You have to respect Madonna's idea of a nostalgia trip.
Standing on stage before an audience of thousands Monday night at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, the pop icon went back forty-something years, to the night in the early 1980s when she premiered her song “Burning Up” to a smaller, more hostile crowd at New York's legendary CBGB.
“People were yelling at me, 'Show us your tits!'” she recalled. “And at that time I didn’t have tits because I wasn’t eating.” She laughed. “Being without money, without a home, without friends, without a job, without food and anorexic, was not a vibe.”
Monday's concert was the first of five on the Forum on Madonna's Celebration Tour, a career-spanning road show meant to “tell you the story of my life,” as she said shortly after the two-hour, 15-minute concert. performance. In the era of Taylor Swift's world-conquering Eras Tour, that retrospective framing may seem like the obvious choice for a musician with a catalog as deep as Madonna's.
However, the 65-year-old singer has always resisted playing the hits in favor of showing off her latest work (like the intimate theater dates she did in 2019 and 2020 behind her latest studio album, “Madame . . So it made sense that she felt a little explanation was necessary.
“I hope you can handle it,” he told his fans, “because imagine: I had to live through it.”
Only a fool would deny Madonna the right to a victory lap, so monumental is her position in pop history, not only as the creator of indelible songs and genre-defining videos, but also as a cultural pioneer whose commitment to Feminist and queer ideals continue to open lanes in the mainstream even now.
“You can all thank me for allowing you to have the courage to come out,” he said Monday, which is certainly one way to describe the allyship work that has long distinguished his career.
For a tour called Celebration, however, this show (featuring more than two dozen Madonna songs divided into seven acts) was curiously lacking in joy; Time and time again, she drew the crowd's attention to the indignities rather than the victories of her promotion, as in the CBGB anecdote or in a short skit before “Holiday” in which she acted as if a bouncer turned her away at the Paradise Garage. .
Late last night, she spoke for a few minutes about the “near-death experience” she suffered last summer that forced her to postpone the launch of the tour and left her almost unable to walk from her house to her backyard. .
“I know it sounds crazy, but it was hard then,” he said. “I didn't know when I could get up again, when I could be myself again, and when I would get my energy back.”
That he was telling us this from a stage (and with his trusted doctor in the house, he noted) was, of course, his own triumph. However, Madonna's performance rarely tapped into the sense of abandonment one would expect to accompany such a victory. The result was easy to admire but not always easy to love.
The overly moody arrangements of once-lush hits like “Hung Up,” “Ray of Light,” and “Like a Prayer” didn’t help; nor the baffling decision to forego all-time favorites like “Music,” “Borderline,” “Secret” and “Lucky Star” to make room for songs like Madonna's forgettable Bond theme, “Die Another Day.” “Like a virgin” was part of the show, but only as a pre-recorded mix with Michael Jackson's “Billie Jean” that played while digital silhouettes of the two superstars were projected on a screen. (As far as costume-change distractions go, it trumped the vaguely pagan fire ritual performed by several of her dancers.)
Could it be said that the life story Madonna promised to tell on Monday had any discernible logic? Not on a show that inexplicably brought together the bellicose “Human Nature” and the yearning “Crazy for You.” That's not a problem per se: a pop concert is a theater of personality and artistry, not of plot or character development. But such a confusing narrative needed more fuss.
Which, being Madonna, she couldn't help but dish out for a few moments in the Forum. “Vogue” was a highlight that had her dancers (including one of the singer's daughters) competing in a raucous ballroom dance show judged by Madonna and comedian Eric André. “Live to Tell” was a moving tribute to people who had died from complications of AIDS; “Take a Bow” was another beautiful ballad, with Madonna's strongest vocals of the night.
And then there was her surprising acoustic performance of “Express Yourself,” for which she modified the song’s well-known intro: “Come on girls, do you believe in love?” – include “children”, “them” and “them”. On the recording, “Express Yourself” is a battering ram of industrial funk; exhorts the listener to create their own destiny. Here, as Madonna sang and strummed a guitar, the song seemed to acknowledge the cost of that process and at the same time she urged us to move forward.
