Madonna Is Getting So Much Crap for Her Prince Tribute at the Billboard Awards

By Joe Reid @joereid
Published May 23, 2016, 9:41 a.m. ET

Last night’s Billboard Music Awards featured a tribute to the late, lamented Prince, as you might imagine. In order to live up to the star power of the purple one himself, the BBMAs chose two of the biggest stars in music history: Madonna and Stevie Wonder. Madonna took the stage and belted the Prince-penned “Nothing Compares 2U” before being joined onstage by Stevie for the iconic “Purple Rain.”

The Madonna performance touched off a wave of reactions on social media, some positive but much of it negative, with the latter culminating in a bit of shade/promotion from the BET Twitter account about their own upcoming Prince tribute.

If BET seems to have been prepared to hop on to a backlash, it’s probably because a backlash was really predictable. As soon as Billboard announced that Madonna would be performing their Prince tribute, there were rumblings of dissatisfaction. There was even a petition started to have Madonna removed from the show. Whether Stevie Wonder was always going to be a part of the tribute or was added later in order to temper the optics of one white woman delivering the Prince tribute is unknown. Of course, that one white woman is Madonna. If there were a holy trinity of pop music in the 1980s (and there was), it was Prince, Madonna, and Michael Jackson. Only one of them is still alive; it makes all the sense in the world that Madonna would be Billboard’s choice to honor Prince.
One particular voice in Madonna’s defense on social media was Questlove, who delivered a multi-tweet call for perspective, saying that this was but one of many Prince tributes to come in the next year and that we shouldn’t get into the “Prince would and wouldn’t approve” game.

As for the BET Awards, they’ll air on June 26th. Presumably sans-Madonna.