2023-11-02 00:56:00
He always resisted playing the ‘greatest hits’ tour card, understanding it as a surrender to nostalgia, but at this point in the game, with four decades of experience, hits to give and sell, 65 birthdays piled up and six children, Madonna She is the universal pop matriarch capable of allowing himself to step aside to show off the legacy. This was the case this Wednesday at the first of their two concerts at Sant Jordi (the only dates in Spain), catwalks for happy extravagance and a binge of hits with a pinch of melancholy.
Let’s forget about the caricature, that pixelated Madonna and scalpel flesh that seems to fight against time. The first song of the night, ‘Nothing really matters’, which in 1998 she dedicated to her little daughter Lourdes, tasted like an adult manifesto: when she was young, the lyrics say, she only cared about having fun and “living selfishly,” an order disrupted by motherhood. Madonna, alone on the large circular stage, in the shadows, with her long black priestess dress and liturgical diadem, lighting the fuse one hour and twenty minutes late. Waiting enlivened by bursts of boos from the public and in the absence of explanations or apologies.
New York in the 80s
The anger was left behind, as it usually happens, as soon as the show took flight. The script for ‘The celebration tour’ displayed a chronological dynamic, with a first act devoted to the eighties ‘remake’: of the hubbub of ‘Everybody’, putting the focus on the New York of its beginnings, to an ‘Into the groove’ wrapped in synthesizer sounds. Madonna, swaying with youthful ways, exhibiting the prodigy of singing (or pretending to) and running at the same time, surrounded by a troop dressed in the rabid fashion of 1984. Labyrinth of catwalks on the runway and video screens that extended and retracted from one topic to another.
The Mrs. Ciccone spoke to welcome us to a show that he presented as “the story of my life”, remembering those first steps in New York, “a million years ago”. And he headed to Barcelona with a resounding “I love this city”, electric guitar at the ready, ready to add some rock to ‘Burning up’. From there to ‘Open your heart’ and a smiling ‘Holiday’ under the mirror ball. One of the simplest and most effective songs in his repertoire, which he crossed with a nod to ‘I want your love’, by Chic.
Sex and religion
Madonna’s personal reading of religion, that classic, appeared in a ‘Like a prayer’ with monastic choirs, hooded monks and a bacchanal of semi-naked bodies entangled in crosses this big. She lacked the punch of the final ‘crescendo’, but provided a souvenir to Prince, another champion of the dialogue between sex and God. And from there we went to ‘Erotica’, which she sang in a bathrobe between three boxing rings, meeting with a version of herself who recreated the bed scene from the ‘Blond ambition tour’, from 1990.
‘Hung up’, a 2005 song with ‘sample’ by Abba, caused a sensation, which expanded the generational radius in its day. And what can we say about the voluptuous house of ‘Vogue’. There were cycle changes due to the ballad ‘Bad girl’, with her daughter Mercy James on the piano, and a parliament in favor of “radical hospitality” and “welcoming the stranger.” And Madonna raised her voice in ‘I will survive’Gloria Gaynor’s hit, was Evita for a few minutes and evoked another lost colleague, Michael Jackson, marrying ‘Like a virgin’ with ‘Billie Jean’.
The maternal figure
The request for pop milestones was top notch, although Madonna left a few in the bedroom: there is no place on this tour for ‘Material girl’, ‘Who’s that girl’, ‘True blue’, ‘Express yourself’ or ‘Music ‘. And no sign of her latest album, ‘Madame X’. Instead, she dropped some slightly under-the-radar numbers, like ‘Mother and Father’, inspired by the loss of her mother when she was only five years old.
Using recent letterso ‘The beautiful island’ o ‘Ray of light’, Received like manna by an audience that covered several generations, Madonna dominated, and came to give a thumbs up to those who, in the 80s, labeled her as an ephemeral toy. And the story continues.
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