“Of late, I feel she is a follower,” Perry said of Madonna.

Madonna is ‘weak,’ Linda Perry says while offering to work on her retirement album

"Of late, I feel she is a follower," Perry said of Madonna.

By Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2025. Her work has previously appeared on Entertainment Tonight and Popsugar.

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May 27, 2026 4:39 p.m. ET

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Linda Perry; Madonna. Credit:

Lester Cohen/Getty; Matt Crossick/PA Images via Getty

- Linda Perry named Madonna as her number one bucket list collaborator, but explained that it's because she wants to work with her as a form of course correction.

- "Of late, I feel she is a follower," Perry told *Consequence* on Tuesday. "She's following the trends. She's trying to compete with Charli XCX and this and that. Everything about her seems weak to me, and not powerful."

- Perry — who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015 —admitted that Madonna has turned down her offers to work on music together before.

Linda Perry is not holding back when sharing her opinion on legendary pop star Madonna.

While the songwriter named Madonna as her number one bucket list collaborator, Perry clarified that it wasn't because she's a fan of the music that Madonna has recently put out. In fact, Perry explained that she would like to work with Madonna as a form of course correction.

"Of late, I feel she is a follower," Perry told *Consequence** *in an interview published Tuesday. "She's following the trends. She's trying to compete with Charli XCX and this and that. Everything about her seems weak to me, and not powerful."

Admitting that Madonna has turned down her offers to work on music together before, becoming "a thorn in my side," Perry made sure to note that she has great respect for the musician. "She's one of the greatest. She taught women to be strong and be yourself, and I love how she just constantly was changing her sound," Perry gushed. "Every record sounded different. I mean, she is an explorer. She is a leader."

Madonna attends the 2026 Met Gala.

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty

The songwriter added, "She is out there in front of everyone, leading the path, telling people what to do and how to just be ballsy and get out there and kick people in the ass, 'Get outta my way.'"

It's because Perry has so much respect for Madonna that she feels disappointment in her recent musical efforts.

"So I would love to get that woman in a studio, slap her in the face a couple of times, and say, 'Wake up, get back to who Madonna is and what you represent. You are a leader,'" Perry declared. "So we gotta get back there and focus on the power of what her voice can do, not the power of what Auto-Tune and effects can do, and all the electronics that she's into right now to hide all that."

Perry already has an idea of the kind of project she would approach the singer with. "I would put her out in the open and make all those flaws, I would just bring them all out and show them, and make this beautiful, more acoustic type record with strings and something she could sit down and just sing to a crowd," Perry shared. "That would be what I want to do. But she would not f---ing step into a room with me because that is far from what she wants to do."

But never let it be said that Perry has given up.

"Madonna, call me when you're ready to get back to your strength, all right?" the singer-songwriter said in a direct message to the pop star.

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Perry — who has worked with Adele, Alicia Keys, and Courtney Love, and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015 — has been making headlines for with her no-holds-barred recollections, including the revelation that she didn't want to give the song "Beautiful" to Christina Aguilera at first.

"I'm thinking in my mind, 'No, you're like, a hot chick. I'm not giving you this song,'" Perry said in a recent appearance on the* Zach Sang Show*. "'No way. Are you kidding me?'"

Linda Perry performs at 'Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve With Ryan Seacrest' in December 2025.

Gilbert Flores/Penske Media via Getty

What saved Aguilera, though, was singing it, at the suggestion of a manager. "That's when I discovered, 'Oh, beautiful people are actually insecure and are just as damaged as I am,'" Perry said. "She's just as f---ed up as I am. 'Okay.' And then it broke the ice between the both of us when I saw that."

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The song was featured on Aguilera's 2002 album *Stripped, *and went on to make the album a big hit, becoming a staple of the singer's live performances. Aguilera also won the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the record.

Perry said that people still talk to her about the song to this day.

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