Last night was my seventh Madonna concert in 23 years, the third Madonna concert each with both Danielle and Shobhit, and the first I have gone to with both of them together.
I have a strong feeling I will not see another Madonna concert with either of them again. This has nothing to do with either Shobhit or Danielle but rather everything to do with Madonna, who is now 65 years old, and with this tour entering the class of older bands and singers (this includes Fleetwood Mac, my favorite band) who embark on tours with no new music to promote.
I don't want to mislead: I had a good time. I honestly think I had a better time than either Danielle or Shobhit, just by virtue of my deep familiarity with the entire Madonna catalog. But, I also had some ambivalence about it, and there were some elements of the show that were . . . kind of sad. People could have made the same statements about the last two Madonna tours I saw:
MDNA (2012) and
Rebel Heart (2015), but having had to skip her 2019
Madame X tour for a multitude of reasons (it was ridiculously expensive "mini residences" in smaller venues over multiple days in a far more limited number of cities, none of which were anywhere near me; we were saving up for our trip to Australia that year and I already also had trips to both Las Vegas and Toronto / Niagara Falls / Syracus in 2019 so I hardly had the budget for an extra trip that seeing that tour would have necessitated; in the end both an injury and the pandemic resulted in 18 canceled shows), last night was my first time seeing Madonna live in
nine years—by far the biggest stretcg since my first concert in 2001—and even in 2015 she was 57 years old.
I said at the time that I enjoyed the
Rebel Heart show more than I had
MDNA in 2012, which I declared was my least favorite of her shows. I can't remember 2012 vividly enough anymore to say for sure, but I'm leaning toward declaring the 2024
Celebration tour was my least favorite. Even though I had a good time! But:
* Shobhit mentioned more than once that Madonna was not fully connecting with the audience, and as much as it pains me to admit it, I think he was right. Somewhat ironically, when she shifted into a ballad version of "Express Yourself" during which we all sang along and she asked us to
light up our phones, Shobhit said she was finally connecting with the audience, and I think he was right about that too.
* The setlist is supposed to have an encore performance of "Celebration," the new track released as a single from her 2009 career retrospective of the same name—also the encore at her MDNA tour, incidentally—but last night, she skipped it: "Bitch I'm Madonna," with maybe a dozen dancers dressed as "Madonna" from different eras of her career, actually did make for a fun closer, but those of us expecting an encore were still disappointed. In fact I'm pretty sure this is the only Madonna show I've gone to where she did
not do an encore. (Again, Shobhit thinks it had to do with the lack of connection with the audience, but there really could be a multitude of reasons for this one.)
* Madonna had two shows in Seattle over the weekend, the first on Saturday night, which
the Seattle Times reported on (I only know about the article because Gina's friend Jennifer, who was also at the show last night, messaged it to be over Facebook yesterday), and I have no idea how close to sold out the Saturday night show was, but there were visible sections of empty seats at last night's show. I'm not sure I've ever seen that before either, but here is a harsh reality: Madonna has not had a top 5 single since "4 Minutes," her duet with Justin Timberlake in 2008, which reached #3; she hasn't had a top 10 single since "Give Me All Your Livin'," barely qualifying at #10 in 2012; it's been more than a decade since Madonna has released music that even remotely entered the musical zeitgeist. And, as I already noted, this is her first tour not even promoting any new album release. People just don't have as much reason to get excited about coming to a Madonna show as they used to.
* Granted, this tour is billed as a "Greatest Hits" tour, which should conceivably have
made people more excited—for the past solid 20 years, Madonna has been notorious for overloading her set lists with tracks from new albums people coming to her shows just don't care that much about, thereby limiting the number of smash hits from her career she performs. The last time she did a "Greatest Hits tour" was with
Re-Invention Tour 2004, which ostensibly was in support of the 2003 album
American Life—easily one of
my favorite Madonna albums, but I was in the minority: in the pre-streaming music subscription era,
American Life was kind of Madonna's first bona fide flop, none of the singles exclusively from that album charting any higher than #37 on the Billboard Hot 100. ("Die Another Day" reached #8, but that had previously been released as a single just associated with the James Bond film of the same name, and later just thrown into the sequencing on the album.) At the time, giving people career-retrospective hits was a way to lure older fans out to her shows. That tour was massively successful in a way that the
Celebration Tour 2024 is clearly not going to be.
* This is hardly new, but way too many of the songs—though certainly not all of them—were clearly lip synced and not actually sung by Madonna. I can understand the need, for example, to conserve energy for dance numbers, but last night was really kind of top loaded with this stuff.
* This part wasn't Madonna's fault at all, but unfortunatley it still had a significant impact on the enjoyment of the show: this was all three of our first concert at the renovated "Climate Pledge Arena" (formerly Key Arena), and the sound system
suuuucked. Notably, Madonna herself never gave any indication of noticing bad sound from the stage, so it's possible the sound was actually great on the floor. But, we were
in Section 201, in way up in the nosebleeds to the side, a section along the wall, row J being baybe 10 to 15 rows
from the wall. We were pretty far from the stage. And we experience a
lot of reverb and sound distortions from the speakers where we were sitting. It really kind of sucked.
* I have to mention the medley of "Like a Virgin" as a mashup with Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," a clear crowd-pleaser with silhouettes behind a screen, of both of them kind of performing to each other, and with famous photos shown at the back of the stage from when the two of them went to the Oscars together in 1991. In a vacuum, this actually been really fun, and "Billie Jean" is a great song on its own merits. But, what Madonna evidently does not understand is that no Michael Jackson song exists in a vacuum, and this mashup indicates to me that Madonna clearly does not believe the
definitively credible accusations of sexual abuse levied against Michael Jackson. (The excellent 2019 HBO documentary
Leaving Neverland finally turned me around on this issue.) All this indicated to me was that Madonna refuses to listen to the credible evidence against a man too many people believe should be "respected" just because he was both a legend and is now dead, which is utter bullshit on both counts. So, once again, I am just disappointed in Madonna.
* Finally, a note on the crowd: like, damn. I was noticing how much older the crowd was even at my
first Madonna concert, with Danielle in Oakland 23 years ago—when Madonna was 43—so imagine what people looked like now. It might be useful to note that Madonna has long had fans even older than herself, so there were plenty of people in the crowd who could easily have been in their sixties. When the closing song was being performed, I saw a couple, a man and a woman, making their way slowly down the steps at the end of the rows, clearly trying to get ahead of the crowd due to, at the very least, the woman's relatively limited mobility.
Have I mentioned I still definitely had a good time?
Let's take a look at the set list, at least as compared to
what USA Today published in December:
1. Nothing Really Matters [from
Ray of Light]
2. Everybody [from
Madonna]
3. Into the Groove [from
Desperately Seeking Susan]
4. I Love New York* [from
Confessions on a Dance Floor] **
5. Burning Up [from
Madonna]
6. Open Your Heart [from
True Blue]
7. Holiday [from
Madonna]
8. Live to Tell [from
True Blue]
9. Like a Prayer [from
Like a Prayer]
10. Erotica [from
Erotica]
11. Justify My Love [from
The Immaculate Collection]
12. Hung Up [from
Confessions on a Dance Floor]
13. Bad Girl [from
Erotics]
14. Vogue [from
I'm Breathless]
15. Human Nature [from
Bedtime Stories]
16. Crazy for You [from
Vision Quest]
17. Die Another Day [from
Die Another Day and
American Life]
18. Don't Tell Me [from
Music]
19. Mother and Father [from
American Life]
20. I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor cover) **
21. La Isla Bonita [from
True Blue]
22. Don't Cry for Me Argentina [from
Evita]
23. Bedtime Story [from
Bedtime Stories]
24. Ray of Light [from
Ray of Light]
25. Rain [from
Erotia] **?
26. Billie Jean / Like a Virgin [from
Like a Virgin]
27. Bitch I'm Madonna [from
Rebel Heart]
28. Celebration [from
Celebration] **
The * single asterisk is from USA Today:
Replaced "Causing a Commotion" at the Dec. 13 North American tour kickoff in Brooklyn, New York. The ** double asterisks are songs I have no recollection of hearing last night. In some cases I know for certain she did not perform them: there was definitely no "I Will Survive," and she absolutely did not perform "Celebration."
Now, compare to
this page, which purports to list the set list specific to Seattle—though it's probably based on Saturday night's show and not Sunday night's. There was definitely no performance of "I Love New York" last night, but this link says "Causing a Commotion"—which I had been looking forward to hearing—was an "acapella snippet." That means it could have been one of several brief interludes I could not recognize because of the fucking sound distortion. So I don't know if she did any part of that song or not. The same may be true of "Rain." I only know with absolute certainty that she did not do "I Love New York" (which may have been something she did only for New York shows anyway), "I Will Survive" or "Celebration." Honestly among those, only missing "Celebration" was a real disappointment to me. Having no encore at all was a bummer, really.
A few quick notes on some of the songs she definitely did perform:
* "Everybody" is an all-time favorite of mine, and I was thrilled to see her perform it.
* "Die Another Day" was a great performance.
* I was absolutely thrilled—
thrilled—to get a live performance of "Bedtime Story," by far the best track on
Bedtime Stories (1994) and maybe in my top two or three favorite Madonna songs of all time. I don't think she performed it in any of the other concerts I've seen of hers. As soon as I heard the distinctive opening notes of that track, I leapt to my feet in a way few other people did. I don't think either Shobhit or Danielle are at all familiar with that song, which, as it happens, was her first single
not to crack the Billboard Top 40 (it peaked at #42)
As for what else to say about the show, getting there with Danielle was an exercise in minor frustration, which in the end turned out totally fine. At first we inivited her to come to our place for dinner before the show, and when she called me in the late morning to tell me she was still deciding what she wanted to do, she wanted to know what we were making for dinner before she decided. We hung up and I texted Shobhit to ask what was being made for dinner (a vegetable stir fry with rice), I texted that to her. And I later texted both her and Shobhit the link to the
Seattle Times article, which Jennifer had shared with the purpose of noting that Madonna had not come onstage Saturday night until 10:00 (the shows were scheduled for 8:30); the show lasted two hours and 15 minutes (it was closer to a solid two hours last night); and she keeps the arena at around 80° (it did indeed prove to be quite warm in there, but not unbearable).
It was hours before I heard back from Danielle, though, and I finally called her at about 7:30 while Shobhit and I were watching episodes of season six of
Night Court on Prime Video. I had already texted her earlier in the day that we had decided we'd wait to even head out until 8:30, and we would park by my office building and walk to Seattle Center from there. She said she wanted to walk with us if we could make that work, and she would park at the same spot. I texted her the address, and shortly thereafter she sent me the link to track her location on Google Maps. She called a bit after that to tell me she was waiting to get coffee and it was taking longer than expected so we could park and go in ahead of her if we wanted. But, eventually her location on the map actually started moving, and she arrived at my office building at right after 9:00, about 15 minutes after we did.
Shobhit and I had already gone up to my office so he could use the bathroom. We had just come back down, Danielle pulled up—and asked if she could go in to pee. So, we went back up again.
Then we
walked through the building to the skywalk over Elliott Avenue, though the building on the other side of the street and its parking garage, up one floor, out the door to Western, up a block on Denny Way and then up First Avenue to Climate Pledge Arena.
In the end, the timing of all this worked out absolutely perfectly. We waited in line for just a few minutes to take turns with the group in front of us to take each other's photos in front of the great, large MADONNA sign with the Space Needle looming in the background. We got inside, passing through a metal detector, and Shobhit had to pee
again. We found our way to our seats. And, having kind of deliberately delayed our arrival—the first photo I took after taking our seats was taken at 9:32—Madonna actually came out about 15 minutes earlier than expected, at roughly 9:45. The show was over at 11:45, give or take just a few minutes.
I started a working "
Celebration Tour 2024" photo album all the way back in January of
last year, when we first purchased the tickets, which were for a show originally scheduled for last July. (Had the show gone on as planned, it would have been eight rather than nine years since my last Madonna concert . . . technically even last night was closer to eight and a half years.) Then she was
hospitalized last summer and her entire tour was postponed. I like to keep my photo albums in chronological order, so ever time I've had a new photo album since, I've had to place them just before this Madonna concert album. Finally I can move on from this one! (I still have a similar scenario going on for Gabriel and Lea's wedding, which is scheduled for May 4.)
The photo album for last night, in the end has 36 shots—32 of them taken last night. That's a record for
Madonna concert photo albums, or at least ones dedicated only to the concert, as opposed to days in Las Vegas when I happened also to go to a concert.
Oh, one final note. I was on the phone for a few minutes with Gabriel yesterday afternoon, and he said, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how human do you think she's going to look?" I said, "Maybe a 6.5." In the end, she didn't look
that bad—the clearly extensive work she's now had done on her face notwithstanding. I think, at least from the distance of our seats (and this includes using the binoculars I was
very glad we brought), she actually looked closer to 8 out of 10 "human."
During our first phone call late in the morning, Danielle asked me, "Are you excited?" and I kind of hesitated. I expected it to be a great show, I said. "But, my opinion of her as a person has . . .
evolved." Well, my prediction was true, although I was a little more bummed out by some things than I expected. I still really enjoyed the show. I'd have enjoyed it a lot more had the sound system not been so shitty.
* * * * *
I will now try to be as brief as I can about the
rest of my weekend.
Right after work on Friday I took myself to see
The Taste of Things and it was absolutely wonderful.
Saturday was a Braeburn Condos Theater Double Feature day with Laney, this one a Yourgos Lanthimos fouble feature:
The Lobster, which neither Laney nor I had watched since we saw it together in the theater in 2016, and I nearly forgot
how much I fucking love that movie.
Shobhit, after going to a Town Hall with our local representatives during the first movie, came back just in time to join us for the second movie:
Poor Things, which I have now seen three times in as many months and which I seem to like a bit more each time I see it. Shobhit had been sort of resisting being impressed by Emma Stone's performance in that movie, and finally commented about halfway through how he could see why some people might vote for her. (He already cast his votes for the SAG Awards, voting for Lily Gladstone in
Killers of the Flower Moon, which I already felt was ultimately the right choice anyway—but, if Lily Gladstone were not in the discussion this year, Emma Stone would be nabbing her second Oscar for this novie for sure. And Shobhit agreed.)
Laney was dutifully delighted by
Poor Things, even bursting into applause when it ended. She went back home shortly thereafter, and Shobhit and I took a walk to QFC.
I got to work about 90 minutes late this morning, something I long actually had as a calendar item at work: I knew Madonna was notoriously late getting onstage, and I didn't want to have only four or five hours of sleep. I just didn't turn on my alarm. I still woke up at first around 6:15—roughly an hour later than usual—not because of Shobhit already getting up and getting ready for his own work shift, but because of my fucking cat (Guru) meowing at me, like it was his duty to tell me it was time to get up. He does this on weekends too, that little fucker.
I snoozed for close to another half hour, then finally got up. I arrived at work at about 9:00. Now I need to try and get some actual work done today.
[posted 12:13 pm]
