Madonna might be losing touch with her audience.
Since she began social distancing herself amid the coronavirus pandemic, the music icon has been posting her "Quarantine Diaries" on Instagram. The posts — in which she types on a typewriter and vocalizes her inner thoughts — aren't exactly hitting the right buttons and are coming off as bizarre, friends and fans told Page Six.
"I worshipped her, we all did," said a source who's worked with Madge in recent years and has ties to her inner circle. "I still do, but I'm disappointed. It's like she's selling out to keep getting attention and she doesn't know how weird she's coming off. I keep hoping she'll snap out of it."
The Instagram posts come after a somewhat unsuccessful Madame X tour in which Madonna's late stage arrivals became commonplace.
Much of what Madonna has posted on social media is fun, including videos with her children. However, other Instagram posts are missing the target and getting her in trouble. She recently deleted an odd video of herself in the bathtub in which she called Covid-19 the "great equalizer." The post sparked backlash. Other fans mocked her for a March 20 video in which she sang into a hairbrush about fried fish to the tune of "Vogue."
So, what's going on? Many say the Material Girl hasn't been the same since her longtime publicist, Liz Rosenberg, retired in 2015.
"No one around her today can tell her anything," said Brad Jeffries, who choreographed for Madonna for years, including the "Like a Virgin" tour. "Liz could, but she's gone. That's why [Madonna] seems to be going so deep into the crazy right now. I defend her right to sleep with 25-year-olds because if she were a 61-year-old guy sleeping with 25-year-old women no one would blink an eye. But the way she's doing it comes off a little desperate."
Since splitting with ex-husband Guy Richie in 2008, she's dated several much-younger men, including her current boyfriend, 26-year-old backup dancer Ahlamalik Williams.
"Guy Ritchie broke her," a friend told Page Six. "He wouldn't take any crap from her and she couldn't handle it. He was the last of her alpha males. Frankly, most guys her age who she would want, [they] want 25-year-olds themselves."
Whether it's age or something else, the Madonna brand is simply not as strong as it once was, her former choreographer said.
"It must be killing her to begin to feel irrelevant," Brad said. "That girl was so smart, so driven, so focused, she could have been a major CEO. She had incredible powers of seduction and had more balls than any guy I ever met — more than any world leader. But she's lived her whole adult life in a white-hot spotlight and now it's dimmed to a 30-watt bulb. For someone like her, that's gotta hurt. Her idea of hell is walking into a room and people either not knowing who she is or not caring."
There are some who still believe that Madonna can and will reinvent herself, as she's done so many times.
"What you're seeing is a performance," a record-industry veteran said. "Nothing with her is unplanned. I feel for her about the [physical] injuries but she's also [seemingly] playing the vulnerable-victim card because it's worked so well for younger artists."
Ed Steinberg, who produced her first video, said, "She is crazy smart and will not fade away."
He added, "She's reinvented herself 12 times and now she's doing it again. Her most outstanding quality is needing attention. I would not write her off. She will rise again."