Madonna talks Britney, Guy, Candy
Gina Serpe

LOS ANGELES—Forget the dance floor, these days Madonna’s doing all her confessing on the radio. In an exclusive interview with the Yo on E! satellite radio show, the newly minted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer holds forth on her former spit-swapping buddy Britney Spears, her upcoming album and the relentless rumours that her marriage is in peril. (Listen to the interview.)
About her pop protégé, Madonna says that Spears remains the artist of choice for 11-year-old daughter Lourdes (Rocco, meanwhile, prefers the dulcet tones of Chris Brown and Usher) and said that, like her discerning daughter, she remains a supporter of the beleaguered star. “They need to step off,” Madonna said of the tabloid and paparazzi focus on Spears. “For real...Let’s go save her.”
Madonna says Lourdes, who met Spears “back in the day,” is equally concerned, albeit in an age-appropriate way. “She knows Britney, but doesn’t catch all that gossip stuff. So I think she sorta gets the drift of what’s going on, and I think she’s kind of protective of Britney.”
As for Madonna’s own home life, she cautions that headlines can be deceiving. “We still have to take turns,” the chart topper said of hubby Guy Ritchie with regard to marital compromise. “It’s not easy.” It’s also, however, not as the tabloids portray.
“You know how people are. It is ridiculous,” she says of the recent slate of state-of-her-union reports. “I don’t pay much attention to it.” What she does pay attention to is keeping her now slightly larger family unit tight.
Of the Ritchie family’s latest addition, Malawi-born son David, Madonna calls his presence nothing short of “amazing.” “He’s the life of the party. He loves music, he’s an amazing dancer, he’s just a character.”
As for whether raising an adopted child is any different from her genetic children, she says she was surprised in that she “thought it would be, but it feels the same, to tell you the truth.” The superstar singer, currently gearing up to summer in the U.S., a country she says she misses despite loving living in the U.K., also talked shop, particularly about her upcoming album, Hard Candy.
“It is sexy,” she said. “I think it’s got some hard set beats, but there’s some sweetness on top. I like the juxtaposition.” She also hazarded a guess as to why some of her more recent albums seemed to connect more with her overseas fan base than her U.S. one, chalking it up to the records’ British producers and the fact that “the vibe was more European.”
“Now my copilots are American and it has more of an American feel.” The patriotism-approved Hard Candy is due out April 29. Her Yo on E! interview airs in its entirety Friday afternoon.