Tori Amos defends Madonna: ‘People want her to be shamed’

Iconic singer-songwriter Tori Amos has spoken up in defence of Madonna in a new interview with the Guardian.

Asked what she made of Madonna’s dramatic fall at the BRIT Awards in February, Amos said she felt “sad” at the slew of negative comments about Madonna’s age after the incident. The 50-year-old, currently touring her fourteenth studio album Unrepentant Geraldines, had this to say about the 56-year-old Queen of Pop:

“Madonna is an entertainer. There are very few people who could’ve gotten up off that floor. It wasn’t because of her that she fell, but it was because of her that the performance carried on. Some of the vilification comes from women as much as men. She’s making choices and she’s able to do things physically that a lot of people 25 years younger can’t; she got up and refused to allow that to shame her. I think people want her to be shamed into a role that they find acceptable for her age. It makes me sad that we can’t embrace Madonna and say, Wow, this is an artist who’s expressing herself in a certain way.”

Asked about her 25-year-long reputation as an indie gay icon, Amos told the Guardian that she seldom sees straight men at her shows, as they’re “too tortured” by the confessional songs she performs.

“I’ve learned a lot from my gay friends and continue to learn. With my gay male friends, they weren’t trying to tear me down or make me doubt myself; there wasn’t a competition, no secret envy of success that sometimes unfortunately can happen among young women where you compete with each other. You try to be magnanimous about your friends’ successes and try to be happy, but I never felt compared against gay guys,” she said.

“And even with dykes, I didn’t feel compared to them either. But I was brought up more by the gay boys – the lesbians came a bit later.”