Madonna is fully in her TikTok era. Technically, she’s been on the app for a bit, but over the past few days, she has proven to have an acute understanding of the platform. The singer started off the week by trolling fans with a “coming out” video, prompting almost every website on the Internet to write a story with the headline “Madonna Seemingly Comes Out as Gay.” Then, on Thursday night, Madonna went live with a TikTok mainstay, Psyiconic aka Terri Joe, and the results were, unsurprisingly, unhinged.
Terri Joe is the Christian, Louisiana-born persona of @_psyiconic_, who boasts almost one million followers on the platform. Over the past few months, Terri has been going live on TikTok with other people of varying degrees of fame, but it was her chats with Doja Cat that really put her on the map. Since then, Terri has also chatted with Ziwe and now, of course, Madonna.
It’s clear from the beginning that Madonna doesn’t exactly know who she’s speaking to. At one point during the chat, Terri brings up the acronym WWTJD (what would Terri Joe do?), to which Madonna asks, “Who’s Terri Joe?” Eventually the singer realizes Terri is, in fact, the person she is speaking to, and luckily, Terri is understanding. “If I was 80 years old too, I would be forgetting people’s names,” she says.
The standout moment of the chat, however, has to be when Madonna debuts her new song, inspired by Balenciaga’s high prices. “Why is Balenciaga so expensive?” she sings. “Why is Balenciaga so très cher? That’s French. Why is Balenciaga never giving me a discount? Why is Balenciaga the only thing I wear?” She reveals that she’s considering turning the idea into a full blown musical and honestly, we’re really hoping she goes through with this one. For her part, Terri Joe responds with an imitation of France Conroy’s character Myrtle Snow in American Horror Story: Coven, screaming “Balenciaga!” It’s unclear if Madonna understood the reference, but she most definitely enjoyed it.
Madonna is supposed to be working on her biopic at the moment, so she likely doesn’t have time to create a full-length musical as well. But hey, TikTok musicals exist, and they’ve actually been quite successful. At the very least, it seems she already has at least one actress on board in Terri Joe, and who knows, maybe Demna will agree to do the costumes.