Madonna’s voice defies typical ageing patterns, researchers find

A study of Madonna’s voice from the 1980s to 2021 found that it does not follow patterns usually associated with women’s ageing, DR reports. Researchers analysed recordings of interviews, not songs, and found that her voice is difficult to place by age or accent.

Women’s voices often become lower around menopause, and researchers expected to find a similar change as Madonna approached 50. Her voice did become lower in 2013, when she was 55, but it grew higher again in the years that followed. Her deepest voice in the recordings studied was from the 1980s.

Researchers also examined how she pronounced certain English vowels. Her pronunciation did not clearly match patterns typically associated with her generation or with places where she has lived, including Michigan and New York. Some of her vowel pronunciations are associated with a younger-sounding voice.

Anna Bothe Jespersen, a linguist and teaching lecturer at the University of Copenhagen, said Madonna’s voice was difficult to place by age. She suggested that its variations could be linked to the different personas Madonna has adopted during her career.

The researchers said they could not determine whether Madonna had deliberately trained her voice or whether biological factors accounted for some of the changes. They also could not conclude that she had received hormone treatment. The study, published in the Nordic Journal of English Studies in 2026, points to both biological and social influences on the voice. Susan Yi Sencindiver, an external lecturer at Aarhus University, said voice can also signal identity, rather than being only a product of biology.