Yesterday Madonna released the official video for her Madonna Vs Sickick - Frozen (Fireboy DML Remix) and - it’s nothing like the original.
Sickick’s Frozen remix went viral on TikTok in March 2021 and became an instant hit on the app, with over 127,000 videos made with the sound. Madonna then officially released the track in December and it has now amassed over 50 million global streams. Following this success, a second remix, this time with Nigerian artist Fireboy DML, seems like it was inevitable.
The first twenty-five seconds of the video begins with a zoom-in on Madonna’s eye, with flashes to a road at night time, as if director Ricardo Gomes is trying to tell the audience that Madonna has been on a journey. Then, as the beat is introduced, the video shows an image of a black dog – historically seen as an omen of death – which has been taken directly from her original Frozen visuals.
From there, the remix video becomes deeply self-indulgent. It’s mostly made up of images of Madonna, sometimes with Fireboy DML, from different angles, overlaid with flashing lights and clips of abstract scenery and weather (and a flash or two of the ravens that characterised the original 1998 music video). In parts, it’s a sort of a fashion show, with Madonna and Fireboy DML walking in slow motion under blue synthetic lights towards the camera. It has Blade Runner undertones, but if it was directed by David Guetta rather than Denis Villeneuve.
There is also something that seems Skims x Balenciaga-inspired about the video. Madonna wears the sports racer-glasses now doing the fashion rounds, has long straight blonde hair, and is wearing a leather bodysuit and black gloves. While Madonna’s shots are given a cold blue hue, the Fireboy DML scenes are much warmer, with red and orange flames bursting across the screen.
Fans of the original song and video may be disappointed. Chris Cunningham’s late 90s masterpiece had Madonna as a sort of banshee, floating and writhing in a desert, embodying female angst. With almost floor length long black hair, sickly alabaster skin, black nails, she wore a black dress with a billowing black cape-jacket.
The choreography was inspired by Martha Graham’s work and Cunningham had previously worked with Aphex Twin. It was weird – like all good music videos – but great. Sometime’s there’s nothing better than unapologetic moody pop, especially when combined with witchy vibes (it’s said she was wearing Olivier Theyskens).
There is a bit of the original in the new video – the repeated black dog and ravens, and the rolling thunder clouds, and towards the end of the remix, Madonna’s hair blows in the wind. She reaches her arms out, throws her head back and the greenscreen background shows a moving desert – all of which is quite banshee-like.
But this is where the similarities end. All the attempted spiritual undertones of Frozen, although only ever skin deep, have been entirely abandoned here in the remix. While it could be argued that that’s a good thing – who wants to repeat something 24 years later? – it feels like Ricardo Gomes and Madonna missed a trick to capitalise on the massive love for the original.
Madonna met Portuguese photographer Gomes in Lisbon while she was recording her 2019 album Madame X. After inviting him to join her team, the two began working together on an increasing number of projects including an art installation to support LGBTQIA+ artists, then on a series of polaroids, and then on the tour film of her Madame X tour.
With the two artists understanding each other so well, plus the first music video’s entrenched place in pop culture history, and with worldwide adoration for the song – both old and new versions – it’s hard not to think they could have produced something a bit more inspiring. But it could be that I’m missing the point. The remix has a heavy beat. It is full of autotune. Fireboy DML’s verses are smooth and easygoing. Perhaps the music video isn’t that deep because it was never meant to be.
