All the Rage #34

She's not aging well.

Other pop divas gracefully ascend into the upper echelons of age without a second glance back--Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, Marie Osmond. (Okay, so that last one is about as graceful as an elephant in a ceramics store. She might not even qualify as a "diva." Bad example.)

That doesn't mean they don't face bumps in the road. Around age forty, most divas will begin a minor flip-out and dive ego-first into a midlife crisis that often involves donning unflattering skimpy outfits and inviting new "hip" producers into the studio to "update" their sound. But once that album flops, as they almost always do, the diva takes a step back, indulges in a final lingering bow and surrenders the stage to any one of the endless line of baby divas waiting to take her place. It's a rite of passage--call it pop menopause.

The formula's not factoring out as smoothly for Madonna. She's coming off a major hit record, Ray of Light, on which William Orbit not only managed to update her sound, but also somehow made her music more VITAL than it's ever been. She did look pathetic cavorting around on awards stages in a wardrobe more becoming of a middle-aged truck driver's wife than a superstar, but to each her own. And that faux British accent is damned annoying. Still, she's hanging on, even if she's really just got her fingernails dug into Fame's supple calves as the Grand Dame attempts to soar on to the next fully witting woman who will be blessed by Her touch.

Yes, Madonna's still a heavyweight diva, the kind who survives birthing a child, updating her image and rubbing her crotch on Mike Myers' shoulder with equal aplomb. But that doesn't mean she'll be with us forever. Someday she too will move on, whether she wants to or not, and we'll be left casting our eyes toward the front of the theater for the next Material Girl to capture our hearts and our groins.

The big question is, who? Who's the next Madonna? Who can summon up the same combination of sexuality, intelligence and stupid pigheadedness? Because chances are, she's out there right now, selling albums even as you read this and kissing Carson Daly's ass on Total Request Live as often as she can. She's waiting, she's ready, she just needs the word. This is an important issue, people.

Is the next Madonna right in front of our noses? And if so, who will it be? And if so, will she sleep with me for two million dollars? How about five? Ten million, plus a sports car? Let's take a look at the candidates, four young ladies who've captured the mainstream public eye and are all flavors of the month to varying degrees.

Only one can be fully crowned the Next Madonna--she'll be revealed last--but first, let's just glance briefly over those whose fifteen minutes will end far sooner, the millennial equivalents of Tiffany and Debbie Gibson.

Mandy Moore

Not even close. She's been floating on the periphery for several months now with her minor hit "Candy," but she has yet to seize the full public imagination like her baby diva counterparts. If you catch her video, it's all bright green VW beetles and skateboarding teenagers. You'll also get a good glimpse of Mandy herself, who falls somewhere between Ms. Aguilera and Ms. Spears on the trashy jailbait scale--she'd tease you like Britney, but never give it up like Christina. Top forty pop is generally made up of one or two "originals" and a bunch of Xeroxes, but Mandy is a really bad Xerox, a copy of a copy of a copy. You can see all the dust marks and ink splotches that popped up as the original ran through the machine. All I can say to Ms. Moore is that I hope Mummy and Daddums have invested your advance money wisely.

Jessica Simpson

Either we've got another Milli Vanilli scandal on our hands, or this chick has some serious pipes. The video for her first single depicts her standing in an airplane hangar belting her adorable guts out, with fan-generated winds blowing her downy tufts of blonde hair to and fro. It's like she's singing into an twin-engine's propeller. She's got a real supermodel look to her, as if God really needed to pack all those gifts into one body--where's the love, Oh Omniscient One? I wouldn't mind legs like scissors or a pair of full, succulent lips myself!

Yet for all her gifts, Jessica hasn't got a prayer, either. She's way too blank--if Mandy Moore's a really bad Xerox, then Ms. Simpson is that weird sheet that ends up in the copy stack without a drop of ink upon it. BO-ring.

Britney Spears

It's Ms. Spears who launched the whole recent spate of teen pop divas with her breakout hit "...Baby One More Time," and for that reason, you might assume that she's the one most deserving to ascend to Madonna's lofty throne. No way. Britney's problem is that she's just too damn clean. She has no grit, no raunch--and by extension, no real heart. She's as engineered as any of her contemporaries, but unlike most of them, you can see the strings reaching upward from Britney's body and into the corporate offices of her record company. Perhaps more than anything else, you need a free spirit to take Madonna's place, someone who may answer to a higher industry power but who can at least give the plausible impression that she's in full control of her own career.

Which is why my pick for the next Madonna has to be...

Christina Aguilera

Yeah, you're fooling yourself if you believe that she's the one charting her own pop course. But she sure talks a good game, going on about how she picks all her own clothes in her own videos and how she doesn't do anything she doesn't want to do. Her voice has a real sexiness to it, not the beauty-pageant-talent-category cleanliness of her peers, and she's got a real raunchy bod to match her pipes. She hits all the right marks--the sexiness, the fake intellectualism, the "I'm still a normal girl" attitude. (She'll lose that soon enough.) More than that, she's got IT--the undefinable quality that helps you spot a diva from fifty paces--and IT might be all she really needs.

So does that mean that "Genie in a Bottle" is the "Borderline" of Generation Z? You better believe it.