The video is her perception of America being obsessed with war. The audience are "Americans" who clap and cheer at the violence. Her rap is about how privileged her life as an American is. And yet she's still not satisfied. What made the video controversial was the timing. It came out at the height of the Iraq war.
ugly truth hurts...that's why it was banned...gratuituous violence as exemplified in the video calls out the indifference of policial america on the plight of innocent victims of war
@gnu_andrew I recall stories that say MTV did air a censored version without the gore, but still with war footage of bombs going off and an ending skit of Bush himself catching the grenade and using it to light a cigarette. It supposedly came like a day after the Iraq War started.
The message was basically what everyone is saying NOW about America going to war with Iraq after 9/11. It was stupid lmao but America at the time was all for it and all about patriotism and everyone was pretty much like "how dare you mock the troops?!" We feel much differently now thank goodness. Madonna is ALWAYS ahead of her time
This is pretty much the only time Madonna backed down from something controversial. In this case her family was receiving death threats and she wanted to keep her children safe. It sucks that people were so up in arms about this video but I'm glad it exists because it's still very relevant today
@@manukosmos1163 yes but the OP meant in the US. Of course only the US attacked her for the message in this video. She got tons of backlash and a radio ban, so her COADF era didn’t do as well in the US as it did outside. Still a success but less so.
No lol. You can’t listen to a lot of music if you think she’s about activism. She tells you; listen to her. She’s only here to live out the American Dream. Same as you. It’s a lie.
@@keetahbrough Lol, she has balls like no one actually have... you need to listen carefully, she tells you at the end: "and nothing it's what it seems"... yo need the brain to get it... that's a brave true, that's why I love her. Her message sprays the word until Madame X got onto the action.
The original ending was she tosses the grenade at someone in the front row, it’s George W Bush who grabs it and leans to the person next to him who is Saddam Hussein and he lights their cigars with it.
Yes!! Thanks for that. I was thinking the original ending showed Bush catching the grenade, but was after watching that, I was starting to think that perhaps I was wrong... 👍
You can tell she was angry at Bush and all that was going on in the world. I love it. American Life is one of my favourite albums. It's a shame this video was banned back in the day but at least it's still available today for those who didn't get the chance to see it and appreciate it. Great reaction man! And long live the Queen of Pop!
Along with Erotica, American Life is one of Madonna’s most underrated, controversial, and misunderstood albums. The album tackled many important topics from war to the American dream to materialism - topics that are relevant now more than ever. Bad Girl and What It Feels Like For a Girl are goodies to react
I would say that the album doesn't talk about war. There's no mention or any reference of it in the lyrics in any of the songs. It's only on this video visually that it deals with the horrors of war.
Since you mentioned Erotica, I have to say it's my favourite album of hers. It's solid from start to finish with not one bad track on the entire thing. I love her softer vocals and the overall jazzy feel of it makes me feel like I'm sitting in a smokey cabaret in Paris.
The Rap bit lyrically showcases the trite stuff that people care about to the suffering of others. It's a most powerful work of artistic venture. This song, fits as a prelude to a song on Madame X - "Killers Who Are Partying".
This is a heavy critique for Bush’s positioning regarding war. This video is a masterpiece! You have to pay attention to the middle Eastern kids that were being bullied by soldiers. The war is a concert, a runaway for the USA. It’s a show, a strategy to make money over the suffering of thousands. Madonna is being very acid and ironic with the lyrics and the video. Pay attention that she doesnt sing “american liFE”, it sounds like American LIE. And many people doesnt care about the dead of innocents, of children, of families... this is what this video is about.
It wasn't really the case that the industry told her to make something softer. Madonna was receiving death threats and public criticism because this video was a direct criticism of the war that the USA was conducting at the time. The war was televised for the first time in history and became a form of entertainment - that's what the fashion show represents, war as entertainment - this was really the only time in her career that Madonna backed down and removed the video herself because she was scared for her families safety.
Yep. What happened to the Dixie Chicks was still fresh at that time, too. Her team knew that could happen to her, so... Of course almost 20 years later she was 100% correct, but, at that time it could have ended her the way it did The Dixie Chicks. Albeit, temporarily.
Yes but it was more than that. The message of her video was true then and is now, but the impact was different from when she MADE the video to when she was about to release it. She said in her statement that when she made the video the war was just beginning and when it came time to release it, it was too late and she didn’t want it to be misunderstood in the new context. Of course, who knew what was actually the real real reason.
Actually, both are true. Clear Channel controlled 1400+ radio stations in the US, the vast majority of pop radio in the land. They were openly pro-war and instantly became anti-Madonna. The video got cancelled out of concern for the death threats and sensitivity to US troops about to go to war (based on a lie, of course) but the song was never played. It disappeared instantly and she's never recovered in terms of radio play. She got Dixie Chicked by the folks who are supposedly against cancel culture.
Madonna along with the Dixie Chicks were the first artist to hate on Bush, well before it was fashionable to do so, in 02/03. Such a statement. Fast forward to 2008 and he was not popular at all. There are songs on Madame X that touch upon Trump’s administration. It didn’t chart very well in the US but people were very put off of her at this point. ICONIC
The first time I ever saw Madonna in concert was her Re-Invention Tour in Washington DC. American Life was amazing and graphic live on stage and the DC crowd loved it! The Re-Invention Tour was the closest thing Madonna ever did to a greatest hits tour. It was songs from the American Life album and the other songs were all her greatest hits from the past but of course they are reworked and tweaked a bit to make them new because she never likes to repeat her performances. She also performs a heart felt, emotional rendition of John Lennon's Imagine that the crowd loved! You should definitely check out the Re-Invention Tour, it's one of her most underrated tours because of the American Life album but in many ways it was one of her best! It will always be special to me since it was the first Madonna tour I went to. I've seen her five times now! 👑
Please listen to the American Life album it's an industrial pop/folky masterpiece and it's actually not as political as people made it out to be. It gets extremely personal touching on topics on love, death, heartbreak, her journey, ego, her children and of course the superficialities of the American life but not really in a political way but on a personal internal level. You'll love it!
By far her most underrated album, was overlooked due to the unjustified controversy surrounding this song. The tracks Intervention & X Static Process are among the best of her career. It's an album I still listen to every week.
Deano Deano thank you! It's easily my top 3 favorite M albums. It's beautiful, sonically and thematically cohesive, and very introspective. It really sucks that the controversy of the AL video overshadowed the album. People don't even give it a chance. The problem is people have the expectation of it being political when it really isn't like at all lmao
And it was the same thing with Erotica. The controversy overshadowed the album and the album isn't really that sexual. It explores themes of love, heartbreak, revenge etc it's a beautiful body of work that was overlooked by preconceived notions
@@deanodeano8604 The song itself is/was critiquing American life or Western culture's values. There's no mention or reference of war in the lyrics of the song or any of the other songs on this album. It's only the video that has war images.
I’m just now discovering the American Life era & is easy my fav album in general now. There are no skip tracks. The more I listen to it, the more I love it. I read is sold 5 million copies to date even with all the controversy
There were many different endings to this one, I’ve see the one where bush catches the grenade and uses it to light his cigar, then there’s one where bush and sadden kiss...
The juxtaposition of war/violence and materialistic world , a fashion show being an example of society being so clueless about the pain of war and how it affects other parts of the world. You have to listen to the album. So underrated . Thanks for your Madonna reactions 💜👑💜👑💜
the ending of this video has also been censored. the original ending has the grenade being tossed into the crowd and being caught by George W. Bush (look a like) who is chuckling as he uses it to light a cigar
I was 13 years old on 2003, and I listened for Madonna at first time with her Music album in 2000. At that time , I didn't understand very well the difficult situation that the world was living. That was Iraq's war, but not only that country was suffering, all countries around the world were confused, because that war was an excuse in order to invaded and robbed Iraq's resources. So that, Madonna could express herself with American life, not only the song, also, with the complete album. This album is majestic, it is a treasure, but in that time, nobody understood the real message that Madonna wanted to express in it. I consider , it is one of the best Madonna's albums in her career . Greetings from Bogotá Colombia
Great reaction! Your face when the rap came up was priceless. I really hated this song when it first came out, the rap always put me over the edge, but it's grown on me a lot over the years. You know I'm satisfied!
Great reaction, I forgot RU-vid has this version. I remember the release and she gave in and altered the video. Glad she still was able to release this version.
Also I love that the album Music celebrates Americana culture in its imagery and American Life then goes in to criticise it. Love that juxtaposition. What’s more is that she was living abroad when these two albums were released.
I was lucky enough to get the original promo video for this, with an actual album image picture sleeve and it has a completely different ending. The hand grenade gets caught by a George Bush look a like and he lights his cigar with it.
That was the version played on European TV Music channels during 2 or 3 weeks. I guess that's also one of the reasons why this album did better in Europe.
Great analysis of what Madonna does so well: pushing buttons both musically and in terms of content. She has said that she's not a great singer, but she has something to say. It's too bad that it often takes years for many people to catch on to what she's saying.
I loved American Life since Madonna was saying look at how materialistic our world is and consumed by celebrities etc. she wanted people to focus on the war in Iraq and all the destruction it brought. It was a bold move post 911 and death threats to her family prevented her from releasing this video. The album is so introspective and a real gem in her body of work. Madonna has always been and will continue tu be a musical trailblazer. There is an alternate ending where an actor playing Bush and Hussein pick up the grenade and it is rendered harmless when they light a cigarette. Love your video reactions.
A MASTERPIECE... By far, one of the best albums she did, and when it was released was of course very controversial and had very negative critics by the media... But it's a real big album, love it, one of my Top 5 from her...
Love your reaction. Speaking of controversial Madonna videos I think you should do "What It Feels Like for a Girl", directed by her then husband Guy Ritchie.
Madonna wrote the song during 2002/3 when the world and especially the USA were raw from the 9/11 attacks. I think she was questioning herself and trying to see it from a different perspective, without taking sides. If I am not mistaken, by the time the video was being made, there were serious talks about waging a war on Iraq. She took the opportunity to voice out her disagreement with the possible war being waged on Iraq with this video, again, showing and highlighting a different perspective, without necessarily taking sides. As often happened in her career, her refusal to see things in simple terms, led to general public misunderstanding her and accused her of anti-USA. She was highly condemned for this. However, in hindsight, I think most people probably agree that the war had led to more problems.... So she might not have been completely wrong in her estimation of the situation at the time. In any case, she was right to offer a different perspective.
Also, Madonna was ridiculed for that horrible rap, but if you actually listen to what she's saying, she's listing all the things that make her and everyone so satisfied, but then she ends that section by singing "Do you think I'm satisfied?" I think her rap was not just a condemnation of the trivial things that are meant to make us happy but the trivial things that specifically are meant to make HER happy. In the end, none of it satisfies.
Hey Dereck that was not the end, this version is different from the original version again, in the original version Madonna throws the grenade and George Bush catches it and light his cigarette with it.
She has a great VICE interview where she talks about the world changing only a few years ago. Remember her mdna world tour last show in South America her power went out and she apparently ran off stage to make sure her children were ok bc of threats. Then came back to finish it via loudspeaker 📢 like a pro
Everyone always has a problem saying Madonna “tried to rap” and jumped the shark - she did this very intentionally, the things she spoke of during the rap exactly exemplify why she was doing the rap - like ‘hey I’m rapping to be trendy’ but it’s really an FU to all of that - she was satirizing/mocking it - she wasn’t actually trying to say ‘I’m a rapper now’ or ‘i want to be a rapper’ - she was using rapping as a way to express the theme of the song ‘American Life’ - ‘do I have to change my name, lose some weight, start rapping - to be heard?’
Really? I thought it was her saying that even with all those things, she was not satisfied as she was constantly reminded of the chaos America was going through.
Why do I enjoy watching people discover this woman? Been a fan since I was a kid and can say she influenced me tremendously without me even knowing it. I love how she’s a freedom fighter and have also made me one. Also I woke up thinking how other artists never take these chances bc of they are prolly worried their career will end. Not her. She prevails because she speaks the truth and makes us aware. --where is Mariah,jlo, Janet, xtina, Britney, Justin, etc making statements that need to be said?? Cmon now
There is a version of this video with a different ending, more interesting and ironic. Saddam Hussein and George Bush appear, smoking cigars and hugging each other like great friends, and attending the fashion show. You should see it.
There's an alternative ending to this video, where she drops the granade & a Bush lookalike catches it & lights up a cigar with it as if it was a lighter & shares that cigar with a Saddam Hussein lookalike. I like that ending best.
Great reaction. The video is brilliant, IMHO. It's a wonderful takedown of the lies Americans tell themselves about our own values. Far more important to us than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (let alone so-called 'family values') is protecting our lifestyle at all costs - including the lives of innocents abroad and our own brave soldiers who are sent to "protect" us but really are being used as just one more commodity in the great churn of American commercialism - from latte to bomb. People forget but at the exact same time, the (Dixie) Chicks got essentially banned from radio for one comment about George W Bush and the Iraq War. Madonna pulled this video out of sensitivity to the troops about to go to war (and I can't fault her for that) but she was also cancelled on the radio. Right-wing owned Clear Channel owned 1400+ radio stations in the USA at the time, an effective monopoly. Madonna has never been played on US radio since. And every time she speaks out about it, they just chalk it up to one more reason to keep her off the air. That's American life for ya...
The glitchy-acoustic sound is very characteristic of Mirwais, the producer. You should check “Naïve song” by Mirwais which is an earlier song with a similar sound.
It was bold and controversial, but I love how the last American Life single was Love Profusion, which provided a little different perspective. Madonna looked feminine and vulnerable in the video.
This song kinda also to me explains why her following projects she stopped being so focused on the drive to be the best, and to start putting out projects based more on being an artist. She says she realized she had lost herself in the “American Life/Dream” and realized it’s all hollow pursuits.
She’s revealing the American Dream. The lie y’all believe in and work for. It’s incredible how celebrities expose the illusion that they help create.. and we completely ignore the warnings. The fashion show is about the show that we all show up for. The image and the cartoon roles we fill. She tells us that underneath all the fun stuff, there is violence and supremacy and the end of the world. she’s crazy but she’s not stupid lol
Madonna as usual the only singer ever to have the balls to release something like that and Erotica and still carry on having a career regardless, I think that is the reason you never saw her leaving a party drunk, or having problems with drugs, she never allowed herself to be a victim of her success, and she carries on her career not relying on her best hits tactic, she still pushing the envelop, if before was about being open about being a sexual woman and the causes she defends, now is about ageism as lots of people think that after 45 you should just dig a grave and through yourself in it lol
The other versions of the video showed a Bush lookalike catch the grenade, which was actually a lighter- and he lit a cigar with it; the 2004 Reinvention Tour backdrop during the live “American Life” rendition also had a Sadam lookalike kiss his cheek or rest his head on Bush’s shoulder, like it’s all a game for oil & world domination. Madonna had stated- in that way, they’re actually alike. You have a good body . . . ;.) Oh, and rap-sequence was some constructive criticism, in my opinion, to the hip-hop community (since it was getting tired- seeing & hearing them brag & make it rain; all about $)
I also feel on Madonnas personal note on herself when she is underground at the fashiuon show it looks to me like a stadium and before she hits the stage in a concert that it is like going into battle to slay. Just perhaps another point of view. If you see it performed in the Reinvention Tour it comes together a little more. Thanks Dereck. You get it.
I truly appreciate the song's architectural form and even the rap, instead, really innovative! The alternate subtle and vibrant portions that recall both sides of life, silky hypocrisy and people rage. "The director's cut version" had a different ending with a man who looks like G.W. Bush, he takes the grenade to light his cigarette. Sadly this part has been cut off.When war and violence become a catwalk! Unbelievable the braveness of this video at that time, if not considering that it's Madonna we're talking about. The follow up to this video is an authentic masterpiece, that I consider one of the most important songs and videos in her whole carrier, HOLLYWOOD from the same album, a place where dream and reality merge together, where the opposites fade into each other, sex, cruelty, elegance, arrogance, beauty and rudeness Heavy sounds and emergency sirens across the life of a brunette Madonna in B&W, badly dressed, comes to Hollywood without a ticket for her ride; a blonde diva (shoot with colour this time) looks at her in a TV screen and you can understand that they are the same woman divided by fame, but something has changed indide her. In the final part the diva, riding the B&W TV with the brunette on, unplugs the video, erasing her own previous image (and ingenuity) forever... Fun fact: the song begins with almost the same lyrics of her first single Everybody (Everybody come on...-Everybody comes to Hollywood...).
Madonna brings the song back to her Madame X new concert video. She rightfully spoke truth about Bush at the time. Now more recently in context to the Trump era US.
Yes, this video was banned and so was Madonna on the airwaves. Her most acoustic album, American Life is at once very political and introspective. It's one of my favorites. You'll find some gems in that album: Love Profusion, Nothing Fails, X-Static Process, Intervention, Nobody Knows Me, Hollywood, Die Another Day, etc. The album is underrated and worth a listen.
I’m just now discovering the American Life era & didn’t get the concept with the censored video. This version made me like the song more & understand it better
The USA sees war as s tv show almost. Like a spectacle. Hence the fashion show. This is an anti war sentiment that needs to be heard. The US have stuck their business in war and glorify it. It's awful.
It is wonderful watching you discover all these amazing M videos/songs for the first time - have you done reaction videos to "Cherish," "Oh Father," "Bad Girl," or "Material Girl" songs/videos??
Hi! Буду писать на родном языке, русском, насколько знаю, данная версия клипа была запрещена к показу на MTV, кроме России. Клип очень откровенный, показывающий разрушительтую политику вторжения USA в жизнь всего мира. Насколько знаю, у М были проблемы и FBI, за столь откровенное и прямолинейное выражение ее послания в клипе!
Girlie show she did military theme for a few songs towards the end but not as aggressive as here. Maybe on yhe drowned world tour but frankly put this was the madame x fighter coming out before we knew she was in there
At the 5 minute mark, Derek’s talking about her message, nothing too much out of control (I think those were the words), meanwhile there’s a baby onscreen with a sash of ammunition that’s bigger than he is. THATS THE STATEMENT!! How fucked up is that and yet it barely is noticed.
