The two “horribly mediocre” entertainers Madonna hated the most
Madonna, having achieved hit singles around the world in five different decades, releasing nine US number one albums and appearing in 46 feature films, can’t have anything to complain about when it comes to the way her trailblazing career has panned out.
This, from a musical standpoint, is unsurprisingly far greater than almost every other artist in the history of popular music could ever even dream of doing. The way her cards have been dealt is the envy of countless peers. After all, if we’re talking about musical achievements, Madonna has pretty much ticked off everything imaginable.
Outside of music, she even won a Golden Globe for her leading role in the 1996 film Evita. While her film career tangent might not be as illustrious as what she’s achieved in music, that’s still pretty good going for someone with little in the way of formal training as an actor.
So yeah, what has Madonna got to be complaining about exactly? Everything is pretty fine and dandy as things go, so there’s little to be bitter about, right?
The thing is, even when you’re at the top of your game, you’re going to find it difficult not to compare yourself to others, and you’ll constantly find yourself examining why your closest competitors are doing so well. In some cases, it may eventually reach a point where you become so obsessed by the achievements of others that you’ll either deliberately move in a different direction so as to distance yourself from their exploits. Or, you could go the other way, and perfect what they’re doing to beat them at their own game.
However, while Madonna evidently carved her own path in various different strands of show business, she found herself venting in a handwritten letter to an unconfirmed recipient in the ‘90s, only for it to resurface in 2017 when it was placed up for auction.
In the letter, she complains that two of the biggest stars of the period in her two respective fields of interest were simply not up to her exacting standards, and she frankly abhorred the fact that they were successful.
“It’s so unequivocally frustrating to read that Whitney Houston has the music career I wish I had and Sharon Stone has the film career I’ll never have,” Madonna raged, evidently unable to recognise that she herself has had a rather impressive career in both worlds.
“Not because I want to be these women,” she added, “because I’d rather die. They’re so horribly mediocre, and they’re always being held up as paragons of virtue and some sort of measuring stick to humiliate me.”
Stone would, of course, respond with as much shock as you might expect to Madonna dragging her through the mud when the letter became the subject of public scrutiny, and the accusations of mediocrity that were levelled against her were not taken kindly. Houston, on the other hand, wasn’t alive to witness the publication of Madonna’s vitriolic note, but again, you can imagine that for someone who was arguably equally successful as her, she’d have been just as baffled and outraged by the hurtful tone used by her contemporary.
