In all fairness, she did tell the judges it was the best song out of what she was given to choose from. It’s not like they can choose anything from their birth year.
Can Madonna songs be done on Idol? If so, I think she had “Take a Bow” available, which would have been just as good for her voice and isn’t nearly as treacly.
Madonna has only been performed one time on Idol, according to What Not To Sing.
And that was a Madonna performance of an Andrew Lloyd Weber song from Evita, so it doesn’t count. So it looks like Madonna wasn’t available for her to sing. Looking at the list, the 1995 choices are absolutely DIRE for girls! Melissa Etheridge isn’t right for her voice, and neither is “No More I Love You’s” by Annie Lennox. I went through the entire Top 100 hits of 1995 and couldn’t find something that suited her better than the one she did. If Madonna was truly unavailable, as I’m guessing it was, then she did what she could with a very limited list of choices.
It’s not like Thia can’t do something different. If only she’d been born in 1992.