Internet Culture

People think Madonna predicted coronavirus with 2019 performance

Conspiracy theorists are revisiting her Eurovision performance of ‘Future.’

Photo of Rachel Kiley

Rachel Kiley

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With the coronavirus (COVID-19) occupying so much of people’s thoughts lately, it’s no surprise that sometimes those thoughts would turn into wondering how we could have seen this coming. And that, occasionally, leads to absolutely bizarre conspiracy theories.

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One of the newly minted theories is that the pandemic was predicted by none other than the Queen of Pop, Madonna herself. Specifically, people think her 2019 Eurovision performance was dropping clues for us mere mortals to pick up on.

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It’s a flimsy theory, to be clear, and we’d like to think most people are just finding a way to pass the time while so many of us are stuck in self-isolation, so we’ll play along for now.

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Here’s the video:

If you skip ahead five minutes, Madonna’s performance takes a dark turn as she sings her song “Future.” The dancers are all wearing gas masks as she says things like “the storm isn’t in the air, it’s inside of us,” and “not everyone is coming to the future.”

Yes, really, this is what the theory that Madonna predicted coronavirus is based on.

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Recent commenters have turned the conversation from her performance itself into how it served as a warning for the current pandemic.

“Not everyone is coming to the future. And they are wearing masks. And she his wearing a crown. Crown in greek is corona. I see it now,” wrote user vagg. G.

“The god she is referring to in this song is Osiris,” Abel O claimed. “X is for Osiris aka Saturn. Which is why she [is] in all black as well. Also wearing a crown for the corona virus. ‘In the midnight hour I can feel your power’ — 12am is known as the witching hour. She is a witch. It’s so blatant, I’m appalled some people can’t see it.”

Naturally, the conversation shifted to the Illuminati.

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“Madonna is a high level Illuminati member. She performs a satanic rituel [sic] at the show as well,” wrote Murat aydın. “When she points [at the] audience with her fingers [it is] meaningful. She already knew about the corona virus in 2019. Don’t u see it is obvious this virus pandemic is known to these people at that time because it is artificial not naturel [sic].”

OK, so maybe a lot of these people really are buying their own theories.

Of course, gas masks have historically been used in media about the future, especially any sort of post-apocalyptic one, and aren’t particularly relevant to the spread of coronavirus. 

And the line Madonna sings after “Not everyone is coming to the future” is, of course, “Not everyone is learning from the past”—because the song is about moving past prejudice and division and into a more peaceful future. The specific performance is believed to have been about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Or, hey, maybe it’s about coronavirus. But we could also probably leave those predictions up to Nostradamus

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