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You don’t get Madonna tickets to see a light-hearted show. You go to watch Olympic-level choreography routines that have been exhaustively road-tested by men who pole-dance on giant crucifixes. You go to see Madge dressed up in elaborately designed samurai, matador, and flapper outfits with so much theatrical flair, they look like they were hand-stitched by the ghosts of Rogers and Hammerstein’s costume designers. You go to see if the 57-year-old can still pull off high notes that are almost as athletic as her high kicks. And if you were at Madison Square Garden last night, as Madonna kicked off a three-night run of shows in her backyard, you saw all of that. But you saw something else, too, something you might not expect. There was Madonna, kicking back on stage, strumming a ukulele–and smiling. Was she actually having a good time up there?

Finally, here was a glimpse of the not-quite-so-serious Madonna. She even set the vibe by opening with a comedian. Amy Schumer staggered onto the stage with a bottle of booze in her hands and quipped, “Who better than me to open up for Madonna? Uh… Any band?” She killed it with dirty jokes involving Katie Couric, the Kardashians, and Abraham Lincoln, warming up the crowd for a set that later found Madonna talking in a Betty Boop voice, cracking jokes with the audience (“You’re too horny for me!” she told a man wearing bull horns), and finally bringing Schumer back on stage to dance to “Unapologetic Bitch” and… er, play with her Sock Bitch puppet.

The playful mood was a surprise, since the show didn’t start that way. She opened with “Iconic,” as a bleak image of Mike Tyson stared the crowd down from a massive video screen and Madonna was lowered from the ceiling in a red and black kimono, writhing around inside a cage made of swords. In voiceover mode, we could hear her sermonizing about how creativity is being crushed by corporate machine—an ironic message for a pop star who has cultivated such a powerful brand, she now sells a Material Girl fashion line at Macy’s. Dancers dressed as gladiators descended upon the stage, in hardware masks that covered their faces, and standing before them as their queen, Madonna, looked like Daenerys Targaryn from Game of Thrones, her long wavy blonde hair flowing behind her, her arms raised up as if to say, Love me! Fear me! As visually spectacular as it was narratively heavy-handed, it felt like a callback to her last tour, MDNA, which featured a dark charade that found Madonna wielding a gun on stage. But when the song ended with video footage of the gladiators knocking over a saintly-looking Madonna statue, the tone changed. Madonna has built a career by playing with what we hold sacred, whether it’s crucifixes or underground dance crazes. Now the only sacred thing she’s tearing down is Madonna herself.

During much of the show, she seemed to revel in her refusal to give the crowd the Madonna they’d always known. The setlist was crammed with material from the new album, disappointing those who came to hear the greatest hits. When she did dip into her back catalogue, she teased the audience with medleys that fused oldies with newer tracks. “Holy Water” segued into “Vogue,” as Madonna cavorted with scantily clad nuns (played by dancers in ruffled white panties) who swung around on crucifixes that towered at three stories high. Then “Vogue” segued back into “Holy Water,” as the dancers created a Last Supper tableau. She chased a male dancer up a long spiral staircase for “Heartbreak City,” then pushed him off the top and watched him free-fall to the ground as she sulked to “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore.”

When she did play an old favorite at its full run time, she revamped the songs so that they were unrecognizable until the lyrics came in, which might’ve confounded those who wanted to sing along. But many of those new arrangements felt fresh and exciting. She turned “Burning Up” into a rock song, playing a guitar solo on a Flying V. She infused “Deeper and Deeper” with a pulsing house undercurrent that felt contemporary again in a dance-music era where groups like Disclosure reign. Not long after lying on the hood of a car, with mechanics swirling on wheel boards around her, and performing “Body Shop”—a song so literal about its sexual intentions, it doesn’t even qualify as a double entendre—she took on “Like a Virgin,” stripping the song down to little more than her voice and a galloping bass. Her performance of that classic was refreshingly minimal, too: no elaborate set pieces, just Madonna joyfully bouncing around stage. She stuffed the microphone in her pants, ripped open her shirt to reveal a black bra (“Getting hot in here, right?”), and dutifully humped the stage, but the whole thing was meant to be more campy than sexy, poking fun at the provocateur she was back when that song could’ve gotten her banned from the VMAs.

Madonna was winking at us—and maybe at a few others, too. She sang “La Vie En Rose” in French, possibly to celebrate the 100^thanniversary of Edith Piaf’s death, or maybe to rile up her rumored rival Lady Gaga, who has claimed the song as her own signature set piece. When Madonna whipped out the ukulele for “La Vie,” then gushed in a faux-naïve Betty Boop voice, “Gosh! A girl can get awful nervous under these lights!” it sounded like she was playfully taking a shot at Taylor Swift, whose golly-gosh enthusiasm and ukulele strumming defined her Speak Now tour. Madonna recently told EW that she and Swift had planned to work on something together after teaming up for the iHeart Radio Music Awards in March, but the collaboration fell apart. Maybe there’s some bad blood?

Then again, maybe Madonna was just being Madonna, not trying to lash out at anyone in particular so much as trying to tease anyone she can. It was fitting that the final third of her show was devoted to matador themes, since Madonna has never stopped baiting her fans. She took a painstakingly long, slow walk up a few steps in her regal matador robe during “Living for Love,” intentionally antagonizing anyone in the crowd who might still be nervous that she’d repeat the famous spill she took at the Brit Awards.

But she also took pleasure in just being a goofball, whether she was pretending to throw back tequila shots during a Spanish-tinged-guitar rendition of “Get Into the Groove,” joining a conga line for “Dress You Up,” or dressing like a sexy Uncle Sam for the closer, “Holiday,” which arrived complete with a big confetti explosion. She even tried to riff with the crowd about her own unluckiness in love, asking the whole room, “Anyone want to get hitched?” Judging by accounts of her previous show in Montreal, the stage banter was scripted. And yet, that was just more proof that, decades after she broke onto the scene in New York, she’s still the ultimate professional, working 16-hour days just to perfect every move, every note, every line of breezy dialogue.

“I’m feeling very nostalgic,” she said toward the end of the show. “Do you people understand that I played Madison Square Garden thirty years ago?” The whole crowd erupted in cheers. “I survived!” she said, breathing hard, but also beaming. She was having fun. And, clearly, having fun was a whole lot of work.

Read more at Entertainment Weekly

Bitch, there’s only one Madonna. The 57-year-old Queen of Pop made that abundantly clear during a more than two hour stage spectacular last night at Madison Square Garden, the first of three NYC-area dates of her hater-silencing Rebel Heart World Tour.

Wheeling out a die-hard fan-feeding 23 tracks — naturally, some recent thumpers off Rebel Heart, her thirteenth studio disc, and  surprisingly straight-forward, heartfelt renderings of classics she hasn’t performed live in decades — the Material Girl turned out her most astonishingly impressive live experience since 2006’s Confessions Tour. Although she was backed by a new, multi-cultural cadre of resistance band-flexible backup dancers, dressed in the finest stage gear from Gucci, Alexander Wang, and Miu Miu and accompanied by a small city’s worth of LED lights, M relied on her singular catalog of hits, unblemished dancing chops and 30 years experience as an unequaled provocateur to do the heavy lifting.

Before showtime, a half-hour round of comedy from opener Amy Schumer lightened the mood in the arena. Here was another button-pushing woman who needed nothing more than a mic to hold the crowd in her clutches with a routine that included several jabs at herself (choice moment: comparing her looks to a hybrid of “a Cabbage Patch Kid and Tonya Harding”) — and one noticeable one at former Madge bestie Gwyneth Paltrow, with Schumer mocking the Goop founder’s Women’s Health cover.

Once Madonna took the crucifix-shaped stage at about 9:50 p.m. (cut her some slack, only 20 minutes late this time!) though, it was clear the singer wasn’t kidding around. Descending from a cage of swords in the opening Game of Thrones-themed suite, she launched the show with Rebel Heart’s “Iconic” and “Bitch I’m Madonna,” showing off her way with a fan during an Asian-infused dance routine. Still, she stopped short of attempting the “fan flip” she pulled off during the Maria Antoinette-styled performance of “Vogue” at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards.

PHOTOS: Madonna wannabes

The concert kicked into high-gear as she strapped on her heavy metal guitar and brought her loyal subjects — including onlookers Jennifer Lopez, Casper Smart, Jerry Seinfeld, Ariana Grande, and Andy Cohen — to their feet with 1983’s “Burning Up.” The setting then quickly turned back to her stock trade of mixing the spiritual and the sexual, with Madonna and her dancers slithering on polls in racy nun habits and reenacting the Last Supper (with an S&M twist) during “Holy Water,” “Devil Pray” and “Messiah.”

The rarities of Encyclopedia Madonnica kept coming after she reemerged in a Pep Boys-esque set dressed as a goth version of Sandy from Grease, singing “Body Shop” before pulling out a ukelele and letting her oft-underestimated vocals shine with an acoustic, tears-inducing take of 1986’s “True Blue.” The disco Erotica-era cut “Deeper and Deeper” followed before Madonna turned back to her vulnerable side, climbing up and down (and up and down) a spiral staircase to belt Rebel Heart’s “Heartbreak City” and an affecting “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore,” a nearly-forgotten torch song from Like a Virgin.

On and on, M kept proving she’s still got the moves and the motion. The mother of four reenacted her matador act from springs’ awards show circuit for “Living for Love” (phew! The cape came off without a hitch. No scary falls this time!); “La Isla Bonita,” “Into The Groove,” and “Dress You Up” were strutted out in her usual Latin-themed set; she stuck to traditional arrangements of Madonna tour regulars  “Material Girl” and “Music”  while switching up the setting to Harlem’s Cotton Club circa 1925, donning a Swarvoski crystal-bedazzled flapper getup.

“I’m feeling pretty nostalgic tonight,” she copped at one point. Madonna backed that up beyond her own catalog, employing her trusty ukelele for more reflective moments, including an unplugged “Who’s That Girl” (!) and a rendition of the French standard “La Vie En Rose” (Reminder: She told Us in March that seeing her daughter sing the song on the instrument has been “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”). But she swung the pendulum back to the here and now by the end, inviting Amy Schumer to escort her offstage (and giving her a sock and a banana? Madonna, please explain!) during “Unapologetic Bitch.”

For the encore, Madonna reemerged draped in an American flag (a nod to her 1990 MTV Rock The Vote ad), belting the spirited “Holiday” without being able to wipe the smile from her face. There’s a double meaning there: An acknowledgment that she’s still unbeatable in every regard as a pop star, with the show acting as a supreme victory lap through a venue she noted she had first performed in 30 years prior. But it also signified what was perhaps most evident the entire time: She had the most fun she’s had onstage in recent memory, lifting her often self-seriousness from recent treks and reveling in the art of being Madonna.

Read more: https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/madonna-concert-review-pop-icon-takes-manhattan-with-nyc-tour-stop-2015179#ixzz3m1dR9b6B
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“You know what they say — it’s lonely at the top,” Madonna told the crowd near the end of her New York show last night. “But it ain’t crowded!” And on the second U.S. show of her hotly awaited new Rebel Heart tour, Our Lady spent three hours proving what a goddess she is, not to mention what an Unapologetic Bitch. Damn right it’s not crowded, because there’s nobody else near her throne. The whole night was a tour of everything only Madonna can do. She’s not the same. She has no shame. She’s on fire.

She sang the Edith Piaf ballad “La Vie En Rose” in French, alone on the stage, strumming her ukelele. (“It’s en français, though, okay? So try and sing along if you can.”) After “Material Girl,” she tossed a wedding bouquet to a gay couple up front, then snickered, “Suckers!” She used crucifixes as stripper poles, doing the “Vogue” rap while writhing against a dancer clad in a nun’s wimple and feathery hot pants. Her cassocked dancers simulated a group-grope orgy at the Last Supper while the guest of honor chanted “Yeezus loves my pussy best!” And all night long, her banter was the toppest of notch, like when she introduced her gorgeous new acoustic country-hoedown version of “True Blue.” “No swear words in this song,” she announced. “This is a song about true love. I didn’t know what I was talking about when I wrote it.” Glad you’re the one who brought that up, Madonna.

She hasn’t reached so far onstage, musically or emotionally, since her 2001 Drowned World extravaganza. Her last couple of tours had spectacular performances, but dodgy set lists. This time Madonna has much stronger new songs to play with, from Rebel Heart — and she brilliantly revamps the hits. She played a Flying V for a punked-out “Burning Up,” dropping to her knees for her guitar solo — the first time she played Madison Square Garden, 30 years ago, she got on her knees in front of the male guitarist while he played a solo, and don’t think she doesn’t remember these things.

Opening act Amy Schumer helped set the tone — when was the last time you saw a stand-up comedian slay in an arena? Schumer was clearly right at home in a room full of Madonna fans: “I know who’s here. It’s like taking a warm bath in a tub full of dick that doesn’t want you.” She talked abut how hot Bradley Cooper’s girlfriend is (“She’s like a panther fucked a gazelle and they fucked Gisele”) and how hot Bradley Cooper is (“you would just grab your ankles and say ‘any hole’s fine'”). For the encore, she came back out to let Madonna kick her in the ass, right before “Holiday.”

But it was Madonna’s night. “Body Shop” was a Fifties-style dance routine where she rolled in on the hood of a vintage Chevy, just like Christie Brinkley in Billy Joel’s “Keeping the Faith” video,” then frolicked in glitter ankle boots with a harem of hot greaser mechanics, all looking like the boy who knocked her up in the “Papa Don’t Preach” video. (So true: Italians do it better!) Then she sat her dancers down on a pile of tires and adopted a Dolly Parton twang to tell them, “Like my grandma always said, if it’s got tits or tires, it’s gonna give you trouble.”

“Like a Virgin” was one of the night’s peak moments — the song got pimped up with the Egyptian-lover electro-beats from “Music,” while she took the stage alone to revamp her cowgirl line-dance moves from the “Don’t Tell Me” video. She wore fingerless black gloves, reading her 1984 Boy Toy self, yet she humps the stage with enough verve and wit to make the girl she used to be look like the shy type. She also said, “It’s so hot in here,” which is Madonna-speak for, “You don’t mind if I strip this shirt off, do you?”

She kept getting surprisingly sentimental about playing the Garden, 30 years after her 1985 Virgin Tour. Back then, she always used to ask the crowd, “Will you marry me?” Tonight the girl was in a slightly shadier mood. “I don’t know about marriage,” she mused, after her bouquet toss. “Do you want to marry me?” When fans screamed, she replied, “No, you probably don’t. But maybe it’ll be third time lucky.” She resurrected long-unheard gems like “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” and “Deeper and Deeper,” along with a snippet of “Justify My Love.” (“You put this in me, so now what?” — such an underrated but on point Madonna line.)

“Music” began as a jazz-flapper café ballet, with Madonna in Twenties Gatsby drag, before it blew up to hit the electro-sleaze heights. (As it happens, it was 15 years ago this week that Madonna released Music, still her hardest-rocking and most seductive album.) After the devils-and-bullfighters-and-Minotaurs pageant of “Living My Life,” she began the gratifyingly long Latin segment with “La Isla Bonita,” stretching into a generous and unhurried medley of “Dress You Up,” “Into the Groove” and “Lucky Star.”

“I’m feeling very nostalgic tonight,” she told the crowd. “Do you people understand I played Madison Square Garden 30 years ago?” She kissed a fan in a 1985 Virgin Tour shirt who claimed he was there — for all we know, he might have been the goth club kid doing the cobweb dance in the “Into The Groove” video. It led to the emotional highlight of the night, when she picked up her acoustic guitar for one of her saltiest and best Number One hits, a song she hasn’t performed since the Eighties: “Who’s that Girl,” leading the audience in the question “¿Quien es esa niña?” The question hung in the air. “I still don’t know,” Madonna said after the song. “I still don’t know. I think I’m not supposed to know — maybe that’s what life’s about, figuring out who the fuck you are.”

Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bitch-shes-madonna-nyc-stop-showcases-genius-of-rebel-heart-tour-20150917#ixzz3m1cRGDjg
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NEW YORK — A floor-length, traditional Latin dress blanketed Madonna’s slender frame.

With her hair woven into a french braid, the singer strummed an acoustic guitar and sang to the crowd as a collage of her fans’ artwork played behind her on a video screen.

In this moment, at Madison Square Garden Wednesday night, it was hard to believe the 57-year-old mother of four had ever thrusted her way through her “Erotica” phase.

But, it would have been more difficult to imagine if a half-hour earlier, the sultry icon had not flung herself onto crucifix-adorned stripper poles, among a team of scantily clad dancers in nun costumes.

Pop’s most culturally influential female has always seem to follow a pattern of unpredictability like this — a romantic gesture in her music may just as easily be followed by shock or obscenity on stage.

And in that vein, the chameleonic performer showed formidable range and allure on her new Rebel Heart world tour, as she morphed from 21st Century dance-vixen, to nostalgic ’80s pop conjurer, to an ostensibly earnest singer-songwriter.

The two-hour set blasted the sold-out crowd mostly with the thump of her upbeat tracks — particularly the new songs off March’s “Rebel Heart” — and revamped many of her greatest hits amid a bevy of dazzling stage sets. Though the fresh takes on her classics varied in their successes.

Throughout the night Madonna was gracious, good-humored and sharp enough on her vocals and intense choreography to arrest the “does she still have it?” skeptics. She most certainly does.

The epic hit-maker’s 76-date roadshow, which kicked off last week in Montreal (Wednesday’s show was No. 4), hits Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City Oct. 3, and runs through March 2016.

HIGHLIGHTS
– Eight songs off “Rebel Heart” peppered the set and reminded that after three decades in the game, the singer can still act as a contemporary force. The set’s second number “Bitch, I’m Madonna” — performed in full-on Japanese samurai garb — felt like a jab to any fans who questioned the pairing of Madonna’s sensual performance style with her age.

But the most memorable of her latest crop was inarguably the sacrilegious live version of “Holy Water,” which not only featured the stripper poles and nuns, but recreated a Last Supper table and quickly covered it with dancers pantomiming sexual acts over its surface.

While church-goers might find the choreography and setting somewhat disturbing, Madonna has said before that in her eyes, religion and music are intertwined. In the sea of vapid stage scenes, it was refreshing to see an artist so vehemently represent their work and push the envelope in a grand, shocking format.

– Amid all the tack-sharp choreography and production value were a few more organic, acoustic numbers. Perhaps the strongest was the night’s lone cover, of Edith Piaf’s classic “La Vie En Rose.” Madonna sat center stage and strummed a ukulele as she worked a slow, smooth vibrato over background accordion.

“I still am a romantic at heart,” she said before the song — her level of earnestness is always up for grabs — and during the French tune’s “la la la” section, she called “everyone sing along!” But she seemed to say it mockingly. A cynic at heart, or just a rebel heart, felt closer to her true psyche.

– Madonna’s second costume change, into a matador costume to battle her bull-horn-headed dancers during “Living For Love” launched the night’s most questionable section. The singer continued to wear the getup for “La Isla Bonita,” and then left to again switch clothes. She emerged wearing the aforementioned Latin gown, and launched into a sluggish, Latin-infused medley of old pop hits. The addition of congas to “Dress You Up” was tolerable, but the medley version of “Into The Groove” completely deflated the song.

To read the full review and view pictures by NJ.com click HERE

Madonna’s album Rebel Heart was bedevilled by leaks; she fell flat on her backside at the Brit awards; and her Instagram gaffes have made Jeremy Corbyn look like a Rupert Murdoch-style media mastermind. As she arrives in Madison Square Garden on the fourth date of her 10th tour – the last under her 10-year, $120m contract with Live Nation – she should be up against it. Yet Madonna is always at her best with her back to the wall, when the killer instinct that has sustained her through over 30 years in pop rears to the surface, a visceral refusal to be beaten.

Her choice of support act on this homecoming gig – since New York is the place she remade herself – is very Madonna, all wrong on paper but in practice, right on the money. Amy Schumer takes the stage in front of a massive backdrop of Madonna’s face staring at the heavens and clutching a sword to her breast, the massive machinery of pop music concealed behind it. Swigging from a bottle of champagne, and with nothing but a microphone and a stool, the comic of the moment says that she was asked: “‘Who better than you to open up for Madonna?’” “Uh,” she rhetorically answers. “Any band?”

Yet Schumer’s perfect reading of the audience, in which straight men are such a minority as to be non-existent, (“It’s like taking a warm bath in a ton of dick that doesn’t want you”) weapons-grade filth (“We’re here to rethink cum”) and description of the Kardashians as a family who “take the faces they were born with as a light suggestion” reduce the crowd to marshmallow before Madonnahas even made an appearance.

Click HERE to read the full article by The Guardian

For an artist who rarely looks back creatively, Madonna was in a particularly wistful mood during her Madison Square Garden concert on Wednesday (Sept. 16) night, the first of three NYC dates on her Rebel Heart Tour.

“I’m feeling very nostalgic tonight,” Madonna said (twice, actually). “I played Madison Square Garden 30 years ago. That’s crazy.” When she trailed off for a moment, you almost thought she was lost in sentimental reverie. But as always, Madonna was laser-focused on the present, even while reminiscing. “You were there?” she asked a fan in the front row who had been talking to her. “Then I gotta give you a kiss.” For the record, a Madonna-on-fan kiss is a controlled affair: She kissed her fingers and touched the fan’s forehead, like a messiah gracing her faithful follower with one touch.

Nostalgia aside, Madonna’s restless creative spirit is on full display on the Rebel Heart Tour. Refusing to coast by playing faithful, familiar live renditions of her hits, Madge recast a number of her classics in different musical molds, with mostly positive results.

Strapping on a guitar, she skuzzed up “Burning Up” to hard rock heights and turned “True Blue” into a ukulele sing-along. For “Like a Virgin,” she lost the original instrumentation, her backup dancers and most of her clothes while turning her breakthrough hit into a sparse, Pharrell-esque jam.

In a lengthy nod to her Spanish-speaking audience, Madonna delivered a Latin-tinged medley of “Dress You Up,” “Into the Groove” and “Lucky Star.” The maracas might have been a little much, but the crisp Spanish guitar successfully made the songs sound newly organic. And while there weren’t as many French speakers in attendance at MSG, Madonna nodded to her Gallic fans with a surprisingly full-voiced version of Edith Piaf’s “La Vie En Rose.” (Was it as good asLady Gaga’s recent live “La Vie en Rose” cover? That’s a topic for opposing fan groups to viciously discuss in the comments section.)

Later in the show, Madonna began “Music” as a Jazz Age ballad before kicking the No. 1 hit into banger mode. The presence of “Music” was an effective reminder that while some compulsive naysayers tsk the Queen of Pop for trend chasing with Diplo, she brought techno to the pop mainstream years before EDM was a ubiquitous term.

As always, Madonna will never be everything to everyone. Some were undoubtedly let down to see her make it through the “Vogue” spoken word section during “Holy Water” without segueing into the full song — and to see the lights come up without any “Like a Prayer.”

But the classic tracks Madonna did pull out were judiciously selected, with attention paid to material rarely performed on her live tours. An acoustic “Who’s That Girl?” (not seen on a Madonna tour in nearly 30 years), a pumping “Deeper and Deeper” (absent from her setlist for 11 years) and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” (which segued out of new song “HeartBreak City”) were all resurrected to huge applause.

Speaking of resurrection, Catholic themes occupied a sizable portion of her stage show, as you would expect — but always with the Ciccone wink. There was a bacchanalian Last Supper, nuns gyrating on stripper polls and famous faces from Renaissance religious paintings projected onscreen during the aforementioned “Vogue” roll call.

Aside from the stunning Minotaur-filled “Living for Love,” the most effective new song in her Rebel Heart Tour arsenal was “Body Shop.” While the song was light to the point of forgettable on the album, its low-key, affable sound worked to the choreography’s advantage as Madonna teased and flirted her way through a stage filled with tires, muscle cars and muscle men.

“My grandma always said, ‘If it’s got tits or tires, it’s going to give you trouble,'” Madonna said in a faux Southern accent after the song. “Sorry, I know I’m not as funny as Amy Schumer, but I’m trying.”

Schumer, incidentally, killed her opening set (last night was her first of three opening slots for Madonna in NYC). Repeatedly mocking the flowering falsehood that it’s a new Golden Era for women in Hollywood while still making jokes about the First Lady taking a hot load, Schumer’s ability to pivot between the bawdy and the incisive proved the perfect fit for a Madonna opener.

“I thought I was gonna bomb so hard for months,” Schumer said when her set was over. “This is the best feeling ever.”

That feeling might’ve been one-upped (or quashed?) later on in the evening when Madonna brought Amy out during “Unapologetic Bitch,” bent her over and literally kicked her ass (in addition to pretending to penetrate it). Schumer was ecstatic and surprisingly rhythmic while dancing with Madonna onstage, but the Queen couldn’t let her go without some hazing.

Before Schumer left the stage, Madonna put a sock puppet on Amy’s hand and made it tell her, “Hi Amy — I’m a sock, bitch!” Waiting a few beats for an actual joke to follow, Schumer exploded into confused laughter when it became clear that was pretty much all Madge had to offer with the skit. Madonna might be good at changing creative lanes, but her attempt at improv was like switching lanes by means of rolling out of a moving car.

When the show came to a triumphant close with “Holiday,” New York’s favorite adopted daughter paraded around in an American flag while her dancers — dressed for a Gatsby-style rager at this point — paraded about with jubilant relief. It was clear they felt the rush of owning Madison Square Garden and relished it. Madonna, on the other hand, kept her composure. Clearly, failure to dominate MSG on Wednesday night was never an option for her — just like failure to dominate New York City was never an option for Madonna more than 30 years ago.

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