all about Madonna

Madonna performs during her Sticky & Sweet Tour in London (September 11 2008)

at AlloCine.fr

In the late 1980s and 90s, Madonna live tours were a rare treat – in the 21st century, they keep coming thick and fast, and upping the extravagant ante.

The Sticky & Sweet tour is her fourth this decade, two years on from the glitterball thrills of her Confessions arena spectacle, and this time it’s boldly stadium-sized, from the masses of dynamic dancers and musicians backing the superstar, to the gigantic ‘M’ initials flanking the stage. Madonna makes her entrance to a rapturous packed house, appropriately enough, on a bespoke throne.

There’s never any questioning who’s queen of this show, and by the second number – the snappy, hip-hop flavoured Beat Goes On, taken from latest album Hard Candy – she’s already packed in more energy and visual trickery than average artists muster in an entire concert: hi-tech screen projections, super-slick choreography, revolving surfaces and an onstage Rolls Royce. Hard Candy’s bombastic pop production and playful humour is well suited to this massive venue, but the show’s highlights include live ‘remixes’ of older favourites, including a vibrant rendition of Into The Groove (featuring Keith Haring cartoons and double dutch skipping en masse) and a Gypsy jam version of La Isla Bonita (she played this version at Live Earth last year, but it’s still a raunchy winner).

Less successful is the show’s pronounced ‘rock’ element – whenever she’s compelled to pick up an electric guitar, it seems to sap her natural assurance. And it does nothing for tracks such as Human Nature and Hung Up – why reinvent your own classics in the style of Avril Lavigne?

Overall, though, Sticky & Sweet is delectable fun – and Madonna enhances its tight pacing and heady scale with some expert audience rapport; she gives praise that ‘it didn’t f*******’ rain!’ before leading a 90,000-strong singalong to her 1989 hit Express Yourself.

Having recently turned a nifty 50, Madonna stakes her claim as the most inexhaustible entertainer in the world, both in terms of repertoire and stamina.

This London date is just midway through the European leg of her latest tour, with a glut of shows across the Americas taking her right up to Christmas.

And at the core of this confection are two characteristically Madonna conceits – the golden age of showbiz and world domination.

source : metro

Much has happened to Madonna since her last full London show in 2006: the rumours of marital strife; the adoption of an African child; the dogged continuation of her kabbalah hobby; a far from awful album; a couple of awful films. More significant is what didn’t happen: nobody came close to usurping her day job as queen of pop. Last night showed why.
The Sweet And Sticky tour is her eighth world jaunt. It’s less overtly sexual than its predecessors, but like them it’s an all-singing, allleaping, thrillingly choreographed extravaganza.
She may have started 40 minutes late, she may play some of the most feeble guitar this side of Guy Ritchie at his 40th birthday party on Wednesday and her exhausting dance routines may have strangely little effect on her vocals, but her crown still fits snugly.
How the 50-year-old kept the punishing pace up I’ll never know. Even watching her was exhausting as she vogued on, yes, Vogue, skipped with a skipping rope on a brilliantly re-invigorated Into The Groove and pogoed like a giddy teenager on Ray Of Light.
Beyond the eye-popping spectacle, the woman with one of the richest catalogues in popular music laboured under the delusion that an audience including Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson wanted to hear nine of her new album’s 12 tracks. Obviously they didn’t, although the adultery victim’s lament She’s Not Me (introduced with a curt “did you ever have a girlfriend who wanted to fuck your boyfriend?”) was gloriously truculent, Spanish Lesson a Carmenesque finger clicker and the tick-tocking 4 Minutes delivered as if the world really did end this week.
When she did look back, she soared. Bravely, everything was reinvented and hopefully one day she’ll do a whole tour featuring radical reworkings of her hits. The hitherto flimsy Borderline and the mighty Hung Up were given new and frankly superior identities as surprisingly convincing rock anthems; the ever-wondrous La Isla Bonita was recast as the ferocious, fiddle-crazed soundtrack to a bacchanalian gypsy wedding and Like A Prayer was remodelled as a thumping house anthem.
“I’d like to thank God that it didn’t f****** rain,” she muttered, as a sort of farewell benediction, before rubbing a guitar between her legs with the gusto of a woman half her age. She remains untouchable. All hail.

source : evening standard

Metropoli

Publico

Dec 04, 2008 Buenos Aires – AR – Estadio River Plate

source : madonna.com

Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet tour hit London last night with her Madgesty in mightily impressive form.
She powered through a 22-song set that would be beyond many a chart star half her age.

The stamina of the woman is immense.

Anyone who can sing Into The Groove flawlessly while skipping, as my exclusive pictures show, deserves an Olympic medal, never mind applause.

Watching from the middle of the arena were a gang of famous faces including actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Hudson, Penelope Cruz and Fergie from Back Eyed Peas.

Madge is going be busy until Christmas. There are more than 40 shows left on this jaunt.

It’s exhausting just thinking about it.

source : the sun

Madonna stayed for just an hour at husband Guy’s 40th birthday party and here’s why – she needed all her energy for last night’s incredible performance at Wembley Stadium.

The 50-year-old queen of pop showed off her honed and muscular body as she cavorted around the stage in a white silk top hat, high cut leotard, fishnets and leather stiletto boots.

Her energetic routine would have put to shame artists half her age, and proved those hours in her private gym have paid off.

The mother-of-three is touring the world with her Sticky and Sweet tour which is flying to 37 venues for the roadshow in just under four months, transporting a team of 250.

Amongst the thousands of fans last night were her A-list friends Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson, whose mouths dropped open in amazement at Madonna’s athletic exploits.
The audience also included Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit and Fergie from the Black Eyed peas.

The decadent two-hour show, which involved L1million of jewellery, saw Madonna perform many of her greatest hits, as well as indulging in eight costume changes.

The pop superstar arrived onstage dressed in a Givenchy outfit in a vintage white American car for the first section of the four-part show.

Labelled Pimp, the opening sequence was recently described by the Material Girl’s publicist as a homage to ‘1920s deco and modern day gangsta pimp’.

Madonna followed up that segment of the concert with Old School, a tribute to the her roots in the urban dance music of early 1980s New York.
The remaining two sections, Gypsy and Rave, continued the high-energy performance.

source : daily mail

Check out Daily Mail for some pictures from the last night’s show.

Dec 21, 2008 Sao Paulo – BR – Morumbi Stadium

source : madonna.com