Maisi and the Disco is About to Break Out of the Dance Floor’s Shadows with Some Help from “Madonna”

For all the flak Madonna got over her incredible opening performance to the 2026 VMAs, one would never know it based on the continued love being thrown her way from a younger generation of pop stars. The latest being Maisi and the Disco with a song called, what else, “Madonna.” And no, it’s hardly the first time someone has written a song in the Queen of Pop’s honor, but it is among the more standout works of the twenty-first century (following such “lad fare” as The Androids’ “Do It With Madonna,” Robbie Williams’ “She’s Madonna” and Drake’s “Madonna”—note: all songs by men that tend to praise her sexual allure [though not so much the Drake track] as opposed to what she’s done for “the culture”).

And it’s apparent that, in order to be so, Maisi and the Disco either did her homework, or genuinely grew up being exposed to Madonna’s music and imagery. As for the latter, like an updated, less polished take on one of Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor promo photos (shot by Steven Klein), the image that greets visitors to Maisi and the Disco’s website is of her doing something of a “bridge pose” over a disco ball against the backdrop of some very uninviting concrete. In terms of referencing this album, it makes sense beyond the fact that Madonna just released Confessions II. For, at twenty-five, Maisi (whose “and the Disco” is in the spirit of MARINA’s erstwhile “and the Diamonds” in that she’s a solo singer) would have been born at the dawn of Madonna’s twenty-first century catalogue, which kicked off with 2000’s Music. An album that’s been having some resonance and rejuvenation of late thanks to Troye Sivan sampling the title track for “Party.”

And while Maisi and the Disco might not (yet) be on the same fame scale that Sivan is, her “awareness-raising” about Madonna’s history and general fabulousness is still being felt at a “local” level. After all, like Charli XCX (who Maisi has also cited as an important artist to her) during the “MySpace days,” Maisi is known for DJing and performing at club nights in London, where, as best as she can for someone of her generation, she attempts to bring back a “pre-internet” feel, which is also part of connecting with the music. Therefore, everyone on the dance floor. For, as Madonna recently said in one of her VMAs acceptance speeches, “Dance brings everybody together, okay? We are all equal on the dance floor.”

If anyone helped cement and publicize that loophole of “equality,” it’s Madonna herself, with “Vogue” lyrics such as, “I know a place where you can get away/It’s called a dance floor” and “It makes no difference if you’re black or white/If you’re a boy or a girl/If the music’s pumping it will give you new life.” Or among the most well-known “Music” lyrics, “Music makes the people come together/Music, mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel.” So it’s no wonder Maisi, herself a “club queen,” would gravitate to Madonna and her long-standing messaging. Accordingly, “Madonna” offers a dance-ready beat (in the style of something Charli XCX might release since, again, this is one of Maisi’s key influences, along with Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse). One that’s paired with the reverent opening lines, “When I was a little girl, I’d sit at home and watch MTV [which means, what, Maisi would have been exposed to Confessions on a Dance Floor and Hard Candy-era Madonna?]/Saw her face, I saw her shoes and realized who I wanna be.” It’s that latter pairing of words that harkens back to the very term that Madonna spurred to be invented: “wannabe.” The name given to the 80s-era fans that found themselves dressing up in lace (gloves and otherwise) and Boy Toy belts just to feel a bit more “like” Madonna. As for Maisi, in her accompanying visualizer for the song, she has her own “Madonna-inspired” look: a Confessions Tour shirt that’s been cut up/modified in a decidedly 80s style (think: ready to do a Jane Fonda workout at a dance studio or serve as a stand-in for Jennifer Beals in Flashdance).

And as she lets loose in her own version of the “Hung Up” dance studio (as Miley Cyrus also does in her ad for Peloton), she sings with such conviction, “I wanna dance like Madonna/Bleach my hair like Madonna/Get hung up, dress it up/I wanna fuck like Madonna/I wanna vogue like Madonna/Say a prayer like Madonna.” As for the mention of Madonna and her dance skills, it’s not the first instance of this happening in a song, with Apollo 440’s 1999 single (released, incidentally, on Madonna’s birthday that year), “Stop the Rock,” touting, “Dancin’ like Madonna/Into the groove-y.” But Maisi, of course, gets more specific than that, continuing to flex her knowledge of Madonna’s music and fashion history with the lines, “Like a virgin, I can’t wait to get on my knees/Jean-Paul Gaultier on my chest like the Mona Lisa.” At another moment, she flat-out admits, “I wanna, wanna be Madonna.” And this means wanting to be Madonna “even now,” when she’s at her most derided for being “old”—the tried-and-true “criticism” constantly lobbed against her. But no matter what age Madonna is, there’s no denying, as Maisi sings, while fantasizing about being Madonna, “Every night is the runway/Camera flashes in my face.”

So it is that Maisi proves no matter how much hate Madonna still gets from mostly conservative pearl-clutchers and ageist-only-against-women prickheads, she has continued to influence and inspire yet another generation of women, pop stars or otherwise. And when Maisi makes the only self-reference on the song (specifically to another single of hers, “Pop Is My Religion”), she pronounces, “I told you pop is my religion” (a sentiment that ties into Miley’s “Different Religion”). Which is exactly why Madonna seems to be her “god” within that religion. For there still remains no other pop star—not even “the legendary Miss Britney Spears”—who has ever done for pop music and the very concept of “being a pop star” what Madonna has.