While she is still hailed by many as the “Queen of Pop,” Madonna has been dropped from Britain’s Radio 1 after insiders say she has become “irrelevant” to the station’s younger listeners.
A Radio 1 insider spoke of the decision to drop the aging pop star, now 56, and said, “At the end of the day it’s all about relevance. It’s natural that as an artist gets older their audience goes elsewhere and Radio 1 has to reflect that.”
Her latest single, titled “Living for Love,” was played once on the station on Jan. 9 and has since been shuffled over to Radio 2, a station that targets audiences over the age of 35, reports the Daily Mail.
The insider also stated, “The station has a duty to meet the needs of younger listeners. I don’t think the audience is losing sleep that it is not playing Madonna in the same way that it used to.”
Throughout her career, the Material Girl has racked up 13 number one hits in the UK, a 23-year period from 1985 to 2008.
Radio 1 will reportedly still air 72-year-old Paul McCartney’s latest track, “Only One,” which is a collaboration with Kanye West.
“Living for Love” is the first single from the album, titled Rebel Heart, and was released early after unfinished tracks were stolen from Madonna’s personal computer and leaked online last December.
Madonna was heavily criticized last month after she altered photos of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. and posted them on social media in order to promote the upcoming album.