The Celebration Tour (Spoilers)

[Voguerista 11,891]

2 minutes ago, Markdonna said:

This will probably go down as my fav moment in the whole show.  Just always always loved this fucking song.  I think I sad in the other thread. she should just do this one with a piano and not much else…. This is just perfect…. And oh my yes — Mercy is a nice touch.

PS — I think the crowd is silent as they are just enjoying the performance.  I had it when everybody else sings along.

What a moment! I think this performance is going to be one of my faves too from this tour. I mean…. Madonna even got in her face and put the top down etc and Mercy still carried on and played magnificently! MERCY JAMES is the quietest of her kids and look how she just SPOKE it!!! Omg!!!!! What a natural, so full of grace, and so composed! I want MORE!!!!!

[Shoful 8,552]

Us Erotica fans WON this tour. She better keep Bad Girl on the setlist until i see it

[dankpepe 1,042]

https://twitter.com/bioniccats/status/1713338692268413212/video/4

 

Then for the rumors that her gigantic ass implant is gone, it's still there:

https://twitter.com/kabirnaidoo/status/1713374813811614112/video/1

She just has it covered / wrapped tight

 

[PlasticLimbo 1,570]

 

[Gutten 206]

34 minutes ago, DiegoLCL said:

WOW!

I like NRM but the music sounds cheap AF

[Donna 16,751]

Madonna proves she’s a survivor

LONDON — There was hit after hit — pretty much one for every year in four decades of music — during Madonna’s Celebration Tour that kicked off at the O2 in London Saturday.

But the most special moments revealed the humanity behind the 65-year-old woman that sometimes has been overshadowed in 40 years living not only as the Queen of Pop but one of the most famous people on the planet.

There was when she sang an a capella “Little Star” — from her 1997 classic “Ray of Light” — instead of “Happy Birthday” for oldest daughter Lourdes, who turned 27 on the same day her mother launched her 40th-anniversary tour.

And then she talked about the Israel-Hamas war in a way that made you feel as if she was just like all mothers out there, frightened for their children.

“It breaks my heart to see children suffering, teenagers suffering, elderly people suffering. All of it is heartbreaking,” she said. “But even though our hearts are broken, our spirits cannot be broken … We can unite in a dark and evil way, or we can unite from a place of light and love. And if we all have that in our collective consciousness, we can change the world and we can bring peace — not only to the Middle East, but all over the world.”

And then there was the moment when Madonna revealed that she didn’t think she would live to see this night three and a half months ago, after a serious bacterial infection led to several days in the ICU — and forced a three-month postponement of the tour.

“I didn’t think I was gonna make it. Neither did my doctors,” she said. “I forgot five days of my life — or my death … But my children were there — and my children always save me every time.”

After vowing that “I’ve got to be there for my children,” she then proceeded to deliver an acoustic rendition of “I Will Survive” with Madonna herself on guitar.

Three of her children also got to perform with their mother on the comeback stage: David, 18, making like Prince and then Michael Jackson; Mercy, 17, on the piano for “Bad Girl”; and Esther, 11, striking a pose to “Vogue.”

It was then that you got to see just how much that, over 40 years, the Material Girl has grown into the Maternal Girl.

Perhaps with a new perspective, Madonna — save for maybe 2004’s Re-Invention Tour — has never worked so hard to give the people what they want.

Opening with the “Ray of Light” single “Nothing Really Matters” — one of the fan favorites that got a rare performance — she made a regal entrance to the roar of her subjects. And as her 1982 debut single “Everybody” gave way to “Into the Groove,” it was a dream start to quickly make you forget the “Madame X” Tour. (As did the prompt start for the notoriously late performer at 8:45 p.m. local time.)

But then sound problems forced an extended break that burst the disco-ball bubble that the entire O2 had been transformed into, as Madonna brought out her hype person Bob the Drag Queen for some stage banter that was almost endearingly awkward.

Still, given her long history of perfectionism, there was the nervous sense that maybe the show wasn’t ready; maybe Madonna, who had her left knee wrapped, wasn’t ready.

But any doubts about that were erased when she gave “Erotica” a boxing-ring reimagining in a sexy section that brought back the Girlie Show era with “Justify My Love” and her “Fever” cover

And while Madonna is no longer the same dancer she once was at 65, it hardly mattered when she delivered the one-two punch of “Die Another Day” with a coven of witches and then “Don’t Tell Me” with a posse of cowboys. But clearly all that “Evita” training is still paying off with her voice sounding strong on ballads such as “Crazy for You” and “Live to Tell.”

Having faced her own mortality, the latter — which was dedicated “in loving memory of all the bright lights we lost to AIDS” — surely hits differently now.

https://nypost.com/2023/10/14/madonna-proves-shes-a-survivor-at-celebration-tour-kickoff/

[Jackie 8,127]

7 minutes ago, dankpepe said:

https://twitter.com/bioniccats/status/1713338692268413212/video/4

 

Then for the rumors that her gigantic ass implant is gone, it's still there:

https://twitter.com/kabirnaidoo/status/1713374813811614112/video/1

She just has it covered / wrapped tight

 

I reckon it's padding - the pics of her right after her hospital on the sidewalk - there was nothing there.

[dankpepe 1,042]

1 minute ago, Jackie said:

I reckon it's padding - the pics of her right after her hospital on the sidewalk - there was nothing there.

Why does she need to wear padded underwear??

I'm still on the side of those sidewalk pics were edited and released as part of a PR campaign since we never got video and just 2 random pics of her pointing at a building like she's never seen buildings before

[Lorx 371]

4 minutes ago, Jackie said:

I reckon it's padding - the pics of her right after her hospital on the sidewalk - there was nothing there.

When I said "don't be so sure she removed her butt implants", many fans were pissed off in this forum.

Like milingo83.

She still has them. Period.

[Burning Up 4 Madonna 1,070]

6 minutes ago, Jackie said:

I reckon it's padding - the pics of her right after her hospital on the sidewalk - there was nothing there.

okay

[Shoful 8,552]

Is the butt still there or not. We need side by sides of before and afters

[Madvox 71]

Removed or not?!

[PlasticLimbo 1,570]

 

 

[Jackie 8,127]

5 minutes ago, Burning Up 4 Madonna said:

okay

I could be and probably am wrong - but it was not that pronounced when she was on the sidewalk holding herself up right - 

[Madvox 71]

1 hour ago, PlasticLimbo said:

What's wrong with dancer's teeth?

[Burning Up 4 Madonna 1,070]

3 minutes ago, Jackie said:

I could be and probably am wrong - but it was not that pronounced when she was on the sidewalk holding herself up right - 

I agree you couldnt see for sure in that pic but from what I just watched in that video it is there for sure.

[Donna 16,751]

Madonna Celebrates Four Decades of Hits With Career-Spanning Spectacle

Oct. 14, 2023, 10:26 p.m. ET

They wore pearls with crucifixes, lace gloves, tulle skirts and body-sculpting corsets. Some even crimped their hair and drew on fake beauty moles, while others wore simple white T-shirts with only the letter M on the back. Spanning generations, the concertgoers arriving at the O2 Arena in London used Saturday night as an opportunity to dress in their favorite Madonna era, even if that was decades before they were born.

Madonna, 65, is on the road for the first time since 2020 with her global Celebration Tour, a stage spectacle touching on more than 40 of her hits across four decades. The show opened at the O2, a 20,000-capacity arena, three months after its planned first date, following a health scare for the pop icon. In June, Madonna was hospitalized shortly before the tour’s scheduled debut in Canada. At the time, her manager said she had a “serious bacterial infection” that resulted in the singer staying in an intensive care unit for several days.

Madonna swore that the tour — her first devoted to her full catalog of hits, rather than to a specific album release — would go on. In recent weeks, she has filled her Instagram account with tantalizing, and very on-brand, images from rehearsals, showing her dressed in a lacy black bustier, practicing onstage steps and resting her fishnet-clad knees.

Fans waited out a 30-minute delay before Madonna arrived onstage in London, opening with a medley of hits before acknowledging the challenges that had led to the moment. “How did I make it this far? Because of you,” she said, adding, “But I will take a bit of credit, too.”

Madonna also reflected on her health struggles this year. “I forgot five days of my life, or my death,” she said. “I don’t really know where I was, but the angels were protecting me.

“If you want to know my secret, and you want to know how I pull through and how I survive, I thought, ‘I’ve got to be there for my children. I have to survive for them,’” she said. She then led the crowd in a singalong of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

The 24 performers onstage notably did not include a live band: Stuart Price, the tour’s musical director, told the BBC that “the original recordings are our stars.” The stage, which encompasses 4,400 square feet, was designed to echo Manhattan neighborhoods, as well as the wedding cake from Madonna’s 1984 MTV Video Music Awards performance of “Like a Virgin.” During the show, she is swept across the venue in a square-framed box 30 feet off the ground.

Carla Nobre, 38, of Nottingham said that seeing Madonna in concert had been on her bucket list, but that she had been disappointed with the performance.“There was too much talking,” she said.

Jenni Purple, 54, from the southern coast of England said the concert, which was her first time seeing Madonna live, had been “absolutely incredible.” “I loved all the medleys, I loved the costumes, I loved all the dances,” she said with a broad smile. “Everything was just mind-blowing.”

In the past, Madonna’s tours have been news-making events tied as much to her latest music as to her cycle of stylistic reinventions. But Celebration is essentially the pop superstar’s Eras Tour, as Taylor Swift has styled her latest outing: a staged romp through decades of hit songs and signature looks, giving fans a chance to relive her career as a stages-of-life experience. (Seventeen of Madonna’s previous costumes were recreated for the tour, and some of the merchandise for sale includes replicas from past treks.)

With her Virgin Tour in 1985, Madonna introduced herself as a punk-glam dance star whose every crucifix pendant or flap of denim was zealously adopted by fans. Who’s That Girl (1987) and Blond Ambition (1990) grew increasingly elaborate as Madonna pushed the fashion envelope with looks like Jean Paul Gaultier’s memorable cone bra and set the bar for bold, imaginative pop megatours. The Girlie Show (1993), in which Madonna appeared as a dominatrix, was the accompaniment to a period of daringly explicit material like her “Sex” book and “Justify My Love” video, which was banned from MTV.

After an eight-year absence from the road, Drowned World (2001) reintroduced Madonna as a new mother, an electro-pop heroine and an acolyte of kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. In more recent years, her Confessions Tour (2006) cast her in late-70s disco style, and Rebel Heart (2015-16) found her playing guitar, in addition to executing the complex choreography for which she is known. Her most recent tour, Madame X, which was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic, saw Madonna looking to reinvent her stage performance once again in a more intimate, almost cabaret form, mostly eschewing arenas for spaces like the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

For Madonna, the 78-date Celebration Tour is a chance to assert her star power in a year when live music has been dominated by Swift and Beyoncé — women who, like Madonna before them, have used talent and deep media savvy to remake pop stardom in their own image. In July, Beyoncé acknowledged the debt, when Madonna, making one of her first public appearances after her hospitalization, attended Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour in New Jersey. “Big shout-out to the queen,” Beyoncé called out during a performance of the “Queens Remix” of her song “Break My Soul,” which blends in Madonna’s 1990 smash “Vogue” — another hit that mined, and honored, gay dance culture of that period.

Madonna returned the acknowledgment on Saturday, playing a bit of the same remix during an interstitial moment.

When Madonna’s latest tour was announced in January, it immediately became one of the year’s big-ticket events — and yielded a micro-flood of hot takes about the singer’s age. But the tour appears to be far from sold out; Ticketmaster still shows many seats available at some major venues like Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where Madonna will start the North American leg of the tour with three shows in December.

Back in 2009, Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour set box-office records when it sold more than $400 million in tickets. Since then, the economics of live music have exploded; Beyoncé has already well exceeded that amount with her Renaissance shows, and Swift may well sell close to $2 billion in tickets by the time her Eras Tour is completed.

Legacy has clearly been on Madonna’s mind lately. Last month, the 1989 Pepsi commercial that introduced her song “Like a Prayer” — before it was pulled amid outrage over its music video, which featured an interracial kiss and the singer dancing in front of burning crosses — was finally aired again during the MTV Video Music Awards.

Madonna, who had been paid $5 million for the promotion — and kept the money — said on social media: “So began my illustrious career as an artist refusing to compromise my artistic integrity.” She added, “Thank you @pepsi for finally realizing the genius of our collaboration. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

It was clearly on fans’ minds as well. Aisha and Maia Letamendia Moore, 17-year-old twins from southern England, near Brighton, wore looks that drew on the Vogue and Like a Virgin eras. “I think she’s such an influence,” Maia said. “She did so many things that were so controversial. She wasn’t scared to do it, she wasn’t scared what people would say.”

Others mentioned rumors that Celebration could be Madonna’s last tour. Helen Dawson, 47, who said she first saw Madonna during the Who’s That Girl Tour in 1987, would abide no such thought. “Never, she won’t give up,” Ms. Dawson said. “This is just a new celebration, a new era.”

 

[Shoful 8,552]

We will easily be able to tell if someone has a rearshot of the bodysuit Bedtime Story outfit

[FraP 453]

I rewatched the video of Rain, and it's a bad performance. Very dull and lifeless, she didn't even do the beautiful final part. I enjoyed it at the concert because it's my favorite song, but upon reviewing it, it's a big no, it seems improvised.

[Future Lover 1,010]

3 hours ago, scion said:

Wow the timing and mixing is terrible. Why is her mic volume at about 20% compared to the studio vocals?

They had sound issues all through this song and had to delay 10 minutes after it to get it corrected. That’s why she’s off and why it sounds weird. 

[Donna 16,751]

Stunning!

[Voguerista 11,891]

4 minutes ago, Jackie said:

I could be and probably am wrong - but it was not that pronounced when she was on the sidewalk holding herself up right - 

I’ve always wondered if she uses padding to protect herself in case she falls and she doesn’t want to hurt a past injury. I’ve also wondered if she might have some arthritis in her hips and padding helps it feel better especially if it’s heated. The thing is, that area is inconsistent. It looks big, then it looks small and then it looks like there is nothing there at all?? 

[Scottyx 8,803]

odd comment maybe but I've never seen a piano bench seat adjusted that high - for someone that tall in my whole life and I have been teaching piano for 30 years. MercyJames was towering over that piano lol ... it sounded great just the same. I wonder was she "finger-syncing?"

[Voguerista 11,891]

19 minutes ago, PlasticLimbo said:

 

 

This is one of my top faves too for what I’ve seen so far(along with Nothing Really Matters and Bad Girl). 

[Donna 16,751]