the most art-historically dense video in pop, a monologue delivered by madonna, and a song that is not actually about religion.
the short answer
the second single from sweetener, released in july 2018. the song is about sexual and personal power described in religious terms rather than about religion itself. the dave meyers video stacks references to michelangelo's creation of adam, rodin's the thinker, romulus and remus and cerberus, and features madonna delivering a rewritten monologue in the middle of it.
what the song is doing
borrowing a religious register to describe something that is not religious. the device is old — pop has been comparing sex to worship for sixty years — and what makes this one work is that it takes the comparison entirely seriously for three and a half minutes rather than using it as a wink. it is not a statement about her own faith, which is a separate subject with its own answer.
every reference in the video
- michelangelo's creation of adam. restaged on the sistine ceiling with the roles reassigned, which is the video's central image and the one that got it written about.
- rodin's the thinker. she sits in the pose, at scale, on a plinth.
- romulus and remus. the founding myth of rome, redrawn.
- cerberus. the three-headed dog, rendered in a way that is more unsettling than the rest of the video.
- the earth itself. the opening shot has her seated on the planet, which is either the most or the least subtle thing in it depending on your tolerance.
the density is the point rather than showing off. a video that references five things is making an argument about a canon that has one gender in the middle of every image in it, and it makes that argument faster than a lyric could.
madonna's monologue
madonna appears midway through, delivering a rewritten version of the ezekiel monologue from pulp fiction, with the pronouns changed. it is a piece of casting rather than a cameo — she is the person who established that this kind of image could be made at all, and putting her voice in the middle of it is the video acknowledging where it comes from.
the vma performance
she performed it at the 2018 mtv video music awards with around fifty female dancers on a set staged as a last supper. it is the best live performance of her career on most reckonings, and it is the one people mean when they say she stopped being a singer who dances and became a performer.
where it sits
it peaked at eight on the hot 100 and is not among her biggest songs by streams. that undersells it: it is the visual centrepiece of the sweetener era, the moment the imagery of her career became as considered as the records, and it is comfortably in the top three of her videos.
questions people ask
what does god is a woman mean?
it uses a religious register to describe sexual and personal power. it is not a statement about her own religious beliefs.
is madonna in the god is a woman video?
yes. she delivers a rewritten version of the ezekiel monologue from pulp fiction, with the pronouns changed.
what art does the god is a woman video reference?
michelangelo's creation of adam, rodin's the thinker, romulus and remus, and cerberus, among others.
what happened at the 2018 vmas?
she performed the song with around fifty female dancers on a set staged as a last supper — widely regarded as her best live television performance.