“The most controversial thing I've ever done is stand by myself,” Madonna announced at the end of a career retrospective montage during her “Celebration Tour.” It was certainly a “mic drop” in and of itself, but in the context of the show, it really took off — in every era, every romance, every success and every pearl-studded controversy, Madonna has risen from the ashes and rediscovered herself.
That statement applies to her entire career, but it also takes on a little extra weight given the tour's narrative: After a nasty bacterial infection put Madonna in the ICU for several days, she had to reschedule her first leg of the North America”. Festive tour.” So for the show's opening date at Brooklyn's Barclays Center on Dec. 13, Madonna carried an air of overwhelming gratitude, sounding thrilled to still be alive.
As such, Madonna provided a compelling, intensely compelling evening of pop music. As it did during the European leg of the tour earlier this year, “The Celebration Tour” features a setlist spanning four decades, featuring songs from every major Madonna studio album (with the exception of 2019 Madame H, which has been completely omitted from the show). Although the set is something of a “Greatest Hits” tour — an “Eras Tour,” if you will — that's not the driving factor. Madonna chose to keep several of her biggest hits outside of the setlist (“Material Girl”, “Like a Virgin”, “Borderline”, “Frozen”) in favor of tracks that don't always give their flowers – especially songs from 2003 American Life, Eroticthe title track and “Bad Girl”, which is playing now for the first time since 1993 Saturday night live implementation.
Although “Celebration” was already scheduled to come before Madonna's illness this year, the episode affected the sensitive, grateful aura of the show. Even more emotional for Madonna was her return home – as Bob the Drag Queen playfully reminded us at the start of the show, New York is where it all began for Madonna, who arrived here in 1978 with just $35 in her pocket her. Throughout the evening, Madonna acknowledged the role that New York has played in both her career and her personality, often calling out the unique “New Yorker” attitude that Madonna herself has cultivated and even destroying the Confessions on a dance floor cut “I Love New York” for the first time in 15 years.
@consistency @madonna kicked off the North American leg of “The Celebration Tour” in Brooklyn. 💃 #madonna #thecelebrationtour #live music
Contrary to New York's edict that “Being on time is being five minutes early,” however, Madonna didn't take the stage until 11:00 p.m. and didn't finish her set until 1:15 a.m. . – according to Madonna, this is because “New York is not for sleeping little pussies”. The show ran so late that the couple of middle-aged women next to me left the show with an hour to go, especially when they realized Madonna wasn't going to play “Like a Virgin.”
However, “The Celebration Tour” is mostly an opportunity for Madonna to have a dialogue with Madonna. At various points in the show, she came face to face with a past version of herself. She drank and ran with her 1983 “shy” persona, setting the stage for an examination of Madonna's various reinventions over the past 40 years. Playfully danced with a performer wearing her iconic cone bra and leaned harder in her provocative BDSM imagery Erotic time. She also invited her children to appear on stage with her, bringing together her family's past, present and future. With the show's multiple screens set up around the stage, Madonna was confronted with images of those she's lost: her mother immortalized in 'Mother and Father', and her moving performance of 'Live to Tell' featured images of important gay and trans figures who they died. of AIDS.
