She is still conquering the charts at 56, but Madonna has claimed BBC Radio 1 is snubbing her because of her age.
The singer suggested the station had unfairly discriminated against her after learning it had not added her new single, Living For Love, to its latest playlist, active from Monday.
“When I heard, I was shocked,” she said. “I was like, ‘Wait a second. Shouldn’t it be to do with whether you wrote a good, catchy pop song?’ I thought it was so discriminatory and unfair.
“We’ve made so many advances in other areas — civil rights, gay rights — but ageism is still an area that’s taboo and not talked about and dealt with.”
Sales of her latest album, Rebel Heart, show Madonna is as popular as ever. The Official Charts Company says she is on track to take the No 1 spot this week. It would be her 12th chart-topping album in the UK.
Radio 1 said it never bans artists and rejected the star’s claims of ageism in The Sun.
“The tracks are chosen on musical merit and their relevance to our young audience on a case-by-case basis,” a spokesman said. “Whilst around 40 per cent of the country’s 15 to 29-year-olds tune in to Radio 1 each week, an artist’s age is never a factor.”
The station said it had played Madonna’s single and pointed out that the song FourFiveSeconds, featuring 72-year-old Paul McCartney with Kanye West and Rihanna, is on the playlist.
Madonna’s attack on Radio 1 comes after a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine in which she said age is “still the one area where you can totally discriminate against somebody; Only females, though. Not males. So in that respect we still live in a very sexist society.”
