- Album artwork for Rebel Heart
We’re barely a week into 2015, and Madonna may have already embarked on the most tasteless album campaign of 2015. In anticipation of her 13th album, Rebel Heart, tentatively set for release on March 9, the longstanding pop icon posted a series of images to Instagram and Twitter depicting political figures like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. wearing the ropes that bind Madonna’s face on the record’s cover. “This ❤️#rebelheart had a dream!” reads the caption on the modified King portrait. Madonna has apologized for the image, though in 2015 it’s hard not to suspect that the stunt might’ve been a calculated PR move. From what we’ve heard of the record so far, “deliberately tasteless” seems to be the look for Madonna this year. The singer employed both Diplo and PC Music associate Sophie to produce the album, and the resulting singles may be the first big leap between the Soundcloud underground and the pop mainstream.
Most people who got into Sophie and the trolling net-label PC Music last year had seen this coming. Songs like “Hey QT,” a collaborative single from Sophie, PC Music head A.G. Cook, and a singer pseudonymously known as Quinn Thomas, already sounded like the next big thing coming in pop. PC Music stretched pop to its most florid extremes, pitching voices up to Chipmunks heights and cranking the filters on their synths. Every single that came out through the web-only label last year proudly wielded tastelessness and comedy as aesthetic weapons. Beyond provocation, there didn’t seem to be any philosophical tenet at the collective’s core. So it’s no surprise Sophie was happy to sign on to a major-label project before he’d even released an album of his own.
