If there’s one thing a lockdown can guarantee, it’s the amount of free time we suddenly find on our hands.

Conspiracy theorists have used this downtime to devour Madonna’s latest studio album Madame X and have come up with some fairly eccentric speculations linking the album artwork and her 2019 Eurovision performance with coronavirus.

Here’s the ‘Madame X’ album artwork

madonna madame x artwork

Certain corners of the internet have pointed out the old type writer is a branded a ‘Corona’ typewriter, much like the one Tom Hanks posted to his Instagram account when he was quarantined in Australia due to the virus.

Every sentence on the paper inserted into the typewriter starts with ‘A’. In a row it forms ‘AAAAAAAAA’.

Love Pop?

Get the latest Pop news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more

Take this with a liberal pinch of salt, but some are pointing out that the coronavirus scientific name is SARS-COV2. The genome for SARS-COV ends in 33 A’s.

And then there’s Madonna’s panned performance at the 2019 Eurovision song contest in Tel Aviv.

YouTube VideoPlay

The press were quick to lambast the Queen of Pop, denouncing her highly auto-tuned performance as “horrifying” and “banal” but it was her apocalyptic stage show which ignited the ‘coronavirus’ rumours some six months later.

Dancers wearing gas masks, the crown on her head (which translated into Spanish is ‘corona’), the masked dancers dying at the end of the performance and the Statue of Liberty (representing New York which has  taken the brunt of the virus) appearing broken.

Was Madonna dropping hints?

madonna onstage

We can probably file away these theories as outlandish and absurd. But there are other artists who have also been included in the ‘they predicted the Coronavirus’ conversations.

Dr Creep is an American underground hip-hop emcee who has been releasing independent music since 2001.

In 2013 he uploaded a music video to YouTube entitled ‘Pandemic’ featuring Lone Ninja. He raps about a coronavirus pandemic in 2020:

“Begin life in a lab,

In the first war of vaccines.

Millions die in the first week, in the pandemic dreams.

Reality Black Death, smallpox, mutated disease.

Flu shot propaganda for all population and troops.

Avoid the plague, it might have seeped into the room.

It’s now airborne with firestorm signal our doom.

2020 combined with Coronavirus, body stackin’

Flu shot propaganda for world population control.”

Dr Creep – ‘I Am The Storm’
YouTube VideoPlay

Dr Creep has stated on social media that some of the inspiration for ‘Pandemic’ came from the 1988 John Carpenter sci-fi movie They Live.

“There is certainly A LOT in that movie,” he said.

Hollywood films have been keeping many conspiracy theorists busy with Coronavirus predictions

You can find a good list here which includes Outbreak (1995), I Am Legend (2007) and Contagion (2012).

As for the smaller screen, look no further than this 1993 episode of The Simpsons, ‘Marge in Chains’.

A virus called the Osaka Flu spreads through Springfield after residents order juicers from Japan. The juicers are packed into boxes as sick workers cough all over them – sending the virus to America.

The Simpsons Predicted The Corona Virus
YouTube VideoPlay

Fans of the show have been taking to social media to discuss the similarities.

“The Simpsons are from the future. They have predicted everything that has happened to us. Like Trump becoming Pres, Kobe’s death and now the Coronavirus. What’s next?! The world ending?” said fan dankhomer back in February.

And a South Korean Netflix series from 2018 titled My Secret Terrius (Episode 10) involved a story about a ‘mutant coronavirus’

All coincidences? Most likely.

But mainstream media has weighed in on the predictive programming debate with this article in the NY Post outlining the 1981 Dean Koontz thriller ‘The Eyes of Darkness’  – a novel about a Chinese scientist who brings a biological weapon called “Wuhan-400” to the United States.

“They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400’ because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside the city of Wuhan,” a character says in the novel — referring to the same city at the epicenter of the current global outbreak.”

wuhan mentioned in book
The Eyes of Darkness

So did Madonna and others predict the Coronavirus pandemic?

Nah.

But maybe it’s time to come out of the rabbit hole and heed warnings on the Madame X album track ‘God Control’: “This is your wake-up call.”

Madonna – ‘God Control’
YouTube VideoPlay

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.
to Rolling Stone magazine
to Rolling Stone magazine