Thursday 12 July 2012


Madonna takes to the stage at the Stade de France at the weekend, facing the possibility of offending Front National leader Marine Le Pen.

The show comes after a spokesperson for the FN told 20 Minutes newspaper that Marine Le Pen is considering legal action if Madonna if uses a video of that features Le Pen with a swastika on her face during the show.

While performing the song Nobody Knows Me, a video showed images accompanying the song, including the controversial image of Le Pen. It's a brief image, which quickly changes to one that looks like a portrait of Hitler. Viewers are left to draw their own conclusion with regard a link between Le Pen, Nazis and Hitler.

Not exactly subtle, but it will be interesting to see whether Madonna uses the footage or is intimidated by legal threats from the Front National.

It's not been the successful comeback she'd have hoped for, despite the involvement of Solveig with her music, and a feeling that for all the scandal and controversy she's engineered through her career, most of the controversy this time is old fashioned  bad publicity.

Her tour has so far been dogged by controversy, the Marine Le pen issue likely to cause some waves in France, but reactions to her costume choice were not entirely what she would have wanted, and the reaction to her showing some flesh also put her in the spotlight for reasons she'd probably avoid.

Her single Give Me All Your Luvin' didn't sell in the quantities that might have been expected given its performance at the superbowl and the associated hype, the second single Girl Gone Wild did not fare much better. Still, number one and top ten across a huge number ouf countries probably isn't that bad. I doubt she's all that worried at the end of the day.

Meanwhile, Madonna has confirmed that her next single is to be Turn Up the Radio, another track that was co-produced by DJ Martin Solveig.

Madonna also plays in Nice on August 21

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