Dear listeners,
Lindsay is desperately seeking some time off this week, so I am the first of your guest playlisters: Caryn, the pop music editor. I’m going to tell you a secret — you could consider it one of my confessions on a dance floor. I saw Madonna’s Celebration Tour seven times; eight if you include the livestream from Rio de Janeiro on Saturday night, where the Queen of Pop wrapped her first-ever retrospective with a free show before an estimated 1.6 million people on Copacabana Beach.
Some have asked why, so a brief explanation: I believe Madonna is the most important and influential solo figure in pop history, and I don’t skip opportunities to see her onstage, where she has innovated and thrilled throughout her four-decade career. (If you’re wondering who was behind “60 Times Madonna Changed Our Culture,” wonder no more.) I was too young to catch the Virgin or Who’s That Girl tours — and nobody took me to Blond Ambition or the Girlie Show (ahem, parents) — so my live history begins with Drowned World in 2001 and I have done my best to catch up.
The Confessions Tour from 2006 is the best I’ve seen in person, the Tears of a Clown revival at Art Basel in 2016 was the zaniest, and Celebration is the first one I’ve reviewed (on its U.S. leg’s opening night in October). Repeated viewings haven’t changed my initial critical overview, though some parts of the show grew on me, some vocal performances sharpened up, and some of the extemporaneous speeches Madonna gave during the two breaks each night designed for them were stunningly raw and moving. (See Bonus Tracks below for more on that.)
But the point of today’s playlist is to take a deeper (and deeper) look at the songs Madonna did — and didn’t — select for the tour. The first five tracks are my favorites from the show, which has a lot to do with how she staged them. The second six are songs that were sorely missed, so should you ever do a Celebration 2, M, please consider them official requests.
Crazy for you,
Caryn
Listen along while you read.
1. “Like a Prayer”
The Celebration Tour stage encompassed 4,400 square feet, including a spinning circular platform that was the focal point for several songs — including this standout, performed on a carousel that rose into the air as shirtless dancers in loincloths and masks draped themselves in crucifixion-like poses. The entire show was set to backing tracks rather than a live band, and for this 1989 hit, it was a remix featuring booming bass and a few seconds of Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s “Unholy” at the beginning and end. (The precise mix isn’t available, but the “7” Remix” edit gets you close.) Chills, I tell you!
2. “Live to Tell”
Much has been written about the stunning performance of this 1986 song, which Madonna staged as a tribute to victims of AIDS. She floated above the crowd in a rectangular box gazing at black-and-white portraits of those lost to the disease (including many of her friends and collaborators) on massive screens around her, which multiplied to demonstrate the scale of the epidemic. Each night I saw the show, she had a genuine emotional response and delivered her strongest vocals here.
3. “Nothing Really Matters”
Madonna started the show with this song from “Ray of Light” (1998), using it as a table setter before she went back in time and revisited the story of her career. It was a striking entrance: She held a few poses on the spinning platform at the base of the stage, and slowly rotated out toward the audience in a black kimono and halo headpiece. As a song choice, it was a pointed opening statement about maturing, life choices, different kinds of love, and beginnings and endings.
4. “Don’t Tell Me”
The videos for “Don’t Tell Me” and “Hung Up” feature my favorite Madonna choreography, and while I was extremely happy to get them both live on this tour, they were both abbreviated! (So were a lot of other songs, but these felt especially egregious.) Still: I love this one’s stubborn message, and it was a blast to see the group number recreated on the Celebration stage — and a reminder that Madonna, always ahead of the curve, went cowboy chic back in 2000.
5. “Open Your Heart”
The section of the show dedicated to Madonna’s early days in New York and her first hits underscored the grit it took to get noticed and the glee she took in escaping on the dance floor. “Everybody” and “Holiday” were delightful, but her live performance of “Open Your Heart” made me discover the song anew: beautifully constructed, simple and still dramatic in the best ways, a real piece of pop perfection.
6. “Music”
OK, now for the requests: This 2000 song joined the set list for the finale in Rio, but it should have been there the whole time! It’s a statement of purpose that encapsulates Madonna’s entire career. It is electrifying heard over the speakers of an arena — we know this, because it was the centerpiece of her Confessions Tour, when she performed it as an ecstatic roller disco in a crisp white suit.
7. “Secret”
Personally, I would have traded “Human Nature” for this “Bedtime Stories” single, which has one of the more unusual chord progressions in the Madonna catalog — a satisfying blend of major and minor that actually sounds mysterious and alluring.
8. “Oh Father”
Motherhood was the defining theme of the Celebration show, a thread that ran from the opener “Nother Really Matters” through the many moments featuring Madonna’s children (four of them went on the road and appeared each night). She performed “Mother and Father,” a song about loss from her 2003 album “American Life,” with her son David, and it did grow on me as a result. (I would have preferred “Hollywood,” but that’s a whole other mood.) Still, I missed “Oh Father,” the dramatic ballad from “Like a Prayer” that was a highlight of Blond Ambition.
9. “Material Girl”
We had a lot of early hits in the show, so I get why it didn’t make the cut, but I will say this: Someone was playing this 1985 smash on a sound system outside of Barclays Center after the second show I saw in Brooklyn, and watching the crowd dance and shout along, I realized I missed this moment during the concert. Still a certified banger!
10. “Beautiful Stranger”
Some of Madonna’s best songs have arrived on soundtracks (that’s where we got “Vogue”!) and I have an enduring love of this kicky little tune from the 1999 album that accompanied “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”
11. “Frozen”
Madonna performed “Frozen” a handful of times on Celebration, subbing it in for “Rain,” but I got “Rain” all seven times and was thirsty for this “Ray of Light” track instead. It’s a masterpiece of downtempo electro with a beautiful vocal and ear-tickling synth flourishes. It brings the drama we crave! Next time, Madonna, please?
The Amplifier Playlist
“Madonna’s Hits-Filled Celebration Tour, Dissected” track list
Track 1: “Like a Prayer”
Track 2: “Live to Tell”
Track 3: “Nothing Really Matters”
Track 4: “Don’t Tell Me”
Track 5: “Open your Heart”
Track 6: “Music”
Track 7: “Secret”
Track 8: “Oh Father”
Track 9: “Material Girl”
Track 10: “Beautiful Stranger”
Track 11: “Frozen”
Bonus Tracks
As I mentioned above, Madonna addressed the audience for two extended periods during each show. On Jan. 23 at Madison Square Garden, she spoke about AIDS in New York in the 1980s, singling out Ellen Matzer and Valery Hughes in the audience — two nurses, “heroes,” she said, on the front lines of the epidemic, working in wards where “there were no visitors.” She went on, describing her own stop in a hospital room where she encountered a young man on the brink of death. “I laid down on the bed next to him, and he held my hand and he said, ‘Mother, thank you for coming,’” she said, her voice starting to break. “And it just made me think, these women here tonight, they did this every [expletive] day. And they got no thanks. So please say thank you to them right now.” It was a moment of gratitude that had most of the arena in tears.
Also, Madonna used “I Don’t Search I Find” as the soundtrack to a spectacular video montage near the end of the show that captured what made her inescapable — and irresistible to the media — throughout her career. It’s the best song from her most recent studio album, “Madame X,” and I recommend it.
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