I youtubed it to see the disaster, but really, that's how she's always sung. Her voice has almost always been altered in her albums. Her first album she had her voice sped up (think Lucky Star). Madonna will still have longtime fans who will go see her, much like Barbra Streisand whose voice is not really there anymore either.
Yeah, I watched the ESC, thougth I was going to die of boredom while waiting for Madonna and the points (when did they start having all those interviews and guest performers) , wathced the performance, found it quite nice (I did prefer the Billboard one, which seemed more motivated and I could have done without the Like a Prayer part, which was just a copy from the MET gala 2018, but apart from that I think it was totally ok.
As for the vocals, as a longtime Madonna fan, I watched the performance and thought she sounded about exactly the same as she always did (even though she DID have some good live vocal moments over the decades, mostly IMO when she sang acoustic ballads on tour, her live vocals always were rather erratic, ranging from bad to "ok" to "surprisingly good"). Probably it was not a good idea to sing live at an event like this when only singing 2 songs, but oh well. I was very irritated by the reactions the next day. Maybe it's quite an achievement that all the press and public seems to have forgotten that singing live was never her strength
As for Barbra Streisand, I watched her concert from 2016 on Netflix and while I thought that she sounded rather "rusty" during the first 30 minutes of the concert, but then her voice got stronger and I found the rest of the concert very impressive. I assume older voices might need more "warming up" time. And I think if you are a fan of someone for decades and you still want to see him, you're going to have realistic expectations, no matter if it's Barbra or Guns N Roses (who also were trashed badly for their concerts in the German media last year) or Elton John or whoever.
I think it seems that "legends" seem to be met with a bit unfair expectations.
I watched Taylor Swifts stadium tour on Netflix too and IMO she dances very little (and not very good) and her voice also often didn't sound all that great on a lot of parts of the tour, but she's generally a rather good live singer I think and she's at the top of her game age-wise. I did not think that Madonnas performances were that much worse than what I've seen from Taylor and it seems a bit unfair that people seem to expect that she's going to be some "legend" that's greater than everybody else, just because she's had this big career that most people are never going to have in the first place.
