Madonna and Nicki Minaj represent different generations. But both singers know a thing or two about provoking the status quo for the sake of generating attention.
Madonna’s been perfecting her shock shtick since the mid-’80s, of course. And with her latest album (not to mention her controversial, demon possession-themed performance at the Grammys in February), Nicki Minaj continues to demonstrate her intention to be a similarly provocative performer.
That said, the pair shares another curious similarity.
I reviewed both Madonna’s new album (MDNA) and Nicki Minaj’s (Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded) in the last two weeks. And one thing that struck me is that both of these singers have songs with the word “sinner” in the title. Madonna’s up to her old embrace-her-inner-naughty-girl, enrage-the-Catholics tricks on “I’m a Sinner.” Meanwhile, Nicki’s song “Beautiful Sinner” relishes the thought of embracing a lying, cheating bad boy.
On the surface, this might not seem like too big a deal. But here’s why it caught my attention: When was the last time you can remember a major pop star using the word sin or sinner in a song title?
There are a few such songs floating around out there, but fewer than you might think. The first such song I could quickly recall was Bon Jovi’s 1989 Top 10 hit “Living in Sin,” the story of a cohabiting couple trying to deal with their families’ collective disapproval of their living arrangement. Back then, if you said two people were “living in sin,” everyone knew exactly what you meant.
In the intervening years, however, the concept of sin—let alone living in it—has really fallen on hard times. And I suspect that’s because our collective notion of sin—of somehow living in a manner that’s displeasing to God—has less and less traction in an increasingly postmodern and post-Christian culture. Two people living together aren’t living in sin. They’re just cohabitating. It’s what lots of folks do these days before they get married … if they get married at all.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Lots of other things our culture might have once considered “sinful” are now nothing more than personal preferences. You have yours, I have mine, end of discussion. No need to start trotting out condemning labels like sin.
That’s why, I suspect, we don’t hear too many people singing about this increasingly “archaic” subject these days. And that’s why it was all the more interesting to me that both Madonna and Nicki Minaj actually were.
I don’t want to make more than I should out of these two singers’ appropriation of this word. After all, both are obviously appropriating the term to demonstrate how naughty they are.
Still, the fact that either would use the word at all—in a glass half-full way of looking at things—perhaps indicates that our culture still has some lingering memory of a time where right and wrong, good and bad did still exist.
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