Madonna’s eldest daughter bore “resentment” over growing up in her mother’s shadow but writing a song together helped her “heal”.
Madonna’s eldest daughter bore “resentment” over growing up in her mother’s shadow.
The 67-year-old singer has teamed up with 29-year-old Lourdes Leon – whose father is fitness trainer Carlos Leon – for a track on her upcoming album Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II but she admitted her offspring, who is more commonly known as Lola, had been “very reluctant” to work with her in the past because she didn’t want to be seen as taking advantage of her family connections.
Speaking to Graham Norton for a BBC special which aired in the UK on Friday (26.06.26) night, Madonna said of her daughter: “She has been very reluctant to work with me.
“She doesn’t want to be perceived as my daughter taking advantage of her privilege.
“She has been very standoffish and working at her own pace and I respect that deeply. She is a great songwriter. She has a much better voice than I do.
“But then one day she came to me and she said, ‘I realise I have been holding on to something’. I want to say maybe resentment.
“At the end of the day, she didn’t ask for this.
“She had been through her adolescence struggling with those feelings. She said, ‘Let’s write a song together. I think it will be a very healing process’. Her lyrics are beautiful. We sound good together.”
The Hung Up singer – who is also mother to Rocco, 25, David, 20, Mercy, also 20, and 13-year-old twins Stella and Estere – recently reflected on how working with her daughter had helped to “heal” their relationship.
Speaking to Interview magazine, she said: “It’s hard for me to write a song about nothing. I have to tell a story. So I wrote about a lot of family trauma, and then we started making dance music. …
“So many very important things have happened to me along the way. For instance, the song I wrote with my daughter, Lola. She approached me about writing a song together as a way to heal our relationship. It was a really important moment, and it solidified the idea that now is the time to make this record.
“All these symbolic things happened. My step-mother died, my brother was ill, my brother died, my daughter approached me… you know what I mean? And then I thought, well, it’s like the script of my film. It begins with death and it ends with death, but there’s all this life in between. Paradoxical subjects, obviously, but death is a part of life. It just felt like I had a lot to get off my chest.”
Madonna’s daughter had ‘resentment’ towards her
