The Kiss Heard Around The WorldBy now you’ve no doubt heard about the big kiss between Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on the MTV Video Music Awards on Thursday of this week. In case you haven’t, here’s a quick run down.

For the first number of the evening, Britney and Christina began singing Like A Virgin dressed wedding dress-like attire. Clearly this was an homage to Madonna’s controversial 1985 performance. Part of the way through the song, Madonna comes out in grooms attire, singing her new song Hollywood. After writhing on both of them, she proceeded to give an open mouth kiss to Britney and then one to Christina. You can find stills here and the video here. It was all quite the shocking moment – a mainstay in Madonna’s career. 🙂

All scandalous behavior aside, I mean Madonna is old enough to be their mother, the overwhelming feeling I came away with was that Madonna was passing the skank torch. Madonna’s focus is now more on the spiritual life and on being a mother, not singing and writhing on stage. She’s done the sex thing and now she has matured, so it’s time for the new breed of shock vixens to take the stage. What better way to pass the skank torch than to give a lesbian kiss?

The performance rocked the VMA’s. When she made her entrance the audience went wild. She appeared as the regal star that she is and received a standing ovation, but trying to mix it up with Christina and Britney was a little much. She’s getting a little to old for that kind of behavior and if this was a parting shot, then it’s a great cap on a legacy of shocking audiences at the MTV Video Music Awards. Madonna is now entering that odd phase in her career where she is no longer the “it” mega star, but a more established and mature mega star. She’s definitely made her mark and in her own words, “taken over the world,” but she is clearly entering a new phase in her career.

That was never more apparent than when she was on TRL promoting her new album “American Life”. It was obvious that she was feeling her age and who wouldn’t? Here you have kids that weren’t even born when you started your career and you’re marketing your new album to them? Although she is still a vibrant and creative artist, she’s on the epoch of her career and hopefully, she knows it.

Although her demographics may be changing, I hope that she doesn’t stop releasing new material. As evidenced by Cher, there’s an eager market that is ready to buy up her albums. It may not be the young market that she once catered to, but that market has matured as she has and they are still with her. The Fab Five may constitute the core of this demographic, but her appeal extends well beyond that. 🙂

So the skank torch has been passed and now Madonna can be the sexy mature mega star who writes children’s books and every so often reminds us of what a vamp she once was.