Lady Gaga Praises Madonna for Inspiring Billboard Women in Music Speech
Making peace. Lady Gaga praised Madonna for her speech at the 2016 Billboard Women in Music event after years of rumors about a feud with the Material Girl.
“@Madonna your speech at the Billboard Music Awards was inspiring. You’re so brave & strong. Thanks for being that for us girls we need that,” the “Perfect Illusion” singer, 30, tweeted on Monday, December 12.
Madge, 58, gave an emotional address and opened up about sexism and a past rape while accepting the Woman of the Year Award at the December 9 event. "Thank you for acknowledging my ability to continue my career for 34 years in the face of blatant misogyny, sexism, constant bullying and relentless abuse,” she said. "When I first moved to New York, I was a teenager, it was 1979, and New York was a very scary place. In the first year, I was held up at gunpoint, raped on a rooftop with a knife digging into my throat, and I had my apartment broken into and robbed so many times I just stopped bolting the door.
She also touched on some of the criticism she’s faced. "You are allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy. But don't act too smart. Don't have an opinion. Don't have an opinion that is out of line with the status quo, at least,” she said. "You are allowed to be objectified by men and dress like a slut, but don't own your sluttiness. And do not, I repeat, do not share your own sexual fantasies with the world. Be what men want you to be. But more importantly, be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. And finally, do not age because age is a sin. You will be criticized. You will be vilified. And you will definitely not be played on the radio.”
Gaga, who is also a rape survivor and advocate for women’s rights, seemed to be burying the rumored hatchet with her tweet on Monday. The two ladies were first pitted against each other when Gaga released “Born This Way” in 2011, and it sounded similar to Madonna’s 1989 song “Express Yourself.” In February 2015, Madonna told Rolling Stone that Gaga “blatantly ripped off one of my songs.”
More recently, the “Bad Romance” songstress seemed to throw shade at Madonna during an interview with Beats 1 Radio in October of this year. When the host compared the two ladies, Gaga shot back, “Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna, she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic huge career, biggest pop star of all time. But I play a lot of instruments. I write all of my own music. I spend hours and hours a day in the studio. I’m a producer. I’m a writer. What I do is different.”
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