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Madonna · S7 E3
The Vindication
The Golden Globe, the Oscar for 'You Must Love Me,' and the moment the industry finally took her seriously as an actress
The Beverly Hilton, Los Angeles, January 19, 1997. Madonna's name is read aloud as the winner of the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, and the woman who was told she could not act walks to the podium visibly shaking.
"Give It 2 Me" (2008). The title is the only demand Madonna has ever really made: give me what I have earned. After years of being told she was not a real actress, not a real singer, not a real anything, the Golden Globe and the Oscar are the industry finally giving it to her. The track's relentless energy is the sound of someone who stopped asking for permission a long time ago.
The Release
Evita opens in theaters on December 14, 1996, two months after Lourdes is born. Madonna watches the premiere as a new mother, carrying a Golden Globe campaign and a newborn at the same time. The reviews are the best she has ever received for her acting. The New York Times calls her performance "surprisingly effective," which from the paper that spent a decade mocking her film career is practically a standing ovation.
“This is the greatest creative experience of my life.”
— Madonna, on her Evita performance
TAP TO REVEAL: What happened when "You Must Love Me" was performed at the Oscars?
Give It 2 Me, Madonna (2008)
"Give It 2 Me" is co-produced by Pharrell Williams, and the beat hits like a demand letter set to music. The production is stripped to its essentials: a driving four-on-the-floor kick, a synth hook, and Madonna's vocal cutting through the mix with zero patience. Listen for how Pharrell's production keeps the arrangement lean and aggressive, refusing to give the listener a moment to catch their breath. The title is not a request. It is an invoice.
The Beverly Hilton, Beverly Hills
The hotel ballroom where Madonna wins the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy on January 19, 1997. After Body of Evidence, Dangerous Game, and years of being dismissed as a serious actress, she walks to this podium with the only major acting award she will ever receive.
Evita: The Reception
Buenos Aires
From the Evita film soundtrack (1996). The song where Eva Perón arrives in Buenos Aires as a teenager with nothing and announces to the entire city that she intends to take it over. Webber and Rice wrote it as a character's declaration of ambition, but Madonna sings it as if she is describing her own arrival in New York in 1977. The energy is infectious, and the hunger is real.
Buenos Aires, Madonna (1996)
Read the lyrics while you listen. This is a song about a provincial girl walking into a city that does not know her name yet and deciding that it will. Replace Buenos Aires with New York and you have the opening chapter of Madonna's entire career.
What award did "You Must Love Me" win at the 69th Academy Awards?
On October 14, 1996, two months before the Evita premiere, Madonna gives birth to a daughter named Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon. The woman who has spent fifteen years performing control discovers something she cannot control at all.
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