Madonna's Words: Should They Be Taken Seriously?

SAN ANGELO, TX - After Madonna made headlines for her speech at the Women’s March this past weekend, a Texas radio station made headlines of its own. Texarkana’s radio station HITS 105 decided to ban Madonna’s songs from its repertoire. Media outlets like Rolling Stone, CNN, Yahoo, Fox, and Billboard ran the story yesterday.

During her speech and involvement in the Woman’s March in D.C, Madonna caused a lot of controversy as thousands of women took to the streets to peacefully march. Other stars joined marches in D.C and in cities across the country. Madonna told the crowd, "Yes, I'm angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot of blowing up the White House, but I know that this won't change anything. We cannot fall into despair.”

According to the press release posted on the station’s Facebook page, HITS 105 made the decision to ban the singer because the staff felt her comments were unpatriotic and had nothing to do with politics.

“It just feels wrong to us to be playing Madonna songs and paying her royalties when the artist has shown un-American sentiments,” said General Manager of HITS 105 Terry Thomas.

Madonna’s last album was released in March of 2015, but many people believe the Queen of Pop continues to be one of the industry’s most iconic singers and entertainers. According to Statistics Brain.com, Madonna has sold 305,786,000 albums during her career. Eight of her 13 albums hit Number #1 on the music charts. She also hosted 511 concerts since 1985 when she began The Virgin Tour. Her latest tour grossed $305,200,000 with the sale of 2,750,000 tickets.

Madonna, throughout her career, has always embraced controversy, so it's not surprising that HITS 105's announcement generated comments from people across the nation. Some people supported the station, while others called it a publicity stunt. Those in favor applauded the station's decision to stand up to the media, and for being patriotic. 

Because of the controversy, San Angelo LIVE decided to ask local and surrounding radio stations if they would be following Texarkana’s example.

Rick Mantooth, station manager at KIXY 94.7, had this to say in response: “Whether we do or do not play her music is not a political statement. She is not a current artist and is not on our playlist anyway. It would be a little difficult for us to ban her music.”

Several radio stations from areas, including Midland, Odessa, and other local stations also stated they would not be sanctioning the artist's music at this time. There have been no other reports of fellow radio stations following HITS 105 example.

San Angelo LIVE! conducted a survey sample on Facebook and asked our readers what they thought about this whole ordeal.

Overall, we had 155 responses. Out of the first 100 responders, 66 thought Madonna’s words should be taken seriously, 28 said they shouldn't be, and six people didn’t particularly care or thought it didn’t matter. When asked if they thought that HITS 105 was right in banning Madonna 66 said yes, 28 said no and six didn’t care or thought it didn’t matter.