One thing has always been true in Madonna‘s 43-year-long music career: And that’s to never count out the “Queen of Pop.” While it’s been six years since her last album release, the hitmaker has a song gaining viral traction online, a mere 33 years after its release.
The song in question is “Thief of Hearts,” a non-single from the artist’s polarizing 1992 album “Erotica.” The song is something between Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” with Madonna daring a back-stabbing seductress to fight her, delivering disses and insults all the way.
“Thief of Hearts” originally started gaining ground on TikTok two weeks ago, when users like milesmoo17 received nearly 14,000 likes for praising the “underrated” track. “Madonna went from the jazz bar to the house club in 1992 and it was GREAT,” raved the user in a video dancing to the song. The audio from milesmoo17’s video has since been repurposed for other TikToks thousands of times since.
Another boost in the song’s popularity came from former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” (and current “The Traitors”) star Lisa Rinna posted a “Thief of Hearts” TikTok video. Rinna, 62, is a noted fan of Madonna and has frequently posted dances to the pop icon’s songs over the years.
The song’s surge in attention has also translated to Google searches, with searches for “thief of hearts Madonna” rising over 400% in the past week, in addition to other search terms showing over 300% increases, per Google Trends data.
Madonna acknowledged the trend on Tuesday, posting a video of herself dancing to “Thief of Hearts” on Instagram. The 68 year-old captioned the post, “Hearts are meant to be broken 💔.”
The newfound popularity of the track is a long time coming, as is most acclaim for “Erotica.” Though the album was divisive upon release — and perhaps overshadowed by her “Sex” coffee table book — it’s now widely regarded as among her most important (and best) albums.
“Erotica” has been retrospectively hailed as a masterpiece, with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame calling it one of the most revolutionary albums of all time, saying in 2017, “Few women artists, before or since ‘Erotica,’ have been so outspoken about their fantasies and desires. Madonna made it clear that shame and sexuality are mutually exclusive.”
The album has also been championed by the LGBTQ+ community, as the album acknowledged the AIDS epidemic in “In This Life,” at a time when most mainstream artists were still too afraid to advocate. In addition to this, “Erotica” and its videos, in addition to her coffee table book, showed positive images of queer sexuality.
Today, both “Erotica” and, now, “Thief of Hearts,” have found their audiences, continuing Madonna’s long legacy of defying the odds. As of Wednesday, the YouTube comments section for the official “Thief of Hearts” audio upload is inundated with fresh comments from fans and newcomers alike.
One user commented: “I knew someday this song would have the attention it always deserved!”
