Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Taylor Swift and Kanye West. Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis.
Elton John and Madonna?
In the annals of celebrity feuds, the one between these two music industry titans does not rank particularly high. In fact, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that they had a dispute decades ago that remained unresolved.
Until this weekend, that is, when they made up backstage at “Saturday Night Live.” The two effusively announced the reconciliation on social media.
“We Finally Buried the Hatchet!!!” Madonna wrote on Monday in a long Instagram post that was accompanied by a photograph of the two musicians with their arms around each other.
She described the moment of forgiveness, writing that she had found out that John was scheduled to be the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” alongside Brandi Carlile, and decided to confront him backstage.
“When I met him, the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘Forgive Me’ and the wall between us fell down,” she wrote. Within minutes, she added, they were hugging.
“Thank you for forgiving me and my big mouth,” John wrote in the replies of her post, adding, “I’m not proud of what I said.”
He posted the same photo on his Instagram story, with the caption “a healing moment.”
The tender moment warmed fans’ hearts — and left some saying, “Remind me what this was about again?”
The two were vague on the details of their dispute. Madonna said only, “Over the decades it hurt me to know that someone I admired so much shared his dislike of me publicly as an artist.”
The acrimony started in the early 2000s, when John made a series of critical comments about Madonna. In 2002, he called “Die Another Day,” her theme song for the James Bond film of the same name, the “worst Bond tune ever.”
At the Q Awards, the now defunct British music awards, in 2004, while accepting the classic songwriter award, he questioned Madonna’s nomination for best live act, saying, “Since when has lip-syncing been live?” Madonna’s representative said at the time that she did not lip-sync.
In 2012, when the two were competing for best original song at the Golden Globes, John said that Madonna didn’t stand a chance of beating him. After she won, she said she hoped that he would continue speaking to her for the next couple of years.
That year, John told an Australian reporter that Madonna’s career was over and called her a “nightmare.”
It’s unclear what changed between then and this weekend. But in her post on Monday, Madonna suggested that a musical partnership might be in the works.
John told her that he had written a song for her and wanted to collaborate, she said.
