Not That Madonna
At the height of her powers, Madonna was inescapable. You couldn’t switch on the radio or walk into a store without hearing one of her songs. Even now, decades later, her name is so entrenched in our minds that we sometimes confuse words that sound like “Madonna.”
Even though I have never made this mistake, a part of me still gets confused for a second when I hear someone talking about “the Madonna,” meaning the Virgin Mary. This often occurs while I’m walking through an art museum and stumble upon a piece called something like Madonna with Five Angels. It always takes me a minute to regain my bearings.