Joan of Arc,” a delicate ballad about feeling the sting of criticism.

And then there’s the willfully provocative “S.E.X.,” which sets a list of bedroom tools (“Twisted rope, handcuffs, blindfold, string of pearls”) against a throbbing slow-grind beat.

With songwriting and production input from hitmakers that include Kanye West, Diplo and Avicii, “Rebel Heart” – Madonna’s follow-up to 2012’s rave-y “MDNA” -- is also one of the singer’s most stylistically varied efforts, moving from cheerful reggae to slinky disco and rough-edged hip-hop. It gathers sonic strands she helped weave into the pop mainstream.

Madonna spoke about the album Monday night by phone from her home in New York, where she’d just sat down to a late dinner. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m eating,” she said. “It’s potato soup with corn. So good.”

As we’re talking, “Rebel Heart” is due to come out in about two hours. Does releasing an album feel like the end of the race or just the beginning?
Oh my God, that’s the beginning. Well, you know what? It’s not the beginning. The beginning was the beginning. It’s the middle.

The run-up to an album is much more intense now than it was a decade or two ago. You have to work harder earlier.
There’s a lot more product out in the marketplace, and there are so many outlets that people have to hear music, whether it’s iTunes or SoundCloud or YouTube or whatever. So the combination of the technology and all the... What’s the word I’m looking for? I don’t want to say “talent,” necessarily, because not all of it’s talent.

Competition?
Is it competition? I don’t think that’s the right word, because I don’t make music like everybody else’s. But, yeah, if you release a record the same day some other big pop star releases a record, it’s probably considered competition.

It’s competition for people’s attention, I think.
That’s right.

You told Rolling Stone recently that you miss the simplicity of the music business the way it used to be.
Of course I do! Who wouldn’t?

What was more simple?
I made a demo, I took it to a nightclub, I gave it to a DJ, he played it, people danced to it, an A&R guy was there, he signed me, I made a record. Then my song – if everyone liked it, fingers crossed -- was on the radio. It was just simpler. There wasn’t Twitter and Facebook and Snapchat. Even before MTV, there was really just live shows and the radio, and that was it.

You also didn’t have situations where half your record leaks before you’re ready to put it out.
Half of it? You mean all of it. Or practically all of it, in various incarnations. That’s part of the technology thing, which brings people perhaps a little too close.

When that happened, you spoke frankly about how invasive it felt. Three months later, has that feeling diminished?
Oh no, it’s still very fresh on my mind, and I’m still very upset about it.

You don’t think the official album has supplanted the leak in people’s brains?
I think their brains have been contaminated by what they’ve heard. And because I was continuously being hacked into – with all the different versions from all the different producers I was working with in all the different recording studios -- it started making me second-guess everything. I had extreme anxiety.

Some of the demos that I had done, I actually liked as demos; I liked the simplicity of them. But then people were commenting on them: “Oh, I can’t wait to hear the finished version.” And I thought, Well, what if this is the finished version? And then other people were saying they liked things as demos that I had changed the production of.

In a way, it was almost like doing a test screening of a film. I went through this with my last film I directed, where the audience’s comments actually weighed in and gave Harvey Weinstein the right to say, “If you change X, Y and Z on your film, I’ll spend more money on the marketing.” But that’s not the movie I want to make. So from the point of view of the artistic process, it was devastating. And it still is.

The focus-group thing you’re describing seems like such a drag.
It’s a drag. But if you start hearing the same things over and over again, you start thinking, Well, maybe there’s some truth to it, and even though I don’t want to hear it, I should be paying attention to it.

At the end of the day, we should all be left alone to do our work and finish our paintings, so to speak, and when we’re ready to show our work, we show our work. Of course you invite the trusted opinion of people – your peers or people whose opinions you respect – and you say, “What do you think?” And sometimes you hear things you don’t want to hear. But what’s really strange is when it’s the entire world, and everyone starts weighing in. I did try very hard to shut everything down and not listen to what people said. But I am a human being after all.

Something else that’s changed in the record industry is the role of the producer. Guys like Diplo and Kanye West are far more visible than producers used to be; they’re cultivating their own mythologies. Does that get in the way of what you’re trying to do?
Not really. They both have strong opinions and a strong idea of what things should sound like, but so do I. And I think we all agreed to work with one another because we have a mutual respect for each other. And there was a clause built in for not necessarily agreeing on everything. But certainly I felt like Kanye made a very valid contribution to the production of the songs that he worked on. And Diplo, I spent a lot of time with him. I like the way he hears music; he draws on lots of different genres.

No one was coming to your earlier records to hear what Patrick Leonard or Mirwais had to say, though. On this one, there’s some Kanye in the music.
But those people weren’t personalities. Kanye’s an artist in his own right; so is Diplo. Mirwais is a very shy behind-the-scenes kind of person who doesn’t have an Instagram account. And Pat Leonard — I mean, he might have an Instagram account, I don’t know. But in those days it didn’t exist. They’re behind-the-scenes songwriter-producers; they’re not artists themselves, whereas Diplo and Avicii and Kanye and many of the people I worked with are.

Well, exactly. That seems like a new method for you.
It had its good points and its bad points. Obviously, the good thing about working with those people is being able to collaborate with them and their talent and tap into the way they look at music, hear music, feel music, create music. The downside is that they’re very busy people too, so getting them to stay in the room for more than eight hours – more than six hours! – was hard. They’re all over the place: multi-tasking, red-carpet events, “Oops, I’ve gotta go do my DJ gig now.” I had to share. I felt oftentimes like a child stomping my foot, going, “Where do you think you’re going? We haven’t finished this song yet!” I found myself bargaining with them.

I assume that was a novel experience.
It was. Diplo said to me, “You’re the only artist I actually sit in the studio with. Everyone else I just send them stuff.” Wow, OK, thanks a lot.

One product of these various collaborations is that the album really embraces a sense of contradiction, even more than your work usually does. There are points where you move directly from one emotion to another that might be perceived as its exact opposite.
Could you give me an example?

Going from “Joan of Arc” to “Iconic.” That’s really two sides of a coin.
A duality. A paradox.

A paradox, right.
Well, that’s what life is.

And that’s something you want to capture in your music.
I do. Because I think that’s the essence of life. Everything isn’t black and white; we live in the gray. And unfortunately everyone takes everything too literally. I can be as vulnerable as I can be a badass. And I’m not claiming that as my unique quality; I think other people can do that too. It’s just whether you can express it or not.

Sometimes you squeeze that duality into one song -- “S.E.X.,” for instance. To me that sounds like both an embodiment and a critique of a heavy-breathing sex jam. The words are super-raunchy; the beat slithers. But there’s something weirdly dispassionate in your voice.
It’s detached.

What’s that song saying?
It’s kind of a social commentary about the way everybody hooks up now and the lack of intimacy. When I made my “Sex” book I was being incredibly ironic, but I was also saying, “Look, it’s not only a man’s place to objectify a woman -- a woman can objectify herself too.” In the song “S.E.X.,” when I do the sort of rap in the middle and I do the list, I made myself sound like I have a lisp. Go back and listen to it. It’s meant to be ironic -- even though there’s some very handy items on that list.

“Holy Water” does that a little bit too. The double entendres are so over the top.
At this point all my songs about sex have to be tongue in cheek. There’s no other way I can approach it. Since exploring sexuality has been such a big part of my career as an artist, I felt like I wanted to address it, but almost from a voyeuristic way, like I’m on the outside looking in.

In a way these songs don’t even seem interested in pleasure. “S.E.X.” talks about breaking the bed, but you don’t sound like you’re having much fun.
Hmm.

There’s a loneliness to it, which I suppose is the voyeurism.
I don’t think love is involved. But remember that I did the record with Kanye, and he has a very specific point of view about sexuality, which I find amusing. It’s not meant to be sexy.

What if a listener doesn’t grasp that?
Well, let’s face it: There’s lot of subtleties in life that are hard for most people to grasp. Don’t you think?

“Joan of Arc” risks that too. It’s about the unseen struggle of a pop star, which some might find hard to sympathize with.
I certainly didn’t write it from a victim’s point of view.

But you know that some people will say, “Oh, boo-hoo.”
Well, I don’t really care what they say. What the song says is, even though I am perceived as a person who is a superhero or who is immune to criticism, there are times when things that people say hurt me. And there are moments when a word of kindness can change everything for me. It’s just the truth. And if people have a problem with that, then they have a problem with that. I admire the conviction that Joan of Arc had. Although I’m sure she had her moments of terror and doubt, I admire that she stuck to her guns. I wish I could always be that way.

Is that true, though? Because if you did—
Because caring about what people think is the death of all artists, really.

I get that. But some of the most effective moments on this record are the most vulnerable. What’s the difference between caring what people think and being vulnerable?
Vulnerability just means you have feelings. That you feel. That you have empathy and compassion. That you’re not a sociopath. Life is confusing if you’re not a pop star or a celebrity or famous. You add that into the mix and it’s really confusing. But I think also that “Joan of Arc” isn’t necessarily the trials and tribulations of being famous. Perhaps all human beings can relate to it.

But being famous gives the song its unique power. You’re talking about the experience of having strangers think they understand your life because they’re privy to certain public aspects of it. But maybe that doesn’t bug you out anymore.
The thing is, I’ve been dissected and misinterpreted for over 30 years now. Sometimes I think about it; sometimes I don’t. Sometimes it shows up in my work; sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I want to speak about it; sometimes I don’t want to say anything.

Does that determine to what extent you put lyrics in your songs that could be deciphered?
Sometimes I like to be more coded and I don’t want to be specific. I want to be specific about feelings but I don’t want people to connect dots and start getting into tabloid kind of thinking. I like the idea that you can write a song about heartbreak or desire or falling in love, and even though it’s specific to you, other people can relate to it and say, “I know what that feels like.”

Sure. But then I hear a song like “Unapologetic Bitch,” which totally invites us to speculate on who you’re addressing.Sometimes you’ve got to do that. Especially when the song has that crazy-ass bass line.

The bass line made you do it.
Blame it on the bass.

Madonna Q&A: 'Ideas Flowed Simply Out Of Me'

Q: You took quite a tumble the other day. How are you feeling?
A: I'm fine. I had a tiny bit of whiplash. My head hit the floor and snapped my neck a little bit. But I didn't hurt any other part of my body, strangely enough -- I sustained no bruises or cuts.

Q: You've been keeping busy, certainly. You worked with an eclectic group of collaborators for Rebel Heart.
A: Lots of people I'd never met before, though certainly people whose work I knew. Usually, with an album, I choose a producer and it takes us a few weeks to get to know each other, and then the chemistry starts to percolate. In this circumstance I kind of got thrown into lots of groups of songwriters. Some people I had direct synergy with...I felt so rejuvenated just in the simple act of writing music. I felt like I was back in New York, in Queens, where I picked up a guitar and wrote my first song. Ideas flowed simply out of me.

Q: There's been talk about how sexually graphic some of the songs are, but they're also pretty emotionally raw. We're reminded that love and sex can work in tandem.
A: Or work against each other. I think love resides in all of the songs, even when they are overtly sexual. Songs like Holy Water and Sex have humor. They're layered. We're dealing with different ideas that I'm constantly exploring – spirituality, sexuality, different aspects of love, whether it's romantic love or the love you have for your children. And love can be as devastating and destructive as it can be rejuvenating and life-giving. I guess I try to capture all of that.

Q: Are you satisfied with the result?
A: I'm a perfectionist. I would say I could have used another month to go nit-picking through things, put on finishing touches and connect the dots. But everybody knows the boring story about the hacker, why I had to put my record out much sooner than I had intended to. But I'm OK with it. I'm proud of it. Maybe the universe was telling me that it was ready -- to get it out there.

Q: When early recordings of the songs were leaked online, it got me to thinking about how much media and how we use it have changed since you first became famous. Do you feel like you're under even more scrutiny now?
A: I've always been under scrutiny. But I used to just not really pay attention to what people said. Now I read people's comments on Instagram. I never had that kind of access – and people didn't have that kind of access to me. It's interesting, reading arguments people are having on my account that I'm no longer even a part of -- whether it's people arguing about Islam versus Israel, or the shooting in Paris, or homophobia or sexism. The one thing I don't understand is when people make comments who are clearly not fans of mine. I think, why are you here? Why are you wasting your time? It's fascinating.

Q: Your eldest child, Lourdes, is studying performing arts at college (the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre and Dance). Do you talk with her about being a performer?
A: We talk about it non-stop -- about being an artist, being creative, where to put energy. She's home for spring break now, in fact. She's very talented in many areas. She doesn't know if she wants to be an actress, or produce music -- and she's an incredible singer and dancer.

Q: Are your other children musically inclined?
A: Absolutely. My son Rocco is a fantastic dancer. He's also into producing music. David plays guitar and sings and dances, and my daughter Mercy plays piano beautifully. So they're all musical in one way or another. Some are more uninhibited than others, but this is a very musical house.

Q: You apparently have a pretty fabulous art collection too.
A: I think all the arts feed off each other. My kids know who Picasso is, and they also know who Andy Warhol is and who Keith Haring is. I think that's important.

Q: For years, people have analyzed your influence on female artists, but you've had a more general impact on music as well -- the incorporation of dance-music textures into pop, for instance.
A: For sure -- bringing dance music into the arena of pop culture, bringing different kids of dance styles out into the public. Also, being outspoken, envelope-pushing, provocative – I think you could say someone like Kanye is walking on that razor's edge as well, and he's a man, not a woman. And I would say Truth Or Dare was the first reality show.

Q: You've also been a champion of gay rights. Have we made progress in that arena in recent years?
A: I think we've made huge progress, definitely. Is there still a lot of discriminatory behavior out there, against the gay community? Yeah. Against the African-American community? Yeah. We've made a lot of advances, but we're still very narrow-minded and judgmental. It's a contradiction.

Q: So now that the album is out, you must be focusing on the tour. What can we expect -- besides a lot of energy and spectacle?
A: I want it to be spectacular, definitely. But I also want to have more intimacy in my show. So you can expect more of that.

Madonna Opens Up to Howard Stern About Getting Raped, Explains Why She Never Pressed Charges: "It's Just Not Worth It"

Madonna may be one of the biggest pop stars in music history.

But long before selling out arenas and millions of albums, she was just a girl with a dream who wanted to make it big in New York City.

In a candid new interview with Sirius XM's Howard Stern Show, the Rebel Heart singer opened up about her big move from the Midwest to New York City. As it turned out, that first year living in the Big Apple was quite the difficult journey.

"First I was in shock, I didn't know a soul," she told Howard Stern when reliving her move to the East Coast. "I was saying hi to people on the streets like a dork."

And as months passed by, Madonna's apartment kept getting robbed, leaving her with very few items. One of the most scariest events, however, happened when her friendliness got her into a difficult situation.

"I was going to a dance class and the door was locked and I needed money for the payphone," she explained. "[A man] gave it to me… he was a very friendly guy. I trusted everybody."

As it turns out, the unnamed person persuaded Madonna to make her phone call across the street where he lived. What came next was most horrifying.

"I was raped," she proclaimed. "The first year I lived in New York was crazy." 

When Stern and co-host Robin Quivers asked if she ever went to the police and filed charges, Madonna explained that the process was too overwhelming.

"You've already been violated," she explained. "It's just not worth it. It's too much humiliation."

And when asked if she ever wanted to just fly back home, Madonna was adamant that it was never a possibility.

"Well, have you ever been to Rochester, Michigan?" she asked. "I just didn't want to go back. I can't be around basic-thinking people."

Madonna Secretly Dated Tupac Shakur: 5 More Revelations From the Material Girl's Howard Stern Interview

She's one of the most famous women in the world, but even Madonna has her secrets.

Luckily for listeners, the "Living for Love" singer was in a sharing mood when she appeared on Howard Stern's SiriusXM radio show Wednesday. At one point during their 83-minute conversation, Madonna revealed that she once dated rapper Tupac Shakur. "I was mad at [David Letterman] when I said the F-word a lot. I was in a weird mood that day. I was dating Tupac Shakur at the time and the thing is he got me all riled up on life in general. So when I went on the show I was feeling very gangsta," she explained.

Madonna was referring to a 1994 appearance on CBS' The Late Show With David Letterman. Shakur, sadly, was shot and killed on Sept. 7, 1996, after attending a Mike Tyson boxing match in Las Vegas.

Stern had never heard about their romance, while Madonna said she thought it was public knowledge. An unauthorized 2007 biography called Madonna: Like an Icon claimed the two briefly dated one year before Shakur's death. In 2014, Rosie Perez told Wendy Williams she played a role in introducing them.

Madonna had plenty of other anecdotes at the ready.

Here are five more revelations from her interview:

1. She was never jealous of Warren Beatty's famous exes.

"Yes, he was [an incredible lover]. I'm not going to lie," Madonna said of her ex. Though Beatty dated the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Julie Christie and Elle Macpherson, she said, "I have confidence in my skills." Beatty also inspired Madonna's 1990 "Vogue," which she wrote in just a few hours. ''I had seen people voguing. Warren asked me to write a song for Dick Tracy and I was thinking about all of the movie stars," the "Ghosttown" singer recalled. "Warren grew up in that era and he dated all of Hollywood, basically.''

2. She felt a kinship with Michael Jackson.

Madonna brought the King of Pop as her date to the Academy Awards in 1991, and they stayed in touch over the years. "I could certainly relate to him on many levels, but he was also a very shy person," she said. "He was famous since he was a child and didn't really have a childhood. He was painfully shy." They were able to bond over their unusual lives, she recalled. "We didn't really have a relationship about me revealing myself to him, but making fun of the crazy world we were living and working in. We didn't talk about our childhoods...I think he felt eternally tortured. It was hard for him to look into people's eyes."

3. She was told her career was "over" after performing "Like a Virgin" for the first time.

When her shoe fell off during the show, she tried to get it back. "I just dove for [my shoe] on the ground, my dress went up and my butt was showing…and I didn't know my skirt was up. So I proceeded to sing the song laying down on the ground. I was just making the best of a situation, which is what I do," Madonna said. "After I got off stage, my manager was white as a ghost. He looked at me and he said, 'Do you know what you just did?' I looked at him and I said, 'Yeah, I lost my shoe onstage.' And he was like, 'No, your butt was showing for the entire song.' And he looked at me and he said, 'Your career is over.'"

4. She dumped artist Jean-Michel Basquiat beause of his heroin addiction.

Recalling her relationship with the late artist in the '80s, Madonna said, "We always think we can fix people and we can't...just change yourself." After the pop singer ended their relationship, Basquiat demanded his ex return all the paintings he'd given to her as gifts. "I loved him," she recalled. "When I broke up with him he made me give them all back to him, and then he painted over all of them black."

5. She no longer does drugs.

"I tried some ecstasy in the '80s, but I felt so ill for so many days after taking it. It wasn't worth it," she explained. Madonna doesn't smoke marijuana, either, saying she's not an "herbalist" and never will be. She does drink alcohol on occasion, however. "I'm pretty fun when I'm drunk," the Grammy winner said.

Madonna Gets Intimate And Personal On The Howard Stern Show

Howard Stern always delivers! He had one of the most interesting and candid interviews with Madonna!

Madonna took some time out of her busy schedule for a 1h30 interview and went right back to rehearsals for the upcoming Rebel Heart Tour and promo performances.

She also confirmed that “Ghosttown” will be the next single and the video will be shot next week.

She did have a cold, but that didn’t stop her!

Madonna on Rebel Heart, Her Fall and More

Madonna was perfectly turned out and running nearly an hour late for an interview at her Upper East Side home on Wednesday evening. She looked tense as she apologized. “I’m late for everything now,” she said.

She added that she has been in a rush since December, when a hacker put unfinished songs online from her new album, “Rebel Heart”; a suspect has been indicted in Israel. Madonna’s immediate response was to release the finished, and much improved, versions of six songs for sale; they zoomed into the top 10 worldwide. She also worked frantically to finish the rest of the album, which arrives on Tuesday. It’s at once familiar — full of love, dancing, empowerment, blasphemy and raunch — and up-to-the-minute, made with a huge number of collaborators and tweaked by multiple hands under Madonna’s constant supervision.

“I intended to think about things, choose things more slowly — the whole process,” she said. “Then I got forced into putting everything out, and now I’m trying to catch up with myself.”

She continued: “What started out as an invigorating, life-enhancing, joyous experience evolved into something quite crazy. A strange artistic process, but a sign of the time. We’re all digital, we’re all vulnerable and everything’s instant — so instant. Instant success and instant failure. Instant discovery, instant destruction, instant construction. It’s as splendid and wonderful as it is devastating. Honestly, to me it’s the death of being an artist in many ways.”

We spoke in her sitting room, where a Fernand Léger painting presides from above the fireplace. A large coffee table was neatly stacked with books and folders of photographs that Madonna has been using for research as she works on the screenplay for her next film project, based on the novel “The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells.”

Imposing cream-colored couches flanked the coffee table, but Madonna preferred sitting on the floor.

For the interview, she had raced home from a wardrobe fitting for coming performances. “I’m wearing half a costume,” she said. She was dressed in black, with stylishly chunky shoes, diamond-patterned tights, black shorts, a button-fronted T-shirt and a half-length jacket with black feathers sprouting from the shoulders. Her fingernails were black and glittery, and she had little silvery crucifix earrings; a skull-shaped ring was on one finger.

Madonna has been performing the single “Living for Love” on awards shows, wearing a matador outfit and surrounded by bare-chested men outfitted with bulls’ horns. On Feb. 25, she took a dangerous tumble in London at the Brit awards, the British equivalent of the Grammys. A dancer was supposed to pull off her cape, but it was tied too tightly and she was yanked backward onto stairs, suffering whiplash. Seconds later, she got up and kept dancing. “I didn’t feel anything when it happened,” she said. “I just remember falling backward, and I hit the back of my head. But I had so much adrenaline pumping, and I was so taken by surprise that I just was, O.K., I have to keep going. So I just got back onstage, and I just kept going.”

She continued: “If I wasn’t in good shape, I wouldn’t have survived that fall. But I’m strong. I know how to fall — I ride horses. And I have core strength, and I know that saved me. That and my guardian angels. I believe that there’s the physical world and the metaphysical world, and I do believe that they are intertwined — as above, so below. So I think both were at work in the protection of me.”

“Rebel Heart,” like most of Madonna’s albums, spells out its concept directly. Originally she had planned to make an album with two distinct halves, a duality of rebel and heart. “One aspect was going to be a representation of the more rebellious, provocateur side of me,” she said. “And the other side was going to be the more romantic, vulnerable side.” The finished album isn’t divided that way; it hops among moods. In a rarity for Madonna, it also takes a few glances backward. “Veni, Vidi, Vici” builds a triumphant autobiography out of her song titles.

“I don’t like to dwell in the past, but it seemed like the right time to do so,” she said. “After three decades one has to look back. Because there’s a lot of times I just stop and think, ‘Wow.’ I’m thinking about all the people that I’ve known, that I’ve worked with, that I’ve been friends with, that I’ve collaborated with, from Basquiat to Michael Jackson to Tupac Shakur. I survived and they didn’t. And it’s bittersweet for me to think about that. It just seemed like a time where I wanted to stop and look back. It’s kind of like survivor guilt. How did I make it and they didn’t?”

Another song, the ballad “Joan of Arc,” confesses that Madonna isn’t impervious to the countless put-downs she has sustained through the years. “I’ve always admired the story of Joan of Arc and what she symbolizes, her conviction,” she said. “I’m not quite there yet. Everyone does think of me as impenetrable and/or superhuman, and maybe that’s the way it goes if you’ve lasted for more than three decades. But of course that’s not the truth, and I guess I was trying to express that.”

The album had been in the making for a year and a half. When she started it, Madonna had simply wanted to take some time to write. “In this business I’m in, you can start to feel like a gerbil on a wheel,” she said. “People expect things from you. And I expect things from me. Since I was a teenager, I’ve never not been in some creative state, like in the act of making up dances, or writing songs, or whatever. I felt really drained.”

She decided to split her time between the “Impossible Lives” screenplay and songwriting. Her manager, Guy Oseary, suggested that she work with Avicii, the 25-year-old Swedish producer who has had worldwide hits with songs like “Wake Me Up,” and his songwriting team.

Madonna has made her best albums collaborating primarily with one producer at a time — William Orbit on “Ray of Light,” Nile Rodgers on “Like a Virgin,” Patrick Leonard on “Like a Prayer.” But the Avicii connection led into the increasingly prevalent 21st-century pop methodology of multiple collaborators working and reworking songs for maximum sizzle: Kanye West; Diplo, who has worked with M.I.A. and Skrillex; Ariel Rechtshaid, who has worked with Usher, Haim and Vampire Weekend; DJ Dahi, who has worked with Drake and Kendrick Lamar, and more.

“I didn’t know exactly what I signed on for, so a simple process became a very complex process,” Madonna said. “Everyone I worked with is tremendously talented, there’s no question about it. It’s just that everybody I worked with has also agreed to work with 5,000 other people. I just had to get in where I could fit in.”

But Madonna insisted on collaborating in what she called her “old-fashioned” way — not handing off tracks to be polished for later approval, but shaping them in person. “I never leave the room,” she said. “Sometimes I think that makes them mad. Like, ‘Don’t you have to go to the bathroom? Don’t you have somewhere to go? Don’t you want to go make some calls?’ ”

Toby Gad, a producer who has also written with Beyoncé, worked on 14 songs with Madonna; seven, including “Joan of Arc” and “Living for Love,” reached the album. “The first week she was quite intimidating,” he said. “It was like a test phase. You have to criticize, but you can’t really offend. But she also likes honest, harsh critics to say things as they are. It worked out really well and she got sweeter and sweeter.”

“Rebel Heart” may well be Madonna’s most diverse album, encompassing the gospel-charged “Living for Love,” the taunting “Bitch I’m Madonna,” ballads like “Ghosttown” and “Heartbreak City,” the sultry come-on of “Best Night,” the reggae of “Unapologetic Bitch” and the playful “Body Shop,” with its automotive double-entendres backed by the plink of a sitar. Songs also mutate as they go, style-hopping between verse and chorus. Mr. West’s productions mingle his sparse, abrasive rhythm tracks with catchy choruses. “That’s me,” Madonna said, smiling. “That’s where I come in. It’s an interesting marriage of both of our aesthetics.” She and Mr. West have also written a song for his next album, she said.

At 56, Madonna is undaunted by a pop market obsessed with youth. “I don’t think artists think about their age when they are creating, do they?” she said. “I only think about it when other people bring it up or try to limit me by saying, ‘You are this age and so dot dot dot.’ ”

Her response, as always, is perseverance. “Because I’ve been marginalized as a female in a male-dominated world, and we’re in a sexist industry or a sexist world, I’ve always had to push against something or resist against something,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been relaxed, if you know what I’m saying. So because I’ve never been relaxed, I’m not going, oh, it used to be so easy. For me, it’s always been hard from Day 1.”