all about Madonna

The Queen of Pop has arrived in Europe with her Confessions tour, thanking not God but something far more carnal (this is Madonna – use your imagination) as she did so for being in a place where “people in the audience dance”.
They certainly did. Even before Her Madgesty appeared, Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium pitch was a mass of moving bodies packed like sardines, eagerly awaiting the first glimpse of their regent.
They were dressed for the occasion too. Within 10 minutes I’d seen more clearly straight men in pink cowboy hats than I had expected to in a lifetime.
The heavily disco-themed extravaganza, based on her Confessions On a Dance Floor album, opened appropriately enough with a huge glitter ball descending from the ceiling.
It opened to reveal Madonna in black raunchy riding-style gear, topped off with a black hat with a mane trailing from it.
As she began to move around the stage, skipping and occasionally cantering, I could see her clearly as the Madonna of 20 years ago, in her early Material Girl and Like A Virgin videos and performances.
Once the hat was off and her face was in close-up on the video screens, it was definitely a more mature version of the world’s most famous pop star on stage, but you would never have known it from her energy levels.
She can sing, dance, gyrate, stretch and jump with the best of them, and proved it repeatedly throughout the set.
The audience were treated to disco anthem I Feel Love to start – very appropriate to the sentiment Madonna must have been receiving from the appreciative crowd before her.
The first of her defining hits came next with Like A Virgin receiving a roar of approval from the crowd, including a bunch of girls standing next to me who just possibly were not born when the song was released.
Despite that, they clearly saw Madonna as an icon and an inspiration. Every time she demonstrated her flexibility, sexuality or ability to keep up with her fit, fast dancers, they cried, “amazing”, “look at that”, “she’s fantastic”, clearly in awe of what the 47-year-old performer could make her well-toned body do.
Madonna’s tour director said before the show began that it was not a concert but closer to a theatrical performance, and he was spot on.
Sets moved seamlessly – at one time delivering Madonna suspended on a giant wire cross from where she sang the ballad Live To Tell – costume changes were quick and flawless. Nobody put a foot wrong the whole night.
There were serious messages being delivered without a trace of subtlety to the audience – videos told us of 12 million children orphaned in Africa because of Aids, with websites flashed up for the concerned to log on to.
During the song Forbidden Love, which used two male dancers to demonstrate the love that (used to) dare not speak its name, up flashed icons of differing religions crossing one another. Yes, we get the message – nasty religion keeps star-crossed lovers apart.
Indeed, my one complaint would have been this – the singer herself seemed a bit too serious. Not until the last quarter of the show did Madonna look like somebody enjoying herself.
She wasn’t much of a smiler, and considering this is a tour about disco, surely one of the most light-hearted, frivolous and fun forms of music, she could have lightened up a little.
The audience did get to see her in different guises. Madonna the rock chick, anybody? That, I have to say, was a new one on me.
She appeared in a leather jacket with a very high feathered collar, straight out of the 70s’ glam rock scene, and reminding me rather incongruously of Suzi Quattro.
It worked for her rendition of the song I Love New York, but I wasn’t so sure about using it for Ray of Light, which is such a dance track it seemed odd to watch her strumming a guitar for it.
But more power to her for doing it. Perhaps this is an indicator of the future, because even she will one day have to give up her high-energy dance-based shows if she carries on touring into her 60s, say – won’t she…?
She certainly didn’t give it up before the end of the night. Wearing a cloak with the legend “Dancing Queen” on it, she belted out Lucky Star, which segued seamlessly into her Number 1 hit Hung Up, finishing with a multitude of golden balloons falling over the exuberant crowds at the front.
And then she was gone. No encore, to the sorrow of the girls next to me, just a message asking, “Have You Confessed?” as the lights came up on the 59,000 people in the audience.
Well, I will. I confess I was impressed. No sign that Queen Madonna will be abdicating from her throne just yet.

Queen of Pop Madonna last night kicked of the UK leg of her dazzling Confessions tour – and her performance was just breathtaking.
The gig at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff was the first of 21 European dates – eight of them in London – so we donned our leotards to shimmy on down with the superstar.
Unfortunately, around 5,000 fans didn’t make her show because ticket prices were steep, ranging from L60-L150. They missed a treat.
We revealed last month how fans were revolting against these outrageous prices despite Madge desperately trying to get them to come. But the star has already made a whopping L46million from her sold-out North American shows, so we don’t imagine she’ll be crying into her macrobiotic Rice Krispies this morning.
The Madge-ical tour show mostly showcased the songs from her current Confessions On A Dancefloor No1 album, but a few old classics such as 1984 hits Lucky Star and Like A Virgin were thrown in for nostalgics.
Although she turns 48 on August 16 – she’ll celebrate with thousands of fans at her gig in Earls Court – Madonna still puts on a show that puts singers half her age to shame. And her husband Guy Ritchie and their children Lourdes, nine, and Rocco, five, watched her stage acrobatics open-mouthed.
The crowd went wild for the first part of the show, dubbed the Equestrian segment – ironic in view of her bad riding accident last year. As horses paraded on overhead screens and dancers in jockey-style gear gyrated on stage, Madonna appeared from the centre of a giant disco ball covered in L2million worth of Swarovski crystals and shouted: “Are you ready, Cardiff?” before belting out Future Lovers and the Donna Summer disco anthem I Feel Love. She gyrated to her dancefloor hits Get Together and Like A Virgin.
Although she’s pushing 50, she proved she hasn’t lost her sex appeal as she writhed about on a saddle, to worried gasps from the audience. She looked super-toned in leggings, lacy top, waistcoat and top hat and gave a saucy crack of her whip.
An insider says: “Madonna was really nervous because it was her first stadium event of this tour.” Suddenly the prospect of being suspended from a glitter ball much higher up seemed pretty daunting.”
The Bedouin segment began with Madonna donning a thorny crown, taking a Christ-like position on a huge cross and singing Live To Tell. Next came the Never Mind the B****cks section, where Madonna went wild for a fun run through rock-infused dance numbers such as I Love New York and Ray Of Light.
Madge turned all political, with signs flashing up on a screen with anti-domestic violence messages Then it was flashing disco balls for a full-on disco party. Madge gave her all with renditions of party favourites La Isla Bonita and Lucky Star.
The screams were deafening as she closed with Hung Up – and many fans shed a tear at the thought that this could be her last world tour.

At a time where every emerging pop artist gets plaudits for how “raw” and “honest” they appear to be, thank God for Madonna. Ultra-slick and fantastically fake her act may be but this is pure, unadulterated escapism on a colossal scale. At up to L150 a pop for tickets, it had better be.
“There’s a lot of people who talk and talk, but how many walk the walk?” she asks her reverent multitude. What walk she walks is anyone’s guess, as this is plastic pop, which only pretends to have a soul. But this is no mere gig, but the ultimate showbiz extravaganza.
As the world’s number one superstar emerges clad in Jean-Paul Gaultier’s S&M-esque creation of leather riding boots, top hat and jodhpurs from her giant disco ball – encrusted with L2m-worth of Swarovski crystals – it’s evident we’ve been teleported to planet Madonna, or cloud nine which ever you prefer. Recent song “Future Lovers” segues into Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”, and soon the blockbuster “Like a Virgin” gets the crowd all jumping. It’s one of the few Eighties songs in the set, revamped for the chemical generation.
This show, her first-ever in Wales, dwarfs any in the stadium’s short history, including U2′s. This, the first stop-off on the European leg of her tour, also boasts a bigger staging than any of the US dates, and it’s mainly all standing. “Thank fuck for that,” the adopted English rose declares, before telling us she wishes she could touch us. Oh, she’s such a tease!
You could never imagine Her Madgesty, the Queen of Pop for the past 22 years, baring her soul in a song, despite naming her tour Confessions. She displays compassion and empathy – “I can tell you all have a conscience of unity,” she says, and a screen relays images of war and suffering during a remix reprise of “Sorry” – but all this hardly squares with the 47-year-old diva’s pelvic thrusts and whip-cracking dominatrix pose.
There’s no escaping the material girl. Love her or berate her, she encapsulates the great capitalist dream while exposing, and revelling in, the hypocrisy of it all. Well aware that shock sells, she raises a perfectly manicured two fingers to the Church; she mockingly wears a crown of thorns while rising a crucifix, flirts with the seven deadly sins and periodically gyrates with a devilish look of ecstasy.
Confessions is a show of four quarters. It begins and ends with her cast as the disco diva, as she reasserts her presence on the global dance floor, while the middle is given over to a “Bedouin” section, featuring the spiritual warbling of Hebrew singer Yitzhak Sinwani. She emerges from a trapdoor for a section she’s called “Never Mind the Bollocks” and she actually appears to have a grasp of basic punk chords as she straps on a guitar. “I Love New York” has more than a whiff of “Pretty Vacant”.
Culminating in dance floor visitations to the various phases of her career, including “La Isla Bonita”, “Erotica”, and “Lucky Star”, Madonna expertly consolidates her grip on the pop throne with a four-to-the-floor finale. Long will she reign.

Apart from Michael Jackson, no one has made pop music as much about looking as listening than Madonna.
And at the Wachovia Center on Wednesday – where the Material Mum will perform again last night, before playing Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City on Sunday – there was plenty to see.
Many a pose was struck, starting with the world’s most famous woman emerging from a disco ball in full dominatrix landed-gentry gear, complete with riding crop and horse-hair ponytail protruding from her top hat.
The opening song, “Future Lovers,” from last year’s electro-groove collection, Confessions on a Dance Floor, was inconsequential, though it tantalizingly did give way to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” Madge did feel love from the adoring, largely female, significantly gay intergenerational audience, who didn’t seem to mind the balmy temperatures, apparently the result of some air-conditioning blowers being turned off to preserve the singer’s precious vocal cords.
The Devon Horse Show was never like this: Before that opening tableaux was finished, Madonna had ridden bareback on one of her super-athletic male dancers, and laid in a barn with a horse in a prerecorded video. She ran through her tepid new single, “Get Together,” and performed “Like A Virgin” while gyrating on a saddle anchored to a stripper pole.
For that, she was accompanied by a video montage of steeplechase horses and riders falling, as Madonna herself did in August – ill-timed, considering the uncertain fate of horse-hero of the moment, Barbaro. There also were X-rays of her own injuries, thus letting fans who wish to get more than skin-deep see her not only in the glorious flesh, but also the broken bone.
That, of course, was just for starters. The hyper-energetic two-hour show also included, in its most desperate attempt to shock, a disappointingly static reading of “Live to Tell” in which the pop-star-as-Christ-figure wore a crown of thorns and was attached to a crucifix – all to better absorb the suffering caused by AIDS, gang violence and child abuse in the world.
And that wasn’t the only point in the evening in which the focus shifted from Madonna’s body – which despite its nearly 48 years is nothing short of fabulous – to the body politic. An interlude of video clips of bad guys – Richard Nixon, Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler – was followed by the aging agent provocateur emerging in black leather and fake-fur collar, electric guitar strapped on, for a Ziggy-Stardust-meets-Sonic-Youth version of “I Love New York.” A truly terrible song, it included an improvised, profane reference to the president.
When not weighed down by pretension, Confessions on a Dance Floor hearkens back enjoyably to a pre-AIDS disco era of innocence and sexual liberation. Musically, the most successful numbers were those free of too much high-concept staging and blessed with catchy tunes, such as “Sorry,” “Jump,” and the aerobicizing closer, “Hung Up.”
That went for the old hits as well, and it would have been nice if she’d done more of them. Her singing – supplemented by two backup singers and a turbaned Yemeni named Isaac – was effective all night, though whether there was any electronic vocal reinforcement was impossible to say.
Madonna’s current musical collaborator, an imperturbable Brit named Stuart Price, led a four-piece computer- and keyboard-driven band that tended to treat everything with an undifferentiated bass-heavy throb.
The bass kept “La Isla Bonita” from being as bouncy as it should have been, but couldn’t stand in the way of “Lucky Star” or “Music” which quoted the Trammps’ “Disco Inferno,” and found the star strutting her stuff in a white three-piece suit, Tony Manero-style. That was fitting – and form-fitting – because ambition, like John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever, has always been Madonna’s main subject.
Refusing to take no for an answer, at one point she scolded fans for not being enthusiastic enough: “If you’re going to be my front-row bitches, you got to give it up.” And on Confessions’ “Like It or Not,” she sounded the familiar theme that Madonna is quite comfortable being Madonna: “You can love me or leave me,” she sang. “Cause I’m never gonna stop.”
Don’t worry, Madge, we wouldn’t have dreamed of thinking that you would.

Madonna may be pressing the same old ideological buttons, but the Confessions tour is a stunning musical makeover.
The ’80s electropop sound of Madonna’s latest permeates the entire two-hour show, and last night she tore up the TD Banknorth Garden for the first of three Boston appearances.
Emerging from a one-and-a-half-ton disco ball, Madge appeared in riding gear, complete with top hat and crop. A sly grin came over her face as the crowd gave her the iconoclastic embrace that keeps her performing – it’s what gets her off. Thus truly being in her element as the center of attention, she gave us her all in return.
Bondage-noir imagery dominated the show’s first quarter, featuring a fantastic cover of the Donna Summer-Giorgio Moroder classic, “I Feel Love”? between her opener, “Future Lovers”? and latest single, “Get Together.”? Though it’s impossible to tell how much vocal management is going on during the more demanding, theatrical numbers, Madonna sounded rehearsed and on target.
The juxtaposition of her broken-boned X-rays and a video montage of equestrian accidents to soundtrack “Like a Virgin”? isn’t that much of a reach – it’s a contemplation of innocence getting shattered, much the same way bones break.
Madonna spoke to the crowd several times, inviting (and even demanding) us to sing and dance with her. She teased, asked if we loved her – asked if we’d die for her. But moreover she was spirited and friendly; the Confessions show is obviously a blast for her, but it’s also exhausting work.
“Live to Tell”? featured an authoritative and impassioned vocal performance, sang from the rumored cross-and-crown of thorns stage set. The bitchy house vibe of “Sorry”? had the entire floor jumping in a unified mass.
The muted industrial tones of “Like It or Not”? came across with deliciously sassy irreverence, as did “Let it Will Be”? later in the set.
After a series of images that seemed to feature famed liars, (George Dubyah, Condoleezza Rice, Nixon, Chairman Mao, bin Laden), Madonna transformed herself into a punk vixen, strapped on her electric guitar and launched into a raunchy “I Love New York,”? followed by a similarly edgy “Ray of Light.”?
“Music”? got a righteous mash-up with The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno”? and Maddy dressed as Travolta with a white bell-bottomed leisure suit. Her dancers sailed all over the stage on roller skates. “Erotic”? was renewed with an updated, catchy euro-disco pulse, as was “Lucky Star,”? which transcended the original’s teeny-bopping tone.
Madonna closed with “Hung Up,”? her vocally weakest number. But by that point, we’d have forgiven her for just about anything.

Anyone who attended Madonna’s show at the TD Banknorth Garden last night is hereby excused from the cardio portion of their workout today.
When the veteran pop superstar said she wanted her “Confessions Tour” to feel like one big disco, she wasn’t fooling.
For almost the entire, frenzied, two-hour performance, Madonna — whether on her own or backed by some combination of her cadre of spectacular dancers — was in constant motion, and the sold-out crowd of 15,076 got down right along with her.
You can nitpick the music (the set list had imperfections), debate the visual accompaniment — some of her “political” statements felt clunky with the glitzy, booty-shaking atmosphere — and you can gripe about the ticket prices. But never let it be said that anyone works harder onstage than Madonna.
It’s clear that the 47-year-old is enjoying her music and her incredibly toned body — apparently yoga and Pilates really, really work. That joy showed in the performance, which felt more upbeat than those in the past.
She began the night, appropriately, emerging from a giant mirror ball over a runway that ran straight through the center of the arena. Decked out in equestrian gear — the first of seven costumes — she was up to her old tricks in no time as she took a quick ride on one of her burly male dancers for the opener “Future Lovers,” which merged briefly with homegirl Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”
The night’s first big cheer came for “Like a Virgin,” which found Madge writhing atop a saddle. (Disturbing footage of riding accidents — recalling her own — on the large video screens may have been a buzz kill for some. )
And as much as she’s a diva, Madonna also isn’t afraid to let the spotlight occasionally fall elsewhere. She seems to construct her shows for her own entertainment as much as the crowd, and songs like “Jump,” featuring a group of “parkours” — urban jungle gymnasts — jumping, climbing, and running headlong toward a nutty jungle gym contraption were eye-popping.
The politicized portions of the show felt airlifted in from some other much more serious performance. “Live to Tell,” with it’s mammoth disco crucifix, was meant as a paean to survival — complete with dance interpretations of child abuse — and the reprise of “Sorry,” with visual images of flames overlaid on African AIDS orphans, both seemed heartfelt but preachy.
An ecstatic “Ray of Light,” on the other hand, got the blood pumping again, and Madonna may be the only person to ever get a Boston crowd to chant “I Love NY,” as she did during the glam rock version of that song.
An acoustic section was the best vocal showcase as Madonna simply stood still and played guitar on a tender, unadorned version of “Drowned World/Substitute For Love” and the gently computerized “Paradise (But Not For Me).”
The night was brought to its thumping conclusion with the shuddering rhythms of “Hung Up” as Madonna and her dancers alternately jumped, crawled, and threw themselves across every inch of the stage, knowing that this was their last dance.
The second of the three shows on Sunday is also sold out, but tickets for Monday’s show remain.

Well, if you couldn’t tell at the beginning when she descended from the ceiling in a giant glitter ball, the set list of Madonna’s concert (the first of three sold-out shows at the TD BankNorth Garden) confirmed she has, in fact, come back to the hardcore dance music that gave her her start.
Most people who have been around as long as she has are apologetically slipping a couple of songs from their latest album into the set list, but last night’s show included 10 songs from Madonna’s latest, Confessions on a Dance Floor. She applied that record’s mix of early-’80s styles such as house, Eurodisco and early techno to old favorites such as “Like a Virgin” and “La Isla Bonita” as well. The conventional wisdom says 2004′s American Life album was a disappointment, and if you feel the same way, this was a show for you: nothing from that record.
Of course, the experience of a Madonna show isn’t complete without the visuals, choreography and costumes, and here last night’s show topped the American Life tour as well — eventually.
The show began with “Future Lovers,” from Confessions (with a snippet of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” tucked into the middle), and went into the lush house of the new album’s “Get Together.” But Madonna, dressed up in some semblance of riding gear, punctuated the songs with dancing that looked, and felt, more like we were watching her work out. The bumped-up “Like a Virgin” was more of the same — although there was humor at work in the video projections of people falling off horses (recalling Madonna’s recent mishap), her own aerobic writhing in a giant saddle was designed to be marveled at rather than enjoyed.
From there, the jump-cut philosophy that made the American Life show a weird mess took over for a while. Here’s Madonna on a glitter-ball crucifix, complete with crown of thorns, singing “Live to Tell” while the video screen projects statistics on African children orphaned by AIDS. Here she is singing “Isaac” while the singer of the same name who sang on the record holds the melody and a robed dancer flings herself around a cage. Here she’s singing “Jump” while film-student-level clips of urban decay flash behind her. Whatever.
The hinge of the show was “Like It or Not,” another dance thumper but with a shuffle rhythm, which Madonna sang alone, with virtually no projections and nothing on stage but a black wooden chair. The song is a fairly simple declaration of independence, but the lo-tech setting gave her a chance to show sass rather than ice, and for the audience to relate rather than adore.
From there, the dance-floor fillers kept coming, and the accoutrements settled down into being impressive yet coherent recapitulations of the themes and vibes of the songs. Madonna slathered distorto-guitar onto “I Love New York” and “Ray of Light”; her dance moves were purposely ungainly during “Let It Will Be” and her banter with the audience was truly playful before the ballad “Substitute for Love,” which was followed by the lovely, doleful ballad “Paradise (Not for Me),” from 2000′s Music album.
By the time she did a virtual live mashup, singing the words and melody of “Music” while her band played the classic “Disco Inferno,” with Madonna in a white disco suit; aped the James Brown routine of being picked up off the stage and helped into a cape (with “Dancing Queen” on it); gave even more dance thump to “Lucky Star” than the original; and finished by blazing through “Hung Up,” the first single from Confessions, the rout was on. Fun won.

Madonna begins her show by climbing out of a disco ball. It splits apart, like one of those chocolate oranges, and out she climbs: a star is hatched.
Wednesday night was the first time she did this at Madison Square Garden, although it’s not scheduled to be the last: the concert marked the beginning of a four-night engagement (not counting two nights later in July). And for the next two hours, she put on a spectacular and mainly successful show, returning again and again to a place she knows well: the dance floor. Just about everything onstage is covered in mirror tiles, even the cross on which Madonna is briefly crucified. (It’s a plea for AIDS relief, naturally.)
The show is largely given over to her 2005 album, “Confessions on a Dance Floor” (Warner Bros.), which is as exuberant as its predecessor, “American Life,” was severe. Most of it was produced with Stuart Price (sometimes known as Jacques Lu Cont), who specializes in sleek and buzzy beats. The album has been praised as Madonna’s nostalgic return to her nightclub roots, but Wednesday’s concert suggested that something has changed. She’s still in the club, but she has a slightly different idea about why.
One of the most dazzling sequences came near the beginning. Madonna rode a saddle that was mounted on a pole to sing “Like a Virgin.” The saddle slowly rose and fell, as if it were on a merry-go-round. And as Madonna contorted, it was easy to miss the disturbing story that was unfolding on screens behind her: there was a video montage of racehorses stumbling, throwing their riders, crashing to earth. This vague sense of terror kept coming back all night, as if to remind the dancers — including the ones in the bleachers — that there’s no such thing as innocent fun.
Like many recent Madonna tours, this one is a trade-off. Fans get fewer old warhorses than they want. (Near the end, she made more than a few nights by singing “Lucky Star.”) In return, they get more outlandish sets, weird conceits and eye-popping dance routines (referencing everything from the Los Angeles krumping scene to the French sport of parkour) than they can digest in one night.
The most indigestible moments are still the ones in which Madonna is burdened with something more inhibiting than a saddle: a guitar. Madonna with a guitar is generally the concert equivalent of cholesterol: it clogs the aisles with otherwise faithful fans who suddenly remember they have to buy a T-shirt, or use the rest room, or track down one of those beer mugs with the pretzel rod in the handle.
No matter: by the time she sung “Hung Up,” the ecstatic, Abba-sampling hit from “Confessions,” the draggy middle was all but forgotten. When pop stars sing about clubs, they’re often singing about leaving them: the whole reason you go is to find someone to leave with. But there’s not much that’s flirtatious or suggestive about “Hung Up.” It sounds, on the contrary, like the work of someone who’s realized that there is no after-party: the party is all there is, and what happens on the dance floor isn’t a means to a end — it’s the end. You don’t go there to leave, or to somehow transcend it; you go there to stay as long as you can. Maybe it takes a 47-year-old pop star to figure that out.

source : nytimes

If you didn’t get what you wanted on Madonna’s Confessions tour–namely, the old hits–you might want to give this CD/DVD set a spin. The Material Girl delivers the goods with “I’m Going to Tell You a Secret,” which documents the pop star’s Reinvention World Tour of 2004. The collection includes such fan favorites and chart toppers as “Vogue,” “Like a Prayer,” “Music” and “Into the Groove.” The disc also includes a version of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Unlike some CD/DVD sets, which offer more for the ears than for the eyes, “I’m Going to Tell You a Secret” could be well worth watching. The Reinvention tour was one of the most elaborately staged productions of recent years.

source : live daily

Madonna may be a record-breaking concert draw, but her album sales of late leave something to be desired. So, the marketing department thought, Why not bring her popular Re-Invention World Tour to the retail outlets of the world? This 14-track CD, coupled with a documentary DVD, focuses on her more concert- and club-friendly material, which should be a plus–but unfortunately, its biggest flaw is its dependency on sub-par material such as “American Life” and “Die Another Day.” Even with a couple of decent oldies get thrown in, this is one Secret best kept.

source : EOnline